3
Seven years later, on the platform of Penny’s Heath station, Sheila discovered a new Hypatia Fairfield: tall, dark, severe, with thoughtful eyes and aggressive chin; by everyday standards a plain young woman, but redeemed from unattractiveness by an air of absorbed interest in some vision of her own. Since leaving school the two girls had exchanged letters of prodigious length. Once or twice they had visited each other’s homes, but these visits had provided an intercourse less intimate, less real, than that of their letters. Into the bubbling pot of that correspondence was poured all the raw egoism, all the shy solemn discoveries, of two active minds passing through the adventure of adolescence. Their knowledge of each other at school had been a mere passing acquaintanceship compared with this new intimacy that only distance and the postal service had made possible.
Recently they had begun to drift apart. Aunt Hester’s disapproval of normal life made the house at Penlington something of a prison; Aunt Hester’s friends were anæmic, uncongenial. ‘Nothing ever happens to me,’ she said to herself. ‘I never meet anyone or do anything. Things just go on, every day alike.’ She began to indulge herself in pessimism. Compared with the soothing syrup of Aunt Hester’s religion, despair was almost intoxicating: she tasted it eagerly, as though it had been wine. In those days she and Hypatia had echoed each other rapturously enough, agreeing—with what delight—that life was but a dry husk and death a fit ending to a witless scheme. But now Hypatia, with a fatal instinct for novelty, had subsided into the arms of a new religion, a religion that made summary end of all problems by denying their existence. It was this, Sheila divined, that had put that look of assured calm into her eyes.
‘So here you are then,’ said Hypatia, shy, as ever, of demonstration. ‘Where’s your trunk? I’ve got the trap in the station-yard.’
With Sheila and her belongings safely in the trap Hypatia took the reins between her capable fingers and drove away.
‘It’s very jolly here,’ said Sheila.
‘Yes. Much the same as before. Why, it must be a year since your last visit!’
‘It is.’
‘Scandalous!’ Hypatia smiled reproof. ‘Well, has your quest succeeded yet?’
‘My quest?’
‘You wrote some months ago saying that you could never rest until you had found a philosophy that would hold water?’
‘I’m still seeking,’ admitted Sheila.
‘You’ll never find it,’ remarked Hypatia, with calm certainty, ‘in the direction you are looking in.’
‘No?’ said Sheila good-humouredly.
‘Well, you’ll have plenty of chance here of inspecting every fad,’ said Hypatia. ‘They’re a lively set, our neighbours. There’s almost every shade of belief and unbelief possible to the human mind represented here, you’ll remember, and every shade has its club or church or soap-box.’
‘Even your shade?’ interposed Sheila.
‘Yes. Though that’s altogether different,’ Hypatia retorted. ‘Still I can understand that you think it just one more little sect and nothing else. When you are in science you will see everything more clearly.’
‘I shall see that there’s nothing to see at all,’ said Sheila. ‘Isn’t that your fundamental doctrine?’
‘True, matter does not exist, if that’s what you mean,’ said Hypatia. ‘That is perhaps Our Leader’s greatest discovery. God is All-Good, the very Principle of Goodness, and man is His reflection. Sin, disease, and death——’
‘Exist in the reflection but not in the reflector,’ remarked Sheila. ‘Are your people of the same way of thinking?’
‘Oh no.’ Hypatia shook her head. ‘Mother’s trying to understand, but Father’s making no attempt at all.’
‘What about your brother?’
‘Of course, Edward’s hopeless. He’s utterly absorbed in his precious book.’
‘I thought he was going in for law,’ said Sheila.
‘So did I. So did everybody. He got a good first in his Tripos. But he doesn’t really care for law. History’s his great subject.’
‘What’s the book about?’ Sheila was excited by the thought of meeting in the flesh this maker of books.
‘I believe he calls it A History of the Religious Idea, but he’s very reticent about it. It’s a very proud exhibition of ignorance, no doubt.’
