________________________________________________
_ Love, say orderly people, can be fallen into by two methods: (1)
through the desires, (2) through the imagination. And if the
orderly people are English, they add that (1) is the inferior
method, and characteristic of the South. It is inferior. Yet
those who pursue it at all events know what they want; they are
not puzzling to themselves or ludicrous to others; they do not
take the wings of the morning and fly into the uttermost parts of
the sea before walking to the registry office; they cannot breed
a tragedy quite like Rickie's.
He is, of course, absurdly young--not twenty-one and he will be
engaged to be married at twenty-three. He has no knowledge of the
world; for example, he thinks that if you do not want money you
can give it to friends who do. He believes in humanity because he
knows a dozen decent people. He believes in women because he has
loved his mother. And his friends are as young and as ignorant as
himself. They are full of the wine of life. But they have not
tasted the cup--let us call it the teacup--of experience, which
has made men of Mr. Pembroke's type what they are. Oh, that
teacup! To be taken at prayers, at friendship, at love, till we
are quite sane, efficient, quite experienced, and quite useless
to God or man. We must drink it, or we shall die. But we need not
drink it always. Here is our problem and our salvation. There
comes a moment--God knows when--at which we can say, "I will
experience no longer. I will create. I will be an experience."
But to do this we must be both acute and heroic. For it is not
easy, after accepting six cups of tea, to throw the seventh in
the face of the hostess. And to Rickie this moment has not, as
yet, been offered.
Ansell, at the end of his third year, got a first in the Moral
Science Tripos. Being a scholar, he kept his rooms in college,
and at once began to work for a Fellowship. Rickie got a
creditable second in the Classical Tripos, Part I., and retired
to sallow lodgings in Mill bane, carrying with him the degree of
B.A. and a small exhibition, which was quite as much as he
deserved. For Part II. he read Greek Archaeology, and got a
second. All this means that Ansell was much cleverer than Rickie.
As for the cow, she was still going strong, though turning a
little academic as the years passed over her.
"We are bound to get narrow," sighed Rickie. He and his friend
were lying in a meadow during their last summer term. In his
incurable love for flowers he had plaited two garlands of
buttercups and cow-parsley, and Ansell's lean Jewish face was
framed in one of them. "Cambridge is wonderful, but--but it's so
tiny. You have no idea--at least, I think you have no idea--how
the great world looks down on it."
"I read the letters in the papers."
"It's a bad look-out."
"How?"
"Cambridge has lost touch with the times."
"Was she ever intended to touch them?"
"She satisfies," said Rickie mysteriously, "neither the
professions, nor the public schools, nor the great thinking mass
of men and women. There is a general feeling that her day is
over, and naturally one feels pretty sick."
"Do you still write short stories?"
"Because your English has gone to the devil. You think and talk
in Journalese. Define a great thinking mass."
Rickie sat up and adjusted his floral crown.
"Estimate the worth of a general feeling."
Silence.
"And thirdly, where is the great world?"
"Oh that--!"
"Yes. That," exclaimed Ansell, rising from his couch in violent
excitement. "Where is it? How do you set about finding it? How
long does it take to get there? What does it think? What does it
do? What does it want? Oblige me with specimens of its art and
literature." Silence. "Till you do, my opinions will be as
follows: There is no great world at all, only a little earth, for
ever isolated from the rest of the little solar system. The earth
is full of tiny societies, and Cambridge is one of them. All the
societies are narrow, but some are good and some are bad--just as
one house is beautiful inside and another ugly. Observe the
metaphor of the houses: I am coming back to it. The good
societies say, `I tell you to do this because I am Cambridge.'
The bad ones say, `I tell you to do that because I am the great
world, not because I am 'Peckham,' or `Billingsgate,' or `Park
Lane,' but `because I am the great world.' They lie. And fools
like you listen to them, and believe that they are a thing which
does not exist and never has existed, and confuse 'great,' which
has no meaning whatever, with 'good,' which means salvation. Look
at this great wreath: it'll be dead tomorrow. Look at that good
flower: it'll come up again next year. Now for the other
metaphor. To compare the world to Cambridge is like comparing the
outsides of houses with the inside of a house. No intellectual
effort is needed, no moral result is attained. You only have to
say, 'Oh, what a difference!' and then come indoors again and
exhibit your broadened mind."
"I never shall come indoors again," said Rickie. "That's the
whole point." And his voice began to quiver. "It's well enough
for those who'll get a Fellowship, but in a few weeks I shall go
down. In a few years it'll be as if I've never been up. It
matters very much to me what the world is like. I can't answer
your questions about it; and that's no loss to you, but so much
the worse for me. And then you've got a house--not a metaphorical
one, but a house with father and sisters. I haven't, and never
shall have. There'll never again be a home for me like Cambridge.
