Part 50 (1/2)

”You see, I didn't get enough exercise before. Lived too close to the works. In fact, a silly existence. I saw it all plain enough as soon as I got back from South Africa.... Exercise! What you want is for your skin to act at least once every day. Don't you think so?” He seemed to be appealing to her for moral support in some revolutionary theory.

”Well--I'm sure I don't know.”

Julian continued--

”If you ask me, I believe there are some people who never perspire from one year's end to another. Never! How can they expect to be well?

How can they expect even to be clean? The pores, you know. I've been reading a lot about it. Well, I walk up here from Knype full speed every day. Everybody ought to do it. Then I have a bath.”

”Oh! Is there a bathroom?”

”No, there isn't,” he answered curtly. Then in a tone of apology: ”But I manage. You see, I'm going to save. I was spending too much down there--furnished rooms. Here I took two rooms--this one and a kitchen--unfurnished; very much cheaper, of course. I've just fixed them up temporarily. Little by little they'll be improved. The woman upstairs comes in for half an hour in the morning and just cleans up when I'm gone.”

”And does your cooking?”

”Not much!” said Julian bravely. ”I do that myself. In the first place, I want very little cooking. Cooking's not natural. And what bit I do want--well, I have my own ideas about it, I've got a little pamphlet about rational eating and cooking. You might read it.

Everybody ought to read it.”

”I suppose all that sort of thing's very interesting,” Rachel remarked at large, with politeness.

”It is,” Julian said emphatically.

Neither of them felt the necessity of defining what was meant by ”all that sort of thing.” The phrase had been used with intention and was perfectly understood.

”But if you want to know what I really came up here for,” Julian resumed, ”I'll show you.”

”Where?”

”Outside.” And he repeated, ”I'll show you.”

III

She followed him as, bareheaded, he hurried out of the room into the street.

”Shan't you take cold without anything on your head in this wind?” she suggested mildly.

He would have snapped off the entire head of any other person who had ventured to make the suggestion. But he treated Rachel more gently because he happened to think that she was the only truly sensible and kind woman he had ever met in his life.

”No fear!” he muttered.

At the front gate he stopped and looked back at his bay-window.

”Now--curtains!” he said. ”I won't have curtains. Blinds, at night, yes, if you like. But curtains! I never could see any use in curtains.

Fallals! Keep the light out! Dust-traps!”

Rachel gazed at him. Despite his beard, he appeared to her as a big schoolboy, blundering about in the world, a sort of leviathan puppy in earnest. She liked him, on account of an occasional wistful expression in his eyes, and because she had been kind to him during his fearful visit to Bycars. She even admired him, for his cruel honesty and force. At the same time, he excited her compa.s.sion to an acute degree.

As she gazed at him the tears were ready to start from her eyes. What she had seen, and what she had heard of the new existence which he was organizing for himself made her feel sick with pity. But mingled with her pity was a sharp disdain. The idea of Julian talking about cleanliness, dust-traps, and rationality gave her a desire to laugh and cry at once. All the stolid and yet wary conservatism of her character revolted against meals at odd hours, brown bread, apples, orange-sucking, action of the skin, male cooking, camp-beds, the frowsiness of casual charwomen, bare heads, and especially bare windows. If Rachel had been absolutely free to civilize Julian's life, she would have begun by measuring the bay-window.