If one were not careful.
‘What did you do with yourself, Beryl? Go riding in the Row?’
She made eyes of wonder at him. ‘But how marvellous! Have you second sight?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Guy modestly. ‘But I do have my little ideas.’
‘I believe you’re bluffing, Guy. Did you see me? Or had I told you sometime or other?’
He smiled teasingly. ‘I certainly didn’t see you. I was taking my well-earned rest. I’d like to see you on a horse.’
‘Would you?’ She smiled benignly.
‘It would do these old eyes good.’
‘I’m sure it would, darling. Do you ride, Mr Elderbrook?’
The capricious forms of address did not disconcert him. It was all part of her unexpectedness.
‘I don’t, dear Miss O’Sullivan. But I can.’
‘If you can, why don’t you? I believe you’re bluffing again.’
‘I find taxis more convenient, my dear,’ he said, lightly ponderous. ‘In the country it’s another matter. There were always horses on my father’s place.’
‘Where was that?’
There could be no harm, could there, in admitting to Mercestershire? He did so.
‘Did you do much hunting up there?’ she asked enviously.
‘Not much,’ he said. ‘I was only a boy, after all,’ he added, in self-defence.
‘Yes, of course. I meant your people.’
‘Ah, my people!’
He left it at that, in the air. She means my people: she means Sir Joseph and Lady Elderbrook, and my uncle the Admiral. He smiled at these fictions, half satirically, half wistfully. They were too raw to be trotted out, but there was a kind of bitter comfort in their contemplation.
‘Did you have a happy childhood?’ she asked him. ‘I did. Though it’s nonsense to pretend that the life of a child is one glad sweet song. Still I did have a pretty gorgeous time, on the whole. My parents are absolute lambs. They spoilt us dreadfully, of course …’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Guy. ‘Though why you call it spoiling I don’t know, considering the result.’
‘What about you? Did you have fun too?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. But it wasn’t … unmixed.’ She waited to hear more, but he said: ‘Never mind about me. Tell me about you.’
As she talked, his envious imagination filled in the picture of her past: the large country house, the music, the tennis parties, the pony-riding, the easy manners, the unassailable social position. And suddenly he was seized with the notion that by possessing her he would at one stroke possess himself of these too. If one were not careful? But why be careful? He was sick of his everlasting self-restraint.
‘Do you know …’ he began.
Something in his voice surprised her; and meeting her quick glance he got out of his chair and stood hovering, waiting for events to shape themselves, waiting for the right words to come, the words that would magically transform this situation and commit him … to what? To what bliss, what folly, what dangerous hazard? He was past caring.
Beryl too was on her feet. ‘Must you go so soon?’ The politely regretful hostess. ‘It’s early yet.’ She offered him her hand in farewell.
Taking it he said: ‘Beryl … how lovely you are!’
The words had a harsh, forced quality, and there was a stiffness in the gesture with which he tried to draw her into his arms. The spontaneity had gone out of his impulse: only resolution remained.
‘Sweet of you, Guy,’ she said. Slipping her hand away she patted him gently, playfully, on both cheeks. ‘Sit down again and have another cigarette.’
Dissembling his confusion he took out his watch and studied it with a great show of thoughtfulness.
‘Well … five minutes perhaps.’ He lighted a cigarette and sat back, aggressively at ease. ‘It’s a wonderful world,’ he said, with a sigh of false content. He had to say something.
‘Arthur will be along in a minute or two, I expect,’ said Beryl. ‘He’ll be so glad to meet you.’
‘Arthur?’
‘Arthur Tantrip. He said he’d drop in.’
‘Ah … yes. I don’t think I know him, do I?’ Lest the silence should lengthen unduly Guy asked: ‘What does he do?’
‘Do?’
‘Is he, I mean, on the stage?’
‘No. Oh no. He writes. Plays and things.’
‘Ah, yes!’ said Guy again. He smiled what he hoped was a fatherly, quizzical, man-of-the-world smile. ‘He’s writing one for you perhaps?’
