It was a fine May night, and the moon shone brightly as Hector crossed the park. It had been nice of Miss Webster to congratulate him. He had not taken much notice of her before, but there was no doubt about it, she was an uncommonly nice girl. She had spoken so—he searched for the right word—well, so nicely. This was all the more meritorious in her because she had been educated in private schools. Boarding schools. He did not approve of private schools. It was a well-known fact that many of the teachers in them were not really qualified to teach; they had received no instruction in pedagogy; they merely had a knowledge—sometimes, he admitted, quite a thorough knowledge—of the subjects they taught. He was not a bigot in pedagogical matters. Still, if pedagogy were not a necessary study for a teacher, the Department would not lay so much stress upon it. Yet, in this expansive, unbuttoned mood, Hector was ready to admit that Miss Webster was a good advertisement for whatever school she had attended. Nevertheless, he chuckled to himself, he would like to throw a few quick problems in factoring at her, just to see what she made of them.
At some distance from the path, under the trees, was a bench, and upon it were a boy and girl in a close embrace. Ordinarily Hector would not have noticed them, for the eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. He saw them now; Hector the actor, rather than Hector the teacher of mathematics, took note of what they were doing. He felt indulgent. It was a fine night; why should they not seek romance?
Romance, he realized, had been a scarce ingredient in his own life. There was, of course, romance in his steady rise from a country lad to his present position, but that was not the sort of romance he meant. There had been that awful business at the Normal School “At Home”. But had he not put that behind him? He flushed at the recollection; twenty-one years since that painful evening, but it still had power to shame him. Nevertheless, that was water under the bridge, and Millicent Maude McGuckin was a married woman in a distant city, doubtless with children near to the age that he and she had been when it all happened. Down into oblivion he thrust the dismaying memory. Just before it disappeared however, he told himself that things would be different if he had that evening to live through again. If one could have the keen appetite of youth, with the experience of age! This cliché of thought rose in his mind as fresh and rosy as Venus from the sea, and he pondered delightedly upon it.
It would be different now. He was master of himself now. If he could have his chance again! And then, so suddenly and sharply that it made him catch his breath, came the thought: Why not? But no, it was out of the question. He thrust the thought from him. But again it returned: Why not? Well, was not he the head of the mathematics department of a large school, past the time for—the expression which his mother had used, when speaking of such matters—for girling? But why not? The question returned with an insistency which made him doubt that it arose in his own mind; it was as though another voice, a clear, insistent voice, spoke to him. Why not? Why not?
Had not a girl—and not just any girl, but a pretty, well-mannered girl, a girl compared with whom Millicent Maude McGuckin in her heyday seemed clumsy and countrified—addressed him in warm and friendly terms a bare fifteen minutes before? Had she not gone out of her way to do so? Had she not offered to drive him home? Had she not smiled upon him as she spoke? Had he missed something in that smile?
Music was not an interest of Hector’s, but in every mind there linger a few rags and tatters of melody, and particularly of melody heard in impressionable youth. From the deeps of memory there rose a forgotten song, a song which had been played at the Normal School “At Home” on that fateful night:
Every little movement
Has a meaning all its own
It was an insinuating tune, a kind of harmonious dig in the ribs. Had there been a meaning in Griselda’s smile which he (old sobersides that he was; he smiled at his stupidity) had overlooked? But the thing was ridiculous! She was a child; eighteen—nineteen, he did not know. He was talking himself into the idea that she was attracted to him. Still, it was not unknown for young women, and particularly young women of unusual character, to be drawn toward older men. And need he suppose that he was without attraction? He was wearing his best suit and his grey Homburg hat with the smart silk binding on the brim. A figure not utterly lacking in distinction, perhaps? Thus reflecting, and a little frightened by his thoughts, Hector arrived at the YMCA and went to bed.
Recurrently during the years his dreams had been plagued by the phantasmata, the hideous succubi, which visit the celibate male. This night, for the first time in his life he dreamed that a beautiful woman, lightly clad, leaned toward him tenderly and spoke his name; her smile was the smile which he had seen the night before. He woke in the night to the knowledge that for the second time in his life he was in love.
To keep pace with her father Pearl Vambrace had to take strides so long that her body was thrown forward, and she held her arms bent at the elbow.
“Don’t slouch, Pearl,” said the Professor.
“You’re going a bit too fast for me, Father.”
“No use walking unless you walk at a brisk pace. Head well up. Breathe deeply through the nose. Deep breathing refreshes the oxygen supply of the blood.”
For another hundred yards nothing was heard except the rhythmical snorting of Professor Vambrace. His nose was large and finely formed, and when he breathed for his health it made a soft whistling sound, like a phantom peanut-roaster.
“Posture is more important now than ever. In this play you will be, so to speak, on display. Acting involves severe physical discipline.”
“Yes, Father.”
“We must train like athletes. The Greeks did so. Of course there were no women on the Greek stage.”
