For Love Alone (38 page)

“I didn't want to be,” said Teresa.

“I only realized then,” said Miss Haviland, with a pitiful smile, “how many friends he had, how much he is loved, and how we are going to miss him.”

He had treated Teresa as an outsider, but had been proud to introduce the pretty blue-dressed graduate, Elaine, to his mother. So much the worse; she would overcome all rivals too. She buckled down to the immense task.

T
hey new in the family that she had been taking walks with a man and that he had now gone away, but as she said nothing about her affairs, friendly estrangement began between her and her relatives. At home, things were bad, they never spoke to each other. Only Kitty spoke to them all. Teresa had found out that Kitty was still in love with a married man, Bayliss, whom she had only met once, on a picnic. He had never written to her but Kitty wrote often now to her cousin Sylvia, who knew the man. Teresa found this out from Lance. Cruel insinuations flew about when Lance was angry. Lance was more comic with her, Teresa, because he knew that her man was a university graduate and Lance, still struggling in his night classes, respected the degree.

The year had nearly gone and it was summer again, December, before she had the first letter from Jonathan Crow, who had sailed on a day in August of that year. He had written to her soon after his arrival, combining a few pages written on board ship, and a few pages written after he was housed in London.

I went with Eugene Burt, a pal I met on the boat, to a theatre in Kingsway. We waited a long time in the rain in Sardinia Street for the show to come out and the crowd waited patiently, with monotonous, habitual patience, reading papers, eating oranges, for about an hour. Meanwhile, in the mud, thick to the ankles, in the middle of Sardinia Street, was a man dancing with his little daughter and two sons, acrobats doing tricks in the filth to amuse the crowd. They slipped and fell in the mud and took advantage of it to raise a laugh. No one saw anything wrong in it that I could see. They are poor; the poorer still, without a coat, are entitled to amuse them. The bobby didn't interfere. Some few threw pennies, the others were indifferent. Burt and I were so sickened we nearly went away, but we, wet like the rest, waited for dry entertainment within at one-and-twopence. We threw them a couple of sixpences, the man stopped and came up to us to say: “Thank you, gentlemen, God bless you”, not “God bless me!” You have no idea of the poverty here. Wait till you come and you'll see. Imagine, there are regular beggars who show their sores in public, and the waiters and the servants are beggars too, they all expect tips, because they are underpaid. You hear “Thank you, sir!” Sir is used everywhere by everyone to everyone. He sirs me but I'm damned if I'll sir the next, I'll teach them a little Australian. Yesterday, in a street off the Strand, a beggar with his ulcerated legs on view, crippled and begging everywhere, the cap in hand, the pestering and the disgust allowed by the boys in blue. I don't know how I'll stick out my two years in this misery of hunger. The English have been revolting since Wat Tyler but the People of Property are still in the saddle. I am in no mood to take it, that's the rub. I had nowhere to go, and no money, having used up all my allowance. The first night, I went to a doss house of some sort that Burt knew of, the next day to L.S.E. to register (he's in his second year, by the way, and showed me the ropes) and then tucker in a teashop, worse than anything we have in the way of food, and out to look for rooms. All cold, dingy. None found; so another sleepless night in the doss house, and the following day we ran to earth an old
landlady of Burt's, a yellow-faced old hag called Bagshawe, and with her a pothouse servant, they run the house. Burt and I now share one room on the first floor—back—only two floors. It's in Marchmont Street, No. 92. Write to me there. Keep me cheered up. One taste of life here and I know I'm going to be lonesome. Some of the others said they would write, Clara, Cooper, Elaine, but I don't know if they will. Gone and forgotten is my epitaph. Why not?

