Ferlie

“ Had he wanted Ferlie to grow up? She had shown precocious signs of it during his last Leave. If he had lost his little companion of the Zoological Gardens England must now become as lonely as Burma. There was the influence of that strange woman who had had tea with them: the aunt. Her name had made him think of hair-oil. Cyprian laid down his pen. In the brightness of the firelight he had not noticed his omission to turn up the electric reading-lamp; and the East ages the eyes. He ought to feel younger than he did. One had to take malaria into account. How old was Ferlie now? ”

“ Ferlie was to blame, in that she made no effort to conciliate. She had not, it must be remembered, known initiation as a débutante into the ritual pertaining unto the Mammon of Precedence. All women were alike to her, from the Leading Lady to the Most Junior Bride whom everybody had voted, "of the Country, my dear." Not all men, because, very shortly, they showed signs of desiring, one by one, to make an individual impression. They began to discuss Themselves with her, preparatory to fathoming that complex of laughter and jarringly grave philosophy which was Herself. ”

“ Ferlie is so devoted to you."
"She is about the first child I have ever addressed, and will probably be the last."
"If she were a normal specimen, the first time you addressed her would have been the last," said Muriel, "I have heard you doing it. I am glad when you are with me you talk down to my level, Cyprian. I have not Ferlie's pristine trust in dictionarial expressions. I should imagine that you were swearing at me half the time."
"I think he talks very good English," said Mrs. Carmichael kindly. "We none of us speak enough like books these days." ”

“ Ferlie imagined Peter to be lacking a little in that commodity.
"Well, young woman!" was the Colonel's greeting as he unbashfully embraced her. "So you are playing truant and, likewise, leading the future Lord John Greville-Mainwaring astray from his ancient heritage. Are any of us to be enlisted as peace-makers?"
"Peace is my present objective," said Ferlie, "but I do not anticipate that Black Towers will supply it, Uncle Ricky, even at your invitation." ”

“ For myself, I am content with the present position so long as there is John to carry on the title some time or other.
"I wish you well, Ferlie, and, if it comforts you, I do not think it would do any harm if you occasionally prayed for my unregenerate soul."
Ferlie laid this sheet before Cyprian, without comment.
"Swine," was his exact expression.
"Do you really feel like that, or is it only pose?"
"Pose? How do you suppose any average man would feel?"
"You're not the average man." ”

“ It would be more than necessary for him to send Ferlie a wedding present.
Nothing impersonal could prove of interest in the ancestral halls of Mainwaring. Yet, there did not seem to be any personal message that Ferlie would be likely to welcome from him at the moment. A younger man had felt more cause for resentment, that Ferlie, during the short intimate moments when she hailed their recovered friendship, had not confided in him her intention of marrying this man. Cyprian was, himself, incapable of resentment against her, however well-deserved. ”

“ A nude figure with hands extended to push back some invisible advancing foe. I bought it. There is terror in the face, lest the unknown power should crush completely; but there is also cold resistance and the strength of despair. I will show you the thing. You, who remember Ferlie as so poignantly alive...."
The speaker broke off for a moment.
"... But I must come to the incident which prompted my letter to you. I had gone unexpectedly to Black Towers, and only John greeted me in that mausoleum of a hall. He is a Ferlie product all right, but only just four. And ... one never knows.... ”

“ Dancers are born, not made. Ferlie was a Lucky One. Clifford Greville-Mainwaring began to enjoy her ingenuous enjoyment. She acknowledged very recent escape from school but wore a mystifyingly philosophical air which intrigued him. He had been fully prepared to initiate her into the mysteries of a first flirtation; always excepting, he supposed, the school music or drawing-master of ascetic or bulbous personal appearance.
But she had proved very unapproachable, even behind the most sheltering palms in the conservatory with its cunningly shaded lights. ”

