Watersprings by Arthur Christopher Benson (read more books txt) 📕

matter. You have learnt a trade, a difficult trade; why should you give it up? We don't happen to need the money, but that doesn't matter. My business is to take off your shoulders, if I can, all the trouble entailed on you by marrying me--it's simply a division of labour. You can't just settle down in the country as a small squire, with nothing much to do. People must do the work they can do, and I should be miserable if I thought I had pulled you out of your place in the world."

"I don't know," said Howard; "there seems to me to be something rather stuffy about it: why can't we just live? Women do; there is no fuss made about their work, and their need to express themselves; yet they do it even more than men, and they do it without priggishness. My work at Cambridge is just what everyone else is doing, and if I don't do it, there will be half a dozen men capable of doing it and glad to do it. The great men of the world don't talk about the importance of their work: they just do whatever comes to hand--it's only the second-rate men who say that their talents haven't full scope. Do you remember poor Chambers, who was at lunch the other day? He told me that he had migrated from a town parish to a country parish, and that he missed the organisation so much. 'There seems nothing to organise down in the country!' he said. 'Now in my town parish there was the whole machine to keep going--I enjoyed that, and I don't feel I am giving effect to the best part of myself.' That seemed to me such a pompous line, and I felt that I didn't want to be like that. One's work! how little it matters! No one is indispensable--the disappearance of one man just gives another his chance."

"Yes, of course, it is rather hard to draw the line," said Maud, "and I think it is a pity to be solemn about it; but it seems to me so simple in this case. You can do the work--they want you back--there is no reason why you should not go back."

"Perhaps it is mere laziness," said Howard, "but I feel as if I wanted a different sort of life now, a quieter life; and yet I know that there is a snare about that. I rather mistrust the people who say they must get time to think out things. It's like the old definition of metaphysics--the science of muddling oneself systematically. I don't think one can act by reason; one must act by instinct, and reason just prevents one's making a fool of oneself."

"I believe the time for the other life will come quite naturally later," said Maud. "At your age, you have got to do things. Of course it's the same with women in a way, but marriage is their obvious career, and the pity is that there don't seem enough husbands to go round. I can sit in my corner and placidly survey the overstocked market now!"

Howard got up and leaned against the chimneypiece, surveying his wife with delight. "Ah, child," he said, "I was lucky to come in when I did. I shiver at the thought that if I had arrived a little later there would have been 'no talk of thee and me' as Omar says. You would have been a devoted wife, and I should have been a hopeless bachelor!"

"It's unthinkable," said Maud, "it's horrible even to speculate about such things--a mere question of proximity! Well, it can't be mended now; and the result is that I not only drive you back to work, but you have to carry me back as well, like Sindbad and the old man of the sea."

"Yes, it's just like that!" said Howard.

He made several attempts, with Mr. Sandys and with his aunt--even with Miss Merry--to get encouragement for his plan; but he could obtain no sympathy.

"I'm sick of the very word 'ideal,'" he said to Maud. "I feel like a waiter handing about tumblers on a tray, pressing people to have ideals--at least that is what I seem to be supposed to be doing. I haven't any ideals myself--the only thing I demand and practise is civility."

"Yes, I don't think you need bother about ideals," said Maud, "it's wonderful the depressing power of words; there are such a lot of fine and obvious things in the world, perfectly distinct, absolutely necessary, and yet the moment they become professional, they deprive one of all spirit and hope--Jane has that effect on me, I am afraid. I am sure she is a fine creature, but her view always makes me feel uncomfortable--now Cousin Anne takes all the things one needs for granted, and isn't above making fun of them; and then they suddenly appear wholesome and sensible. She is quite clear on the point; now if SHE wanted you to stay, it would be different."

"Very well, so be it!" said Howard; "I feel I am caught in feminine toils. I am like a child being taught to walk--every step applauded, handed on from embrace to embrace. I yield! I will take my beautiful mind back to Cambridge, I will go on moulding character, I will go on suggesting high motives. But the responsibility is yours, and if you turn me into a prig, it will not be my fault."

"Ah, I will take the responsibility for that," said Maud, "and, by the way, hadn't we better begin to look out for a house? I can't live in College, I believe, not even if I were to become a bedmaker?"

