EDDY, while they played coon-can that evening (a horrid game prevalent at this time) approached his parents on the subject of the visitors he wanted. He mentioned to them the facts already retailed to Daphne and Molly concerning their accomplishments and virtues (omitting those concerning their domestic arrangements). And these eulogies are a mistake when one is asking friends to stay. One should not utter them. To do so starts a prejudice hard to eradicate in the minds of parents and brothers and sisters, and the visit may prove a failure. Eddy was intelligent and should have known this, but he was in an unthinking mood this Christmas, and did it.
His mother kindly said, “Very well, dear. Which day do you want them to come?”
“I’d rather like them to be here for New Year’s day, if you don’t mind. They might come on the thirty-first.”
Eddy put down three twos in the first round, for the excellent reason that he had collected them.Daphne, disgusted, said, “Look at Teddy saving six points off his damage! I suppose that’s the way they play in your slum.”
Mrs. Oliver said, “Very well. Remember the Bellairs’ are coming to dinner on New Year’s Day. It will make rather a large party, but we can manage all right.”
“Your turn, mother,” said Daphne, who did not like dawdling.
The Dean, who had been looking thoughtful, said, “Le Moine, did you say one of your friends was called? No relation, I suppose, to that writer Le Moine, whose play was censored not long ago?”
“Yes, that’s her husband. But he’s a delightful person. And it was a delightful play, too. Not a bit dull or vulgar or pompous, like some censored plays. He only put in the parts they didn’t like just for fun, to see whether it would be censored or not, and partly because someone had betted him he couldn’t get censored if he tried.”
The Dean looked as if he thought that silly. But he did not mean to talk about censored plays, because of Daphne, who was young. So he only said, “Playing with fire,” and changed the subject. “Is it raining outside, Daffy?” he inquired with humorous intention, as his turn came round to play. As no one asked him why he wanted to know, he told them. “Because, if you don’t mind, I’m thinking of going out,” and he laid his hand on the table.
“Oh, I say, father! Two jokers! No wonder you’re out.” (This jargon of an old-time but once popular game perhaps demands apology; anyhow no one need try to understand it.Tout passe, tout lasse.... Even the Tango Tea will all too soon be out of mode).
The Dean rose from the table. “Now I must stop this frivolling. I’ve any amount of work to get through.”
“Don’t go on too long, Everard.” Mrs. Oliver was afraid his head would ache.
“Needs must, I’m afraid, when a certain person drives. The certain person in this case being represented by poor old Taggert.”
Poor old Taggert was connected with another Church paper, higher than theGuardian, and he had been writing in this paper long challenges to the Dean “to satisfactorily explain” what he had meant by certain expressions used by him in his last letter on Revision. The Dean could satisfactorily explain anything, and found it an agreeable exercise, but one that took time and energy.
“Frightful waste of time,Icall it,” said Daphne, when the door was shut. “Because they never will agree, and they don’t seem to get any further by talking. Why don’t they toss up or something, to see who’s right? Or draw lots. Long one, revise it all, middle one, revise it as father and his lot want, short one, let it alone, like theChurch Timesand Canon Jackson want.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said her mother, absently.
“Some day,” added Eddy, “you may be old enough to understand these difficult things, dear. Till then, try and be seen and not heard.”
“Anyhow,” said Daphne, “I go out.... I believe this is rather a footling game, really. It doesn’t amuse one more than a week. I’d rather play bridge, or hide and seek.”
Christmas passed, as Christmas will pass, only give it time. They kept it at the deanery much as they keep it at other deaneries, and, indeed, in very many homes not deaneries. They did up parcels and ran short of brown paper, and bought more string and many more stamps, and sent off cards and cards, and received cards and cards and cards, and hurried to send off more cards to make up the difference (but some only arrived on Christmas Day, a mean trick, and had to wait to be returned till the new year), and took round parcels, and at last rested, and Christmas Day dawned. It was a bright frosty day, with ice, etcetera, and the Olivers went skating in the afternoon with the Bellairs, round and round oranges. Eddy taught Molly a new trick, or step, or whatever those who skate call what they learn, and Daphne and the Bellairs boys flew about hand-in-hand, graceful and charming to watch. In the night it snowed, and next day they all tobogganed.
“I haven’t seen Molly looking so well for weeks,” said Molly’s mother to her father, though indeed Molly usually looked well.
“Healthy weather,” said Colonel Bellairs, “andhealthy exercise. I like to see all those children playing together.”
His wife liked it too, and beamed on them all at tea, which the Olivers often came in to after the healthy exercise.
Meanwhile Arnold Denison and Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine all wrote to say they would come on the thirty-first, which they proceeded to do. They came by three different trains, and Eddy spent the afternoon meeting them, instead of skating with the Bellairs. First Arnold came, from Cambridge, and twenty minutes later Jane, from Oxford, without her bag, which she had mislaid at Rugby. Meanwhile Eddy got a long telegram from Eileen to the effect that she had missed her train and was coming by the next. He took Jane and Arnold home to tea.
Daphne was still skating. The Dean and his wife were always charming to guests. The Dean talked Cambridge to Arnold. He had been up with Professor Denison, and many other people, and had always kept in touch with Cambridge, as he remarked. Sometimes, while a canon of Ely, he had preached the University Sermon. He did not wholly approve of the social and theological, or non-theological, outlook of Professor Denison and his family; but still, the Denisons were able and interesting and respect-worthy people, if cranky. Arnold the Dean suspected of being very cranky indeed; not the friend he would have chosen for Eddy in the improbable hypothesis of his having hadthe selection of Eddy’s friends. Certainly not the person he would have chosen for Eddy to share rooms with, as was now their plan. But nothing of this appeared in his courteous, if not very effusive, manner to his guest.
To Jane he talked about her father, a distinguished Oxford scholar, and meanwhile eyed her a little curiously, wondering why she looked somehow different from the girls he was used to. His wife could have told him it was because she had on a grey-blue dress, rather beautifully embroidered on the yoke and cuffs, instead of a shirt and coat and skirt. She was not surprised, being one of those people whose rather limited experience has taught them that artists are often like that. She talked to Jane about Welchester, and the Cathedral, and its windows, some of which were good. Jane, with her small sweet voice and pretty manners and charming, friendly smile, was bound to make a pleasant impression on anybody not too greatly prejudiced by the grey-blue dress. And Mrs. Oliver was artistic enough to see that the dress suited her, though she herself preferred that girls should not make themselves look like early Italian pictures of St. Ursula. It might be all right in Oxford or Cambridge (one understands that this style is still, though with decreasing frequency, occasionally to be met with in our older Universities), or no doubt, at Letchworth and the Hampstead Garden City, and possibly beyond Blackfriars Bridge (Mrs. Oliver was vague as to this, not knowing thatpart of London well); but in Welchester, a midland cathedral country town, it was unsuitable, and not done. Mrs. Oliver wondered whether Eddy didn’t mind, but he didn’t seem to. Eddy had never minded the things most boys mind in those ways; he had never, when at school, betrayed the least anxiety concerning his parents’ clothes or manners when they had visited him; probably he thought all clothes and all manners, like all ideas, were very nice, in their different ways.
