Potterism Part 27

Oh, yes, Jane knew that. She said, 'I suppose I do, Arthur.'

He said, 'Then what about it? Do you ...' and she said, 'Rather, of course I do.'

Then they kissed each other, and settled to get married next May or June.

The baby was coming in January.

'You'll have to put up with baby, you know, Arthur,' Jane said.

'Of course, poor little kid. I rather like them. It's rough luck on it not having a father of its own. I'll try to be decent to it.'

That would be queer, thought Jane, Arthur being decent to Oliver's kid; a boy, perhaps, with Oliver's face and Oliver's mind. Poor little kid: but Jane would love it, and Arthur would be decent to it, and its grandparents would spoil it; it would be their favourite, if any more came. They wouldn't like the others, because they would be Gideon's. They might look like little Yids. Perhaps there wouldn't be any others. Jane wasn't keen. They were all right when they were there--jolly little comics, all slippy in their baths, like eels--but they were an unspeakable nuisance while on the way. A rotten system.

4

All next day Jane felt like stopping people in the streets and shouting at them, 'Arthur didn't do it. Nor did I. It was only that silly a.s.s, Clare, or else it was an accident.' For even now Jane wasn't sure which she thought.

But the only person to whom she really said it was Katherine. One told Katherine things, because she was as deep and as quiet as the grave.

Also, if Jane hadn't told her what Clare had said, she would have gone on thinking it was Jane, and Jane didn't like that. Jane did not care to give Katherine more reasons for making her feel cheap than necessary. She would always think Jane cheap, anyhow, because Jane only cared about having a good time, and Katherine thought one should care chiefly about one's job. Jane supposed she was cheap, but didn't much care. She felt she would rather be herself. She had a better time, and would have a better time still before she had done; better than Johnny, with the rubbishy books he was writing and making his firm bring out for him and feeling so pleased with. Jane knew she could write better stuff than Johnny could, any day. And her books would be in addition to Gideon, and babies, and other amusing things.

Jane told Katherine Clare's story. Katherine said, 'H'm. Perhaps. I wonder. It's as likely as not all b.u.mk.u.m that she pushed him. She was probably talking to him when he fell, and got worked up about it later.

The Potter press and Leila Yorke touch. However, you never know. Quite a light push might do it. Those stairs of yours are awful. I really advise you to be careful, Jane.'

'You thought I'd done it, didn't you, old thing?'

'For a bit, I did. For a bit I thought it was Arthur. So did Jukie. You never know. Any one might push any one else. Even Clare may have.'

'You must have thought I was a pretty mean little beast, to let Arthur be suspected without owning up.'

'I did,' Katherine admitted. 'Selfish ...'

She was looking at Jane in her considering way. Her bright blue eyes seemed always to go straight through what she was looking at, like X-rays. When she looked at Jane now, she seemed somehow to be seeing in her not only the present but the past. It was as if she remembered, and was making Jane remember, all kinds of old things Jane had done. Things she had done at Oxford; things she had done since; things Katherine neither blamed nor condemned, but just took into consideration when thinking what sort of a person Jane was. You had the same feeling with Katherine that you had sometimes with Juke, of being a.n.a.lysed and understood all through. You couldn't diddle either of them into thinking you any nicer than you were. Jane didn't want to. It was more restful just to be taken for what one was. Oliver had been always idealising her.

Gideon didn't do that; he knew her too well. Only he didn't bother much about what she was, not being either a priest or a scientific chemist, but a man in love.

'By the way,' said Katherine, 'are you and Arthur going to get married?'

Jane told her in May or June.

Katherine, who was lighting a cigarette, looked at Jane without smiling.

The flame of the match shone into her face, and it was white and cold and quiet.

