St. Quin

Front matter

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Chapter I

Every breath that Edmond St. Quin drew was full of germs. In the first place when the nurse placed him in the cradle she crooned as she had crooned over his father in the same hapless plight. And the cradle had been his greatgrandfather’s.

At his christening the family fairies were present peeping from behind the skirts and trousers of the numerous St. Quins round the font. And they bestowed the St. Quin gifts: dark hair, rather curly; very deep brown eyes, set wide apart; a long, lean, wiry body; quiet and charming manners; and something else. Every St. Quin had a twist of character which he tried, fairly successfully, to obliterate. But at every christening some stray fairy — possibly forgotten by the verger, or waiting behind after some other like ceremony, or purely out of mischief — presented your St. Quin with a gift, and I this odd and entirely unexpected gift was the cause of many anxious family gatherings.

There had been, for instance, that betterforgotten creature, Otho St. Quin, who died, Heaven knows where, after a life of famous dissipation. His portrait, in wig and ruffles, was in the gallery, and gave no hint of his history. Edmond was thought like him by a romantic second cousin, but she kept her feelings secret. Anyhow, she was wrong.

And again, the less said the better of Barbara St. Quin, whose portrait, by Lely, is on the right of the gallery just by the door of the library. From her sprang those dreadful persons, the Valences, ignored by the family, and a very sore point with them by reason of their diabolical success. In what? In trade. — Impossible.

A glance at the catalogue of the gallery would teach you nothing, but some stupid — according to the family — but amazingly clever — according to the world — person, Charles St. Quin, must needs write a brilliant history of the family and expose all its little stories and scandals to the great joy of curiously minded people and the glory of the literary world.

What twist had Edmond? It appeared that he might not have one. His father and his uncles were gentlemen of perfectly regular lives, one might almost say clockwork lives. The uncle in Parliament, on the right side, and a

Cabinet Minister at that, and more, he had never been accused of giving birth to one original idea. Another uncle, Wilfred, a Master of Foxhounds, a profession in itself. Another, Admiral St. Quin, Slim Jim to sailors, James to his wife, and a nonentity at that. And Edmond’s father, the eldest, who owned the house and estate; a big, quiet man, very simple in his tastes, a little mysterious perhaps — perhaps not, it depends upon how you look at mystery. At all events, on the surface most normal.

And Edmond’s mother, Clarissa Jordan that was? A romantic name, one might admit, but did any trace of romance appear in her? Not one bit. Not that any of her friends could see. Mildred Harkness who had been at school with her had stories, yes, but mere schoolgirl affairs. Perhaps a preference for some actor of the day, or a young passion for a neighbor’s son. If it were true, a year in Germany cured that. Did it, one wonders? If one were suspicious, the very serenity of the St. Quins’ lives might be suspicious. They seemed admirably suited but never intimate.

Edmond grew. He breathed in the atmosphere of his fathers before him, of the big hall, the long gallery, the armour, the library smelling of good bindings, of the avenue his greatgreat-grandfather planted. That very gentleman had possessed a passion for trees, had even written an extraordinary book, half diary of actual events, half meditations, and all on the planting of trees. A good deal of it was very beautiful, rather high flown perhaps, but filled with the poetry of Nature. The book was in the library. Edmond read it, and thought it rot.

Everything in the house was smooth, orderly and punctual. At an early age Edmond rose at half-past six, and, accompanied by a groom, rode an exceedingly fat pony over very good grass, and fell several times, and did not cry. At a later age he rode alone or with his sister Barbara, and they did their best to break their necks, but as the St. Quins were almost born on horseback nothing happened. Once, when he was out alone, being then ten years of age, he was pressed to accept a glass of small ale by a farmer. He drank it, rode home in a dazed condition, announced the fact that something had gone funny in his head, and retired to bed. It was considered that he had done quite the right thing.

“ There’s the makings of a man in that boy,” said his father, and was thought to have said a remarkably wise thing.

