“You are a jester, evidently,” said Sebastian, “but I like your humour. Talk away.”
“I am a man of the people,” said Anquetil. “My father owned a fishing smack in a little village in Devonshire. I wanted to go to sea, but they sent me to school instead, and I was sensible enough not to run away. I am, you see, eminently sensible and practical. I worked hard; I had brains; I got a scholarship; I finally went to Oxford. All the time I continued to think about going to sea, but I was patient enough to wait and shrewd enough not to underrate the value of education. When I had done with Oxford I fell in with a man who was taking an expedition to Siberia; he asked me to go with him. We were to look for mammoths. We found fossilised mammoths in the banks of frozen rivers, and by the remains of food still adhering to their teeth we were able to throw some interesting light upon their diet. We were away for a year and a half; and as our researches had met with some success, I have never since lacked employment. You know quite enough about my various undertakings for me to spare you any account of them now. I only wanted to emphasise the difference between our lives. “
“Wait,” said Sebastian. “I am at Oxford now. I am where you were twenty-odd years ago. How do you know what my life will be after I have left?”
Anquetil laughed. “My dear boy, your life was mapped out for you from the moment you were born. You went to a preparatory school; you went to Eton; you are now at Oxford; you will go into the Guards; you will have various love affairs, mostly with fashionable married women; you will frequent wealthy and fashionable houses; you will attend Court functions; you will wear a white-and-scarlet uniform—and look very handsome in it, too—you will be flattered and persecuted by every mother in London; you will eventually become engaged to a suitable young lady; you will marry her in the chapel here and the local bishop will officiate; you will beget an heir and several other children, who ought to have been painted by Hoppner; you will then acquire the habit of being unfaithful to your wife and she to you; you will both know it and both, out of sheer good manners and the force of civilisation, will tacitly agree to ignore your mutual infidelities; you will sometimes make a speech in the House of Lords; you will be given the Garter; you will send your sons to a preparatory school, Eton, Oxford, and into the Guards; after dinner you will talk about socialism and the growth of democracy; you will be worried but not seriously disturbed; on the twelfth of August you will go north to shoot grouse, on the first of September you will return south to shoot partridges, on the first of October you will shoot pheasants; your photograph will appear in the illustrated papers, propped on a shooting stick with two dogs and a loader; you will celebrate your golden wedding; you will carry a spur or a helmet at the next coronation; you will begin to wonder if your son(aged fifty-one) wants you to die; you will oblige him by dying at last, and your coffin will be borne to the family vault on a farm cart accompanied by a procession of your employees and your tenants. And during all those years, you will never escape from Chevron.”
“But I don’t want to escape from Chevron,” said Sebastian.
“No,” said Anquetil, shifting his position a little, “you don’t want to escape from Chevron. You think that you love it, that you give it glad and happy service, but you are really its victim. A place like Chevron is really a despot of the most sinister sort: it disguises its tyranny under the mask of love. Would you like to know what a man like me thinks of a place like Chevron? It fascinates, horrifies, and shocks me. Remember, I come from a cottage myself, and have been accustomed to see families living overcrowded and poor, for so long as I can remember. But it is not the contrast which shocks me. It is not the fact that you employ fifty servants and can choose your room amongst three or four hundred rooms, when parents and children elsewhere are sleeping together in a bed. No. It is the effect on you yourself. You are not allowed to be a free agent. Your life has been ordained for you from the beginning. I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I will agree that probably you will do your duty according to your lights, you will befriend your tenants, rule justly over your servants, take the chair at meetings, earn the respect of your equals—all this when once you have ceased to be a wild young man—but you will be dead, you will be a stuffed image.”
“You are very eloquent,” said Sebastian, “and your sarcasm makes me uneasy, but are you right? Surely one might lead a worse life.”
