Part 11

‘It’s a pity Miss Fry is such a frump,’ said Sheila, when they had got into their beds and Hypatia had blown the light out.

Hypatia agreed. ‘I’m awfully glad you woke up. We might never have got to know each other if you hadn’t caught me reading.’

‘I don’t expect we should,’ responded Sheila, glowing with the excitement of a new friendship.

‘I was absolutely isolated,’ Hypatia said. ‘Oh, why ever didn’t you come to St. Margaret’s before?’

Sheila laughed. ‘I would have done it if I’d known, perhaps. And yet I was sorry to leave my other school.’

‘Was it decent there?’

‘Well, they didn’t teach us much, but it was very comfortable and homelike. I’d practically grown up there. It was a day school. They didn’t worry me much. Two or three of us in the Sixth used to spend a lot of our school hours producing a school mag.’

‘Unofficial, I suppose?’

‘Very. We wrote it out by hand and handed it round.’

‘Did you write stories, or what?’

‘Oh, things, you know,’ said Sheila. ‘It was only a lark. A kind of skit on the official journal.’

‘They’re too ladylike here for anything so vulgar as journalism,’ complained Hypatia to the darkness.

‘I expect so.’

‘Miss Fry with her Ministering Children!’ added Hypatia scornfully.... ‘By the way, are you church, chapel, or what?’

‘The last,’ said Sheila. ‘I’m rather keen on Edward Carpenter just now. Have you read him?’

‘Yes. Whitman and water,’ replied Hypatia. ‘I’m an agnostic personally. So are my people.’

‘Your people too!’ exclaimed Sheila. ‘I thought one’s people were always orthodox.’

Hypatia laughed. ‘Are you Irish?’

‘Part of me is.’

‘The voice part,’ said Hypatia.

‘Mother was Irish, and father had some Irish blood--just a drop or two.’

‘Your voice is lovely.’

Sheila heard Hypatia’s bed creak, and then the sound of a match being struck. Hypatia bent over her.

‘And you’ve Irish eyes too,’ she said. The match flickered out, and she went back to her bed. ‘They’re blue. Blue eyes and dark hair.’

She struck off at a tangent.

‘You’ll like Spencer. He makes your brain simmer. I said that before, didn’t I? Especially on the Unknowable. Funny, some people think there’s nothing unknowable.’

‘Beautiful people,’ said Sheila. ‘The salt of the earth. You’d think, to hear them talk, that they were present at the Creation of the world taking shorthand notes.’

There was silence for a few minutes.

‘I believe I’m too excited to sleep,’ said Sheila presently. ‘But I suppose we ought to....’

* * * * *

For weeks together, in defiance of Kay’s letters, Sheila abandoned herself to her dream of love, and the Kay of her imagination was a lover beyond criticism. It was become an article of her faith that it was this perfect lover, not the author of the letters, whom she would meet again on her return from school. Him she had indeed seen on the night of their love’s visible flowering. They had but to be together again, and she would know him for what he was, master of a speech more eloquent than words. And while she dreamed of this blissful reunion a letter came that rent her heart.

DARLING SHEILA.--Do not be surprised if I don’t write for several days. Dad died suddenly yesterday. Your loving KAY.

She recalled Helena’s death, re-living some of that agony; and compassion for Kay wrung bitter tears from her. Into her letter she poured a torrent of love and pity and passionate protest. She yearned for the moment when she would see him face to face and offer for his comfort the balm of her lips.

* * * * *

‘You see,’ explained Sheila, ‘I couldn’t tell you then, Hypatia. It would have been disloyal. I didn’t admit even to myself that there was anything to spoil our happiness. I thought that as soon as I saw him again, and touched him, that horrible doubt would vanish.’

‘And didn’t it?’

‘Yes, for a moment or two. Then it came back ... and grew and grew ... to a hateful certainty.’

‘Yes?’

‘The separation had lasted for the best part of a year, because I didn’t go home for the long summer holiday: Auntie came here instead. And during that time we’d both developed, he and I.’

‘He was more Kayesque than ever?’

Sheila flinched.

‘Oh, don’t remind me of that detestable invention of mine,’ she begged.... ‘He’d changed--oh, incredibly! Even his appearance. There were still wonderful moments--sometimes when the light fell on his hair ... and he was slightly freckled, you know,’ she added.

‘But he was changed.’

‘He was just like his letters. And when he was saying certain things--stuffy things--he even _looked_ like his letters.’

‘And the mute poetry?’ asked Hypatia presently.

Sheila stared miserably at her own feet.

