THE GIRL WHO WENT BACK
By Barry Pain
There was once a girl whose name was Rose, and she was rather pretty and rather clever. She was not very pretty or very clever, but everybody said she was very sweet. She had great advantages. Her papa was a wise man. Her mamma—well, her mamma had the best intentions and was troubled with ambition. But they both loved Rose.
The ambitious mamma said to the wise papa: “Rose is now seventeen years old. She has faults which must be eradicated. She has good qualities which must be enhanced. The last year of her education must be peculiarly strenuous.”
“As how?” said the wise papa.
“Well, I do not quite like the way she speaks. Her voice is pleasant in quality, and you can generally understand her; but she slurs her words and she is just a little weak on the letter ‘r’. She must be made to pay far more attention to her personal appearance. Her waist is not as small as it might be; and her complexion—but these are not things which you will require to understand. She must learn German thoroughly. A smattering is no use. She must not be allowed to have her own way about the violin. Arithmetic is a very weak point with her. Are you attending?”
The wise papa opened his eyes, and said that he had heard every word, and that she was quite certain to be right, and that he would leave it to her.
Rose had no ambition and no wisdom. She liked play. She liked real music. She liked dancing. But as she was quite good, she did what she was told. Many tutors came about her, and she worked early and late. Her mother confided to her those secrets which should add to her beauty.
The elocution master was quite pleased with her. She learned to ar-tic-u-late her words and to speak dis-tinct-ly. She pronounced every “r” as if it had been a coffee-mill. It was a treat to listen to her.
Her proficiency in foreign languages was really remarkable.
Her music teacher said that she had improved enormously in technique and in taste. Her playing on the violin was a mixture of gymnastics and conjuring tricks. She learned to speak slightingly of melody. She understood advanced orchestration, and pronounced Tschaikowsky correctly. She occasionally annoyed people by giving Chopin the Russian pronunciation.
Her waist became smaller. You might have thought that her long hours of study would have made her pale, but there was always a delicate blush on either cheek-bone, except when she had just washed her face. Her hair became a work of art. It was marvellously arranged.
The college of domestic-training found Rose its most apt pupil. She could cook. She could housekeep. Her arithmetic was unfailing. She could detect at once the mistake in the tradesman’s account, and she could get the right note of asperity into her voice in speaking to him about it. “Is it not rather an extraordinary coincidence that these frequent errors are always in your own favour?” This was obviously the kind of woman that a sensible man would be glad to marry. She was a highly developed helpmeet.
The ambitious mamma saw that Rose had improved out of all knowledge. She became proud of her. She now waited for Rose to make an exceptionally brilliant match. She continued to wait, for something had changed in Rose. People said she was very accomplished and very beautiful, but nobody said she was rather sweet. The boys who had played with her and danced with her did not seem to require her any more; they shivered with fear in her splendid presence.
We should all improve ourselves, and try to do our best—this is the accepted view and there is no need to dispute it—but concentration on one’s own self, even with the highest possible motive, is poison. And Rose had drunk of that poison.
And then the ambitious mamma died; and there were some people who thought that she was better dead. But Rose was overcome with grief. It was not until six weeks later that, standing before the cheval-glass, she noticed how very well she looked in black. She worked harder than ever at the task of self-improvement, until her health broke down. Then two things happened simultaneously. She was ordered into the country, and her papa went to take up an important post in Paris.
Rose lived now in a cottage up on a hill with a refined and elderly lady-companion. Beyond the garden of the cottage was common-land. Here the bracken grew waist-high, and you might see as many foxgloves in ten minutes as you would find in London in ten years. Sheep roamed among the bracken. The difference between the face of the lady-companion and the face of one of those sheep was hardly noticeable; they also had similarities in disposition.
When the lady-companion slept—and she was a perfectly grand sleeper—Rose wandered all the afternoon about the common. She was not improving herself any longer, because that was held to be bad for her health. She worried because she felt that she had lost the love of people. The longer she lived in the country, the more she wanted to be loved. She even put tentative questions to the lady-companion, to find out how it was that she was not loved. But these tentative questions were of no use, because the lady-companion maintained that Rose was loved very much indeed, being under the impression that this was the kind of thing that she was paid to say. She was a conscientious woman.
And then one night Rose had a dream. In her dream she heard a loud knocking at the cottage door, and she herself went to see who was there.
There stood a very ugly old pedlar with a leer on his face, and a pack on his back. He swung his pack round and took off the piece of American cloth from the top of it.
“And what can I sell you to-day, my pretty lady?” he asked.
“Nothing, thank you,” said Rose.
“Don’t say that,” said the pedlar. “You have dealt with me before, you know.”
