She detected in herself a disposition10 to prelude11 rather heavily, to say often and too impressively: “Philip, dear; there is something I want to say ——” She hated herself every time she found that this preluding tendency had got her again, and had foisted12 itself upon her in some new, not instantly avoidable variation.
Yes, things were said and there were answers and acceptances. In the retrospect13 things fell into place and the remark of the late afternoon linked itself to the neglected suggestion of the morning. He had attended to her observations more than she had supposed, and expressed himself she realised with a fragmentary completeness.
Among the things she thought had been got over between herself and Philip was the recognition of their personal difference. They had to understand that their minds worked differently. Mr. Sempack had made that very plain to her, plainer even than he had intended, and she meant to make it very plain to Philip. Philip would have to make allowances for her in the days ahead. It was not only she who had to make allowances for Philip. They had to see each other plain. Illusions were all very well for lovers but not for the love of man and wife.
“I worry more with my mind over things than you do,” she had struggled with it. “Your mind bites and swallows; you hardly know what has happened, but mine grinds round and round. I’m an intellectualiser.”
“You’re damned intelligent,” said Philip loyally.
“That’s not so certain, Phil. I not only think a thing but I’ve got to think I’m thinking it. I’ve got to join things on one to the other. I’ve got to get out my principles and look at them, before I judge anything Philip, has it ever dawned on you that I’m a bit of a prig?”
“You!” cried Philip. “My God!”
He was so horrified14; she had to laugh. “Dear, I am,” she said. “I don’t forget myself in things. You do. But I’m always there, with my set of principles complete, in the foreground — or the frame if you like — of what I’m thinking about. You can’t get away from it, if you are like that.”
“You’re no prig,” said Philip. “What has put that into your head?”
“And so far as I can see,” she said, “it’s no good making up your mind not to be a prig if you are a prig. That’s only going one depth deeper into priggishness.”
Philip had one of his flashes. “Still that’s not so bad as making up your mind that you won’t make up your mind not to be a prig, you little darling. This — all this is adorable and just like you. You are growing up in your own fashion, and so perhaps am I. I’ve always loved your judgments15 and your balance. . . . How little we’ve talked since our marriage! How little we’ve talked! And I always dreamt of talking to you. Before we married I used to think of us sitting and talking — just like this.”
That was a good phase of their time to recall. And she recalled it, with a number of little things he said later, little things that came back again and again to this question of some method, some reasoned substance, in their relationship that she had broached16 in this fashion. At times he would say things that amounted to the endorsement17 and acceptance of her own gently hinted criticisms. It was queer how he gave them back to her, enlarged, rather strengthened.
“Of course,” said Philip, half a day later; “all this taking things for granted is Rot — sheer Rot. Everyone ought to think things out for himself. Everyone. Coal strike. Everything. How lazy — in our minds I mean — people of our sort are! We seem to take it all out of ourselves keeping fit. . . . Fit for nothing.”
And: “Empty-minded. I suppose that people never have been so empty-minded as our sort of people are now. Always before, they had their religion. They had their intentions to live in a certain way that they thought was right. Not simply just jazzing about. . . . ”
It was extraordinary with what completeness he grasped and accepted her long latent criticisms of their life in common. “Puppy,” he remarked, “only put the lid on. I see I must get clear. The damned thing of it, wasn’t that at all. It was the drift. The day after day. The tennis. Just anything that happened.”
He had seized upon her timid and shadowy intimations to make a definite project for their intercourse while he was away. “Prig or no prig,” they were to explain their beliefs to each other, clear up their ideas, “stop the drift.” They were to write as fully1 and clearly as possible to each other. “God and all that,” he said. It didn’t matter.
“I’ve never written a letter, a real letter, I mean about serious things, in my life. I shall try and write about ’em now to you. Just as I see them over there. I shan’t write love-letters to you — except every now and then. Lill’ nonsense, just in passin’. I shall write about every blessed thing. Every blessed thing.
“You mustn’t laugh at the stuff I shall send you. It will clear my mind. People of our sort ought to be made to write things down what we believe. Just to make sure we aren’t fudging.”
