Part 16

And he delivered himself of the oration of Henry V before Harfleur. When that was done he plunged into the address of Othello to the most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, warmed to the words, lost himself, and came to a triumphant close with: "This was the only witchcraft that I used."

"Who was she?"

"Desdemona. And in the end he smothered her because a beast called Iago told lies about her."

"You do recite well."

"I couldn't recite badly to you."

"But what will . . . ?"

She was going to ask what Gertrude would do while he starved in London, but she could not force Gertrude's name to her lips and she broke off the question, and covered her awkwardness by throwing a twig into the water and watching it float down the stream. Bennett seemed to know what she was going to say, for he became suddenly embarrassed and his excited confidence oozed from him. He threw her back on herself by asking:

"What are you going to do?"

"I--I don't know. Just go on."

"I couldn't do that. Anything's better than just going on."

"But it's different for you. You're a man."

"Yes," said Bennett, pleased by the reflection that, after all, he was a man. "Yes, I suppose it is more difficult for a woman. But I shan't run away. I shall just go on and on being a clerk all the rest of my life."

He was appealing to her for pity; in vain. Annette said, cheerfully:

"There must be thousands of men who are clerks, and they can't all be so wretched."

"Some people don't mind, and the rest get used to it. I'm not like that. I want to do things. It isn't enough just to earn your living. A navvy can do that. A horse does that, or a pony down in a mine."

"What else can you do?"

"You can fight against darkness, and ugliness, and cruelty, and everything that makes life horrible and ugly and terrifying for children."

"Oh! for children!"

"Yes. You don't know what my childhood has been like . . ." And he drew a rapid picture of the loneliness of an imaginative child in a dark unhappy house where no love was. "Even now I'm often afraid of the dark stairs up to the attic where I sleep."

"Please, please," said Annette, "don't talk of it any more. It has all been so dark, and it is so lovely here."

"It's odd, but I've never talked like that to . . ."

He, like Annette, could not force Gertrude's name to his lips.

She began to gather the knives and forks. Then she stopped and looked at him. Their eyes met for a second, then his turned away.

"Well?" he said.

Annette was a little troubled as she gave him her answer:

"I do so want you to be happy."

She left him on that and returned to Serge. He was asleep, lying on one side with his hand over his face. Noiselessly she began to re-pack the basket. When she had done that she stole away into the woods, and caught up by their happy mystery, their joy in the warm air, and the sun she ran down the first path she came to until she reached a little place full of bracken. She flung herself down on the carpet of dead leaves and looked along under the bracken stalks--the tiny forest under the great--and watched the gleeful play of light and green shadow. It was good to be alive and sweet to be alone.

By the river sat Bennett in an attitude of utter dejection. He tried to tell himself, as so often he had told himself, that he loved Gertrude with a love that should defy death itself, but the idea woke no echo in his heart. It melted not as was its habit. (It had melted for so many, besides Gertrude, with the sick sweet longing of a boy.) The image of Gertrude was cold. It glowed not with its old brilliance of colour. He felt curiously hollow; nothing in either head or heart until he came to Annette's last words. She wanted him to be happy. He would be. He would be. The words set him stirring in a new way, discovered for him a new direction, and stiffened him up for the journey with a sternness that he had never known before. He was half afraid of himself and yet proud. He felt curiously detached, independent, and strong to face all that had weighed on him so crushingly. . . . He noticed then that Annette had left him, and he went in search of her. He found Serge just waking up, and felt a sudden alarm.

"Annette?" he said.

"I thought she was with you."

"So she was. But she left me only a few minutes ago."

"Better find her then. She can't be gone far. I'm going to bathe. No sign of the others?"

"I haven't seen them."

"All right. I'm going to bathe."

In a few seconds Serge had stripped and ran swiftly across the grass, took a great leap head-foremost over a bramble-bush and splashed into the water. Bennett stood envying him. Serge looked so strong, and he moved so beautifully and easily.