But when Daphne came in, tweed-skirted, and clad in a blue golfer and cap, and prettily flushed by the keen air to the colour of a pink shell, her quick eyes took in every detail of Jane’s attire before she was introduced, and her mother guessed a suppressed twinkle in her smile. Mrs. Oliver hoped Daphne was going to be polite to these visitors. She was afraid Daphne was in a rather perverse mood towards Eddy’s friends. Denison, of course, she frankly disliked, and did not make much secret of it. He was conceited, plain, his hair untidy, his collar low, and his manners supercilious. Denison was well equipped for taking care of himself; those who came to blows with him rarely came off best. He behaved very well at tea, knowing, as Eddy had said, that it was a Deanery. But he was annoying once. Someone had given Mrs. Oliver at Christmas a certain book, containing many beautiful and tranquil thoughts about this world, its inhabitants, its origin, and its goal, by a writer who had produced, and would, no doubt,continue to produce, very many such books. Many people read this writer constantly, and got help therefrom, and often wrote and told him so; others did not read him at all, not finding life long enough; others, again, read him sometimes in an idle moment, to get a little diversion. Of these last was Arnold Denison. When he put his tea-cup down on the table at his side, his eye chanced on the beautiful book lying thereon, and he laughed a little.
“Which one is that? Oh,Garden Paths. That’s the last but two, isn’t it.” He picked it up and turned the leaves, and chuckled at a certain passage, which he proceeded to read aloud. It had, unfortunately, or was intended to have, a philosophical and more or less religious bearing (the writer was a vague but zealous seeker after truth); also, more unfortunately still, the Dean and his wife knew the author; in fact, he had stayed with them often. Eddy would have warned Arnold of that had he had time, but it was too late. He could only now say, “I call that very interesting, and jolly well put.”
The Dean said, genially, but with acerbity, “Ah, you mustn’t make game of Phil Underwood here, you know; he’s apersona gratawith us. A dear fellow. And not in the least spoilt by all his tremendous success. As candid and unaffected as he was when we were at Cambridge together, five and thirty years ago. And look at all he’s done since then. He’s walked straight into the heart of the reading public—the more thoughtful and discriminatingpart of it, that is, for of course he’s not any man’s fare—not showy enough; he’s not one of your smart paradox-and-epigram-mongers. He leads one by very quiet and delightful paths, right out of the noisy world. A great rest and refreshment for busy men and women; we want more like him in this hurrying age, when most people’s chief object seems to be to see how much they can get done in how short a time.”
“He’sfairly good at that, you know,” suggested Arnold, innocently turning to the title-page of the last but two, to find its date.
Mrs. Oliver said, gently, but a little distantly, “I always feel it rather a pity to make fun of a writer who has helped so many people so very greatly as Philip Underwood has,” which was damping and final, and the sort of unfair thing, Arnold felt, that shouldn’t be said in conversation. That is the worst of people who aren’t clever; they suddenly turn on you and score heavily, and you can’t get even. So he said, bored, “Shall I come down with you to meet Eileen, Eddy?” and Daphne thought he had rotten manners and had cheeked her parents. He and Eddy went out together, to meet Eileen.
It was characteristic of Jane that she had given no contribution to this conversation, never having read any Philip Underwood, and only very vaguely and remotely having heard of him. Jane was marvellously good at concerning herself only with the first-rate; hence she never sneered at thesecond or third-rate, for it had no existence for her. She was not one of those artists who mock at the Royal Academy; she never saw most of the pictures there exhibited, but only the few she wished to see, and went on purpose to see. Neither did she jeer at even our most popular writers of fiction, nor at Philip Underwood. Jane was very cloistered, very chaste. Whatsoever things were lovely, she thought on these things, and on no others. At the present moment she was thinking of the Deanery hall, how beautifully it was shaped, and how good was the curve of the oak stairs up from it, and how pleasing and worth drawing Daphne’s long, irregular, delicately-tinted face, with the humorous, one-sided, half-reluctant smile, and the golden waves of hair beneath the blue cap. She wondered if Daphne would let her make a sketch. She would draw her as some little vagabond, amused, sullen, elfish, half-tamed, wholly spoilt, preferably in rags, and bare-limbed—Jane’s fingers itched to be at work on her.
Rather a silent girl, Mrs. Oliver decided, and said, “You must go over the Cathedral to-morrow.”
Jane agreed that she must, and Daphne hoped that Eddy would do that business. For her, she was sick of showing people the Cathedral, and conducting them to the Early English door and the Norman arches, and the something else Lady-chapel, and all the rest of the tiresome things the guide-book superfluously put it into people’s heads to inquire after. One took aunts round.... Butwhenever Daphne could, she left it to the Dean, who enjoyed it, and had, of course, very much more to say about it, knowing not only every detail of its architecture and history, but every detail of its needed repairs and pinnings-up, and general improvements, and how long they would take to do, and how little money was at present forthcoming to do them with. The Dean was as keen on his Cathedral as on revision. Mrs. Oliver had the knowledge of it customary with people of culture who live near cathedrals, and Eddy that and something more, added by a great affection. The Cathedral for him had a glamour and glory.
The Dean began to tell Jane about it.
“You are an artist, Eddy tells us,” he said, presently; “well, I think certain bits of our Cathedral must be an inspiration to any artist. Do you know Wilson Gavin’s studies of details of Ely? Very exquisite and delicate work.”
Jane thought so too.
“Poor Gavin,” the Dean added, more gravely; “we used to see something of him when he came down to Ely, five or six years ago. It’s an extraordinary thing that he could do work like that, so marvellously pure and delicate, and full, apparently of such reverent love of beauty—and at the same time lead the life he has led since, and I suppose is leading now.”
Jane looked puzzled.
The Dean said, “Ah, of course, you don’t know him. But one hears sad stories....”
“I know Mr. Gavin a little,” said Jane. “I always like him very much.”
The Dean thought her either not nearly particular enough, or too ignorant to be credible. She obviously either had never heard, had quite forgotten, or didn’t mind, the sad stories. He hoped for the best, and dropped the subject. He couldn’t well say straight out, before Miss Dawn and Daphne, that he had heard that Mr. Gavin had eloped with someone else’s wife.
It was perhaps for the best that Eddy and Arnold and Eileen arrived at this moment.
At a glance the Olivers saw that Mrs. Le Moine was different from Miss Dawn. She was charmingly dressed. She had a blue travelling-coat, grey furs, deep blue eyes under black brows, and an engaging smile. Certainly “rather beautiful,” as Eddy had said to Daphne, and of a charm that they all felt, but especially the Dean.
Mrs. Oliver, catching Eddy’s eye as he introduced her, saw that he was proud of this one among his visitors. She knew the look, radiant, half shy, the look of a nice child introducing an admired school friend to his people, sure they will get on, thinking how jolly for both of them to know each other. The less nice child has a different look, mistrustful, nervous, anxious, lest his people should disgrace themselves....
Mrs. Oliver gave Mrs. Le Moine tea. They all talked. Eileen had brought in with her a periodical she had been reading in the train, which had in ita poem by Billy Raymond. Arnold picked it up and read it, and said he was sorry about it. Eddy then read it and said, “I rather like it. Don’t you, Eileen? It’s very much Billy in a certain mood, of course.”
Arnold said it was Billy reacting with such violence against Masefield—a very sensible procedure within limits—that he had all but landed himself in the impressionist preciosity of the early Edwardians.
Eileen said, “It’s Billy when he’s been lunching with Cecil. He’s often taken like that then.”
The Dean said, “And who’s Cecil?”
Eileen said, “My husband,” and the Dean and Mrs. Oliver weren’t sure if, given one was living apart from one’s husband, it was quite nice to mention him casually at tea like that; more particularly when he had just written a censored play.
The Dean, in order not to pursue the subject of Mr. Le Moine, held out his hand for theBlue Review, and perused Billy’s production, which was called “The Mussel Picker.”
He laid it down presently and said, “I can’t say I gather any very coherent thought from it.”