She showed this letter only to Miss Haviland, and put it away in a box of scented wood she had bought. She answered the letter at once but had no reply to hers till another three months were out; that was in late March 1934, but after that she began to receive one letter from Jonathan by every mail, and sometimes, when he felt melancholy, two. She sometimes showed them to Miss Haviland, but generally did not and no one else ever saw them, though the family stood each one against the clock, saying slyly:

“There's your letter, Terry”, but preserved a silence about the affair otherwise. They expected her to wait for him to come back. They did not know he might not come back and only to the stranger in the Domain had she told her plans for sailing. His next letter said:

I will be pretty strapped the whole year. Burt and I sit here and shiver and live on bread and cheese; my work goes slowly, but I have another year and a half and it looks as if I might extend it to another year. I haven't used any of my introductions yet. One is to Buxton, one to Marcus; I might get a political job. It might be the solution. So it looks as if there'll be plenty of time for you to come over here.

She tried to study at night. She got her friends to give her their free library tickets and had books piled on the floor in her room. She spent her free time in the office composing letters to Jonathan. She worked over them, studying early and late, to beat Jonathan's university education with her own subtlety, though he was so many
years in advance of her in learning. She had come to think of her wild dreams as impure and kept them apart from Jonathan, who was to her holy, pure, admirable, and whom she had begun to love with a mystic love into which no fleshly thought entered. Once or twice when the moonlight lay across the earth she wondered if they might marry and she imagined some wedding night in which she and Jonathan, standing in a splendid garden of heavy-limbed southern flowers, white and odorous, would kiss each other, and he would pull her backwards by her long hair into his arms. But in this embrace in the moon, apparently, they stood forever. She told herself that if she ever allowed one impure thought to creep into her mind now, she would never have Jonathan; it would be her punishment, and a just one. “Love has nothing to do with all that.” Her former fancies fell away, withered, things hideous and unspeakable began to take their place, since the room could not be left empty, but Jonathan was far apart from all of it, a knight of poverty battling on a frozen island of the north.

Each letter of theirs was a monologue, because of the three months' interval, and this gave their sentiments a false beauty and elevation.

Here, he said, it is as if I was in a kind of hospital or prison. Outside in the world is the richness of human life and experience, here I am tunnelling through libraries; I get out of it, a prison holiday, from time to time, to dig ditches in the country, my country lectures, where there are some nice fellows but the girls particularly are more interested in modern problems than the men, and who try to talk things over. But often enough my life is so meaningless and vapid that I don't even want consolation. To prove it—it is often Gene who reads your letters, not I, and I even give them to Bentham, the artist, to read. They take an interest in them and speak of your ambition—did you know it?—but say you have no courage. You must have the courage of your
convictions! That is the impression you make. You know for yourself that I am no judge either of originality, power, or style. However, I appreciate them, at least by proxy, and with this you must be satisfied, for I can do no better. But then you know me and I assume, therefore, that you are satisfied with me as I am.

A week later after such a hard letter, he would make haste to please her again:

I am longing for you to come over, he would write now, it will be company for me. I can never adapt myself to their infinite social strata, all signalized by different accents. A man with my accent is an outsider, I could not possibly get a job at the L.S.E.—all I can pick up are country lectures. That's all that goes here, pukka sahib or rank outsider—gentleman or bounder—and it's accent, accent, all the way. I have begun to see the web of their social system. It is built up on precedent and the “by accident” or “muddling through”, which is true enough, is only the outside. Inside, they're tough; the muddle is not so muddled that an outsider can stumble inside. Stumbling down from accident to accident! How they love to believe that—I wonder why? You wouldn't think a whole nation would be proud of its confusion. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser, curiouser and curiouser, but I haven't got them by the tail yet. One of these days, I'll write the great solution! I suppose I could go in for parvenu-ship like another, by electioneering to secretary and mayhap to Parliament—in one of those shires where Magdalen and Balliol are despised.

But is it worth it? I don't give a darn for their whole game! So you see what I am feeling. Dull stuff. My landlady, who looks like an old horse, is pretty good to me and gives us both a kind of rough mothering. She brought
us up a coverlet and a hot-water-bag during the last cold spell. I envy you your hot weather, open air, good wages and independence. I compare myself with you and ask, What am I doing at my books at this age? Yours is the better part. Write me to keep my pecker up.

Your affectionate,
J
OHNNY
.

