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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

CLASSICA L PR ESENCES

General Editors
lorna hardwick james i. porter
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

CLASSICAL PRESENCES

Attempts to receive the texts, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome
inevitably run the risk of appropriating the past in order to authenticate the present.
Exploring the ways in which the classical past has been mapped over the centuries allows
us to trace the avowal and disavowal of values and identities, old and new. Classical
Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such
use, and abuse, of the classical past.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

Alexander the Great

from Britain
to Southeast Asia
Peripheral Empires in the Global
Renaissance

Su Fang Ng

1
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Su Fang Ng 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

Acknowledgments

Following Alexander into Europe and Asia has been a long labor of love, and along the
way I have incurred many debts to institutions and individuals. I am grateful for all
the support that made this book possible. A Bunting fellowship at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard in 2005–6 provided an inspiring environment
of highly-accomplished women in which to begin this project. I must thank Judy
Vichniac, then Executive Director, and her staff, as well as fellow fellows, especially
Susan Suleiman, who invited me to contribute an essay to a special issue. When I was
on a Delta Delta Delta fellowship at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle
Park, I learnt much from discussions with a group of like-minded scholars who formed
a seminar on Master Languages and Vernaculars—Catherine Chin, Mary Ellis Gibson,
Alison Keith, Tim Kircher, Stephen Rupp, David Samuels, and Nigel Smith—as well
as benefiting from the support of the Center’s staff and librarians. In 2009–10 as a
Harrington faculty fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, I enjoyed the intellectual
community of early modernists in the English department. It was a particularly lively
time as it was the inaugural year of the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies
(TILTS) organized by Wayne Rebhorn and Frank Whigham. At Texas I particularly
appreciated the warm welcome from Hannah Wojciehowski and John Rumrich, whose
work on Milton I have long admired. I also thank the Harrington Foundation for spon-
soring a symposium I organized on “The Seaborne Renaissance”; additional support
was provided by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the South Asia Institute, and
the Harry Ransom Center.
It is a pleasure to thank several other institutions for short-term fellowships and
grants that supported research for this book. The American Philosophical Society and
British Academy awarded me a Joint Fellowship for Research in London, which gave
me a summer in London archives. The International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden
granted me an affiliated fellowship for a month’s stay. This research was supported in
part by a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council and the National Endowment
for the Humanities. (Findings, opinions and conclusions do not necessarily represent
the views of the OHC or the NEH.) In addition, this scholarship was supported by an
Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Working
Group through funding from the Office of the Vice President for Research (VPR) at
the University of Oklahoma Norman Campus. During its tenure, I spent two months
at Leiden University as a visiting scholar courtesy of the Scaliger Institute: I thank
Harm Beukers, at the time the Scaliger chair, and Kasper van Ommen for helping me
get settled. I would also like to acknowledge the scholarship I received from the Dutch
Language Union (Nederlandse Taalunie) for a three-week Dutch immersion course in the
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

vi Acknowledgments

Netherlands; and tuition grants for language study from the University of Oklahoma’s
Office of the Vice-President for Research.
A number of scholars generously shared their expertise and work, including
Bernadette Andrea, Richmond Barbour, Jonathan Burton, Martin Dzelzainis, Annabel
Teh Gallop, Jane Grogan, Robert Markley, Ian McClure, Thom Richardson, Peter
Riddell, Lisa Voigt, Rienk Vermij, Timothy Wilks, and Paul Wormser. I would also like
to thank Leonard Blussé, who graciously allowed me to audit his graduate course on
the history of European-Asian relations when he was Erasmus Chair at Harvard, as
well as Sharon Achinstein, Chris Chism, Geraldine Heng, Vince Leitch, Curtis Perry,
and Michael Schoenfeldt. I appreciate the opportunities to present work-in-progress
to various audiences. Especially fruitful was the conference on “Alexander the Great in
Medieval and Early Modern Culture” organized by Markus Stock at the University of
Toronto: the collected essays have now been published. I thank the following organ-
izers for kindly inviting me to speak on their campuses: Elizabeth Chang and Samuel
Cohen at the University of Missouri, David Porter who organized a conference on
“Comparative Early Modernities” at the University of Michigan, Jonathan Eburne and
Lovalerie King at Pennsylvania State University, David Loewenstein (then) at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, Allyson Creasman and Christopher Warren at
Carnegie Mellon, Jennifer Waldron at the University of Pittsburg, Adam McKeown
and Scott Oldenburg at Tulane University, Thomas Martin at College of the Holy
Cross, and not the least, at my alma mater Whitman College, Dana Burgess, who first
got me interested in all things Greek.
The anonymous reviewers read the manuscript with care and their detailed comments
made this book far better. I am grateful for the support of the general editors of the
Classical Presences series, Lorna Hardwick and especially James Porter, and I thank
the press editors, Charlotte Loveridge and Georgina Leighton, for their indispensable
help. I also thank a number of colleagues who welcomed me into their language class-
rooms: Hossam Barakat (Arabic), Ehsan Qasemi and Marjan Serafi-Pour (Persian),
Joseph Sullivan (German), Vincent Vanderheijden (Dutch), and Arthur Verbiest (Dutch
at the Taalunie). Final revisions were completed while on a Solmsen Fellowship at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison. I thank Stewart Scales for drawing the maps. My
thanks also to Virginia Tech for their support: the cost of maps and image permissions
was covered by financial support from the Faculty Book Publishing Subvention Fund.
Librarians and staff at various archives have been very helpful, especially the British
Library, the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and Leiden University Special Collections.
I still remember the day when one librarian at Leiden thoughtfully brought out a stool
for me to stand on so I could more easily photograph an oversized manuscript in its
entirety. Particular thanks are due to the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; the
syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Centre for Research Collections, University
of Edinburgh; and Leiden University Special Collections for permission to quote from
manuscript material. I am also grateful to archives that granted permission to repro-
duce images (noted in the List of Figures). Further thanks are due to journal publishers
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