Arnold said, “Quite. Billy hadn’t any just then. That is wholly obvious. Billy sometimes has, but occasionally hasn’t, you know. Billy is at times, though by no means always, a shallow young man.”
“Shallow young men produce a good deal of our modern poetry, it seems to me from my slight acquaintance with it,” said the Dean. “One missesthe thought in it that made the Victorian giants so fine.”
As a good many of the shallow young producers of our modern poetry were more or less intimately known to his three guests, Arnold suspected the Dean of trying to get back on him for his aspersions on Philip Underwood. He with difficulty restrained himself from saying, gently but aloofly,a laMrs. Oliver, “I always think it rather a pity to criticize writers who have helped so many people so very greatly as our Georgian poets have,” and said instead, “But the point about this thing of Billy’s is that it’s not modern in the least. It breathes of fifteen years back—the time when people painted in words, and were all for atmosphere. Surely whatever you say about the best modern people, you can’t deny they’re full of thought—so full that sometimes they forget the sound and everything else. Of course you mayn’tlikethe thought, that’s quite another thing; but you can’t miss it; it fairly jumps out at you.... Did you read John Henderson’s thing in this month’sEnglish Review?”
This was one of the periodicals not taken in at the Deanery, so the Dean hadn’t read it. Nor did he want to enter into an argument on modern poetry, with which he was less familiar than with the Victorian giants.
Arnold, talking too much, as he often did when not talking too little, said across the room to Daphne, “What doyouthink of John Henderson, Miss Oliver?”
It amused him to provoke her, because she was a match for him in rudeness, and drew him too by her attractive face and abrupt speech. She wasn’t dull, though she might care nothing for John Henderson or any other poet, and looked on and yawned when she was bored.
“Never thought about him at all,” she said now. “Who is he?” though she knew quite well.
Arnold proceeded to tell her, with elaboration and diffuseness.
“I can lend you his works, if you’d like,” he added.
She said, “No, thanks,” and Mrs. Oliver said, “I’m afraid we don’t find very much time for casual reading here, Mr. Denison,” meaning that she didn’t think John Henderson proper for Daphne, because he was sometimes coarse, and she suspected him of being free-thinking, though as a matter of fact he was ardently and even passionately religious, in a way hardly fit for deaneries.
“Idon’t read John’s things, you know, Arnold,” put in Jane. “I don’t like them much. He said I’d better not try, as he didn’t suppose I should ever get to like them better.”
“That’s John all over,” said Eileen. “He’s so nice and untouchy. Fancy Cecil saying that—except in bitter sarcasm. John’s a dear, so he is. Though he read worse last Tuesday at the Bookshop than I’ve ever heard anyone. You’d think he had a plum in his mouth.”
Obviously these young people were muchinterested in poets and poetry. So Mrs. Oliver said, “On the last night of the year, the Dean usually reads us some poetry, just before the clock strikes. Very often he reads Tennyson’s ‘Ring out, wild bells.’ It is an old family custom of ours,” she added, and they all said what a good one, and how nice it would be. Then Mrs. Oliver told them that they weren’t to dress for dinner, because there was evensong afterwards in the Cathedral, on account of New Year’s Eve.
“But you needn’t go unless you want to,” Daphne added, enviously. Herself she had to go, whether she wanted to or not.
“I’d like to,” Eileen said.
“It’s a way of seeing the Cathedral, of course,” said Eddy. “It’s rather beautiful by candlelight.”
So they all settled to go, even Arnold, who thought that of all the ways of seeing the Cathedral, that was the least good. However, he went, and when they came back they settled down for a festive night, playing coon-can and the pianola, and preparing punch, till half-past eleven, when the Dean came in from his study with Tennyson, and read “Ring out, wild bells.” At five minutes to twelve they began listening for the clock to strike, and when it had struck and been duly counted, they drank each other a happy new year in punch, except Jane, who disliked whisky too much to drink it, and had lemonade instead. In short, they formed one of the many happy homes ofEngland who were seeing the old year out in the same cheerful and friendly manner. Having done so, they went to bed.
“Eddy in the home is entirely a dear,” Eileen said to Jane, lingering a moment by Jane’s fire before she went to her own. “He’s such—such a good boy, isn’t he?” She leant on the words, with a touch of tenderness and raillery. Then she added, “But, Jane, we shall have his parents shocked before we go. It would be easily done. In fact, I’m not sure we’ve not done it already, a little. Arnold is so reckless, and you so ingenuous, and myself so ambiguous in position. I’ve a fear they think us a little unconventional, no less, and are nervous about our being too much with the pretty little sulky sister. But I expect she’ll see to that herself; we bore her, do you know. And Arnold insists on annoying her, which is tiresome of him.”
“She looks rather sweet when she’s cross,” said Jane, regarding the matter professionally. “I should like to draw her then. Eddy’s people are very nice, only not very peaceful, somehow, do you think? I don’t know why, but one feels a little tired after talking much to them; perhaps it’s because of what you say, that they might easily be shocked; and besides, one doesn’t quite always understand what they say. At least, I don’t; but I’m stupid at understanding people, I know.”
Jane sighed a little, and let her wavy brown hair fall in two smooth strands on either side of her small pale face. The Deanery was full of strangestandards and codes and values, alien and unintelligible. Jane didn’t know even what they were, though Eileen and Arnold, living in a less rarefied, more in-the-world atmosphere, could have enlightened her about many of them. It mattered in the Deanery what one’s father was; quite kindly but quite definitely note was taken of that; Mrs. Oliver valued birth and breeding, though she was not snobbish, and was quite prepared to be kind and friendly to those without it. Also it mattered how one dressed; whether one had on usual, tidy, and sufficiently expensive clothes; whether, in fact, one displayed good taste in the matter, and was neither cheap nor showy, but suitable to the hour and occasion. These things do matter, it is very certain. Also it mattered that one should be able to find one’s way about a Church of England Prayer Book during a service, a task at which Jane and Eileen were both incompetent. Jane had not been brought up to follow services in a book, only to sit in college ante-chapels and listen to anthems; and Eileen, reared by an increasingly anti-clerical father, had drifted fitfully in and out of Roman Catholic churches as a child in Ireland, and had since never attended any. Consequently they had helplessly fumbled with their books at evening service. Arnold, who had received the sound Church education (sublimely independent of personal fancies as to belief or disbelief) of our English male youth at school and college, knew all about it, and showed Jane how tofind the Psalms, while Eddy performed the same office for Eileen. Daphne looked on with cynical amusement, and Mrs. Oliver with genuine shocked feeling.
“Anyhow,” said Daphne to her mother afterwards, “I should think they’ll agree with father that it wants revising.”
Next day they all went tobogganing, and met the Bellairs family. Eddy threw Molly and Eileen together, because he wanted them to make friends, which Daphne resented, because she wanted to talk to Molly herself, and Eileen made her feel shy. When she was alone with Molly she said, “What do you think of Eddy’s friends?”
“Mrs. Le Moine is very charming,” said Molly, an appreciative person. “She’s so awfully pretty, isn’t she? And Miss Dawn seems rather sweet, and Mr. Denison’s very clever, I should think.”
Daphne sniffed. “He thinks so, too. I expect they all think they’re jolly clever. But those two”—she indicated Eileen and Jane—“can’t find their places in their Prayer Books without being shown. I don’t call that very clever.”
“How funny,” said Molly.
