by James Hilton
“I’m afraid I don’t skate at all, Stella,” he said, smiling ruefully at his disturbed papers.
“Then I—I learn you, eh?”
“‘Teach,’ not ‘learn.’”
“‘Teach,’” she repeated dutifully.
He went on: “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be any good. Skating isn’t much in my line.”
Her eyes flashed indignantly. “‘In your line,’ eh? What is that?—What is ‘in your line’?”
“I mean I don’t do—I can’t do that sort of thing. It isn’t my—” He paused, reflected, and finished up: “It wouldn’t suit me.”
She picked up a sheaf of his neatly typewritten notes. “This suit you more—eh?” she exclaimed, with a touch of scorn in her voice.
He smiled. “I must work, Stella. I have a great deal to do. You don’t understand.”
“Will you learn—teach me to understand?”
“Some time. Some evening when it’s raining and you’ve nothing to do, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“If I come this evening?”
“Well, no, better not to-night. I’m rather too busy just now. Some night soon—perhaps next week.”
“All right. And now I go—skate—by myself.”
One thing they discovered very quickly: she was intensely musical. She had never had any instrument to play till she came to Chassingford, and by that time she was almost too old to begin learning. But she taught herself to play the piano just well enough to accompany herself when she sang; the accompaniments were very simple, and always her own composition. Her voice was a contralto, not at all powerful, but of fine quality, and on dark winter afternoons when there was nothing to do, she used to sing scores of old Hungarian tunes one after the other, solely for her own amusement. Neither Philip nor his mother was especially musical, or thought these songs anything more than queer and perhaps picturesque. But to Stella they were full of wild passion or else of rocking melancholy, and sometimes she translated the words into quaint English for the benefit of anybody who was interested. But the tr
“Volt szeretom de mar nincsen
O volt az en draga kincsem…”
—she sang, and then stopped at the piano, puckered her forehead, and went on: “That means ‘One day I loved, but now not any more…My bride also—but now I have him not.’…Understand? But English is not a language for a love-song.”
She played over the air softly and then added “You English have no passion. Passion—is that right? At your concerts—I went to one last week—everybody is bored. You are not full—as the Hungarians are—of music—and love—and what is the word?” She paused, and then said slowly and curiously: “Music—it means a nothing to you…you do not think about love and death…oh, I cannot say it. But this—this is what you English people are not full of.”
She played a wild rhythmic tune which, even with her inexpert handling, conveyed something of its native restlessness.
Philip said sombrely “All Englishmen are not like me, Stella. Some are more like—like what you played.”
“When I meet one I tell you so,” she answered, with lightning rapidity.
V
Mrs. Monsell “ragged” her a good deal (as she ragged everybody) but Stella did not mind, particularly as the witticisms were often too subtle for her to understand. “Is it a choke?” she used to say, interrogatively. And when somebody nodded, she would reply, tranquilly: “Ah, yes, I thought it was a choke.”
Many a calm hour during the University vacations she used to squat down on the hearth-rug in the library with her head propped up comfortably against Philip’s legs, while he treated her to learned talks about English history, politics, and literature. Not always were these talks enthrallingly interesting, and sometimes Mrs. Monsell used to say, in her pert mocking manner: “My dear Philip, I’m sure you must bore that girl dreadfully.” But if Stella were present she always took up the defence. “Sometimes Philip is most dreadfully boring,” she admitted once, “but he is so nice to be bored by.”
Outsiders, seeing the extent to which the two were together, gave many warnings and much advice. “She really is extraordinarily pretty,” said the wife of the vicar of Chassingford. “But aren’t you afraid that Philip will fall madly in love with her?”
To which Mrs. Monsell replied characteristically “My dear, I assure you I should be perfectly delighted if Philip ever did anything half so sensible.”