‘How clever of you!’ said Beryl. ‘Then you have got second sight, after all!’
Smiling still, he blew smoke rings into the air. He felt a little better. He was revolving a new question. Should he go or should he stay? Should he stay and take Master Tantrip’s measure? Or should he gracefully retire, with this worm of curiosity (and what else?) gnawing at his vitals?
A bell rang, cutting short his indecision.
‘Excuse me,’ said Beryl, rising.
She went into the hall, leaving the door of the room ajar. He heard the front door opened, the mingled voices, the footsteps approaching. Primed with knowledge of his presence (so Guy guessed), Arthur Tantrip came into the room, casual and cordial. He shook hands before Beryl was halfway through her introductions. No awkwardness, no hiatus, everything as easy and friendly as you please. He was a big broad fellow, this Tantrip. Not at all Guy’s idea of a literary man. Hair not unreasonably profuse, eyes candid and appraising rather than soulful, yet there was something shaggy and craggy about him.
‘Hullo,’ said Tantrip. ‘How do you do?’
‘How do you do? I ‘m practically,’ said Guy, smiling, ‘on my way out.’
‘Nonsense, Guy! Not till we’ve had a drink,’ cried Beryl.
‘Well …’ Guy hesitated. Diplomatically, he thought. If she pressed him to stay, and if at sight of that pressure Arthur Tantrip remained genial, he would know better where he stood.
He glanced warily at Tantrip, seeking a clue.
‘Drink!’ said Tantrip strangely. ‘Very sound idea.’
Shaking himself like a dog, the extraordinary fellow turned on his heel and went out of the room. Guy looked at Beryl in surprise, not knowing what to make of this behaviour. Was he being dismissed, snubbed, derided by this rival? Or were these the normal manners of the literary man? But Beryl missed his unspoken questions, and the doubt was quickly resolved by the return of Tantrip bearing glasses and bottles on a tray. He set the things down on a small table and began dealing with them expeditiously.
One instant of gaping astonishment. Then the truth, like a thunderclap, burst in Guy’s mind. Tantrip was no rival suitor: he was, quite simply, the man in possession, and Guy’s host.
Having handed Beryl a glass of sherry he said easily: ‘Short or long, Elderbrook?’
Guy did not understand this formula. And he had not yet collected his scattering wits.
‘I can recommend Beryl’s sherry,’ said Tantrip, decanter in hand. ‘But there’s beer if you’d rather?’
Guy stayed with the happy pair for five minutes. Going down in the lift to street-level he became suddenly aware of Nora, stowed away in a corner of his mind. Dear little Nora: so pretty, so dependable, so artlessly happy in his company, so confident of his greatness. In her eyes he could see the man he really was, an inspiriting experience. He revelled for a moment in the warm comfort of Nora. Time I looked her up again. High time. But before he had got many yards down the street his mood had changed. Nora, having restored him to himself, had served her turn for the while. He would ring her up soon. Perhaps tomorrow. There was no particular hurry, however. Nora was always there. Nora would wait.
§ 8
THE work of field and garden at Minsterbourne Priory was more than any one man could manage alone, even a farmer’s son with a knack for it and half a liking. From the first Felix had had casual helpers, of varying zeal and usefulness, and in the high summer of 1914a n
ew one was appointed to him, a young man whose name ‘in the world’ (as he might have told you) had been Philip Yarty. Though ready to renounce that world in dedicating himself to the service of his Saviour, he had not been encouraged to do so by Hemner; and he accounted it not the least of the trials by which God was testing his vocation that in this place, contrary to his somewhat confused idea of monastic tradition, one was known by one’s baptismal name instead of by a holy pseudonym. He had kissed the rod of correction, recognizing for vanity or frivolity, or perhaps a mixture of both, his whim for being translated into, say, Brother Ambrosius; and he rejoiced, for his soul’s sake, that every time his brethren addressed him as Philip was a reminder of that sin. He was eager for penance: too eager. His zeal for self-mortification had more than once had to be restrained. In person he was a slim, pasty-faced youngster of rather less than middle height, with dark intense eyes and a mouth sensitively sad. In self-forgetful moments, when cheerfulness broke in, he moved with a coltish grace; but his normal demeanour was of a sedulously cultivated gravity. It was an open question whether he was a saint in embryo or a soul consuming itself in its own fire.
