Chapter THE FIRST: Which Introduces Our Hero

He wrote this very readily because it was very familiar to him. From first to last he had written it on fair fresh sheets of paper perhaps half a dozen times.

Then he stopped short and sat quite still with his head on one side. Then very neatly he corrected “which introduces” into “in which we introduce.”

It was nearly two years now since he had first begun his novel in this fashion, and he was still quite uncertain about the details of his hero’s introduction. His original intention about the story still floated pleasantly in the sky of his mind; a promise of a happy succession of fine, various and delightful adventures, told easily and good-humouredly; the fortunes of a kindly, unpretending, not too brave but brave enough young man, on his way through the world, to live happily afterwards with a delicious young woman. “Picaresque” was the magic word. None of these adventures had as yet assumed a concrete form in his mind. He felt they would come to him definitely enough one day. If one sat and mused one half saw them, and that was assurance enough for him. And so having rewritten his title page neatly and prettily, he fell into a day-dream and was presently thinking round and about his Christina Alberta as a good hero should.

Bobby was always being puzzled by Christina Alberta, always coming upon something that seemed to clear up everything, and then being puzzled again. But now it seemed to him that he really did know the last fact of importance that was to be known about her. Overnight Paul Lambone had described how he had taken her to Devizes to get advice, and how they had blundered upon the reality of her parentage. He told his story well as a story-writer should; he gave it dramatic point. Evidently he told the tale of set intention, because it was time Bobby knew. Lambone was aware of Christina Alberta’s engagement. He did not know and nobody but Bobby knew that she never intended to be married. But this, it seemed to Bobby, made the understanding of her situation possible; explained that watchful tenderness of Devizes’ face suddenly betrayed by the light of his inadvertent “my dear”; explained her position as though she belonged to him and Paul Lambone instead of being a rather unaccountable visitor; excused her vehement jealousy of Margaret Means, because evidently she had become violently possessive of her father, and had counted perhaps upon recognition and being very much with him. No doubt Margaret Means stood in the way of that. It was natural for Christina Alberta to want to be with Devizes and work with him, and natural for her to suspect and anticipate and resent an intervening personality. Apart from the magic of kinship it was natural that two such subtle and abundant personalities should attract each other greatly. That Devizes should have decided quite abruptly to marry Margaret Means did not present any difficulties to Bobby; he was not thinking very closely about Devizes. Margaret Means was pretty enough for anyone to want to marry her. There are times, as Bobby knew, when that sweet prettiness can stab one like an arrow. It had evidently stabbed and won Devizes. And almost the only thing that gave Bobby a second thought, but no more than a second thought, was Christina Alberta’s fluctuation of purpose, why she should have consented to marry him and then have changed her mind so quickly and definitely and yet have retained him as a lover.

That resolution not to marry seemed after all just a part of her immense modernity. Because of all this group of “new people” in which he found her, she seemed to Bobby to be in every way the newest. She was the boldest enterprise in living he had ever met. Her flare of hungry rebel individuality fascinated him. Where in this world was she going? Would she win out to this free personal life she desired or would she fail to find an objective of work and come upon disappointment and solitude like some creature that has strayed? The world had terrified Bobby in his own person greatly; it terrified him still more when he thought of this valiant little figure going out to challenge it.

Bobby was naturally, inherently, afraid; his instinct was for security, protection, kindliness and help. He clung to his “Aunt Suzannah” job for safety. He didn’t believe Christina Alberta knew one tenth of the dangers she ran of insult, defeat, humiliation, neglect, repulse, fatigue and lonely distress. His imagination presented a tormenting picture of her away there in dark, confused, immense and blundering London, as an excessively fragile figure, light on its feet, shock-head erect, arms akimbo, unaware of monstrous ambushed dangers. Now that he began to understand her, he began to understand a great number of bright-eyed, adventurous, difficult young women he had met in the last few years, and he had his first dim realization of the meaning of the deep wide stir among womankind that had won them votes and a score of unprecedented freedoms.

Many of these younger women were doing their work and holding their own exactly like men. They were painting and drawing like men, writing criticism like men, writing plays and novels like men, leading movements, doing scientific work, playing a part in politics. Like men? On reflection--not exactly. No. They still kept different. But they didn’t do their things in any fashion one could call womanly. Without adding strange new meanings to “womanly.” The novels they were writing interested him immensely. People like Stella Benson wrote books like--anybody; you could not tell from her work whether she was a man or a woman. All that again was new. George Eliot perhaps was a precursor. Perhaps. The former sort of women’s writings, when they were not “pretty me” books, were “kindly auntie” books; you heard the petticoats swish in every page.

