meditated, saying nothing. Then, flinging her head back and laughing merrily:
‘Do you know, Luko,’ she said, ‘I once tried to make myself literate. I read and read at your books − oh, for hours − when you weren’t in. I thought you’d hate me for being ignorant, but I gave it up ‘cos you didn’t seem to like me any better when I knew things out of books, and just as well when I didn’t. But I was dreadfully unhappy about it for awhile.’
‘I didn’t think you were ever unhappy.’
‘Oh! − lots of times.’
‘Over what, for example?’
She looked at him with her mouth askew.
‘Not over that Warrrender creature, anyhow!’ she said at last.
They agreed that the Warrender creature was not worth unhappiness.
‘You know, Luke,’ said Dussie by and by, ‘Marty never liked that Lucy Warrender. I used to try to argue her out of it, and you see she was right.’
‘Marty has a way of being right on points of judgment. Spiritual instinct. She’s clear-eyed. Like day.’
It were hard to say whether it was by reason of spiritual instinct that Martha disliked Miss Warrender, but very easy to say that she liked her lecturing no better as the term went on. No doubt but that Miss Warrender knew her subject and lectured, as she talked, brilliantly and with authority; but she had no power to fuse the errant enthusiasms of the young minds before her, to startle them from their preoccupations and smite them to a common ardour to which all contributed and by which all were set alight. She had not discovered that lecturing is a communal activity. For once Martha found that the getting of understanding had no charm, and confounding theme with lecturer, she hated both; though as far as Luke was concerned she gathered from both Dussie and Common Room conversation that she need fear nothing more to Luke’s honour from Miss Warrender. She was therefore shining again with gladness, rejoicing that he no longer laid himself open to the misrepresentations of the scandal-mongers and quite unaware that Luke was raging inwardly at that disgusting feminine folly that will not allow a man plain Monday’s fare, a little rational conversation on topics of current interest, without the woman’s obtruding her womanhood on him and forcing upon him the meanness of repulsing her. He had no more desire to offer love to a woman other than Dussie than to offer her a used teacup; but with his avidity for exploring other people’s minds, he wanted as much intellectual comradeship as he could obtain, from men and women alike. He wanted to go on talking philosophy to Miss Warrender as he had always done, and being unaccustomed to repressing any of his energetic and multitudinous impulses, resented the make of human nature.
Seeing no alteration in Martha’s shining calm, and clearly persuaded that she was in love with Luke, Dussie thought: ‘She is heroic.’ But Martha was not heroic. She had her paradise within herself and it sufficed her. What she possessed was more to her than what she lacked.
Luke continued to believe her a spirit: but her spirit haunted him. He was arrogant but not conceited; and that she might love him had not crossed his mind. Indeed he felt a subtle fear of her; and fear is not the way to truth. But during that spring Luke began to grow up. Though he hardly admitted it, Miss Warrender had sobered him; and Martha’s rebuke had gone deeper than he knew. He was thoughtful, brooding sometimes until Dussie marvelled. He would turn from her finest dishes, light a cigarette and fling it untasted on the fire.
‘A burnt offering,’ he said, answering her remonstrance.
‘A burnt … what on earth?’
‘Well, a sacrifice to the gods. You set fire to valuable things, you know.’
‘And what god do you sacrifice cigarettes to?’
He said: ‘An unknown god.’
‘But what is it, Luke?’ she cried one evening. ‘You don’t eat or anything. You seem hardly to know that I’m here.’
‘I don’t quite know, Duss,’ he said, rumpling his hair. He was rueful and puzzled; a boy who had remained a boy too long and found maturity difficult.
‘It’s … some sort of spiritual adventure, I suppose,’ he said.
And he began to talk of Martha.
‘Remember the time she told me I shouldn’t be so friendly with Lucy Warrender? All nonsense, of course. Oh, in this particular case she happened to have some justification, but in principle she was quite wrong. But somehow afterwards I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Herself. Not what she said. But her nature. Her nature is like an exquisitely chastened work of art. She does without. Rejects. Takes from life only its finest. And she doesn’t want the other things. She’s amazing, you know − to want so little and to lack so much. She doesn’t really want the things we want − chocs and shocks and frocks and things − all our social excitements. But it’s not because she’s satisfied with a thin and empty life. I expect it’s because she has something much more wildly exciting of her own. I thought and thought about it till I wanted to have it too − to get at the positive side of asceticism. What it gives you, not what it denies. It was really an intellectual curiosity − wanted to know what it was like. Inquisitiveness, you know.’
He could not humble himself far enough as yet to acknowledge that it was more than an intellectual curiosity.
‘You’re awfully funny, Luke,’ said Dussie. ‘Imagine punishing yourself out of inquisitiveness.’
‘It’s what scientists and explorers and people do. But it isn’t punishing myself. That’s the great discovery. It’s the most thrilling excitement − refusing yourself things. Things you normally enjoy. The thrill of doing without them is far more exciting than having them. Comes to be a sort of self-indulgence. A Lenten orgy. A feast of fasting. A lap of luxury. I shall take to lashing myself next as an inordinate appetite. Like smoking, you know. Strokes instead of whiffs. Shan’t you love ironing my hair shirt?’
Dussie’s heart had gone cold. Was he in love with Martha? She turned to the piano and played a ranting reel.
‘You’ll have to look after your costume yourself,’ she cried over her shoulder. ‘I don’t know how to dress for spiritual adventures. I never have any, you see. Shouldn’t recognize one if I met it in my porridge.’
They were both growing up and afraid at first to share their knowledge.
Crux of a Spiritual Adventure
Throughout that spring Martha had walked enchanted. A spell was on her that altered the very contours of her body. Unlike the maleficent spells of the witches, that shrivel the flesh and destroy the human semblance, the spell that was on Martha rounded her figure, filled out the hollows of her cheeks, straightened her shoulders. In spite in her harassed and laborious winter, she had never been so strong and well. Her limbs were tireless. She carried her head high. The philtre she had drunk was of very ancient efficacy. Under the influence of her conscious love for Luke, she was rapidly becoming what Luke loved her for not being − a woman.
‘That’s grand hurdies ye’re gettin’ on you, lassie,’
