Touched and flattered, ‘But, my dear child,’ Fanning protested, ‘I wasn’t doing anything of the kind. I meant what I said. And much more than I said,’ he added, in the teeth of the warning and reproachful outcry raised by his common sense. It was amusing to experiment, it was pleasant to be adored, exciting to be tempted (and how young she was, how perversely fresh!). There was even something quite agreeable in resisting temptation; it had the charms of a strenuous and difficult sport. Like mountain climbing. He smiled once more, consciously brilliant.
This time Pamela dropped her eyes. There was a silence which might have protracted itself uncomfortably, if the waiter had not broken it by bringing the tagliatelle. They began to eat. Pamela was all at once exuberantly gay.
After coffee they took a taxi and drove to the Villa Giulia. ‘For we mustn’t,’ Fanning explained, ‘neglect your education.’
‘Mustn’t we?’ she asked. ‘I often wonder why we mustn’t. Truthfully now, I mean without any hippoing and all that—why shouldn’t I neglect it? Why should I go to this beastly museum?’ She was preparing to play the cynical, boastfully unintellectual part which she had made her own. ‘Why?’ she repeated truculently. Behind the rather vulgar lowbrow mask she cultivated wistful yearnings and concealed the uneasy consciousness of inferiority. ‘A lot of beastly old Roman odds and ends!’ she grumbled; that was one for Miss Figgis.
‘Roman?’ said Fanning. ‘God forbid! Etruscan.’
‘Well, Etruscan, then; it’s all the same, anyhow. Why shouldn’t I neglect the Etruscans? I mean, what have they got to do with me—me?’ And she gave her chest two or three little taps with the tip of a crooked forefinger.
‘Nothing, my child,’ he answered. ‘Thank goodness, they’ve got absolutely nothing to do with you, or me, or anybody else.’
‘Then why . . .?’
‘Precisely for that reason. That’s the definition of culture—knowing and thinking about things that have absolutely nothing to do with us. About Etruscans, for example; or the mountains on the moon; or cat’s-cradle among the Chinese; or the Universe at large.’
‘All the same,’ she insisted, ‘I still don’t see.’
‘Because you’ve never known people who weren’t cultured. But make the acquaintance of a few practical businessmen—the kind who have no time to be anything but alternately efficient and tired. Or of a few workmen from the big towns. (Country people are different; they still have the remains of the old substitutes for culture—religion, folk-lore, tradition. The town fellows have lost the substitutes without acquiring the genuine article.) Get to know those people; they’ll make you see the point of culture. Just as the Sahara’ll make you see the point of water. And for the same reason: they’re arid.’
‘That’s all very well; but what about people like Professor Cobley?’
‘Whom I’ve happily never met,’ he said, ‘but can reconstruct from the expression on your face. Well, all that can be said about those people is: just try to imagine them if they’d never been irrigated. Gobi or Shamo.’
‘Well, perhaps.’ She was dubious.
‘And anyhow the biggest testimony to culture isn’t the soulless philistines—it’s the soulful ones. My sweet Pamela,’ he implored, laying a hand on her bare brown arm, ‘for heaven’s sake don’t run the risk of becoming a soulful philistine.’
‘But as I don’t know what that is,’ she answered, trying to persuade herself, as she spoke, that the touch of his hand was giving her a tremendous frisson—but it really wasn’t.
‘It’s what the name implies,’ he said. ‘A person without culture who goes in for having a soul. An illiterate idealist. A Higher Thinker with nothing to think about but his—or more often, I’m afraid, her—beastly little personal feelings and sensations. They spend their lives staring at their own navels and in the intervals trying to find other people who’ll take an interest and come and stare too. Oh, figuratively,’ he added, noticing the expression of astonishment which had passed across her face. ‘En tout bien, tout honneur. At least, sometimes and to begin with. Though I’ve known cases . . .’ But he decided it would be better not to speak about the lady from Rochester, N.Y. Pamela might be made to feel that the cap fitted. Which it did, except that her little head was such a charming one. ‘In the end,’ he said, ’they go mad, these soulful philistines.
