Tono-Bungay

AR

ley between that great beginning and Lady Grove with more and more costly and ambitious experiments in aerial navi

h their general merit, and which it is ridiculous to be either conceited or modest about. I did get through a very big mass of work in those years, working for a time with a concentrated fierceness that left little of such energy or capacity as I possess unused. I worked out a series of problems connected with the stability of bodies pitching in the air and the internal movements of the wind, and I also revolutionised one leading part at last of the theory of explosive engines. These things are to be fou

pon the steering of inflated bags, the latter a particularly expensive branch of work. I was no doubt moved by something of the same spirit of lavish expenditure that was running away with my uncle in these developments. Presently my establishment above Lady Grove had grown to a painted wood chalet big enough to accommodate six men, and in which I would sometimes live for three weeks together; to a gasometer, to a motor-house, to three big corrugated-roofed sheds and lock-up houses, to a stage from which to start gliders, to a workshop and so forth. A rough road was made. We brought

ssential work goes; that for me is its peculiar merit. Scientific truth is the remotest of mistresses; she hides in strange places, she is attained by tortuous and laborious roads, but SHE IS ALWAYS THERE! Win to her and she will not fail you; she is yours and mankind's for ever. She is reality, the one reality I have found in this strange disorder of existence. She will not s

r way. Then in all directions I relaxed. I did a large amount of work, but I never troubled to think whether it was my maximum nor whether the moods and indolences that came to me at times were avoidable things. With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and foolishly, drank freely and followed my impulses more and more carelessly. I felt no reason why I should do anything else. Never at any point did I use myself to the edge of my capacity. The emotional crisis of my divorce did not produce any immediate change in these matters of personal discipline. I found som

gle for life takes the form of competitive advertisement and the effort to fill your neighbour's eye, when there is no urgent demand either for personal courage, sound nerves or stark beauty, we find ourselves by accident. Always before these times the bulk of the people did not over-eat themselves, because they couldn't, whether they wanted to do so or not, and all but a very few were kept "fit" by unavoidable exercise and personal danger. Now, if only

these things went down the air, and the only way to find o

, I supposed, about equal to the chance of success. I believed that with a dawn-like lucidity. I had begun with a glider that I imagined was on the lines of the Wright brothers' aeroplane, but I could not be sure. It might turn over. I might upset it. It might burrow its nose at the end and smash itself and me. The conditions of the flight necessitated alert attention; it wasn't a thing to be done by jumping off and shutting one's eyes or getting angry or drunk to do it. One had to use one's weight to balan

ance had happened. I felt intensely alive and my nerves were strung like a bow. I shifted a limb, swerved and

out of the way!" The bird doubled itself up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the right abruptly and vanished from my circle of interest. Then I saw the shadow of

and I had learnt much more than soaring. I tilted up her nose at the right moment, levelled again and grounded like a snowflake on a windless day.

es because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. The shame of that cowardi

ere to be got upon a horse. But they put me on made horses, and I conceived a perhaps unworthy contempt for the certitudes of equestrian exercise in comparison with the adventures of mechanism. Also I walked along the high wall at the back of Lady Grove garden, and at last brought myself to stride the gap where the gate comes. If I didn't altogether get rid of a certain giddy instinct by such exercises, at least I trained my will until it didn't matter. And soon I no longer dreaded flight, but

-eyed, and with the old disorderly wave of the hair from her brow, came back into my life. She came riding down a grass path in the thickets below Lady Grove, perched up on a huge black horse, and the old Earl of Carnaby and Archie Garvell, her half-brother, were with he

m. For a man of sixty-five who had sinned all the sins, so they said, and laid waste the most magnificent political debut of any man of his generation, he seemed t

uncle, who was sometimes a little too general and generous with titles

reat place over the

" said my uncle. "It looks big bec

e too much of them. But before our time they used

the silent figure behin

ady Drew. She was looking at me, and her dainty brow under her broad brimmed hat-she was wearing a grey hat and loose unbuttoned coat-wa

dible to me she

he earl and to

not look back. I stood for a second or so at the crossing of the lanes, watching her recede, and then became aware that my uncle was already some paces off and talking over his shoulder in the belief that I was close behind. I turned about and strode to overtake him. My mind was full of Beatrice and this surprise. I remembered her simply as a Normandy. I'd clean forgotten that Garvell was the son and she the step-daughter of our neighbour, Lady Osprey.