'She doesn't think I'm good enough for Arthur,' Jane thought. And anyhow, K didn't, Jane knew, think much of marriage at all. Most women, if you said you were going to get married, a.s.sumed it was a good thing. They caught hold of you and kissed you. If you were a man, other men slapped you on the back, or shook hands or something. They all thought, or pretended to think, it was a fine thing you were doing. They didn't really think so always. Behind their eyes you could often see them thinking other things about it--wondering if you would like it, or why you chose that one, and if it was because you preferred him or her to any one else or because you couldn't get any one else. Or they would be pitying you for stopping being a bachelor or spinster and having to grow up and settle down and support a wife or manage servants and babies. But all that was behind; they didn't show it; they would say, 'Good for you, old thing,' and kiss you or shake your hand.

Katherine did neither to Jane. She hadn't when it was Oliver Hobart, because she hadn't thought it a suitable marriage. She didn't, now it was Arthur Gideon, perhaps for the same reason. She didn't talk about it. She talked about something else.

CHAPTER II

ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED

1

The fine weather ended. Early October had been warm, full of golden light, with clear, still evenings. Later the wind bl.u.s.tered, and it was cold. Sometimes Jane felt sick; that was the baby. But not often. She went about all right, and she was writing--journalism and a novel. She thought she would perhaps send it in for a prize novel compet.i.tion in the spring, only she felt no certainty of pleasing the three judges, all so very dissimilar. Jane's work was a novel about a girl at school and college and thereafter. Perhaps it would be the first of a trilogy; perhaps it would not. The important thing was that it should be well reviewed. How did one work that? You could never tell. Some things were well reviewed, others weren't. Partly luck it was, thought Jane. Novels were better treated usually than they deserved. Verse about as well as it deserved, which, however, wasn't, as a rule, saying very much. Some kinds of book were unkindly used--anthologies of contemporary verse, for instance. Someone would unselfishly go to the trouble of collecting some of the recent poetical output which he or she personally preferred and binding it up in a pleasant portable volume, and you would think all that readers had to do was to read what they liked in it, if anything, and leave out the rest and be grateful. Instead, it would be slated by reviewers, and compared to the Royal Academy, and to a literary signpost pointing the wrong way, and other opprobrious things; as if an anthology could point to anything but the taste of the compiler, which of course could not be expected to agree with any one else's; tastes never do. The thing was, thought Jane, to hit the public taste with the right thing at the right moment. Another thing was to do better than Johnny. That should be possible, because Jane _was_ better than Johnny; had always been. Only there was this baby, which made her feel ill before it came, and would need care and attention afterwards. It wasn't fair. If Johnny married and had a baby it wouldn't get in his way, only in its mamma's. It was a handicap, like your frock (however short it was) when you were climbing.

You had got round that by taking it off and climbing in knickerbockers, but you couldn't get round a baby. And Jane wanted the baby too.

'I suppose I want everything,' said Jane.

Johnny wanted everything too. He got a lot. He got love. He was polygamous by nature, and usually had more than one girl on hand. That autumn he had two. One was Nancy Sharpe, the violinist. They were always about together. People who didn't know either of them well, thought they would get engaged. But neither of them wanted that. The other girl was a different kind: the lovely, painted, music-hall kind you don't meet. No one thought Johnny would marry her, of course. They merely pa.s.sed the time for one another.

Jane wondered if the equivalent man would pa.s.s the time for her. She didn't think so. She thought she would get bored with never talking about anything interesting. And it must, she thought, be pretty beastly having to kiss people who used cheap scent and painted their lips. One would be afraid the red stuff would come off. In fact, it surely would. Didn't men mind--clean men, like Johnny? Men are so different, thought Jane. Johnny was the same at Oxford. He would flirt with girls in tea-shops. Jane had never wanted to flirt with the waiters in restaurants. Men were perhaps less critical; or perhaps they wanted different qualities in those with whom they flirted; or perhaps it was that their amatory instinct, when p.r.o.nounced at all, was much stronger than women's, and flowed out on to any object at hand when they were in the mood. Also, they certainly grew up earlier. At Oxford and Cambridge girls weren't, for the most part, grown-up enough to be thinking about that kind of thing at all. It came on later, with most of them. But men of that age were, quite a lot of them, mature enough to flirt with the girls in Buol's.