Before breakfast there was a peculiar ceremony known as prayers, read by St. Quin to the accompaniment of a kettle on the boil. You knelt with your face to the wall if you were a servant, to the windows if you were of the family or a guest. Once the cat jumped upon the breakfast-table while St. Quin was reading the psalm that always finished prayers. Without stopping, he caught the cat, took it to the door, and shooed it out. Edmond could see by the reflection in the windows a slight agitation among one or two of the print dresses.

Mrs. St. Quin did not appear at prayers, it being understood that she was inclined to be High Church. And if the presence of a faldstool in her bedroom and two books of devotions on it were a sign of High Church she certainly was. It was, however, bad form to mention religion. One went to church as an example to the tenants.

Edmond had a tutor from whom he imbibed what is known in that circle as Education. After the ordinary efforts to learn reading and writing and a vague hazard at the deep and wonderful mysteries of mathematics, he passed on to that supreme knowledge that the Crocodile laid eggs — in Greek; and that Balbus was building a wall — in Latin. In French he mastered “ The penholder of the gardener’s sister,” and such illuminating sentences. And in English history he struggled with a confusion of dates, names, laws and divorce cases, coming out of the sea of facts uncertain of the number of Henry the Eighth’s wives, of the meaning of

Magna Charta, of the real reason for Oliver Cromwell’s rebellion. But he was firm in the story of Alfred and the cakes; the discovery of Richard Coeur de Lion by a minstrel (name forgotten) ; that some Queen had sucked poison from her husband’s wound; the death of the young Princes in the Tower (names and reasons also forgotten) ; was very keen on Sir Walter Raleigh and Drake; was angry about the death of Charles the First — and after that came a mere podge of stories vaguely connected with a period called the Eighteenth Century, until history grew clear again at the Battle of Waterloo.

With these things firmly in his mind he went to school. The St. Quins went to Eton.

Yet there was that gift at his christening. He took a pleasure in dreaming, very faint but yet a pleasure. There was something in him, he knew, beyond the fact that he was a St. Quin and would be very rich. There was something in the world besides the quietude of the big Elizabethan house and the sanctuary of the ages-old garden.

Once Barbara, his sister, gave him one of her books. It was called Grimm’ s Fairy Tales. It was, had he known it, the key to the first door leading on to another world.

“ Well, if you want a book,” said Barbara, “ here’s this.”

“What’s it called?”

She told him the title.

“ Sounds awful rot,” said he.

“Well, if you don’t like it you needn’t have it.”

“ Chuck it down,” he answered.

She, from the play-room window, threw the magic book to him as he stood on the terrace below and called out, “ Swear you won’t mess it, Teddy.”

“ All right. I swear,” said he.

One is almost inclined to believe that the first dose of poison lay between those covers. Edmond took the book, and a dog, and a piece of cake, and four apples down to the punt. He poled down stream about a quarter of a mile to a pool shaded by willows, lay down in the bottom of the punt, and ate and read. His verdict was delivered at tea, a meal he and his sister often had alone in the play-room.

“ Dash it, Babs, it’s a girl’s book.”

To which she answered, “ Your mouth’s covered with jam.”

“ Well, it is a girl’s book,” said he.

“ Boys don’t know everything,” said Babs.

“ They know a jolly sight more than most girls,” said Teddy.

There was a slight pause in the argument, during which they were very polite about passing the cake. She broke the silence by saying :

“ Teddy, if you’ll keep a secret, I’ll show you where they live.”

“ Who’s they?”

“ Fairies.”

“ Rot.”

“ It isn’t rot,” she answered hotly. “ It’s most frightfully jolly to believe in them.”

“ I’m going to row next term,” he answered, feeling a little out of his depth.

“ And we’ll ask if we can take our lunch out to a place I know to-morrow,” said Babs. “ I think you might be bucked, it’s a stunning place down the river. Do come.”

“ I’ll punt you down. You’re rotten with the pole,” he answered graciously.

