§ 1
DID Viola herself believe in the sweet altruism of her filial duty?
She talked of saving Charles from his own restless self; was it an
impulse of pure rectitude that inspired her? Women reclaim a man but
rarely--seek to reclaim him still more rarely--save from a longing to
dispose of him (once reclaimed) as in their gentle wisdom they think
fit. Had Viola disposal in her mind? Daniel had looked his mistress’
fervour in the eyes and doubted it, fearing that it betokened more than
moral warmth of gratitude. But then he loved her, and lovers have eyes
that pierce a cloud of fantasy. How right was he to fear! How wrong
to doubt his Viola! For she at least was innocent of guile. As yet,
though she had peered and screwed her eyes and sought to penetrate
the mystery, she knew so little of love’s features that she mistook
his distant gesturing for her own virtue in commotion. Evil attended
one she liked; instinctively she sought to combat it. Wherefore she
lived no falsehood during those Roman days that followed the encounter
with Charles’ earlier love. Artlessly, maybe, but without conscious
fraud, she told herself that this her guardian was a man whose upright
mind might bend to meet the baseness of chance intimacy, might from
perpetual stooping lose its power for probity, yet still was upright.
Shyly, but with the brave determination of compassion undismayed, she
set herself to save him for integrity. She had not scrupled so to study
her own loveliness as to learn why and how it might assist her. When he
had blundered on her privacy, her modesty had broken into frightened
wailing; but the next day she had found teaching in the very violence
of the shock endured, had come a little nearer to an understanding of
the power of beauty over the medley of strength and weakness that is
man.
After her lunch with Daniel, she asked herself hourly what was
unselfish in her crusading zeal and what acquisitive. Hourly the answer
changed. Until perforce she braved the truth that her own heart told
her. She read the wording of her purpose written by deep conviction on
her brain--read to within glancing distance of the end--and stopped. “I
must win Charles,” she read, “because---- These women must be driven
from his life,” she read, “because----”
With something of a shiver she fixed the day for her return. The
infidel must be outfought at Morvane. To Morvane--a little trembling, a
deal excited--she must go.
“I’ll leave to-morrow, then, if you’ll forgive my hurrying away,” she
said to Rosalind. “Charles will be wanting me at home.”
At home! The word was torture to the hostess. Already it was home to
this outsider, the Morvane that by all laws of justice should be her
son’s inheritance! She turned her face to hide the baleful anger of her
eyes.
“You must please yourself, of course,” she said coldly.
Joyful, the girl went gaily to her packing. That Rosalind should
like her, or mislike, was not a problem worthy her attention on this
blissful day. She was for home, for Morvane, for Charles. She sang her
cheerfulness about the house. From where she sorted ribbons and letters
in her bedroom the music of her happiness came faintly to the ears of
those below. Rosalind Plethern frowned exasperation:
“Shameless little beast!” she thought. “Shouting her triumph in my very
ears!”
§ 2
How lovely was homecoming! How lovely even to think of it as
homecoming! Past fields and coppices and farms she recognized, the
trainlet from the junction jolted Viola. Spring trembled on the edge
of its revealing; hedgerows were red with swollen buds; the woods
dusted with a film of leaves so pale that they seemed silver-powdered.
Landmarks came thickly and more thickly; the desultory train rumbled
along the cutting, where in summer traveller’s joy webbed the steep
banks with labyrinthine stalks; crawled past the level crossing; jerked
to a stop at the platform of the tiny station. See!--the dogcart in the
station yard! See!--the solitary official taking tickets, cap-touching,
smiling in friendly omnicompetence! Mind the high step, miss! Luggage
in behind? Off and away! Now along country roads, between sweet English
fields; now through the tall gates and across the sweep of park; now at
the door and up the steps and in the hall....
“Hallo!”--Charles Plethern’s friendly voice--“Had a good journey?”
* * * * *
They walked together in the afternoon, she and Charles and dogs, over
the tussocky grass, between the Morvane beeches to the lonely grille.
She leant her forehead against its rusty bars.
“Rockarvon!” she murmured.
He smiled.
“I must rebuild these walls. The gates are ludicrous.”
“Do you know?” she said suddenly. “I went down there with Captain
Clavering.”
“Did you? I hadn’t understood. It’s years since I was there. I haven’t
dared....”
She gripped the uprights of the grille.
“If----” she began. Then: “Is it the only thing you ever
wanted--_really_ wanted?”
He nodded slowly.
“I think so,” he said simply. “The only thing----”
As they walked away, threading a path between the trees that fringed
the park, she felt a lump rising in her throat. Strange, that pity for
another’s disappointment should take her thus tearfully.... She thought
of Daniel, scrupulously correct, making a dozen pretexts for a sight
of her in London. Dear Daniel! She was fond of him and pitied him; she
read his anxious patience in his eyes. Poor, disappointed Daniel! But
no sob made to choke her. Strange, that the faithfulness of a handsome
lover should leave her dry-eyed, level-throated; she who, like other
golden women, could weep and melt so generously....
For more than a mile they wandered along the park’s edge, keeping on
their right over the low wall the rutted lane between Morvane and
Rockarvon. At the point where the lane joined a more ambitious road, a
knoll within the Morvane boundary gave an extended view. She climbed
the knoll and stood, a windblown loveliness, scanning the distance.
“There’s some one coming along the road,” she shouted.
