i
the teacher of the sketching class at the evening school was a man who had no great capacity for enduring affection, but his handsome appearance often inspired in women those emotions which if not enduring are deep and disturbing. his own passions may have been deep but they were undeniably fickle.
the townspeople were proud of their new school for in addition to the daily curriculum evening instruction of an advanced modern kind was given. of course all schools since the beginning of time have been modern at some period of their existence but this one was modern, so the vicar declared, because it was so blessedly hygienic. it was built upon a high tree-arboured slope overlooking the snug small town and on its western side stared ambiguously at a free upland country that was neither small nor snug. the seventeen young women and the nine young men were definitely, indeed articulately, inartistic, they were as un?sthetic as pork pies, all except julia tern, a golden-haired fine-complexioned fawn of a girl whose talent[226] was already beyond the reach of any instruction the teacher could give. he could not understand why she continued to attend his classes.
one evening she brought for his criticism a portrait sketch of himself.
“this is extraordinarily beautiful,” he murmured.
“yes?” said julia.
“i mean the execution, the presentation and so on.”
julia did not reply. he stared at her picture of him, a delicately modelled face with a suggestion of nobility, an air that was kind as it was grave. the gravity and nobility which so pleased him were perhaps the effect of a high brow from which the long brown hair flowed thinly back to curve in a tidy cluster at his neck. kindness beamed in the eyes and played around the thin mouth, sharp nose, and positive chin. what could have inspired her to make this idealization of himself, for it was idealization in spite of its fidelity and likeness? he knew he had little enough nobility of character—too little to show so finely—and as for that calm gravity of aspect, why gravity simply was not in him. but there it was on paper, deliberate and authentic, inscribed with his name—david masterman 1910.
“when, how did you come to do it?”
“i just wanted it, you were a nice piece, i watched you a good deal, and there you are!” she said it jauntily but there was a pink flush in her cheeks.
“it’s delicious,” he mused, “i envy you. i can’t touch a decent head—not even yours. but why have[227] you idealized me so?” he twitted her lightly about the gravity and nobility.
“but you are like that, you are. that’s how i see you, at this moment.”
she did not give him the drawing as he hoped she would. he did not care to ask her for it—there was delicious flattery in the thought that she treasured it so much. masterman was a rather solitary man of about thirty, with a modest income which he supplemented with the fees from these classes. he lived alone in a wooden bungalow away out of the town and painted numbers of landscapes, rather lifeless imitations, as he knew, of other men’s masterpieces. they were frequently sold.
sometimes on summer afternoons he would go into woods or fields with a few of his pupils to sketch or paint farmhouses, trees, clouds, stacks, and other rural furniture. he was always hoping to sit alone with julia tern but there were other loyal pupils who never missed these occasions, among them the two forrest girls, ianthe the younger, and katharine, daughters of a thriving contractor. julia remained inscrutable, she gave him no opportunities at all; he could never divine her feelings or gather any response to his own, but there could be no doubt of the feelings of the forrest girls—they quite certainly liked him enormously. except for that, they too, could have no reason for continuing in his classes for both were as devoid of artistic grace as an inkstand. they brought fruit or chocolate to the classes and shared them with him. their attentions, their mutual attentions, were manifested in[228] many ways, small but significant and kind. on these occasions julia’s eyes seemed to rest upon him with an ironical gaze. it was absurd. he liked them well enough and sometimes from his shy wooing of the adorable but enigmatic julia he would turn for solace to ianthe. yet strangely enough it was kate, the least alluring to him of the three girls, who took him to her melancholy heart.
ianthe was a little bud of womanhood, dark-haired but light-headed, dressed in cream coloured clothes. she was small and right and tight, without angularities or rhythms, just one dumpy solid roundness. but she had an astonishing vulgarity of speech, if not of mind, that exacerbated him and in the dim corridors of his imagination she did not linger, she scurried as it were into doorways or upon twisting staircases or stood briefly where a loop of light fell upon her hair, her dusky face, her creamy clothes, and her delightful rotundities. she had eyes of indiscretion and a mind like a hive of bees, it had such a tiny opening and was so full of a cloying content.
one day he suddenly found himself alone with ianthe in a glade of larch trees which they had all been sketching. they had loitered. he had been naming wild flowers which ianthe had picked for the purpose and then thrown wantonly away. she spied a single plant of hellebore growing in the dimness under the closely planted saplings.
“don’t! don’t!” he cried. he kept her from plucking it and they knelt down together to admire the white virginal flower.
[229]
his arm fell round ianthe’s waist in a light casual way. he scarcely realized its presumption. he had not intended to do it; as far as that went he did not particularly want to do it, but there his arm was. ianthe took no notice of the embrace and he felt foolish, he could not retreat until they rose to walk on; then ianthe pressed close to his side until his arm once more stole round her and they kissed.
“heavens above!” she said, “you do get away with it quick.”
“life’s short, there’s no time to lose, i do as i’d be done by.”