So they went. And no one knows what effect it had on his life.

It was a little cup in the woods, all bracken and primroses and young trees. And the sky was laced across with tender green leaves and slim budding branches. And a rippling little stream ran over bright stones and dashed for fun round moss-covered rocks. And just a little way off the river ran, hidden by trees, and sang the song rivers do sing in spring.

They tied up the punt, and opened the lunch-basket, and chattered while they ate, then fell silent while she, wise woman of eleven years, waited for the prompting of his curiosity.

“ Not a bad place,” he admitted, man of twelve.

She, flat on her back with her hat over her eyes, said, very soft:

“ It’s most awfully secret.”

“ I don’t know what you mean about these fairies,” he said. “ Plenty of rabbit holes.”

“ Oh, you boy,” came from under the hat.

“ That’s all jolly well,” said Teddy, “ but that’s all I see. And I jolly well only believe in the things I can see.”

Then she began. She told him how they came out at night and drank out of acorn cups, and Teddy forgot to mention there weren’t any oaks about. Ahd she told him how they danced, and how they sat under toadstools, and swang on the fronds of bracken, and how, if they kept awfully quiet, they might see one.

So they kept quiet until Teddy saw something moving among the fern, and he leapt up with a shout and said: “ There’s one!” And a rabbit, crazy with fear, bolted for his life.

“Oh,” cried Barbara, “ it’s turned itself into a rabbit because you shouted.”

He laughed contemptuously at her. “ You silly ass, Babs. I bet there aren’t any .such things.”

He denied them. He denied the elfin spirit in life. He denied the dreamy, dew-wet nights in woods and the moon’s magic spell. And

IO the high games of Oberon and Ariel and Puck. All that lies beyond fact he denied.

And yet one day he was very late for dinner, almost a criminal offence. He had been all day alone in that cup in the woods looking for something it took him twelve years to find.

Chapter II The Elfin Spirit

So Teddy St. Quin denied the elfin spirit. He denied all that makes life a wonder, a dream, a romance, a great tapestry spun with the golden thread of imagination. He cut Columbine and Harlequin out of the Great Harlequinade, and took to himself the rough-and-tumble of Clown, the rigidity of the Policeman, and the “ what was good enough for my father is good enough for you,” of Pantaloon.

But Columbine and Harlequin will not be denied. A thousand times a year Harlequin taps with his magic wand and sends the stockbroker rejoicing on his way to the business train, seeing what was not there before. The swaying tassels of laburnum in his neighbour’s garden — the golden purses of the poor in pocket and the rich in spirit; the faint, delicious odour ' of lilac; the voices of children playing; the sudden bursting, overwhelming love-song of a thrush. And there creeps, from this, an elfin spirit into his day’s work, and money becomes a symbol, a token with which

II to pay for dreams, and the hearth becomes an altar, and the home a palace, and the train bearing him onwards a ship full of elderly children. And Columbine puts a flower in his buttonhole. And his clerks, looking up from their inkstained desks, see far away — yet not so far — magic casements that look on fairy seas forlorn.

He who walks on grass, understanding grass, is a happy man. The soft tread under foot, the eyes of daisies, the clean scent, the cloak of good green rest tired eyes.

But he who treads pavements weaving dreams is a king and a happy king, and owns at least one world, and that all his own. For him trees and flowers speak, and houses unfold their histories, and postmen have wings and carry in their bags the scythe of Time and the darts of Cupid. And what smile they give policemen at crowded crossings is repaid an hundredfold, and what smile they give to children, yes, and to nurses, is repaid a thousandfold.

Yet our stubborn manner of education enforces on young men that he who has a fringe of soul about his person has, probably, a fringe of soil about his cuffs. That to appear moved is to appear mawkish. That admittedly to care for simple joys is to own oneself out of the movement of the world. So do we make slaves of emperors, and hard beds out of pillows of roses, if we deny the elfin spirit.