Acknowledgments vii

for permission to reuse earlier work. An earlier version of Chapter 9 appeared as

“Pirating Paradise: Alexander the Great, Dutch East Indies, and Satanic Empire in
Milton’s Paradise Lost” in Milton Studies 52 (2011): 59–91, published by Duquesne
University Press. Parts of an article were reworked and incorporated into the book:
“Global Renaissance: Alexander the Great and Early Modern Classicism from the
British Isles to the Malay Archipelago,” special issue on The Idea of Europe, ed. Susan
Rubin Suleiman, Comparative Literature 58.4 (Fall 2006): 293–312, published by Duke
University Press. Brief excerpts of two other articles were also incorporated into the
book: “Dutch Wars, Global Trade, and the Heroic Poem: Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis
(1666) and Amin’s Sya’ir Perang Mengkasar (1670),” Modern Philology 109.3 (February
2012): 352–84, published by the University of Chicago Press (© 2012 by The University
of Chicago. All rights reserved); and “Global Souvenirs: Bridging East and West in the
Malay Alexander Romance,” special issue on The Global Middle Ages, ed. Geraldine
Heng and Lynn Ramey, Literature Compass 11/7 (2014): 395–408, published by Wiley-
Blackwell Publishing (© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.).
My family has been a constant source of support: I thank my father Ng Kim Nam,
who made sure his children got an education, and my mother Chan Lai Kuen, who first
taught us to read in English and Malay. Finally, this book would not have been written
if not for Kenneth Hodges, who believed in the project before I did. His faith in it kept
me going and his love, encouragement, and generosity sustained me.

Nota Bene
I follow Marshall Hodgson’s distinction between the adjective “Islamicate” to refer to
societies where Muslims are dominant and “Islamic” to pertain more specifically to the
religion. Europeanists, however, do not make such distinctions with Christianity. All
translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated or where I quote from published
translations. I use Loeb translations of Greek and Latin texts for their accessibility.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

Contents

List of Maps and Figures xi

Introduction: Intimate Strangers—Peripheries in Global Literary Networks 1

Part I. Conjunctions
1. Heirs to Rome 49
2. Islamic Alexanders in Southeast Asia 75
3. Scottish Alexanders and Stuart Empire 113
4. Greco-Arabic Mirrors for Barbarian Princes 149
5. Hamlet and Arabic Literary Networks 179

Part II. Invocations

6. From Source to Allusion: Alexander in Intercultural Encounters 203
7. English Alexanders and Empire from the Periphery 211
8. Millennial Alexander in the Making of Aceh 243
9. Milton, Alexander’s Pirate, and Merchant Empires in the East 277
10. Demotic Alexander in Indian Ocean Trading Worlds 303
Epilogue 333

Timeline of Texts and Events 343

Bibliography 345
Index 399
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

List of Maps and Figures

Maps
1. Eastern Hemisphere. xiii
2. Southeast Asia. xiv

Figures
0.1 Map of the Spice Islands by Willem Jansz. Blaeu, Molvccae insvla
celeberrimae, Amsterdam, 1630? 6
Harvard Map Collection, Harvard Library.
0.2 Judocus Hondius, Vera totius expeditionis nauticae: description
D. Franc. Draci, Amsterdam?: I. Hondius, 1595 (“Drake Broadside”). 25
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, https://www.loc.
gov/item/92680608/.
2.1 Opening illuminated pages of Hikayat Iskandar Dhulkarnain, copied by
Enci’ Yahya bin ʿAbdulwahid anak Melaka, 1816. Farquhar MS 2, f.1–2. 82
Reproduced courtesy of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain
and Ireland.
2.2 Detail from “Genealogies of Rulers of Palembang,” copied by
Raden Mochtar bin Raden Rangga Astrawidjaija Abdulla at Palembang,
January 22, 1869 showing descent from Iskandar Zulkarnain.
MS Or. 78, f2. 98
Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden
University Libraries.
2.3 World map, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (Entertainment for
He Who Longs to Travel the World), copied from Muhammad al-Idrisi
(c.1110–66) in Cairo, 1553; Gog and Magog (‫ )یأجوج و مأجوج‬are confined by
Alexander’s wall in the bottom left corner. MS Pococke 375, f. 3v–4.
The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford. 106
Image © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
3.1 [Poly-Olbion. Part 1] Poly-Olbion by Michael Drayton Esqr. [1612],
engraving of prince, fourth page from beginning. STC 7226 copy 1. 142
Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi

xii List of Maps and Figures

4.1 Miniature of Aristotle instructing Alexander the Great, from

Kitab Nact al-hayawan (Book of the Characteristics of Animals),
compiled from works by Aristotle and cUbayd Allah ibn Bakhtishu,
Baghdad, c. first half 13th century. MS Or. 2784, f. 96. 154
© The British Library Board.
8.1 English cannon with James I’s coat of arms and cartouche of his
name given to Aceh in 1615; inventory number 1875/07-1-6. 245
Author’s photograph. Museum Bronbeek, Arnhem, the Netherlands.
8.2 Sultan Iskandar Muda’s 1615 letter to King James I. MS Laud Or. Rolls
b. 1 (R). The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford. 248
Image © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
8.3 Sultan Iskandar Thani of Aceh’s 1636 letter to Prince Fredrik Hendrik
of Holland. MS. Cod. Or. 4818a.I.3. 251
Special Collections, Leiden University Libraries.
9.1 “Gezicht op de stad Bantam” (View of the City of Bantam) by
Pieter Serwouter after Pieter Sibrantsz., 1614–22. Number
RP-P-1886-A-11180.278
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi
Map 1 Eastern Hemisphere.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 02/01/2019, SPi
Map 2 Southeast Asia.
Other documents randomly have
different content
This time Quentillian avoided Valeria’s eyes, positively abashed by
the extreme hollowness of Adrian’s pretence at forgetfulness.
“Oh, yes—Olga Duffle—Miss Olga Duffle. She is staying with the
Admastons—the people I was with the day you arrived, Owen. Don’t
you think you girls might ask them all over to tennis, one of these
days?”
“I suppose so—yes, of course we will. Would Father like Miss Duffle?
He doesn’t much care for the Admastons, does he?”
“Absolute prejudice, my dear girl. You’ve got into a rut, all you people
down here—that’s what you’ve done. You’d like Olga most awfully—
everybody does. She’s the most popular girl in London, and not a bit
spoilt, although she’s an only child and her people adore her. Mrs.
Duffle told me herself that Olga was just like a ray of sunshine at
home.”
“What an original woman Mrs. Duffle must be,” murmured Val.
“I always think there must be something remarkable about any girl, if
her own nearest relations speak well of her,” Quentillian said in
detached accents.
Adrian looked suspiciously at his audience.
“You’d like Olga awfully,” he repeated rather pathetically. “And I can
tell you this, Val, she’d give you and Flossie no end of hints about
clothes and things. She dresses better than any girl I’ve ever seen.”
Valeria was roused to no display of enthusiasm by this culminating
claim of Miss Duffle on her regard.
“What sort of age is she?”
“She looks about eighteen, but I believe she’s twenty-four and a bit,”
said Adrian with some precision. “She plays tennis, too, rippingly.
You’d better ask the Admastons to bring her over, I can tell you. It
isn’t everyone who gets the chance of playing with a girl like that.”
“We might have a tennis party next week,” Val considered. “I shall
only ask one Admaston girl; we’ve too many girls as it is. One
Admaston, and this Olga person, and Lucilla and I—Flossie won’t
play if anybody very good is there. That’s four, and then you and
Owen and Mr. Clover—and we could have Captain Cuscaden. I’ll
talk to Lucilla about it, if you like, Adrian.”
“Oh, I don’t care about it. It’s for your own sake, really, that I
suggested it,” Adrian explained.
His forefinger carefully traced out the pattern stamped upon the
leather arm of his chair, and he contemplated it earnestly with his
head upon one side, even murmuring a sub-audible—“One—two—
three—and a corner”—before clearing his throat.
“H’m. No, my dear Val, don’t run away with the idea that I’m wildly
keen on this tennis stunt for my own amusement. In fact, I may say
I’ve been a bit off tennis lately, simply from seeing how
extraordinarily good some amateurs can be. It discourages one, in a
way. But I thought you girls might like to know Olga, I must say.
She’d be an awfully nice friend for you to have, you know.”
There was a pleading note discernible in the tone of Adrian’s
philanthropic suggestions that might have been partly accountable
for the tolerance with which his sister received them.
Nevertheless, she said to Quentillian next day, with a certain hint of
apology:
“We’ve spoilt Adrian, I’m afraid. You remember what a dear little boy
he was?”
Quentillian remembered better still what a tiresome little boy Adrian
had been, but this recollection, as so many others connected with
the house of Morchard, he did not insist upon.
“I suppose he must have his Olga if he wants to, but I hope she’s a
nice girl. You know how very particular Father is, and I think he’s
especially sensitive where Adrian is concerned.”
“It struck me that perhaps he was almost inclined to take Adrian’s
affairs too seriously,” Quentillian suggested, with great moderation.
“Adrian, after all, is very young, isn’t he, both in years and in
character, in spite of his soldiering?”
“I suppose he is. He’s very susceptible, too. I sometimes think that
Father doesn’t altogether make allowance for that.”
Even the very negative criticism implied was so contrary to the spirit
of the house that it gave Quentillian the agreeable illusion of
partnering Valeria in a mild domestic conspiracy, and pleased him
inordinately.
The sense of conspiracy was deepened on the day of the tennis
party, when a Miss Admaston, gawky and unimpressive, duly
escorted Miss Olga Duffle to St. Gwenllian.
She was less pretty, and possessed of more personality, than
Quentillian had expected. Very small and slight, her face was of the
squirrel type, her eyes very large and dark, her black crêpe hair
brushed childishly away from her little round forehead, her nose
unmistakably retroussé. Two very white front teeth were just visible,
resting upon an habitually indrawn under-lip.
Quentillian, quite irrationally, immediately felt certain that she spoke
with a lisp. She did not, but she certainly pronounced the name of
Captain George Cuscaden, with whom she appeared to be upon
intimate terms, as though it were spelt “Dzorze.”
She also called Adrian by his first name, but gave no other startling
signs of modernity. Indeed, a very pretty, and most unmodern,
deference marked her manner towards Canon Morchard.
“Father likes her,” Valeria murmured to Quentillian, who was more
concerned with her charming air of imparting to him a secret than
