XVIII EXCURSION

            Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare!           
          THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

MRS. FOLYAT had her way—as when did she not?—and it was Gertrude, equipped cap-à-pie with new clothes, who went to stay with her uncle William at Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace. Therefore she was not of the party which grew out of Serge’s promise to take Annette into the country on a Saturday. Annette had been unable to keep this entrancing project to herself. Minna had half suggested, half demanded, that she should be of the party. To square the number Serge had asked Basil Haslam, and Minna out of coquetry had invited Herbert Fry, Frederic’s quondam Plymouth comrade, who had turned up on legal business, which, moving slowly, had kept him many weeks, so that, to while away the tedious hours, he had resumed relations with her. He was still “Apollyon,” had an air of great prosperity, flattered Mrs. Folyat up to the eyes, so that he was altogether in her good graces, and she entertained hopes of his carrying Minna back with him to London. (He had told Frederic, but not Mrs. Folyat nor Minna that he was married.) To pair with either Haslam or Fry, as the case might be, Mary was included, and, in compassion for his forlornness in the absence of his “old, old love,” Bennett Lawrie.

Serge paid. Annette made up a great basket of provisions which Bennett Lawrie and Basil Haslam carried between them.

Less than an hour’s journey took them to a great river where they hired two boats—a double-sculler and [Pg 187]a dinghy. Basil Haslam tried to man?uvre Minna into the dinghy, but could not detach her from her “Apollyon,” and was forced to relinquish the little boat to Serge and Annette, who jumped into it while the rest were arguing, pushed off, and rowed away up stream, leaving them to follow in the bigger boat.

“Our party,” said Serge, as he sent the little boat skimming over the water, while Annette dipped her fingers over the side and let the water gurgle up her arm.

“But I’m glad the others came,” answered Annette. “That boy Lawrie looks so pale.”

Serge made her take the rudder lines and taught her how to steer.

“How red your hands are getting,” he said.

“It’s the housework.”

“What a shame!”

“Oh! I like it.”

“Better than governessing?”

“Oh! much, much better. It’s home, you see. And, of course, there’s you. I often sit in your room when you’re not there, and sometimes I look at the things. It must be wonderful to be able to—to draw.”

“Now, why?”

“I don’t quite know, only when you come to beautiful places like this it makes you want to—want to . . .”

“Well?”

“I don’t quite know. . . . It’s like growing . . .”

“That’s quite good. I’d like to know what you think of me, Annette?”

“You’re very puzzling. Sometimes I think you don’t take anything seriously, but then I think it is because you are so different.”

“How different?”

“Not like Frederic.”

Out of the bank near them scuttled a vole, and along and into a hole under the roots of a willow. Annette watched him eagerly, and then returned to Serge, and said:

“Don’t let’s talk about Frederic. I am so happy.”

Serge began to sing. He had very fine deep notes, [Pg 188]but his voice failed him in the upper register, and whenever it cracked he laughed, and when he laughed Annette had to join in. He could never remember any song through to the end, and he invented the most absurd words. Then over a long stretch, as he rowed, he sang a melancholy canoe-song in a minor key that he had heard on the Zambesi. He sang it over and over again.

“I like that,” said Annette. “Do you know, often when I’m in the kitchen I think I’m in a boat sailing away and away. It’s like dreaming, only it goes on and on . . .”

“That’s love.”

“Is it? . . . That’s nonsense. I’m not in love.”

“Not in love, my dear. But it’s love all the same! Your little soul growing and expanding, trying to find an outlet, a channel that will lead it to warmth and the sun . . .”

“You make me feel unhappy when you talk like that.”

“You’re wiser than I am, Annette. You accept things where I think about them.”

“We mustn’t lose the others.”

“We shan’t lose them. They’ll have to come on until they find us. If I thought that Fry was rowing I’d take him ten miles, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”

“You don’t like him.”

“No. Do you?”

“No. But he’s very pleasant.”

“You can admire what you don’t like?”

“I like to admire people. When I’m working it’s pleasant to remember the things they do and say, and the way they say them.”

“So you’re a pleased and uncritical audience of the doings in Fern Square?”

Annette dodged the question. She gave a long sigh, and said:

“I am enjoying myself; but I like best being alone with you. It’s such a glorious day.”