“and there are so many of us! but glory,” said the jolly girl, taking him to her bosom, “in for a penny, in for a pound.”
she did not pick any more flowers and soon they were out of the wood decorously joining the others. he imagined that julia’s gaze was full of irony, and the timid wonder in kate’s eyes moved him uncomfortably. there was something idiotic in the whole affair.
until the end of the summer he met ianthe often enough in the little town or the city three miles off. her uncouthness still repelled him; sometimes he disliked her completely, but she was always happy to be with him, charmingly fond and gay with all the endearing alertness of a pert bird.
her sister kate was not just the mere female that ianthe was; at once sterner and softer her passions were more strong but their defences stood solid as a rock. in spite of her reserve she was always on the[230] brink of her emotions and they, unhappily for her, were often not transient, but enduring. she was nearly thirty, still unwed. her dark beauty, for she, too, was fine, seemed to brood in melancholy over his attentions to the other two women. she was quiet, she had little to say, she seemed to stand and wait.
one autumn night at the school after the pupils had gone home he walked into the dim lobby for his hat and coat. kate forrest was there. she stood with her back to him adjusting her hat. she did not say a word nor did he address her. they were almost touching each other, there was a pleasant scent about her. in the classroom behind the caretaker was walking about the hollow-sounding floor, humming loudly as he clapped down windows and mounted the six chairs to turn out the six gas lamps. when the last light through the glazed door was gone and the lobby was completely dark kate all at once turned to him, folded him in her arms and held him to her breast for one startling moment, then let him go, murmuring o ... o.... it made him strangely happy. he pulled her back in the gloom, whispering tender words. they walked out of the hall into the dark road and stopped to confront each other. the road was empty and dark except for a line of gas lamps that gleamed piercingly bright in the sharp air and on the polished surface of the road that led back from the hill down past her father’s villa. there were no lamps in the opposite direction and the road groped its way out into the dark country where he lived, a mile beyond the town. it[231] was windy and some unseen trees behind a wall near them swung and tossed with many pleasant sounds.
“i will come a little way with you,” kate said.
“yes, come a little way,” he whispered, pressing her arm, “i’ll come back with you.”
she took his arm and they turned towards the country. he could think of nothing to say, he was utterly subdued by his surprise; kate was sad, even moody; but at last she said slowly: “i am unlucky, i always fall in love with men who can’t love me.”
“o but i can and do, dear kate,” he cried lightly. “love me, kate, go on loving me, i’m not, well, i’m not very wicked.”
“no, no, you do not.” she shook her head mournfully: after a few moments she added: “it’s julia tern.”
he was astounded. how could she have known this, how could any one have known—even julia herself? it was queer that she did not refer to his friendship with ianthe; he thought that was much more obvious than his love for julia. in a mood that he only half understood he began to deny her reproachful charge.
“why, you must think me very fickle indeed. i really love you, dear kate, really you.” his arm was around her neck, he smoothed her cheek fondly against his own. she returned his caresses but he could glimpse the melancholy doubt in her averted eyes.
“we often talk of you, we often talk of you at night, in bed, often.”
[232]
“what do you say about me—in bed? who?”
“ianthe and me. she likes you.”
“she likes me! what do you say about me—in bed?”
he hoped ianthe had not been indiscreet but kate only said: “she doesn’t like you as i do—not like this.”
soon they began to walk back toward the town. he smiled once when, as their footsteps clattered unregularly upon the hard clean road, she skipped to adjust the fall of her steps to his.
“do not come any further,” she begged as they neared the street lamps. “it doesn’t matter, not at all, what i’ve said to you. it will be all right. i shall see you again.”
once more she put her arms around his neck murmuring: “goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.”
he watched her tripping away. when he turned homewards his mind was full of thoughts that were only dubiously pleasant. it was all very sweet, surprisingly sweet, but it left him uneasy. he managed to light a cigarette, but the wind blew smoke into his eyes, tore the charred end into fiery rags and tossed the sparkles across his shoulder. if it had only been julia tern!—or even ianthe!—he would have been wholly happy, but this was disturbing. kate was good-looking but these quietly passionate advances amazed him. why had he been so responsive to her? he excused himself, it was quite simple; you could not let a woman down, a loving woman like that, not at once, a man should be kind. but what did she mean[233] when she spoke of always falling in love with men who did not like her? he tossed the cigarette away and turned up the collar of his coat for the faintest fall of warm rain blew against his face like a soft beautiful net. he thrust his hands into his pockets and walked sharply and forgettingly home.
ii
two miles away from the little town was the big city with tramways, electric light, factories, canals, and tens of thousands of people, where a few nights later he met ianthe. walking around and away from the happy lighted streets they came out upon the bank of a canal where darkness and loneliness were intensified by the silent passage of black water whose current they could divine but could not see. as they stepped warily along the unguarded bank he embraced her. even as he did so he cursed himself for a fool to be so fond of this wretched imp of a girl. in his heart he believed he disliked her, but he was not sure. she was childish, artful, luscious, stupid—this was no gesture for a man with any standards. silently clutching each other they approached an iron bridge with lamps upon it and a lighted factory beyond it. the softly-moving water could now be seen—the lamps on the bridge let down thick rods of light into its quiet depths and beyond the arch the windows of the factory, inverted in the stream, bloomed like baskets of fire with flaming fringes among the eddies caused by the black pillars. a boy shuffled across the bridge whistling a tune; there was the rumble[234] and trot of a cab. then all sounds melted into a quiet without one wave of air. the unseen couple had kissed, ianthe was replying to him:
“no, no, i like it, i like you.” she put her brow against his breast. “i like you, i like you.”
his embracing hand could feel the emotion streaming within the girl.
“do you like me better than her?”
“than whom?” he asked.
ianthe was coy. “you know, you know.”
masterman’s feelings were a mixture of perturbation and delight, delight at this manifestation of jealousy of her sister which was an agreeable thing, anyway, for it implied a real depth of regard for him; but he was perturbed for he did not know what kate had told this sister of their last strange meeting. he saluted her again exclaiming: “never mind her. this is our outing, isn’t it?”
“i don’t like her,” ianthe added na?vely, “she is so awfully fond of you.”
“o confound her,” he cried, and then, “you mustn’t mind me saying that so, so sharply, you don’t mind, do you?”
ianthe’s lips were soft and sweet. sisters were quite unscrupulous, masterman had heard of such cases before, but he had tenderness and a reluctance to wound anybody’s susceptibility, let alone the feelings of a woman who loved. he was an artist not only in paint, but in sentiment, and it is possible that he excelled in the less tangible medium.
