CHAPTER XV

 

'In the time of the amiable Brantôme,' Mr Scogan was saying, 'every debutante at the French Court was invited to dine at the King's table, where she was served with wine in a handsome silver cup of Italian workmanship.  It was no ordinary cup, this goblet of the debutantes; for, inside, it had been more curiously and ingeniously engraved with a series of very lively amorous scenes.  With each draught that the young lady swallowed these engravings became increasingly visible, and the Court looked on with interest, every time she put her nose in the cup, to see whether she blushed at what the ebbing wine revealed.  If the debutante blushed, they laughed at her for her innocence; if she did not, she was laughed at for being too knowing.'

      'Do you propose,' asked Anne, 'that the custom should be revived at Buckingham Palace?'

      'I do not,' said Mr Scogan.  'I merely quoted the anecdote as an illustration of the customs, so genially frank, of the sixteenth century.  I might have quoted other anecdotes to show that the customs of the seventeenth and eighteenth, of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, and indeed of every other century, from the time of Hammurabi onward, were equally genial and equally frank.  The only century in which customs were not characterized by the same cheerful openness was the nineteenth, of blessed memory.  It was the astonishing exception.  And yet, with what one must suppose was a deliberate disregard of history, it looked upon its horribly pregnant silences as normal and natural and right; the frankness of the previous fifteen or twenty thousand years was considered abnormal and perverse.  It was a curious phenomenon.'

      'I entirely agree.' Mary panted with excitement in her effort to bring out what she had to say.  'Havelock Ellis says ...'

      Mr Scogan, like a policeman arresting the flow of traffic, held up his hand.  'He does; I know.  And that brings me to my next point: the nature of the reaction.'

      'Havelock Ellis ...'

      'The reaction, when it came - and we may say roughly that it set in a little before the beginning of this century - the reaction was to openness, but not to the same openness as had reigned in the earlier ages.  It was to a scientific openness, not to the jovial frankness of the past, that we returned.  The whole question of Amour became a terribly serious one.  Earnest young men wrote in the public prints that from this time forth it would be impossible ever again to make a joke of any sexual matter.  Professors wrote thick books in which sex was sterilized and dissected.  It has become customary for serious young women, like Mary, to discuss, with philosophic calm, matters of which the merest hint would have sufficed to throw the youth of the sixties into a delirium of amorous excitement.  It is all very estimable, no doubt.  But still' - Mr Scogan sighed - 'I for one should like to see, mingled with this scientific ardour, a little more of the jovial spirit of Rabelais and Chaucer.'

      'I entirely disagree with you,' said Mary.  'Sex isn't a laughing matter; it's serious.'

      'Perhaps,' answered Mr Scogan, 'perhaps I'm an obscene old man, for I must confess that I cannot always regard it as wholly serious.'

      'But I tell you ...' began Mary furiously.  Her face had flushed with excitement.  Her cheeks were the cheeks of a great ripe peach.

      'Indeed,' Mr Scogan continued, 'it seems to me one of the few permanently and everlasting amusing subjects that exist.  Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.'

      'I entirely disagree,' said Mary.  There was a silence.

      Anne looked at her watch.  'Nearly a quarter to eight,' she said.  'I wonder when Ivor will turn up.'  She got up from her deck-chair and, leaning her elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, looked out over the valley and towards the farther hills.  Under the level evening light the architecture of the land revealed itself.  The deep shadows, the bright contrasting lights gave the hills a new solidarity.  Irregularities of the surface, unsuspected before, were picked out with light and shade.  The grass, the corn, the foliage of trees were stippled with intricate shadows.  The surface of things had taken on a marvellous enrichment.

      'Look!' said Anne suddenly, and pointed.  On the opposite side of the valley, at the crest of the ridge, a cloud of dust flushed by the sunlight to rosy gold was moving rapidly along the skyline.  'It's Ivor.  One can tell by the speed.'

      The dust cloud descended into the valley and was lost.  A horn with the voice of a sea-lion made itself heard, approaching.  A minute later Ivor came leaping round the corner of the house.  His hair waved in the wind of his own speed; he laughed as he saw them.

      'Anne darling,' he cried, and embraced her, embraced Mary, very nearly embraced Mr Scogan.  'Well, here I am.  I've come with incredulous speed.'  Ivor's vocabulary was rich, but a little erratic.  'I'm not late for dinner, am I?'  He hoisted himself up on to the balustrade, and sat there, kicking his heels.  With one arm he embraced a large stone flowerpot, leaning his head sideways against its hard and lichenous flanks in an attitude of trustful affection.  He had brown, wavy hair, and his eyes were of a very brilliant, pale, improbable blue.  His head was narrow, his face thin and rather long, his nose aquiline.  In old age - though it was difficult to image Ivor old - he might grow to have an Iron Ducal grimness.  But now, at twenty-six, it was not the structure of his face that impressed one; it was its expression.  That was charming and vivacious, and his smile was an irradiation.  He was for ever moving, restlessly and rapidly, but with an engaging gracefulness.  His frail and slender body seemed to be fed by a spring of inexhaustible energy.

      'No, you're not late.'

      'You're in time to answer a question,' said Mr Scogan.  'We were arguing whether Armour were a serious matter or no.  What do you think?  Is it serious?'

      'Serious?' echoed Ivor.  'Most certainly.'

      'I told you so,' cried Mary triumphantly.

      'But in what sense serious?' Mr Scogan asked.

      'I mean as an occupation.  One can go on with it without ever getting bored.'

      'I see,' said Mr Scogan.  'Perfectly.'

      'One can occupy oneself with it,' Ivor continued, 'always and everywhere.  Women are always wonderfully the same.  Shapes vary a little, that's all.  In Spain' - with his free hand he described a series of ample curves - 'one can't pass them on the stairs.  In England' - he put the tip of his forefinger against the tip of his thumb and, lowering his hand, drew out this circle into an imaginary cylinder - 'in England they're tubular.  But their sentiments are always the same.  At least, I've always found it so.'

      'I'm delighted to hear it,' said Mr Scogan.