‘Hypatia!’ protested Sheila. ‘How very unkind of you!’
Hypatia sniffed.
‘Not at all. You misunderstand me. Edward, you see, is an agnostic. Tout ce que je sais, c’est que je ne sais rien, you know. He professes to know nothing about God and so on, and is just as proud of his ignorance as I used to be of mine.’
‘It must be nice for you to know all about it now,’ said Sheila.
‘It is,’ agreed the seer. ‘But it’s knowledge anyone can share who will try to understand.’
From the field they were passing Fairfield’s Hygienic Corsets blazed in letters of red above the hedge. The factory chimneys blotted out the horizon.
Hypatia’s father was a spare, bullet-headed man with mutton-chop whiskers of a sandy hue and an indomitable nose that he had followed faithfully per aspera ad astra. The stars of Mr. Fairfield’s attainment were commercial prosperity and for his son the education that he himself had been denied. It became more and more apparent to Sheila, during that drive from the station, that for Hypatia’s parents Edward, the firstborn, was the being round whom the world revolved. For him the sun shone and the little stars clapped their hands. Fairfield senior, at first indifferent to Edward, had been trained in son-worship by his wife. Behind a brusqueness that passed for eccentric humour Mrs. Fairfield concealed power. Worshipping her son, for his advancement she had used her husband unsparingly, guiding his energy consistently in the direction of most commercial gain, and curbing his desire to spend himself, a prophet in the wilderness, in fruitless public advocacy of freethought. Her subjugation of her husband, himself a being of great though erratic energy, was the gradual achievement of twenty-five years.
‘Well, Miss Dyrle,’ said Hypatia’s father briskly. ‘Here you are again! We’re glad to see you. You know that.’
He looked at Sheila kindly, but as if to say: ‘Deny it if you can.’
‘Ah,’ he added, ‘here’s my wife. The honoured guest’s arrived, me dear, and I’m just extending to her, in the name of the family, a hearty welcome.’
The arrival of Mrs. Fairfield displaced a lot of air.
‘Now this is a treat,’ she said, holding out both her hands. ‘My dear Sheila! I may still call you Sheila, mayn’t I? You are so often in our thoughts!’
Sheila murmured her pleasure.
‘Must take us as you find us,’ admonished Mr. Fairfield. ‘We’re homely folk with no airs. No education to speak of. Couldn’t afford it. And now that we can afford it—it’s too late.’
‘Not too late for Edward, father dear,’ Edward’s mother reminded him.
‘Ah no. One scholar in the family at any rate.’
‘One scholar, three agnostics, and a religious crank, eh, dad?’ remarked Hypatia.
Her father laughed.
‘Heard the news?’ He turned to Sheila. ‘Hypatia’s saved. Got a new religion. Mine wasn’t good enough for her.’
‘What is yours, dad? I didn’t know you had one.’
‘When you and Edward were nippers I told you my religion. Be afraid of nothing except doing wrong. That’s mine. Everything in the garden’s lovely: that’s yours.’
‘Well, stop arguing all of you, and come to tea,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘Sheila must be ready for hers, I’m sure. Have you met Bunny, Sheila?’
‘No. Who’s Bunny?’
‘One of mother’s young men,’ explained Hypatia. ‘Quite an acquisition. Aristocratic by birth, democratic in sentiment. Isn’t that it, mother?’
At tea they were joined by Edward, rather reluctantly, and by the Honourable Richard Bunnard, alias Bunny. Bunny was a fair freckled youth, with sleek hair brushed straight back from his forehead and well plastered to the head. His blue eyes followed Hypatia’s every movement with patient doglike devotion, except when recalled from this dereliction by the voice of Mrs. Fairfield.
‘Now then, Bunny! I want to hear what you think about this minimum wage question. Is thirty-two shillings enough for a skilled worker like a plate-layer?’
Bunny, very nervous, began opening and shutting his mouth soundlessly like a goldfish.