* * *
CHAPTER III
I
Philip’s rooms at Cambridge were at the top of the corner staircase of Christ’s, with windows that faced on the one side the delightful, not quite rectangular quadrangle, and on the other the junction of two narrow and busy streets. Opposite on the same staircase was another set of rooms, and these were occupied, as the inscription on the door announced, by a certain “A. Ward.”
They had come up to Christ’s together, Philip from his years of private tuition and study, and Aubrey Ward from one of the lesser public-schools. Though tenants of adjacent rooms they hardly spoke during their first year, except for an occasional greet ing on the stairs; and indeed, it seemed that they had little, if anything at all, in common. Philip was a “reading” man, taking no part in sports of any kind, and allowing himself no recreation save now and then a grim walk over the ploughed fields to Madingley. Ward, on the other hand, was a keen Rugby player (having more than once been tried for the University team), and the leading figure not only in most of the College sports but in all the College “rags.”
The “gyp” who attended both sets of rooms was never tired of giving Philip information about his neighbour. “I must say ‘e’s a very fair man, is Mr. Ward, and very generous an’ open-‘anded. You’d think ‘e was so quiet an’ shy when you speak to by ‘imself, but crikey, when ‘e lets ‘imself go!—I never seed a gentleman get so mad as he can when there’s a rag or anythin’ on…No, ‘e don’t drink—‘e’s a teetotaller. The other gentlemen bring beer and wines up to ‘is room when ‘e ‘as a party, but he ‘as lemonade ‘imself. I know ‘cos ‘e ‘as me to wait on ‘em…But crikey, ‘e can get noisier on lemonade than what all the others put together can on whisky!”
One night during Philip’s second year, Ward was holding a large party in his rooms to celebrate the success of the College hockey team. It began about eight o’clock and became progressively noisier until midnight. About that time Philip, who was reading late, heard the party breaking up, and from the way they clattered and clumped down the narrow winding stairs he guessed that they were all pretty drunk. Five minutes later they were racing round the quadrangle, shouting and catcalling, and in a little while Philip heard them clumsily reascending the stairs to Ward’s rooms. Ward had sported his oak, but they hammered on it with their fists till he came to the door. “Come out and let’s have a rag,” one of them yelled ferociously, and others shouted, “Let’s raid the porter’s lodge!”—“Come on, Ward, and rag the Dean,” etc.
Then Philip heard Ward’s voice, very quiet and calm: “No, it’s too late. Go back to bed, you fellows, I’m not coming.”
Then a voice cried out: “I say, who’s this man next door? ‘P. Monsell’—Anybody heard of ‘P. Monsell’—Who is he, anyway? Come on, boys, let’s rag P. Monsell’s rooms!”
Somebody pushed open the door, and Philip, putting down his book, turned to face a recklessly drunken crowd.
He turned very pale. It was not that he was afraid, for he was no coward, and would certainly have defended himself if anybody had set about him. It was rather that, as his mother had often said, he lacked a certain “tact,” the power of dealing ingeniously with a difficult situation. As one of the men staggered and almost fell into his room, knocking over in doing so a table with crockery on it, he did not know whether to smile and treat the matter as a joke or to allow himself to get angry. Really, he was embarrassed almost up to the point of panic.
“I say, look what you’ve done…” he began, ineffectually. “Mind that desk or you�
�ll smash something else.”
A roar of laughter greeted his protest.
Then all at once there was a scuffle out on the land ing, and he saw Ward, in dressing-gown and pyjamas, forcing his way through the crowd and into his room.
“Get back…” said Ward sharply.
No more than that. Somehow they all, even those who were hopelessly drunk, took notice of him. He stood between Philip and the invaders, with his rather sunburnt face set very grimly. “Get back,” he repeated, and he gave one of the foremost men a push that sent him sprawling over the carpet. The crowd on the landing guffawed with laughter, but Ward did not even smile.
“Somebody help me to pull Briggs out,” he ordered curtly, and one of the others, less drunk than the rest, took the prostrate figure by the arms and, with Ward’s assistance, dragged him ignominiously through the doorway.
