The Morning Gift

But in the afternoon Verena came into her own again, for the Professor took boatloads of students out into the bay to show them how to sweep for plankton and Verena, who had sailed in India and crewed for her cousin at Cowes, was in her element. She had only to twitch once at its toggle, and the outboard motor roared into life; she knew exactly what to do with sails, she rowed like an Amazon, so that it was natural that as the students changed places, Verena should remain by the Professor and help.

Secure in her position, she was extremely gracious to her inexperienced classmates, helping them into the dinghy and giving them instructions on seamanship so as to leave the Professor free to show them how to work the nets. Only when Ruth came aboard in her turn and offered to take one of the oars, did Verena’s graciousness desert her.

‘Can you row?’ she said snubbingly. ‘I didn’t think anyone had boats in Vienna.’

But Ruth, though she set a murderous pace, said nothing. She was in the grip of a new and noble resolution which, late that night, she proceeded to share with her friends.

‘I have decided,’ she announced, ‘to love Verena Plackett!’

The students were sitting round a bonfire of driftwood, roasting potatoes in the light of the moon – a dramatic setting in keeping with Ruth’s uplifted state. Only Kenneth Easton was absent. He had wandered away by himself for it had been hard for him seeing Verena go up to the house to dine with the Professor. Kenneth had examined his face carefully in the scrap of mirror which was all the students had to shave by and couldn’t help noticing how much more regular his features were than the Professor’s, how much less broken-looking his nose, and if he smoked a pipe he was certain he would have been able to keep it alight for reasonable stretches of time. Yet it was clear that it was the Professor Verena preferred and now, alone and melancholy, he gazed up at the lighted windows of Bowmont and sighed.

‘I mean it,’ persisted Ruth as her friends stared at her. ‘I’m entirely serious.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Janet, spearing another potato. ‘Raving mad. Verena is entirely and utterly awful.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Ruth. ‘So there is no point at all in trying to like her. Liking Verena would be to attempt the impossible. But there was an old philosopher who used to come and see us in Vienna – he had a long white beard and he used to meditate every day on a bench outside the Stock Exchange – and what he said was: “You must love what you cannot like.” He said it quite often.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Pilly sadly – and a thin bespectacled youth called Simon said he didn’t either.

‘It sounds better in German,’ Ruth admitted, ‘but what it means is that though you can’t like everybody, you can love them deep down – in fact the more you don’t like them, the more important it is that you should. You have to love them as though they were your brother or sister . . . as part of the created world. As a fellow sinner,’ said Ruth, getting excited and dropping her potato in the sand.

Sam, though he knew it was not a Lancelot-like remark, said she was talking nonsense, and Janet pointed out that sinners were a doddle compared to Verena.

‘Sinners are human,’ she said.

But nothing could deflect Ruth from the noble path she had chosen and she quoted yet another European sage, the great Sigmund Freud, who had said that a thing cannot become lovable until it is loved.

‘Like Beauty and the Beast. You have to kiss it before it becomes a prince.’

As was inevitable the conversation now became ribald, but as she accepted the less burnt half of Sam’s potato, Ruth’s eyes were shining with moral virtue and the consciousness of right.

‘You’ll see. I’ll begin tomorrow when we go to Howcroft. I shall love her all day.’

‘Barker’s taken him then?’ asked Miss Somerville encountering Martha the following morning as she returned from the village. ‘He’s agreed?’

The puppy had been conveyed to the carpenter’s house before breakfast, but Martha’s kind, round face looked unaccustomedly shifty. ‘No, he hasn’t. He won’t have him.’

‘Won’t have him?’ Miss Somerville was incredulous. ‘Did you point out that the work on the pews is two months overdue?’

‘Yes, I did. He says his wife’s got asthma and she’s expecting and the doctor said she wasn’t to go near anything with hair.’

‘I must say I find that extraordinary. People like that wouldn’t have heard of asthma in the old days. It makes you wonder whether education is such a good thing.’ She bent to pick up her gardening trug. ‘Where is it, then?’

‘He offered to shoot it for me,’ said Martha. ‘He said it wouldn’t feel a thing – well, that’s true enough; he’s done enough poaching in his time, Barker has – he could knock down a hare at fifty yards and no trouble.’

Miss Somerville straightened her back. Her face was expressionless.

‘So you agreed? It’s been shot?’