He had moved her at last. She whispered to herself hurriedly. “It is tempting— “ And those three words threw him into a tumult of joy. What was tempting to her? After all was the greatest of things possible? Perhaps, after long estrangement, after much tragedy, the South had brought them together in the end. That laughter in the theatre, those silver stars in the purple sky, even the violets of a departed spring, all had helped, and sorrow had helped also, and so had tenderness to others.
“It is tempting,” she repeated, “not to be mysterious. I’ve wanted often to tell you, and then been afraid. I could never tell any one else, certainly no woman, and I think you’re the one man who might understand and not be disgusted.”
“Are you lonely?” he whispered. “Is it anything like that?”
“Yes.” The train seemed to shake him towards her. He was resolved that though a dozen people were looking, he would yet take her in his arms. “I’m terribly lonely, or I wouldn’t speak. I think you must know already.” Their faces were crimson, as if the same thought was surging through them both.
“Perhaps I do.” He came close to her. “Perhaps I could speak instead. But if you will say the word plainly you’ll never be sorry; I will thank you for it all my life.”
She said plainly, “That I love him.” Then she broke down. Her body was shaken with sobs, and lest there should be any doubt she cried between the sobs for Gino! Gino! Gino!
He heard himself remark “Rather! I love him too! When I can forget how he hurt me that evening. Though whenever we shake hands— “ One of them must have moved a step or two, for when she spoke again she was already a little way apart.
“You’ve upset me.” She stifled something that was perilously near hysterics. “I thought I was past all this. You’re taking it wrongly. I’m in love with Gino — don’t pass it off — I mean it crudely — you know what I mean. So laugh at me.”
“Laugh at love?” asked Philip.
“Yes. Pull it to pieces. Tell me I’m a fool or worse — that he’s a cad. Say all you said when Lilia fell in love with him. That’s the help I want. I dare tell you this because I like you — and because you’re without passion; you look on life as a spectacle; you don’t enter it; you only find it funny or beautiful. So I can trust you to cure me. Mr. Herriton, isn’t it funny?” She tried to laugh herself, but became frightened and had to stop. “He’s not a gentleman, nor a Christian, nor good in any way. He’s never flattered me nor honoured me. But because he’s handsome, that’s been enough. The son of an Italian dentist, with a pretty face.” She repeated the phrase as if it was a charm against passion. “Oh, Mr. Herriton, isn’t it funny!” Then, to his relief, she began to cry. “I love him, and I’m not ashamed of it. I love him, and I’m going to Sawston, and if I mayn’t speak about him to you sometimes, I shall die.”
In that terrible discovery Philip managed to think not of himself but of her. He did not lament. He did not even speak to her kindly, for he saw that she could not stand it. A flippant reply was what she asked and needed — something flippant and a little cynical. And indeed it was the only reply he could trust himself to make.
“Perhaps it is what the books call ‘a passing fancy’?”
She shook her head. Even this question was too pathetic. For as far as she knew anything about herself, she knew that her passions, once aroused, were sure. “If I saw him often,” she said, “I might remember what he is like. Or he might grow old. But I dare not risk it, so nothing can alter me now.”
“Well, if the fancy does pass, let me know.” After all, he could say what he wanted.
“Oh, you shall know quick enough— “
“But before you retire to Sawston — are you so mighty sure?”
“What of?” She had stopped crying. He was treating her exactly as she had hoped.
“That you and he— “ He smiled bitterly at the thought of them together. Here was the cruel antique malice of the gods, such as they once sent forth against Pasiphae. Centuries of aspiration and culture — and the world could not escape it. “I was going to say — whatever have you got in common?”
“Nothing except the times we have seen each other.” Again her face was crimson. He turned his own face away.
“Which — which times?”
“The time I thought you weak and heedless, and went instead of you to get the baby. That began it, as far as I know the beginning. Or it may have begun when you took us to the theatre, and I saw him mixed up with music and light. But didn’t understand till the morning. Then you opened the door — and I knew why I had been so happy. Afterwards, in the church, I prayed for us all; not for anything new, but that we might just be as we were — he with the child he loved, you and I and Harriet safe out of the place — and that I might never see him or speak to him again. I could have pulled through then — the thing was only coming near, like a wreath of smoke; it hadn’t wrapped me round.”
“But through my fault,” said Philip solemnly, “he is parted from the child he loves. And because my life was in danger you came and saw him and spoke to him again.” For the thing was even greater than she imagined. Nobody but himself would ever see round it now. And to see round it he was standing at an immense distance. He could even be glad that she had once held the beloved in her arms.
“Don’t talk of ‘faults.’ You’re my friend for ever, Mr. Herriton, I think. Only don’t be charitable and shift or take the blame. Get over supposing I’m refined. That’s what puzzles you. Get over that.”
As he spoke she seemed to be transfigured, and to have indeed no part with refinement or unrefinement any longer. Out of this wreck there was revealed to him something indestructible — something which she, who had given it, could never take away.