with Miss Duffle’s conquest of the Canon.
It was only at tea-time that the Canon joined the tennis party.
Immediately afterwards he made courteous apologies and returned
to the house.
It was undeniable that the absence of the Canon caused the
conversation, which had circled uneasily round cathedral subjects, to
lapse into triviality. The super-critical Quentillian could not decide
which form of social intercourse he found least to his taste.
“Jam?” said Adrian.
The Canon had said, a few minutes earlier:
“You must try some of our strawberry jam, Miss Duffle. My daughter
Flora is responsible for it, I believe. Lucilla there is our housekeeper,
but I am given to understand that her younger sisters are allowed to
try experiments. I will not quote: Fiat experimentum.”
“Jam?” repeated Adrian.
“Oh, there’s a wasp in the jam! Oh, save me!”
Olga laughed as she uttered little cries of alarm, and her laughter
really suggested the adjective “merry.”
“Save the women and children!”
There was much ineffectual slapping of teaspoons against the air,
the tablecloth, the jam pot, and many exclamations.
“Yonder he goes! Passed to you for necessary action, Miss
Admaston!”
“Be a man, Cuscaden; he’s right under your nose.”
“Dzorze, do be careful—you’ll get stung!” Olga cried across the
table.
Captain Cuscaden neatly captured the wasp beneath an empty
plate.
“That’s got him. He’ll never lift up his head again.”
“Oh, then may I have my jam?”
Olga, with her head on one side, might have been imitating a little
girl, but Quentillian could not decide whether or no the imitation was
an unconscious one.
“The wasp has eaten all the jam,” Adrian rejoined in the same tone
as Olga’s.
“Oh! he hasn’t eaten all of it.”
“No, he hasn’t eaten it all.”
“Oh! the wasp didn’t eat all the jam, did he?”
“Not quite all.”
“There are still a few spoonfuls left that the wasp didn’t eat, Miss
Duffle.”
Neither Olga, Adrian, Captain Cuscaden, Flora nor Miss Admaston
appeared to regard themselves as being amongst the extremest
examples of brainless fatuity produced by a fatuous century. Yet thus
it was that Owen Quentillian was regarding them, whilst at the same
time another section of his brain passionlessly registered the
conviction that his nerves were still on edge and his tendency to
irrational irritability passing almost beyond his own control.
After tea he remained idly in a long chair beside Valeria, while they
watched Olga’s little nimble figure on the tennis court, where Adrian
was her partner. Lucilla played against them with George Cuscaden,
and Olga several times called out gaily: “Dzorze, I hate you!”
When Lucilla sent an unplayable stroke across the net, she only
cried: “Oh, well played!”
“I don’t like her voice, do you?” Val murmured confidentially.
“Hideous,” said Quentillian, briefly and candidly.
“I wonder if Adrian thinks he’s in earnest. Of course, I don’t suppose
she’d look at him. And of course he couldn’t think of marrying
anybody for ages. He’s too young, and he’d have to get a job.”
“He’ll have to do that anyway, won’t he? He says he doesn’t dislike
the idea of business, and I could give him an introduction to a man
who might be useful.”
“It’s very kind of you. I know Father wants to get him settled. Dear
Father, he was so disappointed that Adrian isn’t going into the
Church after all, and he’s taken it so beautifully.”
Quentillian regarded the Canon’s disappointment with so much more
astonishment than sympathy that he wished only to avoid a
discussion on the beauty of its manifestation.
“Curiously enough, I have a living in my gift, belonging to my very
small property at Stear. The old man there wishes to retire, and I
want to consult your father as to a new appointment. No one could
be less fitted than myself,” said Quentillian with an emphasis not
altogether devoid of satisfaction, “to nominate a candidate for that
sort of thing.”
Val looked at him with all her peculiar directness of gaze.
“Sometimes you talk as though you rather despised the Church,” she
said bluntly.
There was a pause.
“If I have given you such an impression, I must apologize. It was
most discourteous of me,” said Quentillian stiffly.
He was fully prepared to acknowledge and to defend his own purely
rationalistic views, but the implication of a lack of taste in his
behaviour as guest in an orthodox household offended him.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Val, calmly and gravely. “I know that a great
many very clever people are not believers in the sense that my
father is one, for instance; but they do respect the Christian ideal, all
the same. I only wondered whether you were one of them. Do you
mind my talking like this?”
The relentless voice of Quentillian’s inner monitor assured him that
he was, on the contrary, ready to welcome any intimate discussion of
himself and his views, on whatever subject.
Val looked at him expectantly.
“Where I differ from, for instance, your father, is in separating
Christian morality from what might be called the miraculous element
of Christianity. Frankly, I can’t accept the latter.”
“You don’t believe in the divinity of Christ?”
Her voice was a very much shocked one, and Quentillian replied
only by a gesture. Val kept silence, and presently he glanced at her
face and saw that tears stood in her eyes.
He was half touched and half impatient.
“Surely that point of view isn’t altogether a new one to you. You must
know that the trend of modern thought is all very much in that
direction.”
“I suppose I knew it, certainly. But it has never come very near me
before. Father has sheltered us from everything, in the most
beautiful way.”
She spoke very simply and sincerely.
The time-honoured cliché as to never wishing to deprive anyone of
his or her faith—Valeria least of all—hung unspoken on his lips.
If the spiritual intimacy of which Owen Quentillian was beginning to
dream should come to pass between them, he was quite clearly and
definitely convinced that Valeria’s early beliefs must go.
“Have you really never felt any doubt at all—any inclination to
question?”
Valeria looked troubled.
“I suppose I’ve never thought it out very clearly. One doesn’t, you
know, brought up as we were.”
Her eyes were full of thought.
“Tell me,” said Quentillian gently, after a silence.
“I was hoping,” said Val, with innocent eyes turned full upon him,
“that Father would never know about you. It would make him so
unhappy.”

