literary transcript

CHAPTER XV

June 1903 – January 1904

It had become a rite, a sacrament (that was how John Beavis described it to himself): a sacrament of communion. First, the opening of the wardrobe door, the handling of her dresses. Closing his eyes, he breathed the perfume they exhaled, the faint sweet essence of her body from across the widening abyss of time. Then there were the drawers. These three, on the left, contained her linen. The lavender bags were tied with pale blue ribbon. This lace on the nightgown he now unfolded had touched … Even in thought, John Beavis avoided the pronunciation of the words 'her breasts,' but only imagined the rounded flesh softly swelling and sinking under the intricacies of the patterned thread; then recalled those Roman nights; and finally thought of Lollingdon and the hollow vale, the earth, the terrible dark silence. The nightgown refolded and once more shut away, it was the turn of the two small drawers on the right – of the gloves that had encased her hands, the belts that had girdled her body and that now he wound round his wrist or tightened like a phylactery about his temples. And the rite concluded with the reading of her letters – those touchingly childish letters she had written during their engagement. That consummated the agony for him; the rite was over and he could go to bed with yet another sword in his heart.

But recently, it seemed, the sword had grown blunter. It was as though her death, till now so poignantly alive, had itself begun to die. The rite seemed to be losing its magic: consummation became increasingly difficult of achievement, and, when achieved, was less painful and, for that reason, less satisfying. For the thing which had made life worth living all these months was precisely the pain of his bereavement. Desire and tenderness had suddenly been deprived of their object. It was an amputation – agonizing. And now this pain – and it was all of her that was left him – this precious anguish was slipping away from him, was dying, even as Maisie herself had died.

Tonight it seemed to have vanished altogether. He buried his face in the scented folds of her dresses, he spread out the lace and lawn she had worn next her skin, he blew into one of her gloves and watched the gradual deflation of this image of her hand – dying, dying, till the skin hung limp again and empty of even the pretence of life. But the rites were without effect; John Beavis remained unmoved. He knew that she was dead and that his bereavement was terrible. But he felt nothing of this bereavement – nothing except a kind of dusty emptiness of spirit.

He went to bed unfulfilled, somehow humiliated. Magic rites justify themselves by success; when they fail to produce their proper emotional results, the performer feels that he has been betrayed into making a fool of himself.

Dry, like a mummy, in the dusty emptiness of his own sepulchre, John Beavis lay for a long time, unable to sleep. Twelve; one; two; and then, when he had utterly despaired of it, sleep came, and he was dreaming that she was there beside him; and it was Maisie as she had been in the first year of their marriage, the round flesh swelling and subsiding beneath the lace, the lips parted and, oh, innocently consenting. He took her in his arms.

It was the first time since her death that he had dreamed of her except as dying.

John Beavis woke to a sense of shame; and when, later in the day, he saw Miss Gannett evidently waiting for him, as usual, in the corridor outside his lecture-room, he pretended not to have noticed her, but hurried past with downcast eyes, frowning, as though preoccupied by some abstruse, insoluble problem in the higher philology.

But the next afternoon found him at his old Aunt Edith's weekly At Home. And of course – though he expressed a perhaps excessive surprise at seeing her – of course Miss Gannett was there, as he knew she would be; for she never missed one of Aunt Edith's Thursdays.

'You were in a terrible hurry yesterday,' she said, when his surprise had had time to die down.

'Me? When?' He pretended not to know what she meant.

'At the College, after your lecture.'

'But were you there? I didn't see you.'

'Now he thinks I shirked his lecture,' she wailed to some non-existent third party. Even since, two months before, she had first met him in Aunt Edith's drawing-room, Miss Gannett had faithfully attended every one of his public lectures. 'To improve my mind,' she used to explain. 'Because,' with a jocularity that was at the same time rather wistful, 'it does so need improving!'

Mr Beavis protested. 'But I didn't say anything of the kind.'

'I'll show you the notes I took.'

'No, please don't do that!' It was his turn to be playful. 'If you knew how my own lectures bored me!'

'Well, you nearly ran me over in the corridor, after the lecture.'

'Oh, then!'

'I never saw anyone walk so fast.'

He nodded. 'Yes, I was in a hurry; it's quite true. I had a Committee. Rather a special one,' he added impressively.

She opened her eyes at him very wide, and, from playful, her tone and expression became very serious. 'It must be rather a bore sometimes,' she said, 'to be such a very important person – isn't it?'

Mr Beavis smiled down at the grave and awestruck child before him – at the innocent child who was also a rather plump and snubbily pretty young woman of seven and twenty – smiled with pleasure and stroked his moustache. 'Oh, not quite so important as all that,' he protested. 'Not quite such …' he hesitated for a moment; his mouth twitched, his eyes twinkled; then the colloquialism came out: 'not quite such a “howling toff” as you seem to imagine.'

