Tales of two people

VI

NOW I come to my share in this history. I confess that I approach it with doubt and trembling; but it has to be told here. It will never be told anywhere else – certainly not at the Lexingtons’, nor above all, for my peace’ sake, to my sister Jane.

The following day was a Sunday, and, according to a not infrequent practice of mine, I took a walk in Hyde Park in the morning – in the early hours before the crowd turned out. The place was almost deserted, for the weather was raw and chilly; but there, by some supernatural interposition as I am convinced, whether benign or malignant only the passage of years can show, in a chair at the corner of the Row sat Oliver Kirby. I stopped before him and said “Hallo!”

I had forgotten how entirely formal our previous acquaintance had been, perhaps because I had been thinking about him so much.

He greeted me cordially, indeed gladly, as I fancied, and, when I objected to sitting in the chilly air, he proposed to share my walk. I mentioned the secretaryship, remarking that I understood it was a good thing for a man to get. He shrugged his shoulders, then turned to me, and said, with a sudden twinkle lighting up his eyes, “One might be able to keep our friend straight, perhaps.”

“You think he needs it?”

“It’s only a matter of time for that man to come a cropper. The first big affair he gets to handle, look out! I’m not prejudiced. He’s a very good fellow, and I like him – besides being amused at him. But what I say is true.” He spoke with an uncanny certainty.

“What makes you say it?”

Kirby took my arm. “The man is constitutionally incapable of thinking in the right order. It’s always the same with him, I don’t care whether it’s an article about North Africa or that book of his about primitive man. He always – not occasionally, but always – starts with his conclusion and works backwards to the premises. North Africa ought to be that shape – it is! Primitive man ought to have thought that – he did! You see? The result is that the facts have to adapt themselves to these conclusions of his. Now that habit of mind, Wynne, makes a man who has to do with public affairs a dangerous and pernicious fool. He oughtn’t to be allowed about. What, I should like to know, does he think the Almighty made facts for! Not to be looked at, evidently!”

I was much refreshed by this lively indignation of the intellect. But, “You’re quite sure you’re not prejudiced?” said I.

“I said it all in a review of his book before I ever met him, or came into – ”

“Conflict with him?” I ventured to interpose.

He looked at me gravely. I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business. I have so little that I never welcome that injunction. Then he smiled.

“I forgot that I’d met you at the Lexingtons’,” he said.

“I don’t think you need have told me that you’d forgotten.”

“Well, I had,” said he, staring a little.

“But you needn’t have said so – needn’t have put it that way.”

“Oh!” He seemed to be considering quite a new point of view.

“Not that I’m offended. I only point it out for your good. You expect people to be too much like you. The rest of us have feelings – ”

“I’ve feelings, Wynne,” he interrupted quickly.

“Fancies – ”

“Ah, well – perhaps those too, sometimes.”

“Fears – ”

He squeezed my arm. “You’ve struck me the right morning,” he said.

“Think what you’re asking of – the person we mean.”

“She’s to give me her answer after lunch to-day.”

“I believe it will be ‘No’ – unless you can do something.”

He looked at me searchingly, “What’s in your mind?” he asked. “Out with it! This is a big thing to me, you know.”

“It’s a big thing to her. I know it is. Yes, she has said something to me. But I think she’ll say ‘No,’ unless – well, unless you treat her as you want Val Hare to treat North Africa and primitive man. Apply your own rules, my friend. Reason in the right order!”

He smiled grimly. “Develop that a little,” he requested, or, rather, ordered.

“It’s not your feelings, or your traditions, or your surroundings, that count now. And it’s not what you think she ought to feel, nor what she ought as a fact to feel, nor even what’s she’s telling herself she ought to be brave enough and strong enough to feel. It’s what she must feel, has been bred to feel, and in the end does feel. What she does feel will beat you unless you find a way out.”

“What does she feel?”

“That it’s failure, and that all the other girls will say so – failure in the one great opportunity of her life, in the one great thing that’s expected of her; that it’s final; that she must live all her life a failure among those who looked to her for a great success. And the others will make successes! Would it be a small thing for a man? What is it to a girl?”

“A failure, to marry me? You mean she feels that?”

“Facts, please! Again facts! Not what you think you are, or are sure you are, or are convinced you could be; just what you are – Mr Kirby of the Colonial Office, lately promoted – it is promotion, isn’t it? – to be secretary to – ”

“Stop! I just want to run over all that,” he said.