(iv)
Val, in accordance with time-honoured tradition, nightly brushed out
her long brown hair in her sister Flora’s bedroom.
They talked desultorily.
“Choir practice tomorrow. I wish we could have Plain Chant instead
of those things....”
“Father doesn’t care for Plain Chant.”
“I know.”
“Give me a piece of ribbon, Flossie. I’ve lost all mine.”
“Val—here, will blue do?—Val, do you think Owen is falling in love
with you?”
“I don’t know. Well, to be honest, I think he is.”
“So do I.”
“That’s Lucilla going up to bed. How early they are tonight.”
They heard the Canon’s voice upon the stairs outside.
“Good-night to you, my dear daughter. May God have you in His
keeping!”
Then came a gentle tap upon the bedroom door.
“Not too prolonged a conference, little girls! I have sent Lucilla to
seek her bed.”
“Good-night, father,” they chorused.
“Good-night to you, my dear children. Good-night, and may God
bless you.”
“Father would be pleased.”
Flora reverted, unmistakably, to the topic of Owen Quentillian.
“I suppose so,” said Val doubtfully.
“But you know he would! He is delighted with Owen, and it would be
so close to us—only an hour’s journey. I think it would be very nice,
Val,” said Flora wistfully, “and it’s time one of us got married. Lucilla
won’t, now, and nobody ever asks me, so it had better be you.”
They both laughed.
“Nobody has ever asked me, except that curate we had before Mr.
Clover, and I always thought he was more or less weak-minded,”
Valeria remarked candidly.
“They may not have asked you, but they’ve wanted to,” said Flora
shrewdly. “Don’t answer if you’d rather not, but didn’t Captain
Cuscaden ever...?”
Val crimsoned suddenly.
“No. That was all nonsense. I believe he’s in love with that Olga girl.”
“After you? Oh, Val!”
“I don’t suppose it was ever me at all,” said Val with averted head. “I
can’t think why we’ve ever imagined such nonsense. Anyway, it’s all
over now, and I—I think I rather hate him, now.”
“Oh!” Flora’s tone was both highly dissatisfied and rather
incredulous.
“One can’t hate a person and—and like them, at one and the same
time,” Valeria exclaimed, with all the vehemence of those who affirm
that of which they are not convinced.
“I suppose not. See if you can untie me, Val—I’ve got into a knot.”
There was silence, and then Valeria, without looking at her sister,
suddenly said:
“Sometimes I wish we’d been brought up more like other people,
Flossie. I know Father’s care for us has been beautiful—dear Father!
—but somehow the girls I was with in France seemed more alive, in
a way. They knew about things....”
“Isn’t that rather like Eve wanting the knowledge of good and evil?
Father always says that one should only seek the beautiful side
—‘whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy,’ like St.
Paul says.”
“Owen wouldn’t agree to that. He believes that one ought to know
everything, good and bad alike.”
“Perhaps it’s different for a man.”
“Perhaps. We don’t know much about men, after all, do we,
Flossie?”
Flossie raised her eyebrows with an indescribable effect of fastidious
distaste, and closed her lips.
“I don’t think I want to, particularly. Father is the most wonderful man
that anyone could ever want to know, I should imagine.”
“Oh, yes,” said Valeria.
She was perfectly conscious of speaking anything but whole-
heartedly.
She did indeed think her father wonderful, but she could not, like
Flora, feel herself to be forever satisfied by the contemplation of
parental wonderfulness.
“You’re different since you came back from France, Val. I think you’d
better marry Owen,” said Flora calmly.
“He hasn’t asked me, yet.”
There was a sound from the floor below.
“That was Father! He hates us to sit up late. I’d better go before he
comes up again. Good-night, Flossie.”
“Good-night.”
Flora looked at her sister, and once more murmured: “Father would
like it, you know,” half pleadingly and half as though in rebuke.
“Father doesn’t know everything about Owen. He has been very
much affected by the tone of the day, as Father calls it. His faith....”
“Oh, Val! Isn’t that one reason the more? You might do so much to
help him.”
Flora spoke with humourless and absolute earnestness.
“Valeria!”
The Canon’s voice, subdued but distinct, came to them from without.
“My dear, go to your room. This is not right. You are acting in
defiance of my known wishes, although, no doubt, thoughtlessly. Bid
your sister good-night and go.”
Val did not even wait to carry out the first half of the Canon’s
injunction. She caught up her brush and comb and left the room.
“Are my wishes so little to you, Valeria?” said her father, standing on
the stairs. “It costs so small an act of self-sacrifice to be faithful in
that which is least!”
“I’m sorry, Father. We both forgot the time.”
“Thoughtless Valeria! Are you always to be my madcap daughter?”
His tone was very fond, and he kissed her and blessed her once
more.
Valeria went to her own room.
She sat upon the side of her bed and cried a little.
Everything seemed to be vaguely disappointing and unsatisfactory.
What if Owen Quentillian was in love with her? He was very clever,
and Val was tired of cleverness. Father was clever—even Flora, in
her austere, musical way, was clever. Val supposed grimly that she