Mad with self-consciousness and vanity and egotism and a kind of hopeless bewilderment; for when you’re utterly without culture, every fact’s an isolated, unconnected fact, every experience is unique and unprecedented. Your world’s made up of a few bright points floating about inexplicably in the midst of an unfathomable darkness. Terrifying! It’s enough to drive anyone mad. I’ve seen them, lots of them, gone utterly crazy. In the past they had organized religion, which meant that somebody had once been cultured for them, vicariously. But what with protestantism and the modernists, their philistinism’s absolute now. They’re alone with their own souls. Which is the worst companionship a human being can have. So bad that it sends you dotty. So beware, Pamela, beware! You’ll go mad if you think only of what has something to do with you. The Etruscans will keep you sane.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ She laughed. ‘But aren’t we there?’
The cab drew up at the door of the villa; they got out.
‘And remember that the things that start with having nothing to do with you,’ said Fanning, as he counted out the money for the entrance tickets, ‘turn out in the long run to have a great deal to do with you. Because they become a part of you and you of them. A soul can’t know or fully become itself without knowing and therefore to some extent becoming what isn’t itself. Which it does in various ways. By loving, for example.’
‘You mean . . .?’ The flame of interest brightened in her eyes.
But he went on remorselessly. ‘And by thinking of things that have nothing to do with you.’
‘Yes, I see.’ The flame had dimmed again.
‘Hence my concern about your education.’ He beckoned her through the turnstile into the museum. ‘A purely selfish concern,’ he added, smiling down at her. ‘Because I don’t want the most charming of my young friends to grow into a monster, whom I shall be compelled to flee from. So resign yourself to the Etruscans.’
‘I resign myself,’ said Pamela, laughing. His words had made her feel happy and excited. ‘You can begin.’ And in a theatrical voice, like that which used to make Ruth go off into such fits of laughter, ‘I am all ears,’ she added, ‘as they say in the Best Books.’ She pulled off her hat and shook out the imprisoned hair.
To Fanning, as he watched her, the gesture brought a sudden shock of pleasure. The impatient, exuberant youthfulness of it! And the little head, so beautifully shaped, so gracefully and proudly poised on its long neck! And her hair was drawn back smoothly from the face to explode in a thick tangle of curls on the nape of the neck. Ravishing!
‘All ears,’ she repeated, delightedly conscious of the admiration she was receiving.
‘All ears.’ And almost meditatively, ‘But do you know,’ he went on, ‘I’ve never even seen your ears. May I?’ And without waiting for her permission, he lifted up the soft, goldy-brown hair that lay in a curve, drooping, along the side of her head.
Pamela’s face violently reddened; but she managed none the less to laugh. ‘Are they as long and furry as you expected?’ she asked.
He allowed the lifted hair to fall back into its place and, without answering her question, ‘I’ve always,’ he said, looking at her with a smile which she found disquietingly enigmatic and remote, ‘I’ve always had a certain fellow-feeling for those savages who collect ears and thread them on strings, as necklaces.’
‘But what a horror!’ she cried out.
‘You think so?’ He raised his eyebrows.
But perhaps, Pamela was thinking, he was a sadist. In that book of Krafft-Ebbing’s there had been a lot about sadists. It would be queer if he were . . .
‘But what’s certain,’ Fanning went on in another, business-like voice, ‘what’s only too certain is that ears aren’t culture. They’ve got too much to do with us. With me, at any rate. Much too much.’ He smiled at her again. Pamela smiled back at him, fascinated and obscurely a little frightened; but the fright was an element in the fascination. She dropped her eyes. ‘So don’t let’s waste any more time,’ his voice went on. ‘Culture to right of us, culture to left of us. Let’s begin with this culture on the left. With the vases. They really have absolutely nothing to do with us.’
He began and Pamela listened. Not very attentively, however. She lifted her hand and, under the hair, touched her ear. ‘A fellow-feeling for those savages.’ She remembered his words with a little shudder. He’d almost meant them. And ‘ears aren’t culture. Too much to do with us. With me. Much too
