by A. A. Milne
Yes, it was just here, nearly two years ago, that he had begun his book. Would he ever write another? No. . . . Oh, anyhow No, because of Mr. Pump. And yet—could you just go on doing nothing? It hadn’t seemed like nothing two years ago. He had thought himself very busy. Could he settle down to that sort of business again? Just thinking and digging up weeds? Damn Pump! Well, he could write, even if he didn’t publish. Or—why not? Write a play.
A play! He stared at the ceanothus, hoping for inspiration. None came.
Somebody had said that every man ought to plant a tree, write a book and beget a child. How like Somebody! You can plant a tree by yourself, write a book by yourself; but to beget a child needs the co-operation of somebody else. Fortunately only a woman, so we need not worry about her. The decision is in our hands.
Well, he had planted his tree, written his book. He could hardly hope that the book would survive, but a hundred years from now his trees would still be standing. Did he mind if he left no child? I have no illusions about children, he thought; no sentiment about the name of Wellard. I’d far sooner that Westaways came to somebody who loved it than to a son of mine who only liked it. I think that fatherhood is a ridiculous profession; that it is as impossible to take oneself seriously as a Father as to take oneself seriously as a Bishop or a Judge. No, it’s the other way round. A Father, Bishop or Judge must take himself with a portentous and revolting seriousness if he is to make any sort of job of it. I should be hopeless. If I had a child, I would sooner have a daughter and leave it to Sylvia whose child it would be, and if I want a child, it is just selfishly, so that I can enjoy a new experience.
All the same, I wonder why Sylvia . . .
He felt absurdly happy suddenly. Happy in this new realization of Sylvia; happy to have the whole pageant of summer before him; happy in this ridiculous idea of a play, which he needn’t write, probably couldn’t write, almost certainly wouldn’t write. Happy, somehow, in that brief contact with a child whom he didn’t want, wouldn’t have, yet could have; the child who had been for a moment alive in thought between them; happy in the knowledge of a fatherhood and motherhood within their reach if ever they came to need it. . . .
Meanwhile if he had to create something, he could write a play. He looked at the ceanothus thoughtfully. A play. Yes. He went back to the house, came out again with a trowel, and began to dig up the bindweed.
Chapter Twenty
ONCE more the candles had been blown out; once more the moonlight came through the open windows of Sylvia’s bedroom. There was a gentle rustle of starlings under the eaves. An owl called plaintively, first from one side of the house, and then suddenly from the other, and from a distant fold of the hills a watch-dog barked in faint answer to some romantic challenge. The little noises of the night made the country seem more still than silence, and Reginald and Sylvia more withdrawn from the world.
Sylvia whispered:
‘Happy, darling?’
‘Yes, Sylvia.’
‘We’re so alone here. I never felt like that in London.’
‘Alone with Sylvia and Westaways.’
‘That is all you want, darling?’
‘Yes. Except for a few people to look at you. If ever I were in Who’s Who, my Recreation would be “Watching people’s faces when they first catch sight of Sylvia”.’
‘I expect you will be in Who’s Who now. You ought to be.’
‘Watching people’s faces when they first catch sight of Sylvia. That was what I said.’
‘I heard you, darling. Do you really like it so?’
‘Love it. Do you?’
‘Yes . . . Oh, yes.’
‘I often wonder what it must be like.’
‘Would you like to be one, darling?’
‘Just to try. There was once a man who was allowed to be whatever he liked. And he chose to be a marvellous athlete from fifteen to twenty-five, a beautiful woman from twenty-five to thirty-five, a great writer from thirty-five to forty-five, a successful general from forty-five to fifty-five, a world-famous statesman from fifty-five to sixty-five, and a gardener from sixty-five to seventy-five. Then he went to Heaven.’
‘Is that true, darling?’
‘No, not true that he was all those things, but true that somebody wanted to be something like that. I forget who he was, and I forget some of the things, but it would have been a good life. What would you have chosen, Sylvia?’
‘To have married you when you were thirty-five.’
‘And you did. It’s funny; I said it all without thinking, and it would have been just right. Do you like being beautiful, Sylvia?’
‘Oh, I love it, I love it!’
‘You’re the only person who has never really seen how beautiful you are.’
‘You’re the only person who has,’ whispered Sylvia.
The little clock on Sylvia’s mantelpiece ticked—ticked—ticked. Heaven might be just the endless contemplation of beauty. Then the old-fashioned idea of it as eternal adoration and hymn-singing would be right. To see beauty, to adore, to give expression to one’s adoration, is there ecstasy to compare with it. If Heaven is all a garden and Sylvia, thought Reginald, how I shall give praise. . . .
A garden in which all the flowers, just for once, come out at the same time, while the blossom is still upon the trees. . . .
‘What is it, darling?’
‘Nothing, Sylvia.’
‘I thought you weren’t comfortable.’
‘Utterly comfortable.’
‘I love talking to you in bed like this. It’s so alone.’
‘My head on your lovely breast, Sylvia.’
‘Talking is ordinary, and this is so special. I like doing ordinary things, when—when they’re not ordinary.’
‘Nothing you say or do could ever be ordinary.’
‘You think that now.’
‘Yes, I think that now. But now is all that matters.’
‘What will you do when I’m old, darling?’
‘I don’t know, Sylvia. Will you ever grow old?’
‘I’ll try not to, darling. I’ll put it off as long as I can. You won’t mind, will you, if I’m not very clever sometimes. Because all the time I shall be trying to put it off for you.’
‘You’re better than clever. You’re wise.’
‘Am I? I don’t think I know about myself very much.’
‘I’m always thinking about myself.’
‘I expect that’s the difference between us.’
‘I know so little about you, Sylvia. I know nothing about you. I’m not sure that I want to know. It’s part of your beauty that you’re so unknown to me.’
‘Then I shall keep my secret.’
‘Yes . . . keep it, Sylvia.’
‘Do you want to go to sleep, my darling?’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want not to. I’m just happy. And sleepy.’
‘Go to sleep, my darling.’
‘May I stay like this? You’re so beautiful.’
‘Stay like this, my darling.’
‘Stay beautiful, my sweet Sylvia.’
‘I’ll try, my darling. I expect it’s what I’m for.’
About the Author
A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne (Alan Alexander) was born in London in 1882 and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1902 he was Editor of Granta, the University magazine, and moved back to London the following year to enter journalism. By 1906 he was Assistant Editor of Punch, a post which he held until the beginning of the First World War when he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. While in the army in 1917 he started on a career writing plays of which his best known are Mr. Pim Passes By, The Dover Road and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows – Toad of Toad Hall. He married Dorothy de Selincourt in 1913 and in 1920 had a
son, Christopher Robin. By 1924 Milne was a highly successful playwright, and published the first of his four books for children, a set of poems called When We Were Very Young, which he wrote for his son. This was followed by the storybook Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926, more poems in Now We Are Six (1927) and further stories in The House at Pooh Corner (1928). In addition to his now famous works, Milne wrote many novels, volumes of essays, a well known detective story The Red House Mystery and light verse, works which attracted great success at the time. He continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1956.
About Bello
Bello
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Copyright
First published in 1931 by Methuen & Co. Ltd
This edition published 2017 by Bello
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ISBN 978-1-5098-6959-2 EPUB
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Copyright © The Estate of the Late Lesley Milne Limited, 1931
The right of A.A. Milne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons,living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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