The Well of Loneliness (10 page)

‘You must feel that your teacher’s some sort of midge, Stephen—a tiresome midge that you want to brush off!’

Then Stephen had laughed too: ‘Well, you are little, Puddle—oh, I’m sorry—’

‘I don’t mind,’ Miss Puddleton had told her; ‘call me Puddle if you like, it’s all one to me.’ After which Miss Puddleton disappeared somehow, and Puddle took her place in the household.

An insignificant creature this Puddle, yet at moments unmistakably self-assertive. Always willing to help in domestic affairs, such as balancing Anna’s chaotic account books, or making out library lists for Jackson’s, she was nevertheless very guardful of her rights, very quick to assert and maintain her position. Puddle knew what she wanted and saw that she got it, both in and out of the schoolroom. Yet everyone liked her; she took what she gave and she gave what she took, yes, but sometimes she gave just a little bit more—and that little bit more is the whole art of teaching, the whole art of living, in fact, and Miss Puddleton knew it. Thus gradually, oh, very gradually at first, she wore down her pupil’s unconscious resistance. With small, dexterous fingers she caught Stephen’s brain, and she stroked it and modelled it after her own fashion. She talked to that brain and showed it new pictures; she gave it new thoughts, new hopes and ambitions; she made it feel certain and proud of achievement. Nor did she belittle Stephen’s muscles in the process, never once did Puddle make game of the athlete, never once did she show by so much as the twitch of an eyelid that she had her own thoughts about her pupil. She appeared to take Stephen as a matter of course, nothing surprised or even amused her it seemed, and Stephen grew quite at ease with her.

‘I can always be comfortable with you, Puddle,’ Stephen would say in a tone of satisfaction, ‘you’re like a nice chair; though you are so tiny yet one’s got room to stretch, I don’t know how you do it.’

Then Puddle would smile, and that smile would warm Stephen while it mocked her a little; but it also mocked Puddle—they would share that warm smile with its fun and its kindness so that neither of them could feel hurt or embarrassed. And their friendship took root, growing strong and verdant, and it flourished like a green bay-tree in the schoolroom.

Came the time when Stephen began to realize that Puddle had genius—the genius of teaching; the genius of compelling her pupil to share in her own enthusiastic love of the Classics.

Oh, Stephen, if only you could read this in Greek!’ she would say, and her voice would sound full of excitement; ‘the beauty, the splendid dignity of it—it’s like the sea, Stephen, rather terrible, but splendid; that’s the language, it’s far more virile than Latin.’ And Stephen would catch that sudden excitement, and determine to work even harder at Greek.

But Puddle did not live by the ancients alone, she taught Stephen to appreciate all literary beauty, observing in her pupil a really fine judgment, a great feeling for balance in sentences and words. A vast tract of new interest was thus opened up, and Stephen began to excel in composition; to her own deep amazement she found herself able to write many things that had long lain dormant in her heart—all the beauty of nature, for instance, she could write it. Impressions of childhood—gold light on the hills; the first cuckoo, mysterious, strangely alluring; those rides home from hunting together with her father—bare furrows, the meaning of those bare furrows. And later, how many queer hopes and queer longings, queer joys and even more curious frustrations. Joy of strength, splendid physical strength and courage; joy of health and sound sleep and refreshed awakening; joy of Raftery leaping under the saddle, joy of wind racing backward as Raftery leapt forward. And then, what? A sudden impenetrable darkness, a sudden vast void all nothingness and darkness; a sudden sense of acute apprehension: ‘I’m lost, where am I? Where am I? I’m nothing—yes I am, I’m Stephen—but that’s being nothing—’ then that horrible sense of apprehension.

Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement. One could say things in writing without feeling self-conscious, without feeling shy and ashamed and foolish—one could even write of the days of young Nelson, smiling a very little as one did so.

Sometimes Puddle would sit alone in her bedroom reading and rereading Stephen’s strange compositions; frowning, or smiling a little in her turn, at those turbulent, youthful outpourings.

She would think: ‘Here’s real talent, real red-hot talent—interesting to find it in that great, athletic creature; but what is she likely to make of her talent? She’s up agin the world, if she only knew it!’ Then Puddle would shake her head and look doubtful, feeling sorry for Stephen and the world in general.

