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"She'll never get over it," he said.
"Ghosts? Perhaps we are. Anyway we soon will be."
"Move about? Nobody can move them if you don'tMarch 7, 1818; March 12, 1818; April 3Why, here we are back in '16 again!"
"No, I won'tunless you can laugh as well. But you're going to get into a mess over this as sure as you're Henry Trenchard, and if I don't know all about it, I shan't be able to help you when the time comes that you need me."
"Well, then, I must tell you somethingsomething about myself. I never speak about the past to anybody. Of what importance can it be to anybody but myself? But if we are going to be friends you ought to know something of itand I'm going to tell you."
"I've succeeded in procuring something," wheezed Moffatt in his ear, "if you'd kindly assist with the luggage, Mr. Blanchard."
"Anyway that first success put me on my feet. It was during those years after the Boer War when I think literary success was easier to get than it is nowmore attention was paid to writing because the world was quieter and had leisure to think about the arts and money to pay for them. I don't mean that genius, real genius, wouldn't find it just as easy now as then to come along and establish itself, but I wasn't a genius, of course, nor anything like one. Well, I had friends and a home and work and everything should have been well, but I always felt that something was working against me, some bad influence, some ill omenI've felt it all my life, I feel it now, I shall feel it till I die. Lucky, healthy people can laugh at those things, but when you feel them you don't laugh. You know better. Then I marriedthe daughter of people who lived near by in Chelsea; I was terribly in love; although I felt there was something working against us, yet I couldn't see how now it could touch us. I was sure that she loved meI knew that I loved her. She was such a child that I thought that I could guide her and form her and make her what I wanted. From the first there was something wrong; I can see that now looking back. She had been spoilt because she was an only child and had a stupid silly mother, and she was afraid of everythingof being ill, of being hurt, of being poor. She was conventional too, and only liked the people from the class she knew, people who did all the same things, spoke the same way, ate the same way, dressed the same way. I remember that some of my Glebeshire friends came to see me one day and[Pg 107] frightened her out of her life. Poor Clare! I should understand her now I think, but I don't know. One has things put into one and things left out of one before one's born and you can't alter them, you can only restrain them, keep them in check. I had something fundamentally wild in me, she something tame in her. If we had both been older and wiser we might have compromised as all married people have to, I suppose, but we were both so young that we expected perfection, nay, we demanded it. Perfection! Lord, what youth! . . . Then a baby was born, a boyI let myself go over that boy!" . . . Peter paused. . . . "I can't talk much about that even now. He died. Then everything went wrong. Clare said she'd never have another child. And she was tired of me and frightened of me too. I can see now that she had much justice there. I must have been a dull dog after the boy died, and when I'm dull I am dull. I get so easily convinced that I'm meant to fail, that I've no right in the world at all. Clare wanted fun and gaiety.
"I say, don't . . . don't!" he whispered huskily.
"You want to marrysome woman who'll look after you."
"Keats!" she repeated, "what a funny name for a poet. When I read it in the book I remembered very distantly when we were learning English at school there was such a name. What kind of man was he?"
Henry's first thought was: "Now I must show no surprise at this. I mustn't hurt Peter's feelings." And his second: "Oh dear! Poor thing! How terribly ill she looks!"
Mrs. Tenssen finished her cup of tea before replying.
Millie, in spite of herself, thought of that little quarrel. Of course all lovers must have quarrelsquarrels were the means by which lovers came to know one another betterbut he should not have gone off like that, should not have hurt her. . . . She could not as she would wish declare it to have been all her own fault. Well, then, Bunny was not perfect. Who had ever said that he was? Who was perfect when you came to that? Millie herself was far from perfect. But she wanted him to be honest. At that stage in her development she rated honesty very highly among the virtuesnot unpleasant, stupid, so-called honesty, where you told your friends frankly what you thought of them for your own pleasure and certainly not theirs, but honesty among friends so that you knew exactly where you were. It was not honest of Bunny to be nice to Victoria in order to get money out of herbut Millie was beginning to perceive that Victoria, good, kind and foolish as she was, was a kind of plague-spot in the world, infecting everyone who came near her. Even Millie herself . . . ?
Silence.
They were down in the dining-room, sitting round the dining-room table. Millie had joined them.
[Pg 17]
"Beastly weather," Mr. Baxter volunteered.
Henry was amazed to see Lady Bell-Hall's splendid sang-froid. The house was tumbling about her head, her beloved brother was in all probability leaving her for ever, the whole of her material conditions were to change and be transformed, yet she, who beyond all women depended upon the permanence of minute signs and witnesses, gave herself no faintest whisper of apprehension.
"Am I really a prig?" he thought. "But I don't mean to be. But perhaps prigs never do mean to be. What is a prig, anyway? Isn't it some one who thinks himself better than other people? Well, I certainly don't think myself better"