And then she began to tell him some of the stories [Pg 189]she composed about him for Deedy Fender’s benefit. When she had done she added:

“Of course, I never imagined anything like you.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Oh! no.”

They came to a great wood growing down to the water’s edge. Serge ran the boat into the bank and moored her. He filled his pipe and began to smoke, then lay back with his head on the little seat in the bows. Annette sat with her hands in her lap, and they basked in the hot sun and felt that it was very good. The birds were very merry in the trees. In the trees the wind whispered songs gathered from the sea only twenty miles away. Over all blazed the sun. Flies danced above the water. All was harmony and peace.

Round the bend of the river came the other boat. Bennett Lawrie and Basil Haslam were rowing. Mary was steering, and on each side of her were Minna and Herbert Fry.

Fry called out:

“You’ve led us a nice dance. It is an hour past lunch time.”

Serge grinned and shouted pleasantly:

“All the better for eating, my dear.”

The big boat bumped into the dinghy and moored alongside. The luncheon-basket was hauled out, and on the grass under the trees a cloth was spread. They sat round it, and for some time were silent until their hunger began to be appeased.

“At half-past three,” said Serge, “I am going to bathe. Will you join me, Basil?”

Haslam assented.

“What about you, Lawrie?”

“I would like to, only I can’t swim.”

“You can bob up and down in the shallows.”

“I don’t think I will,” said Bennett miserably.

“Some one,” commented Minna, “must stay and look after us. You can’t leave three sisters alone.”

“Fry will protect you from each other,” said Serge.

[Pg 190]

“Delighted,” rejoined Herbert Fry, with a gallant glance at Minna.

Mary said:

“This pie is perfectly delicious, Annette. You certainly make pastry better than any of us.”

“Mary’s first remark to-day,” said Minna, maliciously.

Mary, who had been most amiably disposed, relapsed into silence, then, feeling that she was damping the general cheerfulness, she made another effort and turned to Herbert Fry, and asked him:

“I suppose you find our town very dull after London.”

Herbert Fry replied:

“Of course, you know, London is the only place to live in.”

“It obviously isn’t that,” said Serge, “since there are millions of people who don’t live in it, don’t want to live in it, have never been there, and also many millions who have never heard of it.”

Minna was startled.

“Hullo, Serge! You going to defend our horrid, dirty town?”

“It doesn’t need me to do that. It is quite satisfied with itself. There is really something admirable about its hard, conceited pride. We don’t really belong to it, being parasitic. If we did, we should be like the rest, blinding ourselves with a tragic vanity.”

“Whether I’m a parasite or not,” rejoined Minna, “I’m going to get out of it as soon as I can.”

“So am I,” said Haslam. “I’m going to London at the end of the year. I’ve only been there once, but it is a fine place, and no mistake.”

“I’ve been there twice,” said Minna. “Mary’s been three times. Annette never. Have you been, Bennett?”

Bennett was rather taken aback at being drawn into the conversation. He was rather shy of Minna.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been to London. My father has been. I don’t suppose I shall ever go. It’s such a long way. It must be a wonderful place. I’ve read a lot about it.”

“I don’t think they have nearly such good music as [Pg 191]we have here . . .” Mary had waited very patiently to produce the remark which had been in her mind when she first spoke. She did so with such a flourish that she brought the conversation to an end. Serge wound it up with:

“We didn’t come into the country to talk of towns.”

“No,” said Minna. “We came to have lunch, and a very good lunch it has been.”

She rose to her feet with a whimsical right-and-left glance at Haslam and Fry, as though she were hazarding which to take with her. Both sprang up together as she moved away, but Haslam was the quicker and reached her side first. They disappeared into the woods, and Fry returned sulkily to the rest of the party. Annette began to gather the plates, knives and forks to take them down to the water.

“Shall I help you?” said Serge.

“No, thank you. I think Bennett might, as he’s the youngest.”

Annette had been feeling very sorry for Bennett. He seemed so solitary, so much out of his element, so unable to cope with grown men like Serge and Basil and the lordly Londoner, Fry. He accepted her invitation with obvious relief, took her burden, and carried it down to the water’s edge, under a willow trailing its leaves in the water.

Herbert Fry offered his escort to Mary, and she acquiesced, bridling.