‘Well, Mrs. Fairfield, I hardly think so. A fellow could hardly live on such a mere pittance, could he? Forty-two or fifty-two or even....’
‘Sixty-two,’ murmured Hypatia.
‘Yes, sixty-two,’ he said, catching eagerly at a straw. ‘Or say three guineas, sixty-three. Not much more than a hundred and fifty a year, you know.’
‘There, father!’ cried Mrs. Fairfield. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘Of what, me dear?’
‘Why, the plate-layers are to have a minimum of sixty-three shillings a week?’
Bunny laughed.
‘Oh no, Mrs. Fairfield. It doesn’t follow. I only said they ought to have that.’
‘Well, you must see to it,’ retorted Mrs. Fairfield. ‘You young people, that’s your work in life, to stir things up. I think you must go into parliament, Bunny. Yes. I shall send you to parliament to put things right for us.’
‘But perhaps Bunny would rather not be sent to parliament, mother?’ suggested Hypatia.
‘Indeed,’ said the young man, ‘I’d much rather not. Edward would make a much better politician than I.’
Mrs. Fairfield proudly surveyed her son. ‘Ah, we must see about Edward. We’re not quite ready for parliament yet, are we, Edward?’
Edward smiled. ‘For my part, I never shall be ready.’
‘Mother ought to go there herself,’ said Hypatia. ‘She’d put the world straight in ten minutes.’
Her mother listened indulgently.
‘Do you know, Sheila, my children are very lucky children. They’ve been brought up in perfect freedom. They’ve got the habit of freedom. They do and think just as they like, have never known what compulsion was. Here’s Hypatia now, with her religion: she’s never been taught it by me; I’ve never forced anything down her throat. I believe that everybody has a right to follow his own bent.’
‘It must be very nice,’ said Sheila, ‘to be brought up in an atmosphere like that.’
‘It would be,’ Hypatia murmured, but Mrs. Fairfield did not take up the challenge.
‘I wish you’d teach me your New Thought,’ begged Bunny of Hypatia.
‘Which is it, New Thought or Higher Thought?’ asked Sheila.
‘Neither,’ answered Edward. ‘It’s something newer and higher than either. Unfortunately you have to believe it implicitly before you can understand it to be anything but nonsense.’
‘You can be quiet, Edward,’ said his sister, ‘even if you can’t be just.’
‘But, really,’ protested the scared Bunny. ‘I am quite in earnest, Hypatia. I would listen respectfully to anyone’s religion, especially yours. Won’t you tell me about it?’
Hypatia relented. ‘I will, some time. It’s useless with Edward about.’
‘It was founded by a woman,’ said Edward, ‘and she’s written a book that is the beginning and end of all Truth. Read it, Bunny, read it and live.’
‘You see.’ Hypatia smiled patiently. ‘That’s what I have to put up with.’
‘It’s too bad,’ Bunny reproached Edward.
‘Oh, don’t sympathize with me, please!’ said Hypatia.
Sheila thought: ‘How hard she has grown!’ and, having already tasted of her friend’s sublime certainties, she felt some relish for Edward’s mockery.
Edward seemed the most likeable person in the room, except perhaps Bunny. Edward was for the most part very quiet and self-contained. He possessed rather an impressive dome of forehead, but he maintained an impenetrable reserve without assuming that air of learning and distinction in which his mother sought so earnestly to invest him. Mrs. Fairfield’s maternal glance conveyed unmistakably to the rest: ‘We must not trouble Edward with our trivial talk. His thoughts are not our thoughts; neither are his ways our ways. He has taken his degree, and he is writing a book.’ Sometimes she referred questions to him, as to an authority; it was as though she was continually thrusting upon him his bachelor’s hood, he as continually repudiating it with a confession of ignorance or indifference. His anxiety to avoid oracular authority kept him more silent than the rest; and this very silence gave him in Sheila’s eyes a distinction that was almost fascination. She guessed him to be modest, unassuming, and clever. The mystery of his inner life drew her interest towards him.
