XXII LOVE

          Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life.         
          ANDREW MARVELL

WITH consummate skill Gertrude invented contrivances to conceal the change that had come about in her affairs and feelings, but, as she never deceived herself, she deceived no one else either. However, everybody pretended to be deceived, and painlessly her engagement with Bennett Lawrie was allowed to fade out of existence. He came less and less to the house until the transformation in his status was complete, and then he came more and more.

Gertrude grew restless, her unease infected her mother, who had begun to tire of Fern Square and to think it and its neighbourhood squalid. The Clibran-Bells had left Fern Square and gone to a more expensive and more modern house in the select neighbourhood of Burdley Park. Little hints were thrown out, but nothing definite was said to Francis, until he expressed a desire to enlarge his greenhouse in the back garden and return to his old pastime of gardening. He had tired of reading. He could not bring himself to tackle new books, and the old had lost the potency of their appeal. His parish work was organised into a comfortable routine, so that he had plenty of leisure, and he disliked being left alone with tobacco and his thoughts. Gradually he had fallen into a nearer companionship with his wife, reading and discussing her foolish books with her and every evening playing three games of bezique and allowing her to win. He wanted [Pg 228]some new form of activity, and one day, the post bringing a seedsman’s catalogue, he found what he wanted. He would grow ferns and bulbs and fuchsias and geraniums and cactuses and have a very pleasant refuge from any malign stroke that fate might be keeping in store for him.

Near the Clibran-Bells Gertrude found a house with a large conservatory, and, all leaping to the prospect of a change, the decision was come to, the remainder of the Fern Square lease disposed of, and the household was moved. The new house was one room smaller than the old. Serge took a studio at the top of a huge caravanserai of offices near the Town Hall Square and arranged to live there. He had painted a portrait of Mrs. Clibran-Bell which had brought him a commission or two, and he regarded himself as sufficiently opulent to pay the not very exorbitant rent.

The removal took place in March, and a very pleasant house-warming was held. Gertrude sent out the invitations and expressly did not invite Bennett Lawrie. He turned up all the same, more silent, melancholy and romantical than ever. He sat in a corner and spoke to nobody, and looked so entirely dejected that at last Minna took pity on him, smiled her sweetest, and said:

“Why do you always play the skeleton at the feast? Are you really thinking of death or only of what there is for supper?”

“I didn’t know I looked like that,” answered Bennett with an effort. “I was feeling rather happy listening to you all.”

“Looking on,” said Minna, “is a dreadfully bad habit. Whenever I do it, I always find myself wondering who is going to be married to whom, or, at any rate, who is in love with whom, and how it is all going to turn out. That is too horribly depressing. It is much better to be an airy trifler. Why don’t you try a little airy trifling?”

“You can’t do it alone.”

“That is quite good. . . . Now then—one—two—three—hop.”

“I really couldn’t trifle with you, Minna.”

This was true. The memory of the day by the river [Pg 229]was much too vivid. Bennett was nothing if not rigidly monogamous. Minna did not know that. This new game, which had never occurred to her before, amused her. She went on:

“But you’re doing it quite nicely.”

Bennett dropped back into the darkest gloom. He began to feel angry with her and said savagely:

“Am I?”

“Indeed you are. And as you ain’t going to be a little clergyman, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does. It always matters.”

“It only matters if—shall I say it?”

“You generally say what you feel inclined to say.”

“It only matters if our little gentleman is in love.”

Bennett scowled. Minna went on with her banter until Annette came into the room with a tray bearing lemonade and claret. Bennett sprang up and hurried to meet her. Minna laughed and nodded to Basil Haslam to come and take Bennett’s seat. When he had done so, she said:

“Have you ever noticed my little sister, Annette?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“She is over there, by that young Lawrie.”

“Young idiot.”

“What do you think of her?”

“She is looking quite pretty. Has she done her hair differently?”

“No, nothing is different.”

“Excitement, perhaps.”

“Per—haps.”

Basil turned to Minna. He was not interested in Annette.

“Minna, you look . . .”

