Maurice Baring
Overlooked
The expedition, after some coffee at a wayside hotel, came to an end and they drove home in two motor cars.
Once more he was thrown together with Mrs. Roseleigh, and once more the soul of each of them seemed to be fitted with an invisible aerial between which soundless messages, which needed neither visible channel nor hidden wire, passed uninterruptedly.
Anikin came back from that expedition a different man. All that night he did not sleep. He kept on repeating to himself: "It was a mistake. I do not love her. I can never love her. It was an illusion: the spell and intoxication of a moment." And then before his eyes the picture of Mrs. Roseleigh stood out in startling detail, her melancholy, laughing, mocking eyes, her quick nervous laugh, her swift flashes of intuition. How she understood the shade of the shadow of what he meant!
And that mocking face seemed to say to him: "You have made a mistake and you know it. You were spellbound for a moment by a face. It is a ravishing face, but the soul behind it is not your soul. You do not understand one another. You never will understand one another. There is an unpassable gulf between you. Do not make the mistake of sacrificing your happiness and hers as well to any silly and hollow phrases of honour. Do not follow the code of convention, follow the voice of your heart, your instincts that cannot go wrong. Tell her before it is too late. And she, she does not love you. She never will love you. She was spellbound, too, for the moment. But you have only to look at her now to see that the spell is broken and it will never come back, at least you will never bring it back. She is English, English to the core, although she looks like the illustration to some strange fairy-tale, and you are a Slav. You cannot do without Russian comfort, the comfort of the mind, and she cannot do without English solidity. She will marry a squire or, perhaps, who knows, a man of business; but someone solid and rooted to the English soil and nested in the English conventions. What can you give her? Not even talent. Not even the disorder and excitement of a Bohemian life; only a restless voyage on the surface of life, and a thousand social and intellectual problems, only the capacity of understanding all that does not interest her."
That is what the conjured-up face of Mrs. Roseleigh seemed to say to him.
It was not, he said to himself, that he was in love or that he ever would be in love with Mrs. Roseleigh. It was only that she had, by her quick sympathy, revealed his own feelings to himself. She had by her presence and her conversation given him the true perspective of things and let him see them in their true light, and in that perspective and in that light he saw clearly that he had made a mistake. He had mistaken a moment of intoxication for the authentic voice of passion. He had pursued a shadow. He had tried to bring to life a statue, and he had failed.
Then he thought that he was perhaps after all mistaken, that the next morning he would find that everything was as it had been before; but he did not sleep, and in the clear light of morning he realized quite clearly that he did not love Kathleen.
What was he to do? He was engaged to be married. Break it off? Tell her at once? It sounded so easy. It was in reality – it would be to him at any rate – so intensely difficult. He hated sharp situations.
He felt that his action had been irrevocable: that there was no way out of it. The chain around him was as thin as a spider's web. But would he have the necessary determination to make the effort of will to snap it? Nothing would be easier. She would probably understand. She would perhaps help him, and yet he felt he would never be able to make the slight gesture which would be enough to free him for ever from that delicate web of gossamer.
5
When Anikin got up after his restless and sleepless night he walked out into the park. The visitors were drinking the waters in the Pavilion and taking monotonous walks between each glass. Asham was sitting in a chair under the trees. His servant was reading out the Times to him. Anikin smiled rather bitterly to himself as he reflected how many little dramas, comedies and tragedies might be played in the immediate neighbourhood of that man without his being aware even of the smallest hint or suggestion of them. He sat down beside him. The servant left off reading and withdrew.
"Don't let me interrupt you," said Anikin, but after a few moments he left Asham. He found he was unable to talk and went back to the hotel, where he drank his coffee and for a time he sat looking at the newspapers in the reading room of the Casino. Then he went back to the park. One thought possessed him, and one only. How was he to do it? Should he say it, or write? And what should he say or write? He caught sight of Arkright who was in the park by himself. He strolled up to him and they talked of yesterday's expedition. Arkright said there were some lakes further off than those they had visited, which were still more worth seeing. They were thinking of going there next week – perhaps Anikin would come too.