Acrimony was added to Daphne’s view of Eileen by Claude Bellairs, who looked at her as if he admired her. Claude as a rule looked at Daphne herself like that; Daphne didn’t want him to, thinking it silly, but it was rather much to have his admiration transferred to this Mrs. Le Moine. Certainly anyone might have admired Eileen;Daphne grudgingly admitted that, as she watched her. Eileen’s manner of accepting attentions was as lazy and casual as Daphne’s own, and considerably less provocative; she couldn’t be said to encourage them. Only there was a charm about her, a drawing-power....
“Idon’t think it’s nice, a married person letting men hang round her,” said Daphne, who was rather vulgar.
Molly, who was refined, coloured all over her round, sensitive face.
“Daffy! How can you? Of course it’s all right.”
“Well, Claude would be flirting in no time if she let him.”
“But of course she wouldn’t. How could she?” Molly was dreadfully shocked.
Daphne gave her cynical, one-sided smile. “Easily, I should think. Only probably she doesn’t think him worth while.”
“Daffy, I think it’s horrible to talk like that. I do wish you wouldn’t.”
“All right. Come on and have a go down the hill, then.”
The Bellairs’ came to dinner that evening. Molly was a little subdued, and with her usual flow of childish high spirits not quite so spontaneous as usual. She sat between Eddy and the Dean, and was rather quiet with both of them. The Dean took in Eileen, and on her other side was Nevill Bellairs, who, having deduced inthe afternoon that she was partly Irish, very naturally mentioned the Home Rule Bill, which he had been spending last session largely in voting against. Being Irish, Mrs. Le Moine presumably felt strongly on this subject, which he introduced with the complacency of one who had been fighting in her cause. She listened to him with her half railing, inscrutable smile, until Eddy said across the table, “Mrs. Le Moine’s a Home Ruler, Nevill; look out,” and Nevill stopped abruptly in full flow and said, “You’re not!” and pretended not to mind, and to be only disconcerted for himself, but was really indignant with her for being such a thing, and a little with Eddy for not having warned him. It dried up his best conversation, as one couldn’t talk politics to a Home Ruler. He wondered was she a Papist, too. So he talked about hunting in Ireland, and found she knew nothing of hunting there or indeed anywhere. Then he tried London, but found that the London she knew was different from his, except externally, and you can’t talk for ever about streets and buildings, especially if you do not frequent the same eating-places. From different eating-places the world is viewed from different angles; few things are a more significant test of a person’s point of view.
Meanwhile the Dean was telling Jane about places of interest, such as Roman camps, in the neighbourhood. The Dean, like many deans, talked rather well. He thought Jane prettily attentive, and more educated than most young women, and thatit was a pity she wore such an old-fashioned dress. He did not say so, but asked her if she had designed it from Carpaccio’s St. Ursula, and she said no, from an angel playing the timbrel by Jacopo Bellini in the Accademia. So after that they talked about Venice, and he said he must show her his photographs of it after dinner. “It must be a wonderful place for an artist,” he told her, and she agreed, and then they compared notes and found that he had stayed at the Hotel Europa, and had had a lovely view of the Giudecca and Santa Maria Maggiore from the windows (“most exquisite on a grey day”), and she had stayed in the flat of an artist friend, looking on to the Rio delle Beccarie, which is arioof the poor. Like Eileen and Nevill, they had eaten in different places; but, unlike London, Venice is a coherent whole, not rings within rings, so they could talk, albeit with reservations and a few cross purposes. The Dean liked talking about pictures, and Torcello, and Ruskin, and St. Mark’s, and the other things one talks about when one has been to Venice. Perhaps too he even wanted a little to hear her talk about them, feeling interested in the impressions of an artist. Jane was rather disappointingly simple and practical on these subjects; artists, like other experts, are apt to leave rhapsodies to the layman, and tacitly assume admiration of the beauty that is dilated on by the unprofessional. They are baffling people; the Dean remembered that about poor Wilson Gavin.
While he thus held Jane’s attention, Eddy talkedto Molly about skating, a subject in which both were keenly interested, Daphne sparred with Claude, and Arnold entertained Mrs. Oliver, whom he found a littledifficileand rather thegrande dame. Frankly, Mrs. Oliver did not like Arnold, and he saw through her courtesy as easily as through Daphne’s rudeness. She thought him conceited (which he was), irreverent (which he was also), worldly (which he was not), and a bad influence over Eddy (and whether he was that depended on what you meant by “bad”).
On the whole it was rather an uncomfortable dinner, as dinners go. There was a sense of misfit about it. There were just enough people at cross-purposes to give a feeling of strain, a feeling felt most strongly by Eddy, who had perceptions, and particularly wanted the evening to be a success. Even Molly and he had somehow come up against something, a rock below the cheerful, friendly stream of their intercourse, that pulled him up, though he didn’t understand what it was. There was a spiritual clash somewhere, between nearly every two of them. Between him and Molly it was all her doing; he had never felt friendlier; it was she who had put up a queer, vague wall. He could not see into her mind, so he didn’t bother about it much but went on being cheerful and friendly.
They were all happier after dinner, when playing the pianola in the hall and dancing to it.
But on the whole the evening was only a moderate success.
The Bellairs’ told their parents afterwards thatthey didn’t much care about the friends Eddy had staying.
“Ibelieve they’re stuck up,” said Dick (the Guards), who hadn’t been at dinner, but had met them tobogganing. “That man Denison’s for ever trying to be clever. I can’t stand that; it’s such beastly bad form. Don’t think he succeeds, either, if you ask me. I can’t see it’s particularly clever to be always sneering at things one knows nothing about. Can’t think why Eddy likes him. He’s not a bit keen on the things Eddy’s keen on—hunting, or shooting, or games, or soldiering.”
“There are lots like him at Oxford,” said Claude. “I know the type. Balliol’s full of it. Awfully unwholesome, and a great bore to meet. They write things, and admire each other’s. I suppose it’s the same at Cambridge. Only I should have thought Eddy would have kept out of the way of it.”
Claude had been disgusted by what he considered Arnold’s rudeness to Daphne. “I thought Mrs. Le Moine seemed rather nice, though,” he added.
“Well, I must say,” Nevill said, “she was a little too much for me. English Home Rulers are bad enough, but at least they know nothing about it and are usually merely silly; but Irish ones are more than I can stand. Eddy told me afterwards that her father was that fellow Conolly, who runs theHibernian—the most disloyal rag that ever throve in a Dublin gutter. It does more harm than any other paper in Ireland, I believe.What can you expect of his daughter, let alone a woman married to a disreputable play-writer, and not even living with him? I rather wonder Mrs. Oliver likes to have her in the house with Daphne.”
“Miss—what d’you call her—Morning—seemed harmless, but a little off it,” said Dick. “She doesn’t talk too much, anyhow, like Denison. Queer things she wears, though. And she doesn’t know much about London, for a person who lives there, I must say. Doesn’t seem to have seen any of the plays. Rather vague, somehow, she struck me as being.”
Claude groaned. “So would her father if you met him. A fearful old dreamer. I coach with him in Political Science. He’s considered a great swell; I was told I was lucky to get him; but I can’t make head or tail of him or his books. His daughter has just his absent eye.”
“Poor things,” said Mrs. Bellairs, sleepily. “And poor Mrs. Oliver and the Dean. I wonder how long these unfortunate people are staying, and if we ought to ask them over one day?”
But none of her children appeared to think they ought. Even Molly, always loyal, always hospitable, always generous, didn’t think so. For stronger in Molly’s child-like soul than even her loyalty and her hospitality, and her generosity, was her moral sense, and this was questioning, shamefacedly, reluctantly, whether these friends of Eddy’s were really “good.”
So they didn’t ask them over.
