She began to say that she and Dan must go back to London.
“We can’t stay here indefinitely. We’ve been here for over a week.”
“What does thatt matter? Aren’t you happy here?”
“You know I’m happy here, only too happy. But what will people think?”
“People,—you mean the Jarrolds.”
“They’re very old-fashioned, you know, Miles; like me; very conventional.”
“And you mind what they think?”
“Well, I have to consider Dan.”
“Nonsense, Evelyn, thatt isn’t true. I’ll tell you what’s true, without humbug. You’re old-fashioned; thatt’s true. And, moreover, you’re so vain that you hate the idea of forfeiting even a tittle of the Jarrolds’ approval. You like having people, even the Jarrolds, completely under your charm. You resent criticism. What an odd mixture you are. You’re so real, and yet so unreal in bits. I can’t make you out.”
“I’m afraid I don’t share your fine aristocratic carelessness, Miles, thatt’s the long and short of it. I belong to a rather cautious and uneasy stock. You can afford to indulge yourself in this fine contempt; we can’t. I hate myself for it, but I remain a victim. You may be right about my personal failings too.”
“I don’t mind your personal failings. They amuse me. They charm me. I should rejoice if you applied them to myself. I think I will arouse your jealousy, just for fun.”
“All right, Miles,—do, if it amuses you.”
“No, thatt’s silly. But what you say about a cautious and uneasy stock really interests me. You mean that you really care about what one calls your Reputation? Is it possible? Does anybody still think about such things? Aren’t you being rather Victorian? even Edwardian?”
“Perhaps, but remember, Miles, families like the Jarrolds are products of Victorianism.”
“Yes, they are just the sort of people who opposed anaesthetics on the ground that if God had not intended man to suffer pain he would never have sent it into the world; the people who reconciled Genesis with geology by the theory that the earth was created complete with fossils buried in the rocks. Or that Adam was created complete with a navel although he had never had a mother.”
“Did they say thatt?”
“Darling, you’re so deliciously ignorant.”
“I never pretended to be anything else, Miles. I know you always have illustrations ready to hand. I can’t compete.”
“You don’t compete,—you’re hors concours. You follow the shortcut of instinct. An unfair advantage—genius over talent.”
“I wish you would be serious.”
“I am serious. I’m a very serious young man. Most young men of my age concentrate on being Good Shots. I don’t. I go in for social problems. I also go in for practical farming. What greater seriousness do you want than thatt?—Anyway, you are perfectly right about the Jarrolds being products of Victorianism. Of course they are, both by date and by temperament. You couldn’t explain exactly why you said it,—probably you had some vague idea that Industry grew up in England during the reign of Victoria, —it was such a long reign, that one can afford to be a little vague about dates,—everything hides conveniently under those ample skirts,—like a lot of chickens under an old hen,—and you had a vague idea that the first machines were broken up by ignorant, angry people,—God, what foresight they showed!—and that people like the Jarrolds stood firm,—and Made England What She Is,—well, so they did, and made a nice packet out of it too from which they still benefit in their costive way,—but why ever you said it you were right. The Jarrolds are Victorians,—Victorians not only because they still believe in all the cant that goes with it. They believe in reputation and in respectability and in keeping up appearances. All those things. And in not allowing people to enjoy themselves on Sunday,—the only day in the week when they get a reprieve from a grinding life. And in condemning women to bear child after child, whether they can feed them adequately in their early years, educate them according to their talents, and settle them in after-life, or not,—all for the sake of keeping England What She Is. Give us emancipation from such ideas and from all that they carry with them, and we may begin to get somewhere. Your Jarrolds are anachronisms today. They ought to be stuffed and put under a glass case.”
“You rather misjudge old Mr. Jarrold himself,” said Evelyn, remembering Mr. Jarrold’s outburst when he had been angry with Evan. “I daresay he would have equally harsh things to say about you and your like. I don’t think he really approves of half the standards he tries to support.”
“No, I like the old man,” said Miles; “he’s a fine old man in his own way, but he’s an anachronism all the same.”
“I see that you yourself don’t intend to be an anachronism, nor Dan either if you can have any say in the matter.”
“Dan is all right. Dan, I hope and pray, is young England. With a bold enquiring mind and a large pair of shears to clear away the brambles.”
“Thatt’s as it may be, Miles, but to go back to what we were saying: I can’t stay here indefinitely.”
Miles looked obstinate.
“You’re doing no harm to anyone, and giving a great deal of pleasure to me.”
“Am I really, Miles? Are you sure? Are you sure you want me? What about your work, which I interrupt? You know you care for your work more than . . .” (“I mustn’t say such things to him,” she thought, “fool that I am. Besides, it isn’t truer—or is it?”)
(“How impossibly feminine women are,” he thought, but because he loved her he felt tenderly towards her.)
“Evelyn, don’t be absurd. Well, I’ll work for a couple of hours a day, if you want me to. Will thatt abolish your scruples?”
