Dan was terribly upset by both the death and the funeral. He stayed the night in his mother’s flat, having got special leave from Eton. He was upset too by his vision of the Midlands, lying under a fog of smoke when he had loft Windsor in a haze of February sunshine. He was upset by the streams of pit-workers and factory-hands who had followed his grandfather’s coffin. He was not upset, as yet, by the sudden responsibility which had devolved upon him; he was too young, and too diffident, for thatt. He did not, as yet, realise the power which had come into his hands. He was simply upset by death, with which he was not familiar, and by the smoky Midland background of his grandfather’s life. It was so different from the pleasant luxury of Newlands! Yet Newlands had grown out of it; the laburnums and rhododendrons of Newlands had grown out of the coal of Orlestone, even as the coal of Orlestone had come from the rotting, primeval forest. He sat over the fire in his mother’s flat, holding his head, unable to understand death.
Evelyn tried to comfort him. His grandfather, she said, was an old man; it was quite natural that he should go. But it was not his going that distressed Dan; it was the thought of his grandfather rotting underground.
“He wouldn’t be burned, Mummy,—why not?”
“Darling, Grandpapa believed in the Resurrection of the Body.”
“But if the body can resurrect from a skeleton, it can resurrect from ashes. Either it can, or it can’t. Surely? The one is just as reasonable, or as unreasonable, as the other?”
Evelyn found no answer. Hers was no logical mind. Even as she believed in the force of human passion, and lived up to thatt belief, so had she an instinctive and unanalytical belief in the dogmas of the Church. In the last resort, she followed her instinct, not her reason. She could sympathise with a person who did not go to church every Sunday, but she was secretly shocked when Dan questioned the ordinary procedure of Christian burial. She belonged to the tradition of the family vault.
“Surely, Mummy, it’s much more hygienic to be burned?”
“Dan, you ought not to think of such things.”
“But, Mummy, it is. One doesn’t take up so much room. And one doesn’t run down into other people’s water-supply.”
“Dan! What do you mean?”
“Well, the cemetery at Orlestone stands immediately above the waterworks. Surely you must have noticed thatt? Grandpapa will trickle down the taps of his colliers, for years and years . . . ten years . . . till he becomes a skeleton. It takes ten years to become a skeleton, especially when you are buried in an expensive coffin.”
“Dan! You mustn’t say such things. Dan! it’s horrible, it’s morbid.”
“No, Mummy, it’s the truth.”
“Dan, stop. A boy of your age oughtn’t to have such ideas. You make me want to put my hands over my ears. Your poor grandfather,—can’t he have peace in his grave?”
“He won’t have peace, Mummy. I read a sermon by Donne . . .”
“Donne? Who was Donne?”
“He was a poet in the seventeenth century whom nobody took any notice of until now. And he was a clergyman too.”
“Miles told you all thatt.”
“No, Miles didn’t,—so there. I found it out for myself. And Donne preached a sermon on being eaten by worms,—I’ll quote it to you. I learnt it by heart. “This post-humus death, this death after death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation and incineration, of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave. Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother and my sister. Miserable incest, when I must be married to my own mother and my sister, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me . . .”
“Dan, please stop; I can’t stand it.”
“No, the people he preached to couldn’t stand it either. They were carried out, fainting. But it was true,—you can’t say it wasn’t true. Donne was a realist.”
“He was a blasphemer,” said Evelyn with angry energy.
“All realists are called blasphemers,” said Dan.
He was growing up. The young had strange, shocking ideas.
“Miles told you thatt,” said Evelyn again.
“Yes,” said Dan this time, serenely “he did.”
Dan went back to Eton, the owner of Newlands and of the Orlestone mines and works. Evelyn was worried. They were richer than ever, but she dreaded the responsibility in Dan’s young hands. With her strong Conservative tendencies, she dreaded the use he would make of it. She thought him too young, too Utopian, and too wild. She had been well trained in the theory of “keeping those people in their place.” She had a traditional, prosperous attitude towards the unwashed poor. She was vaguely sorry for them, but she did not like them, and quieted her conscience by saying that they would not appreciate altered conditions. “You know,” she was accustomed to say, and to hear her friends say, “if you give them decent clothes they only pawn them, and if you give them a bath they only keep the coals in it.” This settled a disquieting matter. So long as one did not visit the slums at Orlestone, one could forget about them; or could reassure oneself by thinking that the people who lived in them had a different standard from one’s own. But she had an uneasy feeling that Dan would not take the same view, once he woke up to his new position, and that Miles would be on his side, not on hers. Not that she wanted people to live in slums. She was only afraid that Dan might explode suddenly into something altogether too revolutionary and tiresome. It would be so much quieter and pleasanter and less strenuous if only he would conduct himself for a few years in the normal fashion. When he had reached the age of twenty-five he might begin to take himself seriously, if he liked.
She did not dare say these things to Miles.
Miles was half derisive and half delighted.
“At last I’ve got what I wanted,—a young capitalist wholly in my power.”
“Miles, what are you going to do to thatt boy?” Genuinely anxious, she secretly delighted in his influence over Dan.
