Читать книгу Cressage - A. C. Benson - Страница 12

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THE MANOR HOUSE,

CRESSAGE GARNET.

MY DEAR HELEN,--

Ever since I parted from you, I have been wondering at my own courage, and wondering too if you think that what I said to you was very pushing and impertinent. But the fact that I did speak, and that you didn't snub me or even say no, far outweighs any of those slow blushes which invade and take possession of my face--you know the kind--or perhaps you don't know them--which seem to start from a very long way off, and yet can't be stopped or delayed. But why should I blush, you may think? What have I done to be ashamed of, except stretch out a hand like a drowning man to someone smiling on the bank.

But still I feel that I have got to justify myself for doing as I did, and to prove that I have not taken an unfair advantage. Of course it would have been more comfortable to have made friends in a deliberate and conventional way. But then the chances were against our meeting, and I am a bad hand at making opportunities. As it is I am only too thankful that we met just those two times, and that I saw at once that you were the one person in the world who could help me, if you chose to.

I can't write a long autobiography, but the main points are these. I have been brought up, with the best intentions, in cotton wool, by two beloved people to whom I am much devoted, and whom it seems almost ungrateful to criticize. But they have been so preoccupied with keeping all the evil and second-rate and hurtful things away from me, that they excluded, without knowing it, all or most of the best things too. Much as they would have liked an omelette, they dared not break the eggs. And then I was sent to school on my guard against all sorts of impossible contingencies, and charged not to make friends too easily, and not to take up with any boy whom I thought my parents might not wish me to know.

Of course a more vigorous and healthy-minded boy wouldn't have troubled his head about it, but I had this dreadful ideal of superiority always before my mind--not to give myself away, not to make myself cheap, to make a secret of everything. My father has many little maxims--not to talk about money, not to talk about health, never to say where you are going or where you have been, never to show emotion--all good practical rules in a general way, when directed against the possibility of becoming a chattering egotist, but crushing and cramping rules if you don't know when to break them.

Things were easier for me at Oxford, when I became less cautious and suspicious; but I had lost or not acquired the knack of easy friendship, though I made a good number of casual friends, and one great friend--Norton.

And then I worked too hard--why, I don't know. Probably because it was a way of passing the time, and a good deal to please Norton.

Then last term I had a strong fit of general disgust. I hated my work, I hated the endless silly talk about games and the stupid rather ill-natured College gossip. I felt I had made a great mess of it all by being so fastidious and contemptuous and narrow-minded--and there seemed to me to be a big and free sort of world outside, of kind and sensible people, who were not ashamed as I was to care for each other in a generous sort of way, and to take an even greater interest in other people's concerns than in their own.

And then, you know, we met. And I seemed to see in you someone full of freshness and good nature, not going by stuffy principles, but taking things and people as they came. And it came over me like a flash that you might help me--I wasn't thinking of you as someone that might only amuse and interest myself, but as someone who might really open a door into the world of live people and happy ideas and outspoken friendships.

All this was what I wanted to say to you, and you know how badly I said it. But you seemed willing to help, though of course I don't want any compact, nor do I claim your whole attention, nor do I want to bind you to anything you don't like.

Norton is to go out with me, and in a day or two I am going to bury myself in a French family in a little Cathedral town and learn to chatter in French. Then I shall go on to Italy--but I'm not a great sight-seer. I like romantic and beautiful places; but I am really going to look out for people.

Tell me exactly what you wish about my writing, and don't feel bound to write yourself unless you are inclined.

Your grateful friend,

WALTER GARNET.

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MY DEAR WALTER (though I feel it rather presuming to write thus to a distinguished young man whom I have met three times in my life, and one of those times you don't even remember),--

I was very glad to get your letter, and understand better than I did. But I am rather alarmed, because you are crediting me with all sorts of things I don't possess, and you will soon knock your head against the bottom of my very shallow little mind, if you have not done so already.

Is there really anything I can give you, Walter, which you don't already possess? You don't know in what a poky world I live, and you would be shocked at some of the girls and young men who are really very good friends of mine. But I haven't any wish to rise in the world. What I see of it seems to me quite delightful and exciting enough. But of course I shall be glad to be of use in any way, and I felt very sad at what you told me about your school and College. The whole thing is at present a complete surprise to me! I thought you had everything in the world you could possibly want, and were floating on the surface quite above all cares and anxieties. But I suppose after all that a house like the Manor, and plenty of money, and the kind of magnificent manners that you and your family have, only keep certain tiresome things away--they don't give you the sort of things that on the whole you can't do without--quarrels and makings-up and worries and people who have to be smoothed down. I am always having to behave nicely to people whom I think absurd and even hateful. But I think even that is rather useful, because I have got to do it whether I like it or not, and I suppose you seldom have to. But, oh dear me, I feel that my reflections on life in general are very thin indeed, and I had better hold my tongue.

I had a fine fencing-match with dear Mrs. Goring the next day. She was dying to know what we had talked about, and I was quite as determined that she should not know. It came to this--that you were so fearfully clever that you wanted some rather stupid and commonplace friends like herself and me. Mrs. Goring is a person I really admire. She has a tiresome and particular husband, and she not only makes the best of him, but he is frantically devoted to her. And out of three farmers' wives and the village schoolmaster and her own housemaid she makes a sort of play like Hamlet, and acts it with all her might. She really does get some fun out of things. And then she isn't ashamed of making mistakes, and she hasn't any sorrows as most of the elderly ladies I know have. I think only very good people can afford to have sorrows, and then they keep them to themselves.

What a lot of nonsense I have written, to be sure, though it has been for me a severe intellectual effort, but I can't expect you to recognize that.

About writing, I must consider; I think we must stoop to some deception. If I get a series of foreign letters in your refined Oxford handwriting, we shall soon get into trouble. You don't know how minutely everything is observed and discussed here. I hate making a secret of anything, but one can't help it sometimes.

Your rather timid friend,

HELEN WORSLEY.