Part 14

It was all I could do to keep going to the end of this term, but I managed it somehow. I've thrown myself into my work as never before: when I am actually in form, teaching, or in the afternoons playing games I am more or less sane, but I am perilously near madness when the night draws on and the hours creep past and I am left alone with nothing to console me but her photographs, her letters and my letters to her. She is my whole aim and end of living: I've tried going to theatres in Scarborough, I've tried to coach all the boys for the sports, I've played "Rugger" and hockey with greater venom than ever before, with the rather humorous result that I now have spoilt my upper lip for ever. I got it cut all to pieces: it was very cleverly sewn up, but I guess it's going to be awry for the rest of my life. I have had a fearful, nightly fear of dying before I can taste the bliss of married life. I wish I could rid myself of this fear: it's the same sort of funk that makes me rush ahead with anything that I am writing, lest I should die before it is finished: it's a most unreasoning, foolish obsession, but one that I am totally unable to eradicate. I owe more than I can ever repay to Maurice Hewlett. I have found it increasingly hard to concentrate my attention on to any book or author since I became engaged: now I've found "The Forest Lovers," "Mrs. Launcelot," "Half-Way House," and others of his novels, and I have been really engrossed, and literally forgotten all about my gnawing agonies while reading him.

Poor old "Parsnips" Askew has been sacked after thirty years' service, for incompetence. I never in my life heard such a blackguardly action. Many mean things have been done since I came here, taking evidence against boys in confession before Confirmation, putting the blame for wrong judgments on to shoulders less well able to bear them, for example, but this beats all. Askew has devoted the best years of his life to Radchester and in spite of being persistently ragged by every boy in the place for two or three generations, he has certainly done a tremendous amount of good in his own honest, simple way.

_April 8, 1913_

As soon as ever the term was over I rushed back to Bath to stay with Elspeth. There was an Easter Dance the very first night. Elspeth and I had every one of them together. It was like returning to Heaven straight out of Hell. I had been holding myself in leash so severely for the past few weeks that I was perilously near to a severe breakdown.

Elspeth and I went to all the point-to-point meetings together and I recalled my envious longings of the year before. Now I am as content and as happy as it is possible for man to be. There isn't a shadow on the horizon. We wander about Bath arm-in-arm, have tea at Fortt's _tête-à-tête_, go to the theatre together, shop, and in the evening Elspeth and her mother make things for her "bottom drawer," while I pretend to read or write.

_May 3, 1913_

I took Elspeth down to Ilfracombe for a fortnight in April in order to introduce her to my grandfather and aunts. I have never known Devon more glorious even in the spring. Just to take her to all my favourite nooks and creeks and hear her eulogies on them is worth Heaven in itself. She is almost as true a lover of the West Country as I am. We motored to Clovelly and Hartland, we went on the sea a good deal; she is a far better sailor than I am.

I keep on applying for every sort of likely vacancy that I hear of. The thought of the long summer term frightens me. I can confide in my people: they understand. They say, "Get married: you won't be happy till you do--never mind about the money, that'll come."

The Tetleys, on the other hand, can't understand what they call my foolish impetuosity. What's the hurry? say they. We are both very young. Elspeth is devoted to her parents, and so we are at a deadlock.

After three months of being engaged I have tried to find out what are the peculiar attractions of Elspeth. I can't write them down. I don't know. She is amazingly shrewd and self-possessed: she very rarely shows her hand; as an observer of human nature I've never come across any one to parallel her--she never misses anything. She is a quite unusually capable musician, a peerless dancer and intellectual--oh, I can't catalogue her like this: all I know is that I love her so passionately that life without her is inconceivable....

We have so far compromised that Elspeth and I are to be married in August if I can get a job of £300 a year by then.

_May 20, 1913_

It was worse than ever coming back to Radchester this time. The long holiday all alone with Elspeth makes life without her more unbearable than ever. I don't suppose people in our position usually feel like this. Most of the engaged couples whom I know are delightfully placid. Men are quite glad to get away from their fiancées and have a "fling" with their old acquaintances before the gates of the prison-house of marriage finally close on them. I seem to have changed entirely since I met her. I am now simply a bundle of nerves enduring agonies of apprehension daily. I am afraid of everything, afraid lest she should be ill, afraid lest she should find some one she likes better than me. I have as yet really no claim on her.