He thought Annette must have gone to look for Minna, and walked slowly into the woods. He had only gone a few yards when he half turned back. He wanted to be alone. He half wanted to go and bathe with Serge, but vanity forbade that, for he was ashamed that he could not swim. He took Serge's prowess as a reproach to himself. That stung him into moving, and he wandered down the path between the bracken until he came to a rowan-tree in all the glory of its red berries. He stopped and plucked a handful, thinking he would give them to Annette. He passed on until he came to a little clearing full of wild flowers and heather. These seemed to him more beautiful than the berries. He flung them away and filled his hands with heather and wild flowers.

Looking up he could see the river shining through the trees and rich green woods and blue hills beyond. He moved towards the river.

Presently he heard voices behind a hazel-tree and, peeping, he saw Haslam and Minna sitting hand in hand, he murmuring, she smiling. Then suddenly Haslam caught Minna to him and they kissed.

Bennett stole away, his heart fluttering. What he had seen sent a great emotion rushing through him, but soon it withered and became disgust. He felt a strange futile anger against the couple, an anger so absurd that it mocked him. He had idealised the whole of the Folyat family, and to see Minna like that degraded her. He did not see her in any ridiculous aspect. His conception of love was too boyishly lofty for that, and yet beneath his anger and his feeling of outrage was the sense of the ridiculous, which must accompany any intrusion into the private affairs of another.

Bennett had plenty of imagination, but he had not trained it to run in harness with his observation. His imagination had, so far, only coloured and inflamed the theories he had imbibed during his education concerning human nature, and, as these theories nowhere met the facts, he was perpetually being shocked by his observations. Having, as yet, no experience, his theories remained unassailed. He believed that he loved Gertrude Folyat with a pure and ennobling love, as a man should love a woman; as, in fact, a man may love the Venus de Milo, a creature of stone. A woman, according to Bennett's docile acceptance of trite theory, must be a goddess of beauty, purity, and chastity, with never a worldly desire or thought. The woman of his love, in fine, must be the Virgin Mother.

That Gertrude was ten years his senior made it all the easier for him to raise her to this exalted position in his idea. Having achieved this with her, without any reference to her wishes or desires, he had manufactured a halo for each of her sisters as her attendant saints. He had never kissed Gertrude except as a devout person kisses Saint Peter's toe. He had dreamed of kisses, and had, with unholy joy, conceived a horror of himself as a terrible and immoral young man, so that his vanity also was implicated in this catastrophe of Minna's downfall. What, at bottom, troubled him most of all was the obvious truth that Minna kissed Basil Haslam because she liked it.

Bennett had such a tussle with his reflections and emotions--he was not far from calling them "the devil"--that he broke into a sweat, and to seek air and coolness for his eyes he made straight for the bank of the river. He had advanced only a few yards when he heard a voice singing:

_Bury me deeply when I am dead, With, a stone at my feet and a cross at my head; And bury me deep that I ne'er may return To the scene of my true love--the brown Scottish burn._

And he heard a splashing of water and, hiding behind the huge trunk of a beech, he looked and saw Annette swinging on the branch of a chestnut tree, her feet dangling to the water and kicking and splashing. She was naked. Her hair was wet and hung limp down to her shoulders. She was as happy as a bird.

Bennett stood rooted. His heart, his whole being melted, and turned away reflections, troubled emotions, all power of thought. He gazed and gazed, and knew that she was beautiful, swinging there under the great leaves of the chestnut. Curiously he thought that she was not so very unlike a boy. He was fascinated. Up and down she swung her branch, scrambled to her feet and dived. . . . The spell was broken. Bennett covered his face with his hands as he realised what he had done. From the extreme of heat he turned very cold and shivered. He found that he had let his heather and wild flowers fall, picked them up, and rushed away, blindly. He lost himself and wandered for a long time before he found again the grassy plot where they had lunched. At the same moment Minna and Basil Haslam returned. Fry, Mary, and Serge were sitting, and Annette was busy boiling the kettle for tea. Entirely oblivious of every one else Bennett went straight up to Annette and held out the wild flowers and heather.

