Alexandra Guy - A Maiden's diary

“All right,” I said. In the dimming light there was something quite romantic to the fisherman's hut-the nets, the hurricane lamps, and even the porthole windows the builder, once a seaman himself, probably, had affected. “You like the place, Oliver?” “Very much,” he said. Impulsively I said, “It's yours if you want it. Take it.” “Thank you, Clarissa. You're much too generous-” “I'm rarely generous. You know that. But I'd like you to have this hut-to work in, live in, as long as you like. Nobody will disturb you.” But Harwell very graciously declined, pleading that it was too far from London. I agreed with him about that. Still, even so, I had misgivings at that point I had the feeling that something dreadful was about to happen. “Please hold me tight, Oliver.” “Of course.” “There's something awful that's going to happen to me,” I said. “Nonsense,” Harwell said. “Anyway, both good and bad things happen to everybody in their measure. And the happening is unpredictable.” I rubbed my cheek against Harwell's.

“If,” I said, “Darwin can sort of predict backward, and account for all species, even insects, why can't he predict frontward and describe what species will be, or won't be?” “Why can't he, indeed?”

Harwell said. “A perfectly sensible question, Clarissa.” He regarded me glowingly, possessively. I liked the look of possessiveness, which made me feel infinitely better. He added, “Why don't you do a paper on it, Clarissa? You're quite capable, you know. It's too bad you can't go on to Oxford or Cambridge.” “Father wouldn't hear of it, even if it were possible.” “He believes in the superiority of the male, I suppose,” Harwell said. “Not so much the superiority,” I said, “as the gulf between the sexes, bridged only by coition and that only transitorily. What do you believe, Oliver?” He took his arms away from me to light his pipe. He smoked for a moment or so and then said, frowning, “I will tell this to you, Clarissa, that I've told to no other living soul. Please keep it entrenous.” “You have my word, Oliver.” “You asked me what I believe in, Clarissa. I'm afraid the answer is-in nothing.” I looked at him in astonishment. “Nothing?” I echoed. “Nothing,” he said dourly, puffing slowly at his pipe, his brown eyes hooded. Again I felt an awful dread. I asked myself what, indeed, I was to believe in if this quite superior man-who was a master of the English tongue, of the Greek, Latin, German and French tongues, who was equally at home with the Principia of Newton as he was with the religious sonnets of Donne-believed in nothing? Although the air was warm, I felt chilled and depressed. “We ought to be getting back,” I said.

“Have I offended you in some way?” “No, no, Oliver. It's just that I'm fifteen-very advanced, I know, beyond my years-and yet shaky.” “All of adolescence is shaky,” he said. “I remember my own.” “Yes,” I said abstractedly as we dressed. I looked around the little hut as if for the last time. I even glanced out of one of the porthole windows at the cove. In a sense I contented myself with the thought that the waters of Gunnels Cove would remain calm long after Oliver Harwell, long after my mother and father, and long after my brother and myself. It would take me, now, at least half an hour to traverse the path to the cove from Quistern House to see if the waters were indeed still calm. Well, that is too much of a journey for an old lady who is temporarily out of lovers. I'll defer the trip until I have myself a man. Which shan't be too much of a wait for the Marchioness of Portferrans… eh? Incidentally, no storm had broken, either above Quistern House or Gunnels Cove.

The following morning when I was due in the conservatory, my father intercepted me at the door to his booklined study. “But I'll be late for my lesson, Father, and Mr. Harwell will not approve.”

I was absolutely amazed that the Marquis was up at this hour. But he blinked not an eye. “I daresay, Clarissa, that he will neither approve nor disapprove. Now do you come into my study, daughter-your mother awaits you there as well.” Oh my God, I thought, a council of war. And what of Oliver Harwell? Why hadn't he been included? “Good morning, Mother,” I said dutifully. I felt somewhat faint, especially with respect to Harwell. I told my noble parents that I felt faint, but not on account of Harwell. At any rate, my father gave me brandy and I swallowed enough of it to cause my mother to raise both eyebrows. “Do you have a morning sickness?” she asked as I wove an unsteady course to one of the leather armchairs. “Are you suggesting that I'm pregnant, Mother?” “Clarissa!” my father said, “must you be so blunt?” “In some of our father-to-daughter conversations,” I said, “you have stressed the idea of candor.”

“Really, Mathew,” my mother said. “You know how children take things literally. How could you in this vale of tears stress the practice of candor?” “This is very much apart from the issue, Louisa,” my father said. “Oblige me by treating first things first.”

“Yes, Mathew,” she said meekly. Meekly for the moment-I knew my mother. The Marquis of Portferrans turned directly to me. “I'm afraid I'll have to be brutally candid about Oliver Harwell.” I walked over to the small table where the brandy and other alcoholic beverages were, and I poured myself another brandy. At which my mother's jaw seemed positively to loosen and become unhinged from the rest of her face. The Marquis, on the other hand, retained his aplomb as I drank a half tumbler of brandy. “Are you ready, Clarissa?” he asked kindly. “Oh, quite.” “Mr. Harwell has precipitately left.” “Precipitately, eh?” I said. “Oh.” “He had a major reason for doing so,” Mathew Quist-Hagen said, Louisa Quist-Hagen gazing narrowly at me. She had a marvelous penchant for gazing narrowly. She should have been trained to ride racing horses.

“Did he?” I said casually, my pulse sprinting like a favored filly. “He said, Mr. Harwell did, that he could not go on to tutor so beautiful a girl without becoming personally involved.”

“Oh, la,” said I. “Is that how he put it?” “Yes,” my father said. “I should think that quite flattering. But it does raise certain problems, Clarissa-such as marriage.” “Mathew,” Louisa said.

“Yes, beloved?” “Marriage is not a problem,” Louisa said.

“Quite so,” Mathew said. “The motion is tabled.” “You are not,” my mother said, “in the House of Lords.” “I am in the house,” my father said, “of women.” He said that sotto voce. It sounded as if my father were slipping a little in his regard for the female. It was obvious, too, that he had got a little weary of the games nature has us play. The odd thing about nature, my dear reader, is that if you don't play her obvious game-that of the male running about and dropping his seed indiscriminately-you play her subtle game, the male dropping his seed indiscriminately, the latter one of the most illusory of games because you drop your seed not so much selectively as habitually, in accordance with your status backdrop.

In any case, my mother said, “What did you say?” “I said, Karl Marx be damned.” “Oh,” my mother said. “I am always very suspicious of men afflicted by carbuncles-such men regard whirlwinds with great respect, since God is purported to speak from them. In any case, I detest stories in which the divinity breaks wind with a mortal-God comes off smelling like a rose while the mortal stinks to high heaven.” “Louisa,” my father said, “you are most eloquent this morning, but we seem to be straying from the major issue. We have a beautiful daughter-” “Cheers,” I said. “… who must be made more accessible than she is at present. She must have, too, a larger selection of men to choose from.” “Cheers,” I said.