To what purpose all this? To show Teddy at school, an animal as fond of buns as bears, a clean, fine-limbed, sound-winded, utterly ordinary boy. He was one of a number of clean collars, white flannels, beads of short hair, fresh complexions, white waistcoats, and strong shoes. You may pick them out of a box and not know the difference. Only mothers know the difference between boys, so careful is our system of training. And only boys resent this. To be exceptional is to be marked out. As soon, they say, wear brown boots with dress-clothes. As soon go to the wrong shop for ties, or be ignorant of the names of the giants of the cricket field.

But the mothers, among themselves, knowing every scar, every hair, every tooth of the young gentlemen, go over their dreams carefully, searching in bottom drawers for queer little shoes, once worn, and nurse grudges against those young gentlemen whose chest measurements wax greater than their own darlings’. And, in strict confidence, one with another, burst into paeans of praise on the works of their own production, seeing in them generals, admirals, judges, and bishops in the making.

And the sisters see the faults and love them, and are curious of other boys’ sisters, and on the great days, when the brothers condescend to introduce them to their friends, swell and grow big with pride, , and diminish and grow small with

St. Quia shame, to see their brothers in the thrall of mere insignificant, empty-headed creatures, by name Miss Thompson, or such-like, with lisle thread stockings, and cotton frocks, and an inexpensive pearl ornament on a thin gold chain about their ' necks.

They know that the reason of the elaborate tea is Miss Thompson and not themselves. They know that the burnished hair and the rather tight shoes, and the very strained conversation are by reason of Miss Thompson’s blinding presence. They see the commencement of the downfall of man and the sceptre of the woman’s little finger about which the world of men writhes, and they resent it bitterly until — until — young Thompson himself presses them to a ridiculous amount of cake, giving them the bits with the almond in them, or feigns great interest in girls’ hockey, and his eyes wander furtively to their hair, so that a sudden and awkward flush makes Miss St. Quin hot to her very eyes (modestly downcast), and her photographs of favourite actors pale into insignificance beside this “ 72 not out, and on a rotten wicket,” “ Oh, shut up ! ” from the blushing Thompson. And all this, if you please, with the shadow of the cradle only just behind them. One wishes, to Heaven, that the shadow of the cradle might always be there.

Innocence has a curiously attractive smell. It has, a very mingled affair, the scent of nurseries, i5 the smell of when you used to say your prayers by the side of a tumbled bed, of soap, of cold water, of the reedy banks of rivers where you fished for minnows, hoping to bring some home in a jam-pot full of water, of clean starched linen, of the first gooseberry tart, of wind off the sea, and of the bodies of young children.

Something of this clings through life from schooldays: a whiff here and there, perhaps of a new cricket ball, or from perspiring and muddy heroes playing football, or in passing an open church door in Paris, and you are back in the time when the only wrong you did was the legitimate getting the better of your pastors and masters.

Through all this Teddy passed in the armour of gorgeous indifference. The flare of history — Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra, Madame Pompadour, Joan of Arc, Venus, Catherine of Russia, just so many names to him. Warlike heroes he took to his heart but not the dates of their existences. Elizabeth of England reviewed troops, good enough. A ripper, and noted as such. Sarah Jennings, the great Duchess of Marlborough, top hole, as rude as any camp follower. Anne Boleyn, rather decent, according to the illustrations. Classic heroines all vague, unsatisfactory figures parading through a dead language in improper clothes — dull. The world of women, taking them all round, good enough at socks, fixi6 ing things up with the Governor, fussing about if one had a cold. But the world of men — ah! To be six foot, or over. To be big in the biceps, to earn praise — “ Not bad, you young ass,’ ? from one’s coach on the river; to be swift of foot, sharp of tongue, quick of eye, fit, smart with the left fist in a fight, and good in the wind in a paper chase, that was life as lived on the educational Olympus among educated Olympians.