There was only one letter that morning. From Anthony, Mr Beavis saw as he tore open the envelope.

BULSTRODE, June 26^th.

'DEAREST FATHER, - Thank you for your letter. I thought we were going to Tenby for the holidays. Did you not arrange it with Mrs Foxe? Foxe says she expects us, so perhaps we ought not to go to Switzerland instead as you say we are doing. We had two matches yesterday, first eleven v. Sunny Bank, second v. Mumbridge, we won both which was rather rippling. I was playing in the second eleven and made six not out. We have begun a book called Lettres de mon Moulin in French, I think it is rotten. There is no more news, so with much love – Your loving son,

'ANTHONY.

'P.S. - Don't forget to write to Mrs Foxe, because Foxe says he knows she thinks we are going to Tenby.'

Mr Beavis frowned as he read the letter, and when breakfast was over, sat down at once to write an answer.

‘EARL’S COURT SQUARE,

27.vi.03.

'DEAREST ANTHONY, - I am disappointed that you should have received what I had hoped was a piece of very exciting news with so little enthusiasm. At your age I should certainly have welcomed the prospect of “going abroad,” especially to Switzerland, with unbounded delight. The arrangements with Mrs Foxe were always of the most indeterminate nature. Needless to say, however, I wrote to her as soon as the golden opportunity for exploring the Bernese Oberland in congenial company turned up, as it did only a few days since, and made me decide to postpone the realization of our vague Tenby plans. If you want to see exactly where we are going, take your map of Switzerland, find Interlaken and the Lake of Brienz, move eastward from the end of the Lake to Meiringen and thence in a southerly direction towards Grindelwald. We shall be staying at the foot of the Scheideck Pass, at Rosenlaui, almost in the shadow of such giants as the Jungfrau, Weisshorn and Co. I do not know the spot, but gather from all accounts that it is entirely “spiffing” and paradisal.

'I am delighted to hear you did so creditably in your match. You must go on, dear boy, from strength to strength. Next year I shall hope to see you sporting the glories of the First Eleven colours.

'I cannot agree with you in finding Daudet “rotten.” I suspect that his rottenness mainly consists in the difficulties he presents to a tyro. When you have acquired a complete mastery of the language, you will come to appreciate the tender charm of his style and the sharpness of his wit.

'I hope you are working your hardest to make good your sad weakness in “maths.” I confess that I never shone in the mathematical line myself, so am able to sympathize with your difficulties. But hard work will do wonders, and I am sure that if you really “put your back into” algebra and geometry, you can easily get up to scholarship standards by this time next year. - Ever your most affectionate father, J.B.’

'It's too sickening!' said Anthony, when he had finished reading his father's letter. The tears came into his eyes; he was filled with a sense of intolerable grievance.

'W-what does he s-say?' Brian asked.

'It's all settled. He's written to your mater that we're going to some stinking hole in Switzerland instead of Tenby. Oh, I really am too sick about it!' He crumpled up the letter and threw it angrily on the ground, then turned away and tried to relieve his feelings by kicking his play-box. Too sick, too sick!' he kept repeating.

Brian was sick too. They were going to have had such a splendid time at Tenby; it had all been imaginatively foreseen, preconstructed in the most luxuriant detail; and now, crash! the future good time was in bits.

'S-still,' he said at last, after a long silence, 'I exp-pect you'll enj-joy yourself in S-switzerland.' And, moved by a sudden impulse, for which would have found it difficult to offer an explanation, he picked up Mr Beavis's letter, smoothed out the crumpled pages and handed it back to Anthony. 'Here's your l-letter,' he said.

Anthony looked at it for a moment, opened his mouth as though to speak, then shut it again, and taking the letter, put it away in his pocket.

The congenial company in which they were to explore the Bernese Oberland turned out, when they reached Rosenlaui, to consist of Miss Gannett and her old schoolfriend Miss Louie Piper. Mr Beavis always spoke of them as 'the girls,' or else, with a touch of that mock-heroic philological jocularity to which he was so partial, 'the damsels' – dominicellae, double diminutive of domina. The teeny weeny ladies! He smiled to himself each time he pronounced the word. To Anthony the damsels seemed a pair of tiresome and already elderly females. Piper, the thin one, was like a governess. He preferred fat old Gannett, in spite of that awful mooey, squealing laugh of hers, in spite of the way she puffed and sweated up the hills. Gannett at least was well-meaning. Luckily, there were two other English boys in the hotel. True, they came from Manchester and spoke rather funnily, but they were decent chaps, and they knew an extraordinary number of dirty stories. Moreover, in the woods behind the hotel they had discovered a cave, where they kept cigarettes. Proudly, when he got back to Bulstrode, Anthony announced that he had smoked every day of the hols.