On one of the warmest of August afternoons he came to Felix in the orchard, bearing portentous news.
‘Brother Felix,’ he said softly, ‘we are at war.’
Felix, intent on the examination of his apple trees, did not pay much attention. He was seldom inclined to give the whole of his attention to Brother Philip’s discourse, for the zeal of the neophyte was apt to run away with that young man, making him harp too diligently on religious themes.
‘Yes, Philip, we are indeed.’ Felix reached up to pluck a crimped leaf from the nearest tree. ‘Look,’ he said, unfolding the leaf flat on the palm of his hand. A minute black insect lay revealed. ‘That’s the beginning of weevil-blight, my boy. There’s work for us here.’
‘Did you know, then, Brother Felix?’ Philip asked. In this moment he looked even younger than his years, at once eager and faintly disappointed. He had hoped to astonish his friend.
‘Know what?’ said Felix. ‘About this little monster? Well, of course——’
‘No, no., About the war?’ Philip insisted.
He got an effect this time. But even now, in the first moment, Felix was not so much astonished as puzzled. He knew Philip by now, or thought he did; knew him too well to imagine that he would have words to spare for any other war than the one in which, world without end, the faithful were for ever mortally engaged against the powers and principalities of darkness; never resting, never sleeping, unwinkingly vigilant, in prayer and praise calling upon their God; for the Devil waiteth to ensnare them, the Devil watcheth, the Devil bideth his time. That war was no news to Felix, and he did not wish at the moment to discuss it with Brother Philip. He had learnt to go cautiously in his dealings with this embarrassingly ardent spirit: in which attitude he was perhaps not alone, for Philip too had lessons to learn. When he spent his nights in the dormitory lying unblanketed on the bare boards, instead of in the sufficiently humble bed provided for him, the brethren had glanced at each other, but refrained, in charity, from comment; but his going barefoot about the Priory grounds, and limping into chapel at evensong on bloodstained feet, provoked Hemner to lay a hand on his shoulder and say gently, in his private ear: ‘We are sufficiently edified, my son. More would be too much. Put on your sandals.’ Philip, resolute to mortify the spirit if not the flesh, had himself confided the story to Felix, and to some others, but whether in true or false humility Felix dared not decide.
The lesson Philip was slowest to learn was how to keep his tongue still. He was engagingly ready for rebuke, and apparently sincere in penitence; but nothing, it seemed, would persuade him to consume his own smoke, that incense of devotion which rose from him, a thought too conspicuously by Minsterbourne standards, at all times and seasons.
But today the world was with him. For a while, at least, he was full of an alien excitement.
‘What war?’ Felix asked. He felt he must risk that much.
‘England is at war with Germany,’ Philip said. ‘We sent an ultimatum. It expired at midnight.’
Felix could only stare. ‘It’s impossible. At war! How … who …?’
‘A child from the village,’ said Philip. ‘The place is buzzing with it. I mean,’ he added, as if in apology, ‘the world.’
‘War with Germany!’ said Felix stupidly. ‘But why?’
