The Furnace Part 5

Tommy, going home with Betty, observed:

'I'm not going to be striking any more. Miss Varley looks at me, and it makes me so shy, and when one's shy one isn't convincing.... I suppose it's really rather a rotten game, you know.'

Betty admitted that it might be so. So that renunciation was made, and their relation with Mrs. Venables became less amusing to themselves and, presumably, less edifying to her. It was quite wearying having to be so comparatively literal.

The Crevequers wondered if Miss Varley appreciated the sacrifice. Betty did not imagine her likely to notice it; she was a person of abstraction. She took an interest, it seemed, in nothing but her work.

To be in her presence--in her studio, for instance--was a little like being in the cold, rarefied atmosphere of a mountain-top. It was curious, always, to plunge suddenly into it. To get back afterwards into the warm valleys was also rather curious. Her conversation, when she had any, was a little obvious in its conventionality. It seemed to Betty, when she looked at her, surprising that this should be so. She was pleasant to look at, slim and tall, with head poised a little high, a little backwards; her short upper lip was caught up a little from her lower, seeming to carry out the character of the round, lifted chin and backward-poised head. Over her far-seeing grey eyes her fair brows often puckered thoughtfully, as if they strove to discern. The winter suns.h.i.+ne, striking in through the window, made of her light hair a fluffy aureole. There was, perhaps, a Puritan touch somewhere about her, emphasized by the simple lines of her green painting-smock. There was also something remote, inaccessible. Her grey eyes, dwelling on Betty, were artist's eyes; they seemed to take in every line, carefully noting, and to give out nothing. There was in their regard a certain quality of reserve, an implication of something held back.

Betty, returning the look with her own melancholy child's gaze, took it in without interpretation or a.n.a.lysis. It happens sometimes that for the interpretation of a look we have to wait for s.p.a.ces of years.

Apprehension is a thing of gradual growth; sudden lightening is rare.

Betty felt it a pity that Miss Varley was not a more conversational person, or at least that her conversation should be so very unexciting, so obvious. In the unquiet condition of Vesuvius, in the fact that a great number of visitors were staying in Naples, Betty felt not the least interest. But Miss Varley seemed disinclined to talk of other things; when the conversation tended to become at all autobiographical she became inattentive and absorbed. Betty, lest she should become bored (an unthinkable calamity), started a game, something of the nature of that which she and Tommy played with Mrs. Venables; the object in this case was to produce the sudden curve of the lifted upper lip, the quick twinkle in the grey eyes, which seemed to come irrepressibly, and half against the owner's will. When Betty scored a point--it really happened fairly often--it cheered her very much.

It was curious how much she liked Prudence Varley. She would have liked to see a great deal of her, not in the rarefied alt.i.tude of the studio, but in a more human and convivial atmosphere. She would very much have liked to ask her to tea (the Crevequers hated tea as a drink, but the function amused them, especially when they were the entertainers). She did suggest it one day, but Miss Varley, it seemed, had other engagements. Mrs. Venables came, with Miranda. Miranda was being educated; she was being introduced to the life of the people. The people did not interest her at all, but she liked the Crevequers, whose function was that of go-between. She would have liked to make a friend of Betty. She and Tommy were, of course, 'rotters'; they both talked much too much, and usually the most awful rubbish, and their absurd stammer made it sound sillier still, and you never knew when they meant a thing and when they didn't; and they neither knew nor cared anything about games or sport.

But, all this said, Miranda was left in an att.i.tude of half-puzzled admiration, of which she could not have quite explained the reason. Her frequent 'I say, you are rotters, you two!' conveyed a little bewilderment, a touch of contempt, and an immense attraction. This attraction put Mrs. Venables into a position of rather annoying inconsistency. She was not strait-laced; she would have been beyond measure distressed had prudery, or any conventional limitations, been attributed to her--had she, in anyone's mind, been termed _bornee_.

Nevertheless, below her aesthetic self--the self which was struck, which designed Liberty dresses and wrote novels (those novels which the Crevequers had decided to put off reading till they were thirty-two and thirty-three)--there lurked a self more ordinary, to whom the artistic issues were obscured, who could become, on occasion, purely the disapproving, very reputable censor of conduct. It was the existence of this self, side by side with the other, which made Prudence Varley sit in judgment on her att.i.tude towards the Crevequers and their kind; it was the existence of this self which made the position of Miranda something of a problem.

