But what about John Robert? Throughout the years of Pearl’s regime the philosopher had manifested an extraordinary combination of absolute correctness and absolute indifference. Money and plans and instructions materialized with prompt effective clarity. Go here, go there, do this, do that. But mainly the great man had remained invisible, and when he did appear his attentions to Hattie were vague, distracted, absent-minded and reluctant. He was always ‘elsewhere’. He notoriously ‘did not like children’, and had never made any serious attempt to ‘get on’ with his grand-daughter, whose wordless diffidence matched his own monumental awkwardness and lack of tact. His relations with Pearl had been even more, though correct, without substance. John Robert had taken one look at Pearl and had decided to trust her absolutely. It seemed to her that he had never looked at her since. How much he must have understood in the first look. Or more likely, how carelessly he had gambled with Hattie’s welfare and her happiness. If Hattie had detested Pearl she would never have told John Robert. Did he realize this, did he care? The absoluteness of the trust, the large sums of money involved, the larger sums of more important matters, sometimes stunned Pearl and touched her with a terrible deep touch. At the same time, once the trust was given, she became invisible, she received only instructions, never encouragement or praise. These she would more cheerfully have done without if she had felt that John Robert thought of her even sometimes as something other than an efficient instrument of his will.
Pearl had, at the start, been frightened of John Robert and of the whole situation, though also, of course, excited and elated by it. It was later, when Pearl felt calm and secure enough to observe Rozanov, herself unobserved (and since she was ‘invisible’ she had many such chances) that the terrible ailment began. How charmless that big, awkward man was, careless about Hattie, egotistically absent-minded, consulting always his convenience and oblivious of theirs. How ugly he was too, fat and flabby and wet-mouthed with jagged yellow teeth. (This was before he had acquired the false ones commented on by George.) His big head and big hooked nose made him look like a vast puppet in a carnival. His movements were graceless and clumsy. His stare was startled and disconcerting as if, when he looked at someone, he simultaneously recalled something awful which had nothing to do with the person looked at. With all this there went a certain decisive precision which Pearl, reciprocating his trust, relied upon. Where the girls’ arrangements were concerned, he meant and did what he said. But what he said to her were only orders. They never had a conversation.
How differently, two years later, did Pearl feel about the impossible being in whose hand their fates rested. She mistook, at first, her warmer feelings for protectiveness, even pity. She ran to fetch his coat, though she did not presume to help him on with it, an operation which his arthritis had rendered difficult. His stick was not only in view, but polished. She also cleaned his shoes. (He never commented.) Sometimes he told her to make telephone calls to hotels. Once he asked her to go out and buy him a hat. (‘What kind?’ ‘Any kind.’) That had caused Pearl a lot of joy and pain. She used to say to herself, though never to Hattie, ‘the poor old chap’. He was a shambling eccentric who needed to be looked after. Too late she realized that her heart was involved.
If he had really just been a ‘poor old chap’ she would probably have loved him too, but differently. As it was, there was an extra spice of fear and admiration. Not that either Pearl or Hattie had ever read any of his books, but they took it for granted that he was ‘awfully distinguished’. Pearl actually got one of his books out of a library once, but could not understand it and hurriedly took it back for fear he should suddenly arrive and find her reading it: which she knew would displease him very much indeed. Also, she wanted to disguise her obsession from Hattie, and had so far succeeded. It was not Pearl’s ‘place’ to love John Robert. Meanwhile he walked in her dreams, surrounded by the joy and fear which had been dimly presaged in the adventure with the hat. She must do everything right, she must be perfect and not fail. Above all, she must not be discovered. It did not occur to her to console herself by taking a heroic stance; her situation was without choice, her course the only possible one. She lived inside a love so improper and so hopeless that she felt sometimes almost free to enjoy herself therein. Love, even without hope, was a joyful energy. When John Robert wrote to her she blushed under her dark complexion. Before he came she imagined his coming a hundred times. When he came she was scarlet, faint, but invisible, always efficient. As she stood at attention and awaited his instructions she longed to seize his hand and cover it with kisses. She loved his orders. That was all that he gave her, and it was much. She trembled and he looked through her with his preoccupied and distant eyes.
I must give them up, thought Pearl, as she stood on the green mossy path and looked through the trees at the April sun on the lawn beyond. I must give them both up. I must cut off, cut away, and become another person.
Quelconque une solitude
Sans le cygne ni le quai
Mire sa desuetude
Au regard que j’abdiquai
Ici de la gloriole
Haute à ne le pas toucher
Dont maint ciel se bariole
Avec les ors de coucher
Mais langoureusement longe
Comme de blanc linge ôté
Tel fugace oiseau si plonge
Exultatrice a cote
Dans l’onde toi devenue
Ta jubilation nue.
‘What is the subject of longe?’ asked Father Bernard. By this time he was becoming rather confused himself.
Hattie suggested ‘solitude’. This had not occurred to Father Bernard. He said, ‘Oh, not oiseau?’
‘Could be oiseau,’ Hattie said politely.
He had reflected with interest, even with a little excitement, upon the prospect of meeting Miss Meynell and examining her to see what stuff she was made of, since thus he interpreted John Robert’s vague idea. He thought, the great man has no conception of the girl, doesn’t know what on earth to do with her. He can’t go on hiding her away in a boarding school, he has to make a decision but doesn’t know how to. All right, I’ll have a look at her at least. But I shall leave him in no doubt about his responsibilities! I’m not going to be saddled with her!
Having accepted the idea that he was to ‘examine’ Miss Meynell, Father Bernard felt at a loss how to proceed. He decided to be frank, to explain that he was not in any sense her ‘tutor’, and that he simply wanted to explore with her, if he could, the subjects which she had found interesting at school, testing her in a friendly way so as to give a helpful report to her grandfather. ‘Not mathematics,’ he added, laughing, at which he had been a perfect dunce. Miss Meynell, not admitting to having been a dunce, agreed it was unnecessary to discuss this subject. She received him nervously and, when the ‘visitors’ had gone, ushered him into the sitting-room. The maid, a girl with an interesting head, looked in to ask if they wanted coffee, which they did not. When Father Bernard had explained his plan, Miss Meynell became quiet and business-like. He had already had a surprise. He had expected a big loutish ‘grown-up’ girl, ‘all over the place’, but this small, quiet creature was both more childish and more composed than his picture of an ‘American teenager’.