“Then,” pursued Anquetil, taking no notice, “there is another danger which you can scarcely hope to escape. It is the weight of the past. Not only will you esteem material objects because they are old—I am not superficial enough to reproach you for so harmless a weakness—but, more banefully, you will venerate ideas and institutions because they have remained for a long time in force; for so long a time as to appear to you absolute and unalterable. That is real atrophy of the soul. You inherit your code ready-made. That waxwork figure labelled Gentleman will be forever mopping and mowing at you. Thus you would never forget your manners, but you would break a heart, and think yourself rather a fine fellow for doing it. You would not defraud others; but you will defraud yourself; you will never take your conventions and smash them to bits. You will never tell lies—avoidable lies—but you will always be afraid of the truth. You will never wonder why you pursue a certain course of behaviour; you will pursue it because it is the thing to do. And the past is to blame for all this; inheritance, tradition, upbringing; your nurse, your father, your tutor, your public school, Chevron, your ancestors, all the gamut. You are condemned, my poor Sebastian; you are beyond rescue. Even should you try to break loose, it will be in vain. Your wildest excesses will be fitted into some pigeon-hole. That convenient phrase, ‘wild oats,’ will cover you from twenty to thirty. That convenient word, ‘eccentric,’ will cover you from thirty until death. ‘An eccentric nobleman.’ That’s the best you may hope for. But though you may wobble in your orbit, you can never escape from it.”
“Nor can the planets,” said Sebastian, looking up at Jupiter.
“Another misleading analogy,” said Anquetil, also looking at Jupiter; “the firmament has magnitude and possibly organisation in its favour, but mankind, though puny, has independence and an undeniable boldness. I like mankind. I prefer a small, bold astronomer to a big, decorous star. But we are getting away from you and Chevron and your common past; further away than you will ever get. You will never jump as far as a planet; never even further than the limits of your own park. You are fenced in—fenced in with oak planks cut from trees several centuries old.”
“Another misleading analogy,” said Sebastian; “you are simply losing yourself in a lot of words.”
“Ah, but remember,” said Anquetil, “I have had my head turned. Not only am I keeping you here in this very peculiar situation, but 1 have been invited by your mother into surroundings well calculated to make me lose my head. Consider my past. I come from the humblest of homes; I depended for my supper upon the catch of a few miserable herrings; I often did not know whether my father was drowned or still alive; my wits were my only fortune; when I go home from time to time today, I have to readjust my ideas, even my speech, until I scarcely know who I am or where I belong. But my weekend at Chevron has shown me one thing: I don’t belong here. I don’t mind admitting to you that these two days have disturbed me more than I should have thought possible. I have perceived a certain beauty where I expected to find nothing but farce. There have been moments, even, when I was bewildered and recreant, and was inclined to go back upon all my fiercest convictions. Your Chevron soothed and charmed me. You, yourself, were a thing new to my experience. You, and your Chevron, were different from your mother and your mother’s world; you had a different quality. I try to be open-minded, you see; I recognise the small particular quality that is your speciality. It breathes from you like an aroma. I don’t suppose that it is peculiar to you personally. I daresay I should recognise it in many young men of your class. You don’t like to hear me say that,” said Anq
uetil; “it embarrasses you, you think me class-conscious. It is one of your taboos, never to mention class; I am offending against good manners. I don’t care. This is my hour and I am making the most of it; and as for you, you must endure hearing the truth for once in your life. Besides, I am not insulting you. I am saying that I perceive the charm of a young man like yourself, master of a great estate, easy, full of grace, with centuries of easy, graceful ancestors behind him. You affect me very strongly—I, who thought myself beyond being affected by such things—so strongly that at dinner for an instant I imagined myself and you in the roles which your personality (oh, quite unconsciously!) was creating for us both. I saw you as the patron and myself as the parasite. You, of course, are quite unaware of the effect you produce; you are quite unaware of your own easy assumptions; that is part of the charm, but it is also your danger. Lofty young man that you are, splendid and insolent, no uneasiness has ever crept like a louse between your shirt and your skin. Remember always, to my credit, that I did my best to put it there.”