" I

's a sort of Savoir Faire, something-it's an old-fashioned phrase, George, but a good one there's a Bong-Tong.... It's like the Oxford turf,

myself, "be a picture

about him," said my uncle, "b

so long? Those queer little brows of hers, the touch o

ination. That and leisure, George. When I was a young

f Beatrice whatever when I met Garvell again that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish antagonism

I

g a letter behind her coffee-machi

window bay at Lady Grove that looks upo

rogative note and

?" asked my aunt. "I've

e young

uette, George, but her line is a bit unusual. Pra

-mother,

Lady Osprey. They're to call on me, anyhow, next Wedn

E

-for

force of character. W

hind the coffee-machine and regarding me with wide blue curiosi

an I've known you," I sai

offee-machine as I did so. She was greatly inte

you saw her? You've had her on

idn't tell you

my aunt conclusively. "That's what you t

lump, dressed with Victorian fussiness, living at the intellectual level of palmistry and genteel fiction, pink in the face and generally flustered by a sense of my aunt's social strangeness and disposed under the circumstances to behave rather like an imitation of the more queenly moments of her own cook. The one seemed made of whalebone, the other of dough. My aunt was nervous, partly through the intrinsic difficulty of handling the lady and partly because of her passionate desire to watch Beatrice and me, and her nervousness took a common form with her, a wider clumsiness of gesture and an exacerbation of her habitual oddity of phrase which d

f being grown-up and responsible. She guided her step-mother through the first encounter, scrutinised my aunt, and got

met," she sa

in the

ren! I remembered it all except

ng thorough. I looked up and met them square

" she said, meditating upon my face

from the others, and her

s though that was a pleasant memory. "And when it was a

the We

I had done you, I suppose.... I'

Beatrice. "Such a beautiful gallery!" Then she stared very hard at

case is rather good," sai

ief meaning no doubt was caution about myself, but much of it was just meaning at large. I chanced to catch the response in a mirror and detected Beatrice with her nose wrinkled into a swift an

th serene tranquillity, and allowing the unwilling feet on the stairs to widen their distance fr

when she thought her step-

you get her

er

wave of the hand at hall and tall windows and sun

ed to be a little chemist about twenty miles from Bladesover.

ed me with interested eyes

cognised me

. I couldn't place you, but I knew I knew you.

in," I ventured. "I'd

orget those ch

ready zest in one another. The thing was so. We pleased each other, we had no doubt in our minds that we pleased each other. From th

bout you," she said with an easy intima

y aunt helped with a word or so about my broken ribs. Lady Osprey evidently regarded flying as a most indesirabl

she said compactly

id, "we do w

cated a height of about four feet from the ground.

she said to her ninth or tenth cake. Beatrice burst into cheerful laughter with her eye on me. I was lyin

she said with quiet distinctne

talked no more

t the tea-table in my mother's room. She was amazingly like that little Princess of my Bladesover memories, the wilful misbehaviours of her hair seemed the same

od up a

terrace?" she said, and fo

ed a vie

tell me," she said, "all about yourself. Tell me about yourself; I know such duffers of men! They all do the same things. How did you get-h

climbing,

, but I have. I've used you as a sort of lay figure-when I've told myself stories. But you've always been rather stiff and difficult in

s it much of a fight?

't kno

st, perhaps and I made no great figure in that. I and my uncle mixed a medicine and it blew

n't do." She medi

?" sa

nt to the Phillbrick gang. And they let it! And I and m

ere you are! Now you're here, what are you going to do? You're young. Is it to be Parliament? heard some m

gine me a soldier and place me years ago. She made me feel more planless and incidental than ever. "Yo

he thought, and keen to hear about it. She had thought all the work so far had been a mere projecting of impossi

us!" she said, with

's dang

!" Lady Osp

ed from the wa

you do thi

rrows. East of Cres

d people co

please. Only

ay soon." She looked at me thoughtful

he quality of Beatrice, with her incidental presence, with things

re a student of theory and literature for a time; I hit upon the string of considerations that led me to what is called Ponderevo's Principle and my F.R.S., and I worked this out in three long papers. Meanwhile I made a lot of turn-table and glider models and started in upon an idea of combining gas-bags and gliders. Balloon work was new to me. I had made one or two ascents in the balloons o

nd not with an internal balloonette. The trouble was to make the thing contractile. This I sought to do by fixing a long, fine-meshed silk net over it that was fastened to be rolled up on two longitudinal rods. Practically I contracted my sausage gas-bag by netting it down. The ends were too complex for me to describe here, but I thought them out elaborately and they were very carefully pl

ng. It tore aft as soon as I began to contract the balloon, and the last two segments immediately bulged through the hole, exactly as an inner tube will bulge through the rupt