Theoretically, it was right and desirable that Miranda should see life as it was lived; practically, Mrs. Venables hesitated a little when confronted by the atmosphere so corrupt and so disreputable--she could not phrase it otherwise--in which Maddan Crevequer's children moved--an atmosphere that seemed to hang about them, jarring so incongruously, and at times (but not to Mrs. Venables) so laughably, with their great sad eyes and their flow of childlike nonsense.

So, half ashamed, Mrs. Venables held Miranda back from personal friends.h.i.+p, knowing herself false to her principles, and morbidly nervous of seeing the word _bornee_ lurking behind her son's observing eyes. Seeing that it was expected of him, he occasionally made use of it; in protest against it she threw herself, and threw Miranda, with increased fervour, into the Intimate Contact with the People. In the Intimate Contact the Crevequers were links. To the club-room in the Vicolo de' Fiori (the steep alley next to that of the Crevequers) they induced their friends to come; on Tuesday evenings, from half-past six to half-past seven, girls and women (really a very creditable number) sat and made paper hats, and Mrs. Venables achieved intimacy with them.

Then they danced; finally they paid a penny and had coffee and a bun, over which further intimacy was achieved. On Sat.u.r.day nights men and boys came, and played bagatelle and spoof and quit, at Mrs. Venables'

suggestion, and mora and _zecchinetto_ on their own. The intimacy here was chiefly achieved by the Crevequers, who joined in the games. But every one was very agreeable to Mrs. Venables, though, as she said, difference of language (and of faith) made confidential relations a matter of slow growth. She envied the Crevequers their closer intimacy.

Miranda on these occasions usually sat in a chair by herself, looking about her with slightly aggrieved blue eyes. The faint disgust in the droop of her lips implied, 'Beastly place, I hate it.' She did not wish to achieve intimacy. She wished that Betty would come and talk to her, instead of playing with the People. Sometimes Mrs. Venables would command her to go and talk to someone; then she would rise reluctantly, feeling exceedingly conscious of her movements and quite over-large. The People, she thought, seemed mostly rather undersized.

'What's the good, Mother? You _know_ I can't say a single thing.' Her voice dragged plaintively.

'It will be so good for you to try. Go to that nice-looking girl over there, making a petticoat. She is smiling at you.'

She certainly appeared to be doing so. The fact did not lessen Miranda's embarra.s.sment. She waited till her mother turned away, then turned her back without ceremony on the nice-looking girl who smiled, and made for her retreat in the corner. There she sat, yawning dejectedly, till Betty Crevequer came to her. Betty stood in front of her, regarding her with a whimsical scrutiny, her head at an angle of contemplation, her lips twitching a little.

'Isn't it fun here?' she remarked. 'I knew you'd like it. Can you make paper hats?'

'Oh, I suppose so. Beastly things. I hate them.'

'Oh! I was afraid you might, perhaps. I was going to ask you to show some one how; but never mind. We're going to dance now. You wouldn't care to join, I expect?'

Miranda would not.

'I hate dancing. I say.'

'Yes?'

'Do you really like this? And how much more is there?'

'Of course; don't you? About a quarter of an hour more. Then there's coffee.' Beastly stuff. You'll hate it. I must go and dance.'

'There is certainly,' Mrs. Venables remarked, watching, 'something refres.h.i.+ngly picturesque in the movements of the Southern peoples. The lithe use of their limbs----'

She took in this impression with satisfaction.

'Don't think any of them can dance a bit, if you ask me,' Miranda p.r.o.nounced.

The unwary remark drew her mother's attention upon her. Mrs. Venables'

serious, fine eyes always seemed to weigh her daughter and to find her wanting.

'Dear Miranda, I wish you would try to take more interest in people.

Miss Crevequer, now; she is entirely in their confidence, quite one of them, so to speak.' She turned to Betty. 'You must help this foolish child to a larger interest, and me to a deeper understanding. I have been having some most interesting conversations. I have been trying to glean from some of the girls their real att.i.tude towards life in its deeper issues; but they are naturally reserved with foreigners--and, no doubt, with heretics. If one could convince them of one's very real sympathy----You are very close to them, one can see. You and I must have some long talks. And I suppose your brother has immense influence with the men and boys?'

'Well, they're just f-friends of ours,' Betty said, stammering a good deal, because she was tired.

