The Great Lover by Jill Dawson

beamed.
     
    So many books, he has, Mr Brooke. Books sprouting everywhere. I suppose this is how all poets are, or maybe all Varsity men, but it’s a wonder. Sometimes I sneak a look at the titles. This makes me sick with ignorance. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. Montaigne by somebody called Florio. Piles of copies of the English Review magazine. A huge great thing called The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission . How could anyone read such a volume? Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare–I recognise that one, of course. The other one I recognise is The Secret River by R. Macaulay–this is a brand new book, with flowers down the spine, and in blue ink inside it says, ‘To Rupert’, so I know this must be the same Miss Macaulay who visited him here at the Orchard. I sneaked a glance inside, but when I read ‘the slumberous afternoon was on the slow green river like the burden of a dream’ my brain thickened and refused to carry on.
    When he asked me, he had no idea how stupid so many books can make a girl feel. I said nothing, knowing how he would laugh–that sudden, high-pitched, girlish blast of laughter he does sometimes–if he knew that the last book I read was The Book of Cheerfulness by Flora Klickmann. I was glad–so glad–to have at least read Mr H. G. Wells, although afraid of blushing when I feared he might broach the subject of relations between men and women. I did not venture my opinion of the heroine of that book. That she was a very silly girl indeed to end up in a room alone with a man and not realise what he might think of her.
    I wasted a good portion of time in his room and now I have a deal of catching up to do. There’s the dusting and the fireplaces, the hateful black-leading to do, then the halls and stairs to be swept, and the boots waiting to be cleaned in the kitchen and, after all that, the lunches for the first guests to start preparing. I can’t really understand how I allowed myself to be delayed–after all, he is so annoying , and so spoiled, and I always feel he is trying to provoke me somehow, catch me out, make me blush or falter with those questions, put in such a strange way.
    After that night, that first night when I saw him naked, returning from his swim in Byron’s Pool I have learned that I am a very silly, puritanical girl. He was disappointed, he said, that the lower orders were as bad as the upper ones in this respect. He had thought that a girl raised on bees–birds and bees, he said meaningfully–a girl raised so might be more likely to trade the ‘ Lilies and Languors of Virtue for the Raptures and Roses of Vice’.
    When I did not know how to reply, he said, ‘Swinburne, Nell.’
    It’s this that infuriates me. He speaks in riddles, seeking always to have the advantage. After all, when I told him of my brothers and the eel-hives and the days spent on the mere catching them, I didn’t try to trick him with words he didn’t know, even though I laughed to myself to hear him describe it as ‘such joy andliberation!’ and to see from the glow in his face that he was picturing some lazy, playful days of his own rather than the hours of patient work that Edmund and Stanley endure for Sam. I think he is always conscious of the impression he is making, tossing his hair and struggling to hide his real thoughts.
    ‘Life is splendid, Nell, but I wish I could write poetry,’ he said, this morning. ‘I write very beautiful stories.’
    ‘Do you, sir? Here’s your hot milk, and would you like me to bring your slippers?’
    ‘Yes…One story I am accomplishing is about a young man who, for various reasons, felt his bookish life vain and wanted to get in touch with Nature. He began by learning to climb trees but, in clambering up an easy fir tree, fell off a low branch six feet above the ground and broke his neck. A short, simple story.’
    Then he told me of his recent visit to a place called Penshurst, to surprise some friends of his who were