NEXTmorning Eileen got a letter. She read it before breakfast, turned rather paler, and looked up at Eddy as if she was trying to bring her mind back from a great distance. In her eyes was fear, and that look of brooding, soft pity that he had learnt to associate with one only of Eileen’s friends.
She said, “Hugh’s ill,” frowning at him absently, and added, “I must go to him, this morning. He’s alone,” and Eddy remembered a paragraph he had seen in theMorning Postabout Lady Dorothy Datcherd and the Riviera. Lady Dorothy never stayed with Datcherd when he was ill. Periodically his lungs got much worse, and he had to lie up, and he hated that.
“Does he write himself?” Arnold asked. He was fond of Hugh Datcherd.
“Yes—oh, he doesn’t say he’s ill, he never will, but I know it by his writing—I must go by the next train, I’m afraid”; she remembered to turn to Mrs. Oliver and speak apologetically. “I’m very sorry to be so sudden.”
“We are so sorry for the cause,” said Mrs. Oliver, courteously. “Is it your brother?” (Surely it wouldn’t be her husband, in the circumstances?)
“It is not,” said Eileen, still abstracted. “It’s a friend. He’s alone, and consumptive, and if he’s not looked after he destroys himself doing quite mad things. His wife’s gone away.”
Mrs. Oliver became a shade less sympathetic. It was a pity it was not a brother, which would have been more natural. However, Mrs. Le Moine was, of course, a married woman, though under curious circumstances. She began to discuss trains, and the pony-carriage, and sandwiches.
Eddy explained afterwards while Eileen was upstairs.
“It’s Hugh Datcherd, a great friend of hers; poor chap, his lungs are frightfully gone, I’m afraid. He’s an extraordinarily interesting and capable man; runs an enormous settlement in North-East London, and has any number of different social schemes all over the place. He editsFurther—do you ever see it, father?”
“Further?Yes, it’s been brought to my notice once or twice. It goes a good way ‘further’ than even our poor heretical deans, doesn’t it?”
It went in a quite different direction, Eddy thought. Our heretical deans do not always go very far along the road which leads to social betterment and slum-destroying; they are often too busy improving theology to have much time to improve houses.
“An able man, I daresay,” said the Dean. “Like all the Datcherds. Most of them have been Parliamentary, of course. Two Datcherds were at Cambridge with me—Roger and Stephen; this man’s uncles, I suppose; his father would be before my time. They were both very brilliant fellows, and fine speakers at the Union, and have become capable Parliamentary speakers now. A family of hereditary Whigs; but this man’s the only out and out Radical, I should say. A pity he’s so bitter against Christianity.”
“He’s not bitter,” said Eddy. “He’s very gentle. Only he disbelieves in it as a means of progress.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Oliver, “he married one of Lord Ulverstone’s daughters—Dorothy, wasn’t it.” (Lord Ulverstone and Mrs. Oliver’s family were both of Westmorland, where there is strong clannish feeling.)
“He and Dorothy don’t seem to be hitting it off, do they,” put in Daphne, and her mother said, “Daphne, dear,” and changed the subject. Daphne ought not, by good rights, to have heard that about Hugh Datcherd being ill and alone, and Mrs. Le Moine going to him.
“She’s a trying woman, I fancy,” said Eddy, who did not mean to be tactless, but had been absorbed in his own thoughts and had got left behind when his mother started a new subject. “Hard, and selfish, and extravagant, and thinks of nothing but amusing herself, and doesn’t care ahang for any of Datcherd’s schemes, or for Datcherd himself, for that matter. She just goes off and leaves him to be ill by himself. He nearly died last year; he was awfully cut up, too, about their little girl dying—she was the only child, and Datcherd was absolutely devoted to her, and I believe her mother neglected her when she was ill, just as she does Datcherd.”
“These stories get exaggerated, of course,” said Mrs. Oliver, because Lady Dorothy was one of the Westmorland Ulverstones, because Daphne was listening, and because she suspected the source of the stories to be Eileen Le Moine.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt there’s her side of it, too, if one knew it,” admitted Eddy, ready, as usual, to see everyone’s point of view. “It would be a frightful bore being married to a man who was interested in all the things you hated most, and gave his whole time and money and energy to them. But anyhow, you see why his friends, and particularly Eileen, who’s his greatest friend, feel responsible for him.”
“A very sad state of things,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Anyhow,” said Daphne, “here’s the pony-trap.”
Eileen came downstairs, hand-in-hand with Jane, and said goodbye to the Dean, and Mrs. Oliver, and Daphne, and “Thank you so much for having me,” and drove off with Eddy and Jane, still with that look of troubled wistfulness in her face.
She smiled faintly at Eddy from the train.
“I’m sorry, Eddy. It’s a shame I have to go,” but her thoughts were not for him, as he knew.
Outside the station they met Arnold, and he and Jane walked off together to see something in the Cathedral, while Eddy drove home.
Jane gave a little pitiful sigh. “Poor dears,” she murmured.
“H’m?” questioned Arnold, who was interested in the streets.
“Poor Eileen,” Jane amplified; “poor Hugh.”
“Oh, quite,” Arnold nodded. But, feeling more interested in ideas than in people, he talked about Welchester.
“The stuffiness of the place!” he commented, with energy of abuse. “The stodginess. The canons and their wives. The—the enlightened culture of the Deanery. The propriety. The correctness. The intelligence. The cathedralism. The good breeding. How can Eddy bear it, Jane? Why doesn’t he kick someone or something over and run?”
“Eddy likes it,” said Jane. “He’s very fond of it. After all, it is rather exquisite; look——”
They had stopped at the end of Church Street, and looked along its narrow length to the square that opened out before the splendid West Front. Arnold screwed up his eyes at it, appreciatively.
“That’sall right. It’s the people I’m thinking of.”
“But you know, Arnold, Eddy’s not exclusive like most people, like you and me, and—and Mrs.Oliver, and those nice Bellairs’. He likes everyone and everything. Things are delightful to him merely because they exist.”
Arnold groaned. “Whitman said that before you, the brute. If I thought Eddy had anything in common with Walt, our friendship would end forthwith.”
“He has nothing whatever,” Jane reassured him, placidly. “Whitman hated all sorts of things. Whitman’s more like you; he’d have hated Welchester.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s true. The cleanliness, the cant, the smug faces of men and women in the street, the worshippers in cathedrals, the keepers of Sabbaths, the respectable and the well-to-do, the Sunday hats and black coats of the men, the panaches and tight skirts of the women, the tea-fights, the well-read deans and their lady-like wives—what have I to do with these or these with me? All, all of them I loathe; away with them, I will not have them near me any more.Allons, camerado, I will take to the open road beneath the stars.... What a pity he would have said that; but I can’t alter my opinion, even for him.... How at home dear old Phil Underwood would be here, wouldn’t he. How he must enjoy his visits to the Deanery, where he’s apersona grata. And how he must bore the young sister.She’sall right, you know, Jane. I rather like her. And she hates me. She’s quite genuine, and free from cant; just as worldly as they make ’em, and neverpretends to be anything else. Besides, she’s all alive; rather like a young wild animal. It’s queer she and Eddy being brother and sister, she so decided and fixed in all her opinions and rejections, and he so impressionable. Oh, another thing—I have an unhappy feeling that Eddy is going, eventually, to marry that little yellow-eyed girl—Miss Bellairs. Somehow I feel it.”
Jane said, “Nonsense,” and laughed. “She’s not a bit the sort.”