“ Peter sat back on his haunches, busily dissecting the corpse of a camera.
"I wonder!" cryptically. Said Ferlie, "You always thought queerly about these things."
"Perhaps I still think queerly about them. That is, if common sense is queer.... Phyllis professed to be in love with me. Of course you are naturally more religious. I suppose you inherit it from Mother. I do not mean that you are an orthodox Churchwoman—save the mark! But your sentiments are religious, Ferlie. Love, the Sacrament! ... and so on. I know that Love is a joke invented by Nature to enable her to work out her own ends. ”

“ Ferlie, in those days, had not even attained the dignity of flapperdom. Too small for khaki-worship. And it was during those years, he had heard, that Muriel began to lose her silver-fair head. He remembered his one last futile attempt to win her before returning to Burma. His hand, the forefinger stained with ink, stretched irresolutely towards the telephone. As if in direct answer to the impulse a bell rang. The electric bell of his flat. Curious. The valet of his rooms used a latch-key, discreetly, when the flat's occupant was out, and had already taken his dinner order. ”

“ Meanwhile,
"That chap and Ferlie," said Peter, having faded away unnoticed to his mother's sitting-room, "are brazenly approaching matrimony to-night under the umbrella-stand. From what I could gather Ferlie seems to consider it an over-rated institution."
Mrs. Carmichael's embroidery dropped on her lap.
"You do not mean to say she is refusing him, Peter? When Lady Cardew and I have worked so hard."
"Oh, have you?" asked Peter. "Why?"
"It is a mystery to me," said his mother, "how short-sighted men can be. Do you happen to know his income?" ”

“ The features, in repose not unlike Ferlie's, were attractively gentle. She leant back in the dark tapestried chair and thought of the lovers, of the long trail which lay before them, of the spiritual courage supporting their rare decision. Could a man and a woman live under such conditions, loving as these two loved? ”

“ Cyprian protested at her making herself responsible for their own three teas.
"Don't be silly," she advised him, "I am quite old enough to make a nephew of you if I wish. Ferlie is my great-niece and it is quite useless to try and hide the ghastly fact. And I have quite a lot of money scattered about in odd corners of the earth. Some day Ferlie shall have some to build a Temple to her Freedom goddess or god. She will find, sooner or later, that the bars she objects to are made of gold. ”

“ Carmichael gave him tea at one end of the big drawing-room, full of Eastern spoil, and Peter strolled in for his, late, abstracted and unimpressed.
"I've heard that Ferlie is a decent dancer," he said.
And, "We shall always regret that if she, eventually, has a Season in Simla," said Mrs. Carmichael, "her father and I will not be there to see her a social success. Simla is always full of pretty girls, but, sometimes, I think that Ferlie has unusual charm." ”

“ Carmichael began to price Ferlie's winter coat and remind herself to impress it upon the matron at Peter's school that Peter was really an Exceptional Boy. She believed in a private appeal to the only woman in an establishment full of unimaginative men. Pictured the red-roofed bungalow in Rangoon without the children's toys annoying her husband in the verandah. ”

“ Ever since, each has been looking for its true half in order to regain the lost power the Perfect Whole first possessed."
"But surely the bi-sexual insects are the lowest in the scale of Evolution," argued Ferlie, shrinking somewhat from the suggestion that Peter's new Heaven and Earth, amalgamated, would contain no marrying nor giving in marriage. Because, though she, at fourteen, had pledged herself to eternally single blessedness, she rather liked to see other people marrying and driving away in their best clothes, looking happy. ”

“ He particularly refrained from asking Ferlie to do so in his note, in case she too should be very busy these days. There would be gaieties in town for the Carmichaels' daughter at eighteen, and hordes of young men who did complicated things with their feet in ball-rooms. Young men, so much younger than Cyprian, that they could not have shared his short career as a soldier, early invalided out in the first push. ”

“ Ferlie wondered if it were principle or whether he still considered himself irrevocably yoked to Phyllis's memory...
What was her mother saying about Peter? Mrs. Carmichael's plaintive tones duetted with the singing of the kettle laying the foundations for her nightly cup of cocoa.
"And, of course, you must do just as you think best.... Poor Peter! Your father's convalescence is being so retarded with worry. Though, I'm sure, at my time of life it isn't very easy to begin to do without things. You, fresh from school, young and strong, will probably not miss luxuries.... ”

