SO far René’s success had come from his power to do what had been expected of him. He had done it without delight or enthusiasm but with the concentration which came from his lack of interest either in the past or the future. From the interest of others in himself he had been able to borrow a little excitement every now and then, but he could never sustain it. It was not lack of energy, mental or physical, but rather that, doing what was expected of him, he did it well enough to lead to further expectation, and this gave him a constant surprise at himself to keep his existence zestful. He was not altogether indifferent, but he could accept. He accepted that Linda loved him, and was equally prepared to accept that she loved him no longer, subject, of course, to any incidental pain he might suffer. Believing in everything that happened with no power of definition or intellectual curiosity, he could never at any given moment realize his position without reference to others, and therefore, when he found himself embroiled in this tender, disturbing relationship with Linda Brock, he needed to bring it to the test of all his other relationships—with his father, his mother, his brother, M’Elroy, Kurt, and Professor and Mrs. Smallman. He could not talk about it to any of them, but he hoped to find in all some appreciation of the new wonder that had come upon him, and he desired, for his comfort, to find out what in this new development was expected of him. Here he was baffled. Everybody was either tactful or insensible. Things inanimate had changed enormously for him. Streets, houses, trees, had taken on a new beauty, a friendliness that made room for his emotions; but people lagged distressfully, and he often had an unhappy sense of leaving them behind, or, as he talked and listened to them, they would dwindle. And yet, at the same time, he found them so wonderful that, in their failure to respond to his need, they seemed to him to be untrue to their own wonder. He knew not the nature of his need, but he was left subtly conscious of its being left unsatisfied. He ascribed his discomfort to his love, and called it “being in love.” It gave him an insatiable desire for Linda’s society, presence, contact; a harsh sensibility to her beauty; an appreciation of her physical qualities upon which he never dared to think, because it led him back in thought to the moment of her colloquy with his father when he had felt so strangely that he and his mother were not of their world. In this distress his mind could find ease in the idea of marriage. That settled the future and appointed an end to the force that urged him on so mysteriously and powerfully; but, accustomed as he was to living humbly in the present, he needed somehow to escape the isolation into which the desire for Linda had cast him. He worked harder than he had ever done, but when he was not working, and issued from the coolness of that limited mental activity, he was visited by a craving that not even Linda could slake. He found most comfort in children and the idea of children. He would go and see Mrs. Smallman, and sit with her in the garden and silently watch Martin and Bridget playing over the meager lawn under the plum-tree. He would talk to Mrs. Smallman about indifferent things, and go sick at heart as he saw how her eyes and mind were upon the children, how little occupied with himself, and how rigidly she kept him from that mystery which he desired to comprehend. Again he would play with the children with an admirable success, so that they would admit him as one of themselves, only as he emerged from the game to be met with an applauding smile from the charming lady, which made him feel that she admired his performance but could not herself admit him. She was friendly and amiable, and would ask him to come again; and he would hear from Linda how well Mrs. Smallman thought of him—“Such a nice boy, and so fond of children”—but she kept him separate. He tried once or twice to tell Mrs. Smallman about Linda.
“She is such a clever girl,” she would say. “A good musician, of course. My husband says she could take a first easily in almost any subject. I am sure she will make a good wife, just the kind of girl to make a man successful. We have often been surprised that she has not married before, but of course she is a girl who could only live happily with a good brain. It does make such a difference.”
Everything she said led back to her own bliss and exceptional fortune; and while René gave her due homage for her motherhood, her wifedom, her gracious happy home, yet he came almost to hate these things without knowing that it was because they were securely barred in. Yet he could not keep away nor refrain from his attempts to storm the citadel.
He would try through Smallman, who was even more exasperating. He seemed to divine that his pupil was groping after some reassurance of human beauty, but he would hint darkly at the difficulties of married life, generalize about the simplicity of human needs, whisper of the revelation of fatherhood, and, just as he had René sitting forward in excited anticipation of the longed-for marvel, he would double and turn aside into the discussion of economic problems, or the unsatisfactory nature of the academic life in Thrigsby. And then, with the children, René would see that Smallman could never enter into their games or their minds as thoroughly as himself.
On the whole he preferred George’s gross swaggering over his paternity, and there was a sure satisfaction in watching his sister-in-law suckle her baby. But there again George and his wife took upon themselves an excessive credit for the achievement, hoarded it, invested it in everybody whom they could get to take it, seeming to use the child as a means of gaining admiration for themselves. They seemed to be incapable of recovering from the astonishment of anything so natural happening to themselves, and they too, a little more exuberantly and less charmingly, barred René out.
“By Jove!” George would say, “there is nothing like it. It’s wonderful what you can do without when you’ve got that. And, as I was saying to Elsie, I can’t make out what swells do who have a nurse. I can’t tell you how jolly glad I was when the monthly went and we could have it all to ourselves.”
To René George was so horrible when he talked so, that he would forget the sentimental satisfaction he had had in the contemplation of the change wrought in the household by the advent of his nephew.
“And imagine,” George said once, “that one never thinks of it. You get making love and all that. Just a bit o’ fun, as likely as not, and it leads to this. By God, it’s a big thing. Hark at the little beggar. I tell you, René, my heart sometimes stops with fright when a long time goes by and he doesn’t howl. Oh, well, your day will come. It’ll come, all right. Don’t you worry!”
In desperation René led the conversation elsewhere.
And at home things were hardly better. He felt that his mother did not like Linda, though she showed no reluctance to talk of her, or indeed to praise her. Perhaps Linda had frightened her. And sometimes René would feel that his mother had a real horror of love and marriage and all but the most superficial and sentimental relations of the sexes. He would wonder how that could be reconciled with her reception of his father or her excited business before the coming of Elsie’s baby. She was often disconcertingly silent when he came home from some employment with Linda, and he learned that he must not tell her what he had been doing.