The Derelict (Bottome, Century Magazine, 1917)/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
Emily's house was n't in the least like other London houses. It was half-way up Campden Hill, and had a little red door in the wall. If you opened the door, there was a garden, a real lawn, with velvety green turf and with trees at an agreeable distance from the windows. A bigger house in a row would have been considerably cheaper, but big houses in rows have an air of five meals a day, family prayers, and heavy balances in banks. Emily's house never reminded any one of an income or lent itself to the congregational use of prayer. You were quite safe as to meals,—the cook was French and excellent,—but they came upon you unawares, without the menace of a gong.
The house was full of flowers and light. There was very little furniture, and what there was, was unexpectedly comfortable. It would have been incredible if the house had not contained a good and beautiful woman. Strictly speaking, perhaps, Emily was not beautiful, but no one was ever strict in the appreciation of Emily; her goodness was undeniable. She was neither tall nor short, and it must be confessed once and for all that she was not slim. She paid eight guineas a pair for her stays, and was wise to do so. She had wonderfully fine hair, which managed never to appear brassy; her nose and her mouth were not good and never mattered.
But to whatever you attributed Emily's charm, it was there with all the force, and with none of the inconveniences, of an avalanche. Her radiance penetrated the house, which seemed like an advance-guard of Emily's; it hung about her clothes, which she bought with industry and inspiration once every year in Paris. They were the kind of clothes possible only to people who have command of a restrained taste and an extravagant expenditure.
Emily thought it a woman's duty to look as well as she could, and she did it thoroughly, as she did everything she thought was right. Human nature was her particular hobby; but it was noticeable that she generally preferred unhappy people, for whom much could be done, to happy people, who like to be left alone. The unhappy people who prefer to be left alone Emily had never had the misfortune to meet, or if she had, she had mercifully overlooked them. She had sufficient vitality to face the victims of an earthquake, but one could imagine her losing very quickly her interest in the earlier stages of the garden of Eden. When Emily was sympathetic, and she was almost always sympathetic, nothing could stop her, not even the object of her sympathy.
Falling in love had not stopped her; it had simply signaled to her as a mission the needs of less happy lovers. She would carry her personal happiness like a torch into dark places, and Geoffrey would carry his with her.
She took an enormous interest in Geoffrey's work; when he was n't carrying a torch she expected him to be a great artist. In the back of her mind (but Emily did not often visit the back of her mind) she felt that great artistic success and torches always came from very comfortable homes. She was a little hurt with Geoffrey for coming to her on the second evening of their engagement and saying that he wanted to be married at once. She felt that marriage had nothing to do with the first principles of their future life, and that he ought to have wanted to lay a triumph at her feet. The Salon prize was a triumph, but she felt, like Sir Thomas, that she would have preferred something more noticeable in London. Geoffrey told her that he had n't any principles and that he wanted to start living.
"I can't, you see," he explained, "live without you. I want you always, all the time, and now."
"I see, I see," Emily murmured, gazing with her benevolent eyes into the vista of a redeeming future. Geoffrey, speechless with satisfaction, watched her. It was wonderful to be going to marry a woman who "saw."
She was n't only all beauty; she was all wisdom, a kind of divine, omnipotent olive-branch spread out over angry floods of ordinary people to encourage them with the hope that one day the floods would subside and they would all cease to be ordinary. Geoffrey explained to her how she would help him with his family.
"You 'll put me right," he said with enthusiasm. "They 'll believe in me then, and if they believe in me, I think I can get on with them better. I tried foot-ball because I had a feeling that if I did well at footer I should understand more what they wanted me to be like at home. However, it did n't do any good. I might as well have read Shelley."
"Darling!" said Emily, with a warmth that involved a close embrace; but when this had finished, Emily did not go on with the discussion about marriage.
"I shall love making them believe in you," she said. "It's too stupid of them not to. They 're dear, wonderful people, but they 're not intelligent; they 're simply figures in the landscape. One can't imagine Amberley without them, but still less can one imagine Sir Thomas without Amberley. I suppose Amberley goes to Tom?"
"Mercifully," said Geoffrey. "I should hate to have a place. When will you marry me?"
Emily sighed.
"I think," she said, "we must wait a little. After all, I'm an only child; you will be in London, and we shall have such beautiful times together. I shall help you work this first critical year in London. I sha'n't be in your way; I shall stand by you and watch you succeed."
Geoffrey looked uneasy. He was n't quite sure that success followed in the wake of being watched, and he was quite sure it did n't follow in a year.
"And you 'll help me," Emily went on, "about my work, won't you? I have n't told you much about it yet,—we 've had so little time really to talk,—but I have a work. I try—I try to help people a little."
Geoffrey nodded. Of course she helped people. Her existence without effort must have simplified the lives of every one she knew. He told her this; Emily laughed at him. She had a distinct sense of humor when she remembered about it; but the intensity with which she brought it to mind sometimes took the edge off her fun.
"Oh, it's not me!" she exclaimed. "It's the things I have. I try to share—and now this new, this greatest thing, love! That's my idea of life—to use all that comes for others. If we all did it,—don't you see?—half the poverty and misery of the world would be healed. I want you to help me heal it."
Geoffrey looked vaguely puzzled.
"That sounds such a tall order, Emily," he said—"the whole world! And shall we ever get any time together?"
"We shall be always together," said Emily, firmly. "It seems to me the only way of being always together."
"Oh, then you can count me in," said Geoffrey, decisively. "But you 'll have to give me tips. I 've never healed anything yet. You ought to talk to Marcel Dupin,—he's my sculptor friend, the one I lived with in Paris,—but he would n't have agreed with you. He had quite the opposite idea; he thought you had to keep fit, and tow your line. He used always to say to me I did n't tow it enough. He wanted me to have experiences—all kinds of funny ones—and use 'em in my work. I believe he'd have been hanged, to learn how you feel about it, if he could have come back and had a go at it afterward. I 've never had theories. You 'll have to teach me a lot."
"What I should like most," said Emily, "is to find those who have been betrayed and lost and ruined by human love,—love gone wrong,—and lift them up again."
"Oh, don't!" said Geoffrey. "I mean, must you? People like that are such a confounded nuisance; and then, you know, when they 've got as far as that, it seems to me you may as well let 'em rip. I don't see how you can work them in afterward."
"It is that attitude," said Emily, gravely, "which makes it impossible. You must have faith, Geoff, Human nature has wonderful recuperative powers; the very force with which it goes wrong can be turned to set it right. I have seen it happen not once, but many times, with drunkards and the poor girls on the streets. They can be brought back and retrieved and made whole again; but only by two forces, faith and love."
Geoffrey bowed his head. He was very much touched and concerned. He was touched because he thought it was beautiful for Emily to feel in such a way toward the unfortunate, and he was concerned because he knew that getting mixed up with the unfortunate is very rarely safe. It is not even safe for the unfortunate. He would have seemed a brute if he said this, but he was n't sure that Emily understood that unfortunate circumstances do not always make unfortunate people, and that a certain type of person will make any circumstance, however redemptive, strikingly unfortunate. Mrs. Dering came into the room and relieved him from the necessity of stating this belief.
Geoffrey knew the Derings well, but he had never given much thought to either of them before. They were a pleasant, well-bred, middle-aged pair who seemed equally happy together or apart.
Mrs. Dering was n't in the least like Emily; she had no charm, and she kept remarkably still. She did not attempt to congratulate or embrace her future son-in-law; she simply gave him her hand, and remarked with a faintly amused, but kindly, smile:
"Fancy, you and Emily!"