“Ta, ta, ta . . . Are we to have it all over again?”

“Yes. Every time I see you. It’s not long before I go away now. Will you come with me? I can do better with you than without.”

“You don’t know. You have never lived with me. I should hate being really poor in a house of my own.”

“I’d make you rich with love.”

[Pg 230]

“And feed me with it and clothe me, and feed and clothe an enormous family?”

“We shouldn’t have an enormous family at once. I’ll make you rich before there are . . .”

Minna tapped his hand with amused affection, got up and left him. She went and stood near Bennett and Annette and she heard him say:

“Thank you for wearing them.”

She saw then that Annette was wearing two little red roses in her bosom.

“It was kind of you to send them,” said Annette.

“I hardly dared,” said Bennett. “I didn’t know if I might. I never see you now.”

Annette looked up at him between fear and delight. His mournful eyes met hers, and with a small envy Minna saw that they were entirely oblivious of everybody in the room. Annette’s lips pouted. A little sigh escaped her. She turned and hurried away.

Basil Haslam came up, took Minna rather roughly by the arm and dragged her away to sit on the stairs. In her heart she was pleased by his masterfulness, but superficially she was irritated, and they sat quarrelling.

The party engaged two rooms, one for cards and one for music. The room in which Bennett stood began to fill as Mary produced her violin. Annette returned from the kitchen with biscuits, sandwiches, cakes and a trifle, and when she had disposed them on the table she turned to Bennett and said:

“Come.”

He followed her.

She led the way into the little back garden, where, in a plot of grimy grass, grew a sycamore-tree. At the end of the garden was a decayed old summer-house of rustic wood. Bennett’s heart thumped as they approached it. They entered and stood for a moment in the darkness, glad of it. Tears came to his eyes. He could not see her. His hands groped in the darkness and soon found hers, warm, trembling. Very gently he drew her to him and kissed her forehead and her hair many times. Closer and closer she pressed to him, her hand went up to his shoulder. [Pg 231]He felt enormous strength come to him; the faintest little cry came from her and their lips met.

For each it was the first kiss of the beloved, a greater joy than either had dreamed of, and therefore almost more pain than joy. Holding her to him, Bennett murmured:

“Annette, love, I love you.”

And she gave little crooning sounds and was the first to kiss again.

Presently they crept back to the house and stole into the rooms again, Bennett looking more miserable and feeling more aloof than ever. Minna saw that Annette’s roses were crushed, so that one of them had lost its petals. Annette’s lips were red and her eyes shone with a new light. Bennett sought Minna and stood in silence by her side. Minna turned to him and said tartly:

“Annette is looking quite pretty to-night, isn’t she?”

“Is she?” Bennett’s voice quavered.

“I should advise you, as a friend, to make yourself very amiable to Ma.”

“I have always,” said Bennett, “had a great respect for Mrs. Folyat.”

“Bah!” answered Minna. “You take yourself much too seriously. You’ll never learn the wisdom of running away.”

“I ran away from you.”

“Of course you did; because I never take you seriously.”

Bennett said with asperity:

“You never take anything seriously. Some day you’ll have to.”

“Pooh!” Minna tossed her head and laughed. “I shall always know when to run away.”

Feeling that the remark was idiotic and inappropriate Bennett closed with:

“The world is very beautiful.”

“Great heavens! We shall have you writing poetry next!”

Bennett went very red. He had already written much poetry, as Minna well knew, for she had purloined and [Pg 232]read many of his effusions to Gertrude. She wondered if it would be going too far to quote, decided that it would, and mentally adapted certain verses to meet the new circumstances.

Bennett was called away to take a hand at whist—he was a fair player—and to pass out of the room he had to go by Annette. He avoided looking at her, but she followed him with her eyes, and, turning, met Minna’s gaze, curious and mischievous. Minna saw her expression harden into pride and defiance, and it was Minna who looked away.

The party was very late in breaking up, and as Bennett was putting on his overcoat Annette came and helped him. He turned to her and they smiled at each other. She said:

“Serge is going to make a picture of me. I begin to-morrow, at his studio.”

