Some Do Not … · Part I · Chapter 1 7 (1/3)

VII

Jumping down from the high step of the dogcart the girl completely disappeared into the silver: she had on an otter-skin toque, dark, that should have been visible. But she was gone more completely than if she had dropped into deep water, into snow⁠—or through tissue paper. More suddenly, at least! In darkness or in deep water a moving paleness would have been visible for a second: snow or a paper hoop would have left an opening. Here there had been nothing.

The constation interested him. He had been watching her intently and with concern for fear she should miss the hidden lower step, in which case she would certainly bark her shins. But she had jumped clear of the cart: with unreasonable pluckiness, in spite of his: “Look out how you get down.” He wouldn’t have done it himself: he couldn’t have faced jumping down into that white solidity⁠ ⁠…

He would have asked: “Are you all right?” but to express more concern than the “look out,” which he had expended already, would have detracted from his stolidity. He was Yorkshire and stolid: she south country and soft: emotional: given to such ejaculations as “I hope you’re not hurt,” when the Yorkshireman only grunts. But soft because she was south country. She was as good as a man⁠—a south country man. She was ready to acknowledge the superior woodenness of the north.⁠ ⁠… That was their convention: so he did not call down: “I hope you’re all right,” though he had desired to.

Her voice came, muffled, as if from the back of the top of his head: the ventriloquial effect was startling:

“Make a noise from time to time. It’s ghostly down here and the lamp’s no good at all. It’s almost out.”

He returned to his constations of the concealing effect of water vapour. He enjoyed the thought of the grotesque appearance he must present in that imbecile landscape. On his right an immense, improbably brilliant horn of a moon, sending a trail as if down the sea, straight to his neck: beside the moon a grotesquely huge star: in an extravagant position above them the Plough, the only constellation that he knew; for, though a mathematician, he despised astronomy. It was not theoretical enough for the pure mathematician and not sufficiently practical for daily life. He had of course calculated the movements of abstruse heavenly bodies: but only from given figures: he had never looked for the stars of his calculations.⁠ ⁠… Above his head and all over the sky were other stars: large and weeping with light, or as the dawn increased, so paling that, at times, you saw them; then missed them. Then the eye picked them up again.

Opposite the moon was a smirch or two of cloud; pink below, dark purple above; on the more pallid, lower blue of the limpid sky.

But the absurd thing was this mist!⁠ ⁠… It appeared to spread from his neck, absolutely level, absolutely silver, to infinity on each side of him. At great distances on his right black tree-shapes, in groups⁠—there were four of them⁠—were exactly like coral islands on a silver sea. He couldn’t escape the idiotic comparison: there wasn’t any other.

Yet it didn’t actually spread from his neck: when he now held his hands, nipple-high, like pallid fish they held black reins which ran downwards into nothingness. If he jerked the rein, the horse threw its head up. Two pricked ears were visible in greyness: the horse being sixteen two and a bit over, the mist might be ten foot high. Thereabouts⁠ ⁠… He wished the girl would come back and jump out of the cart again. Being ready for it he would watch her disappearance more scientifically. He couldn’t of course ask her to do it again: that was irritating. The phenomenon would have proved⁠—or it might of course disprove⁠—his idea of smoke screens. The Chinese of the Ming dynasty were said to have approached and overwhelmed their enemies under clouds of⁠—of course, not acrid⁠—vapour. He had read that the Patagonians, hidden by smoke, were accustomed to approach so near to birds or beasts as to be able to take them by hand. The Greeks under Paleologus the⁠ ⁠…

Miss Wannop’s voice said⁠—from beneath the bottom board of the cart:

“I wish you’d make some noise. It’s lonely down here, besides being possibly dangerous. There might be dicks on each side of the road.”

If they were on the marsh there certainly would be dykes⁠—why did they call ditches “dykes,” and why did she pronounce it “dicks”?⁠—on each side of the road. He could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t express concern and he couldn’t do that by the rules of the game. He tried to whistle “John Peel!” But he was no hand at whistling. He sang:

“D’ye ken, John Peel at the break of day⁠ ⁠…” and felt like a fool. But he kept on at it, the only tune that he knew. It was the Yorkshire Light Infantry quickstep: the regiment of his brothers in India. He wished he had been in the army: but his father hadn’t approved of having more than two younger sons in the army. He wondered if he would ever run with John Peel’s hounds again: he had once or twice. Or with any of the trencher-fed foot packs of the Cleveland district, of which there had been still several when he had been a boy. He had been used to think of himself as being like John Peel with his coat so grey⁠ ⁠… Up through the heather, over Wharton’s place; the pack running wild; the heather dripping; the mist rolling up⁠ ⁠… another kind of mist than this south country silver sheet. Silly stuff! Magical! That was the word. A silly word.⁠ ⁠… South country⁠ ⁠… In the north the old grey mists rolled together, revealing black hillsides!

