Part 6 (1/2)

”Yes, we do quack,” conceded Dodo.

”Or spending five hundred pounds on a ball----”

”My dear, that wouldn't do much in the way of a ball,” began Dodo.

”Well, a thousand pounds then, if you wish to argue about irrelevancies.

All the Christmas-trees and Easter decorations and school-feasts don't cost that----”

”Grantie dear, how marvellously cheap,” said Dodo enthusiastically.

”What a good manager you must be, and it all becomes more appalling every minute. You know that you don't boss it in the darkness because of the good you do, and the pleasure you give, but because it gives you the impression of being busy, and makes so little trouble and expense. Now if you ran races, things in sacks, at the school-feasts yourself, and p.r.i.c.ked your own delicious fingers with the holly for the Christmas decorations, and watered your flowers yourself for the flower-show, there might be something in it. But you don't do anything of that kind: you only give away very cheap prizes at the school-feast, and make your gardeners cut the holly, and take the prizes yourself at the flower-show. You like bossing it, darling: that's what's the matter, and it's that which has changed you. You don't compete, except at the flower-show, and then it's your gardeners who compete for you. You ought to run races at the school-feast, if you want to be considered a serious person.”

”I couldn't run,” said Miss Grantham. ”If I ran, I should die. That would make a tragic chord at the school-feast, instead of a cheerful note.”

”It would do nothing of the sort,” said Dodo. ”The school-children would remember the particular school-feast when you died with wonderful excitement and pleasure. It would be stored for ever in their grateful memories. 'That was the year,' they would say, 'when Miss Grantham fell dead in the sack-race, and such a lovely funeral.' They wouldn't think it the least tragic, bless them.”

To Miss Grantham's detached and philosophic mind this conclusion, when she reflected on it, seemed extremely sound. She decided to pursue that track no further, for it appeared to lead nowhere, and proceeded violently upwards in a sort of moral lift.

”And then I happen to like culture and knowledge,” she said. ”I just happen to, in the same way as you like princes. I know you won't agree about the possible advantage of educating yourself. Last night at dinner I heard you say that you had probably forgotten how to read, as you hadn't read anything for so long. That made me shudder. You seem to think that, because I live in the country, I vegetate. You call me mossy, and I am nothing of the kind. I read for three hours a day, wet or fine. I do wood-carving, I play the piano.”

Dodo gave a long sigh.

”I know; it sounds lovely,” she said. ”So does suicide when you have to get up early in the morning. Sometimes Jack and I think we should like to live in a cottage by a river with a bee-hive and a general servant, and nine rows of beans like Mr. Yeats, and lead the simple life. But moral scruples preserve us from it, just as they preserve one from suicide. When I feel that I want to live in the country, I know it is time to take a tonic or go to Ascot. I don't believe for a moment that I was meant to be a 'primrose by the river's brim.' If you go in for being a primrose by the river's brim, you so soon become 'nothing more to him'

or to anybody else. If Nature had intended me to be a vegetable, she would have made me more like a cabbage than I am.”

Miss Grantham was hardly ever roused by personal criticism, partly because she hardly ever was submitted to it, and partly because it seemed to her to matter so singularly little what anyone else thought of her. But when Dodo began again, ”You're a delicious cow,” she interrupted firmly and decisively, dropped any semblance of defence and attacked.

”And now it's my turn,” she said, ”and don't interrupt me, Dodo, by any smart repartees, because they don't impress me in the least. I may be a cabbage--though as a matter of fact, I am not--but I would far sooner be a cabbage than a flea.”

”A flea?” asked the bewildered Dodo.

”Yes, dear, I said 'flea.' All the people who live the sort of life which you have deliberately adopted as your own, are precisely like fleas. You hop about with dreadful springs, and take little bites of other people, and call that life. If you hear of some marvellous new invention, you ask the inventor to lunch and suck a little of his blood.

Then at dinner you are told that everybody is talking about some new book, so you buy a copy next morning, cut the first fifty pages, leave it about in a prominent place, and ask the author to tea. Meanwhile you forget all about the inventor. Then a new portrait-painter appears, or a new conjuror at the music-halls or a new dancer, and off you hop again and have another bite. For some obscure reason you think that that is life, whereas it is only being a flea. I don't in the least mind your being a flea, you may be precisely what you choose. But what I do object to is your daring to disapprove of my way of life, about which you know nothing whatever. You called me narrow----”

”Never!” said Dodo.

”In effect, you called me narrow. Didn't you?” asked Grantie calmly.

”Yes.”

”Very well then. When you talk about narrowness, you seem unaware that there is no greater narrowness possible than to adopt that c.o.c.ksure att.i.tude. You think you are competent to judge modes of living about which you are quite ignorant. What do you know about me?”

Dodo surged out of her chair.

”Grantie dear, we don't understand each other one bit,” she said, kissing her. ”How sad it all is!”

Grantie remained unmoved and calm.

”I understand you perfectly,” she said. ”Though I am quite aware you don't understand me.”

Dodo suddenly ceased to attend, and held up a silencing finger.