A Prayer for my Son

Chapter 1. Snow-Shine For Arrival-3

'Yes, Proust.'

'Oh! Proust,' she said, laughing. 'I'm afraid I haven't read him for ages. In smart circles in Geneva he is more old-fashioned than Anatole France, and that is more old-fashioned than'--she laughed and looked about her--'I can't think of anything more old-fashioned,' she said.

'Well,' Michael said, 'when you have met the Parkins once or twice you have read certain parts of Chez Swann again.'

Rose fancied that Colonel Fawcus did not altogether enjoy this little literary interruption; although he had not moved, he yet seemed restless. He looked at them benevolently as a kind guardian watches children hunting for sea-shells on the shore. Then he said to her that he did not get half the time he would have liked to keep up with modern literature.

He was, of course, although she did not know it, an author himself. He told her very modestly of the two little books that he had published, one on Ancient Monuments in the Cockermouth district and the second on Old Cumberland Churches. He had been for many years, he remarked, president of the Cumberland-Westmorland Antiquarian Society. He had been forced to give it up because of the accumulation of business. If he ever had time again he planned a work on Anglo-Saxon life in Cumberland, which would, he hoped, be of some general interest. He had accumulated much material, but alas! try as he would, each day seemed busier than the last.

'And my age,' he cried to her joyfully. 'How old do you think I am?'

Although she knew that he was more, she suggested, 'Sixty.'

'Sixty,' he cried. 'Sixty-eight--sixty-nine in a month or two.' He was so plainly delighted with his health and vigour that she was delighted too.

He was more of a scholar than she had imagined. She had not known that he had all this antiquarian knowledge. Why had Humphrey never told her? She could now faintly remember Humphrey once saying something like, 'Oh! Dad's all right if you flatter him on his hobbies.' This, perhaps, was one of them. She saw that he took a child's delight in his own little affairs; so many men did and that was why so many women felt maternal. She looked up at him. Their eyes met. They both smiled. She felt for a moment as though she were his mother.

During the meal, which was plain and good--a rich thick soup, fried sole, roast beef and apple tart--Janet Fawcus spoke very little.

Once she said to Michael Brighouse: 'How did John behave to-day?'

'Very well,' said Michael. 'He is getting on with his skating like anything.'

'You mustn't flatter him too much.'

'On the contrary,' said Michael, 'I'm sometimes afraid I don't encourage him enough. He is very easily discouraged, you know.'

She said nothing to that, but there was an implication in the grave authority with which she considered the food on her plate, that she did not wish instructions from Michael about John, that she knew quite enough without his telling. Later in the meal she said:

'Father, Mr. Cautley rang up.'

'Oh! did he?' said Colonel Fawcus, suddenly changed from gay to grave. 'What did he want?'

'Oh! the usual thing,' said Janet. 'He wanted to come and have a talk with you about the pylons.'

'Oh! did he?' said Colonel Fawcus. 'Well, he can wait. He can take his stuffy self-importance somewhere else. You'd imagine that I'd nothing to do but fuss about little men who do not know their proper place. Cautley, indeed! I should have thought I'd snubbed that man enough to last him a lifetime.'

'How like Geneva!' Rose thought. 'How like everywhere in the world! How like every portrayal of daily life in every novel! Always there is somebody in the way of somebody else. Always everywhere there is someone who just prevents life from being perfect.' Her sympathies were all alive for poor Colonel Fawcus. She could just figure to herself the kind of self-important, interfering little man who would drive a great, generous, impulsive creature like Humphrey's father to frenzies of irritation. There were so many of them in Geneva.

After dinner she had a little conversation with Michael Brighouse. This contained one or two odd things which she was to remember afterwards. Janet disappeared about some household business. Colonel Fawcus said:

'Will you excuse me for half an hour? I have a little business to finish and then I am at your service.'

So Michael and Rose were left alone in the lively, whispering drawing-room, and sat by the side of the fire and had a little talk.

She looked at him and decided that she not only liked him, but trusted him too.

'Tell me about John,' she said.