“Better sport your oak now,” Ward said to Philip, as the last intruder shuffled his way back on to the landing.
Philip did so, too uncomfortable even to murmur thanks.
II
Next morning Ward was emptying his letter-box as Philip left his rooms to attend a lecture. “Quite a little to-do we had last night, didn’t we?” he said, smiling pleasantly. “Decent fellows, all of them you know—horribly tight—but didn’t mean any harm. They’ll pay for the damage to your pots, of course. You must tell me what it comes to.”
“I ought to thank you for clearing them out for me,” said Philip, rather nonplussed.
“Oh, not at all—not at all,” replied the other, shyly. “You must come to tea with me soon and meet them when they’re more—er—more themselves…Really you must.”
Soon afterwards Philip accepted a definite invitation, and found Ward’s sporting friends genial enough but hardly a type with whom he had much in common. Ward himself, however, he liked immensely, and during their third year the two became great friends.
III
Ever since he was a small boy Philip had learned to mistrust his body, and to expect it to fail him at critical moments. It was hardly a surprise, though a bitter disappointment to him, when he fell ill within a month of the Tripos examinations. “Nervous weakness,” the doctor said, and remarked cheerfully that a month or two’s rest would effect a complete cure.
It was possible, of course, to take a degree by means of an “aegrotat,” and Philip thought that he would be entitled to do this. Unfortunately, he bungled his interview with his tutor so badly that the latter judged him to be malingering and refused to sign the necessary statement.
“The aegrotat degree is not simply a matter of form,” he assured Philip severely. “It is not so easy to obtain as a medical certificate, I dare say…No, Monsell, I am afraid I cannot recommend you as you suggest.”
So Philip struggled on as best he could, and in the same way struggled through the hard gruelling of a week-long examination. To his own surprise, he did not collapse. Nor did he do quite so badly as he expected.
At nine o’clock on a warm June morning he stood with Ward amongst the waiting crowd by the flank of the Senate House. Through the windows he could see the dons moving about like slow, mysterious shadows in the dark interior; St. Mary’s Church across the road chimed the hour, and then, whilst they were still waiting, the quarter-past. For Philip, at any rate, the seconds crawled like minutes and the minutes like hours; and meanwhile the sun rose languidly and the stone wall with the notice-boards began to glare fiercely in the gathering heat.
There had been evidently some delay, for the official time for posting the results was nine o’clock, and already it was nearly half-past. As the clang of the half-hour sounded across the road Philip’s excitement, till then carefully controlled, began to escape a little. “I’ll tell you what, Ward,” he said, in sharp gusts of speech, in which his inward perturbation gave him a slight stammer, “If—if I’ve got through—I’ll have a p-party, and get my mother and Stella to come up for it.”
“Who’s Stella? I didn’t know you had a sister.”
He told him. They had both been reticent about their private affairs, and indeed, had known each other for over a year without having more than a vague idea of each other’s families. Now, in the curiously tense atmosphere of waiting for the lists to be posted, it was almost a relief to give and accept confidences. Philip told of his visit three years before to the Balkans and Hungary, of the trip up the Danube, and of the girl who had tried to drown herself on the way to Buda. “She’s nearly nineteen now,” he said in conclusion, “and speaks p-perfect English.”
“I should like to meet her,” said Ward quietly.
A uniformed figure appeared at the door of the Senate House, carrying an array of printed sheets, and a simultaneous burst of cheers went up and continued as he picked his way through the throng to the notice-boards. “Y-you go and see,” said Philip, puffing nervously at a cigarette. “I think I’d rather wait here than f-face that crowd.”
“All right,” answered the other, laughing. He strolled over to the excited jostling group, stood on tiptoe, and tried to read down the lists as they were put up. His whole attitude was as if he were no more than casually interested in them.
Three minutes later he returned.
“We shall have that party, Monsell,” he said.
“What!”
“You got through all right…And so have I. Let’s go and send some wires. Then perhaps we might knock off for the day and go on the river…”
He was like a boy in his excitement.