“Well, but what do you want me to do about it?” said Sebastian at last.
Anquetil considered him. To Sebastian’s eyes, accustomed by now to the darkness, he looked almost diabolic, with the two tufts of the fuzzy black hair sticking out on either side of his face, and the scar running from his mouth to his ear. He knew, however, that he liked Anquetil better than anyone he had ever met in his life. “What do you want me to do about it?” he repeated.
“Come away with me,” said Anquetil. “I am sailing next week, and I may not return to England for two years or more. Come away with us and forget who you are, forget Chevron, forget your carpenters and your blacksmiths, forget society, forget your safety; forget the whole paraphernalia. Learn another point of view. This is your opportunity. Look, you’re hanging over a big drop. Down there, you die; but up here, beside me, you breathe and live. Which is it to be?”
“Do you mean that you will push me over if I refuse?” asked Sebastian. He was not frightened, but interested; he thought that Anquetil, in his exalted state of mind, was capable of anything.
“Oh, no,” said Anquetil contemptuously, “I shan’t push you over. I wouldn’t commit a murder for the sake of an allegory. But, metaphorically, you will fall if you refuse. I shall look down, and I shall see a little black speck twirling, twirling down until it disappears into greater blackness, and that will be the free spirit of Sebastian gone forever. An empty husk of a body will then politely lead me back across the maze of roofs.”
“And you’ll despise me.” Anquetil did not answer.
“I can’t do it,” said Sebastian desperately, after a long pause. “Why didn’t you say all this yesterday? Then, I might have listened to you; today, I can’t. You simply torture me, and all for nothing. It’s too late.”
“Ah?” said Anquetil. “Then I was right. Something has happened to you; I have known it all day. I suppose you imagine that you have fallen in love.”
“I have fallen in love,” said Sebastian sulkily. Anquetil laughed. “What an anti-climax! My poor boy, you evidently have a genius for the commonplace. I see I was mistaken in you. Forget all that I have said.” They sat there, hostile, absurd, facing one another. “I am indeed unfortunate,” said Anquetil, “to have come upon the scene twenty-four hours too late. For since you tell me that yesterday you might have listened, I can only imagine that this cataclysm overtook you late last night. What happened? Did some fair lady appear in your bedroom? Was it . . .”
“Shut up!” cried Sebastian, “I won’t stand this. “
“Of course you won’t,” said Anquetil, “I forgot you were a gentleman. I apologise; you see, I’m only a common man, and I rather resent having given myself away to you as I have been doing for the past hour. But you see that one of my prophecies about you has already come true; I told you that you would have a series of love affairs with fashionable married women. You are already at the beginning of one, it seems; perhaps the first? I hope you will enjoy it. I hope it will be a long time before you discover the ghastly sameness which attends all such adventures. I hope . . .”
“Shall we go down now?” said Sebastian in a voice of ice.
“By all means,” said Anquetil instantly; “let us go down.”
Chapter III
Sylvia
Anquetil left England and was heard of no more, but he left it unaccompanied by Sebastian. His image very quickly faded in Lucy’s memory, whether as a cause for annoyance or for regret. On the other hand, she began to notice a change in her son, and upon her asking him fondly one day what had come over him, he replied that she might attribute anything she chose to Leonard Anquetil. Lucy was surprised by this, and unconvinced, since she would have expected Anquetil’s influence over Sebastian, if any, to work in quite a different direction. She wished that Sebastian were not always so uncommunicative. She, who revelled in confidences, could never indulge the taste with her son, probably the only creature in the world of whom she stood in any awe, for he was not a person of whom one could ask many questions, and indeed she knew very well that she would be wasting her breath in asking questions which from the outset he did not intend to answer. Moreover he was daily growing more forbidding and more masterful, and arranged his life as it pleased him without seeking advice or encouraging interference. Lucy sighed, but her distress was greatly modified by the fact that he was developing in exactly the way she most desired. According to her ideas, he was growing up into an exemplary son, and conducted himself precisely in the way that his mother considered suitable for a young man of his position. He made friends with all the right young men, he brought them home to Chevron, where they became acquainted with Viola; he went to balls in London and danced with all the right debutantes, he flirted with all the right young married women; he organised parties on his own behalf, both at Chevron and elsewhere—was it not he who chartered a liner and spent a turbulent weekend with forty friends, steaming up and down the river from London to Gravesend, and from Gravesend to London, while the strains of his orchestra floated out to the astonished crowds upon the banks?—he bought the fastest motor on the market and drove it himself, he squandered money, he was picturesque, extravagant, wild. Yet withal he was wary, and showed no disposition to marry, though every mother in London did her best to trap him. Finally he appeared one day at Chevron, announced that he had been sent down from Oxford, had no intention of returning there, and proposed to enter the Household Cavalry as soon as possible.
