He settles proudly underneath his turret and waits for the great change to start. The neighbours call and he discovers they are cultured. They are very cultured. And he—with a sick horror he knows at length that he is not. All these people here have something different, not a mere turret—something different about themselves. Menzies believes that eating sheep is murder in the sight of Heaven, and the same with cows. Du Cane will not let his children wear boots, because the notion is not Greek. Farren is convinced that you must sleep with your feet to the south and your head, of course, in the opposite direction. Blythe-Egerton believes in ghosts but says they can't have clothes. Jerningham lives next the golf club house, an envied site, and holds success in games has always been the first precursor of a nation's downfall. Escott knows exactly who should marry what; whilst Ferguson can quite explain the Post-Impressionists, but fails to understand the Royal Academy—peculiar in a Scotchman. Yes, every single one of them has some outstanding gift or knowledge, making him a pleasant man to meet.
So out he goes, post-haste, to search a quality, and wishes now that he had not spent all that extra money upon his symbolic turret. He knows a better secret, now, of how real individuality is gained. It consists not in bricks and mortar nor in any latticed garden-work—though these may be its outward signs—but in a being different. He hurries out and buys the works of Chesterton and Bernard Shaw as a beginning.
Helena, of course, was predisposed to it since Devonshire.
She did not long to become different, so much: she hankered to cease being ignorant.
Hubert was so clever, but that discouraged more than it helped her. He talked quite brilliantly about such deep things, but he would not explain. He laughed and said she was a jolly child. He always treated her rather as one and certainly they had great fun together, but she longed to be clever without getting old, and when she had told him so, he simply laughed and said she ought to be content to have such quaint ideas.
"It's far better," he added, "to be original than clever. Don't you worry your dear little head with dull ideas and facts."
But Helena did worry.
She had now, apart from her old desire for self-development and knowledge about life, all these dull lonely hours to fill; and as she went about, slowly getting to know the people near, she found like our enthusiast that every one of them was full of something—some vital, all-absorbing topic, if nothing more than golf or their own handicap. And that, she saw at once, was what she had to have if she wished ever to make her life really full. She could not go to matinées, like some, or Hubert missed her all the afternoon; and if they went to an At Home, he always dashed away at five, which looked so rude, and people—she felt sure—said afterwards that she could not have much hold over him, so soon. She tried novels, but these she really could not understand. Hubert watched cynically her attempts to get at grips with a sex-novel more sexual than is expected even in these days of censorships and free advertisement.
"But, Hubert," she said finally, "why did she do that? Wasn't she fond of her husband? He seems quite nice. Do these terrible things really happen?"
"Oh no," he answered, as one would speak to a child. "Of course they never happen really."