"I'm afraid not," said Anikin. "My plans are changed. I may have to go away."
"To Russia?" asked Arkright.
"No, to Africa, perhaps," said Anikin.
"It must be delightful," said Arkright, "to be like that, to be able to come and go when one wants to, just as one feels inclined, to start at a moment's notice for Rome or Moscow and to leave the day after one has arrived if one wishes to – to have no obligations, no ties, and to be at home everywhere all over Europe."
Arkright thought of his rather bare flat in Artillery Mansions, the years of toil before a newspaper, let alone a publisher, would look at any of his manuscripts, and then the painful, slow journey up the stairs of recognition and the meagre substantial rewards that his so-called reputation, his "place" in contemporary literature, had brought him; he thought of all the places he had not seen and which he would give worlds to see – Rome, Venice, Russia, the East, Spain, Seville; he thought of what all that would mean to him, of the unbounded wealth which was there waiting for him like ore in quarries in which he would never be allowed to dig; he reflected that he had worked for ten years before ever being able to go abroad at all, and that his furthest and fullest adventure had been a fortnight spent one Easter at a fireless Pension in Florence. Whereas here was this rich and idle Russian who, if he pleased, could roam throughout Europe from one end to the other, who could take an apartment in Rome or a palace in Venice, for whom all the immense spaces of Russia were too small, and who could talk of suddenly going to Africa, as he, Arkright, could scarcely talk of going to Brighton.
"Life is very complicated sometimes," said Anikin. "Just when one thinks things are settled and simple and easy, and that one has turned over a new leaf of life, like a new clean sheet of blotting-paper, one suddenly sees it is not a clean sheet; blots from the old pages come oozing through – one can't get rid of the old sheets and the old blots. All one's life is written in indelible ink – that strong violet ink which nothing rubs out and which runs in the wet but never fades. The past is like a creditor who is always turning up with some old bill that one has forgotten. Perhaps the bill was paid, or one thought it was paid, but it wasn't paid – wasn't fully paid, and there the interest has gone on accumulating for years. And so, just as one thinks one is free, one finds oneself more caught than ever and obliged to cancel all one's new speculations because of the old debts, the old ties. That is what you call the wages of sin, I think. It isn't always necessarily what you would call a sin, but is the wages of the past and that is just as bad, just as strong at any rate. They have to be paid in full, those wages, one day or other, sooner or later."
Arkright had not been an observer of human nature and a careful student of minute psychological shades and impressions for twenty years for nothing. He had had his eyes wide open during the last weeks, and Mrs. Knolles had furnished him with the preliminary and fundamental data of her niece's case. He felt quite certain that something had taken place between Anikin and Kathleen. He felt the peculiar, the unmistakeable relation. And now that the Russian had served him up this neat discourse on the past he knew full well that he was not being told the truth. Anikin was suddenly going away. A week ago he had been perfectly happy and obviously in an intimate relation to Miss Farrel. Now he was suddenly leaving, possibly to Africa. What had happened? What was the cause of this sudden change of plan? He wanted to get out of whatever situation he found himself bound by. But he also wanted to find for others, at any rate, and possibly for himself as well, some excuse for getting out of it. And here the fundamental cunning and ingenious subtlety of his race was helping him. He was concocting a romance which might have been true, but which was, as a matter of fact, untrue. He was adding "the little more." He was inventing a former entanglement as an obstacle to his present engagements which he wanted to cancel.
Arkright knew that there had been a former entanglement in Anikin's life, but what Anikin did not know was that Arkright also knew that this entanglement was over.
"It is very awkward," said Arkright, "when the past and the present conflict."
"Yes," said Anikin, "and very awkward when one is between two duties."