Privately, Lucy thought that Leonard Anquetil was less responsible than Sylvia Roehampton. She could not imagine Anquetil—“that rude man, my dear”—as encouraging Sebastian to his present career of dissipation. Sebastian’s liaison with Lady Roehampton was, of course, notorious. She was seen everywhere with him, and though some people said it was a pity, Lucy did not altogether agree; Sylvia would teach the boy a lot, and meanwhile she kept him from less desirable entanglements; also, thanks to Sylvia’s medium, it was often possible for Lucy to trickle into Sebastian’s ear suggestions which could certainly not have been made by any more direct method. Sylvia, superb and triumphant, was commendably amenable, even if she occasionally annoyed Lucy by her air of superior privity. (Lucy’s passion for her son, probably the most estimable thing about her, inevitably carried with it a certain degree of jealousy.) Many and long were the conferences that Lucy held with Sylvia, for Sylvia, even if not contributing much beyond an “Ah!” or a “Quite,” was content to let Lucy talk while she herself reclined on a sofa, stitching at an endless piece of needlework which well displayed the grace of her little, white, exquisite hands. They were tiny hands, that collapsed, boneless as a kitten, when one grasped them. Lucy, who had scarcely noticed these hands before, now often looked at them and thought with a curious complicated pang how much Sebastian must love them. She, who was as a rule unappreciative of women apart from their clothes, learnt to appraise Sylvia very closely in those days. She
looked at the other woman with all her own feminine experience coming to her aid. Sylvia, the beautiful Sylvia, she had always thought, had always been something of an overblown rose, loose, generous, lovely; now she recognised an additional luxuriance, as though the rose were putting forth all its lavishness before the petals fluttered finally to the ground. There was a bloom on her cheeks, a light in her eyes, a softness on her mouth, which even Lucy must attribute to some influence working from within. Then, immediately, she began to wonder. Was Sylvia really in love with Sebastian? or was it only a final blossoming of her vanity? Impossible to answer! and, needless to say, no allusion was ever made between the friends as to Sebastian and Sylvia’s real relationship. “How kind you are to that boy of mine,” Lucy would say, playing the grateful mother; “so good of you, Sylvia dear, to be bothered with a boy who might be your son—and so raw and uncontrolled, too; so uncivilised. I never know what he will do next. There seems to be no sense in him. I wonder that George doesn’t get annoyed, to see him perpetually storming into the house. Send him back to me, if he becomes a nuisance.”
But she was amused, not dismayed. For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur, and in choosing Sylvia, Sebastian had certainly given proof of his fastidiousness. Lucy respected the instinct that went straight for the best. It did not distress her in the least that they should exhibit themselves together as they did, for she considered it quite cynically: Sebastian affiché with the most beautiful woman in London, Sylvia affiché with the most dashing and eligible young man. Such aesthetic sense as she possessed was gratified by such an association. Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career. Meanwhile she was quite content that Sebastian should become tanned in the rays of Sylvia’s Indian summer.
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