“I’ll write to you—then, if I may.”

Annette was called away by her mother, very peevish and anxious to go to bed. She caught Bennett’s hand, pressed it to her bosom and ran away.

“Good night,” he murmured, and when he was out in the street, walking home, he whispered to himself:

“Good night, my love.”

 

With the two crushed roses in her hand Annette slept like a child, hardly stirring all night, smiling. She had prayed to God, as usual, for her father and mother, and had particularly begged Him to bless her love.

Bennett on the other hand had suffered from a violent reaction. He hardly slept, or, when he did so, it was to dream feverishly, seeing himself in ignominious positions with no clothes on, in church, for instance, or at his office. His thoughts flopped like frogs in a pond; his emotions whirled, rushed in a flood up to the memory of that moment of ecstasy, but were driven back by other memories, the Jew, Kraus, Annette by the river, Minna and Haslam. He wanted so terribly to understand, but he could not. He longed for nothing but to be with Annette, to give her all her desire, to rescue her, fly with her. . . . [Pg 233]He fell asleep. In a chariot with swift horses he drove along a wild, dismal road. Clothed all in brightness he found Annette under a gallow’s tree. Three bodies hung on it and swung in the wind, but she was singing a beautiful song. She mounted into the chariot, and away they sped, so fast, so fast, that presently they soared, and then down they came with the air rushing in their ears. Soon the road caught them again. There were hedges on either side of it now. They grew and grew, taller, taller, taller. It was very dark. Soon he saw that they were in a church. The chariot vanished. Annette vanished. He was alone in a dark empty church, and with a bitter cry he exclaimed . . . He awoke, shivering. He had thrown the bed-clothes off and torn his night-dress from his body. He was so unhappy that he began to cry. Utterly exhausted he fell asleep.

He was late in the morning, dull and dead. The monotonous day’s work in the office soothed him. It was not until he left that he thought again of Annette and remembered that he had not written to her as he promised. He went round to Serge’s studio and found him smoking and surveying the rough beginnings of a charcoal drawing of Annette.

“Hullo! sir,” said Serge. “Anything wrong? You look as though you’d seen a whole car-load of ghosts.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” answered Bennett. “Sometimes I don’t.”

“That’s nonsense at your age. How old are you?”

“Nearly twenty.”

They talked for a little, but Bennett hardly heard what Serge was saying. He went away soon and made no response to Serge’s invitation to come again. When he reached home he locked himself into the dining-room—his father was out—and wrote to Annette. He made no sort of opening, but plunged directly:

“I do not know what to write. I love you. I hate myself. I cannot even tell you how much or why. Something in me is entirely changed, something of me is gone altogether Nothing exists but you. Everything else is hard and cruel and dark. I dreamed of you last [Pg 234]night. I dreamed I had lost you. Have I? I went to look for you to-day. Oh! Annette, I can’t write any more.”

He did not sign it. He hurried it into an envelope when there came a knocking at the door. The letter was shuffled into his pocket and he went to the door and called:

“Who is it?”

In a very soft voice came:

“Tibby.”

He opened to her. She had his night-shirt in her hand. She closed the door and said:

“You’ve torn your shift.”

“Yes. I tore it in my sleep.”

“Poor laddie,” she said. “If I could do aught to help ye I would. Ye’re a poor solitary body. . . . It’s this house and the misery that’s not of your making.”

Bennett looked at her and the kindness in her eyes made him burst into tears. She patted his shoulders, went away into the kitchen and came back with a glass of milk and some biscuits. She saw that he ate and drank, and Bennett said:

“Thank you. I feel better . . . Tibby, why don’t people understand what they are?”

“God knows,” said she. “It’s all a great mystery. There’s a deal of unkindness, and a little kindness in the world. It’s not given to us to understand.”

“Tibby—” he paused. “Tibby, would you love me whatever I did?”

“Surely. You’re one of my bairns.”

Bennett kissed her. Then he went and posted his letter.