At the end of two years, Jonathan had made up his mind not to return to his native land nor to stay in England but to go to America, where greater academic chances were, perhaps he could get a job in Columbia. This damped Teresa's spirits, for she could only go where she could get a job without troublesome formalities, that is, within the British Empire; and she knew that following her schedule she might only reach England just before Jonathan left, or indeed, after he left. This was a chance she must take.

Jonathan had now begun to talk about her coming, and somehow the question had cropped up of what their relations would be. Jonathan said:

I can make no decision about it, it depends upon you entirely; I have no will. If you want to come over to me, make the decision yourself. I am willing to take the chance. As you know, I don't know what love is, but I don't say that it is utterly impossible and if you are willing to try me out, so be it. In any case, I shall be glad to see you.

Teresa thus was not deluded, but admired Jonathan for his plainness, and felt that she was behaving as behaves a gallant and a brave man who passes through the ordeals of hope deferred, patience, and painful longing, to win a wife. She might win him, it was up to her. She accepted his conditions without any surprise, was grateful for them, and would have been indignant if anyone
had commented upon her willing sacrifices. This was her affair and Jonathan's; it might be the prelude to a marriage.

In the beginning of the third year, came a letter from Jonathan which greatly startled her. A paragraph wedged in half-way down the third page of his letter said:

Now that it is settled that you are coming over, I have been thinking things over seriously. This is mere speculation, but I want to ask you a question: Will you, rather, would you, live with me when you arrive? Would you be able to do this? What is your feeling about me in this respect?

This surprised and disabled Teresa so much that she was unable to reply for some time, thinking all the time that it made no difference, it would be a year yet before she could go; and then she wrote, shamefaced: “You must think of yourself and your position. If it got out what would they think at the university? This is for you to say.” She was punished for this when, three months later, she received the answer:

About my question to you: it was out of order and I am sorry I made it, if it upset you at all. Let's put it down to scientific curiosity, a reaction test, and forget all about it, except on the dusty records of Time's laboratory, to be poetical. I don't want to spoil our friendship. But if I'm too Boeotian you'd better give me up. I'm always putting my foot in it and hurting somebody when I only pose a problem. We aren't really willing to see where we stand, we don't want our naked desires dragged out in the callow light of day, do we? So, as I said, let's forget about this whole episode.

In his usual style, a week later, he wrote a pleasant letter:
Let's forget the living together, or rather, let's put it another way. I want you to go walking with me during the summer next year, I think Wales; it would have been Germany, but Germany is now
ausgeschlossen!
Do you care for that? Will you trust me that far? Or we can go down into Cornwall. I think we ought to make some sort of trial, so let's make it Wales and the future comes after Wales, if we have a future.

She became more and more understanding. These letters read from end to end were very like Jonathan, the moody and inexplicable, with his changes of voice and tone, his hopes of love and hatred of love. There was nothing to explain, this was Jonathan himself. She had swallowed everything, disappointment, rivals, girls in the country, casual “pals”, an American girl he had a crush on for a time, coldness, unadvised letters, but she felt she had won; and a little later she received a letter in which he said he must love her.

I feel I love you and you feel you love me, but time will prove, in any case I am anxious to see you. What does that mean? I won't swear to what I mean. I like to get your letters, I am looking forward to the day you come and if that is love, take it for what it is worth, take me, if you can persuade me. You see how I put myself into your hands. Perhaps you will find me changed, but in one thing I have not changed, I have not been happy and if you can alter that, you are welcome. London is drizzling again, the cold is aching in my bones, this is the life I lead. Man is a sun-machine. I have spent three years of misery, I ought to say three lives of misery. All kinds of promises were pie-crust. I'm an unhappy man but you don't mind that. Well, my dear Teresa, it's in the hands of the gods, if you love me, if I can love you, I will and I feel that I do. This is all I can offer! Life has nothing for me, so as well this as that, you understand. You see the kind of man
I turned out to be. But come to London, come to me, and let us see how things turn out. With love,