“Use him, of course, my dear. Use his money, and use his very conveniently secure position in the House of Lords. Exploit him, in fact.”
“Miles! It’s monstrous.”
“What’s monstrous? To get the best out of the boy and his chances because he happens to pay some attention to what I say? Is thatt monstrous?”
“No,—but because his mother happens to be your mistress.”
A sensuous shiver went down her as she said it.
“Thatt’s neither here nor there,—I might have known Dan even if you and I had never seen each other. I might have met him at the Eton Political Society.”
“How cold you are, Miles.”
“No. Not cold. Sensible.”
“I hate sense.”
“Most women do.”
“Thatt’s why women bore men, I suppose, except when they lie in their arms, and sense ceases to count.”
“Yes, I expect it is.”
“Miles, we’re quarrelling now.”
“Are we? I thought we were merely having an argument.”
“Arguments are always quarrels.”
“Yes, perhaps,—for women.”
“Miles, you hate me sometimes, don’t you?”
“No,—only when you say that I hate you.”
“I’m a fool, Miles. I won’t do it again.”
Miles asked her to come out to dinner with some friends of his whom he wanted her to meet,—Viola and Leonard Anquetil. Her conventionality at first rebelled.
“I can’t go to dinner with people I don’t know!”
“But they’ve asked you.”
“How do they know about me? What have you told them?”
“I told them the truth, ages ago. Do you mind? I dined with them a few nights after the ball at Chevron House a
nd I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
These words gave her a pang of such extreme pleasure that her alarm and mistrust vanished.
“Of course I’ll come if you want me to. Will anyone else be there?”
“A couple of men perhaps. I’ll tell Viola not to ask any other women, because I want you to make friends with her. Don’t put on an evening dress,—they never dress.”
This struck Evelyn as very odd; everybody she knew dressed for dinner, the Jarrolds and the people to whom Miles sarcastically referred as her smart friends, the bridge-playing crew of Betsy Charskaya and her like. She decided that these Anquetils must be Bohemians. She had heard of them before; Leonard Anquetil was known as a traveller and explorer who had married the only daughter of Chevron House.
“Bretton may be there,” said Miles.
“Bretton?” He was not at all the kind of person whom Evelyn associated with Chevron House.
“They have all kinds of friends,” said Miles, and gave no further explanations.
She felt curiously shy, as though she were a young girl, engaged to Miles, and about to be taken by him for inspection by his friends. Don’t put on an evening dress, he had said, so she wondered what she should wear, feeling slightly irritated by this dispensation with the ordinary conventions. Evening dress was a formula, a safeguard, like good manners; it was a part of all those things which greased the wheels of life. Evelyn appreciated such things; she was self-conscious about them, and it always made her a little uneasy to observe Miles’ utter disregard. She felt jealous of these friends, who, apparently, were equally indifferent to the things she still thought important. They were better attuned to Miles than she was. She disliked them in advance, with instinctive hostility, deciding in her own mind that they posed.
She put on a black silk shirt with a loosely knotted scarlet handkerchief. It looked careless, but was in fact extremely expensive and studied,—one of Mr. Rivers’ more picturesque creations. Mr. Rivers was in the habit of saying that few of his clients could afford to look both picturesque and chic, but that Mrs. Tommy Jarrold was one of the exceptions. Sitting before her mirror, Evelyn was pleased with her appearance. The red handkerchief suited her small head and dark curling hair. She was glad to be the kind of woman who looked well in any clothes, whether in the country, or in a ballroom, or in the street, or dressed as she was tonight. She wished only that her heart were as smoothly finished as her exterior: these tortures that she endured since Miles had entered her life were not consistent, and she was frightened of her own violence even as she sat polishing her nails.
Miles came to fetch her. He was especially gay. What fun, he said in his most boyish way; and looking her over from head to foot he said that she was lovely and filled him with pride. She smiled rather sadly, being suddenly aware again of the discrepancy in their ages. For how many years longer would he want to show her off to his friends? It was ridiculous to have thought of herself as a young girl, engaged to Miles. Those were the visions that floated into the mind, under the kind seduction of the shaded electric light.
He was in one of his charming moods. She wondered why, and became suspicious.
“Miles,” she said, as they stayed in her sitting room drinking each a glass of sherry, “do tell me more about these mysterious friends of yours.”
“Potted biography?” he said, looking at her, his eyes shining and full of laughter.
“Of course I know the obvious facts about them. Tell me something more. What age are they, for instance, and are they very alarming?”
“Age, Viola must be forty-two or three, Leonard about ten years older. Alarming,—you must judge for yourself. Some people find them alarming. I know them too well.”
“Are you very fond of them, Miles?”
“I adore them both; but if you mean, have I ever been in love with Viola, I haven’t. There now, you see I am shrewd sometimes. That was what you meant, wasn’t it? Now don’t you think we ought to start?”
He was mocking her, but he put his arm round her and kissed her. She mistrusted him, but could not resist him. It was in a mood of exultant happiness that she preceded him downstairs.
