"My good Rickie, if you knew the deathly dullness of Sawston--every one saying the proper thing at the proper time, I so proper, Herbert so proper! Why, weirdness is the one thing I long for! Do arrange something."
"I"m afraid there"s no opportunity. Ansell goes some vast bicycle ride this afternoon; this evening you"re tied up at the Hall; and tomorrow you go."
"But there"s breakfast tomorrow," said Agnes. "Look here, Rickie, bring Mr. Ansell to breakfast with us at Buoys."
Mrs. Lewin seconded the invitation.
"Bad luck again," said Rickie boldly; "I"m already fixed up for breakfast. I"ll tell him of your very kind intention."
"Let"s have him alone," murmured Agnes.
"My dear girl, I should die through the floor! Oh, it"ll be all right about breakfast. I rather think we shall get asked this evening by that shy man who has the pretty rooms in Trinity."
"Oh, very well. Where is it you breakfast, Rickie?"
He faltered. "To Ansell"s, it is--" It seemed as if he was making some great admission. So self-conscious was he, that he thought the two women exchanged glances. Had Agnes already explored that part of him that did not belong to her? Would another chance step reveal the part that did?
He asked them abruptly what they would like to do after lunch.
"Anything," said Mrs. Lewin,--"anything in the world."
A walk? A boat? Ely? A drive? Some objection was raised to each. "To tell the truth," she said at last, "I do feel a wee bit tired, and what occurs to me is this. You and Agnes shall leave me here and have no more bother. I shall be perfectly happy snoozling in one of these delightful drawing-room chairs. Do what you like, and then pick me up after it."
"Alas, it"s against regulations," said Rickie. "The Union won"t trust lady visitors on its premises alone."
"But who"s to know I"m alone? With a lot of men in the drawing-room, how"s each to know that I"m not with the others?"
"That would shock Rickie," said Agnes, laughing. "He"s frightfully high-principled."
"No, I"m not," said Rickie, thinking of his recent shiftiness over breakfast.
"Then come for a walk with me. I want exercise. Some connection of ours was once rector of Madingley. I shall walk out and see the church."
Mrs. Lewin was accordingly left in the Union.
"This is jolly!" Agnes exclaimed as she strode along the somewhat depressing road that leads out of Cambridge past the observatory. "Do I go too fast?"
"No, thank you. I get stronger every year. If it wasn"t for the look of the thing, I should be quite happy."
"But you don"t care for the look of the thing. It"s only ignorant people who do that, surely."
"Perhaps. I care. I like people who are well-made and beautiful. They are of some use in the world. I understand why they are there. I cannot understand why the ugly and crippled are there, however healthy they may feel inside. Don"t you know how Turner spoils his pictures by introducing a man like a bolster in the foreground? Well, in actual life every landscape is spoilt by men of worse shapes still."
"You sound like a bolster with the stuffing out." They laughed. She always blew his cobwebs away like this, with a puff of humorous mountain air. Just now the a.s.sociations he attached to her were various--she reminded him of a heroine of Meredith"s--but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over. He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a trivial and impossible sequel.
Last time they had talked about Gerald. But that was some six months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the faintest blur.
Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr. Pembroke and to education.
Did women lose a lot by not knowing Greek? "A heap," said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus they got to Germany, which he had visited last Easter with Ansell; and thence to the German Emperor, and what a to-do he made; and from him to our own king (still Prince of Wales), who had lived while an undergraduate at Madingley Hall. Here it was. And all the time he thought, "It is hard on her. She has no right to be walking with me. She would be ill with disgust if she knew. It is hard on her to be loved."
They looked at the Hall, and went inside the pretty little church. Some Arundel prints hung upon the pillars, and Agnes expressed the opinion that pictures inside a place of worship were a pity. Rickie did not agree with this. He said again that nothing beautiful was ever to be regretted.
"You"re cracked on beauty," she whispered--they were still inside the church. "Do hurry up and write something."
"Something beautiful?"
"I believe you can. I"m going to lecture you seriously all the way home.
Take care that you don"t waste your life."