“I say again, don’t be charitable. If he had asked me, I might have given myself body and soul. That would have been the end of my rescue party. But all through he took me for a superior being — a goddess. I who was worshipping every inch of him, and every word he spoke. And that saved me.”
Philip’s eyes were fixed on the Campanile of Airolo. But he saw instead the fair myth of Endymion. This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened.
“Thank you,” was all that he permitted himself. “Thank you for everything.”
She looked at him with great friendliness, for he had made her life endurable. At that moment the train entered the San Gothard tunnel. They hurried back to the carriage to close the windows lest the smuts should get into Harriet’s eyes.
THE END
THE LONGEST JOURNEY
This novel was published in 1907 and was Forster’s professed favourite of his five completed novels. The story explores the possibility that an instinctive and determined empathy between human subjects might be the basis for overcoming social barriers, especially of class, as well as providing a redemptive replacement for a waning religious belief – a theme that would find its fullest fruition in Forster’s later novel Howards End (1910). The three-part structure, with each dominated, symbolically or literally, by a different geographic location, also foreshadows the structure of Forster’s final work, A Passage to India (1924).
Broadly speaking, the novel can be seen as a bildungsroman – a genre that narrates the life and development of one particular character. In this case, that character is Rickie Eliot, an idealistic, orphaned Cambridge graduate with a club foot, whose unhappy childhood influences the whole course of his life. The novel tells the story of Rickie’s developing relationship with his wife Agnes, his working class half-brother Stephen and his best friend Ansell – relationships that come to determine his attitudes to life, history and society, as well as the interconnectedness of all of
these.
Despite Forster’s fondness for the novel, the cryptic and unresolved nature of the philosophical and social questions it raises have frustrated many critics. Others, however, have found that its realist mode of storytelling and Forster’s characteristically humane outlook help to make the novel’s underlying themes all the more compelling.
The novel’s title comes from Shelley’s poem Epipsychidion and is a metaphor for the unhappy marriage at the heart of the story.
The first edition
CONTENTS
PART 1 — CAMBRIDGE
PART 2 — SAWSTON
PART 3 — WILTSHIRE
Figsbury Rings, near Salisbury, were the inspiration for the Iron Age hill fort of Cadbury Rings in Forster’s novel
PART 1 — CAMBRIDGE
I
“The cow is there,” said Ansell, lighting a match and holding it out over the carpet. No one spoke. He waited till the end of the match fell off. Then he said again, “She is there, the cow. There, now.”
“You have not proved it,” said a voice.
“I have proved it to myself.”
“I have proved to myself that she isn’t,” said the voice. “The cow is not there.” Ansell frowned and lit another match.
“She’s there for me,” he declared. “I don’t care whether she’s there for you or not. Whether I’m in Cambridge or Iceland or dead, the cow will be there.”
It was philosophy. They were discussing the existence of objects. Do they exist only when there is some one to look at them? Or have they a real existence of their own? It is all very interesting, but at the same time it is difficult. Hence the cow. She seemed to make things easier. She was so familiar, so solid, that surely the truths that she illustrated would in time become familiar and solid also. Is the cow there or not? This was better than deciding between objectivity and subjectivity. So at Oxford, just at the same time, one was asking, “What do our rooms look like in the vac.?”
“Look here, Ansell. I’m there — in the meadow — the cow’s there. You’re there — the cow’s there. Do you agree so far?” “Well?”
“Well, if you go, the cow stops; but if I go, the cow goes. Then what will happen if you stop and I go?”
Several voices cried out that this was quibbling.
“I know it is,” said the speaker brightly, and silence descended again, while they tried honestly to think the matter out.
Rickie, on whose carpet the matches were being dropped, did not like to join in the discussion. It was too difficult for him. He could not even quibble. If he spoke, he should simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen, and to watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the window-seat into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too, and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the kitchen-men with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food for one — that must be for the geographical don, who never came in for Hall; cold food for three, apparently at half-a-crown a head, for some one he did not know; hot food, a la carte — obviously for the ladies haunting the next staircase; cold food for two, at two shillings — going to Ansell’s rooms for himself and Ansell, and as it passed under the lamp he saw that it was meringues again. Then the bedmakers began to arrive, chatting to each other pleasantly, and he could hear Ansell’s bedmaker say, “Oh dang!” when she found she had to lay Ansell’s tablecloth; for there was not a breath stirring. The great elms were motionless, and seemed still in the glory of midsummer, for the darkness hid the yellow blotches on their leaves, and their outlines were still rounded against the tender sky. Those elms were Dryads — so Rickie believed or pretended, and the line between the two is subtler than we admit. At all events they were lady trees, and had for generations fooled the college statutes by their residence in the haunts of youth.
But what about the cow? He returned to her with a start, for this would never do. He also would try to think the matter out. Was she there or not? The cow. There or not. He strained his eyes into the night.