I shall only look at the outside of homes. According to your
metaphor, I shall live in the street, and it matters very much to
me what I find there."
"You'll live in another house right enough," said Ansell, rather
uneasily. "Only take care you pick out a decent one. I can't
think why you flop about so helplessly, like a bit of seaweed. In
four years you've taken as much root as any one."
"Where?"
"I should say you've been fortunate in your friends."
"Oh--that!" But he was not cynical--or cynical in a very tender
way. He was thinking of the irony of friendship--so strong it is,
and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part
in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her
stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible
fathers these are what she wants, and if we are friends it must
be in our spare time. Abram and Sarai were sorrowful, yet their
seed became as sand of the sea, and distracts the politics of
Europe at this moment. But a few verses of poetry is all that
survives of David and Jonathan.
"I wish we were labelled," said Rickie. He wished that all the
confidence and mutual knowledge that is born in such a place as
Cambridge could be organized. People went down into the world
saying, "We know and like each other; we shan't forget." But they
did forget, for man is so made that he cannot remember long
without a symbol; he wished there was a society, a kind of
friendship office, where the marriage of true minds could be
registered.
"Why labels?"
"To know each other again."
"I have taught you pessimism splendidly." He looked at his watch.
"What time?"
"Not twelve."
Rickie got up.
"Why go?" He stretched out his hand and caught hold of Rickie's
ankle.
"I've got that Miss Pembroke to lunch--that girl whom you say
never's there."
"Then why go? All this week you have pretended Miss Pembroke
awaited you. Wednesday--Miss Pembroke to lunch. Thursday--Miss
Pembroke to tea. Now again--and you didn't even invite her."
"To Cambridge, no. But the Hall man they're stopping with has so
many engagements that she and her friend can often come to me,
I'm glad to say. I don't think I ever told you much, but over two
years ago the man she was going to marry was killed at football.
She nearly died of grief. This visit to Cambridge is almost the
first amusement she has felt up to taking. Oh, they go back
tomorrow! Give me breakfast tomorrow."
"All right."
"But I shall see you this evening. I shall be round at your paper
on Schopenhauer. Lemme go."
"Don't go," he said idly. "It's much better for you to talk to
me."
"Lemme go, Stewart."
"It's amusing that you're so feeble. You--simply--can't--get--
away.
I wish I wanted to bully you."
Rickie laughed, and suddenly over balanced into the grass.
Ansell, with unusual playfulness, held him prisoner. They lay
there for few minutes, talking and ragging aimlessly. Then Rickie
seized his opportunity and jerked away.
"Go, go!" yawned the other. But he was a little vexed, for he was
a young man with great capacity for pleasure, and it pleased him
that morning to be with his friend. The thought of two ladies
waiting lunch did not deter him; stupid women, why shouldn't they
wait? Why should they interfere with their betters? With his ear
on the ground he listened to Rickie's departing steps, and
thought, "He wastes a lot of time keeping engagements. Why will
he be pleasant to fools?" And then he thought, "Why has he turned
so unhappy? It isn't as it he's a philosopher, or tries to solve
the riddle of existence. And he's got money of his own: "Thus
thinking, he fell asleep.
Meanwhile Rickie hurried away from him, and slackened and
stopped, and hurried again. He was due at the Union in ten
minutes, but he could not bring himself there. He dared not meet
Miss Pembroke: he loved her.
The devil must have planned it. They had started so gloriously;
she had been a goddess both in joy and sorrow. She was a goddess
still. But he had dethroned the god whom once he had glorified
equally. Slowly, slowly, the image of Gerald had faded. That was
the first step. Rickie had thought, "No matter. He will be bright
again. Just now all the radiance chances to be in her." And on
her he had fixed his eyes. He thought of her awake. He
entertained her willingly in dreams. He found her in poetry and
music and in the sunset. She made him kind and strong. She made
him clever. Through her he kept Cambridge in its proper place,
and lived as a citizen of the great world. But one night he
dreamt that she lay in his arms. This displeased him. He
determined to think a little about Gerald instead. Then the
fabric collapsed.
It was hard on Rickie thus to meet the devil. He did not deserve
it, for he was comparatively civilized, and knew that there was
nothing shameful in love. But to love this woman! If only it had
been any one else! Love in return--that he could expect from no
one, being too ugly and too unattractive. But the love he offered
would not then have been vile. The insult to Miss Pembroke, who
was consecrated, and whom he had consecrated, who could still see
Gerald, and always would see him, shining on his everlasting
throne this was the crime from the devil, the crime that no
penance would ever purge. She knew nothing. She never would know.