They continued the conversation outside. "But I"ve got to hate my own writing. I believe that most people come to that stage--not so early though. What I write is too silly. It can"t happen. For instance, a stupid vulgar man is engaged to a lovely young lady. He wants her to live in the towns, but she only cares for woods. She shocks him this way and that, but gradually he tames her, and makes her nearly as dull as he is. One day she has a last explosion--over the sn.o.bby wedding presents--and flies out of the drawing-room window, shouting, "Freedom and truth!" Near the house is a little dell full of fir-trees, and she runs into it. He comes there the next moment. But she"s gone."
"Awfully exciting. Where?"
"Oh Lord, she"s a Dryad!" cried Rickie, in great disgust. "She"s turned into a tree."
"Rickie, it"s very good indeed. The kind of thing has something in it.
Of course you get it all through Greek and Latin. How upset the man must be when he sees the girl turn."
"He doesn"t see her. He never guesses. Such a man could never see a Dryad."
"So you describe how she turns just before he comes up?"
"No. Indeed I don"t ever say that she does turn. I don"t use the word "Dryad" once."
"I think you ought to put that part plainly. Otherwise, with such an original story, people might miss the point. Have you had any luck with it?"
"Magazines? I haven"t tried. I know what the stuff"s worth. You see, a year or two ago I had a great idea of getting into touch with Nature, just as the Greeks were in touch; and seeing England so beautiful, I used to pretend that her trees and coppices and summer fields of parsley were alive. It"s funny enough now, but it wasn"t funny then, for I got in such a state that I believed, actually believed, that Fauns lived in a certain double hedgerow near the Cog Magogs, and one evening I walked a mile sooner than go through it alone."
"Good gracious!" She laid her hand on his shoulder.
He moved to the other side of the road. "It"s all right now. I"ve changed those follies for others. But while I had them I began to write, and even now I keep on writing, though I know better. I"ve got quite a pile of little stories, all harping on this ridiculous idea of getting into touch with Nature."
"I wish you weren"t so modest. It"s simply splendid as an idea.
Though--but tell me about the Dryad who was engaged to be married. What was she like?"
"I can show you the dell in which the young person disappeared. We pa.s.s it on the right in a moment."
"It does seem a pity that you don"t make something of your talents. It seems such a waste to write little stories and never publish them. You must have enough for a book. Life is so full in our days that short stories are the very thing; they get read by people who"d never tackle a novel. For example, at our Dorcas we tried to read out a long affair by Henry James--Herbert saw it recommended in "The Times." There was no doubt it was very good, but one simply couldn"t remember from one week to another what had happened. So now our aim is to get something that just lasts the hour. I take you seriously, Rickie, and that is why I am so offensive. You are too modest. People who think they can do nothing so often do nothing. I want you to plunge."
It thrilled him like a trumpet-blast. She took him seriously. Could he but thank her for her divine affability! But the words would stick in his throat, or worse still would bring other words along with them. His breath came quickly, for he seldom spoke of his writing, and no one, not even Ansell, had advised him to plunge.
"But do you really think that I could take up literature?"
"Why not? You can try. Even if you fail, you can try. Of course we think you tremendously clever; and I met one of your dons at tea, and he said that your degree was not in the least a proof of your abilities: he said that you knocked up and got flurried in examinations. Oh!"--her cheek flushed,--"I wish I was a man. The whole world lies before them. They can do anything. They aren"t cooped up with servants and tea parties and twaddle. But where"s this dell where the Dryad disappeared?"
"We"ve pa.s.sed it." He had meant to pa.s.s it. It was too beautiful. All he had read, all he had hoped for, all he had loved, seemed to quiver in its enchanted air. It was perilous. He dared not enter it with such a woman.
"How long ago?" She turned back. "I don"t want to miss the dell. Here it must be," she added after a few moments, and sprang up the green bank that hid the entrance from the road. "Oh, what a jolly place!"
"Go right in if you want to see it," said Rickie, and did not offer to go with her. She stood for a moment looking at the view, for a few steps will increase a view in Cambridgeshire. The wind blew her dress against her. Then, like a cataract again, she vanished pure and cool into the dell.