‘I don’t know what became of that,’ she confessed. ‘It was there, you know,’ she added, seeing a gentle incredulous smile flit over her friend’s face. ‘Hypatia, it was, really. I _saw_ it.’

‘And then----’ suggested Hypatia after a silence.

‘Well, as soon as I was certain,’ said Sheila simply, ‘I had to tell him, of course.’

‘That it was hopeless?’

Sheila nodded.

‘We lived in different worlds.... And of course he didn’t understand.’

‘No,’ said Hypatia. ‘He wouldn’t. That was the whole tragedy, wasn’t it?’

‘He thought--’ Sheila began, with a little bitter laugh ... then stopped, and looked at Hypatia with pain in her eyes. ‘He thought I had stopped caring, Hypatia!’

She rose to her feet.

‘It must be getting on for teatime,’ she said. ‘Shall we go?’

3

Seven years later, on the platform of Penny’s Heath station, Sheila discovered a new Hypatia Fairfield: tall, dark, severe, with thoughtful eyes and aggressive chin; by everyday standards a plain young woman, but redeemed from unattractiveness by an air of absorbed interest in some vision of her own. Since leaving school the two girls had exchanged letters of prodigious length. Once or twice they had visited each other’s homes, but these visits had provided an intercourse less intimate, less real, than that of their letters. Into the bubbling pot of that correspondence was poured all the raw egoism, all the shy solemn discoveries, of two active minds passing through the adventure of adolescence. Their knowledge of each other at school had been a mere passing acquaintanceship compared with this new intimacy that only distance and the postal service had made possible.

Recently they had begun to drift apart. Aunt Hester’s disapproval of normal life made the house at Penlington something of a prison; Aunt Hester’s friends were anæmic, uncongenial. ‘Nothing ever happens to me,’ she said to herself. ‘I never meet anyone or do anything. Things just go on, every day alike.’ She began to indulge herself in pessimism. Compared with the soothing syrup of Aunt Hester’s religion, despair was almost intoxicating: she tasted it eagerly, as though it had been wine. In those days she and Hypatia had echoed each other rapturously enough, agreeing--with what delight--that life was but a dry husk and death a fit ending to a witless scheme. But now Hypatia, with a fatal instinct for novelty, had subsided into the arms of a new religion, a religion that made summary end of all problems by denying their existence. It was this, Sheila divined, that had put that look of assured calm into her eyes.

‘So here you are then,’ said Hypatia, shy, as ever, of demonstration. ‘Where’s your trunk? I’ve got the trap in the station-yard.’

With Sheila and her belongings safely in the trap Hypatia took the reins between her capable fingers and drove away.

‘It’s very jolly here,’ said Sheila.

‘Yes. Much the same as before. Why, it must be a year since your last visit!’

‘It is.’

‘Scandalous!’ Hypatia smiled reproof. ‘Well, has your quest succeeded yet?’

‘My quest?’

‘You wrote some months ago saying that you could never rest until you had found a philosophy that would hold water?’

‘I’m still seeking,’ admitted Sheila.

‘You’ll never find it,’ remarked Hypatia, with calm certainty, ‘in the direction you are looking in.’

‘No?’ said Sheila good-humouredly.

‘Well, you’ll have plenty of chance here of inspecting every fad,’ said Hypatia. ‘They’re a lively set, our neighbours. There’s almost every shade of belief and unbelief possible to the human mind represented here, you’ll remember, and every shade has its club or church or soap-box.’

‘Even your shade?’ interposed Sheila.

‘Yes. Though that’s altogether different,’ Hypatia retorted. ‘Still I can understand that you think it just one more little sect and nothing else. When you are in science you will see everything more clearly.’

‘I shall see that there’s nothing to see at all,’ said Sheila. ‘Isn’t that your fundamental doctrine?’

‘True, matter does not exist, if that’s what you mean,’ said Hypatia. ‘That is perhaps Our Leader’s greatest discovery. God is All-Good, the very Principle of Goodness, and man is His reflection. Sin, disease, and death----’

‘Exist in the reflection but not in the reflector,’ remarked Sheila. ‘Are your people of the same way of thinking?’

‘Oh no.’ Hypatia shook her head. ‘Mother’s _trying_ to understand, but Father’s making no attempt at all.’

‘What about your brother?’

‘Of course, Edward’s hopeless. He’s utterly absorbed in his precious book.’

‘I thought he was going in for law,’ said Sheila.

‘So did I. So did everybody. He got a good first in his Tripos. But he doesn’t really care for law. History’s his great subject.’

‘What’s the book about?’ Sheila was excited by the thought of meeting in the flesh this maker of books.