Walking up and down with her in the broad path beyond the stone of the sweet Lucina, he remarked at large, loudly and with no sequence: “Prig be damned!”
And also he said: “A woman is a man’s keeper. A wife is a man’s conscience. If he can’t bring his thoughts to her — she’s no good at all.
“No real good.”
Then a confession19. “I always thought of talking about things with you. When first I met you. We did talk rather. For a bit.”
Her fullest memory was of him late at night on the balcony outside her sitting-room. She was lying on a long deck-chair and he stood leaning against the parapet, jerking things at her, going from topic to topic, lighting20, smoking, throwing away cigarettes.
“Cynthia,” he asked abruptly21, “what do you think about Socialism and all that sort of thing?”
So comprehensive a question found her unprepared. One was trained at school, he went on, to think “that sort of thing.” Rot and not think any more about it. But it wasn’t Rot. There was such a thing as social injustice22. Most people didn’t get a fair deal. They didn’t get a dog’s chance of a fair deal.
He stepped to another aspect.
“Have you ever thought of our sort of life as being mean, Cynthia?”
Latterly she had. But she wanted him to lead the talking and so she answered: “I’ve always assumed we gave something back.”
“Yes. And what do we give back?”
“We ought to give back ——” She paused.
“More than we do.”
“Considering what they get,” he said. “Rather!
“F’r instance,” he began and paused.
The moon with an imperceptible swiftness was gliding23 clear of the black trees and he stood now, a dim outline against a world of misty24 silver, taut25 and earnest, leaning against her balustrade. “I’ve been trying to make out this coal story for myself,” he said. “Rather late in the day seeing how deep in coal we are. But I’ve always left things to Uncle Robert and the partners. I grew up to the idea of leaving things to Uncle Robert.”
The face of Uncle Robert, Lord Edensoke, the head of the Rylands clan26, came before her eyes, a hard handsome face, rather like Philip, rather like Geoffry; she could never determine in her own mind which he was most like. He was the autocrat27 of the Rylands world and she fancied a little hostile to her marriage. It was very easy to understand how Philip had grown up to the idea of leaving things to Uncle Robert.
“I don’t like the story,” Philip was saying.
“You know, Cynthia, it’s a greedy history, on our part.
“I wish old Sempack hadn’t trotted28 off in the way he did. I’d have liked to have had a lot of this out with him. That old boy has a kind of grip of things. I’m getting his books. I suppose it was just his tact29 took him off. He noticed something. Of that trouble. Thought we might want a bit of time together. We did. But I’d have liked to have had his point of view of a lot of things. We coal-owners f’r instance.
“You know, Cynthia, in the coal trouble, we coal-owners don’t seem to have done a single decent thing. I mean to say a generous thing. I mean we just stick to our royalties30. We get in the way and ask to be bought off. I think you ought to read a bit of this Royal Commission Report. It’s in the file of the Manchester Guardian31 downstairs. I’ll mark you some papers. There’s the Commission’s report and the Labour Plan and various schemes and they’re all worth reading. These are things we ought to read. It’s a Tory Commission, this last one. The other wasn’t. The Justice Sankey one. But the things this Report is kind of obliged to say of us. Ever so gently, but it gets them said. The way we hang on. And get. I never saw it before. I suppose because I’ve never looked. Been afraid of being called a prig perhaps. Taking life too seriously and all that. But when you look straight at it, and read those papers — which aren’t Bolshevik, which aren’t even Labourite, mind you — you see things.”
He faced the socialist32 proposition. ”Are we parasites33?” he asked.
Out of something he called their “net production” of coal, Rylands and Cokeson got in royalties and profits seventeen per cent. “Royalties by right and profits by habit,” he said. She made a mental note to find out about net production.
He laughed abruptly. “I’m talking to-night. I seem to be doing all the talking. Just outpouring.”
“Oh! I’ve wanted you to talk,” she said. “For all our life together I’ve been wondering —— What does he think? What does he feel? I mean about these things — these things that really matter. And this is how you feel. It’s so true, my dear, we don’t give enough. We’re not good enough. We take and we don’t repay.”
“But even if we did all we could, how could we repay?”