At, and from, this point I limit my liability. I had managed to point out – it really was not easy to set up to tell him things – where I thought he was wrong. Somehow, amid my trepidation, I was aware of a pleasure in talking to a splendidly open and candid mind. He was surprised that he had been wrong – that touch of a somewhat attractive arrogance there was about him – but the mere suspicion of being wrong made him attentive to the uttermost. Tell him he hadn’t observed his facts, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, rest till he had substantiated, or you had withdrawn, the imputation. But, as I say, to suggest the mistake was all I did. I had no precise remedy ready; I believe I had only a hazy idea of what might be done by a more sympathetic demeanour, a more ample acknowledgment of Miss Constantine’s sacrifice – a notion that she might do the big thing if he made her think it the enormous thing; aren’t even girls like that sometimes? The sower of the seed is entitled to some credit for the crop; after all, though, the ground does more. I take none too much credit for my hint, nor desire to take too much responsibility.

He caught me by the arm and pulled me down on to a bench – a free seat just by the east end of the Serpentine.

“Yes, I see,” he said. “I’ve been an ass. Just since you spoke, it’s all come before me – in a sort of way it grew up in my mind. I know how she feels now – both ways. I only knew how she felt about my end of the thing before. I was antagonistic to the other thing. I couldn’t see Val as a sort of Westminster Abbey for the living – that’s the truth. Never be antagonistic to facts – you’ve taught me that lesson once more, Wynne.” He broke into a sudden amused smile. “I say, if your meddling is generally as useful as it has been to me, I don’t see why you shouldn’t go on meddling, old chap.”

I let that pass, though I should have preferred some such word as “interpose” or “intervene,” or “act as an intermediary.” I still consider that I had been in some sense invited – well, at any rate, tempted – to – well, as I have suggested, intervene.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Settle it,” replied Mr Oliver Kirby, rising from the bench.

He might have been a little more communicative. It is possible to suggest that. As a matter of fact, he was the best part of the way to Hyde Park Corner before I realised that I was sitting alone on the bench.

VII

HAD Kirby been at my elbow, his bullet head almost audibly pricing my actions, relentlessly assessing them, even while he admitted that they had done him good, I imagine that I should not have gone. His epithet rankled. I a meddler! I can only say that it is a fortunate circumstance that he never knew Jane.

However, I did call on Lady Lexington that afternoon, and found just a snug family party – that was what my hostess called it. In fact, besides myself, the only outsider was Valentine Hare; and could he be called an outsider? His precise appellation hung in suspense. Talk was intimate and bright.

In view of Val’s appointment, it was natural that it should turn on the Colonies. Val himself hinted that the Foreign Office would have given more scope for his specialty (he meant North Africa, not the “Religion of Primitive Man”); but Miss Constantine was hot on the Colonies, going so far, indeed, as to get out an atlas and discuss thousands of square miles, and wheat belts, and things like that. Once or twice I fancied that the new Under-Secretary would have been glad not to be quite so new; a few days of coaching from, say, Kirby (Had she had – ? At lunch? No; it was hardly thinkable; he couldn’t have taken that moment to instruct her) would have equipped him better for her excellently informed conversation. As for poor Lexington, he broke down entirely when she got out to Assiniboia and Saskatchewan, and said frankly that in his opinion there was more of Canada than any man could be expected to know about. That did not seem to be at all Miss Constantine’s view. She was stopped only by the ocean. I am not sure that a vaulting ambition did not confederate Japan.

Val was delighted. Miss Constantine was so cordial, so interested, so congratulatory on his appointment. There was, as it seemed to me, a serenity in her manner which had recently been lacking – a return of her old assurance, softened still, but not now by the air of appeal; it was rather by an extreme friendliness. Val must have felt the friendliness too, I think, for he expanded wonderfully, discoursing with marvellous fecundity, and with a knowledge as extensive as it was indefinite, of the British possessions beyond the seas. All said and done, he knew a lot more than I did; but, then, I was not his competitor.

So we got on splendidly together. Lady Lexington beamed, her lord warmed himself happily, Miss Constantine was graciousness itself, Val basked and blossomed – and I wondered what the deuce had happened at Mrs Something Simpson’s flat in Westminster. (Her real name was Whitaker Simpson, and I believe Jane knew it quite well.)

Yes, she was monstrously friendly – distrust that in your mistress whether wooed or won. She would do everything for Val that afternoon, except be left alone with him. The Lexingtons went – you can hardly stop people going in their own house; Miss Boots and Mr Sharpies, who were both there, went – to church. I tried to go, but she wouldn’t let me. Her refusal was quite obvious: Val – he was impeccable in manners – saw it. After precisely the right interval he rose and took his leave. I had the atlas on my knees then (we had got back to Assiniboia), and I studied it hard; but, honestly, I couldn’t help hearing. The tones of her voice, at least, hinted at no desire for privacy.