herself must be clever, if imposed intellectual interests, a wide range
of reading, a habit of abstract discussion, could make her so.
Nevertheless she was guiltily conscious of desires within herself
other than purely academic ones.
Flora was right. Those six months in France had made her different.
She had worked in a canteen, where the preoccupation of everyone
had been the procuring and dispensing of primitive things—food, and
drink, and warmth. Women had worked with their hands for men who
had been fighting, and were going to fight again.
Valeria had been the quickest worker there, one of the most efficient.
The manual work, the close contact with material things, had
satisfied some craving within herself of which she had not before
been actively conscious.
She had learnt to cook and had become proficient with astonishing
ease. Scrambled eggs interested her more than herbaceous
borders, more than choir practises, more, to her own surprise and
shame, than evening readings-aloud at home.
The canteen jokes, elementary, beer-and-tobacco-flavoured, had
amused her whole-heartedly. She had laughed, foolishly and
mirthfully, for sheer enjoyment, knowing all the time that, judged by
the criterion of St. Gwenllian, the jests were pointless, the wit
undeserving of the name.
Very soon she had ceased to dwell upon any remembrance of the
criterion of St. Gwenllian. She had let herself go.
There had been brief, giggling intimacies with girls and young
women whom Valeria could certainly not visualize as intimates in her
own home, allusions and catchwords shared with the men or the
orderlies, childish, undignified escapades which she was aware that
the Canon would have regarded and apostrophised as vulgar. Those
days now seemed like a dream.
Even the girl with whom she had shared a room for six months no
longer wrote to her.
She, the bobbed-haired, twenty-two-year-old Pollie Gordon, had had
love-affairs. Valeria remembered certain confidences made by Pollie,
and still blushed. Pollie had been strangely outspoken, to Miss
Morchard’s way of thinking, but she had been interesting—revealing
even.
Valeria ruefully realized perfectly that Pollie Gordon, whether one’s
taste approved of her or not, had lived every moment of her short life
to the full. She was acutely aware of contrast.
“And I’m twenty-seven!” thought Val. “I’d better go and be a cook
somewhere. If only I could! Or marry Owen—supposing he asks me.
Anyway, one might have children.”
A humourous wonder crossed her mind as to her ability to cope with
the intelligent, eclectically-minded children that Owen Quentillian
might be expected to father.
“It’s a pity he isn’t poor. I believe I should be better as a poor man’s
wife, having to do everything for him, and for the babies, if there
were babies.... The Colonies, for instance....”
Although she was alone, Val coloured again and tears stood in her
eyes.
“What a fool I am!”
It was this painfully sincere conviction that sent her to seek the
oblivion of sleep, rather than any recollection of the fidelity in that
which is least, enjoined upon her by her father.
For the next few days Valeria was zealous in gardening and tennis
playing. She also, on two occasions, fetched volumes of Lamartine
and asked her father to read aloud after dinner.
Her physical exertions sent her to bed tired out, and made her sleep
soundly.
It surprised her very much when Lucilla, who never made personal
remarks, said to her:
“Why don’t you go away for a time, Val? You don’t look well.”
“I’m perfectly all right. I only wish I had rather more to do,
sometimes.”
Valeria looked at her elder sister. She was less intimate with her than
with Flora. No one, in fact, was intimate with Lucilla. She spoke
seldom, and almost always impersonally. At least, one knew that she
was discreet....
Val, on impulse, spoke.
“Do you suppose—don’t be horrified, Lucilla—do you suppose
Father would ever think of letting me go away and work?”
Lucilla gave no sign of being horrified.
She appeared to weigh her answer before she replied.
“I don’t think it would occur to him, of his own accord.”
“Oh, no. But if one asked him? Would it make him dreadfully
unhappy?”
“Yes,” said Lucilla matter-of-factly.
Valeria, disappointed and rather angry, shrugged her shoulders.
“Then, of course, that puts an end to the whole thing.”
Lucilla finished stamping a small pile of the Canon’s letters, laid them
on the table, and placed a paper-weight upon the heap before
turning round to face her sister.
“But why, Val?”
“Why what?”
“Why need it put an end to the whole thing? You know as well as I do
that it would make Father unhappy for any one of us to suggest
leaving home. But if you really mean to do it, you must make up your
mind to his being unhappy about it.”
“Lucilla!”
Lucilla did not elaborate her astounding theses, but her gaze,
sustained and level, met Valeria’s astonished eyes calmly.
“You don’t suppose I’m as hideously selfish as that, do you?”
“I don’t know what you are. But you’ve a right to your own life.”
“Not at anyone else’s expense.”
Lucilla began to stamp postcards.
“Lucilla, you didn’t mean that, did you?”
“Of course I did, Val.”
“That I should hurt Father, and go away just to satisfy my own
