BOOK THREECATHLEEN BENTLEYSo between them love did shineThat the truth saw his rightFlaming in the phœnix’ sight,Either was the other’s mine.Property was thus appalledThat the self was not the same;Single nature’s double nameNeither two nor one was called.IMEETINGHe trieth the sea after many shipwrecks; and beats still on that door which he never saw opened.WHENAnn and Kilner left René, he was filled with anger against them, first of all, fleetingly, with the petulance of a sick man at being left alone without his having expressed a wish for it, and then at their treating him as a sick man when he was nothing of the kind, but only passing through a crisis in which not even sympathy could help him much. Kilner was so cocksure just because he had a peculiar delight in putting paint on canvas; and Ann—poor dear little Ann!—she loved to have things and people at her mercy and to keep them there. And she could make no attempt to understand them, because if she did so, that would be to believe in them and let them be free to work out their own destiny. He knew how little freedom she would even grant himself, and his mind, spurred by revolt into high activity, went straight to its mark, the place where freedom most clearly promised—absurdly, the door through which he had seen Rachel Bentley pass. That led to his clearest and most beautiful memory, the days in Scotland, thehappy boyhood when delight had grown from year to year, to flower at last in the coming of Cathleen. Very vivid was his recollection of their first meeting in his aunt’s house: himself very coltish and shy, she charmingly self-conscious and alert. It was the first year the Bentleys had taken the big house, and she had come round by the road. His aunt had asked him to show Cathleen the short cut through the woods. She chattered until his shyness overcame him, and then they walked in a miserable silence. He comforted himself by regarding her as a little girl, which to his young prudishness made his involuntary adoration of her beauty legitimate. He could never take his eyes off her, and she began to amuse herself with him and try her coquetries upon his oversensitiveness. He suffered terribly. She was caught in her own wiles, and she too suffered. It was a relief to both when, the first year, they parted.The next year she was not so lovely, and had lost or disguised her wildness. It was not long before he discovered that he could rouse it in her. Then began their meetings in the woods.At the thought of her now his affection for Ann, his warm regard for Kilner faded away. They were meaningless without her. He knew not where she was. His only clue was Rachel. Cathleen, too, might go to that house. He would wait until she came. If the worst came to the worst, he would ask Rachel. He must satisfy himself that he was not covering that sweet past with illusions. The meeting with Rachel had brought it all flooding back to bring him to acutediscontent with the present. It was one thing to sigh sentimentally over happy days. To do that was to obscure them. It was quite another thing to have happy days demanding egress through his life, growing through the thick-set years like a tree through a wall.He stole away directly Kilner and Ann were out of sight, found he had only a sovereign, and turned into the tobacconist’s round the corner for change. It was also a news-agent’s, and he bought a newspaper and, as he was borne along by the bus, read of his aunt’s death. Strange, he thought, that all his thoughts should be clustered round her house just then. The wise old woman, with her dear foibles: what had her long life been? The end of it was sweet and true and full of grace. Not only his mother had been helped in her troubles. That he knew. The old lady’s meager income became supple and elastic under the touch of generous charity that never spoiled its gifts with the demand for gratitude. She once said to René: “Better be ungrateful than cramped with gratitude.” Read Dante upside down she might in her old age, but she could quote him from her heart:Ed io a lui: Io mi son un che, quandoAmor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modoche ditta dentro, vo significando.She had made René learn a little Italian and get that by heart. It began now to have a meaning for him, and he repeated it to himself as he came near the road in which stood Rachel’s house.He took up his stand at the corner and waited. He had been there nearly an hour when a car drove up and a spruce, middle-aged gentleman got out, walked up the path, and admitted himself with a key. Rachel’s husband? Far too old for her.Another hour’s waiting. A young woman came along the road. René thought for a moment it was she, and his heart leaped. She did not see him. She turned in at the gate, knocked at the door, and was admitted. No, he decided, that was not Cathleen.Then he told himself he was a fool, that only by the unlikeliest chance would she be there to-day. He walked away, but was back again in ten minutes. In another twenty the door opened and the young woman came out. She stood for a moment at the gate. It could not be Cathleen, she was too tall and slender. In his eager hope and curiosity he moved toward her. He was not a yard away from her when she turned and their eyes met. Neither stirred. They were stilled by the wonder of it. A spell was on them, and slowly in both grew the dreadful knowledge that a word or a gesture would break it. In his heart René prayed: “Oh! let it break into happiness,” and his will leaped into being and decided that it must be so and he laughed. She said:“Oh! René!”It was no echo of the old cry, but the same filled with a new music.Their hands met in the conventional salute. She said:“I have been thinking of you so much.”