第40章 THE SEVENTH(1)

COMPANIONSHIP

Section 1

"Well," said Dr.Martineau, extending his hand to Sir Richmond on the Salisbury station platform, "I leave you to it."His round face betrayed little or no vestiges of his overnight irritation.

"Ought you to leave me to it?" smiled Sir Richmond.

"I shall be interested to learn what happens.""But if you won't stay to see!"

"Now Sir, please," said the guard respectfully but firmly, and Dr.Martineau got in.

Sir Richmond walked thoughtfully down the platform towards the exit.

"What else could I do?" he asked aloud to nobody in particular.

For a little while he thought confusedly of the collapse of his expedition into the secret places of his own heart with Dr.Martineau, and then his prepossession with Miss Grammont resumed possession of his mind.Dr.Martineau was forgotten.

Section 2

For the better part of forty hours, Sir Richmond had either been talking to Miss Grammont, or carrying on imaginary conversations with her in her absence, or sleeping and dreaming dreams in which she never failed to play a part, even if at times it was an altogether amazing and incongruous part.And as they were both very frank and expressive people, they already knew a very great deal about each other.

For an American Miss Grammont was by no means autobiographical.She gave no sketches of her idiosyncrasies, and she repeated no remembered comments and prophets of her contemporaries about herself.She either concealed or she had lost any great interest in her own personality.But she was interested in and curious about the people she had met in life, and her talk of them reflected a considerable amount of light upon her own upbringing and experiences.And her liking for Sir Richmond was pleasingly manifest.She liked his turn of thought, she watched him with a faint smile on her lips as he spoke, and she spread her opinions before him carefully in that soft voice of hers like a shy child showing its treasures to some suddenly trusted and favoured visitor.

Their ways of thought harmonized.They talked at first chiefly about the history of the world and the extraordinary situation of aimlessness in a phase of ruin to which the Great War had brought all Europe, if not all mankind.The world excited them both in the same way; as a crisis in which they were called upon to do something--they did not yet clearly know what.Into this topic they peered as into some deep pool, side by side, and in it they saw each other reflected.

The visit to Avebury had been a great success.It had been a perfect springtime day, and the little inn had been delighted at the reappearance of Sir Richmond's car so soon after its departure.Its delight was particularly manifest in the cream and salad it produced for lunch.Both Miss Grammont and Miss Seyffert displayed an intelligent interest in their food.

After lunch they had all gone out to the stones and the wall.

Half a dozen sunburnt children were putting one of the partially overturned megaliths to a happy use by clambering to the top of it and sliding on their little behinds down its smooth and sloping side amidst much mirthful squealing.

Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont had walked round the old circumvallation together, but Belinda Seyffert had strayed away from them, professing an interest in flowers.It was not so much that she felt they had to be left together that made her do this as her own consciousness of being possessed by a devil who interrupted conversations.

When Miss Grammont was keenly interested in a conversation, then Belinda had learnt from experience that it was wiser to go off with her devil out of the range of any temptation to interrupt.

"You really think," said Miss Grammont, "that it would be possible to take this confused old world and reshape it, set it marching towards that new world of yours--of two hundred and fifty million fully developed, beautiful and happy people?""Why not? Nobody is doing anything with the world except muddle about.Why not give it a direction? ""You'd take it in your hands like clay?"

"Obdurate clay with a sort of recalcitrant, unintelligent life of its own."Her imagination glowed in her eyes and warmed her voice."Ibelieve what you say is possible.If people dare.""I am tired of following little motives that are like flames that go out when you get to them.I am tired of seeing all the world doing the same.I am tired of a world in which there is nothing great but great disasters.Here is something mankind can attempt, that we can attempt.""And will? "

"I believe that as Mankind grows up this is the business Man has to settle down to and will settle down to."She considered that.

"I've been getting to believe something like this.

But--...it frightens me.I suppose most of us have this same sort of dread of taking too much upon ourselves.""So we just live like pigs.Sensible little piggywiggys.I've got a Committee full of that sort of thing.We live like little modest pigs.And let the world go hang.And pride ourselves upon our freedom from the sin of presumption.

"Not quite that!"

"Well! How do you put it?"

"We are afraid," she said."It's too vast.We want bright little lives of our own.""Exactly--sensible little piggy-wiggys."

"We have a right to life--and happiness.