Chapter XXI: The Shedding of the Chrysalis

The official position of fiancé was a new and fascinating experience, in the excitement of which Roland speedily forgot the unpleasantness that its announcement had caused in Hammerton. It was really great fun. Important relatives were asked to meet him, and he was introduced to them by Mr Marston as "my future son-in-law." Muriel insisted on taking him for walks through the village for the pleasure of being able to say to her friends: "This is my fiancé." And when he complained that he was being treated like a prize dog, she asked him what else he thought he was. Muriel had always been a delightful companion and the engagement added to their relationship a charming intimacy. It was jolly to sit with her and hold her hand; and she was not exacting. She did not expect him to be making love to her the whole time. Indeed, he did not make love to her very often. They kissed each other when they were alone, but then kisses were part of the game that they were playing. April had at first been too shy to pronounce the actual word "kiss." She had evaded it, and later, when she had come to use it, it had been for a long while accompanied by a blush. There was no such reserve between Muriel and Roland. Kisses were favours that she would accord to him if he were good. "No," she would say to him sometimes, "I don't think I'm going to let you kiss me this afternoon. You haven't been at all the faithful and dutiful lover. You didn't pay me any attention at lunch; you were talking to father about some silly cricket match and I had to ask you twice to pass me the salt. I oughtn't to have to ask you once. You ought to know what I want. No! I shan't let you kiss me."

And then he would entreat her clemency: he would hold her hand and kneel on the wet grass, an act of devotion to which he would call her notice, and beseech her to be generous, and after a while she would weaken and say--yes, if he was very good he might be allowed one kiss. No more! But when his arms were round her he was not satisfied with one, he would take two, three, four, and she would wriggle in his arms and kick his shins and tell him that he had taken a mean advantage of her; and when he had released her she would vow that as a punishment she would not kiss him again--no, never, not once again, and then would add: "No, not for a whole week!" And he would catch her again in his arms and say: "Make it a minute and I'll agree," and with a laugh she had accepted his amendment.

There were no solemn protestations, no passion, no moments of languid tenderness. They were branches in neighbouring boughs that played merrily in the wind, caring more, perhaps, for the wind than for each other.

They talked exhaustively of the future--of the house they were going to build, the garden they would lay out. "We'll have fowls," he said, "because you'll look so pretty feeding them."

"And we'll have a lawn," she repeated, "because you'll look so hot when you've finished mowing it."

They would discuss endlessly the problem of house decoration. She was very anxious to have bright designs, "with lots of red and blue in it." And he had told her that she could do what she liked with the drawing-room as long as she allowed him a free hand with his own study.

"Which means that you'll have a nasty, plain brown paper, and you'll cover it with ugly photographs of cricket elevens, and it'll be full of horrid arm-chairs and stale tobacco."

One day he took her up to Hammerton to see his parents and his friends. They intrigued her by the difference from the type to which she was accustomed.

"It's awfully interesting," she said. "They are so different from the sort of people that we see--all jammed together in these funny little houses--all furnished just the same."

"Yes, and all doing the same things," said Roland--"going to the office at the same time, coming back at the same time, and if it hadn't been for Gerald that would have been my life. That's what I should have been. I should have done exactly the same things every day of my life except for one fortnight in the year. And it would have been worse for me than for most of them, because I've been at a decent school, because I'd seen that life needn't be like that. These people don't believe it can be different." He spoke with a savage sincerity that surprised Muriel. She had never known him so violent.

"Roland! Roland!" she expostulated. "I've never heard you so fierce about anything before. Your proposal to me was the tamest thing in the world compared with that."

"I'm sorry."

"I should hope so. I believe you hate Hammerton more than you love me."