“Never,” said Rose. “You are mistaken.”
“Yes, you did,” said the ugly old man stoutly. “You bought a packet of Amoricide, and those that deal with me once must deal with me again.”
“What is Amoricide?” asked Rose, who began to have a feeling that after all she did recognise the pedlar’s face.
“Well, well,” said the pedlar, “that’s telling. I don’t mind owning that there is a lot of the Air of Superiority in it, and there are other things. You have no complaint to make about it, have you? It does its work all right. I guarantee that it will exterminate love absolutely. It is death to love. Have you not found it so?”
“I have found,” said Rose, “that it has destroyed the love of others for me, but not the love of me for others.”
The old man chuckled. “That’s it. That’s right. That’s why the people who deal with me once must deal with me again. You must have one more little packet.”
“This time I want to know what is in it.”
The pedlar began to look uneasy. “Don’t ask too many questions. We call it Taedium Vitae. It is a splendid thing.”
Rose was highly educated, and she told him that Taedium Vitae meant life-weariness, and that she would like to know how it acted.
“You go down the hill,” said the old man absent-mindedly, as if he were speaking to himself, “and then, of course, you come to the pine wood.”
Rose nodded. “Yes, I know it. Through the wood is the short cut if you are going to the station. The stile is rather awkward to climb over.”
“You can manage it all right. You have done it before. And you know the dark pool under the trees?”
Rose nodded. This time she did not speak.
“That’s another short cut,” said the old man with a chuckle. “It’s soon over. The sensation of drowning is said to be quite pleasant. Then there is no more trouble—no more worrying because you have lost love, and because life has lost its savour.”
Rose was rather frightened. “When do I pay you?” she asked in a husky whisper.
“That’s all right,” said the old man ingratiatingly. “You don’t pay me till afterwards. We give credit.”
“Afterwards?”
“After the pool. Come, you will take this packet.”
“I will not,” said Rose with sudden determination, and shut the door in the old man’s ugly face. He kept on knocking.
Then she knew that it was only the knocking of the maid who brought her one cup of China tea, one piece of thin bread-and-butter, one large can of hot water, and the news that it was a fine morning.
After that there was a change in Rose. Some of the change was very subtle. Some of it was quite obvious. Even a lady-companion with the mind of a sheep can detect a change in personal appearance. She did detect it, and she spoke about it with discretion.
Rose answered: “Yes, two inches bigger. I don’t wear them at all now. Suppose I shall have to when I go back to town. And I find I simply cannot stand the other stuff. If I’ve got brown, that is because God’s sun meant me to be brown.”
“The merest touch would——”
Rose was good-humoured, but obstinate.
And in time she went back to town. She had lost the habit of thinking about herself or of asking why people did not love her. She gave them the music that they wanted, and not the music that she knew they ought to have wanted. She became very simple and friendly. The tone of her voice softened, and the “r” sound no longer buzzed properly. She had gone back. And when she was not thinking about it at all, people began to love her.
One man particularly. And this was fortunate for Rose.
Papa, who was a director of Kekshose & Cie—they make such big motor-cars that nobody ever dares to let them do as much as they will, and hardly anybody can afford to buy them—came back for the wedding.
I was just going to say, when that foolish story interrupted me, that Cardinal Newman wrote a book called “Apologia pro vita sua.” I mention it not as a discovery but as a reminder. I believe that almost every imaginative author writes an Apologia pro vita sua, though under a different title and in a different guise. I could name one author (and so, of course, could you) who has written several such apologiæ. If I have never done it myself, it is because I am not of the heroic type which undertakes lost causes. But I am not quite sure that I am not writing an Apologia pro horto meo. There is a serpent in every Eden, and its name is Pride. If my half-acre of cat-walk can claim to be a remote descendant of Eden, the serpent exists there too. I point out the good things in the garden. I cover up the defects, or—which is even worse—I make elaborate explanations to prove that they are not defects at all. I cannot expect anybody to like my garden as much as I do, but I want them to respect it. Jokes about it always seem to me to be in bad taste. A very good amateur gardener once came into my garden and mentioned just a few of the things that he noticed. He did it in the kindliest way. He taught me quite a good deal, and I hope he will never know how near I came to beating him on the head with the business end of a large rake.
I think that what I have said about omission is true. Everybody who loves art loves omission. I should like, for instance, if I could, to write in the fewest words that lucidity requires. It has given me pleasure to omit certain things from my garden.
But all the same—and I may as well confess it—fewer things would be omitted from my garden if it were larger and in the heart of the country, and if I had somebody to help me, and if by chance I happened to know something about it.