But the crime was registered in heaven.
He had been tempted to confide in Ansell. But to what purpose? He
would say, "I love Miss Pembroke." and Stewart would reply, "You
ass." And then. "I'm never going to tell her." "You ass," again.
After all, it was not a practical question; Agnes would never
hear of his fall. If his friend had been, as he expressed it,
"labelled"; if he had been a father, or still better a brother,
one might tell him of the discreditable passion. But why irritate
him for no reason? Thinking "I am always angling for sympathy; I
must stop myself," he hurried onward to the Union.
He found his guests half way up the stairs, reading the
advertisements of coaches for the Long Vacation. He heard Mrs.
Lewin say, "I wonder what he'll end by doing." A little
overacting his part, he apologized nonchalantly for his lateness.
"It's always the same," cried Agnes. "Last time he forgot I was
coming altogether." She wore a flowered muslin--something
indescribably liquid and cool. It reminded him a little of those
swift piercing streams, neither blue nor green, that gush out of
the dolomites. Her face was clear and brown, like the face of a
mountaineer; her hair was so plentiful that it seemed banked up
above it; and her little toque, though it answered the note of
the dress, was almost ludicrous, poised on so much natural glory.
When she moved, the sunlight flashed on her ear-rings.
He led them up to the luncheon-room. By now he was conscious of
his limitations as a host, and never attempted to entertain
ladies in his lodgings. Moreover, the Union seemed less intimate.
It had a faint flavour of a London club; it marked the
undergraduate's nearest approach to the great world. Amid its
waiters and serviettes one felt impersonal, and able to conceal
the private emotions. Rickie felt that if Miss Pembroke knew one
thing about him, she knew everything. During this visit he took
her to no place that he greatly loved.
"Sit down, ladies. Fall to. I'm sorry. I was out towards Coton
with a dreadful friend."
Mrs. Lewin pushed up her veil. She was a typical May-term
chaperon, always pleasant, always hungry, and always tired. Year
after year she came up to Cambridge in a tight silk dress, and
year after year she nearly died of it. Her feet hurt, her limbs
were cramped in a canoe, black spots danced before her eyes from
eating too much mayonnaise. But still she came, if not as a
mother as an aunt, if not as an aunt as a friend. Still she
ascended the roof of King's, still she counted the balls of
Clare, still she was on the point of grasping the organization of
the May races. "And who is your friend?" she asked.
"His name is Ansell."
"Well, now, did I see him two years ago--as a bedmaker in
something they did at the Foot Lights? Oh, how I roared."
"You didn't see Mr. Ansell at the Foot Lights," said Agnes,
smiling.
"How do you know?" asked Rickie.
"He'd scarcely be so frivolous."
"Do you remember seeing him?"
"For a moment."
What a memory she had! And how splendidly during that moment she
had behaved!
"Isn't he marvellously clever?"
"I believe so."
"Oh, give me clever people!" cried Mrs. Lewin. "They are kindness
itself at the Hall, but I assure you I am depressed at times. One
cannot talk bump-rowing for ever."
"I never hear about him, Rickie; but isn't he really your
greatest friend?"
"I don't go in for greatest friends."
"Do you mean you like us all equally?"
"All differently, those of you I like."
"Ah, you've caught it!" cried Mrs. Lewin. "Mr. Elliot gave it you
there well."
Agnes laughed, and, her elbows on the table, regarded them both
through her fingers--a habit of hers. Then she said, "Can't we
see the great Mr. Ansell?"
"Oh, let's. Or would he frighten me?"
"He would frighten you," said Rickie. "He's a trifle weird."
"My good Rickie, if you knew the deathly dullness of Sawston--
every one saying the proper thing at the proper time, I so
proper, Herbert so proper! Why, weirdness is the one thing I long
for! Do arrange something."
"I'm afraid there's no opportunity. Ansell goes some vast bicycle
ride this afternoon; this evening you're tied up at the Hall; and
tomorrow you go."
"But there's breakfast tomorrow," said Agnes. "Look here, Rickie,
bring Mr. Ansell to breakfast with us at Buoys."
Mrs. Lewin seconded the invitation.
"Bad luck again," said Rickie boldly; "I'm already fixed up for
breakfast. I'll tell him of your very kind intention."
"Let's have him alone," murmured Agnes.
"My dear girl, I should die through the floor! Oh, it'll be all
right about breakfast. I rather think we shall get asked this
evening by that shy man who has the pretty rooms in Trinity."
