H G Wells Omnibus, page 356
(‘They never seem quite to have their heads, and never seem quite to lose ‘em,’ said Cothope, generalizing about the sex.)
Also he witnessed she acted with remarkable decision. The question was whether I should be taken to the house her stepmother occupied at Bedley Corner, the Carnaby dower house, 16 or down to Carnaby’s place at Easting. Beatrice had no doubt in the matter, for she meant to nurse me. Carnaby didn’t seem to want that to happen. ‘She would have it wasn’t half so far,’ said Cothope. ‘She faced us out….
‘I hate to be faced out of my opinions, so I’ve taken a pedometer over it since. It’s exactly forty-three yards further.
‘Lord Carnaby looked at her pretty straight,’ said Cothope, finishing the picture; ‘and then he gave in.’
§5
But my story has made a jump from June to October, and during that time my relations with Beatrice and the countryside that was her setting had developed in many directions. She came and went, moving in an orbit for which I had no data, going to London and Paris, into Wales and Northampton, while her stepmother on some independent system of her own also vanished and recurred intermittently. At home they obeyed the rule of an inflexible old maid, Charlotte, and Beatrice exercised all the rights of proprietorship in Carnaby’s extensive stables. Her interest in me was from the first undisguised. She found her way to my work-sheds and developed rapidly, in spite of the sincere discouragement of Cothope, into a keen amateur of aeronautics. She would come sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes afoot with an Irish terrier, sometimes riding. She would come for three or four days every day, vanish for a fortnight or three weeks, return.
It was not long before I came to look for her. From the first I found her immensely interesting. To me she was a new feminine type altogether, – I have made it plain I think how limited was my knowledge of women. But she made me not simply interested in her, but in myself. She became for me something that greatly changes a man’s world. How shall I put it? She became an audience. Since I’ve emerged from the emotional developments of the affair I have thought it out in a hundred aspects, and it does seem to me that this way in which men and women make audiences for one another is a curiously influential force in their lives. For some it seems an audience is a vital necessity, they seek audiences as creatures seek food; others again, my uncle among them, can play to an imaginary audience. I, I think, have lived and can live without one. In my adolescence I was my own audience and my own court of honour. And to have an audience in one’s mind is to play a part, to become self-conscious and dramatic. For many years I had been self-forgetful and scientific. I had lived for work and impersonal interests until I found scrutiny, applause and expectation in Beatrice’s eyes. Then I began to live for the effect I imagined I made upon her, to make that very soon the principal value in my life. I played to her. I did things for the look of them. I began to dream more and more of beautiful situations and fine poses and groupings with her and for her.
I put these things down because they puzzle me. I think I was in love with Beatrice, as being in love is usually understood, but it was a different state altogether from my passionate hunger for Marion, or my keen sensuous desire for and pleasure in Effie. These were selfish sincere things, fundamental and instinctive, as sincere as the leap of a tiger. But until matters drew to a crisis with Beatrice, there was an immense imaginative insurgence of a quite different quality. I am setting down here very gravely, and perhaps absurdly, what are no doubt elementary common-places for innumerable people. This love that grew up between Beatrice and myself was, I think –I put it quite tentatively and rather curiously – romantic love. That unfortunate and truncated affair of my uncle and the Scrymgeour lady was really of the same stuff, if a little different in quality. I have to admit that. The factor of audience was of primary importance in either case.
Its effect upon me was to make me in many respects adolescent again. It made me keener upon the point of honour, and anxious and eager to do high and splendid things and, in particular, brave things. So far it ennobled and upheld me. But it did also push me towards vulgar and showy things. At bottom it was disingenuous; it gave my life the quality of stage scenery, with one side to the audience, another side that wasn’t meant to show and an economy of substance. It certainly robbed my work of high patience and quality. I cut down the toil of research in my eagerness and her eagerness for fine flourishes in the air, flights that would tell. I shirked the longer road.
And it robbed me too, of any fine perception of absurdity….
Yet that was not everything in our relationship. The elemental thing was there also. It came in very suddenly.
It was one day in the summer, though I do not now recall without reference to my experimental memoranda whether it was in July or August. I was working with a new and more bird-like aeroplane with wing curvatures studied from Lilienthal, Pilcher and Phillips, 17 that I thought would give a different rhythm for the pitching oscillations than anything I’d had before. I was soaring my long course from the framework on the old barrow by my sheds down to Tinker’s Corner. It is a clear stretch of downland, except for two or three thickets of box and thorn to the right of my course; one transverse trough, in which there is bush and a small rabbit warren, comes in from the east. I had started, and was very intent on the peculiar long swoop with which my new arrangement flew. Then, without any sort of notice, right ahead of me appeared Beatrice riding towards Tinker’s Corner to waylay and talk to me. She looked round over her shoulder, saw me coming, touched her horse to a gallop, and then the brute bolted right into the path of my machine.