Roberts A was an unqualified success. It had run out of the shed admirably at nine or ten miles an hour or more, and although t

n. Only by looking up, as it were, and turning my head back could I see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and the rapid successive passages, swish, swish, sw

eterinary surgeon, and one or two others. My shadow moved a little to the north of them like the shadow of a fish. At Lady Grove the servants were out on the lawn, and the Duffield school playground swarmed with children too indifferent to aeronautics to cease their playing. But in the Crest Hill direction-the place looked extraordinarily squat and ugly from above-there were knots and strings of staring workmen everywhe

nstant when my balloon was at its systole, the whole apparatus was, I am convinced, heavier than air. That,

with horror. I couldn't see what was happening at all and I couldn't imagine. It was a mysterious, inexplicable dive. The thing, it see

tly it wasn't that. I did, at any rate, whatever other impressions there were, release the winding of the outer net and let the balloon expand again, and that no doubt did something to break my fall. I don't remember doing that. Indeed, all I do remember is the giddy effect upon the landscape of f

aft. Then down I swooped, very swiftly, but not nearly so steeply as I imagined I was doing. "Fifteen or twenty degrees," said Cothope, "to be exact

g to drop into the Farthing Down beeches. "You hit the trees," he said, "and the whole affair stood on its nose among them, an

l. I remember I felt a sort of wincing, "Now it comes!" as the trees rushed up to me. If I remember that, I should remember steering. Then the propeller sma

at things that broke, tumbled through a froth of green and yellow into a shadowy world of grea

got a leg around it below its junction, and so was able presently to clamber down, climbing very coolly and deliberately. I dropped ten feet or so from the lowest branch and fell on my feet. "That's all rig

ne is hurt, and perhaps badly hurt, and has still to discover just how far one is hurt. I explored my face carefully and found unfamiliar contours on the left side. The broken end of a branch had driven right through my cheek, damaging my cheek and teeth and gums, and left a splinter of

stopped, anyhow," I

n odd twist for my mind to take. But it w

ing home unaided, because I was thirt

dge of things and blotted them out. I don't remember falling down. I fainted from exc

e was trying to apply the methodical teachings of the St. John's Ambulance classes to a rather abnormal case, Beatrice came galloping through the trees full-tilt, with Lord

ads, and never seem quite to lose 'em,"

d at Bedley Corner, the Carnaby dower house, or down to Carnaby's place at Easting. Beatrice had no doubt in the matter, for she mean

so I've taken a pedometer over it since

straight," said Cothope, finishing

independent system of her own, also vanished and recurred intermittently. At home they obeyed the rule of an inflexible old maid, Charlotte, and Beatrice exercised all the rights of proprietorship in Carnaby's extensive stables. Her interest in me was from the first undisguised. She found her way to my worksheds and deve

cts, and it does seem to me that this way in which men and women make audiences for one another is a curiously influential force in their lives. For some it seems an audience is a vital necessity, they seek audiences as creatures seek food; others again, my uncle among them, can play to an imaginary audience. I, I think, have lived and can live without one. In my adolescence I was my own audience and my own court of honour. And to have an audience in one's mind is to play a part,

nctive, as sincere as the leap of a tiger. But until matters drew to a crisis with Beatrice, there was an immense imaginative insurgence of a quite different quality. I am setting down here very gravely, and perhaps absurdly, what are no doubt elementary commonplaces for innumerable people. This love that grew up betwee

held me. But it did also push me towards vulgar and showy things. At bottom it was disingenuous; it gave my life the quality of stage scenery, with one side to the audience, another side that wasn't meant to show, and an econ

oo, of any fine per

elationship. The elemental thing was

I'd had before. I was soaring my long course from the framework on the old barrow by my sheds down to Tinker's Corner. It is a clear stretch of downland, except for two or three thickets of box and thorn to the right of my course; one transverse trough, in which there is bush and a small rabbit warren, comes in from the east. I had started, and

f falling undamaged-a poor chance it would have been-in order to avoid any risk to her, or whether I would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This latter I did. She had alr

going back to where her hor

lid from her saddle into my arms

gs," she said, a

nd I thought for a mo

garding our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by th

a moment trembling, and then sat down on the tu

she

ile Cothope looked at her with an expre

Then Cothope remarked that pe

ss Beatrice. I see no particular reason why that thought should have come to me in that moment, but it did. I do not believe that before then I had thought of our relations in such terms at all.