“Of course she’s not. But to Eddy, as you observed, all sorts are acceptable. She’s one sort, you’ll admit. And one he’s attached to—wind and weather and jolly adventures and old companionship, she stands for to him. Not a subtle appeal, but still, an appeal. They’re fond of each other, and it will turn to that, you’ll see. Eddy never says, “That’s not the sort of thing, or the sort of person, for me.” Because they all are. Look at the way he swallowed those parsons down in his slum. Swallowed them—why, he loves them. Look at the way he accepts Welchester, stodginess and all, and likes it. He was the same at Cambridge; nothing was outside the range for him; he never drew the line. I’m really not particular”—Jane laughed at him again—“but I tell you he consorted sometimes with the most utterly utter, and didn’t seem to mind. Kept very bad company indeed on occasion; company the Dean wouldn’t at all have approved of, I’m sure. Many times I’ve had to step in and try in vain to haulhim by force out of some select set. Nuts, smugs, pious men, bettingroués, beefy hulks—all were grist to his mill. And still it’s the same. Miss Bellairs, no doubt, is a very nice girl, quite genuine and natural, and rather like a jolly kitten, which is always attractive. But she’s rigid within; she won’t mix with the people Eddy will want to mix with. She’s not comprehensive. She wouldn’t like us much, for instance; she’d think us rather queer and shady beings, not what she’s used to or understands. We should worry and puzzle her. She’s gay and sweet and unselfish, and good, sweet maid, and lets who will be clever. Lets them, but doesn’t want to have much to do with them. She’ll shut us all out, and try to shut Eddy in with her. She won’t succeed, because he’ll go on wanting a little bit of all there is, and so they’ll both be miserable. Her share of the world, you see—all the share she asks for—is homogeneous; his is heterogeneous, a sort of gypsy stew with everything in it. You may say that he’s greedy for mixed fare, while she has a simple and fastidious appetite. There are the materials for another unhappy marriage ready provided.”
Jane was looking at the Prior’s Door with her head on one side. She smiled at it peacefully.
“Really, Arnold——”
“Oh, I know. You’re going to say, what reason have I for supposing that Eddy has ever thought of this young girl in that way, as they say in fiction. I don’t say he has yet. But he will. Propinquitywill do it, and common tastes, and old affection. You’ll see, Jane. I’m not often wrong about these unfortunate affairs. I dislike them so much that it gives me an instinct.”
Jane shook her head. “I think Welchester is affecting you for bad, Arnold. That, you know, is what the people who annoy you so much here would do, I expect—look at all affection and friendship like that.”
“That’s true.” Arnold looked at her in surprise. “But I shouldn’t have expected you to know it. You are improving in perspicacity, Jane; it’s the first time I have known you aware of the vulgarity about you.”
Jane looked a little proud of herself, as she only did when she had displayed a piece of worldly knowledge. She did not say that she had obtained her knowledge from Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, who, watching Eddy and Eileen, had too obviously done so with troubled eyes, so that she longed to comfort them with explanations they would never understand.
It was certain that they were relieved that Eileen had gone, though the reason of her going had placed her in a more dubious light. Also, she forgot, unfortunately, to write her bread and butter letter. “I suppose she can’t spare the time from Hugh,” said Daphne. But she wrote to Jane, telling her that Hugh was laid up with hemorrhage, and had been ordered to go away directly he was fit. “They say Davos, but he won’t. I don’t know where itwill be.” Jane, whose worldly shrewdness after all had narrow limits, repeated this to Eddy in his mother’s presence.
“Has his wife got back yet?” Mrs. Oliver inquired gravely, and Jane shook her head. “Oh no. She won’t. She’s spending the winter on the Riviera.”
“I should think Mr. Datcherd too had better spend the winter on the Riviera,” suggested Mrs. Oliver.
“Isn’t it rather bad for consumption?” said Eddy, shirking issues other than hygienic.
“I believe,” said Jane, not shirking them, “his wife isn’t coming back to him at all again. She’s tired of him, I’m afraid. I daresay it’s a good thing; she is very irritating and difficult.”
Mrs. Oliver changed the subject. These seemed to her what women in her district would have called strange goings on. She commented on them to the Dean, who, more tolerant, said, “One must allow some licence to genius, I suppose.” Perhaps: but the question was, how much. Genius might alter manners—(for the worse, Mrs. Oliver thought)—but it shouldn’t be allowed to alter morals.
“Anyhow,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I am rather troubled that Eddy should be so intimate with these people.”
“Eddy is a steady-headed boy,” said the Dean. “He knows where to draw the line.” Which is what parents often think of their children, with how little warrant! Drawing the line was preciselythe art which, Arnold complained, Eddy had not learnt at all.
Jane and Arnold stayed three days more at the Deanery. Jane drew details of the Cathedral and studies of Daphne. The Dean thought, as he had often thought before, that artists were interesting, child-like, but rather baffling people, incredibly innocent, or else incredibly apt to accept moral evil with indifference; also that, though, he feared, quite outside the Church, and what he considered to be pagan in outlook, she displayed, like poor Wilson Gavin, a very delicate appreciation of ecclesiastical architecture and religious art.
Mrs. Oliver thought her more unconventional and lacking in knowledge of the world than any girl had a right to be.
Daphne and the Bellairs family thought her a harmless crank, who took off her hat in the road.
The Bellairs’ supposed she must Want a Vote, till she announced her indifference on that subject, which disgusted Daphne, an ardent and potentially militant suffragist, and disappointed her mother, a calm but earnest member of the National Union for Women’s Suffrage, who went to meetings Daphne was not allowed at. Jane—perhaps it was because of the queer sexlessness which was part of her charm, perhaps because of being an artist, and other-worldly—seemed to care little for women’s rights or women’s wrongs. Mrs. Oliver noted that her social conscience was unawakened, and thought her selfish. Artistswere perhaps like that—wrapped up in their own joy of the lovely world, so that they never turned and looked into the shadows. Eddy, a keen suffragist himself, said it was because Jane had never lived among the very poor.
“She should use her power of vision,” said the Dean. “She’s got plenty.”
“She’s one-windowed,” Eddy explained. “She only looks out on to the beautiful things; she has a blank wall between her and the ugly.”
“In plain words, a selfish young woman,” said Mrs. Oliver, but to herself.
So much for Jane. Arnold was more severely condemned. The more they all saw of him, the less they liked him, and the more supercilious he grew. Even at times he stopped remembering it was a Deanery, though he really tried to do this. But the atmosphere did annoy him.
“Mr. Denison has really very unfortunate ways of expressing himself at times,” said Mrs. Oliver, who had too, Arnold thought.
“Oh, he means well,” said Eddy apologetic. “You mustn’t mind him. He’s got corns, and if anyone steps on them he turns nasty. He’s always like that.”
“In fact, a conceited pig,” said Daphne, not to herself.
Personally Daphne thought the best of the three was Mrs. Le Moine, who anyhow dressed well and could dance, though her habits might be queer. Better queer habits than queer clothes, any day,thought Daphne, innately a pagan, with the artist’s eye and the materialist’s soul.
Anyhow, Jane and Arnold departed on Monday. From the point of view of Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, it might have been better had it been Saturday, as their ideas of how to spend Sunday had been revealed as unfitting a Deanery. The Olivers were not in the least sabbatarian, they were much too wide-minded for that, but they thought their visitors should go to church once during the day. Perhaps Jane had been discouraged by her experiences with the Prayer Book on New Year’s Eve. Perhaps it never occurred to her to go. Anyhow in the morning she stayed at home and drew, and in the evening wandered into the Cathedral during the collects, stayed for the anthem, and wandered out, peaceful and content, with no suspicion of having done the wrong or unusual thing. Arnold lay in the hall all the morning and smoked and readThe New Machiavelli, which was one of the books not liked at the Deanery. (Arnold, by the way, didn’t like it much either, but dipped in and out of it, grunting when bored.) In consequence (not in consequence ofThe New Machiavelli, which she would have found dull, but of being obliged herself to go to church), Daphne was cross and envious, the Dean and his wife slightly disapproving, and Eddy sorry about the misunderstanding.
