Oh, I dont think its my doing, said Connie.
It must be! Cant be anybody elses. And it seems to me you dont get enough out of it.
How?
Look at the way you are shut up here. I said to Clifford: If that child rebels one day youll have yourself to thank!
But Clifford never denies me anything, said Connie.
Look here, my dear child and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand on Connies arm. A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. Believe me! And she took another sip of brandy, which maybe was her form of repentance.
But I do live my life, dont I?
Not in my idea! Clifford should bring you to London, and let you go about. His sort of friends are all right for him, but what are they for you? If I were you I should think it wasnt good enough. Youll let your youth slip by, and youll spend your old age, and your middle age too, repenting it.
Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the brandy.
But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didnt feel really smart, it wasnt interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under it all; like the soil of Labrador, which his gay little flowers on its surface, and a foot down is frozen.
Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack Strangeways with his wife Olive. The talk was much more desultory than when only the cronies were there, and everybody was a bit bored, for the weather was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to dance to.
Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in bottles, and women would be immunized.
Jolly good thing too! she said. Then a woman can live her own life. Strangeways wanted children, and she didnt.
Howd you like to be immunized? Winterslow asked her, with an ugly smile.
I hope I am; naturally, she said. Anyhow the futures going to have more sense, and a woman neednt be dragged down by her functions.
Perhaps shell float off into space altogether, said Dukes.
I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities, said Clifford. All the love-business for example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies in bottles.
No! cried Olive. That might leave all the more room for fun.
I suppose, said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, if the love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia, perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everybody.
The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a cheerful weekend! said Jack. Sounds all right, but where should we be by Wednesday?
So long as you can forget your body you are happy, said Lady Bennerley. And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it.
Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether, said Winterslow. Its quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the physical side of it.
Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke, said Connie.
It wont happen, said Dukes. Our old show will come flop; our civilization is going to fall. Its going down the bottomless pit, down the chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the phallus!
Oh do! Do be impossible, General! cried Olive.
I believe our civilization is going to collapse, said Aunt Eva.
And what will come after it? asked Clifford.
I havent the faintest idea, but something, I suppose, said the elderly lady.
Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunized women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be? said Clifford.
Oh, dont bother! lets get on with today, said Olive. Only hurry up with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off.
There might even be real men, in the next phase, said Tommy. Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldnt that be a change, an enormous change from us? were not men, and the women arent women. Were only cerebrating make-shifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles.
Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up, said Olive.
Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having, said Winterslow.
Spirits! said Jack, drinking his whisky and soda.
Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body! said Dukes.
But itll come, in time, when weve shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then well get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket.
Something echoed inside Connie: Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body! She didnt at all know what it meant, but it comforted her, as meaningless things may do.
Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of it!
Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her lower body, she couldnt escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself. Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and which she saw with such grim painfulness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands.
She needed help, and she knew it: so she wrote a little cri du coeur[49] to her sister, Hilda. Im not well lately, and I dont know whats the matter with me.
Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two-seater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of grass, where the two great wild beech-trees stood, on the flat in front of the house.
Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.
But Connie! she cried. Whatever is the matter?
Nothing! said Connie, rather shamefacedly; but she knew how she had suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both sisters had the same rather golden, glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique. But now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that stuck out of her jumper.
But youre ill, child! said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two years older than Connie.
But youre ill, child! said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two years older than Connie.
No, not ill. Perhaps Im bored, said Connie a little pathetically.
The light of battle glowed in Hildas face; she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.
This wretched place! she said softly, looking at poor, old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed.
She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wifes family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.
He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didnt care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if hed been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same.
Connies looking awfully unwell, she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the tone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.
Shes a little thinner, he said.
Havent you done anything about it?
Do you think it necessary? he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together.
Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connies; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable than if she had said things.
Ill take her to a doctor, said Hilda at length. Can you suggest a good one round here?
Im afraid I cant.
Then Ill take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust.