Fraternity. Galsworthy John
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on every little phase in turn, enjoying well enough fitting the Chinese puzzle of her scattered thoughts, setting out on each small adventure with a certain cautious zest, and taking Stephen with her as far as he allowed. This last year or so, now that Thyme was a grown girl, she had felt at once a loss of purpose and a gain of liberty. She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. It freed her for the tasting of more things, more people, and more Stephen; but it left a little void in her heart, a little soreness round it. What would Thyme think if she heard this story about her uncle? The thought started a whole train of doubts that had of late beset her. Was her little daughter going to turn out like herself? If not, why not? Stephen joked about his daughter’s skirts, her hockey, her friendship with young men. He joked about the way Thyme refused to let him joke about her art or about her interest in “the people.” His joking was a source of irritation to Cecilia. For, by woman’s instinct rather than by any reasoning process, she was conscious of a disconcerting change. Amongst the people she knew, young men were not now attracted by girls as they had been in her young days. There was a kind of cool and friendly matter-of-factness in the way they treated them, a sort of almost scientific playfulness. And Cecilia felt uneasy as to how far this was to go. She seemed left behind. If young people were really becoming serious, if youths no longer cared about the colour of Thyme’s eyes, or dress, or hair, what would there be left to care for – that is, up to the point of definite relationship? Not that she wanted her daughter to be married. It would be time enough to think of that when she was twenty-five. But her own experiences had been so different. She had spent so many youthful hours in wondering about men, had seen so many men cast furtive looks at her; and now there did not seem in men or girls anything left worth the other’s while to wonder or look furtive about. She was not of a philosophic turn of mind, and had attached no deep meaning to Stephen’s jest – “If young people will reveal their ankles, they’ll soon have no ankles to reveal.”
To Cecilia the extinction of the race seemed threatened; in reality her species of the race alone was vanishing, which to her, of course, was very much the same disaster. With her eyes on Stephen’s boots she thought: ‘How shall I prevent what I’ve heard from coming to Bianca’s ears? I know how she would take it! How shall I prevent Thyme’s hearing? I’m sure I don’t know what the effect would be on her! I must speak to Stephen. He’s so fond of Hilary.’
And, turning away from Stephen’s boots, she mused: ‘Of course it’s nonsense. Hilary’s much too – too nice, too fastidious, to be more than just interested; but he’s so kind he might easily put himself in a false position. And – it’s ugly nonsense! B. can be so disagreeable; even now she’s not – on terms with him!’ And suddenly the thought of Mr. Purcey leaped into her mind – Mr. Purcey, who, as Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace had declared, was not even conscious that there was a problem of the poor. To think of him seemed somehow at that moment comforting, like rolling oneself in a blanket against a draught. Passing into her room, she opened her wardrobe door.
‘Bother the woman!’ she thought. ‘I do want that gentian dress got ready, but now I simply can’t give it to her to do.’
CHAPTER VIII
THE SINGLE MIND OF MR. STONE
Since in the flutter of her spirit caused by the words of Mrs. Hughs, Cecilia felt she must do something, she decided to change her dress.
The furniture of the pretty room she shared with Stephen had not been hastily assembled. Conscious, even fifteen years ago, when they moved into this house, of the grave Philistinism of the upper classes, she and Stephen had ever kept their duty to aestheticism green; and, in the matter of their bed, had lain for two years on two little white affairs, comfortable, but purely temporary, that they might give themselves a chance. The chance had come at last – a bed in real keeping with the period they had settled on, and going for twelve pounds. They had not let it go, and now slept in it – not quite so comfortable, perhaps, but comfortable enough, and conscious of duty done.
For fifteen years Cecilia had been furnishing her house; the process approached completion. The only things remaining on her mind – apart, that is, from Thyme’s development and the condition of the people – were: item, a copper lantern that would allow some light to pass its framework; item, an old oak washstand not going back to Cromwell’s time. And now this third anxiety had come!
She was rather touching, as she stood before the wardrobe glass divested of her bodice, with dimples of exertion in her thin white arms while she hooked her skirt behind, and her greenish eyes troubled, so anxious to do their best for everyone, and save risk of any sort. Having put on a bramble-coloured frock, which laced across her breast with silver lattice-work, and a hat (without feathers, so as to encourage birds) fastened to her head with pins (bought to aid a novel school of metal-work), she went to see what sort of day it was.
The window looked out at the back over some dreary streets, where the wind was flinging light drifts of smoke athwart the sunlight. They had chosen this room, not indeed for its view over the condition of the people, but because of the sky effects at sunset, which were extremely fine. For the first time, perhaps, Cecilia was conscious that a sample of the class she was so interested in was exposed to view beneath her nose. ‘The Hughs live somewhere there,’ she thought. ‘After all I think B. ought to know about that man. She might speak to father, and get him to give up having the girl to copy for him – the whole thing’s so worrying.’
In pursuance of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out, making her way to Hilary’s. With every step she became more uncertain. The fear of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of seeming meddlesome; timidity at touching anything so awkward; distrust, even ignorance, of her sister’s character, which was like, yet so very unlike, her own; a real itch to get the matter settled, so that nothing whatever should come of it – all this she felt. She hurried, dawdled, finished the adventure almost at a run, then told the servant not to announce her. The vision of Bianca’s eyes, while she listened to this tale, was suddenly too much for Cecilia. She decided to pay a visit to her father first.
Mr. Stone was writing, attired in his working dress – a thick brown woollen gown, revealing his thin neck above the line of a blue shirt, and tightly gathered round the waist with tasselled cord; the lower portions of grey trousers were visible above woollen-slippered feet. His hair straggled over his thin long ears. The window, wide open, admitted an east wind; there was no fire. Cecilia shivered.
“Come in quickly,” said Mr. Stone. Turning to a big high desk of stained deal which occupied the middle of one wall, he began methodically to place the inkstand, a heavy paper-knife, a book, and stones of several sizes, on his guttering sheets of manuscript.
Cecilia looked about her; she had not been inside her father’s room for several months. There was nothing in it but that desk, a camp bed in the far corner (with blankets, but no sheets), a folding washstand, and a narrow bookcase, the books in which Cecilia unconsciously told off on the fingers of her memory. They never varied. On the top shelf the Bible and the works of Plautus and Diderot; on the second from the top the plays of Shakespeare in a blue edition; on the third from the bottom Don Quixote, in four volumes, covered with brown paper; a green Milton; the “Comedies of Aristophanes”; a leather book, partially burned, comparing the philosophy of Epicurus with the philosophy of Spinoza; and in a yellow binding Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” On the second from the bottom was lighter literature: “The Iliad”; a “Life of Francis of Assisi”; Speke’s “Discovery of the Sources of the Nile”; the “Pickwick Papers”; “Mr. Midshipman Easy”; The Verses of Theocritus, in a very old translation; Renan’s “Life of Christ”; and the “Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.” The bottom shelf of all was full of books on natural science.
The walls were whitewashed, and, as Cecilia knew, came off on anybody who leaned against them. The floor was stained, and had no carpet. There was a little gas cooking-stove, with cooking things ranged on it; a small bare table; and one large cupboard. No draperies, no pictures, no ornaments of any kind; but by the window an ancient golden leather chair. Cecilia could never bear to sit in that oasis; its colour in this wilderness was too precious to her spirit.
“It’s an east wind, father; aren’t you terribly cold without a fire?”
Mr. Stone came from