Chapter XXVII

The dinner went off quite as well as any one could have expected. It was rather like playing at bran pie. You put your hand into a disintegrating substance and drew out something you had not expected to find. It might be a thimble or a gollywog, but it was seldom appropriate, and it never seemed to lead at all naturally to anything else.

Jim didn’t know any of the people they did, and he talked without ease, solidly, as if talking were an excavating process.

He used his knives and forks correctly, but he didn’t know how to use his ideas; they lacked the smooth shallowness of custom. It was as if he only spoke to find something—or—when he meant what he said. Mr. Egerton and Reggie were wonderfully deft and adaptable, but Viola thought it a curiously long and slightly precarious evening. They were always so very near something that might break.

When Viola was alone at last, and Cèleste had arranged the reading-lamp carefully by her bed, and noiselessly closed the door, she did not begin to read. She lay with her very small head on a very large expanse of spotless linen pillow, thinking over the evening.

She took up a book beautifully bound for her by Ainley, whose taste in books always went as far as their covers, then she put it down again.

‘I should like,’ she said to herself, ‘to hear him preach. I think he wasn’t free to speak to-night. He was like some one who expects to get caught. He ate perfectly properly. I think Reggie must have exaggerated what he was like at the Blighs.’ I ought to go and call on Mrs. Bligh some day. He has a funny Cockney voice. I don’t see why he doesn’t take elocution lessons. I wish father hadn’t been so nice to him. Reggie doesn’t like him. He was much nicer than father really—it didn’t show, his being nice, but he doesn’t like him. I don’t myself, really, only he isn’t like any one else.

‘I’m rather glad mother didn’t meet him——’ Viola flushed suddenly under the disloyalty of her thoughts. Mrs. Egerton had sent a polite message to her husband just before dinner—she hoped they would all excuse her, but she had too bad a headache to leave her room. Viola knew that Mrs. Egerton hadn’t got a headache; she was merely annoying her husband. She knew, though she blamed herself for knowing it, that if Mrs. Egerton had come down she would have been politely devastating to Jim Barton; and that was why she hadn’t come down. Mrs. Egerton wished to annoy her husband but she didn’t wish to spoil any of his business arrangements. Mr. Egerton did not know this. He was merely very much annoyed; and Harry and Reggie only wondered what was up.

Being a girl and being so dreadfully loved by a person so competent as Mrs. Egerton was sometimes rather terrifying. It made you know what people meant when you didn’t like their meanings.

It made your thoughts flicker in and out like frightened mice in the house of an ever menacing cat. One good thing was, Viola hadn’t had to have her evening talk with her mother, while her mind was still raw from its contact with Jim. She could insert a little padding first, and she was inserting the padding now.

Her mind ran unceasingly over the evening’s events. Her father had been extraordinarily cordial; he had ordered champagne, and Mr. Barton drank nothing but water. It was somehow or other a great pity Mr. Barton drank nothing but water.

Mr. Egerton said, ‘Tee-totaller?’ and Mr. Barton had replied, ‘Yes—but against my principles! I believe in doing all natural and delightful things, but I’ve given up alcohol as a protest against its abuse.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Mr. Egerton had said, ‘it is the crime of the class you work amongst.’

‘It’s the only crime they can all get hold of equally easily,’ Jim had answered. ‘They can’t afford the more expensive crimes.’

Her father had dropped the subject, and, still with the air of overdone consideration, had started up the topic of religion, but Mr. Barton wouldn’t be drawn into it. He simply listened. He probably hadn’t agreed at all, or else he had an idea that her father wasn’t sincere—that would have been horrible; there was no reason why one shouldn’t talk pleasantly and tactfully about religion without believing in it.

Then Harry came in late—she must speak to him about it—her father was obviously very angry—that is to say, he’d said, ‘Late as usual, Harry,’ and raised an eyebrow. Reggie had been more sensible. He had got off religion and taken up swimming and rowing—Mr. Barton had been in a trial eight at Cambridge, but he hadn’t had enough time to get his blue. Then they talked about Germany. Mr. Barton hadn’t been to Germany—but he admired the Germans; that was a pity. Reggie and the _Morning Post_ disliked Germans very much, and felt sure they would have to be fought and beaten. Mr. Barton said we ought to make friends with them, that they were, on the whole—if they weren’t too conceited and militant—the best people on the Continent. Reggie agreed they were too conceited, but he didn’t agree they were good, and he thought we ought to be a great deal more militant. Poor Mr. Barton was a pacifist—that had to come out. It did suddenly, as if some one had upset a glass of wine by mistake. Harry brought it out. He said, ‘But that sounds as if you didn’t believe in war,’ and Mr. Barton had said very quickly, with quite the most fighting eyes in the world, ‘I don’t.’