(“Oh!” she thought, shot by a sudden pain, “he takes advantage of the opening I gave him.”)
“What a good idea, Miles,—yes, work for two hours, a day, more if you like. Perhaps you can lend me some books to read while you’re busy.”
He was not deceived. Nor had he yet arrived at the stage of wanting to be deceived. He did not even want to pretend to misunderstand her. Even the most passionate lover of truth shuts his eyes to truth in the early stages of love. He came closer to her; took possession of her hand; fitted his fingers into hers. Physical contact, even the slightest, reassured him.
Any cloud between them could be dispelled when they reached out to one another again, physically. And half an hour’s abstention amounted to half an hour’s starvation.
Miles prolonged these abstentions, sometimes, deliberately. She was far cruder and more direct than he, underneath her surface of sophistication. Her feelings were too strong to allow her to practise deliberate tricks on them. It was all she could do to maintain a reasonable check on their inconvenient violence. Wisdom alone imposed such a check. She knew that she must make no mistakes in her relations with Miles. He was a difficult and dangerous colt to tame. Because he was a young and vigorous man, however, his hunger for her always ended by over-ruling his experimentalism. After he had pretended an impersonal indifference towards her for a time, his desire broke out again, flooding, irresistible.
Between the incertitude of the one and the persuasion of the other, he held her unhappy, happy, and enslaved.
She consented to stay on for a few days longer. The truth was, that she could not tear herself away from him. This late flowering of her heart and senses was altogether too sweet, too weakening. The world ceased to exist; she let it go; nothing remained but the enchanted square of Miles’ castle. The tall, rosy walls shut them into a bewitched enclosure.
“Ah,” he said when she told him this, “you must see it in the spring. Or on a summer evening.”
They were walking in the walled garden, and the twin tops of the towers soared above them into the pale sky. The trees were winter-bare, and the sky full of rooks.
At thatt moment she was happy. She took Miles’ arm, and felt that she shared his life. She even listened patiently when Munday came up to speak to him about something he called dolly-wood. She had no idea what dolly-wood might be, but Miles seemed to know. Miles discussed gravely, and at some length, since length was inseparable from any subject opened by Munday, the advisability of cutting certain chestnut wood this year or of leaving it till next. She listened rather remotely, but with a new sense of the permanence of such arrangements. Miles and his forbears, Munday and his forbears, had been weighing such things for centuries. It seemed to her right that Miles and Munday should be weighing them today. Miles in his castle, managing his farm and his estate, talking to Munday, was the true, the traditional Miles.
When Munday had gone, clicking the garden gate behind him, she slipped her hand into Miles’ arm again.
“I like you as a Tory squire.”
“I apologise, darling. Munday has no tact. He pounces on me whenever he sees a chance.”
“I tell you I like it. It’s so new to me. I like you in thatt rôle.—Miles, look at those black woods. Look at thatt great sky. I don’t believe it could be more beautiful, even on a summer evening.”
An owl began to hoot, somewhere in the orchard.
“Oh, Miles,—promise to love me still, in the summer,— please, Miles.”
For once he was not irritated by her demand; at thatt moment they were perfectly attuned. She felt the harmony, and was content. They continued to pace up and down the garden path, under the high wall, till dusk fell and other little owls took up the cry of the first owl in the orchard.
She was dismayed to find that Miles kept to his suggestion of working for two hours a day. She came into his room to discover him seated with another young man at a table heaped with papers. He looked up with a frown, but smiled when he saw her.
“I never thought you would be down so early. This is Mr. Bretton, who does his best to persuade my constituents that I am the only person fit to represent them. He has a hard job of it. Mrs. Jarrold, Bretton.”
Bretton had flashing but rather small black eyes and tousled black hair. He shook hands awkwardly, as though he were not accustomed to social conventions. He was rather a stocky young man, ill-dressed, and Miles appeared more than usually graceful and at his ease beside him.
He said nothing, not even How-do-you-do? but Evelyn had the impression that it was not because he had nothing to say. He seemed on the contrary to be full of pent-up energy and resentments. She gave him her most charming smile, but felt that he disliked her at sight. They were antagonistic to one another.
“Don’t let me interrupt you, Miles. I had no idea you were busy.”
Miles opened the door for her. Bretton, who had sat down again, remained seated, fidgeting with a pencil. She smiled and nodded good-bye to him, and he replied by an embarrassed nod, obviously aware that he ought to get up, but unwilling to do so.
In the doorway she paused and looked at Miles. He looked back. They looked at each other for a second, straight into each other’s eyes. Defiance and amusement were in his.
She went slowly down the corkscrew staircase of the tower, an angry woman. Miles was not treating her with even the common courtesy accorded to a guest. Because they were lovers he thought he could treat her in this casual manner. He should learn his lesson: she would return to London thatt same day.