“Have I just got a p-pass?” inquired Philip nervously.
“Oh, yes, you’re through, you needn’t worry. Jolly good, I call it. Considering how you’ve been ill.”
“Yes…” He agreed limply. “By the way, what did you get?”
“Oh, a first—much better than I expected.”
Philip held out his hand. “Yes,” he said, smiling bravely. “We will have that p-party. In your honour if not in m-mine.”
“Oh, nonsense, man. You’re through—that’s the main thing.”
Was it? He looked at the blue sky over the Market Square and suddenly the very sunlight seemed to grow dark and dim before his eyes.
IV
The week that intervened between the announcement of the result and Philip’s party was an anti climax. There seemed to be nothing at all to do. Each outgoing train left Cambridge emptier, and in a few days the place had all the forlorn air of a ball room from which all but the last revellers have departed. It was all right for Ward; he had his plans cut and dried for the future—two years at a London hospital, and then, perhaps, a year or so of specialisation, and finally a house-surgeonship or else the ordinary unexciting life of the general practitioner.
But Philip’s plans were vague in the extreme. He was twenty-five years old—rather older, that is, than most undergraduates attaining their degrees; he had had by no means a distinguished career, though he could regard that as chiefly a result of bad luck, The Civil Service did not attract him, despite the high position that his father had held in it; nor did journalism or the law, even supposing he could have obtained an entry into either of those professions. Sufficient money to do as he liked, without the necessity of earning a living, rather accentuated than eased the difficulty of the problem.
One sphere of life had always lured him, and that was politics. He had the half didactic, half administrative mind, the mind that delights in schemes and paper formulations of all kinds. In another age he would have found a patron and been nominated for a “rotten” borough. As it was, the way to success seemed barred by the utter unthinkability of his ever winning an election. He was too nervous, too slow in speech, too unready for any combative emergency. “My dear boy,” said his mother, “why on earth should you choose a profession in which you will be even more a failure than in any other? Take my advice and be either a diplomat or a stockbroker. And if you can’t make up your mind which, have another year at Cambridge to think about it…Or travel…Or write books…Or marry…Or
do anything you like.”
“Marry?—And whom should I marry?”
“I should have thought, Philip,” she answered severely, “that there were some things which even you would have felt capable of deciding for yourself.”
But with all her mordant cleverness she totally failed to understand him. She did not realise that beneath his slowness and willingness to listen to advice, he hail a quiet and definite will of his own, in subservience to which he would spend himself wholly and absolutely, and with all the greater fierceness in that he would count and mark down every atom of the coast. In short, he was an idealist, and Mrs. Monsell did not understand the breed.
V
The party was arranged. Mrs. Monsell motored up with Stella, and Philip met them at the “White Horse” Hotel, where they all lunched together. Somehow the realisation that Stella was beautiful had never occurred to him quite so keenly as it did during those first moments of seeing her after his failure. Perhaps it was because he had never previously had so much time to think of anything outside his work; or perhaps it was some subtle alchemy in the Cambridge atmosphere that was making her more beautiful and himself more perceptive of it. At any rate, as he watched her across the table during lunch, he thought it strange that for so long he had missed something in her that he was seeing then.
That afternoon they motored about the town and district. Stella took the wheel, and he watched her, brown-faced and eager-eyed, as she picked her way cautiously round corners and drove swiftly along the straight vistas of Fenland road. There was some thing vital and passionate in even the least thing she did, the least movement of her head and hand—the clasp of her fingers on the rim of the steering-wheel, the quivering blade-like glance she gave at every cross-roads, and, above all, the slight smile that played about her lips as she thrilled to the sensation of speed. They drove through Girton, Impington, and Milton, to old Chesterton village, where the road creeps along by the riverside and broadens in front of The Pike and Eel inn. Here they meditated tea, and as they were climbing out of the car two “Rob-Roy” skiffs came flashing down the stream with the men in them paddling at top speed.
