by A. A. Milne
It was this confounded book which had made him suddenly critical of Sylvia. From the day, he thought, when I began to write it, and she must have wondered what I was doing, and she seemed to take no interest. From the day when I told her I had written it, and she said ‘Fancy!’ I suppose I’m touchy. Is a mother touchy about her child? Or, whatever it looks like, whatever its nature, does she feel an absolute assurance in her heart that it is perfect? One is touchy because one is uncertain, because one wants reassurance. Surely Shakespeare must have felt pretty certain about A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Surely Keats wanted nobody to tell him that the Nightingale was good? Or is one always—well, I’m not really a writer, so I don’t know.
But, Sylvia, you do understand, don’t you, that this is my child? It is growing up suddenly. I don’t know what will happen, except that I shall never have another. It is my only child. Oh, Sylvia, be tender to it. . . .
And now let’s read Raglan again. Anyhow, Raglan likes it.
Chapter Six
I
THE Baxters were giving a party at Seven Streams. No, that is to make too much of it. At Mallows it would undoubtedly have been a party. There would have been talk, preparations, more talk, decisions made, decisions revoked; more talk, and a sudden dash into Burdon by Hildersham, with additional instructions shouted to him as he turned out of the gate; a last-minute wonder whether a new net could be got down from London in time, a last-minute attempt to mend some of the gaps in the old net. But at Seven Streams one didn’t behave like this. One just asked a few friends up to tennis, and hoped that Sylvia would manage to bring that delightful husband of hers.
Seven Streams was so called that the postman might know where to deliver the letters. It stood on a small hill, and Betty had persuaded herself, and apparently some of her friends, that seven underground streams flowed from the depths of the hill into seven different counties. Wasn’t it odd, dear—she had not known about these streams when Bertie had bought the site and started to build. Seven Streams was just her idea of rather an amusing name for a house, so rural. And then when she began to make inquiries, it really seemed that the place was quite historical! The Romans, you know; all that time. And these underground streams having been there for centuries? Really much older than Westaways. . . .
However, the house was newer. It was half-tiled, the tiles being of that penetrating and indestructible red for which builders have been looking for so long. It had large white balconies outside the upstairs windows. It had large plate-glass windows in the principal ground-floor rooms. It had glass-houses visibly disposed over the garden so that the peaches were always in sight. It had innumerable white-fronted gables. It had gutters and rain-pipes of a rich chocolate colour. In short (thought Reginald) the whole thing had escaped from Surrey when some stockbroker’s back was turned, and was perfectly foul. Luckily it was ten miles away.
‘I told Betty I couldn’t be certain about you, naturally,’ said Sylvia, ‘but you will come, won’t you, darling?’
‘I hate Seven Goldfish Bowls,’ said Reginald. ‘I never know what to say to Baxter between ‘How are you?’ and ‘Good-bye’. Betty maddens me and I want to brain her, and I play tennis abominably. For all of which reasons, and not because I love you, I will come with you on Saturday.’
‘Darling! It won’t be so bad when we’re there.’
‘It will be much much worse. At least let me feel that I am a martyr.’
‘Betty always brings one or two interesting people down with her for the week-end. I expect they’ll want to talk to you about your book.’
Reginald thought: ‘I wish you wouldn’t say your book. It’s got a name. Bindweed. And if you don’t like the name, sweetheart, say “the book”.’ Aloud he said, ‘There are no interesting people in London. The half-dozen portentous asses from whom she has delivered their friends for three short days will talk about themselves. I last saw my racquet in the apple-loft. That day I was killing wasps with it. Is it still there, do you think?’
‘I’ll find it, darling.’
So on Saturday he put on a pair of white flannel trousers, which he had forgotten about, and a pair of tennis shoes, which had mysteriously become white; and he came downstairs again, and found Sylvia in the hall with two racquets.
‘That’s yours,’ she said, putting one in his hand.
Reginald gave it the merest glance and handed it back to her.
‘This is a real racquet, darling. Mine was a cross between a harp and a landing-net.’
‘Well, it’s got your name on,’ said Sylvia.
He looked. It had.
