The Longest Journey (2 page)

The fire had died down, and in the gloom the man by the piano ventured to ask what would happen if an objective cow had a subjective calf. Ansell gave an angry sigh, and at that moment there was a tap on the door.

“Come in!” said Rickie.

The door opened. A tall young woman stood framed in the light that fell from the passage.

“Ladies!” whispered every one in great agitation.

“Yes?” he said nervously, limping towards the door (he was rather lame). “Yes? Please come in. Can I be any good—–”

“Wicked boy!” exclaimed the young lady, advancing a gloved finger into the room. “Wicked, wicked boy!”

He clasped his head with his hands.

“Agnes! Oh how perfectly awful!”

“Wicked, intolerable boy!” She turned on the electric light. The philosophers were revealed with unpleasing suddenness. “My goodness, a tea-party! Oh really, Rickie, you are too bad! I say again: wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I’ll have you horsewhipped. If you please”—she turned to the symposium, which had now risen to its feet—“If you please, he asks me and my brother for the week-end. We accept. At the station, no Rickie. We drive to where his old lodgings were—Trumpery Road or some such name—and he’s left them. I’m furious, and before I can stop my brother, he’s paid off the cab and there we are stranded. I’ve walked—walked for miles. Pray can you tell me what is to be done with Rickie?”

“He must indeed be horsewhipped,” said Tilliard pleasantly. Then he made a bolt for the door.

“Tilliard—do stop—let me introduce Miss Pembroke—don’t all go!” For his friends were flying from his visitor like mists before the sun. “Oh, Agnes, I am so sorry; I’ve nothing to say. I simply forgot you were coming, and everything about you.”

“Thank you, thank you! And how soon will you remember to ask where Herbert is?”

“Where is he, then?”

“I shall not tell you.”

“But didn’t he walk with you?”

“I shall not tell, Rickie. It’s part of your punishment. You are not really sorry yet. I shall punish you again later.”

She was quite right. Rickie was not as much upset as he ought to have been. He was sorry that he had forgotten, and that he had caused his visitors inconvenience. But he did not feel profoundly degraded, as a young man should who has acted discourteously to a young lady. Had he acted discourteously to his bedmaker or his gyp, he would have minded just as much, which was not polite of him.

“First, I’ll go and get food. Do sit down and rest. Oh, let me introduce—–”

Ansell was now the sole remnant of the discussion party. He still stood on the hearthrug with a burnt match in his hand. Miss Pembroke’s arrival had never disturbed him.

“Let me introduce Mr. Ansell—Miss Pembroke.”

There came an awful moment—a moment when he almost regretted that he had a clever friend. Ansell remained absolutely motionless, moving neither hand nor head. Such behaviour is so unknown that Miss Pembroke did not realize what had happened, and kept her own hand stretched out longer than is maidenly.

“Coming to supper?” asked Ansell in low, grave tones.

“I don’t think so,” said Rickie helplessly.

Ansell departed without another word.

“Don’t mind us,” said Miss Pembroke pleasantly. “Why shouldn’t you keep your engagement with your friend? Herbert’s finding lodgings,—that’s why he’s not here,—and they’re sure to be able to give us some dinner. What jolly rooms you’ve got!”

“Oh no—not a bit. I say, I am sorry. I am sorry. I am most awfully sorry.”

“What about?”

“Ansell—–” Then he burst forth. “Ansell isn’t a gentleman. His father’s a draper. His uncles are farmers. He’s here because he’s so clever—just on account of his
brains. Now, sit down. He isn’t a gentleman at all.” And he hurried off to order some dinner.

“What a snob the boy is getting!” thought Agnes, a good deal mollified. It never struck her that those could be the words of affection—that Rickie would never have spoken them about a person whom he disliked. Nor did it strike her that Ansell’s humble birth scarcely explained the quality of his rudeness. She was willing to find life full of trivialities. Six months ago and she might have minded; but now—she cared not what men might do unto her, for she had her own splendid lover, who could have knocked all these unhealthy undergraduates into a cocked-hat. She dared not tell Gerald a word of what had happened; he might have come up from wherever he was and half killed Ansell. And she determined not to tell her brother either, for her nature was kindly, and it pleased her to pass things over.

