Cynthia's Love Affairs/Chapter 1
No 1.—Henry Silvester
I HAD been lunching with my married sister, Alice; and, as usual, she had made me rather angry. At last, in order to clear up one of her misapprehensions about me, I said:
“My dear Alice, I know that I am unmarried, but I cannot see why on that account I am less a woman than you are. I fully believe and hold that all cats are feminine, all dogs masculine, and that cows in the road, if they stare at one, are ipso facto bulls. Could anything less than a woman do that? I take a fashion paper, look better at dinner than at breakfast, like chocolate, shy things with a wrist action, and ignore all questions of physiology. What more do you want? I utterly refuse to consider myself undeveloped, defective, microcephalous, or anything of the kind, and it's of no use to ask me to do it. I'm quite a real woman.”
Alice sighed. She and the vicar, her husband, both sigh a good deal.
“Ah, Cynthia, how you misunderstand me! I never intended to imply anything of the kind; I only meant that womanliness was made perfect by love—by marriage.”
I observed that you could have a very nice fire without burning the house down. This distressed her.
“I do wish,” she said, “that you would not speak of marriage as a—a disaster. Every affair of the heart ought to end in marriage.”
“You take,” I answered, “a very large size in generalisations. I suppose you mean that if any man and woman love each other, they ought to marry if they are free to marry. Sometimes they are not free; sometimes there's not enough money; sometimes the love's one-sided; very often it is temporary—the result of inexperience. Besides, no affair of the heart ought to end in marriage; it ought to go on after marriage. That's a quibble, of course. However, it doesn't matter; you're all wrong, because you've only had your one little engagement and marriage to judge by. I've never been married, but as for affairs of the heart”
“Well!” she said, a little eagerly. I put her off.
Yet for a woman of thirty-two, who has played her last card, and found the game go against her, there is a certain amount of consolation in reminiscences. I have had affairs of the heart—although it was not always my heart; my first reminiscence takes me back to my childhood.
*******
In order to make liquorice-water, to serve as a casual beverage, it is, I should say, above all things necessary that one should be very young. I was very young when I made it. The method is as follows. Take any bottle that is partially filled with medicine prescribed for someone else; empty out the medicine, and rinse the bottle once, hastily and perfunctorily. Procure for the sum of one penny from the village grocer or chemist a piece of black, hard, stick-liquorice. Take it home, and wrap it up securely in the daily paper that your uncle has not yet seen and is certain to want after luncheon. Place the parcel thus formed on the dining-room table—or on any polished table where dents show easily—and then smite it patiently for some time with the handle of the poker. When the liquorice is broken in small pieces, place it in the bottle, fill up with water, cork, and shake vehemently. The water will gradually assume the colour of a sepia drawing-copy. When this tint is secured, add as much brown sugar as you can take without any risk of its being missed. The mixture will then be ready and not at all nice to drink, but if you are very young, you can carry it with you when you go for long walks, and sip it occasionally by way of refreshment. If, owing to the previous career of the bottle, the mixture has a flavour of carbolic or rhubarb, too strong to be conquered or ignored, sell it to the uncle as a remedy for sore-throats at-a profit of three hundred per cent on the original outlay.
Whenever I was a visitor at the house of my bachelor uncle in the country, I used to amuse myself with this awful manufacture. I did so, partly because there were so many conveniences for it. The servants at my father's house did not like me at all; when I asked them for a disused medicine bottle, they either told me that there was not one or gave me a bottle without a cork. Of course, you can make a sort of substitute cork out of a wad of clean note-paper, but it is an untidy-looking mockery. Now at my uncle's house the servants were always too glad to get me medicine bottles or anything else that I wanted. Besides in the country I always went much longer walks than when I was living in London; on a long walk a child naturally wants to feel adventurous, quite new, and traveller-like; and it is much easier to do this if you are carrying supplies with you. On the strength of three mixed biscuits and a bottle of liquorice-water I have felt like a Polar Expedition. Lastly, I used to make this curious mixture at my uncle's house because there were no other children in the house, and—until I happened upon Henry Silvester—there was not much else to do. By the way, it was chiefly through the liquorice-water that I overcame Harry's very natural dislike to me.
I had paid many visits to my uncle before I ever met Harry at all. He had just gone to a private school and took his holidays at fixed intervals. I, on the other hand, generally took my holidays when the decease of one of my governess's near relations necessitated her temporary absence. As far as I remember, her near relations deceased freely, but at quite irregular intervals. It was some time before my holidays coincided with Harry's, but the time came at last. My governess's uncle (who had been more like a father to her than anything else) happened to pass away at the end of August. So she went off to one of those suburbs where one's governess's relations mostly leave their families unprovided for; and I, accompanied by a maid, went on a visit to my uncle. The Silvesters and my uncle were great friends, and consequently I saw a good deal of Harry.