'No,' he answered quickly, 'not yet. I've thought it all out before you came. I want you to see him for two or three days yourself first and make your own conclusions. I don't want to say anything about him until you see for yourself.'

She nodded her head. 'That's right. I think that's wise.'

'I only want to say one thing,' he went on promptly. 'There is so much more going on here than you know, and if at any time later you want a friend, I offer myself.'

'It's very nice of you,' she said, and also rapidly, 'You may detest me. We may fight over John. You cannot promise friendship so quickly as that.'

'Oh yes, I can,' he answered eagerly, 'in this case, at least. However much I might dislike you, I would be with you in this affair for John's sake.'

'You speak,' she said, 'as though there were going to be an inevitable taking of sides.'

'There will be much more than that,' he answered.

'You want to frighten me.'

'No,' he said, 'of course not. I hope you will have a lovely time. I know it will be an interesting one.'

She looked at him. Her eyes dwelt on his face. 'I am sure I can trust you,' she said. 'That is one thing I know about people at once. Tell me yourself. Do you like it here?'

She was aware that they were both speaking urgently, almost furtively, as though they knew there would be an interruption, almost as though they were sure that someone was listening. She looked about the room.

'This is a funny place. You can almost believe there are people in the room you cannot see. But tell me. I want to know. Do you like it here?'

'Like it?' He laughed. 'That's a mild word. There's more than liking or disliking here, as you will soon find. But I am glad to be here for two reasons: one John, the other the country.'

'The country?' She gave a little shiver. 'Isn't it terribly cold and bleak and rough? Doesn't it rain all the time? But perhaps you are North-country by birth. That would make a difference.'

'No,' he said. 'As a matter of fact, I'm not. I was born in Dorset, near Corfe Castle. I have never been north before I came here, and it isn't the North that I thought I loved so much, but this immediate piece of country.'

'Why?' she asked. 'Of course I know the lakes are beautiful, but aren't they desolate in the winter, and tripper-haunted in the summer, and isn't the Wordsworth-Coleridge inheritance dreadfully dreary?'

'That has nothing to do with it,' he said. 'I can't explain to you now. Besides, you may not feel it, and if you don't, nothing that I say will be of the slightest use. If you do, you won't need me to explain it to you. It's lovely. It's perfect. Every inch of ground is exciting. For instance, there is snow everywhere to-night; well, it never lies for long except on the mountain-tops and in a day or two, perhaps to-morrow, the fields will slowly reveal themselves again, and then every detail of them will be important. You will go, for instance, beyond the pond where we were skating to-day, to the road that leads up to St. John's in the Vale, and every tree and every field, every hedgerow, will have some shape, or some colour, or some effect under the changing sky that will make it exciting. I had a friend at Oxford who was great at Anglo-Saxon. He would have some piece of manuscript that he would study, a square of parchment, and every letter and every scrap of colour would mean beauty and history and human interest. So I feel about every inch of country here.'

'I suppose,' Rose said, 'that whenever anyone loves the country they feel that?'

'Perhaps so,' he answered. 'I don't know. I have never felt it about anywhere before. Listen, here's a little poem.

"Close-fitting house of velvet, foxglove bell,

My heart within your walls might live at ease

And never heed Time's knell;

And you, like rose, upturned by infinite seas,

To bleach here on the foam-remembering fell,

Could teach my spirit by obscure degrees

Of gossamer tension between heaven and hell;

But heart and spirit are roving, hiveless bees."'

'How beautiful!' she said. 'Who's that by?'

'A friend of mine copied it out and sent it to me from Oxford. He said it was by somebody called Bowes-Lyon, a new poet. But it has exactly the quality that this place has for me. "Close-fitting house of velvet"--that is what this is, as you will find, and "foam-remembering fell"--that is what the country is.' And he added, his voice almost sinking to a whisper: 'There is a battle here. Our own battle, of which the poet of course knows nothing, scarcely anybody knows.'

'Battle? What battle?' she asked.

But before he could answer her there was the strong, friendly voice at the door:

'Finished sooner than I expected. Now, Rose, let us have a cosy talk.'