"I brought you these," he said, without looking at her.

"The poor flowers are dead," replied Annette, "but the heather is lovely. Thank you."

"Thank you," echoed Bennett.

Annette's hair was still down her back and wet. She caught him gazing at it.

"I had such a lovely swim," she said.

"The woods," said Bennett, "are very beautiful."

Annette was really grateful to him for giving her the flowers. No one had ever done as much for her before. She said:

"If you like you can row me home in the little boat."

Bennett was filled with alarm and he gazed miserably at her. He longed to accept, but he was terrified. He was roused from his dilemma by Basil Haslam, who, overhearing Annette's remark, called out:

"The dinghy's mine and Minna's."

This he said for the benefit of Herbert Fry, who turned and looked, dog-like, upward at Minna.

A large chuckle escaped Serge.

* * *

In the evening, as they turned westward under a glorious sunset, Bennett elected to sit in the bows of the bigger boat. Fry and Serge rowed, and Annette and Minna sat in the stern. Bennett dreamed vaguely. His blood ran warmly through his veins, his brain glowed, and the wind and the water sang to him. He was satisfied as he had never been. When he thought of Minna and Haslam it was with a drowsy, delicious envy. To be together, gently gliding down the river with the evening shadows chasing each other under the trees. To be together--in a little boat--he and Annette . . . Annette . . . Annette . . .

In her lap Annette fingered the heather and wild flowers that Bennett had given her and smiled softly to herself. Serge saw her smile, and said:

"Happy?"

"Oh! yes."

To Bennett her voice sounded distant and very lovely, and it seemed to him that she was speaking to him, for him.

Presently they passed the little boat nestling by the bank under a plane-tree. Mary called out:

"You'll be late."

There came no reply.

They were late. It was half-past twelve before Minna reached home. The household was asleep and Serge had stayed up for her. He said:

"Hardly wise to be so late."

"We missed the train."

"Two or three. Just as well you didn't miss the last."

Minna smiled.

"Why?"

"I don't think you ought to use Haslam as a decoy for Fry. He's too good for it."

"I think you're a beast, Serge."

"Am I? We shall see."

"Fry's married. Frederic told me."

"I don't think that makes a ha'porth of difference--to you or to him."

"It isn't your affair."

"I agree."

"And, anyhow, you're quite wrong. Good-night."

"Good-night."

XIX

GERTRUDE

_Nous mettons l'infini dans l'amour. Ce n'est pas la faute des femmes._ ANATOLE FRANCE.

UPON a day Bennett Lawrie escaped early from his office, leaving his day's work to be finished by a co-junior clerk on a promise to do as much for him when he should require it. He was feeling very tired, having had only a walk and two cigarettes for dinner, a practice so common among junior clerks that they have a name for it--Flag Hash. Twice during Gertrude's absence he had taken Annette and her mother to the theatre--three dress-circle seats at five shillings--a heavy drain upon his income, which was now one pound fifteen shillings a week, paid monthly. His mother knew nothing of the advance of five shillings a week that he had obtained on the third application with the plea that he was engaged to be married. That helped a little, but, even so, his position was serious, and at moments made him feel very sick at heart. He had been making efforts to save money when Mrs. Folyat's expression of regret that she had not been to the theatre plunged him into the rash offer to pay for seats. He had no thought but that she would pay for two of them at least. But no; Mrs. Folyat regarded it as the feminine privilege to enjoy entertainment at the expense of the masculine pocket.

Further cause had Bennett for anxiety in that his correspondence with Gertrude had dwindled from the devoted daily letter to an effusion with great difficulty squeezed out twice a week. That her letter had come at longer and longer intervals comforted him not at all. He had never asked testimony of devotion from his betrothed; it was enough that she should so far stoop as to be engaged to him. . . . Also, as he walked to the station through the dark railway arches, through Town Hall Square with its statues of John Bright, the late Bishop, the Prince Consort, and a local philanthropic sweater, past the Infirmary, he was dogged by an unhappy realisation that it gave him no pleasure to be going to meet Gertrude. She had written him a romantic little note:

"Dear, I am coming back to you. I have no thought but for you. I shall arrive by the 5.45. Yours, G. F."

Bennett rehearsed the meeting. He would greet her warmly and with dignity. He would kiss her hand; not her cheek. He would then silently convey that he was fully aware of his delinquences, but asked no pardon for them. Scoundrel as he had shown himself, he would have her "pass on and thank God she was rid of a knave." . . . However, he reflected that upon former occasions his most eloquent silence had conveyed nothing at all to Gertrude, and he began to rehearse the scene from another standpoint. He would say; "You bade me come. I have come. In spite of what has happened, in spite of my sins of thought and deed, I will be loyal. I will keep my troth." That was better, but not altogether appropriate from a station platform. He was still rehearsing when the train came in. He stood by the engine thinking that there he would be sure not to miss his quarry. There was a considerable crowd to meet the train, for in those days a journey from London was an important affair, and travellers were welcomed by their nearest and dearest, glad that they had escaped the perils of the way, hopeful that they had not succumbed to its fatigues, and mindful of the presents that would be in bag or trunk. . . . Bennett Lawrie thought not at all of presents. He was only bothered because he had not yet discovered the right mode of address.

The image of Gertrude that he had always chivalrously borne upon his mind, and what he was pleased to call his heart, bore very little resemblance to her features and figure. It happened that in London she had bought a new hat of a new fashion, so that in the throng he did not recognise her. She saw his blank eyes upon her and petulantly walked past him without giving a sign. She also had been rehearsing their meeting, but she had solved all difficulties by relying upon the dog-like devotion that he had always given her. He would, she had thought, come forward with his sad eyes glowing, take her by the hand and with that solemn dignity of his stoop, kiss, and, if he lingered long enough over it, be kissed in return. He would take her baggage, and carry it, as he always carried her parcels or her umbrella, as though it were a Divine trust, and they would take a four-wheeled cab. By that time one or other would have found the correct words or the inevitable gesture of love, and all would be as it had been.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but, where the heart is not very deeply implicated, absence sometimes has the effect of driving love out altogether. Lovers like to vow that they will never change, but they vow the impossible, wherein lies half their pleasure. As Gertrude Folyat had gone farther and farther away from her boy-lover, she had seen him dwindling in stature, but with a microscopic clarity. Having a very human dislike of seeing things as they were presented to her she pumped up a sea of sentiment, dived into it and saw blurred the newly-revealed figure. That sufficed until in the gaieties of Folkestone--she never questioned the gaiety of what was presented to her for pleasure--and the excitement and opulence of life at Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace, she was able to forget him altogether. It had been in a sudden dread that he might be injured and morose when she next saw him that on the eve of her departure she had written to bid him come to meet her. She thought that would please him. As soon as she had done so she regretted it. It seemed to place him in the stronger position which she had always striven to reserve for herself. Her visits had shaken her resignation to marriage with him, for she had been staying with snobs and was ashamed that he should be only a clerk, but all the same she wished to cling to him to avoid solicitude and the horrible possibility which had begun to shadow her of no marriage at all. She told herself that she loved Bennett, and the thought of love was quite enough for her. She never doubted that the thing itself was hers. She was not very intelligent.

It gave her a curious pleasure to ignore Bennett's presence on the station platform. She had never thought of being angry with him, but when anger took possession of her she welcomed and fed it, for it solved her problem. She would overwhelm him with her displeasure and enslave him with a tender reconciliation.

She drove home alone in a four-wheeled cab to Fern Square and enjoyed an extremely pleasant evening with her mother talking about the William Folyats and the Folkestone Folyats, their friends and their refined manner of living. The house in Fern Square struck her as dingy and undistinguished, and she did not trouble to conceal her impression. She had brought a present for each member of her family, except Minna, and, being rather warmly received, complained that no one had come to meet her.

"We thought Bennett darling would be there," said Minna.

"Was he not?" asked Mrs. Folyat.

Bennett arrived to answer the question. He too had found in anger the solvent of his qualms. He was one of those people who suffer cold tortures in sudden glimpses of their dead selves, and as he had paced up and down the station long after the crowd to meet the London train had dispersed he saw himself in his old relation with his betrothed, callow, docile, sheep-like; in a word, unfledged. The day on the river with Serge and Annette--(the rest counted for nothing in his memory of it)--had wrought a greater change in him that he knew. The shrill resentment at his old self that suddenly swept through and took possession of him was his first intimation of it. It was rather more than he could bear, and he shifted the burden of his animosity from himself to Gertrude. If she had not come by the train, well and good. She might perhaps have been kept in London, though a telegram could have saved him from the discomfort of a long wait at the station. He had risked incurring the displeasure of his senior at the office to please her. If she had come and had not looked out for him, that was not lightly to be borne. His anger was just. She should be made to feel that he was not--so he phrased it--"dirt beneath her feet." He resolved that he would not go to Fern Square until she wrote to him.

This resolve oozed away almost as soon as it was made. He had no money to pay for an evening's entertainment, and, if he did not go to Fern Square he must perforce go home and spend the evening with his mother and sisters.

The hobgoblin opened the door to him.

"Has Miss Gertrude returned?" he asked.

"Oopstairs," said the hobgoblin, and she shuffled away to the kitchen, leaving him to close the door.

He went upstairs to find the whole family assembled, with the exception of Frederic, who was at the Clibran-Bells. They all seemed so jolly that he felt that he had done wrong in coming and wished he had adhered to his first resolve. He felt that he was intruding, and by sheer force of the numbers present his old part of the humble, devoted and grateful lover was pressed upon him. In no other rôle could he find room in the company. Once again circumstances had played into Gertrude's hands and she became, what to her family she had always been, the romantic mistress of an unhappy lowly lover.

Before very long their own skill in the playing of these parts and the general feeling of the family had driven them out of the room into the peace and solitude of the study. There silence fell upon them and they stole uneasy glances at each other. Gertrude sat in her father's great chair, Bennett stood with his back against the mantelpiece under the portrait of Gertrude's paternal grandmother.

"I went to meet you," said Bennett at length.

"I didn't see you."

"If you had looked for me you must have seen me. I am tall enough."

There was considerable irritation behind his words.

"Am I then," said Gertrude, "am I so very short that you could not see me?"

"I waited," returned Bennett. "You didn't."

"I did. I waited quite five minutes."

"I waited half an hour."

Gertrude took her courage in both hands and said:

"If you had cared for me, you would have seen me."

"I waited," mumbled Bennett, obstinately.

They were silent again. Gertrude began to feel uneasy. They had quarrelled before, but always when she had touched on his affection for her his opposition had been broken. She could not take his stubbornness seriously even now. A little maliciously she was thinking:

"After all he is ten years younger than I am."

Unhappily for her, Bennett, with more malice, was thinking:

"After all, she is ten years older than I am."

For the first time he had become dimly aware that the advantage lay with himself. He said:

"I left the office earlier than I had any right to do to meet you. You could not have looked for me."

"Why will you go on arguing about it?"

"I've no wish to argue."

He only wished to avoid silence, to avoid facing what was irresistibly being borne in upon him, that all his relations with this woman had been a phantasm, a thing of the mists of yesterday. It was a hateful shock to all his theories, to all his ideals of constancy and single-minded devotion. He had worshipped this woman, set her--(at her own suggestion, though he did not know it)--on a pedestal, and lo! a day had come when she was no longer there. The pedestal remained, but the goddess was spirited away. He was very unhappy.

Gertrude was exasperated. She could have slapped him with infinite pleasure. She tapped with her foot on the ground.

"You are being too ridiculous," she said.

"Am I ever anything else?" returned Bennett, with a sudden plunge into self-torment.

Pat came the reply:

"Never!"

Bennett felt savage, turned on her and cried:

"Now I know what you think of me."