There was a queer moment of doubt whether we shouldn’t all smash together. I had to make up my mind very quickly whether I would pitch-up and drop backward at once and take my chance of falling undamaged, a poor chance it would have been, in order to avoid any risk to her, or whether I would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This latter I did. She had already got her horse in hand when I came up to her. Her woman’s body lay along his neck, and she glanced up as I, with wings aspread, and every nerve in a state of tension, swept over her.
Then I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and trembling.
We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and for one instant I held her. ‘Those great wings,’ she said, and that was all.
She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted.
‘Very near a nasty accident,’ said Cothope, coming up and regarding our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. ‘Very dangerous thing coming across us like that.’
Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and then sat down on the turf. ‘I’ll just sit down for a moment,’ she said.
‘Oh!’ she said.
She covered her face with her hands while Cothope looked at her with an expression between suspicion and impatience.
For some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope remarked that perhaps he’d better get her water.
As for me I was filled with a new outrageous idea begotten I scarcely know how from this incident with its instant contacts and swift emotions, and that was that I must make love to and possess Beatrice. I see no particular reason why that thought should have come to me in that moment, but it did. I do not believe that before then I had thought of our relations in such terms at all. Suddenly, as I remember it, the factor of passion came. She crouched there, and I stood over her and neither of us said a word. But it was just as though something had been shouted from the sky.
Cothope had gone twenty paces perhaps when she uncovered her face. ‘I shan’t want any water,’ she said. ‘Call him back.’
§6
After that the spirit of our relations changed. The old ease had gone. She came to me less frequently, and when she came she would have someone with her, usually old Carnaby, and he would do the bulk of the talking. All through September she was away. When we were alone together there was a curious constraint. We became clouds of inexpressible feeling towards one another; we could think of nothing that was not too momentous for words.
Then came the smash of Lord Roberts a and I found myself with a bandaged face in a bedroom in the Bedley Corner dower house with Beatrice presiding over an inefficient nurse, Lady Osprey very pink and shocked in the background, and my aunt jealously intervening.
My injuries were much more showy than serious, and I could have been taken to Lady Grove next day, but Beatrice would not permit that, and kept me at Bedley Corner three clear days. In the afternoon of the second day she became extremely solicitous for the proper aeration of the nurse, packed her off for an hour in a brisk rain, and sat by me alone.
I asked her to marry me.
On the whole I must admit it was not a situation that lent itself to eloquence. I lay on my back and talked through bandages and with some little difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I was feverish and in pain, and the emotional suspense I had been in so long with regard to her, became now an unendurable impatience.
‘Comfortable?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I read to you?’
‘No. I want to talk.’
‘You can’t. I’d better talk to you.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
She came and stood by my bedside and looked me in the eyes. ‘I don’t – I don’t want you to talk to me,’ she said. ‘I thought you couldn’t talk.’
‘I get few chances – of you.’
‘You’d better not talk. Don’t talk now. Let me chatter instead. You ought not to talk.’
‘It isn’t much,’ I said.
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘I’m not going to be disfigured,’ I said. ‘Only a scar.’
‘Oh!’ she said, as if she had expected something quite different. ‘Did you think you’d become a sort of gargoyle?’
‘L’Homme qui Rit!18 – I didn’t know. But that’s all right. Jolly flowers those are!’
‘Michaelmas daisies,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re not disfigured. And those are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all? When I saw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought to have been, by all the rules of the game.’
She said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move.
‘Are we social equals?’ I said abruptly.
She stared at me. ‘Queer question,’ she said.
‘But are we?’
‘H’m. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? Is the daughter of a courtesy Baron who died – of general disreputableness, I believe – before his father–? I give it up. Does it matter?’
‘No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me.’
She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her. ‘Damn these bandages!’ I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile rage.
She roused herself to her duties as nurse. ‘What are you doing? Why are you trying to sit up? Lie down! Don’t touch your bandages. I told you not to talk.’
She stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders and pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I had raised to my face. ‘I told you not to talk,’ she whispered close to my face. ‘I asked you not to talk. Why couldn’t you do as I asked you?’
‘You’ve been avoiding me for a month,’ I said.
‘I know. You might have known. Put your hand back – down by your side.’
I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush had come to her cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. ‘I asked you,’ she repeated, ‘not to talk.’
My eyes questioned her mutely.
She put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tormented. ‘How can I answer you now?’ she said. ‘How can I say anything now?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
She made no answer.
‘Do you mean it must be No?’
She nodded.
‘But –,’ I said, and my whole soul was full of accusations.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain. I can’t. But it has to be No! It can’t be. It’s utterly, finally, for ever impossible…. Keep your hands still!’