"Oh, very well. Where is it you breakfast, Rickie?"
He faltered. "To Ansell's, it is--" It seemed as if he was making
some great admission. So self-conscious was he, that he thought
the two women exchanged glances. Had Agnes already explored that
part of him that did not belong to her? Would another chance step
reveal the part that did? He asked them abruptly what they would
like to do after lunch.
"Anything," said Mrs. Lewin,--"anything in the world."
A walk? A boat? Ely? A drive? Some objection was raised to each.
"To tell the truth," she said at last, "I do feel a wee bit
tired, and what occurs to me is this. You and Agnes shall leave
me here and have no more bother. I shall be perfectly happy
snoozling in one of these delightful drawing-room chairs. Do
what you like, and then pick me up after it."
"Alas, it's against regulations," said Rickie. "The Union won't
trust lady visitors on its premises alone."
"But who's to know I'm alone? With a lot of men in the
drawing-room, how's each to know that I'm not with the others?"
"That would shock Rickie," said Agnes, laughing. "He's
frightfully high-principled."
"No, I'm not," said Rickie, thinking of his recent shiftiness
over breakfast.
"Then come for a walk with me. I want exercise. Some connection
of ours was once rector of Madingley. I shall walk out and see
the church."
Mrs. Lewin was accordingly left in the Union.
"This is jolly!" Agnes exclaimed as she strode along the somewhat
depressing road that leads out of Cambridge past the observatory.
"Do I go too fast?"
"No, thank you. I get stronger every year. If it wasn't for the
look of the thing, I should be quite happy."
"But you don't care for the look of the thing. It's only ignorant
people who do that, surely."
"Perhaps. I care. I like people who are well-made and beautiful.
They are of some use in the world. I understand why they are
there. I cannot understand why the ugly and crippled are there,
however healthy they may feel inside. Don't you know how Turner
spoils his pictures by introducing a man like a bolster in the
foreground? Well, in actual life every landscape is spoilt by men
of worse shapes still."
"You sound like a bolster with the stuffing out." They laughed.
She always blew his cobwebs away like this, with a puff of
humorous mountain air. Just now the associations he attached to
her were various--she reminded him of a heroine of Meredith's--
but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about
her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over.
He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a
trivial and impossible sequel.
Last time they had talked about Gerald. But that was some six
months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the
faintest blur. Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr.
Pembroke and to education. Did women lose a lot by not knowing
Greek? "A heap," said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus
they got to Germany, which he had visited last Easter with
Ansell; and thence to the German Emperor, and what a to-do he
made; and from him to our own king (still Prince of Wales), who
had lived while an undergraduate at Madingley Hall. Here it was.
And all the time he thought, "It is hard on her. She has no right
to be walking with me. She would be ill with disgust if she knew.
It is hard on her to be loved."
They looked at the Hall, and went inside the pretty little
church. Some Arundel prints hung upon the pillars, and Agnes
expressed the opinion that pictures inside a place of worship
were a pity. Rickie did not agree with this. He said again that
nothing beautiful was ever to be regretted.
"You're cracked on beauty," she whispered--they were still inside
the church. "Do hurry up and write something."
"Something beautiful?"
"I believe you can. I'm going to lecture you seriously all the
way home. Take care that you don't waste your life."
They continued the conversation outside. "But I've got to hate my
own writing. I believe that most people come to that stage--not
so early though. What I write is too silly. It can't happen. For
instance, a stupid vulgar man is engaged to a lovely young lady.
He wants her to live in the towns, but she only cares for woods.
She shocks him this way and that, but gradually he tames her, and
makes her nearly as dull as he is. One day she has a last
explosion--over the snobby wedding presents--and flies out of the
drawing-room window, shouting, 'Freedom and truth!' Near the
house is a little dell full of fir-trees, and she runs into it.
He comes there the next moment. But she's gone."
"Awfully exciting. Where?"
"Oh Lord, she's a Dryad!" cried Rickie, in great disgust. "She's
turned into a tree."
"Rickie, it's very good indeed. The kind of thing has something in
it. Of course you get it all through Greek and Latin. How upset
the man must be when he sees the girl turn."
"He doesn't see her. He never guesses. Such a man could never see
a Dryad."
"So you describe how she turns just before he comes up?"
"No. Indeed I don't ever say that she does turn. I don't use the
word 'Dryad' once."
"I think you ought to put that part plainly. Otherwise, with such
an original story, people might miss the point. Have you had any
luck with it?"