“We could at least do all we could.”
He stood quite still for a time and then came over to her. He bent34 down over her and sat down beside her, he kissed her face, cool and infinitely35 delicate in the moonlight, and crumpled36 up beside her chaise-longue, a dark heap with a pale clear profile, and his ear against her hand. She loved the feel of his ear.
“My dear, it’s so amazing!“ he whispered. “When we begin to look at ourselves. To see how near we may be to the things they say of us in Hyde Park.”
He brooded. “Getting all we do out of the country and doing nothing for it. A bit of soldiering in the war — but it was the Tommies got the mud and the short commons. And things like that. . . . What else have I done for — this?”
This in his whispered voice was all the beauty in their lives, this warm globe of silver and ebony in which they nestled darkly together.
“Presently I am expected to sit for Sealholme — just to make sure nobody gets busy with our royalties. . . .
“Suppose I stood for Sealholme on the other side!
“It is funny to wake up, so to speak, and find myself with all this socialism running about in my head.”
He rubbed his ear and cheek against her hand as a cat might do. “Is it you, has given me this socialism? I must have caught it from you.”
She pinched his ear softly. “You’ve been thinking.”
“If it isn’t you, it’s ——”
He paused for her to fall into his trap.
“Sempack,” she guessed.
“Bullace,” he said. “Queer beast. Something between an ass18 and a walrus37. Egg on his moustache. But he gave the show away. All his talk about labour — and keeping labour down. So utterly38 mean. Bluster39 and meanness. Yes. But how does Bullace stand to Uncle Robert? . . .
“Where does Uncle Robert come in?”
Long silence.
“You are the rightest thing in the world, Cynthia. I’ve not given you a fair chance with me. I’ve never given us a fair chance with ourselves. We have to think things out. All this stuff. Where we are and what we are.”
He sighed.
“And then I suppose what we have to do.”
He went off at a tangent. “My Cynthia. I love you.”
“My dear“ she whispered and drew his head into the crook40 of her arm against her crescent breast and kissed his hair.
“Two kids. That’s been the pose. Pretty dears! Lovely to see how happy they are. Uncle Robert will see to things. But not such kids. Not such kids that we can’t spend twenty-two thousand a year on ourselves and bring a child into the world. What am I? Twenty-nine! . . . Too much of this darling kid business. We’re man and woman, caught unprepared. . . . ”
He had a flash of imagination. “Suppose I went and looked over this balcony and down there in the black shadows under the palm trees I saw the miners who pay for this house, with their lanterns, cramped41 as they are in the mine, creeping forward, step by step, picking and sweating through the shadows, eh? Chaps younger than me. Boys some of ’em. And suppose one or two of ’em looked up! . . .
“God! the things I don’t know! The things I’ve never thought about! The hours of perfect health I’ve spent on that cursed tennis court while all this trouble was brewing42! . . . When you and I might have been talking and learning to understand!”
Astounding43 this burst of pent-up radicalism44! How long had it been accumulating?
Brooding, reading, thinking; how silent he had been! And then these ideas, these very decisive ideas — for all their inchoate45 expressiveness46.
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1
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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2
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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3
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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4
consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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5
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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6
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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7
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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8
polyglot
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| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
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9
seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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10
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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12
foisted
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| 强迫接受，把…强加于( foist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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14
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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15
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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16
broached
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| v.谈起( broach的过去式和过去分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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17
endorsement
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| n.背书；赞成，认可，担保；签(注)，批注 | |
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18
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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20
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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23
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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24
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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25
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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26
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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autocrat
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| n.独裁者；专横的人 | |
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28
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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29
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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30
royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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31
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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32
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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33
parasites
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| 寄生物( parasite的名词复数 )； 靠他人为生的人； 诸虫 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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35
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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36
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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37
walrus
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| n.海象 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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39
bluster
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| v.猛刮；怒冲冲的说；n.吓唬，怒号；狂风声 | |
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40
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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41
cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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42
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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43
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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44
radicalism
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| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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45
inchoate
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| adj.才开始的，初期的 | |
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46
expressiveness
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| n.富有表现力 | |
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