I saw him, for the first time, in church One morning. He struck me as being singularly well-behaved for a boy. Just before the sermon he started up and walked out, with his handkerchief to his nose. I know now—which I did not know then—that his nose was not really bleeding. His dislike to me, which was not occasioned by any fault of mine, happened in this way. I must mention that Harry at that time had, exclusive of flannel things, three suits—a best suit, which he wore on Sundays and when he came down in the evening; a second-best suit; and a shockingly bad suit, which he wore whenever he got the chance. Now on those occasions when I arrived unexpectedly—as I often did—at the Silvesters' house, Harry was always wearing the shockingly bad suit; and he was always compelled to change it, in my honour, for the second-best suit. He hated the trouble, and, naturally, hated me for being the cause of it. I always dressed very well, and the contrast made the shockingly bad suit impossible.
However, one day Harry and I met in the chemist's shop. He was buying some rat-poison, and I asked him what he wanted it for. He said, rather mysteriously: “Oh—nothing in particular.” I bought my liquorice, and he asked me if I was going to eat it. I told him that I was not, and I described to him the manufacture of liquorice-water as we walked out of the shop and up the village street together. “That isn't a bad idea,” he said, reflectively, “I'll make some of that and take it with me when I go back next term, and I promise never to tell anyone how to make it.”
I had not asked or even desired any such promise. But I accepted it with gravity, and it certainly marked an advance in the intimacy between us.
“And look here, Cynthia,” he added, “I don't mind telling you now about that rat-poison. I was getting it for our gardener, and what he really wants it for is to poison rats.”
His motive for giving the explanation was quite chivalrous, but the explanation itself was so appallingly and maddeningly obvious that, from sheer regard for our self-respect, we had to change the subject at once.
“Don't let's go in yet, Harry,” I said. “If you go up to your house with me, your aunts will make you change your things, and that must be a bore.”
“It is a bore,” he said seriously. “I always thought you were rather stuck-up and liked chaps to wear their swaggerest clothes.”
“No, I don't, I should hate any boy who was particular about his clothes.”
“But you're wearing your swaggerest things yourself.”
“I'm not though. This isn't my best frock or anything like it.”
“Besides,” he added, with an air of impartiality, “it's more right for girls to care about such things, because some girls are pretty.”
“Do you think so?”
“I didn't use to, I do now,” he said with, emphasis. For three moments we walked in embarrassed silence, staring down at our toes.
Then at his suggestion we went down a lane to the left, to see if we could cross Polney Brook by the stepping-stones. There was also a bridge across the brook, but we felt that bridges were safe, easy, unromantic, and generally contemptible. When we reached the stepping-stones we found that some of them were two or three inches under water—there was a flood on at the time—and the tops of the others were wet and slippery.
“The only way to do it,” Harry observed, “would be to cross barefoot.”
“Then I don't think I will, if you don't mind very much,” I said, hesitatingly.
“You'd much better not,” said Harry. “But I'll have a shot at it myself, because I should like to say I did it. You just wait here.”
He took off his boots, stockings, and straw hat, and gave them into my charge; he crossed the brook, and then recrossed it back to me. He was very splashed, rather hot, and bright-eyed.
I thought that he was intrepid and looked quite a splendid boy. He took me to several other places. He knew of a cushat's nest, and we went to look at it. We never found it; perhaps the cushat had heard that we were coming.
In church on the following Sunday Harry sat immediately in front of me. I watched him as he came up the aisle. He looked thoughtful, dignified, and religious; and he was wearing his best suit. At the very commencement of the service I noticed that he held his prayer-book very much to the right instead of straight before him; another glance showed me why he had done it. On a slip of note-paper inside the book was written in a large round hand the following unpunctuated message:—
“I have made mine with double as much lickerice as you do and if you would like to taste it afterwards give a cough.”
The worst of an artificial cough in the hands—perhaps I should say, in the mouth—of a beginner is that it may come out with a hideous and unnatural loudness, when the cougher only intends it to be a mere whisper. My cough on this occasion surprised and horrified me. It seemed to ring through the church like the crack of a pistol. I felt that all the human eyes within a radius of twelve pews were staring the stare of pained surprise full at me, When I looked up I saw that Harry's back was shaking gently. But no sound came. He told me afterwards that he had learnt at school the secret of noiseless laughter; it consists in closing the nostrils firmly with one hand, and shutting the mouth. As Harry remarked, “You may blow up, but you simply can't laugh out loud.”
I saw a good deal of Harry during the next week. There were several cases of stuffed birds in his father's study, and Harry showed me two or three of the birds there which he himself had killed with his catapult. By this time I must have found great favour in his eyes, for he said to me one day, “Look here, Cynthia, I'm going out to-morrow with my catty, and you can come too and see me shoot. There isn't any other girl I'd take out when I'd got my catty with me.”