She went up to her bedroom, avoiding Dan. Dan, she knew, was in the sittingroom, reading a pamphlet on economics which Miles had given him. She could not bear to face Dan’s enthusiasm at thatt moment. She crept into the cottage by the back door; upstairs as silently as possible. It was cold in her bedroom. The fire was laid, indeed, but she was too proud and angry to light it. She remembered how Miles had run out into the orchard, last night, and had returned carrying a frosty log which he flung, laughing, on the fire. She moved about, putting her things into her trunk. Almost everything she handled awoke some association with Miles; the jerseys he liked, the shoes he had derided. She bundled them all in, regardless of Privett’s disapproval when they would be unpacked. It would be a relief to get back to Privett, and to the warmth and compactness of her own flat. She must have been mad ever to think that she and Miles were intended for one another; that they could ever, possibly, have hit it off. Let Miles stick to his farming and his politics; let him find a woman more accommodating and slavish than she.
She had packed nearly everything when she heard Miles’ voice downstairs. At the same time there came a scratch at the door and a low whimper. She opened, and Caesar, the Great Dane, lumbered in. He moved his tail so that it struck like a piece of wood against the furniture; he walked round nosing at her possessions, raising a puzzled head. “Dogs always know when one is going away,”—so Miles had said. “Yes, Caesar,” she said, putting her arms round his big neck, “I’m going away.”
Dan’s steps bounded up the stair.
“Mummy! Mummy! where are you? Here’s Miles.”
She came out quickly on to the landing, shutting her bedroom door behind her. Miles appeared at the foot of the stair.
“Evelyn! Come out? I’ve got rid of Bretton.”
She descended the stairs carefully; the steps were old and uneven. Miles was there, his hair shining under the window. Dan was there too, looking flushed and excited. They both seemed very young and guileless. She could not believe in the look Miles had given her when he opened the door for her to go out. She could not believe that he had really measured his strength against hers. He looked like a boy released from school.
“I must put on a hat, then,” she said, “if you want me to come out.”
She said nothing to him about her intention of leaving; she merely unpacked her things again, meekly, feeling half grim and half exultant as she recognised her submission to him. But she did ask him about Bretton.
“Bretton? He’s my political agent. The son of the local blacksmith. A good boy, and a raging Communist.”
“A Communist?” said Evelyn, as though Miles had said ‘a lion.’
“Yes, poor boy, he has to water down his convictions for the sake of keeping his job with me. Bretton will go far, some day.”
“He doesn’t go in for good manners, in the meantime.”
“No. Does thatt matter? It would be a sham on his part if he did. Would you like to undertake his training? If so, I’ll ask him to luncheon tomorrow.”
“For God’s sake don’t, Miles. He didn’t like me, he didn’t approve of me.”
“Well, how could you expect him to approve of anybody with the value of three years’ university education hanging in pearls round their neck?”
“I thought Communists didn’t approve of university education any more than of pearls?”
“They don’t,—but they envy it. They think it confers heaven knows what advantages. As a matter of fact, Bretton has a far fresher and more cutting mind than I have. He is quite free of sentiment and tradition and obscurantist handicaps of thatt sort. As for you, I don’t suppose he ever saw anybody like you in his life before.”
“Do you think me so contemptible, too, Miles?”
“I think you lovely, and decorative.”
“But useless? idle?” she insisted.
“No,” he said; “I like women to be idle and decorative. Life is quite ugly enough without women making themselves ugly too.”
“Are you serious? or are you joking?”
“Both! You can take your choice.”
She found herself alone with Bretton a day or two later. He had come to see Miles, but Miles had been fetched by Munday to look at a sick cow.
“Do come in, Mr. Bretton. Mr. Vane-Merrick will be back in a few minutes. Do warm yourself by the fire, it’s a very cold day. Have you come far?” She was full of amiable chatter.
He was disconcerted by Evelyn; alarmed; mistrustful. He sat on the edge of a chair by the fire because she had told him to do so, but he was clearly independent of external comfort. The light which burnt behind his rather mean, vicious, intelligent eyes proclaimed him independent of such considerations. Evelyn, for all her worldly address, was not at ease with this young man. He presented her with a new experience, even as the Mundays had presented her with a new experience. But she was not angry with him now, she was interested. She was beginning to realise that England was not populated only by Jarrolds.
“You must have a very interesting job, working for Mr. Vane-Merrick?”
Still he would not thaw; he was sulky, but not unattractive. She was determined to charm him.
“I never realised, when I first knew Mr. Vane-Merrick, what a very active life he led. He seems to have so many different interests.” (“Surely,” she thought, “I am not spying on Miles in any unworthy way?”) “I suppose,” she went on, “he has a safe seat down here in his constituency?”
“So far as any seat is safe, Mrs. . . .” He stopped. He had forgotten her name. “I’m sorry,” he said clumsily, “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
She liked him better and better; she was in a generous mood.
“Jarrold,” she said, “but never mind about thatt. Do tell me what you do for Mr. Vane-Merrick. I am so ignorant about such things! Do you,—well, what do you do?”
Family History Page 12