She took off her gloves, and then she took off her earrings and began to admire them. These ear-rings were a freak of hers—her only freak. She had always wanted some, and the day Gerald asked her to marry him she went to a shop and had her ears pierced. In some wonderful way she knew that it was right. And he had given her the rings—little gold knobs, copied, the jeweller told them, from something prehistoric—and he had kissed the spots of blood on her handkerchief. Herbert, as usual, had been shocked.

“I can’t help it,” she cried, springing up. “I’m not like other girls.” She began to pace about Rickie’s room, for she hated to keep quiet. There was nothing much to see in it. The pictures were not attractive, nor did they attract her—school groups, Watts’ “Sir Percival,” a dog running after a rabbit, a man running after a maid, a cheap brown Madonna in a cheap green frame—in short, a collection where one mediocrity was generally cancelled by another.
Over the door there hung a long photograph of a city with waterways, which Agnes, who had never been to Venice, took to be Venice, but which people who had been to Stockholm knew to be Stockholm. Rickie’s mother, looking rather sweet, was standing on the mantelpiece. Some more pictures had just arrived from the framers and were leaning with their faces to the wall, but she did not bother to turn them round. On the table were dirty teacups, a flat chocolate cake, and Omar Khayyam, with an Oswego biscuit between his pages. Also a vase filled with the crimson leaves of autumn. This made her smile.

Then she saw her host’s shoes: he had left them lying on the sofa. Rickie was slightly deformed, and so the shoes were not the same size, and one of them had a thick heel to help him towards an even walk. “Ugh!” she exclaimed, and removed them gingerly to the bedroom. There she saw other shoes and boots and pumps, a whole row of them, all deformed. “Ugh! Poor boy! It is too bad. Why shouldn’t he be like other people? This hereditary business is too awful.” She shut the door with a sigh. Then she recalled the perfect form of Gerald, his athletic walk, the poise of his shoulders, his arms stretched forward to receive her. Gradually she was comforted.

“I beg your pardon, miss, but might I ask how many to lay?” It was the bedmaker, Mrs. Aberdeen.

“Three, I think,” said Agnes, smiling pleasantly. “Mr. Elliot’ll be back in a minute. He has gone to order dinner.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“Plenty of teacups to wash up!”

“But teacups is easy washing, particularly Mr. Elliot’s.”

“Why are his so easy?”

“Because no nasty corners in them to hold the dirt. Mr. Anderson—he’s below—has crinkly noctagons, and one wouldn’t believe the difference. It was I bought these for Mr. Elliot. His one thought is to save one trouble. I never seed such a thoughtful gentleman. The world, I
say, will be the better for him.” She took the teacups into the gyp room, and then returned with the tablecloth, and added, “if he’s spared.”

“I’m afraid he isn’t strong,” said Agnes.

“Oh, miss, his nose! I don’t know what he’d say if he knew I mentioned his nose, but really I must speak to someone, and he has neither father nor mother. His nose! It poured twice with blood in the Long.”

“Yes?”

“It’s a thing that ought to be known. I assure you, that little room!… And in any case, Mr. Elliot’s a gentleman that can ill afford to lose it. Luckily his friends were up; and I always say they’re more like brothers than anything else.”

“Nice for him. He has no real brothers.”

“Oh, Mr. Hornblower, he is a merry gentleman, and Mr. Tilliard too! And Mr. Elliot himself likes his romp at times. Why, it’s the merriest staircase in the buildings! Last night the bedmaker from W said to me, ‘What are you doing to my gentlemen? Here’s Mr. Ansell come back ’ot with his collar flopping.’ I said, ‘And a good thing.’ Some bedders keep their gentlemen just so; but surely, miss, the world being what it is, the longer one is able to laugh in it the better.”

Bedmakers have to be comic and dishonest. It is expected of them. In a picture of university life it is their only function. So when we meet one who has the face of a lady, and feelings of which a lady might be proud, we pass her by.

“Yes?” said Miss Pembroke, and then their talk was stopped by the arrival of her brother.

“It is too bad!” he exclaimed. “It is really too bad.”

“Now, Bertie boy, Bertie boy! I’ll have no peevishness.”

“I am not peevish, Agnes, but I have a full right to be. Pray, why did he not meet us? Why did he not provide rooms? And pray, why did you leave me to do all the
settling? All the lodgings I knew are full, and our bedrooms look into a mews. I cannot help it. And then—look here! It really is too bad.” He held up his foot like a wounded dog. It was dripping with water.

