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Chapter 7
Looking at it now I can see that the days which followed Audrey's
arrival at Sanstead marked the true beginning of our acquaintanceship.
Before, during our engagement, we had been strangers, artificially
tied together, and she had struggled against the chain. But now,
for the first time, we were beginning to know each other, and were
discovering that, after all, we had much in common.
It did not alarm me, this growing feeling of comradeship. Keenly
on the alert as I was for the least sign that would show that I
was in danger of weakening in my loyalty to Cynthia, I did not
detect one in my friendliness for Audrey. On the contrary, I was
hugely relieved, for it seemed to me that the danger was past. I
had not imagined it possible that I could ever experience towards
her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the
last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory,
until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman
image, some goddess. What I was passing through now, of course,
though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that
state of mind. Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable
human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself,
and by sheer force of will brought Audrey into a reasonable
relation to the scheme of things.
I suppose a not too intelligent moth has much the same views with
regard to the lamp. His last thought, as he enters the flame, is
probably one of self-congratulation that he has arranged his
dealings with it on such a satisfactory commonsense basis.
And then, when I was feeling particularly safe and complacent,
disaster came.
The day was Wednesday, and my 'afternoon off', but the rain was
driving against the windows, and the attractions of billiards with
the marker at the 'Feathers' had not proved sufficient to make me
face the two-mile walk in the storm. I had settled myself in the
study. There was a noble fire burning in the grate, and the
darkness lit by the glow of the coals, the dripping of the rain,
the good behaviour of my pipe, and the reflection that, as I sat
there, Glossop was engaged downstairs in wrestling with my class,
combined to steep me in a meditative peace. Audrey was playing the
piano in the drawing-room. The sound came to me faintly through
the closed doors. I recognized what she was playing. I wondered if
the melody had the same associations for her that it had for me.
The music stopped. I heard the drawing-room door open. She came
into the study.
'I didn't know there was anyone here,' she said. 'I'm frozen. The
drawing-room fire's out.'
'Come and sit down,' I said. 'You don't mind the smoke?'
I drew a chair up to the fire for her, feeling, as I did so, a
certain pride. Here I was, alone with her in the firelight, and my
pulse was regular and my brain cool. I had a momentary vision of
myself as the Strong Man, the strong, quiet man with the iron grip
on his emotions. I was pleased with myself.
She sat for some minutes, gazing into the fire. Little spurts of
flame whistled comfortably in the heart of the black-red coals.
Outside the storm shrieked faintly, and flurries of rain dashed
themselves against the window.
'It's very nice in here,' she said at last.
'Peaceful.'
I filled my pipe and re-lit it. Her eyes, seen for an instant in
the light of the match, looked dreamy.
'I've been sitting here listening to you,' I said. 'I liked that
last thing you played.'
'You always did.'
'You remember that? Do you remember one evening--no, you
wouldn't.'
'Which evening?'
'Oh, you wouldn't remember. It's only one particular evening when
you played that thing. It sticks in my mind. It was at your
father's studio.'
She looked up quickly.
'We went out afterwards and sat in the park.'
I sat up thrilled.
'A man came by with a dog,' I said.
'Two dogs.'
'One surely!'
'Two. A bull-dog and a fox-terrier.'
'I remember the bull-dog, but--by Jove, you're right. A fox-terrier
with a black patch over his left eye.'
'Right eye.'
'Right eye. They came up to us, and you--'
'Gave them chocolates.'
I sank back slowly in my chair.
'You've got a wonderful memory,' I said.
She bent over the fire without speaking. The rain rattled on the
window.
'So you still like my playing, Peter?'
'I like it better than ever; there's something in it now that I
don't believe there used to be. I can't describe it--something--'
'I think it's knowledge, Peter,' she said quietly. 'Experience.
I'm five years older than I was when I used to play to you before,
and I've seen a good deal in those five years. It may not be
altogether pleasant seeing life, but--well, it makes you play the
piano better. Experience goes in at the heart and comes out at the
finger-tips.'
It seemed to me that she spoke a little bitterly.
'Have you had a bad time, Audrey, these last years?' I said.
'Pretty bad.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I'm not--altogether. I've learned a lot.'
She was silent again, her eyes fixed on the fire.
'What are you thinking about?' I said.
'Oh, a great many things.'
'Pleasant?'