But Bunny, too, was interesting; for Bunny had good looks and that air of trustfully appealing for affection to which Sheila was so susceptible. There was something pathetic about his obvious devotion to Hypatia. Except the commanding Mrs. Fairfield he seemed to look at no one else. He deferred to Hypatia constantly.
‘I suppose you would say that a headache is essentially unreal, Hypatia? If we knew the truth about ourselves we shouldn’t have headaches, should we?’
‘We shouldn’t have even heads,’ said Edward. ‘I see you’ve already had a dose, Bunny.’
‘Shut up, Fairfield!’ said the Honourable Richard. ‘Give your sister a hearing. Am I right, Hypatia?’
‘Certainly,’ agreed Hypatia. ‘Our failure to apprehend the truth is the root of all so-called evil and pain.’
‘I see,’ said Bunny, wrinkling his brow.
Sheila was touched to see the poor boy falling so easy a pray to the dominating Hypatia. But Mrs. Fairfield thought it was time to look after her property.
‘You don’t, my poor Bunny,’ cut in Mrs. Fairfield. ‘Nor does anyone else. No sense, anyhow. Don’t fill your mind with such stuff just to please Hypatia.... You must be a good boy,’ she added, ‘and do as I tell you.’
‘Mother means that, Bunny,’ said Hypatia. ‘She means every word, although she tries to make a joke of it. If you want to please mother, obey her in all things. It is the only way.’
Mrs. Fairfield became pale and distressed. Signs of an approaching fainting-fit were perceptible. Observing them, her husband broke in sharply. ‘Hypatia, hold your noise!’
So there was a feud, thought Sheila, between the young woman and the old: a duel for the soul of Bunny. Since he had apparently no brains of his own worth considering, the scalp would no doubt fall to Hypatia, who had youth as an ally. And then what terrible vengeance would fall upon him? Could nothing save him from them both? A highly dangerous pity awoke in Sheila’s heart.
‘You shall all go to the Folk Dancing to-night,’ announced Mrs. Fairfield.
The lure of Folk Dancing led them across two fields to a turreted eccentric stone building known as the Summer School, which was at once a gigantic advertisement and a place of mental and physical recreation for Fairfield’s factory hands. He had spent thousands of pounds on this long-cherished scheme, and only a well-timed fainting-fit of his wife’s had prevented his spending thousands more.
Fairfield’s Summer School was as hygienic as his corsets. It was a curious horseshoe-shaped building enclosing a large well-kept lawn in the middle of which, on festive occasions, a maypole was erected; a tower and belfry loomed at the back. To these cloisters the factory hands were wont to repair for free instruction in the theory and practice of arts and modern languages, for lectures on history, sociology, science, for concerts and dances on the green. It claimed to be, and was, a local centre of liberal popular culture. Anything and everything could be discussed there save one thing: it was a point of honour with the founder that Fairfield’s Hygienic Corsets should never be mentioned.
Dusk had already fallen when the Fairfield party reached the green, and the dancing had already begun. Someone began lighting the lamps.
‘This is jolly!’ said Bunny with infectious good spirits. ‘Won’t you dance with me, Hypatia?’
‘I’ve never been taken for Hypatia before,’ Sheila answered.
‘Oh, sorry! It’s Miss Dyrle. Do dance with me, Miss Dyrle. It’s a waltz this time, without trimmings.’
They whirled away among the dancers.
‘I don’t know these old dances, do you?’
‘No. But what does it matter? They stick in a few ordinary things now and again specially for Philistines like us.’
Her heart danced with the music.
‘You brought your violin, didn’t you, Mr. Bunnard? When are you going to play for us?’
But Bunny did not answer. Sheila was rather chilled to observe his abrupt change of mood. He had caught sight of Hypatia dancing with her brother.
They finished the set in silence, and Sheila was immediately claimed by Edward. She felt bitterly alone in the world. She and Hypatia had come to a definite parting of the ways; and she had no other friend.
