Giant’s Bread · Book III · I · Chapter 3 1 4

IV

Myra wrote to Joe:

Dearest Josephine:

I am so worried about Vernon and this woman he is always going up to town to see⁠—some opera singer or other. Years older than he is. It’s so dreadful the way women like that get hold of boys. I am terribly worried and don’t know what to do about it. I have spoken to your Uncle Sydney, but he was not very helpful about it and just said that boys will be boys. But I don’t want my boy to be like that. I was wondering, dear Joe, if it would be any good my seeing this woman and begging her to leave my boy alone. Even a bad woman would listen to a mother, I think. Vernon is too young to have his life ruined. I really don’t know what to do. I seem to have no influence over Vernon nowadays.

Joe showed this letter to Sebastian.

“I suppose she means Jane,” said Sebastian. “I’d rather like to see an interview between them. Frankly, I think Jane would be amused.”

“It’s too silly,” said Joe hotly. “I wish to goodness Vernon would fall in love with Jane. It would be a hundred times better for him than being in love with that silly stick of a Nell.”

“You don’t like Nell, do you, Joe?”

“You don’t like her either.”

“Oh! yes, I do, in a way. She doesn’t interest me very much, but I can quite see the attraction. In her own way, she’s quite lovely.”

“Yes, in a chocolate-box way.”

“She doesn’t attract me, because to my mind there’s nothing there to attract as yet. The real Nell hasn’t happened. Perhaps she never will. I suppose to some people that is very attractive because it opens out all sorts of possibilities.”

“Well, I think Jane is worth ten of Nell! The sooner Vernon gets over his silly calf love for Nell and falls in love with Jane instead, the better it will be.”

Sebastian lit a cigarette and said slowly:

“I’m not sure that I agree with you.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s not very easy to explain. But, you see, Jane is a real person⁠—very much so. To be in love with Jane might be a whole-time job. We’re agreed, aren’t we, that Vernon is very possibly a genius? Well, I don’t think a genius wants to be married to a real person. He wants to be married to someone rather negligible⁠—someone whose personality won’t interfere. Now it may sound cynical, but that’s what will probably happen if Vernon marries Nell. At the moment she represents⁠—I don’t quite know what to call it⁠—what’s that line? ‘The apple tree, the singing and the gold⁠ ⁠…’ Something like that. Once he’s married to her, that will go. She’ll just be a nice pretty sweet-tempered girl whom, naturally, he loves very much. But she won’t interfere. She’ll never get between him and his work⁠—she hasn’t got sufficient personality. Now Jane might. She wouldn’t mean to, but she might. It isn’t Jane’s beauty that attracts you⁠—it’s herself. She might be absolutely fatal to Vernon.”

“Well,” said Joe, “I don’t agree with you. I think Nell’s a silly little ass and I should hate to see Vernon married to her. I hope it will all come to nothing.”

“Which is much the likeliest thing to happen,” said Sebastian.