“Oho! This explains the peevishness. Off with it at once. It’ll be another of your colds.”

“I really think I had better.” He sat down by the fire and daintily unlaced his boot. “I notice a great change in university tone. I can never remember swaggering three abreast along the pavement and charging inoffensive visitors into a gutter when I was an undergraduate. One of the men, too, wore an Eton tie. But the others, I should say, came from very queer schools, if they came from any schools at all.”

Mr. Pembroke was nearly twenty years older than his sister, and had never been as handsome. But he was not at all the person to knock into a gutter, for though not in orders, he had the air of being on the verge of them, and his features, as well as his clothes, had the clerical cut. In his presence conversation became pure and colourless and full of understatements, and—just as if he was a real clergyman—neither men nor boys ever forgot that he was there. He had observed this, and it pleased him very much. His conscience permitted him to enter the Church whenever his profession, which was the scholastic, should demand it.

“No gutter in the world’s as wet as this,” said Agnes, who had peeled off her brother’s sock, and was now toasting it at the embers on a pair of tongs.

“Surely you know the running water by the edge of the Trumpington road? It’s turned on occasionally to clear away the refuse—a most primitive idea. When I was up we had a joke about it, and called it the ‘Pem.’ ”

“How complimentary!”

“You foolish girl,—not after me, of course. We called it the ‘Pem’ because it is close to Pembroke College. I
remember—–” He smiled a little, and twiddled his toes. Then he remembered the bedmaker, and said, “My sock is now dry. My sock, please.”

“Your sock is sopping. No, you don’t!” She twitched the tongs away from him. Mrs. Aberdeen, without speaking, fetched a pair of Rickie’s socks and a pair of Rickie’s shoes.

“Thank you; ah, thank you. I am sure Mr. Elliot would allow it.” Then he said in French to his sister, “Has there been the slightest sign of Frederick?”

“Now, do call him Rickie, and talk English. I found him here. He had forgotten about us, and was very sorry. Now he’s gone to get some dinner, and I can’t think why he isn’t back.”

Mrs. Aberdeen left them.

“He wants pulling up sharply. There is nothing original in absent-mindedness. True originality lies elsewhere. Really, the lower classes have no
nous
. However can I wear such deformities?” For he had been madly trying to cram a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe.

“Don’t!” said Agnes hastily. “Don’t touch the poor fellow’s things.” The sight of the smart, stubby patent leather made her almost feel faint. She had known Rickie for many years, but it seemed so dreadful and so different now that he was a man. It was her first great contact with the abnormal, and unknown fibres of her being rose in revolt against it. She frowned when she heard his uneven tread upon the stairs.

“Agnes—before he arrives—you ought never to have left me and gone to his rooms alone. A most elementary transgression. Imagine the unpleasantness if you had found him with friends. If Gerald—–”

Rickie by now had got into a fluster. At the kitchens he had lost his head, and when his turn came—he had had to wait—he had yielded his place to those behind, saying that he didn’t matter. And he had wasted more
precious time buying bananas, though he knew that the Pembrokes were not partial to fruit. Amid much tardy and chaotic hospitality the meal got under way. All the spoons and forks were anyhow, for Mrs. Aberdeen’s virtues were not practical. The fish seemed never to have been alive, the meat had no kick, and the cork of the college claret slid forth silently, as if ashamed of the contents. Agnes was particularly pleasant. But her brother could not recover himself. He still remembered their desolate arrival, and he could feel the waters of the Pem eating into his instep.

“Rickie,” cried the lady, “are you aware that you haven’t congratulated me on my engagement?”

Rickie laughed nervously, and said, “Why no! No more I have.”

“Say something pretty, then.”

“I hope you’ll be very happy,” he mumbled. “But I don’t know anything about marriage.”

“Oh, you awful boy! Herbert, isn’t he just the same? But you do know something about Gerald, so don’t be so chilly and cautious. I’ve just realized, looking at those groups, that you must have been at school together. Did you come much across him?”

“Very little,” he answered, and sounded shy. He got up hastily, and began to muddle with the coffee.

“But he was in the same house. Surely that’s a house group?”

“He was a prefect.” He made his coffee on the simple system. One had a brown pot, into which the boiling stuff was poured. Just before serving one put in a drop of cold water, and the idea was that the grounds fell to the bottom.