After a few moments she complained to Edward of giddiness. He led her to a seat.
‘Feel better now?’
‘Quite, thanks. But I’d rather not begin again just yet.’
He studied the ground.
‘It’s a year since you were here.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve often thought of that visit.’
‘Have you?’ said Sheila. ‘I live with my aunt, you know, and she doesn’t approve of my visits to a home of free-thinkers.’
‘But you are not of her persuasion?’
‘Obviously not. Hypatia was my best friend.’
‘Was?’
He seemed to be offering a far from unwelcome sympathy.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I wouldn’t have you tell her for the world. But we’ve drifted away from each other.’
‘Yes? I fancied so.’
‘I suppose it’s this religion of hers,’ said Sheila. ‘Of course I don’t care a rap what she believes, but she’s grown so ... so remote.’
‘I agree with you entirely. I’m glad she hasn’t converted you anyhow. My friend Bunny is doomed, I fear. Hypatia begs the whole question. If matter is only an appearance it is none the less real to our minds: it exists mentally. The whole philosophy is nothing but a silly quibble about terms.’
‘How is your book getting on?’ asked Sheila.
‘Slowly, but it is getting on. Writing a hundred thousand words is a great labour. The mere pen-pushing alone is a bore.’
‘It must be. Couldn’t you dictate it?’
‘That would be difficult for me and very dull for the unfortunate secretary. I’m afraid I should be too self-conscious to work well.’
‘At first, perhaps,’ said Sheila. ‘But that would wear off. And it would be a privilege for the secretary, I should think.’
‘A privilege!’ He laughed. ‘Why, the book is scandalous and atheistical.’
‘That’s why to help would be a privilege,’ she answered with a nervous smile. ‘Would it really help you to be able to dictate to someone?’
‘That would depend, I expect.’
She summoned her courage.
‘Well, to me, for instance?’
‘You!’
‘Yes, me,’ she said humbly. ‘I can spell, you know.’
‘You would do that for me?’ he exclaimed in amazement.
‘I’d willingly do it—for the cause,’ she added rather mischievously.
‘How astoundingly decent of you!’
‘It’s not very polite to be so surprised to find me decent,’ she said, laughing at him.
He looked with undisguised admiration into her Irish eyes. ‘By Jove, what things we could do together!’
A flame of comradeship leaped to life in Sheila. The word ‘together’ made an echoing music in her mind.
Mr. Fairfield stood before them.
‘Miss Dyrle, give me the honour. A real old-fashioned dance this time instead of these new-fangled folk things. Sir Roger de Coverley. And after that Bunny’s going to give us a tune on the fiddle.’
Later, feeling rather breathless and crumpled, she listened to Bunny’s ‘tune on the fiddle.’ She could see the violinist’s face, with a new expression in his eyes, spangled grotesquely with a red light from a fairy lamp. The moon was rising in a pale green sky. Two tall feathery trees, swaying in the gentle wind, seemed to caress each other as they merged for a moment and drew apart again. The music spoke—spoke to Sheila intimately. It seemed to have for her a secret message. It communicated a tremulous half-sobbing ecstasy of pain and beauty: it drew her, shuddering with delight, through divers moods. Now she was in a moonlit forest of tall poplars, walking, walking, alone in the universe. Now there was a flowered field, full of white and green, yellow and red, made glad with the twinkling feet of dancing shepherds and shepherdesses.
As if in response to the music, stars began tremblingly to peer through the luminous green curtain of the sky.
The next morning Edward invited her into the holy of holies where the book was being written.
It was a small room having some of the austerity of a monk’s cell. Two of the walls were lined with books, classified under such headings as Ancient History, Mediæval History, Modern History, Sociology, Science, Philosophy.
‘I do everything on a system,’ remarked Edward in a rather satisfied tone; but Sheila only laughed at his labels.
‘I could never read here,’ she said. ‘I should put a ticket on myself and stand in the corner all day. What a dreadfully orderly room!’