I think I have got him there, thought Arkright. "A French writer," he said aloud, "has said, 'de deux devoirs, il faut choisir le plus désagréable; that in chosing the disagreeable course you were likely to be right."
Anikin remained pensive.
"What I find still more complicated," he said, "is when there is a right reason for doing a thing, but one can't use it because the right reason is not the real reason; there is another one as well."
"For doing a duty," said Arkright. "Is that what you mean?"
"There are circumstances," said Anikin, "in which one could point to duty as a motive, but in which the duty happens to be the same as one's inclinations, and if one took a certain course it would not be because of the duty but because of the inclinations. So one can't any more talk or think of duty."
"Then," said Arkright, a little impatiently, "we can cancel the word duty altogether. It is simply a case of choosing between duty and inclination."
"No," said Anikin, "it is sometimes a case of choosing between a pleasure which is not contrary to duty (et qui pourrait même avoir l'excuse du devoir)" he lapsed into French, which was his habit when he found it difficult to express himself in English, "and an obligation which is contrary both to duty and inclination."
"What is the difference between an obligation and a duty?" asked Arkright. He wished to pin the elusive Slav down to something definite.
"Isn't there in life often a conflict between them?" asked Anikin. "In practical life, I mean. You know Tennyson's lines:
"His honour rooted in dishonour stood
And faith unfaithful made him falsely true."
"Now I understand," thought Arkright, "he is going to pretend that he is in the position of Lancelot to Elaine, and plead a prior loyalty to a Guinevere that no longer counts."
"I think," he said, "in that case one cannot help remaining 'falsely true.'" That is, he thought, what he wants me to say.
"One cannot, that is to say, disregard the past," said Anikin.
"No, one can't," said Arkright, as if he had entirely accepted the Russian's complicated fiction.
He wanted, at the same time, to give him a hint that he was not quite so easily deceived as all that.
"Isn't it a curious thought," he said, "how often people invoke the engagements of a past which they have comfortably disregarded up to that moment when they no longer wish to face an obligation in the present, like a man who in order to avoid meeting a new debt suddenly points to an old debt as something sacred, which up till that moment he had completely disregarded, and indeed, forgotten?"
Anikin laughed.
"Why are you laughing?" asked Arkright.
"I am laughing at your intuition," said Anikin. "You novelists are terrible people."
"He knows I have seen through him," thought Arkright, "and he doesn't mind. He wanted me to see through him the whole time. He wants me to know that he knows I know, and he doesn't mind. I think that all this elaborate romance was perhaps only meant for me. He will choose some simpler means of breaking off his engagement with Miss Farrel than by pleading a past obligation. He is far subtler and deeper than I thought, subtler and deeper in his simplicity. I should not be surprised if he were to give her no explanation whatsoever."
Arkright was in a sense right. What Anikin had said to Arkright was meant for him and not for Miss Farrel. It was not a rehearsal of a possible explanation for her, but it was the testing of a possible justification of himself to himself. He had not thought out what he was going to say before he began to talk to Arkright. He had begun with fact and had involuntarily embroidered the fact with fiction. It was Wahrheit und Dichtung and the Dichtung had got the better of the Wahrheit. His passion for make-belief and self-analysis had carried him away, and he had said things which might easily have been true and had hinted at difficulties which might have been his, but which, in reality, were purely imaginary. When he saw that Arkright had divined the truth, he laughed at the novelist's acuteness, and had let him see frankly that he realized he had been found out and that he did not mind.
It was cynical, if you called that cynicism. Anikin would not have called it something else: the absence of cement, which a Russian writer had said was the cardinal feature of the Russian character. He did not mean to say or do anything to Kathleen that could possibly seem slighting. He was far too gentle and far too easy-going, far too weak, if you will, to dream of doing anything of the kind. With her, infinite delicacy would be needed. He did not know whether he could break off his engagement at all, so great was his horror of ruptures, of cutting Gordian-knots. This knot, in any case, could not be cut. It must be patiently unravelled if it was to be untied at all.