One Saturday in November Mr Beavis came down to Bulstrode for the afternoon. They watched the football for a bit, then went for a depressing walk that ended, however, at the King's Arms. Mr Beavis ordered crumpets 'and buttered eggs for this young stalwart' (with a conspiratorial twinkle at the waitress, as though she also knew that the word meant 'foundation-worthy'), 'and cherry jam to follow – isn't cherry the favourite?'

Anthony nodded. Cherry was the favourite. But so much solicitude made him feel rather suspicious. What could it all be for? Was he going to say something about his work? About going in for the scholarship next summer? About …? He blushed. But after all, his father couldn't possibly know anything about that. Not possibly. In the end he gave it up; he couldn't imagine what it was.

But when, after an unusually long silence, his father leaned forward and said, 'I've got an interesting piece of news for you, dear boy,' Anthony knew, in a sudden flash of illumination, exactly what was coming.

'He's going to marry the Gannett female,' he said to himself.

And so he was. In the middle of December.

'A companion for you,' Mr Beavis was saying. That youthfulness, those fresh and girlish high spirits! A companion as well as a second mother.'

Anthony nodded. But 'companion' – what did he mean? He thought of the fat old Gannett, toiling up the slopes behind Rosenlaui, red-faced, smelling of sweat, reeking … And suddenly his mother's voice was sounding in his ears.

'Pauline wants you to call her by her Christian name,' Mr Beavis went on. 'It'll be … well, jollier, don't you think?'

Anthony said 'Yes,' because there was obviously nothing else for him to say, and helped himself to more cherry jam.

'Third person singular aorist of τίθημι?' questioned Anthony.

Horse-Face got it wrong. It was Staithes who answered correctly.

'Second plural pluperfect of έρχομαι?'

Brian's hesitation was due to something graver than his stammer.

'You're putrid tonight, Horse-Face,' said Anthony and pointed his finger at Staithes, who gave him the right answer again. 'Good for you, Staithes.' And repeating Jimbug's stalest joke, 'The sediment sinks to the bottom, Horse-Face,' he rumbled in a parody of Jimbug's deep voice.

'Poor old Horse-Face!' said Staithes, slapping the other on the back. Now that Horse-Face had given him the pleasure of knowing less Greek grammar than he did, Staithes almost loved him.

It was nearly eleven, long after lights-out, and the three of them were crowded into the w.c., Anthony in his capacity of examiner sitting majestically on the seat, and the other two squatting on their heels below him, on the floor. The May night was still and warm; in less than six weeks they would be sitting for their scholarship examinations, Brian and Anthony at Eton, Mark Staithes at Rugby. It was after the previous Christmas holidays that Staithes had come back to Bulstrode with the announcement that he was going in for a scholarship. Astonishing news and, for his courtiers and followers, appalling! That work was idiotic, and that those who worked were contemptible, had been axiomatic among them. And now here was Staithes going in for a schol with the other swots – with Benger Beavis, with old Horse-Face, with that horrible little tick, Goggler Ledwidge. It had seemed a betrayal of all that was most sacred.

By his words first of all, and afterwards, more effectively, by his actions, Staithes had reassured them. The scholarship idea was his Pater's. Not because of the money, he had hastened to add. His Pater didn't care a damn about the money. But for the honour and glory, because it was a tradition in the family. His Pater himself and his Uncles, his Fraters – they had all got schols. It wouldn't do to let the Family down. Which didn't change the fact that swotting was a stinking bore and that all swotters who swotted because they liked it, as Horse-Face and Beavis seemed to do, were absolute worms. And to prove it he had ragged old Horse-Face about his stammer and his piddle-warblers, he had organized a campaign against Goggler for funking at football, he had stuck nibs into Beavis's bottom during prep; and, though working very hard himself, he had made up for it by playing harder than ever and by missing no opportunity of telling everyone how beastly swotting was, how he had absolutely no chance whatever of getting a schol.

When face had been sufficient saved, he had changed his tactics towards Beavis and Horse-Face, and after showing himself for some time progressively more friendly towards them, had ended by proposing the creation of a society of mutual assistance in school swotting. It was he who, at the beginning of the summer term, had suggested the nightly sessions in the w.c. Brian had wanted to include Goggler in these reading-parties; but the other two had protested; and anyhow, the w.c. was demonstrably too small to contain a fourth. He had to be content with helping Goggler in occasional half-hours during the day. Night and the lavatory were reserved for the triumvirate.

To explain this evening's failure with Greek verbs, 'I'm rather t-t-t …' Brian began; then, forced into apparent affectation, 'rather weary to-n-night,' he concluded.

His pallor and the blue transparency under his eyes testified to the truth of his words; but for Mark Staithes they were obviously an excuse by means of which Horse-Face hoped to diminish a little the sting of his defeat at the hands of one who had been swotting, not for years, as his rivals had, but only a few months. It was an implied confession of inferiority. Triumphing, Staithes felt that he could be magnanimous. 'Hard luck!' he said solicitously. 'Let's have a bit of a rest.'