The news had almost no meaning for him. His mind was utterly unprepared for it, and it was beyond him to imagine what it might involve. In this ignorance he was at one with the great multitude of his fellow-countrymen. They, going about their business in the world of every day, had the advantage of him by little more than a week. For if he was living a cloistered life, so in their different fashions were they all, so far as world-politics were concerned. A crisis in Ireland, with gun-running and inflammatory speeches, competed for their attention at breakfast-time with the current criminal trial. Unrest in the Balkans was no new thing; the vamped-up scare about the German naval programme was not to be taken seriously by sensible people; the murder of an archduke whom nobody outside Whitehall had heard of in this island gave the newspapers a headline, but the cricket results (and why not?) were more important. The summer had been glorious, and in the smart world of the illustrated weeklies there was the Regatta to look forward to. In general (for there were minor discontents) John Bull and his wife had lived too long in peace and prosperity to believe that disaster could be imminent. Home affairs had been lively enough, for those who read the parliamentary debates and wore red or blue rosettes on election days: ‘scenes’ in the House, Mr Asquith shouted down, the Lords after a bitter fight curtailed of their power of veto, Cabinet ministers personally assaulted by vote-hungry women, the imprisonment and hunger-striking and forcible feeding of these offenders, Ulster’s defiance of Home Rule, and so on and so on, all very agreeable reading for comfortable people. But of foreign affairs the man in the street knew nothing and cared less. The comings and goings of the diplomats were kept secret from him, and nothing had occurred in the world to bludgeon him into political consciousness or weaken his fond persuasion that war, so far as his country was concerned, was a thing of the past, and had been since that tiresome affair in South Africa. There had been no mass-persecution of German Jews; no Munich; no year of cumulative warnings. Poison gas had not been heard of, and the aeroplane was in its puling infancy, something to gape at on an afternoon at Hendon. Even at the end, with the lamps of civilization beginning to go out in Europe, there was nothing but an exchange of cautious, too cautious, diplomatic cablegrams, conducted for our part by a distinguished English gentleman with a talent for ornithology; until the armies in Europe were on the march, and our decision, which some said might earlier have stemmed the tide of darkness, could no longer be evaded.
Philip retailed the story, so far as he knew it. The German-inspired Austrian ultimatum to Serbia; the intervention of France; the mobilization of Russia; Belgium’s appeal to Britain in the face of Germany’s threat; and at last the British ultimatum. He did not know much; but Felix surmised, and at any other time would have been amused by the surmise, that he knew more than any ‘child from the village’ could have told him. But perhaps the child had brought a morning paper with him.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Felix said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
But he was something of an adept in believing things that didn’t make sense, and his disbelief evaporated even in the moment of its avowal.
‘So we really are at war,’ he said, staring at the pastoral peace that surrounded him. Men are already dying in battle, he thought.
‘Not we, Brother Felix,’ Philip gently corrected him. ‘The world. England.’
‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ said Felix impatiently. ‘So am I. What’s the good of talking nonsense?’
Philip smiled sweetly, forgiving the asperity. There was not an ounce of malice in him.
�
�You said yourself: “We are at war”,’ Felix reminded him.
‘I was wrong. A slip of the tongue. The world is at war, yes. But we are not of the world, Brother Felix. We have God’s work to do, you and I.’
‘What work? Saving our own souls?’
‘Yes, indeed. But how? How but by knowing and living the love of Christ? Isn’t that what the Reverend Father has told us? Philip flushed under his senior’s bland, critical scrutiny. ‘Those were his words,’ he confessed ingenuously, ‘not mine. How splendid he is, isn’t he! I wonder if he will speak to us about the war this evening, in chapel?’
‘I should think it extremely probable,’ said Felix. After a pondering silence he remarked, more to himself than to Philip: ‘It’s a strange world. I shall have been ordained before the year’s end.’
‘If it’s God’s will, Brother Felix,’ said Philip, with a loving smile.
§ 9
GUY’S lodging, which he had now occupied for two and a half years, had much to recommend it, and not least its address, or at any rate half its address. 23 Whitehall Avenue sounded good in his ears; the name of the northern suburb that followed was respectable, but alas not so distinguished; to live in the unexceptionable western region cost more than he had thought it worth while at that time to spend on a point of mere prestige. In the light of the dazzling future to which he looked forward, the double-fronted villa with its half-basement and its stone steps up to the front door struck him as dingy, the furniture heavy, the wallpaper drab, the amenities meagre and old-fashioned; but, compared with that cheap bedsittingroom at Walham Green, to have two large rooms to himself and the run of a comfortable house was luxury itself. Most of all was he lucky in his landlady. As much by what she was as by what she did, though in an unobtrusive fashion she did a great deal, it was she who made the place a home.
The Elderbrook Brothers Page 20