"I think," said Arkright, "that all these cases are simple to reason about, but difficult to act on." Anikin was once more amazed at the novelist's perception. He laughed again, the same puzzling, quizzical Slav laugh.
"You Russians," said Arkright, "find all these complicated questions of conflicting duties, divided conscience and clashing obligations, much easier than we do."
"Why?" asked Anikin.
"Because you have a simple directness in dealing with subtle questions of this kind which is so complete and so transparent that it strikes us Westerners as being sometimes almost cynical."
"Cynical?" said Anikin. "I assure you I was not being cynical."
He said this smiling so naturally and frankly that for a moment Arkright was puzzled. And Anikin had been quite honest in saying this. He could not have felt less cynical about the whole matter; at the same time he had not been able to help taking momentary enjoyment in Arkright's acute diagnosis of the case when it was put to him, and at his swift deciphering of the hieroglyphics and his skilful diagnosis, and he had not been able to help conveying the impression that he was taking a light-hearted view of the matter, when, in reality, he was perplexed and distressed beyond measure; for he still had no idea of what he was to do, and the threads of gossamer seemed to bind him more tightly than ever.
6
Anikin strolled away from Arkright, and as he walked towards the Pavilion he met Mrs. Roseleigh. She saw at a glance that he had a confidence to unload, and she determined to take the situation in hand, to say what she wanted to say to him before he would have time to say anything to her. After he had heard what she had to say he would no longer want to make any more confidences, and if he did, she would know how to deal with them. They strolled along the Galeries till they reached a shady seat where they sat down.
"You are out early," he said, "I particularly wanted – "
"I particularly wanted to see you this morning," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about Lancelot Stukely. You know his story?"
"Some of it," said Anikin.
"He is going away."
"Because of Donna Laura?"
"Oh, it's not that."
"I thought he was devoted to her."
"He likes her. He thinks she's a very good sort. So she is, but she's a lot of other things too."
"He doesn't know that?"
"No, he doesn't know that."
"You know how he wanted to marry Kathleen Farrel?" she said, after a moment's pause.
"Yes," said Anikin, "I heard a little about it."
"It was impossible before."
"Because of money?"
"Yes, but now it is possible. He's been left money," she explained. "He's quite well off, he could marry at once."
"But if he doesn't want to?"
"He does want to, that is just it."
"Then why not? Because Miss Farrel does not like him?"
"Kathleen does like him really; at least she would like him really – only – "
"There has been a misunderstanding," said Mrs. Roseleigh. She put an anxious note into her voice, slightly lowering it, and pressing down as it were the soft pedal of sympathy and confidential intimacy.
"They have both misunderstood, you see; and one misunderstanding has reacted on the other. Perhaps you don't know the whole story?"
"Do tell it me," he said. Once more he had the sensation of coasting or free-wheeling down a pleasant hill of perfect companionship.
"Many years ago," said Mrs. Roseleigh, "she was engaged to Lancelot Stukely. She wouldn't marry him because she thought she couldn't leave her father. She couldn't have left him then. He depended on her for everything. But he died, and Lancelot, who was away, didn't come back and didn't write. He didn't dare, poor man! It was very silly of him. He thought he was too poor to offer her to share his poverty, but she wouldn't have minded. Anyhow he waited and time passed, and then the other day his uncle died and left him money, and he came back at once, and came here at once, to see her, not to see Donna Laura. That was just an accident, Donna Laura being here, but when he came here he thought Kathleen no longer cared, so he decided to go away without saying anything.
"Kathleen had been longing for him to come back, had been expecting him to come back for years. She had been waiting for years. She was not normal from excitement, and then she had a shock and disappointment. She was not, you see, herself. She was susceptible to all influences. She was magnetic for the moment, ready for an electric disturbance; she was like a watch that is taken near a dynamo on board ship, it makes it go wrong. And now she realizes that she is going wrong and that she won't go right till she is demagnetized."