I suppose a passion of this sort comes to most men never, to a few just once and never leaves them. I haven't written a sensible word in an article since that eventful night in January, which now seems twenty or thirty years ago. Five minutes after I have left Elspeth I feel as if I had been separated from her for months and were never likely to see her again. I write the most pitiable, unmanly, mawkish letters to her: she bears with me wonderfully. I wonder if it would have been better for her if she married Conyngham. He has money and certainly would not be in danger of going off his head unless he was constantly with her. I had always been led to believe that the time of one's engagement was full of ecstatic joys. I wish I found it so. All I crave is marriage and never having to separate from Elspeth as long as I live. Every day this term, instead of playing cricket, I wander for miles alone, looking at all the cottages and bungalows along the shore to find a cheap enough place for us to live in.

Even Tony, though he does his best, cannot soothe me in my present paroxysms. It really is sheer cruelty to think of transplanting Elspeth from a place like Bath, away from society and shops and friends and games and amusements to a dead-alive hole like this, where she won't meet more than two girls of her own station in life in the year. I just spend my time in praying for the days to pass more quickly.

I had no idea that twenty-four hours could possibly take so long in the passing. Nothing contents me. I really try to plunge into my work but I have lost all interest for the moment, even in English. The only thing that consoles me is the fact that we have fixed the sixth of August for the wedding. I am like some Lower School fag: every day I cross off the date from five or six calendars, which I keep to show that so many days have gone, so many have still to go.

I have interviewed the Head Master about my staying and he wants me even as a married man. He has gone so far as to ask Elspeth to come up this term and stay with him.

Elspeth has all her time filled up making preparations for the wedding; she doesn't seem to miss me as I do her, which is after all not strange. I seem to be the girl in this affair and she the man. Every day I suffer more and more. Now the boys have nearly all got measles and I am picturing myself as getting them too just when she arrives. I have every sort of foreboding and dread on me all day and all night. I haven't slept since I came back this term. I wish I knew what was the matter with me. Day after day I watch for the post, waiting for the offer of some job to arrive. From the morning till the evening post seems a lifetime--but in the end I have been rewarded for my vigilant and arduous search. I have just heard from the Head Master of Marlton that he would like to see me on Wednesday with a view to my taking a post on his staff in September. I have written to Elspeth to meet me in London and come the rest of the way with me. I also mean to bring her back with me to Radchester: I can't stand the strain of this any longer.

_June 11, 1913_

I went to see Marlton and Elspeth joined me in London. It is as about as different from Radchester as Heaven from Hell. It is about the most beautiful old town I have ever seen. The country round is densely wooded, with undulating hills of no very great height, but extraordinarily picturesque. After leaving Lewes--it's in Sussex--one seems to lose all touch with the hurry of modern life: only the slowest of slow trains stops at Marlton. We were met at the old-world station, at which no one seems ever to alight, by a courteous old butler, who led us up past the castle and the kennels to the Priory, a huge Gothic church most beautifully proportioned, with flying buttresses on the north and south. The school is an adjunct of the Priory and is exactly like an Oxford College: it has the same perfectly kept lawns, the same remoteness from actuality, the same quaint old cloisters and tiny courts and quadrangles. All the buildings are hoary with age and ivy-covered. The Head Master's house is set right in the middle of the school buildings: the boys live in more modern houses scattered here and there about the town. The Head Master and his wife were exceedingly pleasant both to Elspeth and myself. They showed us over the buildings, which are indescribably beautiful; the boys are all quieter and far more gentlemanly than the northerners and looked attractive and friendly. We went down to the playing fields and watched them at cricket. They have none of our absurd rules here: there are no bounds and boys are given as much personal liberty as if they were at home. It will be splendid to teach in such a place. Both Elspeth and I were enchanted with it. After a titanic battle, I managed to get her to agree to come back to Radchester to stay for a few days with the Head Master of the Preparatory School, who has always been good to me. Poor Elspeth! When she saw the bleak desolate plain of Radchester she nearly wept. Thank God we are not going to live here. She stayed at the Prep. for ten days and I spent every spare second with her. Every morning I used to go down to fetch her and she used to come up the shore to meet me, looking just lovely. She would sit and sew in my rooms all day so that I could get to her at once after school and I abandoned all games so that I could be with her. After ten days she could stay no longer at the Prep. and the Head Master had not asked her for another month, so I had to try all sorts of people to see if they would entertain her. No one would! So she had to go home. I couldn't do without her: I thought I should go mad.

