第17章 CHAPTER IV(2)
He does not believe we are laying bare the secrets of our souls: he takes it we are just pretending. "Once upon a time there lived a girl named Angelina who loved a party by the name of Edwin." He imagines--he, the general reader--when we tell him all the wonderful thoughts that were inside Angelina, that it was we who put them there. He does not know, he will not try to understand, that Angelina is in reality more real than is Miss Jones, who rides up every morning in the 'bus with him, and has a pretty knack of rendering conversation about the weather novel and suggestive. As a boy I won some popularity among my schoolmates as a teller of stories. One afternoon, to a small collection with whom I was homing across Regent's Park, I told the story of a beautiful Princess. But she was not the ordinary Princess. She would not behave as a Princess should. I could not help it. The others heard only my voice, but I was listening to the wind. She thought she loved the Prince--until he had wounded the Dragon unto death and had carried her away into the wood. Then, while the Prince lay sleeping, she heard the Dragon calling to her in its pain, and crept back to where it lay bleeding, and put her arms about its scaly neck and kissed it; and that healed it. I was hoping myself that at this point it would turn into a prince itself, but it didn't; it just remained a dragon--so the wind said. Yet the Princess loved it: it wasn't half a bad dragon, when you knew it. I could not tell them what became of the Prince: the wind didn't seem to care a hang about the Prince.
Myself, I liked the story, but Hocker, who was a Fifth Form boy, voicing our little public, said it was rot, so far, and that I had got to hurry up and finish things rightly.
"But that is all," I told them.
"No, it isn't," said Hocker. "She's got to marry the Prince in the end. He'll have to kill the Dragon again; and mind he does it properly this time. Whoever heard of a Princess leaving a Prince for a Dragon!"
"But she wasn't the ordinary sort of Princess," I argued.
"Then she's got to be," criticised Hocker. "Don't you give yourself so many airs. You make her marry the Prince, and be slippy about it.
I've got to catch the four-fifteen from Chalk Farm station."
"But she didn't," I persisted obstinately. "She married the Dragon and lived happy ever afterwards."
Hocker adopted sterner measures. He seized my arm and twisted it behind me.
"She married who?" demanded Hocker: grammar was not Hocker's strong point.
"The Dragon," I growled.
"She married who?" repeated Hocker.
"The Dragon," I whined.
"She married who?" for the third time urged Hocker.
Hocker was strong, and the tears were forcing themselves into my eyes in spite of me. So the Princess in return for healing the Dragon made it promise to reform. It went back with her to the Prince, and made itself generally useful to both of them for the rest of the tour. And the Prince took the Princess home with him and married her; and the Dragon died and was buried. The others liked the story better, but I hated it; and the wind sighed and died away.
The little crowd becomes the reading public, and Hocker grows into an editor; he twists my arm in other ways. Some are brave, so the crowd kicks them and scurries off to catch the four-fifteen. But most of us, I fear, are slaves to Hocker. Then, after awhile, the wind grows sulky and will not tell us stories any more, and we have to make them up out of our own heads. Perhaps it is just as well. What were doors and windows made for but to keep out the wind.
He is a dangerous fellow, this wandering Wind; he leads me astray. I was talking about our architect.
He made a bad start, so far as Robina was concerned, by coming in at the back-door. Robina, in a big apron, was washing up. He apologised for having blundered into the kitchen, and offered to go out again and work round to the front. Robina replied, with unnecessary severity as I thought, that an architect, if anyone, might have known the difference between the right side of a house and the wrong; but presumed that youth and inexperience could always be pleaded as excuse for stupidity. I cannot myself see why Robina should have been so much annoyed. Labour, as Robina had been explaining to Veronica only a few hours before, exalts a woman. In olden days, ladies--the highest in the land--were proud, not ashamed, of their ability to perform domestic duties. This, later on, I pointed out to Robina. Her answer was that in olden days you didn't have chits of boys going about, calling themselves architects, and opening back-doors without knocking; or if they did knock, knocking so that nobody on earth could hear them.
Robina wiped her hands on the towel behind the door, and brought him into the front-room, where she announced him, coldly, as "The young man from the architect's office." He explained--but quite modestly--that he was not exactly Messrs. Spreight's young man, but an architect himself, a junior member of the firm. To make it clear he produced his card, which was that of Mr. Archibald T. Bute, F.R.I.B.A. Practically speaking, all this was unnecessary. Through the open door I had, of course, heard every word; and old Spreight had told me of his intention to send me one of his most promising assistants, who would be able to devote himself entirely to my work.
I put matters right by introducing him formally to Robina. They bowed to one another rather stiffly. Robina said that if he would excuse her she would return to her work; and he answered "Charmed," and also that he didn't mean it. As I have tried to get it into Robina's head, the young fellow was confused. He had meant--it was self-evident--that he was charmed at being introduced to her, not at her desire to return to the kitchen. But Robina appears to have taken a dislike to him.
I gave him a cigar, and we started for the house. It lies just a mile from this cottage, the other side of the wood. One excellent trait in him I soon discovered--he is intelligent without knowing everything.