So the autumn passed, quickly and happily. And by Christmas time they had begun to speak of an April wedding. There was no reason for delay. Roland was now making over seven hundred pounds a year, and the Marstons were too certain of their son-in-law to demand a long engagement. Yet it was on the very evening when the date was fixed that Roland and Muriel had their first brief quarrel. Roland had been tired by the long discussion, and Muriel's keen vitality had exasperated him. She was talking so eagerly of her trousseau, her bridesmaids, the locality of her honeymoon. She seemed to him to be sharing their love, his and hers, with all those other people who had no part in it. He was envious, feeling that their love was no longer theirs. He was still angry when they stood together on the landing to say good-night to each other.

"I don't believe you care for me at all," he said, "that you regard our marriage as anything more than a pantomime, a glorified garden-party!"

A look of hurt amazement crossed her face.

"But, Roland!"

"Oh, you know what I mean, Muriel, you--well, all these others!" He paused, unable to express himself, then caught her quickly, roughly into his arms, and kissed her hungrily. "I don't care," he said, "you'll be mine soon, mine!"

She pushed away from him, her face flushed and frightened.

"Oh, don't, Roland, don't!"

He was instantly apologetic.

"I'm sorry, Elfkin. I'm a beast. Forgive me, but oh, Elfkin, you really are anxious about the marriage for my sake?"

"Of course, silly!"

"I mean you're glad that we're going to be married soon?"

She was surprised and at the same time amused by the look of entreaty in his eyes.

"Don't look so tragic about it, of course I'm glad."

"But...." He got no further, for she had taken his hands and was playing with them, slapping them against his sides.

"Don't be such a silly, Roland, darling; you ought to know how pleased I am. I'm looking forward to it frightfully; and I know you'll be an awful dear to me."

She brought his hands together in one last triumphant smack, and leaning forward imprinted a light kiss upon his forehead. He tried to draw her again into his arms, but she broke from him.

"Oh, no, no, no," she said, and ran lightly up the stairs. She turned at the corner of the landing to blow a kiss to him. "Good-night, darling," and she was gone.

It was not repeated. Doubt, remorse, hesitation were alike forgotten in the excitement of preparation. He had arranged to take over the lease of a small house on the edge of the Marston estate, and the furnishing of it was a new and delightful game. The present tenants did not relinquish possession till the end of February, and during the intervening weeks Muriel and Roland would prowl round the house like animals waiting for their prey. They were finely contemptuous of the existing arrangements. Fancy using that big room as a drawing-room; it faced south-east, and though it would be warm enough during the morning, it would be freezily cold in the afternoon. Of course they would make that the dining-room; it would be glorious for breakfast. And that big room above it should be their bedroom; they would wake with the sunlight streaming through the window.

"You'll see the apple-tree while you brush your hair," he told her. And they both agreed that they would cut down the large walnut-tree in the garden. It was pretty, but it shut out the view of Hogstead. "It'll be much better to be able to look out from the drawing-room window and see the funny old people going up and down the village street." And Roland reminded her how they had looked down on them that day when they had leant against the gate: "Do you remember?" And she had laughed and told him that he was a stupid old sentimentalist, but she had kissed him all the same. And then the great day had come when the tenants began to move; they stood all the afternoon watching the workmen stagger into the garden, bowed with the weight of heavy furniture.

"I can't think how all that stuff ever got in there," Muriel said, and began to wonder whether they themselves would ever have enough. "We've nothing like as much as that."

And Roland had to assure her that they could always buy more, and that anyway the house had been over-furnished.

"You couldn't move for chairs and chesterfields and bureaux."

It was two days before the last van rolled away and Muriel and Roland were able to walk up the garden path "into our own house." But it was a bitter disappointment. The rooms looked mean and small and shabby now that they were unfurnished. The bare boards of the floors and staircases were dirty and covered with the straw of packing cases, the plaster of the wall showing white where the book-shelves had been unfixed. And the paper that had been shielded by pictures from the sunshine struck a vivid contrast to its faded environment. Muriel was on the verge of tears.

"Oh, Roland, what's happened to our pretty house?" she cried. And it took all his skill to persuade her that rooms always did look small till they were furnished, and that carpets and pictures covered many things.