‘I believe he calls it _A History of the Religious Idea_, but he’s very reticent about it. It’s a very proud exhibition of ignorance, no doubt.’

‘Hypatia!’ protested Sheila. ‘How very unkind of you!’

Hypatia sniffed.

‘Not at all. You misunderstand me. Edward, you see, is an agnostic. _Tout ce que je sais, c’est que je ne sais rien_, you know. He professes to know nothing about God and so on, and is just as proud of his ignorance as I used to be of mine.’

‘It must be nice for you to know all about it now,’ said Sheila.

‘It is,’ agreed the seer. ‘But it’s knowledge anyone can share who will try to understand.’

From the field they were passing _Fairfield’s Hygienic Corsets_ blazed in letters of red above the hedge. The factory chimneys blotted out the horizon.

* * * * *

Hypatia’s father was a spare, bullet-headed man with mutton-chop whiskers of a sandy hue and an indomitable nose that he had followed faithfully _per aspera ad astra_. The stars of Mr. Fairfield’s attainment were commercial prosperity and for his son the education that he himself had been denied. It became more and more apparent to Sheila, during that drive from the station, that for Hypatia’s parents Edward, the firstborn, was the being round whom the world revolved. For him the sun shone and the little stars clapped their hands. Fairfield senior, at first indifferent to Edward, had been trained in son-worship by his wife. Behind a brusqueness that passed for eccentric humour Mrs. Fairfield concealed power. Worshipping her son, for his advancement she had used her husband unsparingly, guiding his energy consistently in the direction of most commercial gain, and curbing his desire to spend himself, a prophet in the wilderness, in fruitless public advocacy of freethought. Her subjugation of her husband, himself a being of great though erratic energy, was the gradual achievement of twenty-five years.

‘Well, Miss Dyrle,’ said Hypatia’s father briskly. ‘Here you are again! We’re glad to see you. You know that.’

He looked at Sheila kindly, but as if to say: ‘Deny it if you can.’

‘Ah,’ he added, ‘here’s my wife. The honoured guest’s arrived, me dear, and I’m just extending to her, in the name of the family, a hearty welcome.’

The arrival of Mrs. Fairfield displaced a lot of air.

‘Now this _is_ a treat,’ she said, holding out both her hands. ‘My dear Sheila! I may still call you Sheila, mayn’t I? You are so _often_ in our thoughts!’

Sheila murmured her pleasure.

‘Must take us as you find us,’ admonished Mr. Fairfield. ‘We’re homely folk with no airs. No education to speak of. Couldn’t afford it. And now that we can afford it--it’s too late.’

‘Not too late for Edward, father dear,’ Edward’s mother reminded him.

‘Ah no. One scholar in the family at any rate.’

‘One scholar, three agnostics, and a religious crank, eh, dad?’ remarked Hypatia.

Her father laughed.

‘Heard the news?’ He turned to Sheila. ‘Hypatia’s saved. Got a new religion. Mine wasn’t good enough for her.’

‘What is yours, dad? I didn’t know you had one.’

‘When you and Edward were nippers I told you my religion. Be afraid of nothing except doing wrong. That’s mine. Everything in the garden’s lovely: that’s yours.’

‘Well, stop arguing all of you, and come to tea,’ said Mrs. Fairfield. ‘Sheila must be ready for hers, I’m sure. Have you met Bunny, Sheila?’

‘No. Who’s Bunny?’

‘One of mother’s young men,’ explained Hypatia. ‘Quite an acquisition. Aristocratic by birth, democratic in sentiment. Isn’t that it, mother?’

At tea they were joined by Edward, rather reluctantly, and by the Honourable Richard Bunnard, _alias_ Bunny. Bunny was a fair freckled youth, with sleek hair brushed straight back from his forehead and well plastered to the head. His blue eyes followed Hypatia’s every movement with patient doglike devotion, except when recalled from this dereliction by the voice of Mrs. Fairfield.

‘Now then, Bunny! I want to hear what you think about this minimum wage question. Is thirty-two shillings enough for a skilled worker like a plate-layer?’

Bunny, very nervous, began opening and shutting his mouth soundlessly like a goldfish.

‘Well, Mrs. Fairfield, I hardly think so. A fellow could hardly live on such a mere pittance, could he? Forty-two or fifty-two or even....’

‘Sixty-two,’ murmured Hypatia.

‘Yes, sixty-two,’ he said, catching eagerly at a straw. ‘Or say three guineas, sixty-three. Not much more than a hundred and fifty a year, you know.’

‘There, father!’ cried Mrs. Fairfield. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘Of what, me dear?’