“Much?” said he. “I have been thinking of nothing else. And I was not sure that it was you when you went in just now.”“I saw you, but I didn’t recognize you. Rachel told me she had met you.”“Did she tell you where?”“I had to dig it out of her. She was very hushed and secret. Rachel is funny. I’ve been looking at taxi-drivers ever since. They are a very plain lot of men.”“Where do you live now?”“In Bloomsbury. I am working for my living, you know.”“I’m glad of that, but I shouldn’t have thought it necessary.”“My father died.”“I heard that.”“He left nearly all his money to another woman: another family. I suppose he liked them better than us. I had a row with my mother over it. It appears she knew all about it and never minded. Only when it came to her having less money than she thought, she developed a horrid conscience and denounced my father to us. I hadn’t thought about such things, but I was fond of my father, and it wasn’t fair to vilify him after his death. I didn’t understand it in the very least, but I stood up for him, and of course I said a lot of stupid, cruel things. I went to see the other woman. She was quite old, older than mother, rather vulgar, but jolly and warm-hearted and kind, and, from the way she talked, I could see she really did lovemy father and was very proud of him. You know, he made his own way. His father was a barber in Rickham, in Hertfordshire. She came from there, too. I told mother I had seen her, and she was furious, and said I was too young to know anything about such things. I pointed out that she had told me, and she declared she never imagined that I would understand. Then she put it all down to my taste for low company, meaning you. That annoyed me, and I told her you were a very learned and brilliant person. She said Thrigsby wasn’t a real university, and its degrees did not count. You weren’t a gentleman, and it was terrible how all the professions were being invaded by little whipper-snappers with a thin coating of book knowledge. So I asked her point-blank why she married my father, and she said he was extremely successful. Father had left us each two hundred pounds. I asked for that, and said I would earn my own living. I should have a year in which to look round. She said no one would ever marry me if I worked. I told her that the little I had learned of her life didn’t make me anxious to be married. She became very solemn on that, and told me I couldn’t possibly remain unmarried, because I was too pretty. I said I thought women could look after themselves, and obviously other arrangements were possible, and sometimes more profitable. That was an odious thing to say, but we had irritated each other out of all decency, and for vulgarity the other woman was an angel to us. I couldn’t stay with my mother; I had said too much. She knew if I stayed it would make it hard for her toplay the devoted widow; and also, if she could be the broken-hearted parent, it would give her a good start. She pounced on that, and let me go with her most lugubrious blessing and most ghoulish doubts. She prophesied almost gleefully that I would go to the bad, and helped me along by treating me as if I had already done so. Then I plunged into the wicked world. It was very disappointing. I had been led to suppose that no woman was safe alone. The wicked world has absolutely disregarded me. Occasionally some miserable little man or pale-faced boy has sidled up to me in the street and said, ‘Excuse me, miss’—or ‘Haven’t we met before?’ They don’t alarm me. I say I won’t excuse them or that I haven’t met them, and they look very comically cast down, and say ‘Beg pardon’ and shuffle off. Sometimes I am so sorry for them that I feel inclined to run after them and tell them to cheer up, because it’s quite easy to find affection if you only set about it the right way. They think it’s adventure they want, but it isn’t. It’s only affection, some sort of human contact. I understood that, because I too was lonely. But those poor little men were so dull. I can’t bear being dull, and I hate to see it in others; I hate to see them settling down to it. That’s what mother wanted me to do. I might have done it, too, if father hadn’t died. You know it seems quite pleasant to flirt and spend money, and find a husband and go on flirting and spending money. I’d never seen anyone die before, and it did make me feel ashamed. All of us were changed by it for a little. We became very shy of each other, and wanted to be nice, andbegan to talk about the things we really thought and felt inside ourselves. Then all that slipped away, and we were just the same as before until we talked about father’s money, and then we were all angry. I suppose I hadn’t quite recovered from the strain of his death, because all that hurt me, and I could only think that I had really loved him, and might have loved him much more if things had been somehow different. And then when I saw that kind, common woman it opened up another kind of life going on apart from money and position and amusement, all the things we were so proud of. It horrified me at first, of course. It is dreadful because it is secret. In itself— Well, anyhow, the only other thing in my life that was the least bit like it and could stand against it was my absurd little affair with you in Scotland. So you see, I had begun to think of you even before Rachel met you.”