I remember that day well, and I remember the catapult—its double elastic, the scrap of dirty kid-glove where the shot was placed, and the forked wood that had been partially baked early in its career in order to make it tough and hard. I thought I was going to enjoy myself in a peculiarly exciting and thrilling way. Just at first I did so, but that was because Harry did not happen to hit anything. At last he took a shot at a robin, and hit it without killing it. The poor thing fell and fluttered. Now I had not imagined that it was going to be at all like that; the stuffed birds in the glass case had looked quite happy. Harry ran towards the bird, and I put my hands over my eyes. When he came back I was crying.
“It's all right, Cynnie,” he said, “I've killed it; it doesn't feel any more.”
The emotions are, unfortunately, not provided with an instantaneous break. I could never stop a fit of crying in less than half its own length. Harry looked at me with anxious, troubled eyes.
He produced one or two scraps of natural history, inspired by tact and a desire to console. The robin, I was given to understand, was a cruel, voracious, and spiteful bird. If it had been a wild beast, instead of a bird, it would have been wilder and beastlier than other wild beasts. It was because of its red breast that people made so much of it, and because it came into Christmas cards.
This did console me to some extent, but I was still crying a little.
Then Harry did a very heroic action.
He drew from his pocket a knife of his which contained many more implements than he could ever by any possible chance want to use. He opened the large blade, and, before I could stop him, he had cut his catapult to chips—his much-loved catapult that he had made himself, that caused him to be envied in his form at school, that constituted his chief treasure.
“There, Cynnie,” he said, “I've smashed it up and I won't go cattying any more, so you needn't keep on now—need you?”
I did not answer in words, but I acted on a sudden spontaneous and unmaidenly impulse; I kissed him.
I do not think he minded it much, but he was evidently not prepared for it, and it caused him a momentary fit of great shyness. He stared straight in front of him, and made an unnecessary remark about the weather.
One day Harry and I had gone up to the Lily Pond, which was a long walk. As usual, there were no lilies near the bank, and there was no boat to take us to the white buds in the centre of the pond. I made some remark, I suppose, on the irritating character of the situation.
“Look here,” said Harry, “would you like to have some of those lilies?”
“Of course I should.”
“Very well, then, you just run across the field down into the road, and wait for me there. I may be some little time.”
“All right,” I said obediently. I mostly acted under Harry's directions.
In about twenty minutes Harry came to me with a good bunch of water-lilies. “How did you get them?” I asked. Then I noticed his hair, which was much deranged and exceedingly damp. “Why, you must have been in the water!”
“Yes; I swam out for them.” His eyes were triumphant.
“Was it hard?”
“Oh, no; of course you have to know how to swim. I don't say that I'd have done it for just anybody.”
“How did you dry yourself?”
“Partly, I didn't, and partly I happened to have two handkerchiefs. I forgot to take the old one out of my pocket when I put a fresh one in this morning. They came in pretty handy.”
I believe it was this which finally decided me to give Harry a small silver pig to wear as an ornament on his watch-chain. It seemed to impress him; indeed, I should have been very disappointed it it had not impressed him; for it cost three-and-six, and although I borrowed half-a-crown from my uncle the other shilling was my own actual valuable money.
I was to leave for home at the end of the week. On the day before I went I called at the Silvesters' to say good-bye; they had all been very kind to me. Harry was dignified almost to frigidity, but as he shook hands with me he pressed upon me a scrap of paper and a look of warning. As I walked home I read the paper; it bade me be in the home-close at eight o'clock that night, and take all possible precautions against discovery. I do not suppose that discovery would have mattered in the least, but every boy has a sort of longing to feel criminal, I suppose.
So at eight o'clock I went through the orchard into the home-close, and met Harry there,
“Well?” I said.
“I say, it's awfully good of you to have come.”
“I didn't mind—I rather wanted to.”
“Look here, Cynnie, I wish you weren't going away.”
“I wish I wasn't, too.”
“Why?” There was a pause, and I did not answer. “Do you remember that day when I smashed up my catty, and you”
“Y—yes.”
He looked at me very hard, and I lifted my eyes to look at him once. Then we took each other's meaning, and he kissed me.
We said good-bye at last. But before that happened I knew that I was very pretty indeed, because he had told me so. And we were to be married—as soon as we were grown up. And he had mentioned that there was no possible pitch of destitution which could cause him to part from the silver pig that he wore on his watch-chain. And I had learnt from experience that it hurts you rather to cut a small piece of your hair off with a pocket-knife.
So I went back through the orchard, feeling very happy and very sorry, with my boots very wet, owing to the long grass.
*******
The thing faded out, of course, with time, as such things do. My uncle left that neighbourhood, and I saw no more of Harry Silvester. I learnt long afterwards that he had gone into the tea-trade, married, and was living at Clapham; and I still fail to understand how the Harry Silvester that I knew could in his manhood do such things. However, we most of us outlive our romantic side—sooner or later.
Sometimes I almost wish that this affair had not faded out, but it left room for further experiences.