‘A little present for you,’ she said, going pink.
Reginald contemplated her with his head on one side.
‘I suppose’, he said, ‘if I took you in my arms and kissed you violently six times, I should disarrange something?’
‘Yes,’ said Sylvia, ‘but I shouldn’t mind. I can go upstairs again.’
‘Swear you’ll look as perfect as you do now?’
She nodded seriously.
‘You are a darling,’ he cried, and took her in his arms.
So far the party was a success.
They came to Seven Streams. They abandoned the car, and followed a butler through the house to the lawns at the back. Betty, surrounded by a green tennis-court, a red tennis-court and several friends, was waiting for them.
‘So you dragged him from his beloved Westaways,’ she said to Sylvia. ‘Such an amusing place,’ she added to one of the friends. ‘You must get Mr. Wellard to tell you all about it. Darling, you are looking lovely. Doesn’t she look sweet, Bertie? Colonel Rudge, do you know Mr. Reginald Wellard? He’s just written such a delightful book. Every one’s talking about it.’
The Colonel, who had been hoping, as soon as he saw Sylvia, to get her into a corner and tell her all about India, said ‘How do’ unenthusiastically to Reginald.
‘Well,’ said Baxter, ‘what about getting a game started? You’ll play, Colonel?’
The Colonel thought that some of the younger ones had better show their paces first.
One of the younger ones, on being suddenly accosted, said modestly that he was ready to play if wanted, but on the other hand, quite ready to sit out if he was not wanted. And he was afraid that he wasn’t much good.
Everybody else said at once that he (or she) was absolutely hopeless.
There are, of course, degrees of hopelessness. Nobody knew whether the other man’s hopelessness was more or less hopeless than his own.
‘I expect you’re very good really,’ said Betty to a tall young man in glasses, who had been particularly despairing of himself.
‘I’m not really, Mrs. Baxter,’ he protested. ‘At Eastbourne last year——’
Nobody waited to hear what had happened at Eastbourne last year. Anybody who could talk about Eastbourne at all like that was using a different language from theirs when he said he was hopeless. ‘Hopeless to expect to take a set off Tilden’ was what he meant.
‘Sylvia, darling,’ said Betty, feeling that the time for action had come, ‘suppose you play with Mr. Palliser—Mrs. Wellard’—a stoutish young man bowed to Sylvia—‘and Margery—Mr. Cobb, do you know Mrs. Arkwright?’—the tall young man from Eastbourne said No, he didn’t, How do you do?—‘you play with Mr. Cobb. There! We’ll get up another set directly. Now let’s sit down comfortably and enjoy ourselves. I expect Mr. Cobb is very good.’
Mr. Cobb was very good. Mrs. Arkwright said ‘Yours’ and ‘Sorry’ at intervals, but did not otherwise take much part in the game. Mr. Palliser said ‘Mine’ and ‘Sorry’ at intervals, until the score was four-love against them, and thereafter ‘Yours’ and ‘Oh, well played, partner’ until it was four-all. Reginald, his hat over his eyes, lay back and watched Sylvia happily.
‘Fella in the Sixtieth out in India with me wrote a book,’ said Colonel Rudge
suddenly.
‘Oh?’ said Reginald.
‘Fact,’ said the Colonel. ‘Fella in the Sixtieth.’
Reginald waited for the rest of the story, but it seemed that that was all. The Colonel was simply noting the coincidence of somebody over here writing a book and somebody in India also writing a book.
How easily Sylvia moved! How unhurried she always seemed! She was not really in the Eastbourne class, perhaps, but she had this natural gift of effortless physical expression. Timing, he supposed.
‘Tranter, that was the fella,’ came from his right. ‘Expect you know him.’
Reginald woke and said that he was afraid he didn’t. (Why ‘afraid’, he wondered. Afraid of what?)
‘Well, he wrote a book,’ said the Colonel stubbornly. ‘Forget what it was called.’