‘Why, the plate-layers are to have a minimum of sixty-three shillings a week?’

Bunny laughed.

‘Oh no, Mrs. Fairfield. It doesn’t follow. I only said they ought to have that.’

‘Well, you must see to it,’ retorted Mrs. Fairfield. ‘You young people, that’s your work in life, to stir things up. I think you must go into parliament, Bunny. Yes. I shall send you to parliament to put things right for us.’

‘But perhaps Bunny would rather not be sent to parliament, mother?’ suggested Hypatia.

‘Indeed,’ said the young man, ‘I’d much rather not. Edward would make a much better politician than I.’

Mrs. Fairfield proudly surveyed her son. ‘Ah, we must see about Edward. We’re not quite ready for parliament yet, are we, Edward?’

Edward smiled. ‘For my part, I never shall be ready.’

‘Mother ought to go there herself,’ said Hypatia. ‘She’d put the world straight in ten minutes.’

Her mother listened indulgently.

‘Do you know, Sheila, my children are very lucky children. They’ve been brought up in perfect freedom. They’ve got the habit of freedom. They do and think just as they like, have never known what compulsion was. Here’s Hypatia now, with her religion: she’s never been taught it by me; I’ve never forced anything down her throat. I believe that everybody has a right to follow his own bent.’

‘It must be very nice,’ said Sheila, ‘to be brought up in an atmosphere like that.’

‘It would be,’ Hypatia murmured, but Mrs. Fairfield did not take up the challenge.

‘I wish you’d teach me your New Thought,’ begged Bunny of Hypatia.

‘Which is it, New Thought or Higher Thought?’ asked Sheila.

‘Neither,’ answered Edward. ‘It’s something newer and higher than either. Unfortunately you have to believe it implicitly before you can understand it to be anything but nonsense.’

‘You can be quiet, Edward,’ said his sister, ‘even if you can’t be just.’

‘But, really,’ protested the scared Bunny. ‘I am quite in earnest, Hypatia. I would listen respectfully to anyone’s religion, especially yours. Won’t you tell me about it?’

Hypatia relented. ‘I will, some time. It’s useless with Edward about.’

‘It was founded by a woman,’ said Edward, ‘and she’s written a book that is the beginning and end of all Truth. Read it, Bunny, read it and live.’

‘You see.’ Hypatia smiled patiently. ‘That’s what I have to put up with.’

‘It’s too bad,’ Bunny reproached Edward.

‘Oh, don’t sympathize with me, _please_!’ said Hypatia.

Sheila thought: ‘How hard she has grown!’ and, having already tasted of her friend’s sublime certainties, she felt some relish for Edward’s mockery.

Edward seemed the most likeable person in the room, except perhaps Bunny. Edward was for the most part very quiet and self-contained. He possessed rather an impressive dome of forehead, but he maintained an impenetrable reserve without assuming that air of learning and distinction in which his mother sought so earnestly to invest him. Mrs. Fairfield’s maternal glance conveyed unmistakably to the rest: ‘We must not trouble Edward with our trivial talk. His thoughts are not our thoughts; neither are his ways our ways. He has taken his degree, and he is writing a book.’ Sometimes she referred questions to him, as to an authority; it was as though she was continually thrusting upon him his bachelor’s hood, he as continually repudiating it with a confession of ignorance or indifference. His anxiety to avoid oracular authority kept him more silent than the rest; and this very silence gave him in Sheila’s eyes a distinction that was almost fascination. She guessed him to be modest, unassuming, and clever. The mystery of his inner life drew her interest towards him.

But Bunny, too, was interesting; for Bunny had good looks and that air of trustfully appealing for affection to which Sheila was so susceptible. There was something pathetic about his obvious devotion to Hypatia. Except the commanding Mrs. Fairfield he seemed to look at no one else. He deferred to Hypatia constantly.

‘I suppose you would say that a headache is essentially unreal, Hypatia? If we knew the truth about ourselves we shouldn’t have headaches, should we?’

‘We shouldn’t have even heads,’ said Edward. ‘I see you’ve already had a dose, Bunny.’

‘Shut up, Fairfield!’ said the Honourable Richard. ‘Give your sister a hearing. Am I right, Hypatia?’

‘Certainly,’ agreed Hypatia. ‘Our failure to apprehend the truth is the root of all so-called evil and pain.’

‘I see,’ said Bunny, wrinkling his brow.

Sheila was touched to see the poor boy falling so easy a pray to the dominating Hypatia. But Mrs. Fairfield thought it was time to look after her property.