"But our pictures won't fit exactly in those places," Muriel wailed, "and all our small pictures will have haloes."

"Then we'll get new papers," Roland said.

There were moments when it seemed that things could not be possibly finished in time. On the last week of March there was not a carpet on the floor, not a curtain over a window, not a picture on the walls.

"I know what it'll be," said Muriel in despair, "we shall have to go and leave it half-finished, and while we're away mother'll arrange it according to her own ideas, and her ideas are not mine. It'll take us all the rest of our lives getting things out of the places where she has put them. It's going to be awful, Roland, I know it is. We oughtn't to have arranged our marriage till we'd arranged our house."

Muriel was a little difficult during those days, but Roland was very patient and very affectionate.

"You only wait," he said; "it looks pretty awful now, but one good day's shopping'll make a jolly big difference."

And it did. In one week they bought all the carpets, the curtains, the chairs and tables, and Gerald was dispatched with a list that Mrs Marston had drawn up of the uninteresting things--saucepans, frying-pans, crockery--and with a blank cheque. "We can't be bothered with those things," said Roland.

It was a hectic week. They had decided to spend three hundred pounds on furnishing, and every evening, for Roland was staying with the Marstons, the two of them sat down to adjust their accounts, and to Muriel, who had never experienced a moment's anxiety about money, this checking of a balance-sheet was a delightful game. It was such fun pretending to be poor, adding up figures, comparing price-lists, as though each penny mattered. She would sit, her pencil on her lips, her account-book on one side, her price-list on the other, and would look up at Roland with an imploring, helpless glance, and: "Roland, dear, there's such a beautiful wardrobe here; it's fifty pounds, but it'll hold all my things; do you think we can afford it?"

And Roland would assume dire deliberation: "Well," he would say, after an impressive pause, "I think we can, only we'll have to be very careful over the servant's bedroom if we get it." And Muriel would throw her arms round his neck and assure him that he was a darling, and turn again to the price-list.

And all the while the wedding presents were arriving by every post. That, too, was great fun, or rather it had been at the start.

The first parcels were opened with unbounded enthusiasm.

"Oh, Roland, Mrs Boffin has sent us a silver inkstand; isn't it sweet of her?"

"Muriel, come and look at these candlesticks; they are beauties."

And letters of eager thanks were written. After a week or so the game began to lose its fascination. The gifts resembled each other; they began to forget who had given what, and as they wrote the letters of acknowledgment they would shout to each other in despair:

"Oh, Roland, do tell me what Mr Fitzherbert sent us!"

"I can't remember. I'm trying to think who I've got to thank for that butter-dish."

"The butter-dish!--that was Mr Robinson--but Mr Fitzherbert?"

"But the butter-dish wasn't Mr Robinson; he was the clock!"

"Then it was Mrs Evans; and, Roland, do, do think what Mr Fitzherbert gave us."

And so it went on, till at last they began to show a decided preference for cheques.

And there was the honeymoon: that had to be arranged. Muriel would rather like to have gone abroad.

"I've been only twice. We'll see all the foreigners, and sit in cafés, and go to theatres and see if we can understand them."

But Roland was not very anxious to go abroad. He went there too often in the way of business. He might meet people who at other times were charming, but were not on a honeymoon the most comfortable company. There would be the fatigue of long journeys, and besides, he wanted Muriel to himself.

"I don't want to go and see foreigners, I want to see you."

"Well, you'll have seen a good deal of me before you've finished."

"But, Muriel," and the firm note in his voice forced her to capitulate.

"All right, all right, have it as you like."

And so, after much discussion, it was decided that they should get a cyclist map of England, find a Sussex village that was at least three miles from any railway station, and then write to the postmaster and ask whether anyone there would be ready to let them rooms for a month.

"Three miles from anywhere! Heavens! but I shall be bored; still it's as you wish. Go and get your map, Gerald."

And with the map spread on the table they selected, after an hour's argument, to see if anything was doing at Bamfield.

"It should be a good place," said Roland. "It's just under the Downs."