If Teddy and his kind learned nothing else they learned to be men, to go straight, to have clean hands and a clean tongue, to look after their bodies, and to prepare themselves against the great fight with the gift of a superlative honesty.

Yet there came that twist, that extra eye of the St. Quins. He would find himself speculating, almost with a shudder, about the immensity of the stars, and the thought, carelessly imbibed one day, of the distance of the sun from the earth gave him a mental pain almost too strong to bear. But, beyond that, he found himself observing colours, and the shapes of people’s heads, and once was brought to an abrupt terminus of his mental outlook by the swing of some verses, a task put upon him by a new master not yet dulled by routine.

At home, during this time, the exactitude of the domestic arrangements rather tied him. He began then a habit that for ever remained with him, that earned him his nickname at Oxford; he prowled, and was known as The Prowler. There are many words in the language representing shades of this phase of unrest. To saunter, supposed to be derived from those who love the earth and wander on Saint Terre. To mooch about, a listless business; to wander, showing an over-eager spirit, high pulsed and loose ended; to stroll, more the province of the philosopher; to loaf, the work of an idler; to prowl, quite the spirit of the adventurer, one who seeks, one who is eager for new sensations, one who hopes to find a heroine in every cottage, one who possesses, perhaps unwittingly, the gift of the elfin spirit.

It led Teddy — by way of excuse he said he wanted to know the estate — into abrupt collisions with farmers’ boys, whose thatched heads he punched, or by whose horny hands he received punishment. It gave him curious knowledge of the habits of wild animals, and so appeased his inherited sporting instincts. It gave him glimpses of Nature at her secret business. The tumble of water over weirs, the lace-like foam, the iridescent bubbles, the dart and sudden gleam of kingfishers. It gave him a power of silence given by deep woods where pine-needles carpet the rides, or beech-nuts only crack underfoot, or by stretches of heath and moor whose rims showed dark against the sky, as if no world lay beyond that immensity but stars and the breath of some great i8 unknown Being. Or the black and silver of a still pool; or the hush before storms, and the shiver of Nature before thunder, that grim voice speaking out of the sky; or the absolute commanding beauty of a rainbow, the bridge between this world and a world of rare delights.

So he grew, and so his sister grew. And there remained between them that best and most unselfish of the affections, the only one where sex has no part and passion does not muddy the understanding. Albeit that great love burns its way through from red fire to a molten glow of gold, it had, of course, touched neither of them yet. But Cupid can brush with his wings as well as wound with his darts, and of such is the love of brother and sister, unspoken, holy, and complete.

If she had a St. Quin gift she hid it. His little oddness was clear to her woman’s eyes, but she never spoke of it. And her gift was the harder to bear for it was red, red blood, a quick pulse and thoughts of splendid unknown things to culminate — vaguely — in a Norse-like giant of a man, one day, on another with a fiery Southerner, on another with a kind of super-Catholic priest as sacred as vestments and incense could make him outside, but a man all aglow within.

So Barbara bowled to Teddy overhand, and very well, or played tennis with him, or threw a fly by his side after his instructions, climbed many trees — out of sight of the house — and regarded him secretly as a man above men.

Of his father he knew nothing, except that he was the model of all country gentlemen, by whom he was treated almost as an equal in all unimportant matters, as a complete stranger in all those affairs where the realities of life come uppermost.

As for Mrs. St. Quin and himself their relations were on the basis of a complete and satisfactory understanding. She knew, the names of all his friends, their habits, failings, and prowess on fields of sports. They spoke together, not quite freely, on the outward observances of religion as if it were a society function, or the rules of a club, the founder of which paid almost exclusive attention to those English mentioned in Burke’s Landed Gentry. Points of honour with regard to the treatment of certain young ladies, as to how one wrote to them — if one did; good form before the servants; woman’s advice as to how to arm oneself against other women — a feeble advice at that and certainly traitorous to the sex; the flimsiest career at the University — such were the grounds on which Teddy based his love for his mother, whom he regarded as a sweet, dear, precious woman whose intellect was far below the average man’s. In fact, he imagined that he took care of her. And no line in her face told him that she had conquered that gift Barbara had of red, red blood, or that her almost nunlike aloofness was the ice over an aching heart.