Sexless, these new ones? Bobby weighed the word. The earlier generation of women who wanted to be emancipated suppressed sex, suppressed it so fiercely that its negative presence became the dominant factor in their lives. They ceased to be positive woman; they became fantastically negative woman. But this newer multitude was not so much repressing as forgetting their sex, making little of it. Christina Alberta had in a way made nothing of her sex, not by struggling against it, but by making it cheap for herself as a man makes it cheap for himself--so that it was a thing of mere intermittent moods and impulses for her--and she could go on to other things.

Going on to other things. His imagination recurred to that little figure resolved to conquer the world for itself in defiance of every tradition.

There was a strong urgency in him to start off to London in pursuit of her, to hover about her, intervene, protect her and carry her off to security. He knew she wouldn’t permit that sort of thing to happen anyhow. He’d have to be just a friend and companion to her, be at hand for her, and if she did encounter some disaster, stand by her.

It was a queer thing that he should want to stand by this unsexed young woman. It was just what one would not expect; it was part, perhaps, of the immense biological changes of the time. In the past the species had needed half the race specialized for child-bearing and child-rearing; now plainly it didn’t. The tremendous and worshipful dignity of wife and mother was not for all women any longer. That would remain for a certain sort of them to take up if they would. But a vast multitude of women were born now to miss that. Some would become pretty nuisances who would presently cease to be pretty, parasites on love and the respect for motherhood; shams, simulacra. Others would break away to a real individual life--a third sex. Perhaps in the new world there would cease to be two sexes only; there would be recognized varieties and subdivisions. So Bobby speculated. For just as there were women who did not want to bear children, so there were men who did not want to lord it over wife and children.

They would want to love all the same. Every individual of a social species needed love; to fail in that need was to escape out of social life to lonely futility. “Mutual comfort,” Bobby quoted. In his past Bobby had dreamt of the love of children. Even now he remembered as a fact that he had dreamt particularly of a little girl of his own that he could protect and explore. But now the thought and interest of Christina Alberta had blotted that out. It was extraordinary to him to perceive how possessed he was by her. He could endure no prospect of life just now unless it was to include Christina Alberta as its principal fact. But he’d be no use to her unless she respected him. He couldn’t hope to stand subordinate to her, any more than he could hope to be her master. In the latter case she’d rebel; in the former, she’d despise. They would have to stand side by side. And since she was clever, able and resolved to work hard and distinguish herself, he must word hard and also distinguish himself too. He had to be her equal and remain and keep himself her equal....

That, in fact, was why he was going to write a great novel--not just a novel but a great one.

He looked again at the neatly written page. “Ups and Downs,” he read. “A Pedestrian Novel.”

It dawned upon him that there was something profoundly wrong about that.

It was to have been a story of wandering about in the world that is; the story of the happy adventures of a well tempered mind in a well understood scheme of things. But Bobby was beginning to realize that there is not, and there never has been, a world that is; there is only a world that has been and a world that is to be. “New people,” whispered Bobby, and dipped a quill in the ink and made a border of dots round his title. Then suddenly he crossed out those three words “Ups and Downs” and wrote instead, “New Country.”

“That might be the title of any novel that matters,” said Bobby.

He mused deeply. Then he altered the sub-title to “The History of an Explorer.”

He scratched out “Explorer.”

“Involuntary traveller,” said Bobby.

Finally he put back “A Pedestrian Novel” as his sub-title....

He became aware of an intermittent dull tapping, and following the sound discovered a thrush trying to break up a snail on the gravel path. But the gravel path was too fine and soft to give a firm anvil for the beating. “The silly bird ought to find a brick or a potsherd,” said Bobby and reflected. “I suppose all the flower-pots are shut up in the shed....

“I don’t like to see that bird wasting the morning and being disappointed....

“It wouldn’t take a minute....”

He got up, let himself out by the little glass door beside the window and went to find a brick. Presently he returned with it.

But he did not go back into the study because while he had been looking for the brick, he had seen a young blackbird which had got under the strawberry netting, and was evidently scared out of its silly wits. So he went back to see about the blackbird. The minutes passed and he did not reappear. Perhaps he had found some other fellow-creature in trouble.

Presently a little breeze blew into the study through the open glass door, and lifted the sheet of paper which was to introduce our hero, and wafted it softly and suggestively on to the unlit wood fire upon the hearth. There it lay for a long time.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Superscripted characters are preceded by a carat character: n^{th}.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

No attempt has been made to regularize dialect.