He didn’t suppose he’d have the wind now: this rotten bureaucratic life!⁠ ⁠… If he had been in the army like the two brothers, Ernest and James, next above him⁠ ⁠… But no doubt he would not have liked the army. Discipline!⁠ ⁠… He supposed he would have put up with the discipline: a gentleman had to. Because noblesse oblige: not for fear of consequences⁠ ⁠… But army officers seemed to him pathetic. They spluttered and roared: to make men jump smartly: at the end of apoplectic efforts the men jumped smartly. But there was the end of it.⁠ ⁠…

Actually, this mist was not silver, or was, perhaps, no longer silver: if you looked at it with the eye of the artist⁠ ⁠… With the exact eye! It was smirched with bars of purple; of red; of orange: delicate reflections: dark blue shadows from the upper sky where it formed drifts like snow.⁠ ⁠… The exact eye: exact observation: it was a man’s work. The only work for a man. Why, then, were artists soft: effeminate; not men at all: whilst the army officer, who had the inexact mind of the schoolteacher, was a manly man? Quite a manly man: until he became an old woman!

And the bureaucrat then? Growing fat and soft like himself, or dry and stringy like Macmaster or old Ingleby? They did men’s work: exact observation: return No. 17642 with figures exact. Yet they grew hysterical: they ran about corridors or frantically rang table bells, asking with high voices of querulous eunuchs why form ninety thousand and two wasn’t ready. Nevertheless men like the bureaucratic life: his own brother, Mark, head of the family: heir to Groby.⁠ ⁠… Fifteen years older: a quiet stick: wooden: brown; always in a bowler-hat, as often as not with his racing-glasses hung around him. Attending his first-class office when he liked: too good a man for any administration to lose by putting on the screw.⁠ ⁠… But heir to Groby: what would that stick make of the place?⁠ ⁠… Let it, no doubt, and go on pottering from the Albany to race meetings⁠—where he never betted⁠—to Whitehall, where he was said to be indispensable.⁠ ⁠… Why indispensable? Why in heaven’s name? That stick who had never hunted, never shot: couldn’t tell coulter from plough-handle and lived in his bowler-hat!⁠ ⁠… A “sound” man: the archetype of all sound men. Never in his life had anyone shaken his head at Mark and said:

“You’re brilliant!” Brilliant! That stick! No, he was indispensable!

“Upon my soul!” Tietjens said to himself, “that girl down there is the only intelligent living soul I’ve met for years.”⁠ ⁠… A little pronounced in manner sometimes; faulty in reasoning naturally, but quite intelligent, with a touch of wrong accent now and then. But if she was wanted anywhere, there she’d be! Of good stock, of course: on both sides!⁠ ⁠… But, positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing: the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Kill or cure! The two functions of man. If you wanted something killed you’d go to Sylvia Tietjens in the sure faith that she would kill it: emotion: hope: ideal: kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you’d go to Valentine: she’d find something to do for it⁠ ⁠… The two types of mind: remorseless enemy: sure screen: dagger⁠ ⁠… sheath!

Perhaps the future of the world, then, was to women? Why not? He hadn’t in years met a man that he hadn’t to talk down to⁠—as you talk down to a child: as he had talked down to General Campion or to Mr. Waterhouse⁠ ⁠… as he always talked down to Macmaster. All good fellows in their way.⁠ ⁠…

But why was he born to be a sort of lonely buffalo: outside the herd? Not artist: not soldier: not bureaucrat: not certainly indispensable anywhere: apparently not even sound in the eyes of these dim-minded specialists⁠ ⁠… An exact observer.⁠ ⁠…

Hardly even that for the last six and a half hours:

“Die Sommer Nacht hat mirs angethan:

Das war ein schwiegsame Reiten⁠ ⁠…”

he said aloud.

How could you translate that: you couldn’t translate it: no one could translate Heine:

“It was the summer night came over me:

That was silent riding⁠ ⁠…”

A voice cut into his warm, drowsy thought:

“Oh, you do exist. But you’ve spoken too late. I’ve run into the horse.” He must have been speaking aloud. He had felt the horse quivering at the end of the reins. The horse, too, was used to her by now. It had hardly stirred⁠ ⁠… He wondered when he had left off singing “John Peel.”⁠ ⁠… He said:

“Come along, then: have you found anything?”

The answer came:

“Something⁠ ⁠… But you can’t talk in this stuff⁠ ⁠… I’ll just⁠ ⁠…”

The voice died away as if a door had shut. He waited: consciously waiting: as an occupation! Contritely and to make a noise he rattled the whip-stock in its bucket. The horse started and he had to check in quickly: a damn fool he was. Of course a horse would start if you rattled a whip-stock. He called out:

“Are you all right?” The cart might have knocked her down. He had, however, broken the convention. Her voice came from a great distance:

“I’m all right. Trying the other side⁠ ⁠…”

His last thought came back to him. He had broken their convention: he had exhibited concern: like any other man.⁠ ⁠… He said to himself:

“By God! Why not take a holiday: why not break all conventions?”