"Ah!" said Anikin, "she realizes."
"You see," said Mrs. Roseleigh gently, "it wasn't anyone's fault. It just happened."
"And how will she be demagnetized?" asked Anikin.
"Ah, that is just it," said Mrs. Roseleigh. "We must all try and help her. We must all try to show her that we want to help. To show her that we understand."
Anikin wondered whether Mrs. Roseleigh was speaking on a full knowledge of the case, or whether she knew something and had guessed the rest.
"I suppose," he said, "you have always known what has happened to Miss Farrel?"
"I know everything that has happened to Kathleen," she said. "You see, I have known her for years. She's my best friend. And now I can judge just as well from what she doesn't say, as from what she says. She always tells me enough for it not to be necessary to tell me any more. If it was necessary, if I had any doubt, I could, and should always ask."
"Then you think," said Anikin, "that she will marry Stukely?"
"In time, yes; but not at once."
Anikin remembered Stukely's conduct and was puzzled.
"I am sure," he said, "that since he has been here he has made no effort."
"Of course he didn't," she said, "He saw that it was useless. He knew at once."
"Is he that kind of man, that knows at once?"
"Yes, he's that kind of man. He saw directly; directly he saw her, and he didn't say a word. He just settled to go."
Anikin felt this was difficult to believe; all the more difficult because he wanted to believe it. Was Mrs. Roseleigh making it easy, too easy?
"But he's going back to Africa," he said.
"How do you know?" she asked.
"He told Mr. Asham, and he told me."
"He will go to London first. Kathleen will not stay here much longer either. I am going soon to London, too, and I shall see Lancelot Stukely there before he goes away, and do my best. And if you see him – "
"Before he goes?"
"Before he goes," she went on, "if you see him, perhaps you could help too, not by saying anything, of course, but sometimes one can help – "
"I have a dread," said Anikin, "of some explanations."
"That is just what she doesn't want – explanations, neither he nor she," said Mrs. Roseleigh. "Kathleen wants us to understand without explanations. She is praying we may understand without her having to explain to us, or without our having to explain to her. She wants to be spared all that. She has already been through such a lot. She is ashamed at appearing so contradictory. She knows I understand, but she doubts whether any one else ever could, and she does not know where to turn, nor what to do."
"And when you go to London," he asked, "will you make it all right?"
"Oh yes," she said.
"Are you quite sure you can make it all right? I mean with Stukely, of course," he said.
"Of course," said Mrs. Roseleigh, but she knew perfectly well that he really meant all right with Kathleen.
"And you think he will marry her, and that she will marry him?" he asked one last time.
"I am quite sure of it," she said, "not at once, of course, but in time. We must give them time."
"Very well," he said. He did not feel quite sure that it was all right.
Mrs. Roseleigh divined his uncertainty and his doubts.
"You see," she said, "what happened was very complicated. She knows that ever since Lancelot arrived, she was never really herself – "
"She knows?" he asked.
"She only wants to get back to her normal self."
"Well," he said, "I believe you know best. I will do what you tell me. I was thinking of going to London myself," he added. "Do you think that would be a good plan? I might see Stukely. I might even travel with him."
"That," said Mrs. Roseleigh, "would be an excellent plan."
Mrs. Roseleigh's explanation, the explanation she had just served out to Anikin, was, as far as she was concerned, a curious blend of fact and fiction; of honesty and disingenuousness. She was convinced that both Kathleen and Anikin had made a mistake, and that the sooner the mistake was rectified the better for both of them. She thought if it was rectified, there was every chance of Stukely marrying Kathleen, but she had no reason to suppose that her explanation of his conduct was the true one. She thought Stukely had forgotten all about Kathleen, but there was no reason that he should not be brought back into the old groove. A little management would do it. He would have to marry now. He would want to marry; and it would be the natural, normal thing for him to marry Kathleen, if he could be persuaded that she had never cared for anyone else; and Mrs. Roseleigh felt quite ready to undertake the explanation. She was quite disinterested with regard to Kathleen and quite disinterested towards Stukely. Was she quite disinterested towards Anikin?