"Magazines? I haven't tried. I know what the stuff's worth. You
see, a year or two ago I had a great idea of getting into touch
with Nature, just as the Greeks were in touch; and seeing England
so beautiful, I used to pretend that her trees and coppices and
summer fields of parsley were alive. It's funny enough now, but
it wasn't funny then, for I got in such a state that I believed,
actually believed, that Fauns lived in a certain double hedgerow
near the Cog Magogs, and one evening I walked a mile sooner
than go through it alone."
"Good gracious!" She laid her hand on his shoulder.
He moved to the other side of the road. "It's all right now. I've
changed those follies for others. But while I had them I began to
write, and even now I keep on writing, though I know better. I've
got quite a pile of little stories, all harping on this
ridiculous idea of getting into touch with Nature."
"I wish you weren't so modest. It's simply splendid as an idea.
Though--but tell me about the Dryad who was engaged to be
married. What was she like?"
"I can show you the dell in which the young person disappeared.
We pass it on the right in a moment."
"It does seem a pity that you don't make something of your
talents. It seems such a waste to write little stories and never
publish them. You must have enough for a book. Life is so full in
our days that short stories are the very thing; they get read by
people who'd never tackle a novel. For example, at our Dorcas we
tried to read out a long affair by Henry James--Herbert saw it
recommended in 'The Times.' There was no doubt it was very good,
but one simply couldn't remember from one week to another what
had happened. So now our aim is to get something that just lasts
the hour. I take you seriously, Rickie, and that is why I am so
offensive. You are too modest. People who think they can do
nothing so often do nothing. I want you to plunge."
It thrilled him like a trumpet-blast. She took him seriously.
Could he but thank her for her divine affability! But the words
would stick in his throat, or worse still would bring other words
along with them. His breath came quickly, for he seldom spoke of
his writing, and no one, not even Ansell, had advised him to
plunge.
"But do you really think that I could take up literature?"
"Why not? You can try. Even if you fail, you can try. Of course
we think you tremendously clever; and I met one of your dons at
tea, and he said that your degree was not in the least a proof of
your abilities: he said that you knocked up and got flurried in
examinations. Oh!"--her cheek flushed,--"I wish I was a man. The
whole world lies before them. They can do anything. They aren't
cooped up with servants and tea parties and twaddle. But where's
this dell where the Dryad disappeared?"
"We've passed it." He had meant to pass it. It was too beautiful.
All he had read, all he had hoped for, all he had loved, seemed
to quiver in its enchanted air. It was perilous. He dared not
enter it with such a woman.
"How long ago?" She turned back. "I don't want to miss the dell.
Here it must be," she added after a few moments, and sprang up
the green bank that hid the entrance from the road. "Oh, what a
jolly place!"
"Go right in if you want to see it," said Rickie, and did not
offer to go with her. She stood for a moment looking at the view,
for a few steps will increase a view in Cambridgeshire. The wind
blew her dress against her. Then, like a cataract again, she
vanished pure and cool into the dell.
The young man thought of her feelings no longer. His heart
throbbed louder and louder, and seemed to shake him to pieces.
"Rickie!"
She was calling from the dell. For an answer he sat down where he
was, on the dust-bespattered margin. She could call as loud as
she liked. The devil had done much, but he should not take him to
her.
"Rickie!"--and it came with the tones of an angel. He drove his
fingers into his ears, and invoked the name of Gerald. But there
was no sign, neither angry motion in the air nor hint of January
mist. June--fields of June, sky of June, songs of June. Grass of
June beneath him, grass of June over the tragedy he had deemed
immortal. A bird called out of the dell: "Rickie!"
A bird flew into the dell.
"Did you take me for the Dryad?" she asked. She was sitting down
with his head on her lap. He had laid it there for a moment
before he went out to die, and she had not let him take it away.
"I prayed you might not be a woman," he whispered.
"Darling, I am very much a woman. I do not vanish into groves and
trees. I thought you would never come."
"Did you expect--?"
"I hoped. I called hoping."
Inside the dell it was neither June nor January. The chalk walls
barred out the seasons, and the fir-trees did not seem to feel
their passage. Only from time to time the odours of summer
slipped in from the wood above, to comment on the waxing year.
She bent down to touch him with her lips.
He started, and cried passionately, "Never forget that your
greatest thing is over. I have forgotten: I am too weak. You
shall never forget. What I said to you then is greater than what
I say to you now. What he gave you then is greater than anything
you will get from me."
She was frightened. Again she had the sense of something
abnormal. Then she said, "What is all this nonsense?" and folded
him in her arms. _
Read next: PART 1 - CAMBRIDGE: CHAPTER 8
Read previous: PART 1 - CAMBRIDGE: CHAPTER 6
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