restlessness, knowing that he disapproved and was unhappy? I
should never know a moment’s peace again.”
“Well, if you feel like that, I suppose you won’t do it.”
“Wouldn’t you feel like that, in my place?”
“No, I shouldn’t; but that’s neither here nor there. It’s for you to
decide whether a practical consideration or a sentimental one
weighs most in your own particular case.”
“Sentimental?”
Val’s indignant tone gave the word its least agreeable meaning.
“It is a question of sentiment, isn’t it? Father likes to have you at
home, but he’s not dependent upon you in any way.”
“But wouldn’t he say that my place was at home—that it was only
restlessness and love of independence...?” Valeria stammered.
She suddenly felt very young beneath the remote, passionless gaze
of her sister. For the first time in her life she saw Lucilla as a human
being and not as an elder sister, and she was struck with Lucilla’s
strange effect of spiritual aloofness. It would be very easy to speak
freely to anyone so impersonal as Lucilla.
“It’s ever since I got back from France,” said Val suddenly. “I don’t
know what’s the matter with me, exactly, but I’ve ... wanted things.
I’ve wanted to work quite hard, at things like cooking, or sweeping—
and I’ve been sick of books, and music, and botany. I don’t feel any
of it is one scrap worth while. And, oh, Lucilla, it’s such nonsense,
because no one wants me to cook or sweep, so I’m just ‘seeking
vocations to which I am not called,’ as Father always says. Perhaps
it’s just that I want change.”
Lucilla was silent.
“Do say what you think,” Val besought her with some impatience.
“I will if you like, but it isn’t really what I think, or what Father thinks,
that matters. It’s what you think yourself.”
Valeria stamped her foot.
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Better go away,” Lucilla then said briefly.
“Work?”
“Yes, if that’s what you feel like. Of course, marriage would be
better.”
“Lucilla.”
“You asked me to say what I thought,” her sister pointed out.
“I suppose you mean Owen Quentillian,” Val said at last. “But even if
I did that—and he hasn’t asked me to, so far—it would only mean
just the same sort of thing, only in another house. There’d be
servants to do the real work, and a gardener to do the garden, and a
nurse for the babies, if there were babies. Owen talks about farming
Stear, but he’d do it all out of books, I feel certain. We should be
frightfully—frightfully civilized.”
“Owen is frightfully civilized.”
“Well, I don’t think I am,” said Val contentiously.
“Lucilla, do you like Owen?”
“Yes. I’m very sorry for him, too.”
“Why?” Valeria could not believe that Owen would be in the least
grateful for Lucilla’s sorrow. It might even be difficult to induce him to
believe that anyone could be sufficiently officious to indulge in such
an emotion on his behalf.
“I think his shell-shock has affected him much more than he
realizes,” Lucilla said. “I think his nerves are on edge, very often.
He’d be a difficult person to live with, Val.”
Valeria remained thoughtful.
She knew that Lucilla’s judgments, if rarely put into words, were
extraordinarily clear-cut and definite, and as such they carried
conviction to her own intuitive, emotional impulses of like and dislike.
“Father likes Owen so much. Wouldn’t he be pleased if one ever
did?” Val said elliptically.
“Very pleased, I should think.”
“Of course, that isn’t really a reason for doing it.”
Lucilla apparently found the wisdom of her sister’s observation too
obvious for reply.
“Not the only reason, anyway.”
Lucilla’s silence was again an assent.
“Gossiping in the morning, my daughters?”
The Canon’s deep, pleasant voice preceded him as he paused
outside the open window.
“Is that as it should be? Lucilla, my dear love, at your desk again?
You look pale—you should be in the open air. Is not the day a
glorious one? When this world about us is so unutterably fair, does it
not make one think of ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath
it entered into the heart of man to conceive, what things He hath
prepared for them that love him’?”
The Canon’s uplifted gaze was as joyful as it was earnest.
“Heaven seems very near, on such a day,” he said softly.
Val, always outspoken, and struggling with the unease of her own
discontent, joined him at the window and said wistfully:
“I can’t feel it like you do, Father. I wish I could.”
“Little Valeria! It will come, my dear; it will all come. These things
become more real and vivid to us as life goes on. So many of those I
love have gone to swell the ranks of the Church Triumphant, now—
such a goodly company of friends! How can I feel it to be a strange
or far-away country, when your mother awaits me there, and my own
dear father and mother, and such a host of friends? What a meeting
that will be, with no shadow of parting any more!”
Valeria was conscious of foolish, utterly unexplained tears, rising to
her throat at the tender, trustful voice in which her father spoke.
How she loved him! Never could she do anything that would hurt or
disappoint him. The resolution, impulsive and emotional, gave her a
certain sense of stability, welcome after all her chaotic self-
questionings and contradictory determinations.