Jane discussed it with Gideon one evening. Gideon said, 'Men usually have, as a rule, more s.e.x feeling than women, that's all. Naturally. They need more, to carry them through all the business of making marriage proposals and keeping up homes, and so on. Women often have very little.

That's why they're often better at friends.h.i.+p than men are. A woman can be a man's friend all their lives, but a man, in nine cases out of ten, will either get tired of it or want more. Women have a tremendous gift for friends.h.i.+p. Their friends.h.i.+ps with other women are usually much more devoted and more faithful than a man's with other men. Most men, though of course not all, want s.e.x in their lives at some time or other.

Hundreds of women are quite happy without it. They're quite often nearly s.e.xless. Very few men are that.'

Jane said, 'There are plenty of women like Clare, whom one can't think of apart from s.e.x. No friends.h.i.+p would ever satisfy her. If she isn't a wife and mother she'll be starved. She'll marry, of course.'

'Yes,' Gideon agreed. 'There are plenty of women like that. And when a woman is like that, she's much more dependent on love and marriage than any man is, because she usually has fewer other things in her life. But there are women also like Katherine.'

'Oh, Katherine. K isn't even dependent on friends.h.i.+p. She only wants her work. K isn't typical.'

'No; she isn't typical. She isn't a channel for the life force, like most of us. She's too independent; she won't let herself be used in that way.'

'Am I a channel for the life force?' thought Jane. 'I suppose so. Hence Oliver and baby. Is Arthur? I suppose so. Hence his wanting to marry me.'

2

Jane told her family that she was going to marry Gideon. Lady Pinkerton said, 'It's extraordinary to me that you can think of it, Jane, after all that has happened. Surely, my child, the fact that it was the last thing Oliver would wish should have some weight with you. Whatever plane he may be on now, he must be disturbed by such news as this. Besides, dear child, it is far too soon. You should wait at least a year before taking such a step. And Arthur Gideon! Not only a Jew, Jane, and not only a man of such very unfortunate political principles, but one who has never attempted to conceal his spiteful hostility both to father's papers and my books. But perhaps, as I believe you agree with him in despising both of these, that may be an extra bond between you. Only you must _see_ that it will make family life extremely awkward.'

Of course it would. But family lives nearly always are awkward, Jane thought; it is one of the things about them.

Lady Pinkerton added, having suddenly remembered it, 'Besides, my dear, he _drinks_; you told me so yourself.'

Jane said, if she had, she had lied, doubtless for some good reason now forgotten by her. He didn't drink, not in the excessive sense of that word obviously intended by Lady Pinkerton. Lady Pinkerton was unconvinced; she still was sure he drank in that sense.

She resumed, 'And Jewish babies! I wonder you can think of it, Jane. They may be a throw-back to a most degraded Russian-Jewish type. What brothers and sisters for the dear mite who is coming first! My dear, I do beg you to think this over long and seriously before committing yourself. You may live to repent it bitterly.'

Clare said, '_Jane_! How _can_ you--after ...'

After Oliver, she meant. She would never say his name; perhaps one doesn't like to when one has killed a man.

Jane thought, 'Why didn't I leave Oliver to Clare? She'd have suited him much better. I was stupid; I thought I wanted him. I did want him. But not in the way I want Arthur now. One wants so many things.'

Lord Pinkerton said, 'You're making a big mistake, Babs. That fellow won't last. He's building on sand, as the Bible puts it--building on sand. I hear on good authority that the _Fact_ can't go on many months longer, unless it changes its tone and methods considerably; it's got no chance of fighting its way as it is now. People don't want that kind of thing. They don't want anything the Gideon lot will give them. Gideon and his sort haven't got the goods. They're building on the sand of their own fancy, not on the rock of general human demand. I hear that that daily they talked of starting can't come off yet, either.... The chap's a bad investment, Babs.... And he despises me and my goods, you know. That'll be awkward.'