“ Just the flash of an eyelid, and Jardine was pursuing his majestic course over the grass, his back-view impervious to criticism and comment. Not until the last glimpse of his black coat-tails had disappeared behind the yew-bushes did Ferlie rise to her feet and face Cyprian beside the laughing faun. Again that illusory sightlessness filmed her dilated pupils. She looked through him and beyond into a blank pall of darkness.
"Cyprian," the voice was dead like her face, "Take me away."
He fancied the half-human leering thing of stone stirred in evil exultation. ”

“ Mused Ferlie's mother, it was all very well for the men-folk to content themselves with prayer by proxy, reaping where their loyal wives had sown, but if the women were also to desert the old and tried paths to that Better Land, Far, Far Away, the chances were that the Judgment would fall due before anyone had reached those Eternal Bowers, and the travellers find themselves shooed into Outer Darkness to the tune of "Depart, ye Cursed!" ”

“ The people, by nature, were no heroes, and it took more than the sight of the foreign lady's stricken insensibility to induce them to collect canoes at this late hour, when the labours of the day should be over.
The padre's influence did more than Mr. Toms' promises of reward, but little Jelly, having finally shouldered his shot-gun, was surprised to find Ferlie prepared to accompany them armed with a small despatch case and Cyprian's revolver.
"The children, Mrs. Sterne," he stammered. "Surely you w-will remain w-with them."
"There will be Naomi and Young Brown," said Ferlie coolly. ”

“ He has never shown any interest in the child—looks upon its arrival as a duty mutually performed. There has been no public quarrel; no cruelty that we know of, and the rumours, however unsavoury, do not provide the evidence for divorce proceedings. In any case, Ferlie has joined the Church of Rome. ”

“ Ferlie was saying excitedly. "I am speaking cold sense when I repeat that it will be impossible for me to hide much longer from Cyprian that I am not spending my afternoons at the Club. I actually had to go there to-day to avoid questions before he went out into the district."
"Well, it's no use," Digby Maur's huskily uneven tones replied. "You're great on 'control' and all that, and the means you employ to get here do not concern me. You will continue to come for as long as I need you, because you can't help yourself ”

“ Did I lie to you after the return of Hla Byu into our joint lives? Did I leave you and withdraw to fight my battle alone when she drowned herself? I wonder whether the earthly years make a difference, Ferlie, after all? I wonder whether you are capable of understanding what love means to a man who has lived nearly half a century without it, and who suddenly finds himself face to face with its illimitable mysteries? ”

“ As a first step towards bursting upon Humanity in the guise of Universal Healer, he had taken Havelock Ellis in large indigestible doses, concluding inflexibly that all trouble dated, not so much from Adam and Eve as from Lilith, who made of them Two, instead of One, like herself.
"Originally, we were in all probability One Perfect Sex," he told Ferlie. "Artificial experimenting caused the split, which, naturally, left one sex the complement of the other. We find the old allegory of Jupiter dividing by sword the race of gods which, having created, he had begun to fear. ”

“ Visions of Peter followed by a Herd released from lawful matrimony caused Ferlie an instant's misgiving.
Of course it was admitted that the marriage service had been somewhat unfortunately reformed already once in the past by Cranmer, who, influenced by German relatives, had introduced the Germanic idea of servile obedience for the woman, absent in the old Catholic form. The modern Anti-Reformationists were rightly demanding fresh revision and omissions. "Stronger ants," she supposed. ”

“ To the field of literature and speculation Ferrier restored glimpses of the sunshine of Paradise. Under his magical spell they ceased to look like fields that had been cursed with weeds, watered with sweat and tears, and levelled and planted with untold labour. Every utterance of his tended alike to disclose the beauty and penetrate the mystery of existence. He was a persevering philosopher, but he was also a poet by a gift of nature. ”