“Absurd!” René winced at the word.“Wasn’t it? I couldn’t have gone on with it, you know. It made me feel so helpless, and I felt so mean, letting you care so much. Your letters used to frighten me.”“But you cared for me?”“Yes, yes; with one eye on you and the other on my mother.”René thought that over uneasily. He was disconcerted by this cool young woman. The enchantment of their meeting had roused and invigorated him, and, as usual, he had surrendered to the emotional flux of the encounter and was prepared for wonders, which, asusual, did not come, or, at least, were not palpable. His eyes never left her face. It was lit with a smile of happiness, an incommunicable joy.Unconscious of their surroundings they had reached Kensington Gardens, and stood by the railings outside the Palace looking over the Round Pond. A gray October day: the trees gaunt and shabby; the heavy clouds tumbled and ragged. A cold northwest wind was blowing. René’s ungloved hands were blue.He gripped Cathleen’s arm, and she turned her happy eyes on him.“That’s good,” she said. “You were so strong then.”“Cathleen, I mustn’t lose sight of you again. You make me forget everything that has been, though that isn’t quite what I wanted to say.”“I shan’t lose sight of you, my dear. It doesn’t matter what happens to either of us.”René said:“A good deal has happened to me.”“Tell me.”He told her. She received his story in silence. At last she said:“If you have a friend, it doesn’t matter what he does. All the same, it’s a nuisance.”“What is?”“The nuisance is that I’m a woman and you’re a man. Can friendship get over that?”“Love,” said René, “can master everything. I love you. Shall we start with that? That’s clear, anyhow.”“Clear? Oh, yes; but it means being very certain about it and definite. Some of the charm of love goes. It is gone already from me.”“I’m sorry.”“Don’t. I’m trying not to pity you. Oh, René, my foolish dear, I only want to love you and help you.”“It is you who are strong,” he said.She moved closer to him, so that she could just touch him.“We shall need all the strength we can get if we are not to be broken—strength and patience.”“I have a friend,” said he, “who thinks that all the confusion comes from sloth and fear.”“I should like to meet that friend.”
So between them love did shineThat the truth saw his rightFlaming in the phœnix’ sight,Either was the other’s mine.Property was thus appalledThat the self was not the same;Single nature’s double nameNeither two nor one was called.
So between them love did shine
That the truth saw his right
Flaming in the phœnix’ sight,
Either was the other’s mine.
Property was thus appalled
That the self was not the same;
Single nature’s double name
Neither two nor one was called.
He trieth the sea after many shipwrecks; and beats still on that door which he never saw opened.
WHENAnn and Kilner left René, he was filled with anger against them, first of all, fleetingly, with the petulance of a sick man at being left alone without his having expressed a wish for it, and then at their treating him as a sick man when he was nothing of the kind, but only passing through a crisis in which not even sympathy could help him much. Kilner was so cocksure just because he had a peculiar delight in putting paint on canvas; and Ann—poor dear little Ann!—she loved to have things and people at her mercy and to keep them there. And she could make no attempt to understand them, because if she did so, that would be to believe in them and let them be free to work out their own destiny. He knew how little freedom she would even grant himself, and his mind, spurred by revolt into high activity, went straight to its mark, the place where freedom most clearly promised—absurdly, the door through which he had seen Rachel Bentley pass. That led to his clearest and most beautiful memory, the days in Scotland, thehappy boyhood when delight had grown from year to year, to flower at last in the coming of Cathleen. Very vivid was his recollection of their first meeting in his aunt’s house: himself very coltish and shy, she charmingly self-conscious and alert. It was the first year the Bentleys had taken the big house, and she had come round by the road. His aunt had asked him to show Cathleen the short cut through the woods. She chattered until his shyness overcame him, and then they walked in a miserable silence. He comforted himself by regarding her as a little girl, which to his young prudishness made his involuntary adoration of her beauty legitimate. He could never take his eyes off her, and she began to amuse herself with him and try her coquetries upon his oversensitiveness. He suffered terribly. She was caught in her own wiles, and she too suffered. It was a relief to both when, the first year, they parted.
The next year she was not so lovely, and had lost or disguised her wildness. It was not long before he discovered that he could rouse it in her. Then began their meetings in the woods.
