The Balliols Page 21

  You don’t like my saying that, thought Stella, you are angry and you resent my interference. But you are grateful all the same that I’m thinking the same way that you yourself are. And you’re wise to make it as far off as the Malay States.

  And that’s that, thought Stella, as she walked out into the summered street. It was a hot, sunny day, but she walked with a swift, firm stride. She was in a hurry to get back to her office. There was a great deal of work to be attended to. She had been away a good deal these last few days. She felt the need for action. Work was both a drug and stimulant. As long as you worked hard enough, you could forget that you were lonely. If you drove your brain hard, you could forget that your heart was aching. If there was something to be settled in the immediate future, you could be spared that looking into a far future that bred despair. There were certain people selected by life to do life’s work, who could achieve their function best by the refusal, the denial of what constituted happiness for the vast majority of mankind. Natural celibates who were fulfilled, not foiled, by that denial. For a long time she had recognized that it was with such that her lot lay. There were weak moments, when the heart ached for a personal happiness. Such moments were weakness. They must be kept down.

  She found Miss Draft turning the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  “You needn’t bother about that. The girl’s going to live.”

  “Oh!”

  Miss Draft’s countenance expressed neither disappointment nor relief. Stella would have preferred her to look disappointed. It would have been an inhumanity that would have at least proved that Miss Draft herself was human; that she had emotions; even if they were focused on a Cause. She would have preferred to think of Miss Draft as someone who welcomed a friend’s death if it helped an issue. That abrupt “Oh” was singularly negative. A fish, she thought, an animated fish, and it’s among you that a real woman like myself has to live in order that real women may be given something for which they haven’t asked.

  “There’s a big meeting in the Albert Hall next week,” Miss Draft remarked. “There’ll be several Cabinet Ministers on the platform. We ought to do something to upset it.”

  “It’s about time I waved a flag.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean you, Miss Balliol.”

  “I don’t care whom you meant; it’s time I waved one.”

  Action would be a good thing. She had spent too much time at a desk, with telephones and papers. It was time that she was on the road again, speaking, fighting; an active, not an “arm-chair” militant.

  “We’ll be wanting another girl to work here. My niece isn’t coming back,” she added.

  VIII

  A Month later on the eve of her departure for Penang, Lucy sat before an array of open trunks, the floor and the bed covered with frocks, shoes, hats, camisoles; and Ruth curled up in an armchair beyond the débris.

  “I can’t really believe I’m going,” Lucy said.

  It had happened so quickly that she had hardly realized that it was happening. Everything had been arranged for her. She hadn’t been consulted. She had just been told what was going to be. The trip had been presented to her as a settled fact. They had asked the doctor when she could sail, before they had asked her whether she wished to sail. It had been assumed that she would “leap at the idea,” as her father put it parenthetically. Everyone told her how lucky she was; what a lovely time she would have; what messages to give; what things to be sure not to miss; what to bring back with her. There had been interviews with shipping agents, with bank managers. There had been trunks to be bought, clothes to be chosen. There had been a succession of good-bye parties. No, she just had not had time to realize what was happening. To Stella alone had she made a protest; and that a brief one.

  “I had thought I was coming into work with you,” she had expostulated.

  “So you are,” Stella had answered breezily. “Only you need a rest after a smash like that. This is too good an opportunity to miss. I’d have given a good deal to have it myself at your age. You take your holiday. Make it a good one. You’ve deserved it. Then come back here. We’ll settle down to some real work together.”

  Stella had assumed her going as unquestioningly as had her parents. In that case, I’d better go, she had thought. And it’s no good my pretending that I’m not excited. I am. It’ll be lovely. All my worries are over now. I’m friends with Stella. When I come back we’ll start planning things. In the meantime there’s this holiday. I’ve deserved it. I’m going to enjoy it. As she relaxed more and more to the excitement of departure, she thought more and more of the immediate future; less and less of the “after I come back,” to which all that was supposedly a prelude. Her thoughts were entirely on her journey as she knelt, on that last evening, among her clothes and trunks.

  She chattered inconsequently as she packed. “Now, this is the trunk I’ll be having in my cabin. Do you think I’ll be needing the green dress? I wonder if there’ll be anyone to look after one’s things on board: press them and iron them. I shall need a terrible lot of things with me if there isn’t.”

  Pensively her sister watched her. In the full summer of her girlhood Ruth was clearly not going to become a beauty; but she had a vivacity, a mischievous prettiness that promised adventure. Her zest for living was unabated, she was clear-skinned and healthy-eyed; though she still had something of that long-legged faunishness that, in the nursery, had made her seem a tomboy. Her shoulders and arms were full, their lines rounded. Most men would take the trouble to look twice at her.

  “It’s funny to think of all that may happen to you before you spend another night here,” she remarked.

  “What sort of things?”

  “Oh, anything: you may be married.”

  Lucy laughed at that. “At my age!”

  “Mother was married and had had two children at your age.”

  “People married younger then. Married! Why, no one’s even looked like making love to me!”

  “What!”

  Ruth’s astonishment was so genuine that Lucy felt that she owed, to her dignity as an elder sister, some qualification of this confession.

  “I don’t count the boys who try to kiss you on the stairs at dances.”

  “Did you ever let them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “It seemed so silly. They were so frightened of me.”

  “The only man who’s ever kissed me wasn’t in the least afraid.”

  “Ruth, you never told me anything about that!”

  “It wasn’t anything.”

  “It must have been. Tell me. Don’t be mean. Tell me everything: who it was, when it was, what was he like?”

  “Well…” Ruth hesitated. She hadn’t meant to tell Lucy. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone. It had slipped out.

  “When was it, where was it?” Lucy was insisting. “Come on. Right from the very start.”

  There was nothing to be done but tell her. “It was at a picnic in the spring; a year ago. You remember when I was staying with the Manningtons. There was a young man who kept looking at me. We were picking bluebells. Suddenly I found I was alone with him. And then… oh, well… he just kissed me.…” She finished weakly.

  It sounded tame, fearfully tame; and it hadn’t been at all. There had been the day itself: a late May afternoon; everything green and sparkling. The sky blue, the sun warm, the bluebells in the woods. One couldn’t believe in the reality of a blue so brilliant. And that young man, graceful and tall and languid, who had kept looking at her; so that she had felt her heart beating excitedly. She had wanted to be alone with him, yet had been afraid of being alone with him. She had been stooping to pick bluebells. She had stood up, there he was beside her. Everyone else was out of sight. He was smiling down at her. Her arms were full of flowers. “You are very pretty,” he had said. He had put his hand under her chin and lifted it; then bent his head, there had been sunlight on his hair; he had kissed her, it had been so s
imple and graceful—in tune with the May day and the sense of spring. But she couldn’t convey anything of that in a description. And there was Lucy persisting with her questions. What was the man like really? Had she ever seen him again since? Did she want to see him again?

  “And what was it like, really? Did you like it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It made me feel rather a devil, I suppose.”

  Lucy shook her head, in mock reproof.

  “I may be four years older than you are. But I think you’ll be married years before me.”

  “Perhaps, but——” Ruth paused, a pensive expression on her face. “It’s funny how little one really does know about marriage,” she went on. “They talk about Victorian innocence and modern enlightenment, and of course we do know a lot—compared with our grandmothers, that’s to say. But how little we know, of the things we want to know. No one’ll tell us. It’s not in any book.…” She paused again; then turning quickly in the chair, kneeling up on the seat and bending forward, her elbows on the side, her chin rested on her wrists: “Lucy,” she said quickly, and her cheeks were flushed—“Let’s make a pact. Let’s promise that which ever of us marries first tells the other everything: really everything. Do you agree?”

  “Well… oh… yes, I suppose so.”

  “Good. That’s agreed, then.”

  Only Balliol and Jane went down to see Lucy off. She was to pick up a P. & O. boat at Marseilles. She was crossing by an ordinary continental service. The platform presented so familiar an appearance that it was difficult to realize that she was starting on a long journey. The atmosphere was that of a short trip to Paris, a week-end at Le Touquet; at the most a fortnight’s holiday at Biarritz. There was nothing to suggest the hot sands of Egypt, the palm groves of Mount Lavinia, the attar huts round the islanded entrance to Singapore. The casual nature of their talk was in tune with that week-end atmosphere. There was no feeling of an occasion about it. The only suggestion that Lucy was destined for anything more than a forty-eight hours’ jaunt was made, surprisingly enough, by her mother.

  “There’s a young man you may come across that I used to know. He does work of some kind for your father’s firm in the Far East. Rickman: Roy Rickman. If you do see him, give him nice wishes from me.”

  She flushed a little. Balliol looked at her quickly, enquiringly. It was the first time that she had mentioned Rickman’s name since he had first left for the Far East. Did she think often of him, he wondered. They couldn’t have corresponded. If they had, she would have known that he was in England eighteen months ago. She would have made some comment; suggested an invitation to some meal. Himself, he had carefully avoided any reference to the boy’s return; had, for that matter, only seen him twice. They had discussed their business, and left it there. The business had proved profitable. It was odd the way things turned out. He would never have thought of employing Rickman unless he had wished to get him out of England. And now the act directed to one purpose had proved profitable in another.

  He wondered what would have happened had Rickman remained in England. He wondered how much that episode had meant to Jane. She was so vague, so indirect; only occasionally appearing to have definite wishes, preferences, dislikes. Again he had the feeling of being a stranger to her. But there was the guard waving his flag, sending the passengers into their compartments; warning their friends back from the footboard. A whistle blew, the train jerked, grunted, then slowly, in a smooth rhythm, drew away. The face at the window grew indistinct. I wonder what stranger will come back to me, he thought.

  That afternoon was the end of term prize-giving at Francis’s school. It was like all the other prize-givings. It was held in the gymnasium. There was a stage at one end of it. The headmaster stood at a desk, on which were arranged a collection of calf-bound trophies. His staff of seven masters were arrayed behind him. In the centre of the hall on chairs were seated the parents, guardians, relatives on whose patronage the fortune of the school depended. Behind them, and at their side, on forms, were the boys to whose service the school was dedicate.

  Balliol never missed such functions. He always attended them with an amused curl of the lip. The atmosphere was very like a shareholders’ meeting; where the Chairman is aware that he has a good dividend to declare, but is anxious to convince the shareholders that the actual results are better than their appearance.

  The formula for a prize-giving was a fixed one. The headmaster was large, genial, middle-aged, rubicund with golf. He smiled down upon the school and upon its parents. He addressed himself to the boys.

  “Before I start distributing the prizes, there’s just one thing that I would like to say. It’s to the school now that I am speaking. Well, you boys, it’s this. I want to tell you how pleased I am with the way you’ve backed me up this term. You’ve worked hard and you’ve played hard. I don’t know how long it is since we’ve had such a thoroughly satisfactory term. Of course, there are one or two young gentlemen”—and at this point a twinkle appeared in the corner of his eye—”who have been a trifle, well, shall we say difficult? But that’s past history. We won’t say anything more about it, and, as a whole, as I’ve already said, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a satisfactory set of fellows. Thank you very much.”

  He made practically the same speech every prize-giving. Balliol once remarked on this to one of the assistant masters, with whom he was on terms of closish intimacy. The master laughed.

  “The Head’s a wonder. Always the same speech. Hardly a phrase different. It sends the parents away in just the right frame of mind. They’ll get their account to-morrow. Of course he doesn’t know that’s why he’s doing it. But that’s the reason right enough. And how clever that bit about the young gentlemen who’ve been difficult. It makes every mother feel that her boy is better than her neighbour’s.”

  Balliol had suggested that such an opinion was likely to be revised by the evidence of the terminal report.

  “Not a bit of it,” the master answered. “All our reports are strictly censored. We write them out on a piece of foolscap and the Head gets them typed. When we write ‘lazy and unintelligent’ the parents read ‘moderate.’ You can take it from me that the boy who gets ‘moderate’ in his report more than once is one of earth’s best dunces.”

  Balliol had not repeated this conversation to his wife. He was able consequently to take a pleasantly ironic pleasure in the delight that Francis’s reports invariably caused her. “It is nice how well he’s doing,” she would say. And again, “I’m glad there’s such a good tone in the school. I should hate Francis to be somewhere where they’re always having rows.”

  As he sat back in the uncomfortable school chair, he watched the effect on Jane of the headmaster’s oratory. She was leaning forward, her eyes on the headmaster’s face, her lips a little parted: eager, animated, expectant. Yes, the old Head knew how to get round mothers; there was no mistaking that. The expectant look on her face grew keener when they reached Francis’s class: the third. He began reading the names out from the bottom. Twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth. He’s doing rather well, thought Balliol. Himself he was not a believer in forcing a young boy; he would rather back the man who won a scholarship to a University than to a prep, school. That fact and his own opinion of the standard of teaching in the school had prevented him from taking much interest in Francis’s scholastic achievements. There was plenty of time for that. All the same, it was exciting to hear the names being read out one after another. It was like a race. Sixth, fifth, fourth, anyhow, he was in the running. Third. Still not Francis. A second: another name. Jane gave a little gasp. “Oh!” “First, Balliol.” With hands clapping on all sides of him, a sturdy, Eton-collared urchin was walking up to the stage.

  Francis’s reward for a term’s industry was Mallory’s Morte d’ Arthur. He turned a page or two while the two senior forms were read. “Looks pretty mingy,” the boy next him whispered. “Don’t care about that. My father gives me half-a-crown every time I get a prize. That
’s what I work for.”

  It was to his father that he brought the book the moment the last echoing three cheers had died away. But his mother’s arm that he took.

  “I thought we might go and have tea at Stewart’s,” she was saying. “You’d like that, darling, wouldn’t you?”

  “Rather!”

  Balliol watched them as he turned the pages of the Mallory. There was no doubt that Francis was his mother’s favourite. There was a deeper note in her voice, a different look on her face when she was with him. Just as there had been on his, he supposed, when he was with Lucy. However parents might try, they couldn’t help having a favourite. And they couldn’t conceal that preference from their children. It wasn’t the injustice that people supposed it was. Lucy and Francis were the difficult ones. They needed more careful attention than Hugh and Ruth. Those two were self-reliant in a way the others weren’t. They could stand alone; on their own feet. Helen… But it was a long time before she would begin to be a problem.

  In spite of Balliol’s devotion to Lucy, it was his wife who took the more real interest in her letters; who looked up sailing dates, figured out how soon the letter from Port Said might be expected; the letter from Aden; the next, Colombo; who read and re-read the letters when they arrived; who kept bringing reference to Lucy’s doings into her talk. She took the detached interest in Lucy which it is only possible to feel towards someone of whom you are very fond; but with whose interests your own interests are not involved. She was genuinely anxious to know what Lucy was doing, thinking, seeing. Balliol, on the other hand, when the train had drawn out of Victoria Station, had thought, “That’s that.” He had seen her departure, as the end of a relationship. Something had died. It would never be the same again. The Lucy round whom he had built dreams was taken from him. It was some other person who was writing amusing descriptions of fellow-passengers and ports of call.