‘You don’t, my poor Bunny,’ cut in Mrs. Fairfield. ‘Nor does anyone else. No sense, anyhow. Don’t fill your mind with such stuff just to please Hypatia.... You must be a good boy,’ she added, ‘and do as I tell you.’

‘Mother means that, Bunny,’ said Hypatia. ‘She means every word, although she tries to make a joke of it. If you want to please mother, obey her in all things. It is the only way.’

Mrs. Fairfield became pale and distressed. Signs of an approaching fainting-fit were perceptible. Observing them, her husband broke in sharply. ‘Hypatia, hold your noise!’

So there was a feud, thought Sheila, between the young woman and the old: a duel for the soul of Bunny. Since he had apparently no brains of his own worth considering, the scalp would no doubt fall to Hypatia, who had youth as an ally. And then what terrible vengeance would fall upon him? Could nothing save him from them both? A highly dangerous pity awoke in Sheila’s heart.

‘You shall all go to the Folk Dancing to-night,’ announced Mrs. Fairfield.

* * * * *

The lure of Folk Dancing led them across two fields to a turreted eccentric stone building known as the Summer School, which was at once a gigantic advertisement and a place of mental and physical recreation for Fairfield’s factory hands. He had spent thousands of pounds on this long-cherished scheme, and only a well-timed fainting-fit of his wife’s had prevented his spending thousands more.

Fairfield’s Summer School was as hygienic as his corsets. It was a curious horseshoe-shaped building enclosing a large well-kept lawn in the middle of which, on festive occasions, a maypole was erected; a tower and belfry loomed at the back. To these cloisters the factory hands were wont to repair for free instruction in the theory and practice of arts and modern languages, for lectures on history, sociology, science, for concerts and dances on the green. It claimed to be, and was, a local centre of liberal popular culture. Anything and everything could be discussed there save one thing: it was a point of honour with the founder that Fairfield’s Hygienic Corsets should never be mentioned.

Dusk had already fallen when the Fairfield party reached the green, and the dancing had already begun. Someone began lighting the lamps.

‘This is jolly!’ said Bunny with infectious good spirits. ‘Won’t you dance with me, Hypatia?’

‘I’ve never been taken for Hypatia before,’ Sheila answered.

‘Oh, sorry! It’s Miss Dyrle. Do dance with me, Miss Dyrle. It’s a waltz this time, without trimmings.’

They whirled away among the dancers.

‘I don’t know these old dances, do you?’

‘No. But what does it matter? They stick in a few ordinary things now and again specially for Philistines like us.’

Her heart danced with the music.

‘You brought your violin, didn’t you, Mr. Bunnard? When are you going to play for us?’

But Bunny did not answer. Sheila was rather chilled to observe his abrupt change of mood. He had caught sight of Hypatia dancing with her brother.

They finished the set in silence, and Sheila was immediately claimed by Edward. She felt bitterly alone in the world. She and Hypatia had come to a definite parting of the ways; and she had no other friend.

After a few moments she complained to Edward of giddiness. He led her to a seat.

‘Feel better now?’

‘Quite, thanks. But I’d rather not begin again just yet.’

He studied the ground.

‘It’s a year since you were here.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve often thought of that visit.’

‘Have you?’ said Sheila. ‘I live with my aunt, you know, and she doesn’t approve of my visits to a home of free-thinkers.’

‘But you are not of her persuasion?’

‘Obviously not. Hypatia was my best friend.’

‘Was?’

He seemed to be offering a far from unwelcome sympathy.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I wouldn’t have you tell her for the world. But we’ve drifted away from each other.’

‘Yes? I fancied so.’

‘I suppose it’s this religion of hers,’ said Sheila. ‘Of course I don’t care a rap what she believes, but she’s grown so ... so remote.’

‘I agree with you entirely. I’m glad she hasn’t converted _you_ anyhow. My friend Bunny is doomed, I fear. Hypatia begs the whole question. If matter is only an appearance it is none the less real to our minds: it exists mentally. The whole philosophy is nothing but a silly quibble about terms.’

‘How is your book getting on?’ asked Sheila.

‘Slowly, but it _is_ getting on. Writing a hundred thousand words is a great labour. The mere pen-pushing alone is a bore.’

‘It must be. Couldn’t you dictate it?’

‘That would be difficult for me and very dull for the unfortunate secretary. I’m afraid I should be too self-conscious to work well.’

‘At first, perhaps,’ said Sheila. ‘But that would wear off. And it would be a privilege for the secretary, I should think.’

‘A privilege!’ He laughed. ‘Why, the book is scandalous and atheistical.’