In all this fret and fluster Mr Marston took the most intense interest. It reminded him of his own marriage and, finding his youth again in theirs, he spoke often of his honeymoon.

"Do you remember, dear, when we went out for a picnic in the woods and it came on to rain and we went to that little cottage under the hill?" And again: "Do you remember that view we got of the sea from the top of Eversleigh?" Little incidents of his courtship that he had forgotten a long time were recalled to him, so that he came to feel a genuine tenderness for the wife whom he had neglected for business, for cricket, and his children; from a distance of thirty years the perfume of those scented months had returned to him.

Gerald was alone unmoved. He was annoyed one morning when he found the floor of the billiard-room covered with packing cases, but he retained his hardly won composure. He accepted the duties of best man without enthusiasm. "At any rate it will soon be over," he had said, and had proceeded to give Roland two new white wood bats.

"They won't last long, but you can't help making a few runs with them." And his friend was left to draw from that present what inference he might think fit.

They were hectic days, but at last everything was finished. The house was papered and furnished, rooms had been booked at Bamfield, and in the last week in April Roland returned to Hammerton. He had had scarcely a moment's rest during the last two months. Life had moved at an incredible pace, and only with an enormous struggle had he managed to keep pace with it. He had had no time to think what he was doing. Each morning had presented him with some fresh difficulty, each night had left some piece of work unfinished. And, now that it was over, he felt exhausted. The store of energy that had sustained his vitality at so high a pressure was spent.

The sudden marriage was naturally a disappointment to his parents. Their opinion had not been asked; the arrangements had been made at Hogstead. Roland had just told them that such and such a thing had been decided, and they were hurt. They had known, of course, all along that as soon as their son was married they would lose him, but they had expected to retain his confidence up till then; and, being sentimental, they had often spoken together of the wife that he would choose. They had looked forward to his days of courtship, hoping to have a share in that fresh happiness. But the pleasure had been given to others; they had had no part in it.

In consequence Roland did not find them very responsive. They listened attentively to all he told them, but they asked no questions, and the conversation was not made easy. Roland was piqued by their behaviour; he had intended to arrange a picnic for the three of them on the last day, but now decided that he would not. After all, why should he: it would be no pleasure for any of them, not if they were going to sit glum and silent. Two days before his marriage he went for a walk in the evening with his father, and as Gerald would be coming on the next day to stay the night with them this was the last walk they would have together. But in nothing that they said to each other was implied any appreciation of the fact. When Mr Whately returned from the office he handed the evening paper to his wife, commented on the political situation in Russia and on the economical situation of France, and was, on the whole, of the opinion that Spanish cooking was superior to Italian, "Not quite so much variety," he said, "but there's a flavour about it that one gets nowhere else." He then proceeded to remove his boots: "And what about a walk, Roland?"

Ronald nodded, and Mr Whately went upstairs to change his suit. They walked as usual down the High Street, they turned up the corner of College Road, they crossed by the Public Library into Green Crescent, and completed their circuit by walking down into the High Street through Woolston Avenue. They talked of Fernhurst, of the coming cricket season, of the marriage ceremony, of the arrangements that had been made for meeting the guests at the church, of the train that Roland and Muriel would catch afterwards. But there passed between them not one sentence, question, intonation of the voice that could be called intimate, that could be said to express not remorse, but any attitude at all towards the severing of a long relationship. As they walked up the steps of 105 Hammerton Villas they were discussing the effectiveness of the new pull stroke that in face of prejudice so many great batsmen were practising.

"I think I shall go down to the nets at the Oval to-morrow, father, and see what I can make of it."

It was a bleak morning and the Oval presented a dismal appearance; a few men were pottering about with ladders and paint brushes; a cutting machine was clanking on the grass; the long stone terraces were cold and forbidding; the clock in the pavilion had stopped; far over at the Vauxhall end a couple of bored professionals were bowling to an enthusiastic amateur who had no idea of the game, but demanded instruction after every stroke. Roland stood behind the net and watched for a while an exhibition of cross-bat play that was calculated to make him for ever an advocate of the left shoulder, the left elbow and the left foot. He had a few minutes' chat with one of the groundsmen.

