It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

If a friendship between a man and a woman is to remain contented with itself, seeking neither promotion nor dissolution, there must not be present in it, on the part of either, any longing to gain power over the other. Our own belief is that if Miss Arkroyd's self-love had not felt hurt at what seemed to her a too ready acceptance by Challis of the position in which a slight change in her manner had placed him, he might have paid his visit to Royd, gone back home, and maybe pretended to himself that the still waters of his inner soul had never been ruffled by Judith or any other fashionable enchantress. But a woman's pleasure in the power of her beauty is like that of dram-drinking. She may "swear off," as Rip Van Winkle did, a thousand times—but she will go back and do it again, or die for it. How can she help it, when a glance, a movement, a slight inexplicable intonation of her voice, is enough to bring back to bondage the idiot that thinks he has broken free? Why should she try to help it, from the point of view of self-interest, when she believes—as Judith did, without misgiving—that she can throw her end of the chain away at any moment, and wash her hands of that booby, and go on to another?

Judith believed her position was security itself, and was a little piqued at the readiness with which Challis had jumped at the permission to withdraw into his own sanctum. Whatever behaviour of her own had influenced this readiness, she resented it as an interruption to an assertion of power she was beginning to feel herself entitled to. Like the dram-drinker, she could not do without it. So, after three days of cordial civility, too dexterous to indite as a change of front, and equally dexterous postponement of Estrild for some future discussion, the young lady, without explanation, resumed the half-familiar, half-patronizing tone Challis had become accustomed to in Grosvenor Square.

Some three days later it happened that this household decided on a sort of picnic known to it as "half-a-mile-off tea." A houseful of able-bodied servants made this festivity, which was exactly what its name implies, easily possible. All the most critical tea-drinker could want had gone before, and the house-party, or most of it, was straggling across the parkland to Fern Hollow, the place appointed. Challis and Judith were accidentally last.

A chance left him the only hearer of a voice dropped languidly for the benefit of his ears alone. "Let these noisy people go on in front, Scroop," said its owner to him; and then, in reply to his amused look at hearing himself so addressed, "I knew I should do it in the end, because of the newspaper reviews. Do you mind my calling you Scroop now and then, by accident?"

"Nothing can please me better," said he. "Biggest compliment you can pay me!" It started the soul-brush afresh, and he had to settle whether it was to be submission or protest. He fancied he could manage the latter even though he acknowledged the voice, that continued, "Suppose we go by Trout Bend! It's nonsense hurrying. The tea can wait. Or we can have fresh made." This was concession, both in the proposed tête-à-tête, and something in the familiarity of treatment, which seemed to savour more of the Hermitage than Grosvenor Square. But it was only the simple vocabulary common to all tea-worlds; they are above class distinctions.

"Suppose we do," said Challis. And they did.

Trout Bend is a small incident in Geography. But it has a quality in common with—for instance—the Arctic Circle. It is always the same. Its lower segment has the same merry ripple over the same stones, and its upper one spreads to the same pools, that foster here and there each year the very selfsame bulrushes, to all appearance. And in the middle of the best one—the one, that is, that lends itself best to self-deception on the part of the fisherman—the fish that leaped last year, when you were looking at it and wondering how deep it was in the middle, does it again, and doesn't bore you. Because if he did, you wouldn't watch for him a third time. Only then he doesn't do it again, and that does bore you. And where the pools end and the ripples begin are the same infatuated stepping-stones, that think they can bear your weight, and can't. And then you become spell-bound on them as they wobble, and are rescued by extended walking-sticks from either side, and get across quite dry, or only a very little water in one shoe.

It was all the same this time, certainly, as when Challis was here in the autumn; all but a black swimming-bird, who had nodded a great deal, and surprised him, but not his companion—it was Athelstan Taylor—by diving suddenly and never coming up. The Rector had explained the ways of water hens, and that this slyboots was still under some floating rubbish, with her nose out for breath. Challis remembered wondering whether the whole of this class of birds was feminine, and watercocks only existed in connection with the Company. There was none this time—neither cock nor hen—and the open pastureland this side the beech-covert was all ablaze with buttercups in the high grass. For the fallow-deer found their pasture farther from the house, and never a little tail wagged on a dappled back in sight of Challis and Judith as they crossed the bridge—one slice of an elm-tree, with the outline on it of its trunk of a hundred years ago.

"I suppose you know the legend of this bridge and the convict," said the lady, turning to the gentleman.

"What legend of this bridge and what convict?" His inattention to his words was shown in the way he echoed them—sounds without meaning.