Serge was left alone. He lay on his back and gazed up at the sky—blue, serene, cheering, and comforting. His body relaxed, and he gave himself up to the sweetness of the day’s mood, not without a final drowsy reflection:

“If such a moment of contentment as this is the highest good, and, since it can be procured at the cost of a little physical labour rewarded by a solid meal, what’s the good of all the rest? The answer to that is that one cannot live alone. What a day for love-making!” He laughed. “Everything leads back to that.”

[Pg 192]

He thought of Herbert Fry fobbed off with Mary, and he chuckled. Then he thought of Bennett Lawrie and Annette together by the water. He raised himself up. He could not see them, but he could hear their voices.

“What a day!” he said again, and added “for love-making.”

 

Down by the river Annette and Bennett were at first very shy of each other. In silence she handed him the plates, and he dipped them in the water and handed them back to her and she dried them; then the forks, and when they came to the knives, Bennett thought:

“Why can’t I say something?”

And Annette thought:

“Why can’t I say something?”

She looked out along the shining river, slow-moving under its green banks; never a house, never a boat in sight, and Bennett was bending down entirely engrossed in his occupation. It was his air of complete absorption in everything he did and said (though he never did and never said anything remarkable) that interested her and made her want to know more of him.

At last, when they had finished, very timidly she asked him:

“Are you going to be a clergyman?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” She remembered very vividly his earnestness in her father’s study.

“It costs too much money, you know. And my mother doesn’t believe in me. It wouldn’t be any good if she did, because there isn’t any money.”

Annette could only say again:

“I’m sorry.”

Instead of moving away, she sat down on the bank, and Bennett knelt quite near her. Seeking to explain away her desire to stay, she said:

“It’s so lovely here.”

“It’s not so beautiful as Scotland.”

“Or Westmoreland.”

“Have you been to Scotland?”

[Pg 193]

“I was at school in Edinburgh.”

“My father comes from Scotland.”

They exchanged the histories of their respective fathers. His was a mournful tale of a gradual descent into poverty, and he ended:

“I suppose I shall be a clerk all my life, unless I run away and become an actor.”

“An actor?”

“Yes. I should go to London. I might starve in the beginning, but I’d be a great man in the end. I’d play Shakespeare. Don’t you love Shakespeare?”

“I’ve never read any of his plays.”

“I’d like to read you some. I know some of the speeches by heart.”

And he delivered himself of the oration of Henry V before Harfleur. When that was done he plunged into the address of Othello to the most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, warmed to the words, lost himself, and came to a triumphant close with: “This was the only witchcraft that I used.”

“Who was she?”

“Desdemona. And in the end he smothered her because a beast called Iago told lies about her.”

“You do recite well.”

“I couldn’t recite badly to you.”

“But what will . . . ?”

She was going to ask what Gertrude would do while he starved in London, but she could not force Gertrude’s name to her lips and she broke off the question, and covered her awkwardness by throwing a twig into the water and watching it float down the stream. Bennett seemed to know what she was going to say, for he became suddenly embarrassed and his excited confidence oozed from him. He threw her back on herself by asking:

“What are you going to do?”

“I—I don’t know. Just go on.”

“I couldn’t do that. Anything’s better than just going on.”

“But it’s different for you. You’re a man.”

“Yes,” said Bennett, pleased by the reflection that, [Pg 194]after all, he was a man. “Yes, I suppose it is more difficult for a woman. But I shan’t run away. I shall just go on and on being a clerk all the rest of my life.”

He was appealing to her for pity; in vain. Annette said, cheerfully:

“There must be thousands of men who are clerks, and they can’t all be so wretched.”

“Some people don’t mind, and the rest get used to it. I’m not like that. I want to do things. It isn’t enough just to earn your living. A navvy can do that. A horse does that, or a pony down in a mine.”

“What else can you do?”

“You can fight against darkness, and ugliness, and cruelty, and everything that makes life horrible and ugly and terrifying for children.”

“Oh! for children!”

“Yes. You don’t know what my childhood has been like . . .” And he drew a rapid picture of the loneliness of an imaginative child in a dark unhappy house where no love was. “Even now I’m often afraid of the dark stairs up to the attic where I sleep.”

“Please, please,” said Annette, “don’t talk of it any more. It has all been so dark, and it is so lovely here.”

“It’s odd, but I’ve never talked like that to . . .”