Her mood changed when they reached the Anquetils’ house, for she felt instantly that Miles was completely at his ease. He was at home in thatt house. Anquetil himself opened the door,—a lean, grey-haired man with a scarred face and an uncommunicative manner, untidily dressed in an old jacket and grey flannel trousers. He nodded to Miles and shook hands rather reluctantly with Evelyn, as though he considered such a concession to ordinary manners as a waste of energy and time. “Come in,” he said, taking the pipe from his mouth in the dark passage.
The drawing-room was a studio on the ground floor. It was large and shadowy and ill-defined. Several people stood round the fire; two or three men, a girl, and a woman. Evelyn recognised Bretton, who, like Anquetil, was smoking a pipe. The girl was pretty and impudent looking, with short golden curls. She wore a blue Chinese coat and black satin trousers. Evelyn knew at once that all these people were very intimate; and that Miles was very intimate with them too. Feeling completely out of it, she was angry with Miles for having brought her there. This was not at all the kind of world to which she was accustomed, and she resented the fact that Miles should have been for years an intimate of this world so unfamiliar to her. Even her pleasure in the fact that he had revealed their true relationship to these people, the Anquetils, turned to resentment when she came face to face with them, though she could not have explained why.
Yet she liked Viola Anquetil, in spite of herself. Viola Anquetil came forward to greet her, a calm, tall, self-possessed woman in a dress of Venetian red. She was a beautiful woman in early middle-age, statuesque, her dark hair lying sleekly in two bands above her brows, and gathered into a knot at the back. Her hand, when she gave it, was cool and slender; her manner peaceful. Evelyn, who had heard that she was alarming, realised that this woman had a very deep life of her own. She realised that the stream of life in this house flowed very deep and strong and intense, and that its serenity proceeded entirely from the woman. It certainly did not proceed from the man; any man with thatt queer scarred face was by nature a stranger to serenity. Serenity had been the woman’s gift to him, and their understanding enveloped them as with a radiance. Not that they spoke to one another, or even glanced; thatt was unnecessary. But it was clear that they were absolutely united.
Everything was very informal. Viola introduced her son, a coltish boy of about Dan’s age. She introduced the girl as Inez Marston; the other young man as Mr. Allen. Neither of these names conveyed any meaning to Evelyn. No one took any further notice of her or made any fuss about her, but returned to their interrupted conversation. The girl and Bretton sat on a divan talking very earnestly; the girl was talking, and Bretton, listening intently, nodded from time to time as the girl drove home her points. Evelyn remembered with resentment how she herself had been unable to capture his attention or his approval for a moment.
There appeared to be no dining room in the house, for they dined at a table in a corner of the studio. There were no servants visible either, but Anquetil and his son cleared away the plates and brought fresh supplies from a sideboard. Evelyn felt completely out of her element. The conversation disconcerted her too, for there was none of the small-talk to which she was accustomed; if these people had nothing particular to say they merely remained silent. They did not seem to think it worth while talking for the sake of talking. Neither gossip nor personalities interested them, but only ideas, in complete contrast to both the world of the Jarrolds and the world of Betsy Charskaya. Yet they were not solemn. They flashed and laughed, and were eager and argumentative. Only Anquetil was a little grim and unbending. An austere man, with the highest possible standards, he never allowed himself to be anything but rather grimly amused.
Evelyn tried at first to talk to him, but found that she got no mo
re response from him that she had got from Bretton. It was clear that the men, in this universe, would not put themselves out to be conventionally civil to women. Perhaps thatt was partly responsible for the atmosphere of steady reality. These people were real; Evelyn owned it, much as she hated them. She fought against them; tried to impose her standards on them by making conversation to Leonard Anquetil; failed; retired into an angry silence. Nobody noticed; nobody cared.
She observed Miles. He was talking to the man Allen, not to his hostess who sat neglected and absorbed in her own thoughts. This, again, enraged Evelyn. It enraged her that Miles should adapt himself so naturally to the manners of these disconcerting people. Viola Anquetil was a rare woman,—she had guessed thatt,—and Miles was treating her with no more courtesy than he would have accorded to a man. All Evelyn’s feminine solidarity was aroused. Then she grew doubly enraged on discovering that the other woman did not resent Miles’ detachment in the least.
The conversation quickened every now and then into the tempo of a row. Reality was it?—these people felt passionately on the subjects that interested them. Evelyn, nurtured in her own good careful middle-class traditions, was genuinely horrified by the subjects they discussed. She looked at the coltish son, and at the girl Inez, with an inborn veneration for their youth. The boy was not eighteen, the girl not twenty, yet they took things lightly for granted which would have puzzled Evelyn rather than interested her, at their age. They took them for granted, with an intelligent and ardent interest which showed that they had already thought over them and had come to some conclusion in their minds. And it was not only that they discussed such subjects as the necessity for easier divorce,—Sweden, they said, was a sensible country,—Evelyn could swallow thatt, knowing that the young were no longer so ignorant as they ought be to,—but their frankness horrified her,—their frankness about incomes, other people’s and their own,—their frankness about their feelings. Such things were taboo in the Jarrolds’ world; and even in the world of Betsy Charskaya, a decent reserve was maintained. But here in the Anquetils’ house, there was no reserve. There was a desire for truth; thatt was the best that could be said for it.
Family History Page 15