‘Don’t you like it?’ There was disappointment in his tone.
‘Yes, very much. It is little and quiet and studious. There’s no cabbage pattern on the wall and no Jorrocks pictures. There are no pictures of podgy children stroking big dogs, and no family photographs.... I’m sure that gentleman over there isn’t in the family.’ She pointed to a photograph of a Greek statue.
‘No, that’s Euripides. And yet there’s something about the room that you don’t like. What is it?’
‘Well, you do everything on a system, you said. I think that’s what’s wrong. You’ve done this room on a system. Ars est celare artem. Isn’t it the same with systems?’
‘Do you read Horace much?’ he enquired.
‘Not at all,’ confessed Sheila. ‘I found that tag at the end of a dictionary.’
He laughed. ‘You’re delightfully honest.’
A shaft of sunlight falling on his face made visible the little downy hairs over his cheekbones. Sheila caught her eyes involuntarily looking at them.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to work now?’
‘There’s no hurry.’
‘Come, come, I’m sure your system doesn’t permit loitering! Can you provide me with pen and paper?’
‘Do you really mean me to dictate to you?’
She felt a sudden twinge of embarrassment lest she was pressing unwanted assistance upon him.
‘You said I was honest just now. Will you be equally honest with me? If my presence would disturb you, please turn me out.’
He considered gravely for a moment. ‘One can hardly tell—save by experiment.’
‘You wouldn’t mind telling me, would you?’
‘No. I would tell you at once. You have sense enough not to be offended.’
She was absurdly elated by this curt compliment.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘the book comes first with me always. Nothing else matters.’
She ruminated upon that thought for several seconds. The bluntness, the ungraciousness of it at once repelled and attracted her. She could not but admire Edward’s capacity for impersonal enthusiasm; it made him great; and she found something fascinating in his indifference to lesser things. Among those lesser things she was content, for the moment, to include herself. To be his tool, to help him in his work: such service, she felt, would be its own sufficient reward.
Noting her silence, ‘That seems to you inhuman?’ he asked.
‘It seems to me superhuman,’ answered Sheila. ‘Perhaps that’s the secret of fine living: to subordinate all personal things to some great impersonal passion.’
‘That’s just how I feel,’ he said.
Sheila continued. ‘Unless we’re content to be miserable and useless, we must have a consuming passion, if it’s only for collecting beetles: something that doesn’t depend on anybody else.... Persons change,’ she added sadly.
‘You’re thinking of Hypatia,’ he suggested.
‘Hypatia, yes. And someone else. It’s like building your house on sand, you know, ever to rely on persons.’
‘Still,’ said Edward, ‘if a person’s rational and consistent—and there are consistent persons.’
‘Yes, and there are clockwork toys. A perfectly consistent person must be very much like them, I should think.’
‘But surely you agree that man is just that: a mechanical toy in the hands of Necessity. The illusion of freewill is only disguised mechanism.’
‘How dreadful!’ Sheila exclaimed. ‘Then Henley’s lines:
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul—
are meaningless to you?’
‘The man who thinks that he is master of his fate is the most enslaved of all persons,’ said Edward. ‘For he is not even master of the facts.’
‘That’s a quotation from your book, I believe,’ said Sheila. And the young man blushed.
This was the beginning of a long and animated discussion, the first of many. In Edward Sheila discovered that reliability which she had thought could be attributed to no person. His mind was keen and critical: it worked with a certain deadly precision that was as impressive and at times almost as terrifying as a piece of gigantic machinery. He had doubts and hesitancies indeed: the hesitancies of one aware of the subtleties, the baffling complexity, of problems which less careful minds deemed simple; but once he had reached a definite decision, nothing short of overpowering ratiocination, no consideration of comfort or sentiment, could shake him from it. And while her sense of poetry revolted against a certain aridness in his philosophy, the very magnitude and the shattering presumption of his attempt to rationalize the universe overpowered her imagination and thrilled her with a sense of great adventure.