3

This then was how Stephen conquered yet another kingdom, and at seventeen was not only athlete but student. Three years under Puddle’s ingenious tuition, and the girl was as proud of her brains as of her muscles—a trifle too proud, she was growing conceited, she was growing self-satisfied, arrogant even, and Sir Philip must tease her: ‘Ask Stephen, she’ll tell us. Stephen, what’s that reference to Adeimantus, something about a mind fixed on true being—doesn’t it come in Euripides, somewhere? Oh, no, I’m forgetting, of course it’s Plato; really my Greek is disgracefully rusty!’ Then Stephen would know that Sir Philip was laughing at her, but very kindly.

In spite of her newly acquired book learning, Stephen still talked quite often to Raftery. He was now ten years old and had grown much in wisdom himself, so he listened with care and attention.

‘You see,’ she would tell him, ‘it’s very important to develop the brain as well as the muscles; I’m now doing both—stand still, will you, Raftery! Never mind that old corn-bin, stop rolling your eye round—it’s very important to develop the brain because that gives you an advantage over people, it makes you more able to do as you like in this world, to conquer conditions, Raftery.’

And Raftery, who was not really thinking of the corn-bin, but rolling his eye in an effort to answer, would want to say something too big for his language, which at best must consist of small sounds and small movements; would want to say something about a strong feeling he had that Stephen was missing the truth. But how could he hope to make her understand the age-old wisdom of all the dumb creatures? The wisdom of plains and primeval forests, the wisdom come down from the youth of the world.

At seventeen Stephen was taller than Anna, who had used to be considered quite tall for a woman, but Stephen was nearly as tall as her father—not a beauty this, in the eyes of the neighbours.

Colonel Antrim would shake his head and remark: ‘I like ‘em plump and compact, it’s more taking.’

Then his wife, who was certainly plump and compact, so compact in her stays that she felt rather breathless, would say: ‘But then Stephen is very unusual, almost—well, almost a wee bit unnatural—such a pity, poor child, it’s a terrible drawback; young men do hate that sort of thing, don’t they?’

But in spite of all this Stephen’s figure was handsome in a flat, broad-shouldered and slim flanked fashion; and her movements were purposeful, having fine poise, she moved with the easy assurance of the athlete. Her hands, although large for a woman, were slender and meticulously tended; she was proud of her hands. In face she had changed very little since childhood, still having Sir Philip’s wide, tolerant expression. What change there was only tended to strengthen the extraordinary likeness between father and daughter, for now that the bones of her face showed more clearly, as the childish fullness had gradually diminished, the formation of the resolute jaw was Sir Philip’s. His too the strong chin with its shade of a cleft; the well modelled, sensitive lips were his also. A fine face, very pleasing, yet with something about it that went ill with the hats on which Anna insisted—large hats trimmed with ribbons or roses or daisies, and supposed to be softening to the features.

Staring at her own reflection in the glass, Stephen would feel just a little uneasy: Am I queer looking or not?’ she would wonder, Suppose I wore my hair more like Mother’s?’ and then she would undo her splendid thick hair, and would part it in the middle and draw it back loosely.

The result was always far from becoming, so that Stephen would hastily plait it again. She now wore the plait screwed up very tightly in the nape of her neck with a bow of black ribbon. Anna hated this fashion and constantly said so, but Stephen was stubborn: ‘I’ve tried your way, Mother, and look like a scarecrow; you’re beautiful, darling, but your young daughter isn’t, which is jolly hard on you.’

She makes no effort to improve her appearance,’ Anna would reproach, very gravely.

These days there was constant warfare between them on the subject of clothes; quite a seemly warfare, for Stephen was learning to control her hot temper, and Anna was seldom anything but gentle. Nevertheless it was open warfare, the inevitable clash of two opposing natures who sought to express themselves in apparel, since clothes, after all, are a form of self-expression. The victory would now be on this side, now on that; sometimes Stephen would appear in a thick woollen jersey, or a suit of rough tweeds surreptitiously ordered from the excellent tailor in Malvern. Sometimes Anna would triumph, having journeyed to London to procure soft and very expensive dresses, which her daughter must wear in order to please her, because she would come home quite tired by such journeys. On the whole, Anna got her own way at this time, for Stephen would suddenly give up the contest, reduced to submission by Anna’s disappointment, always more efficacious than mere disapproval.

