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Dodo: A Detail of the Day

<h4>CHAPTER EIGHT</h4> The questions about which a man is apt to, say that he alone can judge, are usually exactly those questions in which his judgment is most likely to be at fault, for they concern him very intimately—a truth which he expresses by saying that he alone can judge about them, and for that very reason his emotions are apt to colour what he considers his sober decision. Jack was exactly in this position when he left the Chesterfords' door that afternoon. It was only six o'clock when he went away, and he wished to be alone, and to think about it. But the house seemed stuffy and unsuggestive, and he ordered a horse, and sat fuming and frowning till it came round. It fidgeted and edged away from the pavement when he tried to mount it, and he said, "Get out, you brute," with remarkable emphasis, and asked the groom whether he hadn't yet learned to hold a horse quiet. This was sufficient to show that he was in a perturbed frame of mind. The Row was rather empty, for a great race meeting was going on, and Jack cantered quickly up to the end, and cursed his stupidity for not having gone to Sandown. Then he put his horse to a quiet pace, and determined to think the matter out. He had left the Chesterfords in January with a full realisation of his position. He was in love with Dodo, perhaps more deeply than ever, and Dodo was hopelessly, irrevocably out of his reach. The only thing left to be done was to get over it; but his ordinary circle and its leisurely duties were quite impossible just at present, and he adopted the traditional English method of travelling, and shooting unoffending animals. Whether the absence of faith was responsible, is an open question; at any rate, the remedy did not result in a cure. He was intensely bored with foreign countries; they were quite as distasteful as England, and, on the whole, had less to offer. And he came back to London again as suddenly as he had left it. He only remembered one incident in his four months abroad which gave him any pleasure; that was when he received a letter from Dodo at Berlin, which said nothing particular, and wound up with a little mild chaff on the absurdity of his going abroad at all. "I hope you are really better," wrote Dodo, "though I didn't know that you were in any immediate danger of breaking down when you left us. Anyhow, come back. London is particularly wholesome, and, to tell you the truth, it's just a wee bit dull. Don't be conceited." Of course he came back; it was no good remaining abroad, and yawning in front of the Sistine Madonna, who, in her impossible serene mildness, had no message whatever for him. He wanted to see Dodo; why on earth shouldn't he? She was the only thing he really cared about, and she was quite out of his reach. Where was the harm? For two days after his arrival in London he was still undecided, and made no effort to see her, and on the third day her note came. London was as bad as Dresden, and again, where was the harm? He wrote a note saying he would come, then he tore that up and sent a refusal, offering no excuse; and after all, he had gone, and parted from her with the words that he would come again the next day. But ah, how sweet it was to see her again! Such were the facts upon which Jack wished to form a conclusion. All this indecision was really too annoying. What was the use of a conscience that took the sugar out of your tea, and yet could not prevent you from drinking it? It was not strong enough to prevent him going to see Dodo, and it took the malicious line of making the visit as little enjoyable as possible. Well, it must be settled one way or the other. The problem obviously depended on one question. Did his desire for Dodo grow stronger with seeing her? He decided that it did not make much difference to the quality or degree of his longing, but, on the other hand, her society gave him an inestimable pleasure. When she had refused him a year ago, he had gone on seeing her day after day, without the horrible, unsatisfied emptiness he had felt abroad. That absorbing craving for her, he remembered, began when she was on her wedding tour. Then why not see her freely and frequently? No harm could possibly come out of it. Dodo, he thought, cared for him only as she cared for a dozen other friends, why should he, then, who cared so deeply for her, cut himself off from her? Again his deep-rooted affection and respect for her husband was an immense safeguard. Quixotism was a doubtful virtue at the best, and decidedly out of date, and besides, what would Dodo think if she suddenly found that one of her best friends invariably declined to meet her under any circumstances? She would certainly guess the reason, and if there was one possible solution of this stupid problem more undesirable than another, it was that. And Jack made up his mind. Well, that was settled, and here was Bertie riding down upon him. He felt as if he wished to record a deliberate and sober conclusion. They joined forces and rode up together. Then Jack said suddenly,— "Bertie, I have been making a fool of myself, but I am better now." "That's good," said Bertie placidly. There was something indefinably soothing about Bertie's manner. Jack determined to be more explicit. It is often a relief to tell a friend one's own resolutions, especially if one does not expect unseasonable objections. "It's about Dodo," he said. "You see I'm dreadfully in love with her. Awkward, isn't it?" "Devilish," said Bertie, without a shade of emotion passing over his face. "And the less I see of her," said Jack, "the worse I get, so I've determined that the more I see of her in the ordinary way, the better. It sounds an unusual treatment, I know, but you must acknowledge I gave the other method a fair chance. I went and killed pigs in Austria, and climbed the Matterhorn, but it wouldn't do." They rode on a little time in silence. Then Bertie said,— "Do you want my advice?" "Well, yes," said Jack rather dubiously. "Then I'm dashed if I like it, Jack," he said. "It's too dangerous. Just think——" But Jack broke in,— "Don't you see my friendship for Chesterford is an absolute safeguard. Dodo gives me more pleasure than anyone I know, and when I can't see her, life becomes unbearable. Chesterford is one of those men to whom one couldn't do a mean thing, and, furthermore, Dodo doesn't love me. If those two facts don't ensure safety, I don't know what would. Besides, Bertie, I'm not a rascal." "I can't like it," said Bertie. "If one has a propensity for falling into the fire, it's as well to keep off the hearthrug. I know you're not a rascal, but this is a thing one can't argue about. It is a matter of feeling." "I know," said Jack, "I've felt it too. But I think it's outweighed by other considerations. If I thought any mischief could come of it, I should deserve to be horse-whipped." "I don't like it," repeated Bertie stolidly. Jack went to see Dodo the next afternoon, and for many afternoons during the next fortnight he might have been seen on Chesterford's doorstep, either coming or going. Her husband seemed almost as glad as Dodo that Jack should come often. His visits were obviously very pleasant to her, and she had begun to talk nonsense again as fluently as ever. With Jack, however, she had some rather serious talks; his future appeared to be exercising her mind somewhat. Jack's life at this time was absolutely aimless. Before he had gone abroad he had been at the Bar, and had been called, but his chambers now knew him no more. He had no home duties, being, as Dodo expressed it, "a poor little orphan of six foot two," and he had enough money for an idle bachelor life. Dodo took a very real interest in the career of her friends. It was part of her completeness, as I have said before, to be the centre of a set of successful people. Jack could do very well, she felt, in the purely ornamental line, and she by no means wished to debar him from the ornamental profession, but yet she was vaguely dissatisfied. She induced him one day to state in full, exactly the ideas he had about his own future. "You dangle very well indeed," she said to him, "and I'm far from wishing you not to dangle, but, if it's to be your profession, you must do it more systematically. Lady Wrayston was here yesterday, and she said no one ever saw you now. That's lazy; you're neglecting your work." Jack was silent a few minutes. The truth of the matter was that he was becoming so preoccupied with Dodo, that he was acquiring a real distaste for other society. His days seemed to have dwindled down to an hour or two hours each, according to the time he passed with Dodo. The interval between his leaving the house one day and returning to it the next, had got to be merely a tedious period of waiting, which he would gladly have dispensed with. In such intervals society appeared to him not a distraction, but a laborious substitute for inaction, and labour at any time was not congenial to him. His life, in fact, was a series of conscious pulses with long-drawn pauses in between. He was dimly aware that this sort of thing could not go on for ever. The machine would stop, or get quicker or slower, and there were endless complications imminent in either case. "I don't know that I really care for dangling," said Jack discontentedly. "At the same time it is the least objectionable form of amusement." "Well, you can't dangle for ever in any case," said Dodo. "You ought to marry and settle down. Chesterford is a sort of apotheosis of a dangler. By performing, with scrupulous care, a quantity of little things that don't matter much, like being J.P., and handing the offertory plate, he is in a way quite a busy man, to himself at least, though nothing would happen if he ceased doing any or all of these things; and the dangler, who thinks himself busy, is the happiest of men, because he gets all the advantages of dangling, and none of the disadvantages, and his conscience—have you got a conscience, Jack?—so far from pricking him, tells him he's doing the whole duty of man. Then again he's married—to me, too. That's a profession in itself." "Ah, but I can't be married to you too," remarked Jack. "You're absurd," said Dodo; "but really, Jack, I wish you'd marry someone else. I sha'n't think you unfaithful." "I don't flatter myself that you would," said Jack, with a touch of irritation. Dodo looked up rather surprised at the hard ring in his voice. She thought it wiser to ignore this last remark. "I never can quite make out whether you are ambitious or not," she said. "Now and then you make me feel as if you would rather like to go and live in a small cathedral town——" "And shock the canons?" suggested Jack. "Not necessarily; but cultivate sheer domesticity. You're very domestic in a way. Bertie would do admirably in a cathedral town. He'd be dreadfully happy among dull people. They would all think him so brilliant and charming, and the bishop would ask him over to dine at the palace whenever anyone came down from London." "I'm not ambitious in the way of wanting to score small successes," said Jack. "Anyone can score them. I don't mind flying at high game and missing. If you miss of course you have to load again, but I'd sooner do that than make a bag of rabbits. Besides, you can get your rabbits sitting, as you go after your high game. But I don't want rabbits." "What is your high game?" asked Dodo. Jack considered. "It's this," he said. "You may attain it, or at any rate strive after it, by doing nothing, or working like a horse. But, anyhow, it's being in the midst of things, it's seeing the wheels go round, and forming conclusions as to why they go round, it's hearing the world go rushing by like a river in flood, it's knowing what everyone thinks about, it's guessing why one woman falls in love with one man, and why another man falls in love with her. You don't get that in cathedral towns. The archdeacon's daughter falls in love with the dean's son, and nobody else is at all in love with either of them. The world doesn't rattle in cathedral towns, they take care to oil it; the world doesn't come down in flood in cathedral towns, there is nothing so badly regulated as that. I don't know why I should choose cathedral towns particularly to say these things about. I think you suggested that I should live in one. If you like you can plunge into the river in flood and go down with it—that's what they call having a profession—but it's just as instructive to stand on the bank and watch it; more instructive, perhaps, because you needn't swim, and can give your whole attention to it. On the whole, that is what I mean to do." "That's good, Jack," said Dodo; "but you're not consistent. The fact that you haven't been going out lately, shows that you're standing with your back to it, with your hands in your pocket. After all, what you say only conies to this, that you are interested in the problem of human life. Well, there's just as much human life in your cathedral town." "Ah, but there's no go about it," said he. "It's no more like life than a duck pond is to the river in flood." "Oh, you're wrong there," said Dodo. "It goes on just the same, though it doesn't make such a fuss. But in any case you are standing with your back to it now, as I said." "I'm going into details, just at present," said Jack. "How do you mean?" "I'm watching a little bit of it." "I suppose you mean Chesterford and me. Do you find us very interesting?" demanded Dodo. "Very." Jack was rather uncomfortable. He wanted to say more, and wished he hadn't said so much. He wondered how Dodo would take it. Dodo did not take it at all. She was, for the time at any rate, much more interested in Jack's prospects as they concerned him, than as they bore on herself. "What is the upshot of all your observations?" she asked. Jack hardly knew whether to feel relieved or slighted. Was Dodo's apparent unconsciousness of the tenor of what he had said genuine or affected? On that he felt a great deal depended. But whether it was genuine or not, the matter was closed for the present. Dodo repeated her question. "My observations on you, or on the world in general?" he asked. "Either will do," said Dodo; "we're very normal. Any conclusion you have formed about the rest of the world will apply to us." "My conclusion is that you are not quite normal," said he. Dodo laughed. "Oh, I'm dreadfully normal," she said; "all my inconsistencies lie on the surface—I'm married, I've got a baby, I'm honest, I'm lazy. I'm all I should and shouldn't be. And Chesterford——" "Oh, then Chesterford's normal too," said Jack. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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