Four-all. Sylvia was serving. ‘Sorry,’ said Mrs. Arkwright. (Fifteen-love.) ‘Sorry,’ said Mr. Palliser. (Fifteen-all.) ‘Sorry,’ said Mrs. Arkwright. (Thirty-fifteen.) ‘Sorry,’ said Mr. Palliser. (Thirty-all.) ‘Sorry,’ said Mrs. Arkwright. (Forty-thirty.) ‘Yours!’ shouted Mr. Palliser. ‘Oh, well played!’ ‘Very sorry,’ said Mrs. Arkwright. (Game.)
‘What d’you say your book was called?’ said the Colonel, evidently hoping that this would give a clue to the title of Tranter’s book.
‘Bindweed,’ grunted Reginald, feeling suddenly ashamed of it.
‘What?’
‘Bindweed!’ (What the devil does it matter, he thought angrily.)
‘Ah! . . . No, that wasn’t it.’
Five-all. Mr. Cobb has been doing wonderful Eastbourne things at the net.
‘Bindweed,’ said Colonel Rudge, pulling at his moustache. ‘That’s that stuff that climbs up things, what? Gets all over the garden.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thought so.’
Mr. Palliser had found a service at last. . . . Oh, well played, darling. . . . The wretched Palliser will dream about you to-night, and, realizing that he may never see you again, blow his brains out in the morning. Think of all the men in the world not married to Sylvia. Poor devils.
‘Sort of gardening book, what?’ said Colonel Rudge.
‘What? . . . Oh . . . No.’
‘It is the stuff I mean, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘The what-d’you-call-it.’
‘Is what?’
‘What I said. Climbs up things. Gets all over the garden?’
‘Oh yes, yes. Always!’
‘What d’you say it was called? This stuff?’
‘Bindweed.’
‘Yes. And what d’you say your book was called?’
‘Bindweed.’
‘That’s right,’ said the Colonel fretfully. ‘That’s what I said.’
This, thought Reginald, is one of the interesting people brought down from London who want to talk to me about my book.
‘This fella’, thought the Colonel, ‘doesn’t seem to know what his own book’s called. What’s the matter with him?’
Six-all. Sylvia’s service again. You do look lovely serving, darling. That poor devil Palliser will have to shoot himself to-night.
‘This fella Tranter was always a bit queer. Not sure it wasn’t poetry he wrote. I know it wasn’t gardens. Expect you know a good deal about ’em, don’t you?’
Seven-six. Well done, Sylvia.
‘About what?’
‘Gardens.’ (Dammit, the fella’s a fool.)
‘I’m very keen on my own. I don’t know much about it really.’
‘Ah! Then it isn’t what you’d call a textbook?’
‘No.’
Double-fault from Mrs. Arkwright. Unplayable return from Sylvia. Love-thirty. Now you’ve got them, darling.
‘I know the fella who is really the fella who wrote Field Service Regulations. At least I used to know him. S’pose you never came across him?’
‘No.’
‘That wasn’t Tranter, of course,’ explained the Colonel carefully. ‘Tranter wrote this book I was telling you about, and then left the service. That was in ’eighty-five. I did hear he got married, but I never heard whether it was true or not.’
‘Really?’ said Reginald.
‘Funny you never ran into him.’
Palliser has gone berserk suddenly. He is at the net, everywhere. Sylvia, at the back of the court, is leaning on her racquet, laughing. Palliser smashing, Cobb returning smashes, Palliser tying himself into knots, but getting the ball over somehow, Cobb brushing his partner out of the way and trying to kill Palliser, Mrs. Arkwright scuttling out of the way and bleating ‘Yours’, Sylvia still leaning on her racquet and laughing, a last smash from Palliser, a last heroic return from Eastbourne, a lob, ‘Too good’ from Eastbourne, game, set, apologies, congratulations, modesty, mock-modesty, thanks, retirement of the gladiators.
‘Well done,’ said Betty. ‘Aren’t you all very hot? Mr. Cobb, there are drinks just over there, if you—or would you rather wait for tea, dear?’
Mrs. Arkwright decided to wait. Mr. Palliser insisted on giving Mrs. Wellard a drink. They went off together. For ever, Palliser hoped. When another set had been arranged, Reginald found himself between Mrs. Arkwright and his hostess.