She would not have admitted to her dearest friend, not even to herself, that she was not; but as a matter of fact she had consciously or unconsciously annexed Anikin. He was made to be charmed by her. She was not in the least in love with him, and she did not think he was in love with her; she was not a dynamo deranging a watch; she was a magnet attracting a piece of steel; but she had not done it on purpose. She had done it because she couldn't help it. Her conscience was quite clear, because she was convinced she was helping Kathleen, Stukely and Anikin out of a difficult and an impossible situation; but at the same time (and this is what she would not have admitted) she was pleasing herself.
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival first of Kathleen herself, then of Arkright.
Kathleen had in her hands the copy of a weekly review.
After mutual salutations had passed, Kathleen and Arkright sat down near Mrs. Roseleigh and Anikin.
"Aunt Elsie," said Kathleen to Arkright, "asked me to give you back this. She is not coming down yet, she is very busy." She handed Arkright the review.
"Ah!" said Arkright. "Did the article on Nietzsche interest her?"
"Very much, I think," said Kathleen, "but I liked the story best. The story about the brass ring."
"A sentimental story, wasn't it?" said Arkright.
"What was it about?" asked Anikin.
"Mr. Arkright will tell it you better than I can," said Kathleen.
"I am afraid I don't remember it well enough," said Arkright.
He remembered the story sufficiently well, although being of no literary importance, it had small interest for him; but he saw that Miss Farrel had some reason for wanting it told, and for telling it herself, so he pressed her to indicate the subject.
"Well," she said, "it's about a man who had been all sorts of things: a soldier, a king, and a savant, and who wants to go into a monastery, and says he had done with all that the world can give, and as he says this to the abbot, a brass ring, which he wears round his neck, falls on to the floor of the cell. The ring had been given him by a queen whom he had loved, a long time ago, at a distance and without telling her or anyone, and who had been dead for years. The abbot tells him to throw it away and he can't. He gives up the idea of entering the monastery and goes away to wander through the world. I think he was right not to throw away the ring, don't you?" she said.
"Do you think one ought never to throw away the brass ring?" said Anikin, with the incomparable Slav facility for "catching on," who instantly adopted the phrase as a symbol of the past.
"Never," said Kathleen.
"Whatever it entails?" Anikin asked.
"Whatever it entails," she answered.
"Have you never thrown away your brass ring?" asked Anikin, smiling.
"I haven't got one to throw away," she said.
"Then I will send you one from London, I am going there in a day or two," he said.
"Mrs. Roseleigh was right," he said to himself, "no explanations are necessary."
Mrs. Roseleigh looked at him with approval. Kathleen Farrel seemed relieved too, as though a weight too heavy for her to bear had been lifted from her, as though after having forced herself to keep awake in an alien world and an unfamiliar sunlight, she was now allowed to go back once more to the region of dreamless limbo.
"Yes,", she said, "please send me one from London," as if there were nothing surprising or unexpected about his departure.
In truth she was relieved. The episode at Bellevue was as far away from her now as the dreams and adventure of her childhood. She felt no regret. She asked for no explanation. Anikin's words gave her no pang; nothing but a joyless relief; but it was with the slightest tinge of melancholy that she realized that she must be different from other people, and she would not have had things otherwise.
As Arkright looked at her dark hair, her haunting eyes and her listless face, he thought of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood; and wondered whether a Fairy Prince would one day awaken her to life. He did not know her full story; he did not know that she was a mortal who had trespassed in Fairyland and was now paying the penalty.
The enchanted thickets were closing round her, and the forest was taking its revenge on the intruder who had once rashly dared to violate its secrecy.
He did not know that Kathleen Farrel had in more senses than one been overlooked.