“it’s a little awkward,” he ventured. ianthe didn’t[235] understand, she didn’t understand that at all.
“the difficulty, you see,” he said with the air of one handling whimsically a question of perplexity that yet yielded its amusement, “is ... is kate.”
“kate?” said ianthe.
“she is so—so gone, so absolutely gone.”
“gone?”
“well, she’s really really in love, deeply, deeply,” he said looking away anywhere but at her sister’s eyes.
“with chris halton, do you mean?”
“ho, ho!” he laughed, “halton! lord, no, with me, with me, isn’t she?”
“with you!”
but ianthe was quite positive even a little ironical about that. “she is not, she rather dislikes you, mr. prince charming, so there. we speak of you sometimes at night in bed—we sleep together. she knows what i think of you but she’s quite, well she doesn’t like you at all—she acts the heavy sister.”
“o,” said masterman, groping as it were for some light in his darkness.
“she—what do you think—she warns me against you,” ianthe continued.
“against me?”
“as if i care. do you?”
“no, no. i don’t care.”
they left the dark bank where they had been standing and walked along to the bridge. halfway up its steps to the road he paused and asked: “then who is it that is so fond of me?”
[236]
“o you know, you know.” ianthe nestled blissfully in his arm again.
“no, but who is it, i may be making another howler. i thought you meant kate, what did she warn you of, i mean against me?”
they were now in the streets again, walking towards the tram centre. the shops were darkened and closed, but the cinemas lavished their unwanted illuminations on the street. there were no hurrying people, there was just strolling ease; the policemen at corners were chatting to other policemen now in private clothes. the brilliant trams rumbled and clanged and stopped, the saloons were full and musical.
“what did she warn you against?” he repeated.
“you,” chuckled ianthe.
“but what about? what has she got against me?”
“everything. you know, you know you do.” the archness of ianthe was objectively baffling but under it all he read its significance, its invitation.
he waited beside her for a tram but when it came he pleaded a further engagement in the city. he had no other engagement, he only wanted to be alone, to sort out the things she had dangled before his mind, so he boarded the next car and walked from the tutsan terminus to his cottage. both girls were fond of him, then—ianthe’s candour left him no room for doubt—and they were both lying to each other about him. well, he didn’t mind that, lies were a kind of protective colouring, he lied himself whenever it was necessary, or suited him. not often, but truth was not always possible to sensitive minded men. why, after all,[237] should sympathetic mendacity be a monopoly of polite society? “but it’s also the trick of thieves and seducers, david masterman,” he muttered to himself. “i’m not a thief, no, i’m not a thief. as for the other thing, well, what is there against me—nothing, nothing at all.” but a strange voiceless sigh seemed to echo from the trees along the dark road, “not as yet, not as yet.”
he walked on more rapidly.
three women! there was no doubt about the third, ianthe had thought of julia, too, just as kate had. what a fate for a misogamist! he felt like a mouse being taken for a ride in a bath chair. he had an invincible prejudice against marriage not as an institution but because he was perfectly aware of his incapacity for faithfulness. his emotions were deep but unprolonged. love was love, but marriage turned love into the stone of sisyphus. at the sound of the marriage bell—a passing bell—earth at his feet would burst into flame and the sky above would pour upon him an unquenching profusion of tears. love was a fine and ennobling thing, but though he had the will to love he knew beyond the possibility of doubt that his own capacity for love was a meandering strengthless thing. even his loyalty to julia tern—and that had the strongest flavour of any emotion that had ever beset him, no matter how brief its term—even that was a deviating zigzag loyalty. for he wanted to go on being jolly and friendly with ianthe if only julia did not get to know. with kate, too, that tender melancholy woman; she would be vastly unhappy. who was this christopher whom ianthe fondly imagined her[238] sister to favour? whoever he was, poor devil, he would not thank d. m. for his intervention. but he would drop all this; however had he, of all men, come to be plunged so suddenly into a state of things for which he had shown so little fancy in the past? julia would despise him, she would be sure to despise him, sure to; and yet if he could only believe she would not it would be pleasant to go on being friendly with ianthe pending ... pending what?
masterman was a very pliant man, but as things shaped themselves for him he did not go a step further with ianthe, and it was not to julia at all that he made love.
iii
the amour, if it may be described as such, of david masterman and kate forrest took a course that was devoid of ecstasy, whatever other qualities may have illuminated their desires. it was an affair in which the human intentions, which are intellectual, were on both sides strong enough to subdue the efforts of passion, which are instinctive, to rid itself of the customary curbs; and to turn the clash of inhibitions wherein the man proposes and the woman rejects into a conflict not of ideal but of mere propriety. they were like two negative atoms swinging in a medium from which the positive flux was withdrawn; for them the nebul? did not “cohere into an orb.”
kate’s fine figure was not so fine as julia tern’s; her dusky charms were excelled by those of ianthe; but her melancholy immobility, superficial as it was,[239] had a suggestive emotional appeal that won masterman away from her rivals. those sad eyes had but to rest on his and their depths submerged him. her black hair had no special luxuriance, her stature no unusual grace; the eyes were almost blue and the thin oval face had always the flush of fine weather in it; but her strong hands, though not as white as snow, were paler than milk, their pallor was unnatural. almost without an effort she drew him away from the entangling ianthe, and even the image of julia became but a fair cloud seen in moonlight, delicate and desirable but very far away; it would never return. julia had observed the relations between them—no discerning eye could misread kate’s passion—and she gave up his class, a secession that had a deep significance for him, and a grief that he could not conceal from kate though she was too wise to speak of it.
but in spite of her poignant aspect—for it was in that appearance she made such a powerful appeal to masterman; the way she would wait silently for him on the outside of a crowd of the laughing chattering students was touching—she was an egotist of extraordinary type. she believed in herself and in her virtue more strongly than she believed in him or their mutual love. by midsummer, after months of wooing, she knew that the man who so passionately moved her and whose own love she no less powerfully engaged was a man who would never marry, who had a morbid preposterous horror of the domesticity and devotion that was her conception of living bliss. “the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world,” he said. he, too,[240] knew that the adored woman, for her part, could not dream of a concession beyond the limits her virginal modesty prescribed. he had argued and stormed and swore that baffled love turns irrevocably to hatred. she did not believe him, she even smiled. but he had behaved grossly towards her, terrified her, and they had parted in anger.
he did not see her for many weeks. he was surprised and dismayed that his misery was so profound. he knew he had loved her, he had not doubted its sincerity but he had doubted its depth. then one september evening she had come back to the class and afterwards she had walked along the road with him towards his home.
“come to my house,” he said, “you have never been to see it.”
she shook her head, it was getting dark, and they walked on past his home further into the country. the eve was late but it had come suddenly without the deliberation of sunset or the tenuity of dusk. each tree was a hatful of the arriving blackness. they stood by a white gate under an elm, but they had little to say to each other.
“come to my house,” he urged again and again; she shook her head. he was indignant at her distrust of him. perhaps she was right but he would never forgive her. the sky was now darker than the road; the sighing air was warm, with drifting spots of rain.
“tell me,” she suddenly said taking his arm, “has anybody else ever loved you like that.”
[241]
he prevaricated: “like what?” he waited a long time for her answer. she gave it steadily.
“like you want me to love you.”
he, too, hesitated. he kissed her. he wanted to tell her that it was not wise to pry.
“tell me,” she urged, “tell me.”
“yes,” he replied. he could not see her plainly in the darkness, but he knew of the tears that fell from her eyes.
“how unreasonable,” he thought, “how stupid!” he tried to tell the truth to her—the truth as he conceived it—about his feelings towards her, and towards those others, and about themselves as he perceived it.
she was almost alarmed, certainly shocked.
“but you don’t believe such things,” she almost shivered, “i’m sure you don’t, it isn’t right, it is not true.”
“it may not be true,” he declared implacably, “but i believe it. the real warrant for holding a belief is not that it is true but that it satisfies you.” she did not seem to understand that; she only answered irrelevantly. “i’ll make it all up to you some day. i shall not change, david, toward you. we have got all our lives before us. i shan’t alter—will you?”
“not alter!” he began angrily but then subduedly added with a grim irony that she did not gather in: “no, i shall not alter.”
she flung herself upon his breast murmuring: “i’ll make it all up to you, some day.”
he felt like a sick-minded man and was glad when they parted. he went back to his cottage grumbling[242] audibly to himself. why could he not take this woman with the loving and constant heart and wed her? he did not know why, but he knew he never would do that. she was fine to look upon but she had ideas (if you could call them ideas) which he disliked. her instincts and propensities were all wrong, they were antagonistic to him, just, as he felt, his were antagonistic to her. what was true, though, was her sorrow at what she called their misunderstandings and what was profound, what was almost convincing, was her assumption (which but measured her own love for him) that he could not cease to love her. how vain that was. he had not loved any woman in the form she thought all love must take. these were not misunderstandings, they were just simply at opposite ends of a tilted beam; he the sophisticated, and she the innocent beyond the reach of his sophistries. but good lord, what did it all matter? what did anything matter? he would not see her again. he undressed, got into bed. he thought of julia, of ianthe, of kate. he had a dream in which he lay in a shroud upon a white board and was interrogated by a saint who carried a reporter’s notebook and a fountain pen.
“what is your desire, sick-minded man?” the saint interrogated him, “what consummation would exalt your languid eyes?”
“i want the present not to be. it is neither grave nor noble.”
“then that is your sickness. that mere negation is at once your hope and end.”
[243]
“i do not know.”
“if the present so derides the dignified past surely your desire lies in a future incarnating beautiful old historic dreams?”
“i do not know.”
“ideals are not in the past. they do not exist in any future. they rush on, and away, beyond your immediate activities, beyond the horizons that are for ever fixed, for ever charging down upon us.”
“i do not know.”
“what is it you do know?” asked the exasperated saint, jerking his fountain pen to loosen its flow, and masterman replied like a lunatic:
“i know that sealing wax is a pure and beautiful material and you get such a lot of it for a penny.”
he woke and slept no more. he cursed kate, he sneered at julia, he anathematized ianthe, until the bright eye of morning began to gild once more their broken images.
iv
between the sisters there grew a feud; ianthe behaved evilly when she discovered their mutual infatuation for their one lover. the echoes of that feud, at first dim, but soon crashingly clear, reached him, touched him and moved him on kate’s behalf: all his loyalty belonged to her. what did it matter if he could not fathom his own desire, that ianthe was still his for a word, that kate’s implacable virtue still offered its deprecatory hand, when kate herself came back to him?
[244]
they were to spend a picnic day together and she went to him for breakfast. her tremors of propriety were fully exercised as she cycled along to his home; she was too fond of him and he was more than fond of her; but all her qualms were lulled. he did not appear in any of the half-expected negligee, he was beautifully and amusingly at home.
“my dear!” he exclaimed in the enjoyment of her presence; she stood staring at him as she removed her wrap, the morn though bright being fresh and cool: “why do i never do you justice! why do i half forget! you are marvellously, irresistibly lovely. how do you do it—or how do i fail so?”
she could only answer him with blushes. his bungalow had but two rooms, both on the ground floor, one a studio and the other his living and sleeping room. it was new, built of bricks and unpainted boards. the interior walls were unplastered and undecorated except for three small saucepans hung on hooks, a shelf of dusty volumes, and nails, large rusty nails, projecting everywhere, one holding a discarded collar and a clothes brush. a tall flat cupboard contained a narrow bed to be lowered for sleeping, huge portmanteaus and holdalls reposed in a corner beside a bureau, there was a big brass candle-pan on a chair beside the round stove. while he prepared breakfast the girl walked about the room, making shy replies to his hilarious questions. it was warm in there but to her tidy comfort-loving heart the room was disordered and bare. she stood looking out of the window:[245] the april air was bright but chilly, the grass in thin tufts fluttered and shivered.
“it is very nice,” she said to him once, “but it’s strange and i feel that i ought not to be here.”
“o, never mind where you ought to be,” he cried, pouring out her coffee, “that’s where you are, you suit the place, you brighten and adorn it, it’s your native setting, kate. no—i know exactly what is running in your mind, you are going to ask if i suffer loneliness here. well, i don’t. a great art in life is the capacity to extract a flavour from something not obviously flavoured, but here it is all flavour. come and look at things.”
he rose and led her from egg and toast to the world outside. long fields of pasture and thicket followed a stream that followed other meadows, soon hidden by the ambulating many folding valleys, and so on to the sea, a hundred miles away. into his open door were blown, in their season, balls of thistledown, crisp leaves, twigs and dried grass, the reminder, the faint brush, of decay. the airs of wandering winds came in, odours of herb, the fragrance of viewless flowers. the land in some directions was now being furrowed where corn was greenly to thrive, to wave in glimmering gold, to lie in the stook, to pile on giant stack. horses were trailing a harrow across an upland below the park, the wind was flapping the coats of the drivers, the tails and manes of the horses, and heaving gladly in trees. a boy fired the heaps of squitch whose smoke wore across the land in dense deliberate[246] wreaths. sportsmen’s guns were sounding from the hollow park.
kate followed masterman around his cottage; he seemed to be fascinated by the smoke, the wind, the horses and men.
“breakfast will be cold.”
how queerly he looked at her before he said: “yes, of course, breakfast will be getting cold,” and then added, inconsequently: “flowers are like men and women, they either stare brazenly at the sun or they bend humbly before it, but even the most modest desire the sun.”
when he spoke like that she always felt that the words held a half-hidden, perhaps libidinous, meaning, which she could not understand but only guess at; and she was afraid of her guesses. full of curious, not to say absurd superstitions about herself and about him, his strange oblique emotions startled her virginal understanding; her desire was to be good, very very good, but to be that she could not but suspect the impulses of most other people, especially the impulses of men. well, perhaps she was right: the woman who hasn’t any doubts must have many illusions.
he carried a bag of lunch and they walked out into the day. soon the wind ceased, the brightness grew warm, the warmth was coloured; clouds lolled in the air like tufts of lilac. at the edge of a spinney they sat down under a tree. boughs of wood blown down by the winter gales were now being hidden by the spring grass. a rabbit, twenty yards away, sat up and watched the couple, a fat grey creature. “hoi,” cried[247] kate, and the rabbit hopped away. it could not run very fast, it did not seem much afraid.
“is it wounded?” she asked.
“no, i think it is a tame one, escaped from a farm or a cottage near us, i expect.”
kate crept after it on hands and knees and it let her approach. she offered it the core of an apple she had just eaten. the rabbit took it and bit her finger. then kate caught it by the ears. it squealed but kate held it to her bosom with delight, and the rabbit soon rested there if not with delight at least with ease. it was warm against her breast, it was delicious to feel it there, to pull its ears and caress its fat flanks, but as she was doing this she suddenly saw that its coat was infested with fleas. she dropped the rabbit with a scream of disgust and it rushed into the thicket.
“come here,” said masterman to her, “let me search you, this is distressing.”
she knelt down before him and in spite of her wriggling he reassured her.
“it’s rather a nice blouse,” he said.
“i don’t care for it. i shall not wear it again. i shall sell it to someone or give it to them.”
“i would love to take it from you stitch by stitch.”
with an awkward movement of her arm she thrust at his face, crying loudly, “no, how dare you speak to me like that!”
“is it very daring?” for a moment he saw her clenched hands, detestably bloodless, a symbol of roused virtue: but at once her anger was gone, kate was contrite and tender. she touched his face with[248] her white fingers softly as the settling of a moth. “o, why did we come here?”
he did not respond to her caresses, he was sullen, they left the spinney; but as they walked she took his arm murmuring: “forgive me, i’ll make it all up to you some day.”
coyness and cunning, passion and pride, were so much at odds that later on they quarrelled again. kate knew that he would neither marry her nor let her go; she could neither let him go nor keep him. this figure of her distress amused him, he was callously provoking, and her resentment flowed out at the touch of his scorn. with kate there seemed to be no intermediate stages between docility and fury, or even between love and hatred.
“why are you like this?” she cried, beating her pallid hands together, “i have known you for so long.”
“ah, we have known each other for so long, but as for really knowing you—no! i’m not a tame rabbit to be fondled any more.”
she stared for a moment, as if in recollection; then burst into ironical laughter. he caught her roughly in his arms but she beat him away.
“o, go to ... go to....”
“hell?” he suggested.
