Читать книгу Undertow - Arthur Hamilton Gibbs - Страница 10

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The word that presently ran up and down the High Street of Uxminster varied in phraseology with the different social levels. In the Pig and Whistle it was as simple and direct as the sawdust and the spittoon. “Jocelyn’s got a girl!” There was a snicker. Eye went to knowing eye. Whereupon the bartender, arbiter of everything from bets to forcible ejections on Saturday nights, rescued the topic from possible ribaldry and set his royal seal upon it. “For crisake why not? ’E’s all right, see!”

At the linen draper’s another angle was revealed. The blonde girl with the glasses and adenoids remarked with bitten-off words, “That Millie Sampson’s got a nerve! She’d ought to have gone into the movies. Thinks she’s a proper Pola Negri, she does. Only ’ere a month and Mr. Jocelyn’s fair moonstruck about her!”

Whereupon her darker colleague smiled icily. “Reely! Why don’t you go and get a job in the bookshop yourself? I’m sure you could show her up!”

Farther along the street where a brass kettle simmered on the hob and one gentle voice asked, “What are trumps, my dear?” the answer was a little laugh. “Hearts, appropriately enough. I was just asking Mrs. Jennifer if she’d heard about Mr. Jocelyn and Mr. Sampson’s niece. Altogether a romance, I’m told. It seems too bad that one of our own girls ... But then, these things are never made to order, are they? And she seems to be quite nice!”

All unconscious that the case of Millicent and himself was considered a fait accompli, and that the peal of not too distant wedding balls was in every ear, Philip Jocelyn had barely made the first step towards analyzing his own emotions.

In the classroom her face got between him and the blackboard full of irregular endings of verbs—that much he recognized—although it was not her face as it actually was, but as it seemed to him, colored by his idea of her. The real Millicent was as unknown to him as an iceberg sighted by a ship five miles away. She was indeed the girl who worked in her uncle’s shop, who had had tea with him, who had twice been out walking with him over the countryside, who greeted him evening after evening when he went into the shop; but she was a Millicent overlaid with Philip’s imagination, a lay figure onto which he had draped the tissue of his desire, a woman almost wholly of his own creation. And, in the manner of every artist looking upon his finished canvas, he was not satisfied with it.

In the seclusion of his monastic room, in which he could tramp only six paces between the bookshelf and the bed, and seven and a bit from the door to the table under the window, Philip Jocelyn went up and down for many nights, trying to grasp what had happened. All his inhibitions prevented him from getting straight down to bedrock and admitting that he was in love. Perhaps he wasn’t, but like a frightened horse he balked away from such a cataclysm. He was willing to admit only that he was “interested in her”, that she was “attractive”, that she was “in his mind a good deal”; but as to being in love, that was ridiculous. She didn’t know anything. She was always saying or doing something at precisely the wrong moment, which was as exasperating as if one had suddenly touched a nettle. And yet, it was true that Uxminster was no longer Uxminster. The sleepiness, the aimlessness, had gone out of it. Every day now had an objective,—to go into the bookshop, with or without an excuse, and see Millicent for a minute or two, just see her. It didn’t matter if she was busy with customers. In fact, in some ways it was better when she was. Then he could watch her, while he passed the time of day with old Sampson, and go on to the Pig and Whistle all keyed-up for a game of billiards.

As he started the water for the midnight cocoa on a small spirit lamp on the washstand, and went to the cupboard for the condensed milk and sugar, he frowned to himself. “Why does she irritate me so when I’m with her? I’ve seen her practically every day for a month, so I know her now, know her really well, and yet ...”

He came back, milk in one hand, sugar in the other, but as he put them down on the washstand, a flood of color came into his face, as though an answer had suddenly descended like a revelation.

“My God!” he murmured.

Clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back, he resumed his pacing. Could that be it? In what book had he read the theory,—of subconscious antagonism between the mutually attracted male and female who had not yet mated?

For many minutes his mind was sidetracked from the personal equation while he groped to remember when and where he had read it. As a rule, he flattered himself, he kept his reading fairly well classified in his mind, could dig in when called upon and produce both author and title together with the desired quotation. To-night, in his condition of perturbation, the nearest he could get to it was a muttered “one of those German psychologists.”

Then, timidly, he came fluttering back to a hesitant consideration of the theory in relation to Millicent and himself. The question of attraction was undeniable, already admitted; and therefore the theory might certainly explain a great deal, if the word antagonism could be interpreted as what he had called irritation. Would that all disappear if ...

He stopped. The word mating was so curious. Its definition might suggest companionship, marital or not—after all, the working man called his assistant “mate”—but it also had the more significant connotation of dominance, of crushing. For instance, one mated one’s opponent’s king at chess; in other words, you defeated him, smashed him. Mating was therefore preëminently to conquer,—which explained the theory of antagonism, the one for being withheld, the other in recognition of eventual submission. It became therefore a brutal word, given a false glamor by the poets. How could one be willing to use it in regard to a girl like Millicent, any girl indeed? ... But, leaving the word out, it certainly looked as if the theory fitted in with the facts. It was more than probable that ...

A sound of hissing and crackling penetrated to his consciousness. The water was boiling over on to the flame. He hurried to the washstand and rescued it. Then he put three spoonfuls onto the cocoa in his cup and began to mash it into a liquid paste. When it had assumed the desired condition of smoothness, he slowly added more water, stirring all the time, until the cup was full. Then he took up the can of milk, punctured with two holes in the lid, and squirted a trickle into the cocoa. Finally he put in a lump of sugar.... Where was he? Something was more than probable.... Oh, well, it didn’t matter. The whole point was that he had put his finger on the probable root of that aftermath of emptiness. Which being so, what next? ... With an accustomed hand he carried the brimming cup to the table, short-stepped, concentrated; but, as usual, was unsuccessful. His cocoa slopped over into the saucer, half filling it.

“Damn!” he said; and then chuckled. “How she’d pull my leg if she could see that!”

Gingerly, and with precautionary blowings, he imbibed a teaspoonful at a time until the lowered level permitted him to pour the overflow back in to the cup.

Then he sat down in the armchair and began to fill a pipe, a curved cherry wood, which invariably snorted and gurgled and which cost him half a box of matches every time he smoked it. Once, on the plea of economy, but actually as a herd-minded gesture—everybody seemed to be flashing them about—he had invested in a lighter. After wrestling with it ineffectually for a trying period of three weeks, he had formed the opinion that they were nasty messy gadgets, entirely beyond the scope of anybody but a mechanical genius. Instead of throwing it away, however, his years of lights-turned-down made him put it carefully in a drawer. After all, it was as good as new, and some day it might come in useful, as a Christmas present, for instance, to some one who could work the stupid things. He struck a match. The pipe began its stertorous wheezing, from time to time he swallowed a mouthful of cocoa. Presently he muttered, “I’m thirty ... let me see, five ... good lord, nearly six! Am I a damn fool if I ... She can’t be a day over twenty-seven ... but after all she does come out with me. I suppose if we ... I mean, I suppose if I moved out into a cottage, they’d raise my salary a bit. One could get a cottage for about a pound a week. And then, the drawings would bring a bit extra. That, and the few hundreds I’ve got saved away.... Hardly a palace, of course, but we could grow some flowers, and I could take my shelves for the books.... My God, just think of it! Swallows rocketing, the sun just dropping behind the hill, that swooning stillness of summer, and she and I ... working, feeling, growing, suffering sometimes, but always for one another. That would be living, really living ... wouldn’t it?”

As he drew the picture, he had unconsciously clasped the cup in both hands, staring down into it unseeing, sipping as he paused at each new angle of thought. But finally, when the last line had been put in, he squirmed as the after-twinge of doubt shot through him,—that same after-twinge, fear in disguise, which had clogged his footsteps all through life. This time, however, there was a greater urge in opposition. He raised the cup and gulped down the last mouthfuls as though in a fever to get rid of it. “Damn it, it would!” he insisted, and slammed the cup down on the table, as though slamming doubt on the head. He struggled up out of his chair, knocking his pipe on to the floor as he did so, and catching his foot in his dressing gown. His cheeks were flushed; excitement came into his eyes.

“By God,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it all straggled, “I’ll tell her ... I mean I’ll ask her to-morrow!”