From the pocket of his dressing-gown Anthony produced three ginger-nuts, rather soft, it was true, with age, but nonetheless welcome.

For the thousandth time since it had been decided that he should go in for a scholarship, 'I wish I had the ghost of a chance,' said Staithes.

'You've g-got a very g-good one.'

'No, I haven't. It's just a crazy idea of my Pater's. Crazy!' he repeated, shaking his head. But in fact it was with a tingling, warm sensation of pride, of exultation, that he remembered his father's words. 'We Staitheses … When one's a Staithes … You've got as good brains as the rest of us, and as much determination …' He forced a sigh, and, aloud, 'Not a ghost of a chance,' he insisted.

'Yes, you h-have, honestly.'

'Rot!' He refused to admit even the possibility of the thing. Then, if he failed, he could laughingly say, 'I told you so'; and if he succeeded, as he privately believed he would, the glory would be all the greater. Besides, the more persistently he denied his chances, the oftener they would repeat their delicious assurances of his possible, his probable, success. Success, what was more, in their own line; success, in spite of his consistent refusal, till the beginning of last term, ever to take this ridiculous swotting seriously.

It was Benger who brought the next tribute. 'Jimbug thinks you've got a chance,' he said. 'I heard him talking to old Jacko about it yesterday.'

'What does that old fool Jimbug know about it?' Staithes made a disparaging grimace; but through the mask of contempt his brown eyes shone with pleasure. 'And as for Jacko …'

A sudden rattling of the door-handle made them all start. 'I say, you chaps,' came an imploring whisper through the keyhole, 'do buck up! I've got the most frightful bellyache.'

Brian rose hastily from the floor. 'We must l-let him in,' he began.

But Staithes pulled him down again. 'Don't be a fool!' he said; then, turning towards the door, 'Go to one of the rears downstairs,' he said, 'we're busy.'

'But I'm in a most frightful hurry.'

'Then the quicker you go, the better.'

'You're a swine!' protested the whisper. Then 'Christ!' it added, as they heard the sound of slippered feet receding in a panic rush down the stairs.

Staithes grinned. 'That'll teach him,' he said. 'What about another go at the Greek grammar?'

Outraged in advance, James Beavis had felt his indignation growing with every minute he spent under his brother's roof. The house positively reeked of matrimony. It was asphyxiating! And there sat John, fairly basking in those invisible radiations of dark female warmth, inhaling the stuffiness with a quivering nostril, deeply contented, revoltingly happy! Like a marmot, it suddenly occurred to James Beavis, a marmot with its female, crowded fur to fur in their subterranean burrow. Yes, the house was just a burrow – a burrow, with John like a thin marmot at one end of the table and that soft, bulging marmot-woman at the other, and between them, one on either side, himself, outraged and nauseated, and that unhappy little Anthony, like a changeling from the world of fresh air, caught and dragged down and imprisoned in the marmot-warren. Indignation begot equally violent pity and affection for this unhappy child, begot at the same time a retrospective feeling of sympathy for poor Maisie. In her lifetime he had always regarded Maisie as just a fool – hopelessly silly and frivolous. Now, John's marriage and the oppressive connubiality which enveloped the all too happy couple made him forget his judgments on the living Maisie and think of her as a most superior woman (at least, she had had the grace to be slim), posthumously martyred by her husband for the sake of this repulsively fleshy female marmot. Horrible! He did well to be angry.

Pauline meanwhile had refused a second helping of the chocolate soufflé.

'But my dear, you must,' John Beavis insisted.

Pauline heaved the conscious imitation of a sigh of repletion. 'I couldn't.'

'Not even the favourite chocolatl?' Mr Beavis always spoke of chocolate in the original Aztec.

Playfully, Pauline eyed the dish askance. 'I shouldn't,' she said, implicitly admitting that the repletion was not complete.

'Yes, you should,' he wheedled.

'Now he's trying to make me fat!' she wailed with mock reproach. 'He's leading me into temptation!'

'Well, be led.'

This time, Pauline's sigh was a martyr's. 'All right, then,' she said submissively. The maid, who had been waiting impassively for the outcome of the controversy, presented the dish once again. Pauline helped herself.

'There's a good child,' said Mr Beavis, in a tone and with a twinkle that expressed a sportive mock-fatherliness. 'And now, James, I hope you'll follow the good example.'

James's disgust and anger were so intense that he could not trust himself to speak, for fear of saying something outrageous. He contented himself with curtly shaking his head.

'No chocolatl for you?' Mr Beavis turned to Anthony. 'But I'm sure you'll take pity on the pudding!' And when Anthony did, 'Ah, that's good!' he said. 'That's the way …' - he hesitated for a fraction of a second - '… the way to tuck-in!'