"Yes, sir, it do look pretty dismal, but you wait. April's a funny month; why, to-morrow we shall probably have brilliant sunshine, and there'll be twenty or thirty people down here, and when you go away you'll be thinking about getting out that bat of yours and putting a drop of oil on it." Roland expressed a hope that this prophecy would prove correct.

April was a funny month: it was cold to-day, but within a week the sun would be shining on green grass and new white flannels. Only another week! The fixing of this date, however, reminded Roland that in a week's time he would be in a small village under the Downs, three miles from the nearest station, and this reminder was somewhat of a shock to him. He would miss the first four weeks of the season. By the time he came back everyone else would have found their form; it was rather a nuisance. Still, a honeymoon! Ah, well, one could not have it both ways.

Gerald was not arriving till the afternoon, and the morning passed slowly for Roland. He walked from Kennington over Westminster Bridge and along the Embankment to Charing Cross; he strolled down the Strand, looking into the shop windows and wondering whether he was hungry enough to have his lunch. He decided he was not and continued his walk, but boredom made him reconsider the decision, and he found himself unable to pass a small Italian restaurant at the beginning of Fleet Street; and as he had a long time, with nothing to do in it, he ordered a heavy lunch. When the waiter presented him with his bill he had become fretfully irritable--the usual penalty of overeating.

What on earth should he do with himself for two hours? How slowly the time was passing. It was impossible to realise that in twenty-four hours' time he would be standing beside Muriel before the altar, that in two days' time they would be man and wife. What would it be like? Pondering the question, he walked along to Trafalgar Square, and still pondering it he mounted a bus and travelled on it as far as a sevenpenny ticket would take him. Then he got on to a bus that was going in the opposite direction, and by the time he was back again at Trafalgar Square, Gerald's train from Hogstead was nearly due.

It was not a particularly exciting evening and the atmosphere was distinctly edgy. Mr Whately was bothered about his clothes, and whether he should wear a white or a dark tie; and Mrs Whately was fussing over little things. "Did old Mrs Whately know that she had to change at Waterloo? Had anyone written to tell her? And who was going to meet her at the other end?" It was a relief to Roland when they had gone to bed and he and Gerald were left alone.

"It's a funny thing," Gerald said; "five years ago we didn't know each other; you were nothing to me, nor I to you, and then we meet in Brewster's study, and again at the Oval and, before we know where we are you're a junior partner in the business and engaged to my sister. To think what a difference you've made to all of us!"

"And the funniest thing of all," said Roland, "is to think that if I hadn't caught the three-thirty from Waterloo instead of the four-eighteen, none of this would have happened. I shouldn't have met that blighter Howard, nor gone out with those girls; and, even so, none of it would have happened if I had taken my footer boots down to be mended, as I ought to have done, on a Sunday afternoon instead of loafing in my study. One can't tell what's going to be a blessing till one's done with it. If I hadn't had that row I should never have met you and I should never have met Muriel." And he paused, wondering what would have happened to him if he had caught the four-eighteen and taken his boots down to be mended. He would have stayed on another year at school; he would have been captain of the house; he would have gone up to the 'Varsity. He would have had a good time, no doubt, but where would he be now? Probably an assistant master at a second-rate public school, an ill-paid post that had been given to him because he was good at games. Probably also he would be engaged to April, and he would be making desperate calculations with account-books to discover whether it was possible to marry on one hundred and fifty pounds a year.

"That now," he said, "was the luckiest thing for me that ever happened."

And they sat for a while in silence pondering the strange contradictions of life, pondering also the instability of human schemes. One might plan out the future, pigeon-hole it, have everything arranged as by a machine, and then what happened? Someone caught a train at three-thirty instead of at four-eighteen, or was too lazy to take his football boots down to be mended on a wet afternoon, and the plans that had been built up so elaborately through so many years were capsized, and one had to begin again.