They erected themselves intangibly and irrefragably. He had not known this young woman twenty-four hours: not to speak to: and already the convention existed between them that he must play stiff and cold, she warm and clinging.⁠ ⁠… Yet she was obviously as cool a hand as himself: cooler, no doubt, for at bottom he was certainly a sentimentalist.

A convention of the most imbecile type.⁠ ⁠… Then break all conventions: with the young woman: with himself above all. For forty-eight hours⁠ ⁠… almost exactly forty-eight hours till he started for Dover.⁠ ⁠…

“And I must to the greenwood go,

Alone: a banished man!”

Border ballad! Written not seven miles from Groby!

By the descending moon: it being then just after cockcrow of midsummer night⁠—what sentimentality!⁠—it must be half-past four on Sunday. He had worked out that to catch the morning Ostend boat at Dover he must leave the Wannops’ at 5:15 on Tuesday morning, in a motor for the junction.⁠ ⁠… What incredible cross-country train connections! Five hours for not forty miles.

He had then forty-eight and three-quarter hours! Let them be a holiday! A holiday from himself above all: a holiday from his standards: from his convention with himself. From clear observation: from exact thought: from knocking over all the skittles of the exactitudes of others: from the suppression of emotions.⁠ ⁠… From all the weariness that made him intolerable to himself.⁠ ⁠… He felt his limbs lengthen, as if they too had relaxed.

Well, already he had had six and a half hours of it. They had started at 10 and, like any other man, he had enjoyed the drive, though it had been difficult to keep the beastly cart balanced, the girl had had to sit behind with her arm round the other girl who screamed at every oak tree.⁠ ⁠…

But he had⁠—if he put himself to the question⁠—mooned along under the absurd moon that had accompanied them down the heaven: to the scent of hay: to the sound of nightingales, hoarse by now, of course⁠—in June he changes his tune; of corncrakes, of bats, of a heron twice, overhead. They had passed the blue-black shadows of corn stacks, of heavy, rounded oaks, of hop oasts that are half church tower, half finger-post. And the road silver grey, and the night warm.⁠ ⁠… It was midsummer night that had done that to him.⁠ ⁠…

Hat mir’s angethan.

Das war ein schwiegsame Reiten.⁠ ⁠…

Not absolutely silent of course: but silentish! Coming back from the parson’s, where they had dropped the little London sewer rat, they had talked very little.⁠ ⁠… Not unpleasant people the parson’s: an uncle of the girl’s: three girl cousins, not unpleasant, like the girl but without the individuality⁠ ⁠… A remarkably good bite of beef: a truly meritorious Stilton and a drop of whisky that proved the parson to be a man. All in candlelight. A motherly mother of the family to take the rat up some stairs⁠ ⁠… a great deal of laughter of girls⁠ ⁠… then a restart an hour later than had been scheduled.⁠ ⁠… Well, it hadn’t mattered: they had the whole of eternity before them: the good horse⁠—really it was a good horse!⁠—putting its shoulders into the work.⁠ ⁠…

They had talked a little at first; about the safeness of the London girl from the police now; about the brickishness of the parson in taking her in. She certainly would never have reached Charing Cross by train.⁠ ⁠…

There had fallen long periods of silences. A bat had whirled very near their off-lamp.

“What a large bat!” she had said. “Noctilux major.⁠ ⁠…”

He said:

“Where do you get your absurd Latin nomenclature from? Isn’t it phalœna⁠ ⁠…” She had answered:

“From White⁠ ⁠… The Natural History of Selborne is the only natural history I ever read.⁠ ⁠…”

“He’s the last English writer that could write,” said Tietjens.

“He calls the downs ‘those majestic and amusing mountains,’ ” she said. “Where do you get your dreadful Latin pronunciation from? Phal⁠ ⁠… i⁠ ⁠… i⁠ ⁠… na! To rhyme with Dinah!”

“It’s ‘sublime and amusing mountains,’ not ‘majestic and amusing,’ ” Tietjens said. “I got my Latin pronunciation, like all public schoolboys of today, from the German.”

She answered:

“You would! Father used to say it made him sick.”

“Caesar equals Kaiser,” Tietjens said.⁠ ⁠…

“Bother your Germans,” she said, “they’re no ethnologists; they’re rotten at philology!” She added: “Father used to say so,” to take away from an appearance of pedantry.

A silence then! She had right over her head a rug that her aunt had lent her; a silhouette beside him, with a cocky nose turned up straight out of the descending black mass. But for the square toque she would have had the silhouette of a Manchester cotton-hand: the toque gave it a different line; like the fillet of Diana. It was piquant and agreeable to ride beside a quite silent lady in the darkness of the thick Weald that let next to no moonlight through. The horse’s hoofs went clock, clock: a good horse. The near lamp illuminated the russet figure of a man with a sack on his back, pressed into the hedge, a blinking lurcher beside him.