Either way it was attractive. If she was there, other cows were there too. The darkness of Europe was dotted with them, and in the far East their flanks were shining in the rising sun. Great herds of them stood browsing in pastures where no man came nor need ever come, or plashed knee-deep by the brink of impassable rivers. And this, moreover, was the view of Ansell. Yet Tilliard’s view had a good deal in it. One might do worse than follow Tilliard, and suppose the cow not to be there unless oneself was there to see her. A cowless world, then, stretched round him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field, and, click! it would at once become radiant with bovine life.
Suddenly he realized that this, again, would never do. As usual, he had missed the whole point, and was overlaying philosophy with gross and senseless details. For if the cow was not there, the world and the fields were not there either. And what would Ansell care about sunlit flanks or impassable streams? Rickie rebuked his own groveling soul, and turned his eyes away from the night, which had led him to such absurd conclusions.
The fire was dancing, and the shadow of Ansell, who stood close up to it, seemed to dominate the little room. He was still talking, or rather jerking, and he was still lighting matches and dropping their ends upon the carpet. Now and then he would make a motion with his feet as if he were running quickly backward upstairs, and would tread on the edge of the fender, so that the fire-irons went flying and the buttered-bun dishes crashed against each other in the hearth. The other philosophers were crouched in odd shapes on the sofa and table and chairs, and one, who was a little bored, had crawled to the piano and was timidly trying the Prelude to Rhinegold with his knee upon the soft pedal. The air was heavy with good tobacco-smoke and the pleasant warmth of tea, and as Rickie became more sleepy the events of the day seemed to float one by one before his acquiescent eyes. In the morning he had read Theocritus, whom he believed to be the greatest of Greek poets; he had lunched with a merry don and had tasted Zwieback biscuits; then he had walked with people he liked, and had walked just long enough; and now his room was full of other people whom he liked, and when they left he would go and have supper with Ansell, whom he liked as well as any one. A year ago he had known none of these joys. He had crept cold and friendless and ignorant out of a great public school, preparing for a silent and solitary journey, and praying as a highest favour that he might be left alone. Cambridge had not answered his prayer. She had taken and soothed him, and warmed him, and had laughed at him a little, saying that he must not be so tragic yet awhile, for his boyhood had been but a dusty corridor that led to the spacious halls of youth. In one year he had made many friends and learnt much, and he might learn even more if he could but concentrate his attention on that cow.
The fire had died down, and in the gloom the man by the piano ventured to ask what would happen if an objective cow had a subjective calf. Ansell gave an angry sigh, and at that moment there was a tap on the door.
“Come in!” said Rickie.
The door opened. A tall young woman stood framed in the light that fell from the passage.
“Ladies!” whispered every-one in great agitation.
“Yes?” he said nervously, limping towards the door (he was rather lame). “Yes? Please come in. Can I be any good— “
“Wicked boy!” exclaimed the young lady, advancing a gloved finger into the room. “Wicked, wicked boy!”
He clasped his head with his hands.
“Agnes! Oh how perfectly awful!”
“Wicked, intolerable boy!” She turned on the electric light. The philosophers were revealed with unpleasing suddenness. “My goodness, a tea-party! Oh really, Rickie, you are too bad! I say again: wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I’ll have you horsewhipped. If you please” — she turned to the symposium, which had now risen to its feet “If you please, he asks me and my brother for the week-end. We accept. At the station, no Rickie. We drive to where his old lodgings were — Trumpery Road or some such name — and he’s left them. I’m furious, and before
I can stop my brother, he’s paid off the cab and there we are stranded. I’ve walked — walked for miles. Pray can you tell me what is to be done with Rickie?”
“He must indeed be horsewhipped,” said Tilliard pleasantly. Then he made a bolt for the door.
“Tilliard — do stop — let me introduce Miss Pembroke — don’t all go!” For his friends were flying from his visitor like mists before the sun. “Oh, Agnes, I am so sorry; I’ve nothing to say. I simply forgot you were coming, and everything about you.”
“Thank you, thank you! And how soon will you remember to ask where Herbert is?”
“Where is he, then?”
“I shall not tell you.”
“But didn’t he walk with you?”
“I shall not tell, Rickie. It’s part of your punishment. You are not really sorry yet. I shall punish you again later.”
She was quite right. Rickie was not as much upset as he ought to have been. He was sorry that he had forgotten, and that he had caused his visitors inconvenience. But he did not feel profoundly degraded, as a young man should who has acted discourteously to a young lady. Had he acted discourteously to his bedmaker or his gyp, he would have minded just as much, which was not polite of him.
“First, I’ll go and get food. Do sit down and rest. Oh, let me introduce— “
Ansell was now the sole remnant of the discussion party. He still stood on the hearthrug with a burnt match in his hand. Miss Pembroke’s arrival had never disturbed him.
“Let me introduce Mr. Ansell — Miss Pembroke.”
Works of E M Forster Page 16