And so he went to Oxford.

Chapter III

To Gerald Sunderland, most amiable of good fellows, and esteemed most correct of mortals, Teddy explained how the whole world hung in the balance.

“ You see, old chap,” he said, pointing each remark with a tennis racquet, “ you see, it isn’t as if I was awfully hard up, or a rotter, or hadn’t done anything.”

“ Exactly,” replied the oracle.

“And she’s . You don’t mind me telling

you all this?”

“ Enjoy it,” answered the sage.

“ She’s such a little stunner.”

At which there fell a silence, as if a listening world , leaned to give an ear to the portentous conversation. The two young men, brave in white flannels, sun-browned, clip-headed, lay sprawling on the grass. Ice melted calmly in a cider-cup near by; the pale perfumed smoke of most expensive cigarettes curled to the sky. Through trees and flowers the great house showed, and in the garden the English orchestra of humming insects played, while in the distance, most refreshing sound, a sprinkler played on Mrs. St. Quin’s most precious rose trees.

“ And so?” said Gerry, filling his second glass.

“ And so the trouble is that while it seems all right it feels all wrong.”

No sound but cider slaking Gerry’s throat.

“ Being in the boat doesn’t seem to count, and having pots of money doesn’t, either.”

The excellent Gerald roused himself. “ You might remember, Teddy,” he said, “that you’re a bit scrappy in your information. I know who you mean, of course — Miss Pinner — and I know you’ve been at her people’s and she’s been here, but the — the cream of the thing I know nothing about. Are you ?”

“ Well, that’s just it,” said Teddy. “ Am I fond of her? Often when I am shaving I say to myself, 4 Do I ?’ — and I don’t know. Look at this beastly cut, that comes of looking at her photograph instead of the glass. Of course I’m awfully keen on her. Well, I chucked cigarettes for ten days when I wasn’t in training. And when I came down this morning — what did she say — I ask you?”

“ I heard her, old chap.”

“Well — there you are. Is that a sign? ‘We do love our new socks, don’t we?’ — you heard her say it, Gerry.”

“ You don’t seem to have changed them.”

“ Well, old chap, a man can’t give up everything.”

“ She might have been pulling your leg.”

Teddy raised himself on one elbow and looked seriously at his friend.

“ Do you know,” he said, “ I’m not sure she’s not always doing it. Look here. I met her at our ball, and then at the hop at Oriel, and then there was that picnic, you know: you and my sister, and Tubby and Doris Cooper, and Phyllis and me. We wandered about, if you remember, and I showed her the place where I broke the punt pole and got soused, and all that. Well, I met her again by appointment, and we swopped ideas and got on like billy-o. Then her brother asked me down, and I went. Then she let me call her Phyllis — which was rather jolly of her. And I found out her pater knew mine donkey years ago, so we all palled up.”

“ Sort of brotherly love.”

“ Well, you know, old chap,” said Teddy, “ as well as I do, that if you go about on the river with a girl, and her step suits yours and all that, things become, if you know what I mean, different. I got a bit off my feed and thought an awful lot about her. She’s got jolly hair, you know, and awfully jolly eyes, and altogether I got rather keen.”

“And she?” asked the wise adviser.

44 Well, that’s the whole thing. I must tell somebody or I shall burst. She, really, admires quite a different sort of chap. I mean, my getting into the boat didn’t seem to matter at all. She’s awfully keen on a chap reading and getting on and making a name. Well, as I said, 4 It’s no good my getting on, because I’ve got to run the place some time, and that’ll take all my time.’ So she lent me a book, most awful tosh, I thought — but I read it. And when she asked me for my honest opinion I said — well, I said, 4 I don’t understand a word of it,’ and she said, 4 Poor old Teddy Bear! ’”