There were times when the artist in Mrs. Venables sank a little in the helper; but here she ran up against a very blank inapprehensiveness. She had perforce to grasp that her uses in this capacity were purely financial. It is not easy to give to those who will not receive, who do not even apprehend their own need of gifts. This inapprehensiveness was as a blank wall; there was no surmounting it. They looked at each other from either side of a spiritual and social gulf; and the ignoring of its existence on the one side made any attempts at throwing, as it were, a rope across from the other impossible. The rope would have dangled--did dangle when experimentally thrown--ludicrously futile in mid-air. The thrower stepped back again to the artist's standpoint, and absorbed impressions.

To give financial help came to a.s.sume an aspect of immorality. Loans were gratefully taken, and no talk of repayment even remotely rose. It was, as Warren had put it, 'very obvious'--so obvious as to be tiresome.

Illumination was shed on the aspect which the payment of debts presented to the Crevequers on the night when they came to dinner, in their redeemed dress-clothes, after winning on the lottery.

'And it all went,' Tommy concluded his narrative, stammering querulously, 'to a silly fool we owed money to. Wasn't it a shame, Mrs.

Venables? We owed it him for months; he needn't have been in such a tearing hurry all of a sudden. Waste, wasn't it? All kinds of things, you know, we might have done with it. If we'd hired a motor-car, would you all have come to Pompei with us? Or would you rather have taken a boat to Capri? You could have had your choice, anyhow. And all that money wasted; we might just as well have dropped it into the sea, you know--better; it would have been fun diving for it and bringing it up with our toes. Do you know how to do that, Venables? I did it once when a North German Lloyd was going out. You know how they swim round and dive for money and make such a horrid row? Well, I thought I'd do it, too, once, because it was such a nice warm day; and they threw me pennies, but another man always brought them up with his toes; I could never find them. Sell, wasn't it? but much funnier than paying all that money to Grollo. People are so grasping, aren't they.'

It was manifest that money lent to the Crevequers must be accounted a bad debt. Mrs. Venables lent no more; her moral sense rebelled against it.

But Warren proved himself admirably accommodating.

CHAPTER V

BAIae'S BAY

'I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day.'

R. L. STEVENSON.

'Why should I care for the ages, Because they are old and grey?

To me, like sudden laughter, The stars are fresh and gay.

The world is a daring fancy, And finished yesterday.'

G. K. CHESTERTON.

On a blue Sunday morning, not early enough to spoil their night--on principle they shunned always the dimmer hours of dawn--the Crevequers slipped the leash of the city and went to spend a happy day in the country. They often spent their Sundays thus; with their wonted inconsequent abruptness one would say to the other on Sat.u.r.day evening, 'I'm tired of Naples. Let's go somewhere else by the next train,' and they would shovel a few things--usually those among their possessions which they were least likely to want--into a bag, and take tickets quite at random to any place, known or unknown, which occurred to them.

Novelty was often a desirable qualification; but on this Sunday morning they went to Baja, because a strenuous week had blunted their imaginations; also, perhaps, a little because on the sh.o.r.es of Baja there lies much healing. Their affairs had not been going altogether smoothly of late, and the need rose in them, unworded, for stillness by blue water and the sun upon warm sand.

Having found these things, they entered into a contented peace, and built a sand castle. Then they lay on the sand ten yards from it, and took shots at it with bits of pumice-stone.

'Well,' Tommy observed at length, 'I've won that. And now it looks like a plum-pudding. Ducks and drakes? No; we'll go to sleep, because we got up too early for the time we went to bed. Pity; get up later next time.

No, you can't talk yet, Betty, because I'm resting. You know, you don't need so much rest, because you're not a newspaper man. I'm sorry I'm a newspaper man; they're so untruthful, and when they try to be funny they're only rude. But I'm glad we're not a daily; if we were we should get into seven times as many rows as we do, shouldn't we. Our mortification might be greater than we could bear. Muzzi can bear a great deal, though; he's so brave. I'm not; I'm dreadfully sensitive. If I die a violent death at the hands of the Sindaco--I probably shall, you know, so will Muzzi--Mrs. Venables will have Ma.s.ses said for me, because they're such an interesting medieval survival, obviously deeply rooted in human psychology. Why are heretics such goats? And why talk about heretics and newspapers on our happy Sunday in the country? Your turn, Betty; change the subject while I s.n.a.t.c.h a moment of sleep.'