At the thought of her now his affection for Ann, his warm regard for Kilner faded away. They were meaningless without her. He knew not where she was. His only clue was Rachel. Cathleen, too, might go to that house. He would wait until she came. If the worst came to the worst, he would ask Rachel. He must satisfy himself that he was not covering that sweet past with illusions. The meeting with Rachel had brought it all flooding back to bring him to acutediscontent with the present. It was one thing to sigh sentimentally over happy days. To do that was to obscure them. It was quite another thing to have happy days demanding egress through his life, growing through the thick-set years like a tree through a wall.
He stole away directly Kilner and Ann were out of sight, found he had only a sovereign, and turned into the tobacconist’s round the corner for change. It was also a news-agent’s, and he bought a newspaper and, as he was borne along by the bus, read of his aunt’s death. Strange, he thought, that all his thoughts should be clustered round her house just then. The wise old woman, with her dear foibles: what had her long life been? The end of it was sweet and true and full of grace. Not only his mother had been helped in her troubles. That he knew. The old lady’s meager income became supple and elastic under the touch of generous charity that never spoiled its gifts with the demand for gratitude. She once said to René: “Better be ungrateful than cramped with gratitude.” Read Dante upside down she might in her old age, but she could quote him from her heart:
Ed io a lui: Io mi son un che, quandoAmor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modoche ditta dentro, vo significando.
Ed io a lui: Io mi son un che, quando
Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo
che ditta dentro, vo significando.
She had made René learn a little Italian and get that by heart. It began now to have a meaning for him, and he repeated it to himself as he came near the road in which stood Rachel’s house.
He took up his stand at the corner and waited. He had been there nearly an hour when a car drove up and a spruce, middle-aged gentleman got out, walked up the path, and admitted himself with a key. Rachel’s husband? Far too old for her.
Another hour’s waiting. A young woman came along the road. René thought for a moment it was she, and his heart leaped. She did not see him. She turned in at the gate, knocked at the door, and was admitted. No, he decided, that was not Cathleen.
Then he told himself he was a fool, that only by the unlikeliest chance would she be there to-day. He walked away, but was back again in ten minutes. In another twenty the door opened and the young woman came out. She stood for a moment at the gate. It could not be Cathleen, she was too tall and slender. In his eager hope and curiosity he moved toward her. He was not a yard away from her when she turned and their eyes met. Neither stirred. They were stilled by the wonder of it. A spell was on them, and slowly in both grew the dreadful knowledge that a word or a gesture would break it. In his heart René prayed: “Oh! let it break into happiness,” and his will leaped into being and decided that it must be so and he laughed. She said:
“Oh! René!”
It was no echo of the old cry, but the same filled with a new music.
Their hands met in the conventional salute. She said:
“I have been thinking of you so much.”
“Much?” said he. “I have been thinking of nothing else. And I was not sure that it was you when you went in just now.”
“I saw you, but I didn’t recognize you. Rachel told me she had met you.”
“Did she tell you where?”
“I had to dig it out of her. She was very hushed and secret. Rachel is funny. I’ve been looking at taxi-drivers ever since. They are a very plain lot of men.”
“Where do you live now?”
“In Bloomsbury. I am working for my living, you know.”
“I’m glad of that, but I shouldn’t have thought it necessary.”
“My father died.”
“I heard that.”
“He left nearly all his money to another woman: another family. I suppose he liked them better than us. I had a row with my mother over it. It appears she knew all about it and never minded. Only when it came to her having less money than she thought, she developed a horrid conscience and denounced my father to us. I hadn’t thought about such things, but I was fond of my father, and it wasn’t fair to vilify him after his death. I didn’t understand it in the very least, but I stood up for him, and of course I said a lot of stupid, cruel things. I went to see the other woman. She was quite old, older than mother, rather vulgar, but jolly and warm-hearted and kind, and, from the way she talked, I could see she really did lovemy father and was very proud of him. You know, he made his own way. His father was a barber in Rickham, in Hertfordshire. She came from there, too. I told mother I had seen her, and she was furious, and said I was too young to know anything about such things. I pointed out that she had told me, and she declared she never imagined that I would understand. Then she put it all down to my taste for low company, meaning you. That annoyed me, and I told her you were a very learned and brilliant person. She said Thrigsby wasn’t a real university, and its degrees did not count. You weren’t a gentleman, and it was terrible how all the professions were being invaded by little whipper-snappers with a thin coating of book knowledge. So I asked her point-blank why she married my father, and she said he was extremely successful. Father had left us each two hundred