en she uncovered her face. "I shan't wan

ith her, usually old Carnaby, and he would do the bulk of the talking. All through September she was away. When we were alone together there was a

room in the Bedley Corner dower-house with Beatrice presiding over an inefficient nurse

not permit that, and kept me at Bedley Corner three clear days. In the afternoon of the second day she became extrem

her to m

rough bandages, and with some little difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I was feverish and in

able?" s

es

I read

want to

I'd better t

, "I want to

in the eyes. "I don't-I don't want you to talk

w chances

talk now. Let me chatter ins

t much,"

her you

be disfigured," I

something quite different. "Did you t

know. But that's all righ

nial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all? When I saw you on the ground I cert

hings, but I was thin

l equals?" I

e. "Queer quest

are

of a courtesy Baron who died-of general disreputableness,

sed. I want to know i

I must plead with her. "Damn these bandages!"

e you doing? Why are you trying to sit up? Sit down

y the shoulders and pushed me back upon the pillow. Sh

close to my face. "I asked you not to ta

oiding me for a

known. Put your hand b

had come to her cheeks, and her eyes were very b

estioned h

n my chest. Her ey

nswer you no

I say any

you mean?

de no

an it must

no

my whole soul was

it has to be 'No!' It can't be. It's utterly, final

id, "when w

rry. I can'

d you talk?" she crie

something it was

elmas daisies awry. "Why did you talk like that?" she sa

d. "Is it some circumst

social positi

in. For a long time we were absolutely still. The wind and rain

me if I loved

t's THAT!

said. "But if you wan

," sh

d at one

my heart, if yo

the devil

the shepherd's pipe music from the last act in "Tristan and Isolde." Presently she missed a note, failed again, ran her finger heavil

nger for Beatrice, and I was too inflamed and weakened to conceal the state of my mind. I was feebly angry because of the irritation of dressing, and particularly of the

bed," said I, "if I may have a word with Miss Beatrice.

had my ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly I do not know, and

and stood by my beds

child, "is that I can't take this as final. I want to see you and tal

nd began to snivel, "I can't res

talk it all over with you again. When you are well. I promise I

w. All you want to know you

ike to

the door was closed, s

egan whispering very softly and r

ce, my king. Women are such things of mood-or I would have behaved differently. We say 'No' when we mean 'Yes'-and fly into crises. So now, Yes-yes-yes. I will. I can't even kiss you. Gi

said, "

l be able to-understand them. But now they don't matter. Only you know this m

understand. I wish

side mine for a moment an

iculties there are," I

I

al sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies, "just the old flowers there were in your room," said my aunt, with a relentless eye on me. I didn't get any talk alone with Beatrice then, and she took occasion to tell us

made no reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl: "I can

ations, the blottesque intellectual battlegrounds over which I have been fighting. I find this account of my relations to Beatrice quite the most difficult part of my story to write. I happen to be a very objective

ow high, now low, now exalted, and now intensely physical. No one has ever yet dared to tell a love story completely, its alternations

tely that worship mingled with a high, impatient resolve to make her mine, to take her by strength and courage, to do my loving in a violent heroic manner? And then the dou

me and perplexed

planation, and the most exalted and romantic confidence in her

ay from me when it was so clearly manifest she loved me? Did she think of marrying him? Had I invaded some long-planned scheme? It was evident he did not like me, that in some way I spoilt the world for him. She returned to Bedley Corner, and for some we

on the air. The framework was to be hollow like a bird's bones, airtight, and the air pumped in or out, and the weight of fuel I carried changed. I talked much and boasted to Cothope-whom I suspected of scepticisms about this new type-of what it would do, and it progressed-slowly. It progressed slowly because I was restless and uncertain. At times I would go away to London to snatch some chance of seeing Beatrice there, at time

things of the sort that need atmosphere, baldly and furtively. I wrote to her several times and she wrote back notes that I would sometimes respond to altoget

wrangle over them in my workroom-whi

n't you let me know the secret? That's what I'm fo

out no longer against the

at left her no loopholes; I behaved as

rote, "or I will come and take you.

hes of the trees. We walked to and fro for an hour or more, and from the first I pitched the key high in romance and made unders

foolish to let her make. I don't know. I confess I have never completely understood Beatrice. I confess I am still perplexed at many thing

he said, but though I he

beyond her controlling, but none the less interesting-much as she had looked at m

hought she sm

ot overcome for you! Do your people think I'm no equal for you? Who

ght of you. I have wanted something t

ve me an honourable excuse for it, and I'll put al

g base pride. I said these empty and foolish things, and they are part of

h megalomania to

y is a better man

ed, stung to

an; when you get away from me you think I'm a cheat and a cad.... There's not a word of truth in the things they say about us. I've been slack. I've left things. But we

ain that I would cease to boast of t

merely personal discontent to our financial position. It was all very well to talk as I had done of wealth and power and peerages, but what did I know nowadays of my uncle's position? Suppose in the midst of such boasting an

train and went up

lly stood. Before I had talked to my uncle for ten minutes I felt like a man