‘Well,’ said Betty proudly, ‘I’ve got your book.’
‘Oh?’ (The first copy known to have been sold, other than to himself. Or perhaps only borrowed?)
She leant across to Mrs. Arkwright.
‘Mr. Wellard has written such a delightful book, all about all of us down here.’
Reginald opened his mouth to protest indignantly, but they had forgotten him.
‘Oh?’ said Mrs. Arkwright. ‘How amusing!’
‘He was a little naughty about Bertie, I thought, but I’ve forgiven him because it was so clever. And true.’
‘Oh, is Bertie in it?’
‘Oh, my dear, we’re all in it. You remember Grace Hildersham, don’t you? That large fair woman who came to dinner when you were down in the spring.’
‘Is she in it?’
‘Is she! Mr. Wellard was very naughty about her. But so amusing!’
‘I must get it.’
‘Oh, you must. Of course, not knowing all the people will spoil it for you a little——’
‘Oh, but I know you and Bertie and Grace Hildersham and——!’
‘Let me think. Anybody else? Oh, yes, the last time you were down, do you remember coming into Burdon with me to try and get some liqueur chocolates ——’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘And on the way we passed a farm and I said, “That’s Redding Farm, where the Colebys live”——’
‘Y-yes, I think I do.’
‘And I told you about Lena Coleby, and what people were saying——’
‘I don’t think so, darling.’
‘No, perhaps it was—well, anyhow, she’s in it.’
‘I must get it,’ said Mrs. Arkwright. She looked curiously at the man across whom they had been talking. ‘What a gift it must be!’ she said. ‘How do you do it?’
Books oughtn’t to be published, thought Reginald. They ought to be written, and then one copy ought to be beautifully printed—no, two—one for the author and one for the author’s wife, if he loved her, and the two copies should be kept in a very secret place, and only discovered there a hundred years after they were dead. And, meanwhile, any woman called Baxter and any woman called Arkwright should be made to walk from the Mansion House to Hyde Park Corner, (stands having been erected along the route) wearing only a red chest-protector and a pair of football boots. Probably they wouldn’t mind, damn them, but if they did, they would then have some faint idea of what indecent exposure meant to a sensitive person. . . .
A butler inclined his portliness towards Madam. Tea was served.
‘Shall we go in?’ said Betty. ‘The tennis players can come when they’re ready. Where is your lovely wife, Mr. Wellard?’
The only bearable thing about Betty Baxter, thought Reginald, is that she knows Sylvia is beautiful.
He followed her in to tea. The party was now definitely a failure.
II
After tea Reginald had his heart’s desire. He played one set with Sylvia as his partner. The casual intimacy of the lawn-tennis-court, such as is shared by any two players, became the more casual, the more delightful because of that much greater intimacy, shared in secret, which was always in their thoughts. Here am I, Reginald Wellard, just introduced to this lovely young woman. For the moment our hearts are set on the same thing; we have but one life which we live together; our hopes, our fears, our aspirations the same; she and I together against the world. But alas! for so short a time. In half an hour we are separated, and I shall never see her again. . . . And then for a moment their eyes meet. They smile at each other shyly. He will see her again.
Does she love playing with him as much as he loves it? He will never know. How can he possibly know? Perhaps, when she has prepared the way for the winning stroke, and he hits the ball feebly into the net, she feels as he feels, when he has prepared the way for a joke, and she smiles it innocently away. How fair, but how horrible, if she did! Well, he won’t give her the chance, he will play brilliantly to-day. . . . He played brilliantly.
‘I just loved that,’ he said to her, when they had won.
‘So did I, darling,’ said Sylvia.
Later he was watching her again, Lena Coleby, an unexpected arrival, by his side.
‘I couldn’t come before, you know how it is, but I felt I must just look in,’ she had explained to her hostess.
‘Of course, dear. You know Mr. Wellard. Talk to him, won’t you? He looks so lonely.”
If Betty Baxter were introducing the latest murderer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, she would assume that they knew each other already, and if she were introducing the Archbishop to his wife, she would feel it necessary to record the assumption.