‘Here, give it to me!’ she would say rather gruffly, grabbing the delicate dress from her mother.

Then off she would rush and put it on all wrong, so that Anna would sigh in a kind of desperation, and would pat, readjust, unfasten and fasten, striving to make peace between wearer and model, whose inimical feelings were evidently mutual.

Came a day when Stephen was suddenly outspoken: ‘It’s my face,’ she announced, ‘something’s wrong with my face.’

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Anna, and her cheeks flushed a little, as though the girl’s words had been an offence, then she turned away quickly to hide her expression.

But Stephen had seen that fleeting expression, and she stood very still when her mother had left her, her own face growing heavy and sombre with anger, with a sense of some uncomprehended injustice. She wrenched off the dress and hurled it from her, longing intensely to rend it, to hurt it, longing to hurt herself in the process, yet filled all the while with that sense of injustice. But this mood changed abruptly to one of self pity; she wanted to sit down and weep over Stephen; on a sudden impulse she wanted to pray over Stephen as though she were someone apart, yet terribly personal too in her trouble. Going over to the dress she smoothed it out slowly; it seemed to have acquired an enormous importance; it seemed to have acquired the importance of prayer, the poor, crumpled thing lying crushed and dejected. Yet Stephen, these days, was not given to prayer, God had grown so unreal, so hard to believe in since she had studied Comparative Religion; engrossed in her studies she had somehow mislaid Him. But now, here she was, very wishful to pray, while not knowing how to explain her dilemma: ‘I’m terribly unhappy, dear, improbable God—’ would not be a very propitious beginning. And yet at this moment she was wanting a God and a tangible one, very kind and paternal; a God with a white flowing beard and wide forehead, a benevolent parent—Who would lean out of Heaven and turn His face sideways the better to listen from His cloud, upheld by cherubs and angels. What she wanted was a wise old family God, surrounded by endless heavenly relations. In spite of her troubles she began to laugh weakly, and the laughing was good for it killed self pity; nor can it have offended that Venerable Person whose image persists in the hearts of small children.

She donned the new dress with infinite precaution, pulling out its bows and arranging its ruffles. Her large hands were clumsy but now they were willing, very penitent hands full of deep resignation. They fumbled and paused, then continued to fumble with the endless small fastenings so cunningly hidden. She sighed once or twice but the sighs were quite patient, so perhaps in this Wise, after all, Stephen prayed.

2

Anna worried continually over her daughter; for one thing Stephen was a social disaster, yet at seventeen many a girl was presented, but the bare idea of this had terrified Stephen, and so it had had to be abandoned. At garden parties she was always a failure, seemingly ill at ease and ungracious. She shook hands much too hard, digging rings into fingers, this from sheer automatic nervous reaction. She spoke not at all, or else gabbled too freely, so that Anna grew vague in her own conversation; all eyes and ears she would be as she listened—it was certainly terribly hard on Anna. But if hard on Anna, it was harder on Stephen who dreaded these festive gatherings intensely; indeed her dread of them lacked all proportion, becoming a kind of unreasoning obsession. Every vestige of self-confidence seemed to’ desert her, so that Puddle, supposing she happened to be present would find herself grimly comparing this Stephen with the graceful, light-footed, proficient young athlete, with the clever and somewhat opinionated student who was fast outstripping her own powers as a teacher. Yes, Puddle would sit there grimly comparing, and would feel not a little uneasy as she did so. Then something of her pupil’s distress would reach her, so that perforce she would have to share it and as like as not she would want to shake Stephen.

Good Lord,’ she would think, ‘why can’t she hit back? It’s absurd, it’s outrageous to be so disgruntled by a handful of petty, half-educated yokels—a girl with her brain too, it’s simply outrageous! She’ll have to tackle life more forcibly than this, if she’s not going to let herself go under!’

But Stephen, completely oblivious of Puddle, would be deep in the throes of her old suspicion, the suspicion that had haunted her ever since childhood—she would fancy that people were laughing at her. So sensitive was she, that a half-heard sentence, a word, a glance, made her inwardly crumble. It might well be that people were not even thinking about her, much less discussing her appearance—no good, she would always imagine that the word, the glance, had some purely personal meaning. She would twitch at her hat with inadequate fingers, or walk clumsily, slouching a little as she did so, until Anna would whisper: