He wanted to talk to somebody about his love, but he knew no one to whom he could even hint of such a thing. He engaged Mr Adams in conversation about The Tempest, and led up to the character of Ariel. “I think you’ll like that in our production,” said he; “we have a very clever girl playing Ariel, a Miss Webster.”
“She’ll have to be clever,” said Adams; “Shakespeare wrote that part for a boy, and it’s always a mistake to cast a woman for it. I don’t know that I care to see some great lolloping girl attempt it.” This last remark was pure spite, and Adams did not really know why he made it. But there is a spirit of Malignance which makes people say offensive things to lovers about those they love, even when that love is hidden, and Mr Adams was, for the moment, the instrument of it. Hector was wounded, but he could say nothing, for fear of revealing what might, he knew, bring him into derision.
Sexual desire played no conscious part in what he felt for Griselda. Indeed, it had never entered his life since that incident at the Normal School Conversazione. He did not long to possess her physically; he wanted to dominate her mentally. He wanted her to think of him as he thought of her, as of someone who stood high above and apart from the rest of mankind. He wanted to defend her from dangers; he wanted to bring her great gifts of courage and wisdom; he wanted to take her from the world and keep her to himself, and to know that she was blissfully happy to renounce the world for him. He thought that once he had declared his love, she might permit him to kiss her, but his imagination shrank quickly from that kiss; it would, he was sure, be a thing of such pain and joy that it might rob him of his senses. He had never, in all his forty years, kissed any woman but his mother.
Nevertheless, he was strongly conscious that Griselda was a woman, and was subject to the disabilities which he believed to be a special and unjust burden to her sex. When, at rehearsals, she seemed to be a little out of sorts, or flung herself on the grass to rest, or wore the look of weary beauty which had worked so powerfully upon Solly at the casting meeting, Hector grieved that she might be in the throes of those “illnesses peculiar to women” of which, as a boy, he had read in patent medicine almanacs. Thinking this, he could become quite maudlin on her account, and once remarked to the astonished Mr Leakey, out of the blue, that woman had a great deal to bear which men could only guess at.
If only he could tell someone about his love! The urge to talk about it was mastered, but only just, by his fear of making himself foolish, or of destroying the magic of his feelings by giving them a voice. Once he thought seriously of seeking an interview with Mr Webster, and telling that gentleman that he, Hector, loved his daughter and wanted her father’s consent to seek her hand. This was, he realized, no longer the custom, but what he felt for Griselda demanded the fullest measure of formality. Besides, he was nearer in age to Mr Webster than to his daughter; an older man, and the father of such a girl, would surely understand the frankness and nobility which prompted such an action. Fortunately better sense prevailed, and Mr Webster was spared an interview which he would have found embarrassing and depressing.
Freddy was not so fortunate. Hector found her in the grounds at St Agnes’ one afternoon when he had, as usual, arrived early for rehearsal; she lay on the grass, memorizing her words as the goddess Ceres. Hector had no fear of adolescent girls, for he had taught hundreds of them. Here, he thought, was someone he could pump about Griselda.
“I see you are getting your words by heart,” said he.
“Yes,” said Freddy.
“That’s right. We won’t make much progress until we are all perfect in our words.”
“I suppose not.”
“Do you find memorizing hard?”
“Not when I’m allowed to concentrate on it.”
“You should memorize each night, the last thing before you go to sleep. That is the best way to memorize formulae, or anything like that.”
“Really?”
“Why are you not at school?”
“I’ve been ill; I’m taking a term off.”
“Pity, pity; you shouldn’t break the flow of your education until it is complete. That is, if you can afford to keep up the continuity, which not everyone is able to do.”
“The doctor told my father to keep me at home. I’ve nothing to say about it.”
“Ah. Pity, pity.”
A pause, during which Freddy and Hector regarded one another solemnly.
“A very fine old house you have here.”
“Thank you.”
“How old, now?”
“Oh, about a hundred and thirty years, I suppose. Prebendary Bedlam built most of it.”
“Who?”
“You aren’t a native of Salterton, are you?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not likely you’d have heard of him.”
“You have a lovely big room, I expect.”
“No, quite small.”
“But your sister has a lovely big room, I expect?”
“She has two rooms; a sitting-room and a bedroom with the biggest bed in it you ever saw, with a crimson silk bedspread,” said Freddy, who was getting tired of this and decided to give the pryer some well-deserved mis-information. “She has a marvellous bathroom, with a sunken tub, and a peach basin, and a black John and a toilet roll which plays The Lass of Richmond Hill when you pull it,” she continued, beginning to enjoy herself.
Hector was not sure how he should take this. Long experience of girls of Freddy’s age told him that she was lying. Nevertheless, she was Griselda’s sister, and to that extent sacred. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“That’s very interesting,” said he. “And which would be her window, now?”
“Those big ones there,” said Freddy, pointing to her father’s windows. Was he a Peeping Tom, she wondered.
“Has your sister finished school?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, she didn’t lose terms like you. She’ll have been very clever at school?”
“Not very,” said Freddy.
“Really? But she was a leader, I suppose? I expect she was very much admired?”
So that’s it, thought Freddy. This silly old clown is stuck on Gristle. The dirty old man, chasing a girl less than half his age. Just another John Knox. With the concentrated spite of the eunuch, or the sexless, she said:
“No, she wasn’t liked, really, except by a few. But she was the champion burper of the school. She can swallow an awful lot of air, you know, and belch the first few bars of God Save the King, while saluting. She was always begged to do it on stunt nights.”
Hector walked away, saddened. The child was a liar, and perhaps not quite right in the head, but her blasphemy had wounded him, none the less.
Hector was wrong in supposing that Griselda did not notice him. She noticed that he seemed often to be in the way, that he changed colour and breathed heavily when she sang her little piece into his ear, and that he seemed to be physically timid and fearful of accidents. This last observation was unjust, and was the outcome of Hector’s solicitude for her; as Ariel she had to climb about one some platforms which Tom had put up at the back of the stage and disguised with greenery; it never entered her head to be frightened of these trivial heights, but whenever she had to get down from them, she was likely to find Hector there, with a hand outstretched, and a look of apprehension on his face; he would assist her to the ground, gingerly, and walk away, as though embarrassed. Larry Pye sometimes wanted to do the same thing, but she knew Larry; he wanted to squeeze her legs as he lifted her, and she usually jumped straight at him, causing him to skip ungallantly out of danger. But she assumed that Hector was a fusspot who thought that she could not jump six or eight feet without breaking something.