Aaron's Rod, D. H. Lawrence [book recommendations for young adults .TXT] 📗

“Risky! I don’t see that! Music risky? Bach? Beethoven! No, I don’t agree. On the contrary, I think it is most elevating—most morally inspiring. No, I tremble before it because it is so wonderful and elevating.”

“I often find it makes me feel diabolical,” said he.

“That is your misfortune, I am sure,” said Lady Franks. “Please do take another—but perhaps you don’t like mushrooms?”

Aaron quite liked mushrooms, and helped himself to the entree.

“But perhaps,” said she, “you are too modern. You don’t care for Bach or Beethoven or Chopin—dear Chopin.”

“I find them all quite as modern as I am.”

“Is that so! Yes. For myself I am quite old-fashioned—though I can appreciate Strauss and Stravinsky as well, some things. But my old things—ah, I don’t think the moderns are so fine. They are not so deep. They haven’t fathomed life so deeply.” Lady Franks sighed faintly.

“They don’t care for depths,” said Aaron.

“No, they haven’t the capacity. But I like big, deep music. Oh, I love orchestra. But my instrument is the piano. I like the great masters, Bach, Beethoven. They have such faith. You were talking of faith—believing that things would work out well for you in the end. Beethoven inspires that in me, too.”

“He makes you feel that all will be well with you at last?”

“Yes, he does. He makes me feel faith in my PERSONAL destiny. And I do feel that there is something in one’s special fate. I feel that I myself have a special kind of fate, that will always look after me.”

“And you can trust to it?”

“Yes, I can. It ALWAYS turns out right. I think something has gone wrong—and then, it always turns out right. Why when we were in London —when we were at lunch one morning it suddenly struck me, haven’t I left my fur cloak somewhere? It was rather cold, so I had taken it with me, and then never put it on. And I hadn’t brought it home. I had left it somewhere. But whether in a taxi, or in a shop, or in a little show of pictures I had been to, I couldn’t remember. I COULD NOT remember. And I thought to myself: have I lost my cloak? I went round to everywhere I could think of: no-trace of it. But I didn’t give it up. Something prompted me not to give it up: quite distinctly, I felt something telling me that I should get it back. So I called at Scotland Yard and gave the information. Well, two days later I had a notice from Scotland Yard, so I went. And there was my cloak. I had it back. And that has happened to me almost every time. I almost always get my things back. And I always feel that something looks after me, do you know: almost takes care of me.”

“But do you mean when you lose things—or in your life?”

“I mean when I lose things—or when I want to get something I want—I am very nearly ALWAYS successful. And I always feel there is some sort of higher power which does it for me.”

“Finds your cloak for you.”

“Yes. Wasn’t it extraordinary? I felt when I saw my cloak in Scotland Yard: There, I KNEW I should recover you. And I always feel, as I say, that there is some higher power which helps me. Do you feel the same?”

“No, not that way, worse luck. I lost a batch of music a month ago which didn’t belong to me—and which I couldn’t replace. But I never could recover it: though I’m sure nobody wanted it.”

“How very unfortunate! Whereas my fur cloak was just the thing that gets stolen most.”

“I wished some power would trace my music: but apparently we aren’t all gifted alike with guardian angels.”

“Apparently not. And that is how I regard it: almost as a gift, you know, that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle.”

“For always recovering your property?”

“Yes—and succeeding in my undertakings.”

“I’m afraid I had no fairy godmother.”

“Well—I think I had. And very glad I am of it.”

“Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at his hostess.

So the dinner sailed merrily on.

“But does Beethoven make you feel,” said Aaron as an afterthought, “in the same way—that you will always find the things you have lost?”

“Yes—he makes me feel the same faith: that what I lose will be returned to me. Just as I found my cloak. And that if I enter into an undertaking, it will be successful.”

“And your life has been always successful?”

“Yes—almost always. We have succeeded with almost everything.”

“Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at her again.

But even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her satisfaction. She had had her suffering, sure enough. But none the less, she was in the main satisfied. She sat there, a good hostess, and expected the homage due to her success. And of course she got it. Aaron himself did his little share of shoe-licking, and swallowed the taste of boot-polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about.

The dinner wound gaily to an end. The ladies retired. Sir William left his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next to Aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near.

“Now, Colonel,” said the host, “send round the bottle.”

With a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the Colonel sent on the port, actually port, in those bleak, post-war days!

“Well, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “we will drink to your kind Providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by so doing.”

“No, sir; no, sir! The Providence belonged to Mr. Lilly. Mr. Sisson put his money on kindly fortune, I believe,” said Arthur, who rosy and fresh with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous bonne bouchee for a finely-discriminating cannibal.

“Ah, yes, indeed! A much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses to. Mr. Sisson’s kindly fortune. Fortuna gentil-issima! Well, Mr. Sisson, and may your Lady Fortune ever smile on you.”

Sir William lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head. Nay, more than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it. The devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines. So, with his strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight glowered sightlessly over his glass at Aaron. Then he drank: the strange, careful, old-man’s gesture in drinking.

“But,” said Aaron, “if Fortune is a female---”

“Fortune! Fortune! Why, Fortune is a lady. What do you say, Major?”

“She has all the airs of one, Sir William,” said the Major, with the wistful grimness of his age and culture. And the young fellow stared like a crucified cyclops from his one eye: the black shutter being over the other.

“And all the graces,” capped Sir William, delighted with himself.

“Oh, quite!” said the Major. “For some, all the airs, and for others, all the graces.”

“Faint heart ne’er won fair lady, my boy,” said Sir William. “Not that your heart is faint. On the contrary—as we know, and your country knows. But with Lady Fortune you need another kind of stout heart— oh, quite another kind.”

“I believe it, sir: and the kind of stout heart which I am afraid I haven’t got,” said the Major.

“What!” said the old man. “Show the white feather before you’ve tackled the lady! Fill the Major’s glass, Colonel. I am quite sure we will none of us ever say die.”

“Not likely. Not if we know it,” said the Colonel, stretching himself heartily inside his tunic. He was becoming ruddier than the cherry. All he cared about at the moment was his gay little port glass. But the Major’s young cheek was hollow and sallow, his one eye terribly pathetic.

“And you, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “mean to carry all before you by taking no thought for the morrow. Well, now, we can only wish you success.”

“I don’t want to carry all before me,” said Aaron. “I should be sorry. I want to walk past most of it.”

“Can you tell us where to? I am intrigued, as Sybil says, to know where you will walk to. Come now. Enlighten us.”

“Nowhere, I suppose.”

“But is that satisfactory? Can you find it satisfactory?”

“Is it even true?” said the Major. “Isn’t it quite as positive an act to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?”

“My dear boy, you can’t merely walk away from a situation. Believe that. If you walk away from Rome, you walk into the Maremma, or into the Alban Hills, or into the sea—but you walk into something. Now if I am going to walk away from Rome, I prefer to choose my direction, and therefore my destination.”

“But you can’t,” said the Major.

“What can’t you?”

“Choose. Either your direction or your destination.” The Major was obstinate.

“Really!” said Sir William. “I have not found it so. I have not found it so. I have had to keep myself hard at work, all my life, choosing between this or that.”

“And we,” said the Major, “have no choice, except between this or nothing.”

“Really! I am afraid,” said Sir William, “I am afraid I am too old— or too young—which shall I say?—to understand.”

“Too young, sir,” said Arthur sweetly. “The child was always father to the man, I believe.”

“I confess the Major makes me feel childish,” said the old man. “The choice between this or nothing is a puzzler to me. Can you help me out, Mr. Sisson? What do you make of this this-or-nothing business? I can understand neck-or-nothing---”

“I prefer the NOTHING part of it to the THIS part of it,” said Aaron, grinning.

“Colonel,” said the old man, “throw a little light on this nothingness.”

“No, Sir William,” said the Colonel. “I am all right as I am.”

“As a matter of fact, so are we all, perfectly A-one,” said Arthur.

Aaron broke into a laugh.

“That’s the top and bottom of it,” he laughed, flushed with wine, and handsome. We’re all as right as ninepence. Only it’s rather nice to talk.”

“There!” said Sir William. “We’re all as right as ninepence! We’re all as right ninepence. So there well leave it, before the Major has time to say he is twopence short.” Laughing his strange old soundless laugh, Sir William rose and made a little bow. “Come up and join the ladies in a minute or two,” he said. Arthur opened the door for him and he left the room.

The four men were silent for a