"And it's so funny," Roland said, "to think of the fuss they made at Fernhurst about a thing like that--just taking a girl out for a walk, and you'd think I'd broken the whole ten commandments, and all the talk about my corrupting the pure soul of Brewster."

Gerald broke into a great laugh.

"The pure soul of Brewster!" he said. "My lord! if you'd known what he was like after he'd been in the house a term. He'd have taken a blooming lot of corrupting then. Gawd, but he was a lad!" And Gerald supplied some intriguing anecdotes of Brewster's early life. "He was a lad!" And Brewster's name started a train of associations, and Roland asked Gerald whether he had heard of Baker.

"Baker? Baker?" Gerald repeated. "No. I can't say I ever remember hearing anything about him. He must have been after my time."

Roland got up, walked across to his bureau, and taking a bunch of keys from his hip pocket unlocked a small top drawer. He took the drawer out and, bringing it across, laid it on the table. It was full of photographs, letters, ribbons, dance programmes, and he began to fumble among them: "I think we shall find something about Master Baker here," he said. "Ah, yes, here we are!" And he handed across to Gerald a large house photograph. "There he is, bottom row, fourth from the right."

Gerald scrutinised the photograph, holding it to the light.

"Lord, yes," he said, "that tells its own story; what's happened to him now?"

"He was head of the house two years ago; he's gone up to Selwyn. I believe he's going into the Church."

Gerald smiled. "When we all meet at an old boys' dinner in twenty years' time we shall get one or two shocks. Think of Brewster bald, and Maconochie stout, and Evans the father of a family!"

"My lord!"

And they began to rummage in the drawer, till the table was littered with letters and photographs.

The photographs led them from one reminiscence to another; and in that little series of isolated recollections they lived again through all that had remained vivid to them of their school-days.

"Heavens!" said Gerald, "who's that? You don't mean to say that's Harrison! Why, I remember him when he first came, a ridiculous kid; we used to call him 'Little Belly.' About the first week he was there he showed his gym. belt to someone and said: 'Isn't it small? Haven't I a little belly?'"

"And here's Hardy," said Roland. "Do you remember that innings of his in the final house match, and how we lined up on each side of the pavilion and cheered him when he came out?"

"And do you remember that try of his in the three cock?--two men and the back to beat and only a couple of yards to spare between them and the touch-line. I don't know how he kept his foot inside."

And as the store of Fernhurst photographs became exhausted they found among the notes and hotel bills delightful memories of much that they had in common.

"The Café du Nord, Ghent! My son," said Gerald, "do you remember that top-hole Burgundy? Yes, here it is--two bottles of Volnay, fifty-three francs."

"Wasn't that the night when that ripping little German girl smiled at us across the room?"

"And when I said that another bottle of Volnay was better than any woman in the world."

A torn hotel bill at Cologne recalled a disappointing evening in the company of two German girls whom they had met at a dance and taken out to supper--an evening that had ended, to the surprise of both of them, in a platonic pressure of the hands.

"Do you remember how we stood under the cathedral and watched them pass out of sight behind the turning of the Hohe Strasse, and then you turned to me and said: 'There's no understanding women'?"

And then there was the evening when they had gone to the opera in Bonn and had had supper afterwards in a little restaurant, from the window of which they could see the Rhine flowing beneath them in the moonlight, and its beauty and the tender sentimental melodies of Verdi had produced in both of them a mood of rare appreciation; they had sat in silence and made no attempt to express in talk the sense of wonderment. Much was recalled to them by these pieces of crumpled paper, and when Roland put away the drawer it seemed to Gerald that he was locking away a whole period of his life. And when they said good-night to each other on the stairs Gerald could not help wondering whether, in the evening that had just passed, their friendship had not reached the limit of its tether. Roland was beginning a new life in which he would have no part. As he heard his friend's door shut behind him he could not help feeling that never again would they reach that same point of intimacy.