“No, Father.”
“Nor on the Shakespearean stage, for the matter of that.”
“No, Father.”
“All the more reason why you should be in the pink of condition. Plenty of sleep. A light but sufficient diet. Lots of fruit. Keep your bowels open. Avoid draughts.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Don’t suppose that there are no draughts in early summer,” said the Professor, as though Pearl had contumaciously insisted upon this absurdity. “They are just as bad as in the winter. A summer cold is much the most difficult to shake.”
“I suppose so.”
“You may take it from me.”
“Yes, Father.”
Another hundred yards with the peanut-roaster going full blast.
“Some very odd casting done tonight.”
“What didn’t you like, Father?”
“What is the sense of putting that Tompkins girl in as Juno? Where’s your balance going to be with that hoyden lolloping about the stage? Eva Wildfang was the obvious person for the part. It was nothing short of perverse for Miss Rich to overlook her.”
“Maybe she thought Miss Wildfang was too old.”
“What do you mean, too old? Eva Wildfang is a woman of cultivation. She knows who Juno was. I don’t suppose this Tompkins creature ever heard of Juno before tonight. And Mackilwraith! Stiff as a stick. What will become of your plasticity, your fluidity of movement, with him on the stage?”
“Maybe Bonnie-Susan will be fluid enough for two.”
“Who’s Bonnie-Susan?”
“Bonnie-Susan Tompkins.”
“Bonnie-Susan! Pah!”
Another hundred yards, during which the Professor fiercely renewed the oxygen in his bloodstream. Then—
“Pearl?”
“Father?”
“That last remark of yours, about the Tompkins girl being fluid; was that intended as a jest?”
“Only a little one, Father.”
“It is not the sort of pleasantry which I like to hear from a daughter of mine. There was a smack of pertness about it.”
“Sorry, Father.”
“It had an overtone of indelicacy.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything like that.”
“I should hope
not.”
After the next spurt of walking it was Pearl who began the conversation.
“Father, who is that man who is to play Ferdinand?”
“You were introduced to him, were you not? Of course you were. He is a Lieutenant Roger Tasset.”
“Yes, but do you know anything about him beyond that?”
“He is here to do some special military course. I think that he comes from Halifax. Mrs Forrester picked him up. We lack younger men.”
“Do you think he will be good?”
“I sincerely hope so. He appears chiefly with us. Perhaps I can take him for some special coaching. I mean to give you all the help I can—not merely in the scenes which you play with me. Perhaps we might include him in some of our private rehearsals. We could work for balance.”
“Oh, I think that would be lovely.”
Pearl Vambrace lived a life which, to the casual glance, seemed unendurable. But she had grown up to it, and although she knew that it was not like the life of any other girl of her acquaintance she did not find it actively unpleasant. If the chance had been offered to her, she would not have changed her lot for that of anyone else; she would have asked, instead, that a few changes be made in the life she had.
She would have asked, for instance, that her father should not snub her so often, and so hard. She had never seen him as the casting committee had seen him, anxious and almost humble on her behalf. She saw him only as one who made constant demands on her, and was harshly displeased if those demands were not met. He insisted that she be first in all her classes during her school life, and somehow, with a few lapses from grace, she had managed it. But she was not to be a blue-stocking, he said; she was to be truly womanly, and for that reason she must have general culture, nice manners and a store of agreeable conversation. These attributes he did his best to implant in her himself, sparing no severity of tongue if she fell below the standard he had fixed. She would undoubtedly marry, he said, and she must fit herself to be the wife of the right sort of man. Neither Pearl nor her father recognized the fact, but this really meant being the sort of wife that Walter Vambrace wished he had married.
Mrs Vambrace was a devout Roman Catholic lady, and when she had married the Professor it had been with a strong hope that he would shortly join her in her faith. It had seemed likely enough at the time. The romantic side of Catholicism had appealed to the young Vambrace, and his ravenous intellect had rapidly mastered subtleties of Catholic philosophy which were beyond her understanding. When her parents urged her to wait for his conversion before marrying, she had declined to do so, for the conversion was, in her mind, a certainty. But it had not come about. For a time the Professor stuck where he was, elegantly juggling with coloured balls of belief. But then his enthusiasm had cooled, and without anything definite being said, it became clear that he had lost interest in the project. His wife was free to do as she pleased.
What she pleased to do did not strengthen the bond between her and her husband, nor did it especially endear her to her Church. She sought mystical experience. She read, reflected, meditated, fasted, did spiritual exercises, and prayed, hoping humbly that some crumb of unmistakeable manna would be vouchsafed to her. She was gentle and kind and tried to do her best for her husband and child, but her yearning for a greater enlightenment blinded her to many of their commonplace needs. Pearl, as a child, had always been oddly dressed. She had never had a party, and was rarely asked to the parties of others. Her father, after a few disputes with his wife and one really blazing row with a monsignor who called to protest, caused Pearl to be educated in Protestant schools, but made her way difficult by insisting she be entered on the school records as an agnostic. It was the Professor’s contention, after his experiment in Catholicism, that a man could lead a life of Roman virtue without any religion at all, and he harangued Pearl on this theme from her fifth year. Her mother, tentatively and ineffectually, tried to soften this chilly doctrine with some odds and ends of spiritual counsel, snippets from a store of knowledge which led her daily farther from the world in which her body had its existence, which no child was capable of understanding. If Pearl had not been a girl of more than common strength of character she would have been in danger of losing her reason in that household.