‘Never?’ the astonished Harry had blurted out. ‘Not if a man went for you?’

‘Least of all then,’ Jim Barton had said. ‘Perhaps if he went for somebody else—but there are usually better methods——’

‘I’m hanged if I know what they are!’ Harry had exclaimed. Then Reggie had intervened, and very nicely, without being a bit prejudiced, laughing all the time, he had shown how little good arbitration and the Hague Conference were or ever would be. He had explained everything so well that her father said it couldn’t be better put. Viola herself believed Mr. Barton would be convinced now.

But he wasn’t convinced. He said, ‘So you think the brains of men will always be chained to gunpowder? I don’t.’ But he hadn’t gone on with it. Reggie had asked him if he’d read _The Riddle of the Sands_. But Mr. Barton hadn’t read it. He said he’d read books in German that were the same kind of thing. He added, ‘I don’t like inflammatory stuff.’

Viola told him about the Navy League herself—she belonged to it—and she had explained how very necessary it was for England to be prepared, then nothing would happen. But Jim had laughed at her and said, ‘When you dress to go out, don’t you go out? I think I should if I had a ball dress on!’

Reggie had explained that if you happen to be the richest country in the world it is wiser not to be unarmed in the society of thieves.

‘Yes, if you must look on other countries as thieves, and if you will be burdened with riches,’ Jim had replied. Unfortunately he was not even an Imperialist.

It was really very puzzling for any one not to be an Imperialist.

Not exactly wicked, of course, but rather like having a principle against eating your own breakfast. It was worse to be a teetotaller and pacifist, because in a kind of way temperance and peace were virtues, and it is such bad form to have virtues that other people don’t care much about. Besides teetotallers and pacifists were usually awful creatures and yet Mr. Barton didn’t look very awful when he smiled.

Of course she wouldn’t see him again unless she went to hear him preach at Poplar. There must be a map of London in the house; she had discovered that Poplar was in London.

The men had been ages over their wine—Viola had known they would be.

Harry was going out to a dance. He had rushed in and asked who that awful bounder was, kissed her and advised her to come with him; when she told him she couldn’t he had rushed out. But the others were downstairs for ages, persuading Mr. Barton not to encourage the horrid strike. She wondered how they were doing it. Then they came upstairs and she saw they hadn’t persuaded him.

Her father was naturally very much annoyed, and had asked her to sing something. Reggie was full of jokes, but somehow or other Viola had felt that under the jokes Reggie was even more annoyed than her father.

She sang ‘The Rosary,’ because every one was singing it.

Her little beautiful voice had slipped its golden sound over all their troubled spirits, and charmed them into peace. When she had finished singing she saw that there were tears in Mr. Barton’s eyes. He did not speak at all.

She had gone on singing, but she had felt a curious trembling in her limbs which she had never felt before while she sang, as if all the chords of her being vibrated and were stirred cruelly by the beauty of sound. She couldn’t go on very long; though none of them had wanted her to stop.

Mr. Barton went away at once, and her father had letters to write. Reggie had kissed her. Of course he had a perfect right to kiss her.

It was funny that poets thought love so exquisite, when it really seemed rather tiresome—like being trodden on by mistake. Well, of course, Reggie was a dear and she would get used to it. Sometimes even now she liked it, and she always liked Reggie. They were to go and look at some furniture to-morrow. Reggie had said it was just what they wanted, but Viola wondered, because she knew so very well exactly what she liked furniture to be, if it would be what she wanted?

Reggie spoke as if their tastes would naturally be exactly the same. They liked the same dances, the same songs, the same books, the same houses—not always the same people; probably they would like the same furniture. Only it rather mattered, because you had to live with furniture—and people, too, of course mattered. You had to live with people. Being married meant the same people, and even more the same person—always the same person.

Some people were not easy to know. You never had enough of them—they were formidable—exciting—strange. You wanted to find out what they meant. They weren’t just tidy and clean and in love with you.

Viola put out the light and snuggled down into the vast expanse of her very soft dark bed. She tried to see Reggie’s face—she ought to accustom herself to dream of it, but she couldn’t—his eyeglasses seemed to get in the way, and quite unbidden, startling—almost alarming in their intensity—she saw a pair of very vivid blue eyes looking straight at her—the darkness could not hide them—the enormous security of her engagement was no barrier to them. All that was built up around her for defence and solidity slipped away from her. She was alone in the dark facing those blue eyes—they asked her nothing at all, but they were extraordinarily formidable.