‘But,’ I said, ‘when we met again—’
‘I can’t marry. I can’t and won’t.’
She stood up. ‘Why did you talk?’ she cried. ‘Couldn’t you see?’
She seemed to have something it was impossible to say.
She came to the table beside my bed and pulled the Michaelmas daisies awry. ‘Why did you talk like that?’ she said in a tone of infinite bitterness. ‘To begin like that—!’
‘But what is it?’ I said. ‘Is it some circumstance – my social position?’
‘Oh damn your social position!’ she cried.
She went and stood at the further window staring out at the rain. For a long time we were absolutely still. The wind and rain came in little gusts upon the pane. She turned to me abruptly.
‘You didn’t ask me if I loved you,’ she said.
‘Oh, if it’s that!’ said I.
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘But if you want to know –’ She paused.
‘I do,’ she said.
We stared at one another.
‘I do – with all my heart, if you want to know.’
‘Then why the devil –?’ I asked.
She made no answer. She walked across the room to the piano and began to play, rather noisily and rapidly, with odd gusts of emphasis, the shepherd’s pipe music from the last act in Tristan and Isolde.19 Presently she missed a note, failed again, ran her finger heavily up the scale, struck the piano passionately with her fist making a feeble jar in the treble, jumped up, and went out of the room….
The nurse found me still wearing my helmet of bandages, partially dressed and pottering round the room to find the rest of my clothes. I was in a state of exasperated hunger for Beatrice and I was too inflamed and weakened to conceal the state of my mind. I was feebly angry because of the irritation of dressing and particularly of the struggle to put on my trousers without being able to see my legs. I was staggering about, and once I had fallen over a chair, and I had upset the jar of Michaelmas daisies.
I must have been a detestable spectacle. ‘I’ll go back to bed,’ said I, ‘if I may have a word with Miss Normandy. I’ve got something to say to her. That’s why I’m dressing.’
My point was conceded, but there were long delays. Whether the household had my ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly I do not know, and what Lady Osprey can have made of it in the former case I can’t imagine….
At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘All I want to say,’ I said with the querulous note of a misunderstood child, ‘is that I can’t take this as final. I want to see you and talk when I’m better – and write. I can’t do anything now. I can’t argue.’
I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel.
‘I can’t rest. You see? I can’t do anything.’
She sat down beside me again and spoke softly. ‘I promise I will talk it all over with you again. When you are well. I promise I will meet you somewhere so that we can talk. You can’t talk now. I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know…. Will that do?’
‘I’d like to know—’
She looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it.
Then she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and rapidly with her face close to me.
‘Dear,’ she said, ‘I love you. If it will make you happy to marry me, I will marry you. I was in a mood just now – a stupid inconsiderate mood. Of course I will marry you. You are my prince, my king. Women are such things of mood – or I would have – behaved differently. We say “No” when we mean “Yes” – and fly into crises. So now, Yes – yes – yes. I will… I can’t even kiss you. Give me your hand to kiss that. Understand I am yours. Do you understand? I am yours just as if we had been married fifty years. Your wife – Beatrice. Is that enough? Now – now will you rest?’
‘Yes,’ I said; ‘but why —?’
‘There are complications. There are difficulties. When you are better you will be able to – understand them. But now they don’t matter. Only you know this must be secret – for a time. Absolutely secret between us. Will you promise that?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I understand. I wish I could kiss you.’
She laid her head down beside mine for a moment, and then she kissed my hand.
‘I don’t care what difficulties there are,’ I said, and shut my eyes.
§7
But I was only beginning to gauge the unaccountable elements in Beatrice. For a week after my return to Lady Grove I had no sign of her, and then she called with Lady Osprey and brought a huge bunch of perennial sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies, ‘just the old flowers there were in your room’, said my aunt with a relentless eye on me. I didn’t get any talk alone with Beatrice then, and she took occasion to tell us she was going to London for some indefinite number of weeks. I couldn’t even pledge her to write to me, and when she did it was a brief enigmatical friendly letter with not a word of the reality between us.
I wrote back a love-letter – my first love-letter – and she made no reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl: ‘I can’t write letters. Wait till we can talk. Are you better?’…
I think the reader would be amused if he could see the papers on my desk as I write all this, the mangled and disfigured pages, the experimental arrangements of notes, the sheets of suggestions balanced in constellations, the blottesque intellectual battlegrounds over which I have been fighting. I find this account of my relations to Beatrice quite the most difficult part of my story to write. I happen to be a very objective-minded person, I forget my moods and this was so much an affair of moods. And even such moods and emotions as I recall are very difficult to convey. To me it is about as difficult as describing a taste or a scent.