“Will you give Owen and myself the pleasure of your company this
afternoon, Valeria? We meditate an expedition to Stear—an
expedition to Stear.”
She said that she would go with them.
None of the Canon’s children had ever refused an invitation to go out
with the Canon since the days when the Sunday afternoons of their
childhood had been marked by the recurrent honour of a walk with
Father. An honour and a pleasure, even if rather a breathless one,
and one that moreover was occasionally liable to end in shattering
disaster, as when Flora had been sent home in disgrace by herself
for the misguided sense of humour that had led her, aged five, to put
out her tongue at the curate. Or that other unforgettable episode
when Val herself, teased by the boys, had vigorously boxed Adrian’s
ears.
She smiled as she recollected it, and wondered if Owen
remembered too, and yet there was a sort of disloyalty in recalling
the affair too closely.
The Canon had been so very angry! His anger, as intense as it was
memorable, had been succeeded by such a prolonged period of the
blackest depression!
Val realized thankfully that it was a long time since any of them had
seen the Canon angry.
She turned aimlessly down the garden.
The Canon had already gone indoors. He was never other than
occupied, and Valeria had never seen him impatient of an
interruption.
“The man who wants me is the man I want,” the Canon sometimes
quoted, with his wonderfully attractive smile.
“Father is wonderful. Never could I disappoint or grieve him,” thought
Val vehemently.
She suddenly wheeled round and returned to the open window,
determined that Lucilla, the astonishing Lucilla, should know of her
resolution.
“You know what we were talking about just now?” she demanded
abruptly.
Lucilla looked up.
“I’ve quite made up my mind that your advice was wrong,” said Val
firmly. “I know you said what you thought was best, and it’s nice of
you to want me to be independent, but, after all, one’s duty comes
first. I don’t believe it’s my duty to dash away from home and make
Father unhappy.”
Lucilla looked down again.
“Of course, if anything happened of itself to make me leave home, it
would be quite different. If I married, or anything like that. But just to
go away for a purely selfish whim——”
She paused expressively.
“I couldn’t do it, you know.”
“Well—” Lucilla’s tone conceded, apparently, that Val had every right
to judge for herself. Further than that, it did not go.
“Lucilla, if you really think like that, about living one’s own life, and I
suppose from the aggravating way in which you won’t say anything,
that you do—why don’t you do it yourself?”
“But I haven’t any wish to,” said Lucilla, looking surprised.
“Haven’t you ever had any wish to?”
“Oh, yes, once. But not now.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Val pursued desperately. She felt as though
she was coming really to know her sister for the first time.
“I suppose because I thought, like you, that it wouldn’t do to leave
Father.”
“But you don’t think that any more?”
“No.”
“Did anyone advise you?”
“Oh, no. There wasn’t anything to advise about. One has to think
things out for oneself, after all.”
“Oh!” Val was conscious of her own perpetual craving for approval
from everyone, for any course that she might adopt.
“Did you ever ask anyone’s advice, Lucilla?”
“I don’t think so. If I did, it would be because I meant to take it, and I
can’t imagine wanting to let anyone else decide things for me. Just
talking about one’s own affairs isn’t taking advice, though people like
to call it so.”
“I think it’s a very good thing you’re not married,” said Val crossly.
“You’re too superior.”
“Perhaps that’s why no one has ever asked me,” said Miss Morchard
with calm.
Valeria, in spite of her momentary elevation of spirits in resolving
never to grieve her father, prepared for the visit to Stear in a
discontented frame of mind.
At the last moment Adrian suddenly announced a wish to
accompany them.
“My dear! But of course—” The Canon’s pleasure was very evident.
“Owen, you will welcome this lad of mine as part of our little
excursion, eh? Why not make one of the old-time family parties?
Why not let us all go and explore this future home of Owen’s? It’s not
very often that I have a free afternoon nowadays—and to have all
my dear ones to make holiday with me would be indeed a rare joy.”
He looked round him expectantly.
“The caretaker won’t be able to manage tea for so many,” said
Lucilla, looking at Quentillian.
“There speaks my practical housekeeper!
For though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.
“Eh, Lucilla? Could you not contrive a basket for us, my dear, picnic
fashion? Come, come, let’s have an impromptu picnic. What say
you, young people?”
They said what the Canon wanted them to say. No one, Val felt,
could have done otherwise, in the face of his eagerness. She was
partly disappointed, and partly relieved. There had been a certain
romance in going with Owen to see Owen’s home, with the barely
acknowledged wonder whether it might not one day also be hers.
But there was no hint of romance in the solidly packed basket
presently produced by Lucilla, and reluctantly carried by Adrian, nor
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