Instead she was, at eighteen, a shy, dark girl with the fine eyes which Valentine had remarked, and the look of distinction which sometimes appears on the faces of those who have had to depend very much upon their own spiritual resources. Submissive to her father, loving and helpful to her mother, she was nevertheless conscious that she had a destiny apart from these unhappy creatures, and she waited patiently for the day of her deliverance.
Had it come, had the Great Experience arrived, which would free her from the loneliness which that divided household had imposed upon her? She thought with shame of her awkwardness when he had put out his hand for hers, and she had lacked courage to give it. But what had she done to deserve such luck as to have that wonderful young man to play her lover in The Tempest!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
She murmured the words to herself as she sat on the side of her bed brushing her hair. Her father had always said that she would marry. Would she marry anyone half so thrilling as Roger Tasset? Her attempt to get new information about him on the way home had come to nothing. But her father meant to ask him to the house!
Was that anything to be thankful for? It was a neglected house, reasonably clean, but everything in it was threadbare, not from lack of money but from lack of desire for anything better. A Roman father, a mother who desired only to be alone with the Alone—what kind of household would such people maintain? She looked at her familiar room with new eyes; a white iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, a small mirror with a whorl in it, and a chair with weak back legs; her clothes hung behind a faded chintz curtain in a corner; the only picture was a framed postcard of Dürer’s “Praying Hands”, put there by her mother when she was a child, as next best thing to a crucifix; but there were many bookshelves with books of childhood, and the books of a sensitive, curious lonely girl. But to Pearl, in her present mood, it looked a pitiful room for a girl who hoped to attract the notice, and perhaps the love, of a prince among men. Such a girl should have a lovely room—the kind of room which she was convinced that Griselda Webster must have—and stocks of lovely clothes. Her father had taught her to talk, as he said, intelligently, but she was not convinced that this would be allurement enough for Roger Tasset. We always undervalue what we have never been without; Pearl thought little of intelligence and the conversation that goes with it.
She peered into the cloudy depths of the mirror, expertly avoiding the worst of the distortion caused by the whorl. In her white cotton nightdress, short-sleeved and falling only to her knees, she might have been a sibyl looking for a portent in the sacred smoke; but she was only a girl with the unfashionable sort of good looks staring at herself in a bad mirror. What right had she to be thinking of that glorious Apollo, of that planner of twenty shabby seductions?
Rye and tap water; it was to this melancholy potion that Solly turned for solace after he had called in at his mother’s room, and put her mind at ease for the night. He was guiltily conscious that, as he talked to her, he was comparing her age and dilapidated face, so baggy without its teeth, to Griselda’s fresh beauty; when he bent to kiss her a whiff of her medicine rose unappetizingly in his face; she mumbled his cheek and called him “lovey”, a name that he detested. Then, escaping to his attic sitting-room, he was free of her.
Free? Not much more so than when he sat at her side. He sipped at his flat drink and reflected upon his condition. His loyalty to his mother was powerful. Why? Because she depended so heavily upon it. She had told him, he could not reckon how many times, that he was all that she had in the world. This was true only in an emotional sense, of course. Mrs Bridgetower had come of a family well established in an importing business in Mont
real, and when her father died, well before the days of succession duties, she and a sister had shared his considerable estate. Nor had her husband left her unprovided for. Without being positively wealthy, she was a woman of means. It requires a good deal of capital for two people to live as Mrs Bridgetower and her son lived, when there has been no breadwinner in the family for ten years. Money, it is often said, does not bring happiness; it must be added, however, that it makes it possible to support unhappiness with exemplary fortitude.
If only his father had lived, he thought. But when Solly was twelve Professor Bridgetower had surprisingly tumbled from a small outcropping of rock, while with a group of students on a field expedition, and as they gaped at him in dismay and incomprehension, he had died of heart failure in two minutes. The eminent geologist, with his bald head and his surprised blue eyes and his big moustache, was suddenly no more. That night Solly had sat by his mother’s bed until dawn, and in the coherent passages of her grief she made it plain to him that he was, henceforth, charged with the emotional responsibility toward her which his father had so unaccountably abdicated. The intellectual facade, the intricate understanding of the Yellow Peril, the sardonic manner, were a shell within which dwelt the real Mrs Bridgetower, who feared to be alone in the world and who was determined that she should not be so long as there was a man from whom she could draw vitality.
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