On the whole, the visit had not been the success Eddy had wished for. He felt that. In spite ofsome honest endeavour on both sides, the hosts and guests had not fitted into each other.
Coming back into Welchester from a walk, and seeing its streets full of peace and blue winter twilight and starred with yellow lamps, Eddy thought it queer that there should be disharmonies in such a place. It had peace, and a wistful, ordered beauty, and dignity, and grace....
They were singing in the Cathedral, and lights glowed redly through the stained windows. Strangely the place transcended all factions, all barriers, proving them illusions in the still light of the Real. Eddy, beneath all his ineffectualities, his futilities of life and thought, had a very keen sense of unity, of the coherence of all beauty and good; in a sense he did really transcend the barriers recognised by less shallow people. With a welcoming leap his heart went out to embrace all beauty, all truth. Surely one could afford to miss no aspect of it through blindness. Open-eyed he looked into the blue night of lamps and shadows and men and women, and beyond it to the stars and the sickle of the moon, and all of it crowded into his vision, and he caught his breath a little and smiled, because it was so good and so much.
When he got home he saw his mother sitting in the hall, reading theTimes. Moved by love and liking, he put his arm round her shoulders and bent over her and kissed her. The grace, the breeding, the culture—she was surely part of it all, and should make, like the Cathedral, for harmony.Arnold had found Mrs. Oliver commonplace. Eddy found her admirable. Jane had not found her at all. There was the difference between them. Undoubtedly Eddy’s, whether the most truthful way or not, was the least wasteful.
SOONafter Eddy’s return to London, Eileen Le Moine wrote and asked him to meet her at lunch at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was a rather more select restaurant than they and their friends usually frequented in Soho, so Eddy divined that she wanted to speak to him alone and uninterrupted. She arrived late, as always, and pale, and a little abstracted, as if she were tired in mind or body, but her smile flashed out at him, radiant and kind. Direct and to the point, as usual, she began at once, as they began to eat risotto, “I wonder would you do something for Hugh?”
Eddy said, “I expect so,” and added, “I hope he’s much better?”
“He is not,” she told him. “The doctor says he must go away—out of England—for quite a month, and have no bother or work at all. It’s partly nerves, you see, and over-work. Someone will have to go with him, to look after him, but they’ve not settled who yet. He’ll probably go to Greece, and walk about.... Anyhow he’s to be away somewhere.... And he’s been destroyinghimself with worry because he must leave his work—the settlement and everything—and he’s afraid it will go to pieces. You know he has the Club House open every evening for the boys and young men, and goes down there himself several nights a week. What we thought was that perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking charge, being generally responsible, in fact. There are several helpers, of course, but Hugh wants someone to see after it and get people to give lectures and keep the thing going. We thought you’d perhaps have the time, and we knew you had the experience and could do it. It’s very important to have someone at the top that they like; it just makes all the difference. And Hugh thinks it so hopeful that they turned you out of St. Gregory’s; he doesn’t entirely approve of St. Gregory’s, as you know. Now will you?”
Eddy, after due consideration, said he would do the best he could.
“I shall be very inept, you know. Will it matter much? I suppose the men down there—Pollard and the rest—will see me through. And you’ll be coming down sometimes, perhaps.”
She said “I may,” then looked at him for a moment speculatively, and added, “But I may not. I might be away, with Hugh.”
“Oh,” said Eddy.
“If no one else satisfactory can go with him,” she said. “He must have the right person. Someone who, besides looking after him, will make himlike living and travelling and seeing things. That’s very important, the doctor says. He is such a terribly depressed person, poor Hugh. I can brighten him up. So I rather expect I will go, and walk about Greece with him. We would both like it, of course.”
“Of course,” said Eddy, his chin on his hand, looking out of the window at the orange trees that grew in tubs by the door.
“And, lest we should have people shocked,” added Eileen, “Bridget’s coming too. Not that we mind people with that sort of horrible mind being shocked—but it wouldn’t do to spoil Hugh’s work by it, and it might. Hugh, of course, doesn’t want things said about me, either. People are so stupid. I wonder will the time ever come when two friends can go about together the way no harm will be said. Bridget thinks never. But after all, if no one’s prepared to set an example of common-sense, how are we to move on ever out of all this horrid, improper tangle and muddle? Jane, of course, says, what does it matter, no one who counts would mind; but then for Jane so few people count. Jane would do it herself to-morrow, and never even suspect that anyone was shocked. But one can’t have people saying things about Hugh, and he running clubs and settlements and things; it would destroy him and them; he’s one of the people who’ve got to be careful; which is a bore, but can’t be helped.”
“No, it can’t be helped,” Eddy agreed. “Onedoesn’t want people to be hurt or shocked, even apart from clubs and things; and so many even of the nicest people would be.”
There she differed from him. “Not the nicest. The less nice. The foolish, the coarse-minded, the shut-in, the—the tiresome.”
Eddy smiled disagreement, and she remembered that they would be shocked at the Deanery, doubtless.
“Ah well,” she said, “have it your own way. The nicest, then, as well as the least nice, because none of them know any better, poor dears. For that matter, Bridget said she’d be shocked herself if we went alone. Bridget has moods, you know, when she prides herself on being proper—the British female guarding the conventions. She’s in one of them now.... Well, go and see Hugh to-morrow, will you, and talk about the Settlement. He’ll have a lot to say, but don’t have him excited. It’s wonderful what a trust he has in you, Eddy, since you left St. Gregory’s.”
“An inadequate reason,” said Eddy, “but leading to a very proper conclusion. Yes, I’ll go and see him, then.”
He did so, next day. He found Datcherd at the writing-table in his library. It was a large and beautiful library in a large and beautiful house. The Datcherds were rich (or would have been had not Datcherd spent much too much money on building houses for the poor, and Lady Dorothy Datcherd rather too much on cards and clothes andother luxuries), and there was about their belongings that air of caste, of inherited culture, of transmitted intelligence and recognition of social and political responsibilities, that is perhaps only to be found in families with a political tradition of several generations. Datcherd wasn’t a clever literary free-lance; he was a hereditary Whig; that was why he couldn’t be detached, why, about his breaking with custom and convention, there would always be a wrench and strain, a bitterness of hostility, instead of the light ease of Eileen Le Moine’s set, that could gently mock at the heavy-handed world because it had never been under its dominance, never conceived anything but freedom. That, and because of their finer sense of responsibility, is why it is aristocrats who will always make the best social revolutionaries. They know that life is real, life is earnest; they are bound up with the established status by innumerable ties, which either to keep or to break means purpose. They are, in fact, heavily involved, all round; they cannot escape their liabilities; they are the grown-up people in a light-hearted world of children. Surely, then, they should have more of the reins in their hands, less jerking of them from below.... Such, at least, were Eddy’s reflections in Datcherd’s library, while he waited for Datcherd to finish a letter and thought how ill he looked.