 

Annette came to meet him next day as he left his office. They had a long walk and were altogether happy, laughing and discovering little jokes that they could share—odd names on the shop-fronts, queer folk in the streets, strange advertisements on the placards. He left her near her home. He had so loved being alone with her that he had no wish to see her with her family. Also he was afraid of Minna. She spoiled everything.

[Pg 235]

Only one evening a week could Annette give to him, but they had Saturday afternoon and Sundays. She knew very little of the town, and, though he had little pride in it, it was a delight to him to show her such beauties as it had—the Zoological Gardens, the Art Gallery, the Reference Library, the School, the College, Humphrey Bodham’s Hospital, the parks, the elegant southern suburbs. They shared it all, and sharing made everything beautiful. Always he found her more wonderful. Her simple trust in him strengthened him, dissipated the mists and dark shadows of his mind, made him, what he had never been, a boy. He could laugh with her.

All the rest of his life seemed small and unimportant. Often at home he sang aloud and talked to himself until his mother rebuked him. Then he would atone by performing all sorts of little services for her. In the office he felt that the silly day’s work could be done in ten minutes—nine o’clock, work till a quarter past, send the whole world whizzing round, and then away to Annette. . . . But Annette’s days were long and laborious, and the presiding powers at the office demanded his attendance from nine till five. He found his work easier and quite interesting. He began dimly to perceive a purpose in its processes. Talk with one or two of the elder men enlightened him. A great deal of what they said seemed absurd to him. The world did not exist for business. It existed for Annette. He had a trembling desire to tell them so . . . One man told him that though immense fortunes had been made in the cotton trade, they were a mere trifle compared with the misery that had been created in the making of them. “But that,” said the man gloomily, “is the way of the world. It’s happened so often that nobody worries when it happens again. All business is dirty business. A man must live, though I can never understand why.” . . . Such pessimism seemed utterly absurd to Bennett. He did not want to understand why. He had only a general desire to be pleasant to everybody, and became so willing and busy and obliging that his superiors began to reverse their opinion of [Pg 236]him. They had thought him conceited, reserved, and, at bottom, stupid. One of the senior clerks went out of his way to speak a few encouraging words to him. Such a thing had never happened before, and Bennett rushed away to Annette to tell her that the ball was at his feet, and he would quickly make his fortune, and then he would call for her one day, and they would be married by the bishop and for ever and ever they would live in a delicious dream. They were always making plans, and living in them, in a future that was so near the present as to be almost indistinguishable from it. There was no past. They ignored obstacles and impediments, lived in and for each other, and it seemed that it had always been so.

They hardly ever kissed each other in those young days. When they did so they set stirring in each other forces that instinctively they felt to be dangerous. What they had was so very precious, just the few hours every week of unclouded happiness. Always—wet or fine—they were out of doors, wandering blindly, oblivious of all else save each other. They would take meals in their pockets the more to be independent.

As the result of one long walk in the rain Annette fell ill and was in bed for a fortnight. She filled all Bennett’s thoughts. He dared not write to her, and only once was he bold enough to go and make enquiries of Minna. The outside world began to close in upon him and to insist that he should bring his image of his beloved into some more proportionate relation with it. Much of the glamour left her, but she was not the less precious to him. Rather more; but in a new way, a simpler way, more easy to grasp. His intelligence began to play about her, to appreciate her directness—(how marvellous that was compared with everything else that he had had!)—her honesty, her confiding loyalty, her skill in bending to his mood, and discarding everything that might interfere with their happiness. . . . Days of gold and summer sun, young, green days, all warm and busy with new life. . . . Then, one evening as he sat by the window of his attic, looking across the miles of roofs in the direction where [Pg 237]she lay, she began to appear to him in yet another way. He harked back to the night of their first kiss, and he felt again the warmth of her body in its triumphant surrender. He was half terrified by the new flood of warmth that ran through him, and he put his hands over his eyes as if to shut out what he was seeing. He became wholly afraid and ran downstairs to seek company.

He turned to his religion and scourged himself with the most na?vely terrible thoughts of hell and damnation. This only had the effect of a bellows on hot iron: his imagination became white hot, and not Annette, but Woman obsessed him. Against that he could only set Annette and her love: the only pure threads of his life. He was sick and lean for love of her when he saw her again.