"Yes," said Howard, "a high-minded house of roughcast and tile, with plenty of white paint inside, Chippendale chairs, Watts engravings. I have come to that--it's inevitable, it just expresses the situation; but I mustn't go on like this--it isn't funny, this academic irony--it's dreadfully professional. I will be sensible, and write to an agent for a list. It had better just be 'a house' with nothing distinctive; because this will be our home, I hope, and that the official residence. And now, Maud, I won't be tiresome any more; we can't waste time in talking about these things. I haven't done with making love to you yet, and I doubt if I ever shall!"


XXXIII


ANXIETY

The months moved slowly on, a time full of deepening strain and anxiety to Howard. Maud herself seemed serene enough at first, full of hope; she began to be more dependent on him; and Howard perceived two things which gave him some solace; in the first place he found that, sharp as the tension of anxiety in his mind often was, he did not realise it as a burden of which he would be merely glad to be rid. He had an instinctive dislike of all painful straining things--of responsibilities, disagreeable duties, things that disturbed his tranquillity; but this anxiety did not come to him in that light at all; he longed that it should be over, but it was not a thing which he desired to banish from his mind; it was all bound up with love and happy anticipation; and next he learned the joy of doing things that would otherwise be troublesome for the sake of love, and found them all transmuted, not into seemly courtesies, but into sharp and urgent pleasures. To be of use to Maud, to entertain her, to disguise his anxieties, to compel himself to talk easily and lightly--all this filled his soul with delight, especially when he found as the months went on that Maud began to look to him as a matter of course; and though Howard had been used to say that being read aloud to was the only occupation in the world that was worse than reading aloud, he found that there was no greater pleasure than in reading to Maud day by day, in finding books that she cared for.

"If only I could spare you some of this," he said to her one day, "that's the awful thing, not to be able to share the pain of anyone whom one loves. I feel I could hold my hand in the fire with a smile, if only I knew that it was saving you something!"

"Ah, dearest, I know," said Maud, "but you mustn't think of it like that; it INTERESTS me in a curious way--I can't explain--I don't feel helpless; I feel as if I were doing something worth the trouble!"

At last the time drew near; it was hot, silent, airless weather; the sun lay fiercely in the little valley, day by day; one morning they were sitting together and Maud suddenly said to him, "Dearest, one thing I want to say; if I seem to be afraid, I am NOT afraid: will you remember that? I want to walk every step of the way; I mean to do it, I wish to do it; I am not afraid in my heart of hearts of anything--pain, or even worse; and you must remember that, even if I do not seem to remember!"

"Yes," said Howard, "I will remember that; and indeed I know it; you even take away my own fears when you speak so; love takes hands beneath it all."

But on the following morning--Maud had a restless and suffering night--Mrs. Graves came in upon Howard as he tried to read, to tell him that there was great anxiety, Maud had had a sudden attack of pain; it had passed off, but they were not reassured. "The doctor will be here presently," she said. Howard rose dry-lipped and haggard. "She sends you her dearest love," she said, "but she would rather be alone; she doesn't wish you to see her thus; she is absolutely brave, and that is the best thing; and I am not afraid myself," she added: "we must just wait--everything is in her favour; but I know how you feel and how you must feel; just clasp the anxiety close, look in its face; it's a blessed thing, though you can't see it as I do--blessed, I mean, that one CAN feel so."

But the fear thickened after this. A carriage drew up, and Howard saw two doctors descend, carrying bags in their hands. His heart sickened within him, yet he was helped by seeing their unembarrassed and cheerful air, the nod that one of them, a big, fresh-faced man, gave to the coachman, the look he cast round the beautiful old house. People could think of such things, Howard saw, in a moment like that. He went down and met them in the hall, and had that strange sense of unreality in moments of crisis, when one hears one's own voice saying courteous things, without any volition of one's own. The big doctor looked at him kindly. "It is all quite simple and straightforward!" he said. "You must not let yourself be anxious; these times pass by and one wonders afterwards how one could have been so much afraid."

But the hours brought no relief; the doctors stayed long in the house; something had occurred, Howard knew not what, did not dare to conjecture. The silence, the beauty of the whole scene, was insupportably horrible to him. He walked up and down in the afternoon, gazing at Maud's windows--once a nurse came to the window and opened it a little. He went back at last into the house; the doctors were there, talking in low tones to Mrs. Graves. "I will be back first thing in the morning," said one; the worst, then, had not happened. But as he appeared a look of inquiry passed between