Their ensuing conversation need not be detailed. Datcherd told Eddy about arranging lectures at the Club House whenever he could, about the reading-room,the gymnasium, the billiard-room, the woodwork, and the other diversions and educational enterprises which flourish in such institutions. Eddy was familiar with them already, having sometimes been down to the Club House. It was in its main purpose educational. To it came youths between the ages of fifteen and five and twenty, and gave their evenings to acquiring instruction in political economy, sociology, history, art, physical exercises, science, and other branches of learning. They had regular instructors; and besides these, irregular lecturers came down once or twice a week, friends of Datcherd’s, politicians, social workers, writers, anyone who would come and was considered by Datcherd suitable. The Fabian Society, it seemed, throve still among the Club members, and was given occasional indulgences such as Mr. Shaw or Mr. Sidney Webb, and lesser treats frequently. They had debates, and other habits such as will be readily imagined. Having indicated these, Datcherd proceeded to tell Eddy something about his assistant workers, in what ways each needed firm or tender handling.
While they were talking, Billy Raymond came in, to tell Datcherd about a new poet he had found, who wrote verse that seemed suitable forFurther. Billy Raymond, a generous and appreciative person, was given to finding new poets, usually in cellars, attics, or workmen’s flats. It was commonly said that he less found them than made them, by some transmuting magic of his own touch. Anyhowthey quite often produced poetry, for longer or shorter periods. This latest one was a Socialist in conviction and expression; hence his suitability forFurther. Eddy wasn’t sure that they ought to talk ofFurther; it obviously had Hugh excited.
He and Billy Raymond came away together, which rather pleased Eddy, as he liked Billy better than most people of his acquaintance, which was saying much. There was a breadth about Billy, a large and gentle tolerance, a courtesy towards all sorts and conditions of men and views, that made him restful, as compared, for instance, with the intolerant Arnold Denison. Perhaps the difference was partly that Billy was a poet, with the artist’s vision, which takes in, and Arnold only a critic, whose function it is to select and exclude. Billy, in short, was a producer, and Arnold a publisher; and publishers have to be for ever saying that things won’t do, aren’t good enough. If they can’t say that, they are poor publishers indeed. Billy, in Eddy’s view, approached more nearly than most people to that synthesis which, Eddy believed, unites all factions and all sections of truth.
Billy said, “Poor dear Hugh. I am extraordinarily sorry for him. I am glad you are going to help in the Settlement. He hates leaving it so much. I’m sure I couldn’t worry about my work or anything else if I was going to walk about Greece for a month; but he’s so—so ascetic. I think I respect Datcherd more than almost anyone; he’s so absolutely single-minded. He won’t enjoy Greecea bit, I believe, because of all the people in slums who can’t be there, and wouldn’t if they could. It will seem to him wicked waste of money. Waste, you know! My word!”
“Perhaps,” said Eddy, “he’ll learn how to enjoy life more now his wife has left him. She must have been a weight on his mind.”
“Oh, well,” said Billy, “I don’t know. Perhaps so.... One never really felt that she quite existed, and I daresay he didn’t either, so I don’t suppose her being gone will make so very much difference. She was a sort of unreal thing—a shadow. I always got on with her pretty well; in fact, I rather liked her in a way; but I never felt she was actually there.”
“She’d be there to Datcherd, though,” Eddy said, feeling that Billy’s wisdom hardly embraced the peculiar circumstances of married life, and Billy, never much interested in personal relations, said, “Perhaps.”
They were in Kensington, and Billy went to call on his grandmother, who lived in Gordon Place, and to whom he went frequently to play backgammon and relate the news. Billy was a very affectionate and dutiful young man, and also nearly as fond of backgammon as his grandmother was. With his grandmother lived an aunt, who didn’t care for his poetry much, and Billy was very fond of her too. He sometimes went with his grandmother to St. Mary Abbot’s Church, to help her to see weddings (which she preferred even to backgammon), orattend services. She was proud of Billy, but, for poets to read, preferred Scott, Keble, or Doctor Watts. She admitted herself behind modern times, but loved to see and hear what young people were doing, though it usually seemed rather silly. To her Billy went this afternoon, and Eddy meanwhile called on Mrs. Le Moine and Miss Hogan in Campden Hill Road. He found Miss Hogan in, just returned from a picture-show, and she gave him tea and conversation.
“Of course you’ve heard all about our intentions. Actually we’re off on Thursday.... Last time Eileen went abroad, the people she was with took a maniac by mistake; so very uncomfortable. I quite thought after that she had decided that travel was not for her. However, it seems not. You know—I’m sure she told you—she was for going just he and she,tout simple. Most improper, of course, not to say unwholesome. They meant no harm, dear children, but who would believe that, and even so, what are theconvenancesfor but to be observed? I put it before Eileen in my most banal andbornémanner, but, needless to say, how fruitless! So at last I had to offer to go too. Of course from kindness she had to accept that, though it won’t be at all the same, particularly not to Hugh. Anyhow there we are, and we’re off on Thursday. Hugh will be very much upset by the Channel; I believe he always is; no constitution whatever, poor creature. Also I believe he is of those with whom it lasts on between Calais andParis—a most unhappy class, but to be avoided as travelling companions. I know too well, because of an aunt of mine.... Well, anyhow we’re going to take the train to Trieste, and then a ship to Kalamata, and then take to our feet and walk across Greece. Hitherto I have only done Greece on the Dunnottar Castle, in the care of Sir Henry Lunn, which, if less thrilling, is safer, owing to the wild dogs that tear the pedestrian on the Greek hills, one is given to understand. I only hope we may be preserved.... And meanwhile you’re going to run those wonderful clubs of Hugh’s. I wonder if you’ll do it at all as he would wish! It is beautiful to see how he trusts you—why, I can’t imagine. In his place I wouldn’t; I would rather hand over my clubs to some unlettered subordinate after my own heart and bred in my own faith. As for you, you have so many faiths that Hugh’s will be swamped in the crowd. But you feel confident that you will do it well? That is good, and the main qualification for success.”
Thus Miss Hogan babbled on, partly because she always did, partly because the young man looked rather strained, and she was afraid if she paused that he might say how sad he was at Eileen’s going, and she believed these things better unexpressed. He wasn’t the only young man who was fond of Eileen, and Miss Hogan had her own ideas as to how to deal with such emotions. She didn’t believe it went deep with Eddy, or that he would admit to himself any emotion at all beyond friendship,owing to his own views as to what was right, not to speak of what was sensible; and no doubt if left to himself for a month or so, he would manage to recover entirely. It would be so obviously silly, as well as wrong, to fall in love with Eileen Le Moine, and Bridget did not believe Eddy, in spite of some confusion in his mental outlook, to be really silly.
She directed the conversation on to the picture-show she had just been to, and that reminded her of Sally Peters.
“Did you hear what the stupid child’s done? Joined the Wild Women, and jabbed her umbrella into a lot of Post Impressionists in the Grafton Galleries. Of course they caught her at it—the clumsiest child!—and took her up on the spot, and she’s coming up for trial to-morrow with three other lunatics, old enough to know better than to lead an ignorant baby like that into mischief. I expect she’ll get a month, and serve her right. I suppose she’ll go on hunger-strike; but she’s so plump that it will probably affect her health not unfavourably. I don’t know who got hold of her; doubtless some mad and bad creatures who saw she had no more sense than a little owl, and set her blundering into shop-windows and picture-glasses like a young blue-bottle.... By the way, though you are, I know, so many things, I feel sure you draw the line at the militants.”
Eddy said he thought he saw their point of view.
“Point of view! They’ve not one,” Miss Hogancried. “I suppose, like other decent people, you want women to have votes! Well, you must grant they’ve spoilt any chance ofthat, anyhow—smashed up the whole suffrage campaign with their horrible jabbing umbrellas and absurd little bombs.”