He, like Annette, could not force Gertrude’s name to his lips.

She began to gather the knives and forks. Then she stopped and looked at him. Their eyes met for a second, then his turned away.

“Well?” he said.

Annette was a little troubled as she gave him her answer:

“I do so want you to be happy.”

She left him on that and returned to Serge. He was asleep, lying on one side with his hand over his face. Noiselessly she began to re-pack the basket. When she had done that she stole away into the woods, and caught up by their happy mystery, their joy in the warm air, and the sun she ran down the first path she came to until she reached a little place full of bracken. She flung [Pg 195]herself down on the carpet of dead leaves and looked along under the bracken stalks—the tiny forest under the great—and watched the gleeful play of light and green shadow. It was good to be alive and sweet to be alone.

By the river sat Bennett in an attitude of utter dejection. He tried to tell himself, as so often he had told himself, that he loved Gertrude with a love that should defy death itself, but the idea woke no echo in his heart. It melted not as was its habit. (It had melted for so many, besides Gertrude, with the sick sweet longing of a boy.) The image of Gertrude was cold. It glowed not with its old brilliance of colour. He felt curiously hollow; nothing in either head or heart until he came to Annette’s last words. She wanted him to be happy. He would be. He would be. The words set him stirring in a new way, discovered for him a new direction, and stiffened him up for the journey with a sternness that he had never known before. He was half afraid of himself and yet proud. He felt curiously detached, independent, and strong to face all that had weighed on him so crushingly. . . . He noticed then that Annette had left him, and he went in search of her. He found Serge just waking up, and felt a sudden alarm.

“Annette?” he said.

“I thought she was with you.”

“So she was. But she left me only a few minutes ago.”

“Better find her then. She can’t be gone far. I’m going to bathe. No sign of the others?”

“I haven’t seen them.”

“All right. I’m going to bathe.”

In a few seconds Serge had stripped and ran swiftly across the grass, took a great leap head-foremost over a bramble-bush and splashed into the water. Bennett stood envying him. Serge looked so strong, and he moved so beautifully and easily.

He thought Annette must have gone to look for Minna, and walked slowly into the woods. He had only gone a few yards when he half turned back. He wanted to [Pg 196]be alone. He half wanted to go and bathe with Serge, but vanity forbade that, for he was ashamed that he could not swim. He took Serge’s prowess as a reproach to himself. That stung him into moving, and he wandered down the path between the bracken until he came to a rowan-tree in all the glory of its red berries. He stopped and plucked a handful, thinking he would give them to Annette. He passed on until he came to a little clearing full of wild flowers and heather. These seemed to him more beautiful than the berries. He flung them away and filled his hands with heather and wild flowers.

Looking up he could see the river shining through the trees and rich green woods and blue hills beyond. He moved towards the river.

Presently he heard voices behind a hazel-tree and, peeping, he saw Haslam and Minna sitting hand in hand, he murmuring, she smiling. Then suddenly Haslam caught Minna to him and they kissed.

Bennett stole away, his heart fluttering. What he had seen sent a great emotion rushing through him, but soon it withered and became disgust. He felt a strange futile anger against the couple, an anger so absurd that it mocked him. He had idealised the whole of the Folyat family, and to see Minna like that degraded her. He did not see her in any ridiculous aspect. His conception of love was too boyishly lofty for that, and yet beneath his anger and his feeling of outrage was the sense of the ridiculous, which must accompany any intrusion into the private affairs of another.

Bennett had plenty of imagination, but he had not trained it to run in harness with his observation. His imagination had, so far, only coloured and inflamed the theories he had imbibed during his education concerning human nature, and, as these theories nowhere met the facts, he was perpetually being shocked by his observations. Having, as yet, no experience, his theories remained unassailed. He believed that he loved Gertrude Folyat with a pure and ennobling love, as a man should love a woman; as, in fact, a man may love the Venus de [Pg 197]Milo, a creature of stone. A woman, according to Bennett’s docile acceptance of trite theory, must be a goddess of beauty, purity, and chastity, with never a worldly desire or thought. The woman of his love, in fine, must be the Virgin Mother.