pounds. I asked for that, and said I would earn my own living. I should have a year in which to look round. She said no one would ever marry me if I worked. I told her that the little I had learned of her life didn’t make me anxious to be married. She became very solemn on that, and told me I couldn’t possibly remain unmarried, because I was too pretty. I said I thought women could look after themselves, and obviously other arrangements were possible, and sometimes more profitable. That was an odious thing to say, but we had irritated each other out of all decency, and for vulgarity the other woman was an angel to us. I couldn’t stay with my mother; I had said too much. She knew if I stayed it would make it hard for her toplay the devoted widow; and also, if she could be the broken-hearted parent, it would give her a good start. She pounced on that, and let me go with her most lugubrious blessing and most ghoulish doubts. She prophesied almost gleefully that I would go to the bad, and helped me along by treating me as if I had already done so. Then I plunged into the wicked world. It was very disappointing. I had been led to suppose that no woman was safe alone. The wicked world has absolutely disregarded me. Occasionally some miserable little man or pale-faced boy has sidled up to me in the street and said, ‘Excuse me, miss’—or ‘Haven’t we met before?’ They don’t alarm me. I say I won’t excuse them or that I haven’t met them, and they look very comically cast down, and say ‘Beg pardon’ and shuffle off. Sometimes I am so sorry for them that I feel inclined to run after them and tell them to cheer up, because it’s quite easy to find affection if you only set about it the right way. They think it’s adventure they want, but it isn’t. It’s only affection, some sort of human contact. I understood that, because I too was lonely. But those poor little men were so dull. I can’t bear being dull, and I hate to see it in others; I hate to see them settling down to it. That’s what mother wanted me to do. I might have done it, too, if father hadn’t died. You know it seems quite pleasant to flirt and spend money, and find a husband and go on flirting and spending money. I’d never seen anyone die before, and it did make me feel ashamed. All of us were changed by it for a little. We became very shy of each other, and wanted to be nice, andbegan to talk about the things we really thought and felt inside ourselves. Then all that slipped away, and we were just the same as before until we talked about father’s money, and then we were all angry. I suppose I hadn’t quite recovered from the strain of his death, because all that hurt me, and I could only think that I had really loved him, and might have loved him much more if things had been somehow different. And then when I saw that kind, common woman it opened up another kind of life going on apart from money and position and amusement, all the things we were so proud of. It horrified me at first, of course. It is dreadful because it is secret. In itself— Well, anyhow, the only other thing in my life that was the least bit like it and could stand against it was my absurd little affair with you in Scotland. So you see, I had begun to think of you even before Rachel met you.”
“Absurd!” René winced at the word.
“Wasn’t it? I couldn’t have gone on with it, you know. It made me feel so helpless, and I felt so mean, letting you care so much. Your letters used to frighten me.”
“But you cared for me?”
“Yes, yes; with one eye on you and the other on my mother.”
René thought that over uneasily. He was disconcerted by this cool young woman. The enchantment of their meeting had roused and invigorated him, and, as usual, he had surrendered to the emotional flux of the encounter and was prepared for wonders, which, asusual, did not come, or, at least, were not palpable. His eyes never left her face. It was lit with a smile of happiness, an incommunicable joy.
Unconscious of their surroundings they had reached Kensington Gardens, and stood by the railings outside the Palace looking over the Round Pond. A gray October day: the trees gaunt and shabby; the heavy clouds tumbled and ragged. A cold northwest wind was blowing. René’s ungloved hands were blue.
He gripped Cathleen’s arm, and she turned her happy eyes on him.
“That’s good,” she said. “You were so strong then.”
“Cathleen, I mustn’t lose sight of you again. You make me forget everything that has been, though that isn’t quite what I wanted to say.”
“I shan’t lose sight of you, my dear. It doesn’t matter what happens to either of us.”
René said:
“A good deal has happened to me.”
“Tell me.”
He told her. She received his story in silence. At last she said:
“If you have a friend, it doesn’t matter what he does. All the same, it’s a nuisance.”
“What is?”
“The nuisance is that I’m a woman and you’re a man. Can friendship get over that?”
“Love,” said René, “can master everything. I love you. Shall we start with that? That’s clear, anyhow.”
“Clear? Oh, yes; but it means being very certain about it and definite. Some of the charm of love goes. It is gone already from me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. I’m trying not to pity you. Oh, René, my foolish dear, I only want to love you and help you.”
“It is you who are strong,” he said.
She moved closer to him, so that she could just touch him.
“We shall need all the strength we can get if we are not to be broken—strength and patience.”
“I have a friend,” said he, “who thinks that all the confusion comes from sloth and fear.”
“I should like to meet that friend.”