She was white and large-eyed. Her mother was present. He could only press her hand. How their two hands trembled as they touched!

Her first excursion was to Serge’s studio, where the portrait had been left unfinished. Bennett met her there, and, after the sitting, they had a long silent walk, arm in arm.

“I thought of you all the time,” said she.

“And I of you . . .” He was troubled. “Oh! Annette!”

He took her hand and, in the street as they were, kissed it over and over again.

 

She went away to the sea and Serge with her. She liked being with Serge, but even to him she could not declare herself. Under the warm sun with the strong air blowing over salt from the sea she quickly became well again, but all her longing was to get back. She was uneasy. When she had last seen Bennett she had felt that some of the glamour and delight had gone from him. He had changed. She must change with him. He had gone on. Gone deeper. She must go with him. She had never been trained to think. She never reasoned any difficulty out. All her perception of her circumstances came to her in flashes. . . . It was not long before she [Pg 238]had caught Bennett up. She was not afraid, but only glad to be with him once more. She was proud of the new horizon that had opened to her. When health came back to her she was a woman.

One evening as she sat with Serge on the sands gazing at the moon peeping above the sea and silvering the waves she said:

“Serge, tell me, have you ever been in love?”

“Often.”

“Happily?”

“Happily and unhappily. It doesn’t matter much. The great thing is to love.”

“What is love?”

“A great thing, but not the be-all and end-all of existence as so many people try to believe. The greatest things lie beyond it.”

“Then you must go through it to get at them.”

“Exactly. Most people stick in the middle, or remain shivering on the wrong side.”

“Like Frederic?”

“Like Frederic.”

“I used to hate Frederic, but now I’m only sorry for him.”

“What’s come to you?”

She shivered.

“It’s very cold. Can I go home to-morrow?”

“If you like. Do you want to?”

“I must.”

 

She returned to the house in Burdley Park next morning, but it was some days before she informed Bennett of her arrival. He came hot-foot as soon as he had her letter, and there was an air of dogged determination about him and the embarrassment of one who has a vital topic to approach. He had made a compromise between his mental torment and his religious scruples and come to the idea of marriage, and the idea had taken complete possession of him so that he saw nothing else. The vision of the future to which it led was sufficiently entrancing to make him unwilling to look elsewhere. He [Pg 239]did try to contemplate the future without that step, but it stretched intolerably blank. He needed action. The upheaval that had taken place in him had set him growing mentally and spiritually; in his office, in his house, he was hurt at every turn, bumping into corners where none had been before. He saw in marriage perfect freedom. It was an illusion, but he was wholly deceived by it. He saw it as a summit of achievement from which he could defy all that he had suffered all his life. He said to Annette:

“Annette, I love you. I want you to marry me. We shall be very poor, but we shall have each other, and nothing else matters.”

This he said to convince himself. Annette did not need convincing. She believed.

“No,” she said, “nothing else matters.”

He had hardly expected such instant compliance. For a moment it shook the firmness of his conviction and blurred his vision of the free future. He told himself that their present existence was intolerable and must not be suffered to continue.

Excitedly they made their plans. They believed that it was their affair and theirs only. They saw the outside world as harsh and menacing and devoid of understanding, were seared by it, and used their fears to fortify their resolve.

“Another month,” said Bennett, “and we shall be man and wife.”

“I love you,” said Annette. It was the first time the words had passed her lips.

When Bennett had paid the expenses of the ceremony in an out-of-the-way church and the price of the ring and their wedding-dinner in a restaurant near his office he had exactly thirty-shillings left until the end of the month. Annette returned to her home until he should have found a lodging for her, and he engaged himself to break the news to his mother at the first fitting moment; fixed, in his own mind, at that when he should next receive his monthly salary of seven pounds.

He anticipated a storm, but, being still borne up by the excitement and the adventure of what they had done, they felt secure against all wrath. Hardly could they understand that there should be wrath. How could their love meet with anything but love?