That Gertrude was ten years his senior made it all the easier for him to raise her to this exalted position in his idea. Having achieved this with her, without any reference to her wishes or desires, he had manufactured a halo for each of her sisters as her attendant saints. He had never kissed Gertrude except as a devout person kisses Saint Peter’s toe. He had dreamed of kisses, and had, with unholy joy, conceived a horror of himself as a terrible and immoral young man, so that his vanity also was implicated in this catastrophe of Minna’s downfall. What, at bottom, troubled him most of all was the obvious truth that Minna kissed Basil Haslam because she liked it.

Bennett had such a tussle with his reflections and emotions—he was not far from calling them “the devil”—that he broke into a sweat, and to seek air and coolness for his eyes he made straight for the bank of the river. He had advanced only a few yards when he heard a voice singing:

    Bury me deeply when I am dead,

    With, a stone at my feet and a cross at my head;

    And bury me deep that I ne’er may return

    To the scene of my true love—the brown Scottish burn.

And he heard a splashing of water and, hiding behind the huge trunk of a beech, he looked and saw Annette swinging on the branch of a chestnut tree, her feet dangling to the water and kicking and splashing. She was naked. Her hair was wet and hung limp down to her shoulders. She was as happy as a bird.

Bennett stood rooted. His heart, his whole being melted, and turned away reflections, troubled emotions, all power of thought. He gazed and gazed, and knew that she was beautiful, swinging there under the great leaves of the chestnut. Curiously he thought that she [Pg 198]was not so very unlike a boy. He was fascinated. Up and down she swung her branch, scrambled to her feet and dived. . . . The spell was broken. Bennett covered his face with his hands as he realised what he had done. From the extreme of heat he turned very cold and shivered. He found that he had let his heather and wild flowers fall, picked them up, and rushed away, blindly. He lost himself and wandered for a long time before he found again the grassy plot where they had lunched. At the same moment Minna and Basil Haslam returned. Fry, Mary, and Serge were sitting, and Annette was busy boiling the kettle for tea. Entirely oblivious of every one else Bennett went straight up to Annette and held out the wild flowers and heather.

“I brought you these,” he said, without looking at her.

“The poor flowers are dead,” replied Annette, “but the heather is lovely. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” echoed Bennett.

Annette’s hair was still down her back and wet. She caught him gazing at it.

“I had such a lovely swim,” she said.

“The woods,” said Bennett, “are very beautiful.”

Annette was really grateful to him for giving her the flowers. No one had ever done as much for her before. She said:

“If you like you can row me home in the little boat.”

Bennett was filled with alarm and he gazed miserably at her. He longed to accept, but he was terrified. He was roused from his dilemma by Basil Haslam, who, overhearing Annette’s remark, called out:

“The dinghy’s mine and Minna’s.”

This he said for the benefit of Herbert Fry, who turned and looked, dog-like, upward at Minna.

A large chuckle escaped Serge.

 

In the evening, as they turned westward under a glorious sunset, Bennett elected to sit in the bows of the bigger boat. Fry and Serge rowed, and Annette and Minna sat in the stern. Bennett dreamed vaguely. His blood ran warmly through his veins, his brain glowed, [Pg 199]and the wind and the water sang to him. He was satisfied as he had never been. When he thought of Minna and Haslam it was with a drowsy, delicious envy. To be together, gently gliding down the river with the evening shadows chasing each other under the trees. To be together—in a little boat—he and Annette . . . Annette . . . Annette . . .

In her lap Annette fingered the heather and wild flowers that Bennett had given her and smiled softly to herself. Serge saw her smile, and said:

“Happy?”

“Oh! yes.”

To Bennett her voice sounded distant and very lovely, and it seemed to him that she was speaking to him, for him.

Presently they passed the little boat nestling by the bank under a plane-tree. Mary called out:

“You’ll be late.”

There came no reply.

They were late. It was half-past twelve before Minna reached home. The household was asleep and Serge had stayed up for her. He said:

“Hardly wise to be so late.”

“We missed the train.”

“Two or three. Just as well you didn’t miss the last.”

Minna smiled.

“Why?”

“I don’t think you ought to use Haslam as a decoy for Fry. He’s too good for it.”

“I think you’re a beast, Serge.”

“Am I? We shall see.”

“Fry’s married. Frederic told me.”

“I don’t think that makes a ha’porth of difference—to you or to him.”

“It isn’t your affair.”

“I agree.”

“And, anyhow, you’re quite wrong. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”