“yes,” she burst out tempestuously, “and stop there.”
he was stunned by her unexpected violence. she was coarse like ianthe after all. but he said steadily:
“i’m willing to go there if you will only keep out of my way when i arrive.”
then he left her standing in a lane, he hurried and[249] ran, clambering over stiles and brushing through hedges, anything to get away from the detestable creature. she did not follow him and they were soon out of sight of each other. anger and commination swarmed to his lips, he branded her with frenzied opprobrium and all the beastliness that was in him. nothing under heaven should ever persuade him to approach the filthy beast again, the damned intolerable pimp, never, never again, never.
but he came to a bridge. on it he rested. and in that bright air, that sylvan peace, his rancour fell away from him, like sand from a glass, leaving him dumb and blank at the meanness of his deed. he went back to the lane as fast as he could go. she was not there. kate, kate, my dove! but he could not find her.
he was lost in the fields until he came at last upon a road and a lonely tavern thereby. it had a painted sign; a very smudgy fox, in an inexplicable attitude, destroying a fowl that looked like a plum-pudding but was intended to depict a snipe. at the stable door the tiniest black kitten in the world was shaping with timid belligerency at a young and fluffy goose who, ignoring it, went on sipping ecstatically from a pan of water. on the door were nailed, in two semicircles of decoration, sixteen fox pads in various stages of decay, an entire spiral shaving from the hoof of a horse, and some chalk jottings:
2 pads
3 cruppers
1 bellyband
2 set britchin
[250]
the tavern was long and low and clean, its garden was bare but trim. there was comfort, he rested, had tea, and then in the bar his painful musings were broken by a ragged unfortunate old pedlar from huddersfield.
“born and bred in slatterwick, it’s no lie ah’m speaking, ah were born and bred slatterwick, close to arthur brinkley’s farm, his sister’s in canady, john orkroyd took farm, arthur’s dead.”
“humph!”
“and buried. that iron bridge at jackamon’s belong to daniel cranmer. he’s dead.”
“humph!”
“and buried. from th’ iron bridge it’s two miles and a quarter to herbert oddy’s, that’s the ‘bay horse,’ am ah right, at shelmersdyke. three miles and three-quarters from dyke to the ‘cock and goat’ at shapley fell, am ah right?”
masterman, never having been within a hundred miles of yorkshire, puffed at his cigarette and nodded moodily, “i suppose so” or “yes, yes.”
“from arthur brinkley’s to th’ iron bridge is one mile and a half and a bit, and from arthur brinkley’s to jury cartright’s is just four mile. he’s dead, sir.”
“yes.”
“and buried. is that wrong? am ah speaking wrong? no. it’s long step from yon, rough tramp for an old man.”
masterman—after giving sixpence to the pedlar who, uttering a benediction, pressed upon him a card of shirt buttons—said “good evening” and walked out[251] to be alone upon the road with his once angry but now penitent mind. kate, poor dear kate!
the sun was low down lolling near the horizon but there was an astonishing light upon the land. cottage windows were blocks of solid gold in this lateral brilliance, shafts of shapely shade lay across leagues of field, he could have counted every leaf among the rumpled boskage of the sycamores. a vast fan of indurated cloud, shell-like and pearly, was wavering over the western sky but in the east were snowy rounded masses like fabulous balloons. at a cross road he stood by an old sign post, its pillar plastered with the faded bill of a long-ago circus. he could read every word of it but when he turned away he found everything had grown dimmer. the wind arose, the forest began to roar like a heaving beast. all verdurous things leaned one way. a flock of starlings flew over him with one movement and settled in a rolling elm. how lonely it was. he took off his hat. his skull was fearfully tender—he had dabbed it too hard with his hair brush that morning. his hair was growing thin, like his youth and his desires.
what had become of kate, where had she hidden? what would become of her? he would never see her again. he disliked everything about her, except her self. her clothes, her speech, her walk, the way she carried her umbrella, her reticence that was nothing if not conspicuous, her melancholy, her angular concrete piety, her hands—in particular he disliked her pale hands. she had a mind that was cultivated as perfunctorily[252] as a kitchen garden, with ideas like roots or beans, hostilities like briars, and a fence of prudery that was as tough as hoops of galvanized iron. and yet he loved her—or almost. he was ready to love her, he wanted to, he wanted her; her deep but guarded devotion—it was limited but it was devotion—compelled this return from him. it was a passionate return. he had tried to mould that devotion into a form that could delight him—he had failed. he knew her now, he could peer into her craven soul as one peers into an empty bottle, with one eye. for her the opportunities afforded by freedom were but the preludes to misadventure. what a fool she was!
when he reached home kate stood in darkness at the doorway of his house. he exclaimed with delight, her surprising presence was the very centre of his desire, he wanted to embrace her, loving her deeply, inexplicably again; just in a moment.
“i want my bike,” the girl said sullenly. “i left it inside this morning.
“ah, your bicycle! yes, you did.” he unlocked the door. “wait, there should be a candle, there should be.”
she stood in the doorway until he had lit it.
“come in, kate,” he said, “let me give you something. i think there is some milk, certainly i have some cake, come in, kate, or do you drink beer, i have beer, come in, i’ll make you something hot.”
but kate only took her bicycle. “i ought to have been home hours ago,” she said darkly, wheeling it outside and lighting the lantern. he watched her[253] silently as she dabbed the wick, the pallor of her hands had never appeared so marked.
“let’s be kind to each other,” he said, detaining her, “don’t go, dear kate.”
she pushed the bicycle out into the road.
“won’t you see me again?” he asked as she mounted it.
“i am always seeing you,” she called back, but her meaning was dark to him.