One morning the doctor came round and told me that I ought to give myself a rest, that my nerves were giving way, that he would fix up leave for me--that I was simply to go away at once. So without saying good-bye to any of my four-years' friends I packed a suit-case and left.

It seems impossible to believe, now that I am back in Bath with Elspeth, that I can ever have suffered as I did: it is all like the dim recollection of some horrible nightmare. I miss my boys, I miss my form, I hate to think of another man usurping my rooms, my place in chapel, taking my work--but the break is final. This morning I received all my books, my pictures, my clothes, everything that I had collected in my four years and Radchester and I part company for ever.

XIII

_July 9, 1913_

As soon as we got back to Bath I was sent to a doctor, who told me that I was suffering from a very severe nervous breakdown, and that I must do literally nothing till September but laze. So I have parted from Radchester for ever. Once I was married he said I should probably become normal again. Elspeth and I spent our days shopping and making arrangements for the wedding. We went down to Marlton to find a suitable house to live in and found one about a mile from the school, right on the outskirts of the town, a semi-detached "villa," rather like the house in Stratford-on-Avon in which Shakespeare was born: it has a tiny stretch of garden and a superb view from the dining-room and bedroom windows of the park and the wooded hills of the south away towards the sea. £35 a year is the rent. We measured every nook of it for carpets and stairs and hall furniture, and made an inventory of everything that we should want. We spend many happy hours searching through catalogues for all that we shall require in the house. I have insured my life for £1000, so that Elspeth will not be left quite penniless if I die suddenly. We play tennis a good deal and I read a fair amount, but I haven't the heart to write very much. I don't quite know why.

_July 30, 1913_

Elspeth and I have had one or two minor tiffs over matters of judgment. She has a decided will of her own. It is going to take me a little time to learn the much-needed lesson that marriages to be successful must be largely a matter of give and take. We are both rather obstinate. I must learn to give in to her more readily.

_August 30, 1913_

As the time drew nearer to the day fixed for the wedding, people began to arrive from all over the country. A good many Radchester boys and masters, all my relatives, and friends of all sorts began to arrive in Bath. We had an amazing number of presents, but those which touched me most were from Heatherington's House and my form. So I'm not forgotten even yet at Radchester. They had a lively time after I left. In my place as a temporary substitute they got a parson who drank heavily and had to be carried out of chapel twice. Because I am so poor and because our house at Marlton is so small I was prevailed upon to sell all my books, which I now see was one of the grossest mistakes I ever committed in my life. At the time I thought of it as a piece of heroism and great self-sacrifice. The episode reminds me of Charles Lamb and the cake. As a matter of fact it was a piece of unmitigated foolishness. I only got £50 for the lot, and the notes that I had made in them might be worth that if I had kept and used them.

We were married with a great show of pomp and splendour on the sixth of August. I didn't at all like the gorgeous ceremony: there were too many people. It was too much of an orgie: far too much fuss was made of us. As I look back it appears now as a medley of changing clothes, cutting cake, drinking champagne, uttering platitudes to visitors, complying with endless superstitions, and never seeing Elspeth. I had no idea that there were so many million omens attached to weddings. They must be very unlucky things. It began to mean something when the day was nearly over and we found ourselves locked in a first-class carriage bound for Porlock.

We had a room in the Ship Inn looking over the bay, and met some of the most entertaining people it has ever been my fortune to come across. No one suspected that we were a honeymoon couple: we were purposely callous about each other's welfare in the presence of others and joined with every party that was got up for any purpose. Most of the time we spent in attending meets of the staghounds.

Every one in the hotel was there for the hunting, and the conversation was a refreshing change after that of Common Room at Radchester. One man in particular, called Monteith, who was up at Oxford with me, was very struck with Elspeth and used to bring her great bunches of white heather every night. I like to see her admired: it shows me that I chose circumspectly.

We bathed every day and explored the combes and rivers and villages in every direction. I know no more beautiful country than this for a honeymoon: you can get quiet when you want it. We lunched nearly every day among the whortleberries on the moor, far away from the sight of any living creature: when we wanted to mix with society we only had to drop down into Porlock, and there were always forty or fifty people in the hotel willing and eager to be friendly. It was the most consummately perfect setting for a wedding tour imaginable. There was not a speck or flaw cast upon our complete happiness once during the entire time. It was all too short: three weeks fled past like three days and we got to know each other's little foibles and idiosyncrasies and to make allowance for them.