'Mixed. The last thing I thought about was pleasant. That was,
that I am very lucky to be doing the work I am doing now. Compared
with some of the things I have done--'
She shivered.
'I wish you would tell me about those years, Audrey,' I said.
'What were some of the things you did?'
She leaned back in her chair and shaded her face from the fire
with a newspaper. Her eyes were in the shadow.
'Well, let me see. I was a nurse for some time at the Lafayette
Hospital in New York.'
'That's hard work?'
'Horribly hard. I had to give it up after a while. But--it teaches
you.... You learn.... You learn--all sorts of things. Realities.
How much of your own trouble is imagination. You get real trouble
in a hospital. You get it thrown at you.'
I said nothing. I was feeling--I don't know why--a little
uncomfortable, a little at a disadvantage, as one feels in the
presence of some one bigger than oneself.
'Then I was a waitress.'
'A waitress?'
'I tell you I did everything. I was a waitress, and a very bad
one. I broke plates. I muddled orders. Finally I was very rude to
a customer and I went on to try something else. I forget what came
next. I think it was the stage. I travelled for a year with a
touring company. That was hard work, too, but I liked it. After
that came dressmaking, which was harder and which I hated. And
then I had my first stroke of real luck.'
'What was that?'
'I met Mr Ford.'
'How did that happen?'
'You wouldn't remember a Miss Vanderley, an American girl who was
over in London five or six years ago? My father taught her
painting. She was very rich, but she was wild at that time to be
Bohemian. I think that's why she chose Father as a teacher. Well,
she was always at the studio, and we became great friends, and one
day, after all these things I have been telling you of, I thought
I would write to her, and see if she could not find me something
to do. She was a _dear_.' Her voice trembled, and she lowered
the newspaper till her whole face was hidden. 'She wanted me to
come to their home and live on her for ever, but I couldn't have
that. I told her I must work. So she sent me to Mr Ford, whom the
Vanderleys knew very well, and I became Ogden's governess.'
'Great Scott!' I cried. 'What!'
She laughed rather shakily.
'I don't think I was a very good governess. I knew next to
nothing. I ought to have been having a governess myself. But I
managed somehow.'
'But Ogden?' I said. 'That little fiend, didn't he worry the life
out of you?'
'Oh, I had luck there again. He happened to take a mild liking to
me, and he was as good as gold--for him; that's to say, if I
didn't interfere with him too much, and I didn't. I was horribly
weak; he let me alone. It was the happiest time I had had for
ages.'
'And when he came here, you came too, as a sort of ex-governess,
to continue exerting your moral influence over him?'
She laughed.
'More or less that.'
We sat in silence for a while, and then she put into words the
thought which was in both our minds.
'How odd it seems, you and I sitting together chatting like this,
Peter, after all--all these years.'
'Like a dream!'
'Just like a dream ... I'm so glad.... You don't know how I've
hated myself sometimes for--for--'
'Audrey! You mustn't talk like that. Don't let's think of it.
Besides, it was my fault.'
She shook her head.
'Well, put it that we didn't understand one another.'
She nodded slowly.
'No, we didn't understand one another.'
'But we do now,' I said. 'We're friends, Audrey.'
She did not answer. For a long time we sat in silence. And then the
newspaper must have moved--a gleam from the fire fell upon her face,
lighting up her eyes; and at the sight something in me began to
throb, like a drum warning a city against danger. The next moment
the shadow had covered them again.
I sat there, tense, gripping the arms of my chair. I was tingling.
Something was happening to me. I had a curious sensation of being
on the threshold of something wonderful and perilous.
From downstairs there came the sound of boys' voices. Work was
over, and with it this talk by the firelight. In a few minutes
somebody, Glossop, or Mr Abney, would be breaking in on our
retreat.
We both rose, and then--it happened. She must have tripped in the
darkness. She stumbled forward, her hand caught at my coat, and
she was in my arms.
It was a thing of an instant. She recovered herself, moved to the
door, and was gone.
But I stood where I was, motionless, aghast at the revelation
which had come to me in that brief moment. It was the physical
contact, the feel of her, warm and alive, that had shattered for
ever that flimsy structure of friendship which I had fancied so
strong. I had said to Love, 'Thus far, and no farther', and Love
had swept over me, the more powerful for being checked. The time
of self-deception was over. I knew myself.
Content of Part 2 - Peter Burns' Narrative: Chapter 7 [P G Wodehouse's novel: The Little Nugget]
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