“faugh! the devil! the fool!” he gurgled anathemas as he returned to his cottage. “and me too! what am i?”
but no mortal man could ever love a woman of that kind. she did not love him at all, had never loved him. then what was it she did love? not her virtue—you might as well be proud of the sole of your foot; it was some sort of pride, perhaps the test of her virtue that the conflict between them provoked, the contest itself alone alluring her, not its aim and end. she was never happier than when having led him on she thwarted him. but she would find that his metal was as tough as her own.
before going to bed he spent an hour in writing very slowly a letter to kate, telling her that he felt they would not meet again, that their notions of love were so unrelated, their standards so different. “my morals are at least as high as yours though likely enough you regard me as a rip. let us recognize then,” he wrote concludingly, “that we have come to the end of the tether without once having put an ounce of strain upon its delightful but never tense cord. but[254] the effort to keep the affair down to the level at which you seem satisfied has wearied me. the task of living down to that assured me that for you the effort of living up to mine would be consuming. i congratulate you, my dear, on coming through scatheless and that the only appropriate condolences are my own—for myself.”
it was rather pompous, he thought, but then she wouldn’t notice that, let alone understand it. she suffered not so much from an impediment of speech—how could she when she spoke so little?—as from an impediment of intellect, which was worse, much worse, but not so noticeable being so common a failing. she was, when all was said and done, just a fool. it was a pity, for bodily she must indeed be a treasure. what a pity! but she had never had any love for him at all, only compassion and pity for his bad thoughts about her; he had neither pity for her nor compunction—only love. dear, dear, dear. blow out the candle, lock the door, good-night!
v
he did not see her again for a long time. he would have liked to have seen her, yes, just once more, but of course he was glad, quite glad, that she did not wish to risk it and drag from dim depths the old passion to break again in those idiotic bubbles of propriety. she did not answer his letter—he was amused. then her long silence vexed him, until vexation was merged in alarm. she had gone away from tutsan—of course—gone away on family affairs—oh, naturally!—she might[255] be gone for ever. but a real grief came upon him. he had long mocked the girl, not only the girl but his own vision of her; now she was gone his mind elaborated her melancholy immobile figure into an image of beauty. her absence, her silence, left him wretched. he heard of her from ianthe who renewed her blandishments; he was not unwilling to receive them now—he hoped their intercourse might be reported to kate.
after many months he did receive a letter from her. it was a tender letter though ill-expressed, not very wise or informative, but he could feel that the old affection for him was still there, and he wrote her a long reply in which penitence and passion and appeal were mingled.
“i know now, yes, i see it all now; solutions are so easy when the proof of them is passed. we were cold to each other, it was stupid, i should have made you love me and it would have been well. i see it now. how stupid, how unlucky; it turned me to anger and you to sorrow. now i can think only of you.”
she made no further sign, not immediately, and he grew dull again. his old disbelief in her returned. bah! she loved him no more than a suicide loved the pond it dies in; she had used him for her senseless egoism, tempting him and fooling him, wantonly, he had not begun it, and she took a chaste pride in saving herself from him. what was it the old writer had said?
“chastity, by nature the gentlest of all affections—give it but its head—’tis like a ramping and roaring[256] lion.” saving herself! yes, she would save herself for marriage.
he even began to contemplate that outcome.
her delayed letter, when it came, announced that she was coming home at once; he was to meet her train in the morning after the morrow.
it was a dull autumnal morning when he met her. her appearance was not less charming than he had imagined it, though the charm was almost inarticulate and there were one or two crude touches that momentarily distressed him. but he met with a flush of emotion all her glances of gaiety and love that were somehow, vaguely, different—perhaps there was a shade less reserve. they went to lunch in the city and at the end of the meal he asked her:
“well, why have you come back again?”
she looked at him intently: “guess!”
“i—well, no—perhaps—tell me, kate, yourself.”
“you are different now, you look different, david.”
“am i changed? better or worse?”
she did not reply and he continued:
“you too, are changed. i can’t tell how it is, or where, but you are.”
“o, i am changed, much changed,” murmured kate.
“have you been well?”
“yes.”
“and happy?”
“yes.”
“then how unwise of you to come back.”
“i have come back,” said kate, “to be happier. but somehow you are different.”
[257]
“you are different, too. shall we ever be happy again?”
“why—why not!” said kate.
“come on!” he cried hilariously, “let us make a day of it, come along!”
out in the streets they wandered until rain began to fall.
“come in here for a while.” they were passing a roomy dull building, the museum, and they went in together. it was a vast hollow-sounding flagstone place that had a central brightness fading into dim recesses and galleries of gloom. they examined a monster skeleton of something like an elephant, three stuffed apes, and a picture of the dodo. kate stood before them without interest or amusement, she just contemplated them. what did she want with an elephant, an ape, or a dodo? the glass exhibit cases were leaned upon by them, the pieces of coal neatly arranged and labelled were stared at besides the pieces of granite or coloured rock with long names ending in orite dorite and sorite and so on to the precious gems including an imitation, as big as a bun, of a noted diamond. they leaned over them, repeating the names on the labels with the quintessence of vacuity. they hated it. there were beetles and worms of horror, butterflies of beauty, and birds that had been stuffed so long that they seemed to be intoxicated; their beaks fitted them as loosely as a drunkard’s hat, their glassy eyes were pathetically vague. after ascending a flight of stone steps david and kate stooped for a long time over a case of sea-anemones that had been reproduced in[258] gelatine by a german with a fancy for such things. from the railed balcony they could peer down into the well of the fusty-smelling museum. no one else was visiting it, they were alone with all things dead, things that had died millions of years ago and were yet simulating life. a footfall sounded so harsh in the corridors, boomed with such clangour, that they took slow diffident steps, almost tiptoeing, while kate scarcely spoke at all and he conversed in murmurs. whenever he coughed the whole place seemed to shudder. in the recess, hidden from prying eyes, david clasped her willing body in his arms. for once she was unshrinking and returned his fervour. the vastness, the emptiness, the deadness, worked upon their feelings with intense magic.
“love me, david,” she murmured, and when they moved away from the gelatinous sea-urchins she kept both her arms clasped around him as they walked the length of the empty corridors. he could not understand her, he could not perceive her intimations, their meaning was dark to him. she was so altered, this was another kate.