We went as far afield as Ilfracombe, Lynton, Minehead and Exford: we went on foot, by steamer, in dog-carts and coaches, and we were as merry as crickets all the time. After it was over we went up home to see my people and to introduce ourselves in the married state to the villagers, who have known me since I was a boy. All this month I seem to have been walking on air. I've forgotten there ever was such a place as Radchester or that I ever nearly went mad because I had not Elspeth by me. What I should do without her now God only knows. I only hope and pray that we may live together to a ripe old age and die within a few hours of each other. Then our lives will have been rounded off completely, for as it is we are only happy in the possession of each other. Nothing else contents us.

We went on to London after this in order to buy the requisite furniture for our cottage. We accomplished this in a single day, spending about £150 in all in equipping ourselves with a complete outfit from "cellar to attic." We are now back again in Bath.

_September 6, 1913_

I don't like wasting all my days in this house in the Crescent. I seem to have lost all my wild ideals on education: I have no boys now to give my life for: all my hopes are centred upon one object, Elspeth, and if she fails me I am undone indeed.

I spend my energies on writing silly letters to the daily papers on the subject of the Olympic Games, of all footling things. Elspeth now cries through half the night because she says I have changed and no longer love her with that same passion that I once had for her. This is quite untrue, but I can't make her see it. I seem to be a mass of contradictions.

Bath seems to have lost its attraction for me now that I have nothing to do except wait for the opening of term at Marlton. I find myself pining for Radchester, the club, the cross-county runs, "Rugger," camp, bathing, boys to tea--and all the savage, healthy years of apprenticeship while I was learning my job. I've read very little except a novel called "Sinister Street," by Compton Mackenzie, which seems to me to be at once very good and very bad. I don't like it so much as "Carnival," but his pictures of his old Public School masters are extraordinarily vivid and probably true. I wish I could write such a book. I want to settle down to some serious writing, but I haven't the patience to begin on a book, partly because I should immediately begin to fear lest I should die before it was finished. I wish I could rid myself of this silliness.

_September 11, 1913_

I have just been up to the Board of Education to be interviewed for a lucrative post in India. I should dearly like to go and I have the job definitely offered me, £600 a year to inspect the teaching of English in Ceylon, but Elspeth is against it, so I shall have to refuse. I was also offered £7 a week to sub-edit the Daily Tatler, but I could not of course break my contract at Marlton, and they would not keep it open, so that's off. I should like to be a journalist. The work would suit me admirably.

I read "The Story of Louie," by Oliver Onions on my way south at night, and arrived at Marlton at nine o'clock and walked up the hill through the pretty narrow streets to my new home, which Elspeth and her mother had prepared against my coming. It certainly is a great change after Radchester. The only unfortunate thing is that I am no longer my own master. I now shall have to be careful about dirty boots. Elspeth has the last word as to where everything is to go. She and her mother went to bed early and I went round the house on a tour of inspection. The hall is really something to be proud of, with its bookcases and oak chest and grandfather clock. The drawing-room is small but dainty; most of the pictures are ordinary and cheap: we bought them at Boots' for very little. The silver that we had for wedding presents is all put out on mahogany tables, and there are photographs of Elspeth's friends but none of mine, which irritated me momentarily. I loathe the nondescript china ornaments on the mantelpiece. The dining-room closely resembles my own rooms at Radchester. All my old Oxford signed proofs of Blair Leighton and Dicksee take up the wall space and there are two bookshelves. The study contains my bureau and all my special treasures. In this room at least, I hope, that I shall be able to do as I like. Our bedroom is large and yet very cosy. I think I am going to love this house. At any rate I feel very proud at being a householder.

_September 19, 1913_

I have spent a week on my bicycle exploring the surrounding country before term begins. It is glorious to live where people hunt, and there are large houses, and cars passing the door (we are right on the main London-Hastings road) and the villages are all snug and picturesque, and there are heaps of ripping neighbours who call and look as if they were going to entertain us lavishly. It is possible, too, to get down to a real sea, how different from the so-called sea at Radchester, a sea of blue and green flanked by great white Sussex cliffs. I feel most extraordinarily at home and yet I funk the coming term: I don't know how these boys will take to me. They are sure to be very different from the Radchester boys. I doubt whether they'll be as boisterous or as healthy. Time will show.

XIV

_October 4, 1913_