YOUTH TO YOUTH
1
Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a co-operative press next year. He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to learn too.
"Because, if you're really not going to marry Barry, and if Barry sticks to not having you without, you'll be rather at a loose end, won't you, and you may as well come and help us with the press.... But of course, you know," Kay added absently, his thoughts still on the press, "I should advise you to give up on that point."
"Give up, Kay? Marry, do you mean?"
"Yes.... It doesn't seem to me to be a point worth making a fuss about. Of course I agree with you in theory—I always have. But I've come to think lately that it's not a point of much importance. And perfectly sensible people are doing it all the time. You know Jimmy Kenrick and Susan Mallow have done it? They used to say they wouldn't, but they have. The fact is, people do do it, whatever they say about it beforehand. And though in theory it's absurd, it seems often to work out pretty well in actual life. Personally I should make no bones about it, if I wanted a girl and she wanted marriage. Of course a girl can always go on being called by her own name if she likes. That has points."
"Of course one could do that," Gerda pondered.
"It's a sound plan in some ways. It saves trouble and explanation to go on with the name you've published your things under before marriage.... By the way, what about your poems, Gerda? They'll be about ready by the time we get our press going, won't they? We can afford to have some slight stuff of that sort if we get hold of a few really good things to start with, to make our name."
Gerda's thoughts were not on her poems, nor on Kay's press, but on his advice about matrimony. For the first time she wavered. If Kay thought that.... It set the business in a new light. And of course other people were doing it; sound people, the people who talked the same language and belonged to the same set as one's self.
Kay had spoken. It was the careless, authentic voice of youth speaking to youth. It was a trumpet blast making a breach in the walls against which the batteries of middle age had thundered in vain. Gerda told herself that she must look further into this, think it over again, talk it over with other people of the age to know what was right. If it could be managed with honour, she would find it a great relief to give up on this point. For Barry was so firm; he would never give up; and, after all, one of them must, if it could be done with a clear conscience.
2
Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, "I've been thinking it over again, Barry, and I've decided that perhaps it will be all right for us to get married after all."
Barry took both her hands and kissed each in turn, to show that he was not triumphing but adoring.
"You mean it? You feel you can really do it without violating your conscience? Sure, darling?"
"Yes, I think I'm sure. Lots of quite sensible, good people have done it lately."
"Oh any number, of course—if that's any reason."
"Not, not those people. My sort of people, I mean. People who believe what I do, and wouldn't tie themselves up and lose their liberty for anything."
"I agree with Lenin. He says liberty is a bourgeois dream."
"Barry, I may keep my name, mayn't I? I may still be called Gerda Bendish, by people in general?"
"Of course, if you like. Rather silly, isn't it? Because it won't be your name. But that's your concern."
"It's the name I've always written and drawn under, you see."
"Yes. I see your point. Of course you shall be Gerda Bendish anywhere you like, only not on cheques, if you don't mind."
"And I don't much want to wear a wedding ring, Barry."
"That's as you like, too, of course. You might keep it in your purse when travelling, to produce if censorious hotel keepers look askance at us. Even the most abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or your marriage lines will do as well.... Gerda, you blessed darling, it's most frightfully decent and sporting of you to have changed your mind and owned up. Next time we differ I'll try and be the one to do it, I honestly will.... I say, let's come out by ourselves and dine and do a theatre, to celebrate the occasion."
So they celebrated the triumph of institutionalism.
3
Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen, jolly, adventuring business, an ardent thing, full of gallant dreams and endeavours. It should never grow tame or stale or placid, never lose its fine edge. There would be mountain peak beyond mountain peak to scale together. They would be co-workers, playmates, friends and lovers all at once, and they would walk in liberty as in a bourgeois dream.
So planned Barry Briscoe, the romantic, about whose head the vision splendid always hovered, a realisable, capturable thing.
Gerda thought, "I'm happy. Poetry and drawing and Barry. I've everything I want, except a St. Bernard pup, and Kay's giving me that for Christmas. I'm happy."
It was a tingling, intense, sensuous feeling, like stretching warm before a good fire, or lying in fragrant thymy woods in June, in the old Junes when suns were hot. Life was a song and a dream and a summer morning.
"You're happy, Gerda," Neville said to her once, gladly but half wistfully, and she nodded, with her small gleaming smile.
"Go on being happy," Neville told her, and Gerda did not know that she had nearly added "for it's cost rather a lot, your happiness." Gerda seldom cared how much things had cost; she did not waste thought on such matters. She was happy.