“i have come home to make it all up to you,” she repeated, and he scarcely dared to understand her.
they approached a lecture-room; the door was open, the room was empty, they went in and stood near the platform. the place was arranged like a tiny theatre, tiers of desks rising in half-circles on three sides high up towards the ceiling. a small platform with a lecturer’s desk confronted the rising tiers; on the wall behind it a large white sheet; a magic lantern[259] on a pedestal was near and a blackboard on an easel. a pencil of white chalk lay broken on the floor. behind the easel was a piano, a new piano with a duster on its lid. the room smelled of spilled acids. the lovers’ steps upon the wooden floor echoed louder than ever after their peregrinations upon the flagstones; they were timid of the sound and stood still, close together, silent. he touched her bosom and pressed her to his heart, but all her surrender seemed strange and nerveless. she was almost violently different; he had liked her old rejections, they were fiery and passionate. he scarce knew what to do, he understood her less than ever now. dressed as she was in thick winter clothes it was like embracing a tree, it tired him. she lay in his arms waiting, waiting, until he felt almost stifled. something like the smell of the acids came from her fur necklet. he was glad when she stood up, but she was looking at him intently. to cover his uneasiness he went to the blackboard and picking up a piece of the chalk he wrote the first inconsequent words that came into his mind. kate stood where he had left her, staring at the board as he traced the words upon it:
we are but little children weak
laughing softly she strolled towards him.
“what do you write that for? i know what it is.”
“what it is! well, what is it?”
she took the chalk from his fingers.
“it’s a hymn,” she went on, “it goes....”
[260]
“a hymn!” he cried, “i did not know that.”
underneath the one he had written she was now writing another line on the board.
nor born to any high estate.
“of course,” he whispered, “i remember it now. i sang it as a child—at school—go on, go on.”
but she had thereupon suddenly turned away, silent, dropping her hands to her side. one of her old black moods had seized her. he let her go and picking up another fragment of chalk completed the verse.
what can we do for jesu’s sake
who is so high and good and great?
she turned when he had finished and without a word walked loudly to the piano, fetched the duster and rubbed out the words they had written on the blackboard. she was glaring angrily at him.
“how absurd you are,”—he was annoyed—“let us go out and get some tea.” he wandered off to the door, but she did not follow. he stood just outside gazing vacantly at a stuffed jay that had an indigo eye. he looked into the room again. she was there still, just as he had left her; her head bent, her hands hanging clasped before her, the dimness covering and caressing her—a figure full of sad thoughts. he ran to her and crushed her in his arms again.
“kate, my lovely.”
she was saying brokenly: “you know what i said.[261] i’ve come to make it all up to you. i promised, didn’t i?”
something shuddered in his very soul—too late, too late, this was no love for him. the magic lantern looked a stupid childish toy, the smell of the acid was repulsive. of all they had written upon the blackboard one word dimly remained: jesu.
she stirred in his arms. “you are changed, david.”
“changed, yes, everything is changed.”
“this is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were acting.”
“yes, as if we were acting. but we are not acting. let us go up and sit in the gallery.”
they ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and looked down to the tiny platform and the white curtain. she sat fondling his hands, leaning against him.
“have you ever acted—you would do it so well?”
“why do you say that? am i at all histrionic?”
“does that mean insincere? o no. but you are the person one expects to be able to do anything.”
“nonsense! i’ve never acted. i suppose i could. it isn’t difficult, you haven’t to be clever, only courageous. i should think it very easy to be only an ordinary actor, but i’m wrong, no doubt. i thought it was easy to write—to write a play—until i tried. i once engaged myself to write a little play for some students to act. i had never done such a thing before and like other idiots i thought i hadn’t ever done it simply because i hadn’t ever wanted to. heavens, how harassed i was and how ashamed! i could not do it, i got no further than the author’s speech.”
[262]
“well that was something. tell me it.”
“it’s nothing to do with the play. it’s what the author says to the audience when the play is finished.”
she insisted on hearing it whatever it was. “o well,” he said at last, “let’s do that properly, at least. i’ll go down there and deliver it from the stage. you must pretend that you are the enthusiastic audience. come and sit in the stalls.”
they went down together.
“now imagine that this curtain goes up and i suddenly appear.”
kate faintly clapped her hands. he stood upon the platform facing her and taking off his hat, began:
“ladies and gentlemen,
“i am so deeply touched by the warmth of this reception, this utterly undeserved appreciation, that—forgive me—i have forgotten the speech i had carefully prepared in anticipation of it. let me meet my obligation by telling you a story; i think it is true, i made it up myself. once upon a time there was a poor playwright—something like me—who wrote a play—something like this—and at the end of the performance the audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience—something like this—called him before the curtain and demanded a speech. he protested that he was unprepared and asked them to allow him to tell them a story—something like this. well, that, too, was a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience, so they didn’t mind and he began again.—once upon a time a poor playwright—and was just about to repeat the story i have already twice told you when[263] suddenly, without a word of warning, without a sound, without a compunction, the curtain swooped down and chopped him clean in half.”
masterman made an elaborate obeisance and stepped off the platform.
“is that all?” asked kate.
“that’s all.”
at that moment a loud bell clanged throughout the building signifying that the museum was about to close.
“come along!” he cried, but kate did not move, she still sat in the stalls.
“don’t leave me, david, i want to hear the play?” she said archly.
“there was no play. there is no play. come, or we shall be locked in for the night.”
she still sat on. he went to her and seized her hands.
“what does it matter!” she whispered, embracing him. “i want to make it all up to you.”
he was astoundingly moved. she was marvellously changed. if she hadn’t the beauty of perfection she had some of the perfection of beauty. he adored her.
“but, no,” he said, “it won’t do, it really won’t. come, i have got to buy you something at once, a ring with a diamond in it, as big as a bun, an engagement ring, quickly, or the shops will be shut.”
he dragged the stammering bewildered girl away, down the stairs and into the street. the rain had ceased, the sunset sky was bright and masterman was intensely happy.