He was throwing sticks for the dogs and only waved in answer. The
moment she had spoken she knew the purpose of her speech; the moment
that he waved, she knew that she had wanted him to wave. She watched
him, absorbed in his dogs, slight and nonchalant and English. Then she
turned toward the road again. A figure on horseback was approaching and
she recognized it for Walter Gray. Down from the knoll she ran.
“It’s Mr. Gray, Charles. Come and speak to him.”
The dogs saw their entertainment fade and vanish. Philosophically, they
bounded at their master’s heels; then ran to right and left, intent on
some erratic business of their own.
Gray saw Charles Plethern and Viola, and wondered dully whether to
stop or ride unseeing on his way. The old fiasco of the party mocked
his shyness; still the girl’s rudeness tortured him. Then, however, he
remembered that his sister, a while ago, had spoken of a letter she had
received from Lady Grieve. Walter recalled Lady Grieve and her kindness
at Morvane. She had, it appeared, written to Madeleine asking her
friendship for Miss Marvell. Walter had scoffed gruffly when first his
sister told him of the good lady’s letter; now, however, her request
came once more to mind and, after the manner of his kind, dutifully he
prepared to honour it.
Returning his neighbours’ salutations, he walked his horse on to the
grass margin of the road and stood by the park wall. A little to his
surprise, the girl addressed him:
“What a fine horse, Mr. Gray! Is he new? I don’t remember him last
summer.”
Subtle! So subtle that only instinct could have guided her! If Walter
had any vanity at all, it was a vanity of horses. He flushed with
pleasure, muttered the history of the animal’s acquisition. She
listened with frank interest and, when he paused, turned easily to her
guardian.
“Isn’t he a beauty, Charles? We can’t produce a horse like that. Do you
ride a lot, Mr. Gray?”
“All day, Miss Marvell, when I am not working with my hands.”
“Hunt?”
“A little. But it is too expensive for me as a regular thing.”
Charles took his share.
“How are your sisters, Gray? I’m afraid,” with a pleasant smile, “I
don’t know how many you have, nor which of them are at home!”
Walter took the personality in good part.
“We are a large family and they come and go. At present only Madeleine
of my actual sisters is at Clonsall--the permanent garrison,
Madeleine!--but a sister-in-law and her children and some odd cousins
are about the place.”
“What fun to have an elastic house like that!” cried Viola. “I suppose
you are so kind to every one that they just come and stay when they
like?”
“They certainly come!” laughed Walter. “But I take no credit for it.”
“May I come over and see Miss Gray?” the girl asked.
“Of course,” he replied. “Madeleine will be delighted. But you will
find a queer, untidy household. Elasticity has its drawbacks, you know.”
“I have learnt to love a lot of things during the last half-year, Mr.
Gray, that I was too stupid to love before.”
She said it so simply, and yet with a timidity so entrancing, that he
felt his old prejudice turning to fondness. Outwardly this was the
impudent beauty of the tennis-party, but that girl could not have
spoken as this girl had done. He looked from Viola to Charles.
“You have been abroad, Plethern?”
“Yes. We’ve been in Rome--the child and I. Now I have brought her to
be bored at Morvane. I shall be as grateful as she can be herself for
anything you and Miss Gray can do to make her happy.”
Viola laughed gaily.
“You talk as though I had a secret sorrow, Charles! Poor Mr. Gray will
think I’m a mental case!”
“I can guarantee Clonsall as a cure for melancholia, at any rate,” said
Gray. “If, however, you are ordered quiet----!” The neighbours took
friendly leave.
“He’s brighter than usual,” said Charles, as he and Viola walked home
to tea.
“I think he’s very nice,” she answered staunchly, “and his horse is
beautiful!”
§ 3
Walter was right to give the girl credit for her brave apology. It had
needed courage, under her guardian’s eye, thus to ask pardon for the
bad manners of six months before. And yet, when she was standing on the
steps of Clonsall, hearing the old bell sound rustily in the distance,
waiting to plunge into the dual embarrassment of fresh apology and a
crowd of strangers, Viola felt that there was worse to come. Madeleine
had written a kind note of invitation and now the lonely Viola was in
the hall, hearing behind the closed door of some nearby room shrill
sounds of talk, sounds of unruly childhood tapping spoons, deep
notes of adult admonition. Then a door opened; the racket swelled to
raucousness; dulled again; Madeleine crossed the hall to greet her
guest. They shook hands, mutually at a loss. The effort of rescue was
Viola’s. Jerking her head toward the noise of choral infancy, she
asked: “What’s happening?”
Madeleine looked puzzled. Then her face cleared.
“Oh, that’s tea! I forgot you came from a quiet house. One gets used to
it here. Will you come in or do they frighten you?”
For a moment Viola suspected sarcasm, but a glance at the other’s
wide-set, honest eyes reassured her.
“I’ll risk it,” she said, smiling.
Down the long dining-room a long table stretched, dotted with bread
and butter, scones and cake. Several persons and three small children
were seated at this table, and, as Viola entered, the entire assembly
fell into sudden silence. Eyes seized and held the stranger fast. A
grey-haired man rose from an armchair at the table head.
“Miss Marvell, dad--from Morvane,” explained Madeleine.
The squire shook hands impressively.
“We are glad to see you, Miss Marvell. You must excuse a nursery tea.”
“I’ve warned her,” laughed his daughter. “Come and sit here, Miss
Marvell, next to me. Then you’ll be out of reach of jammy fingers.
Babies--this is Miss Marvell. Say ‘How do you do’ nicely.”
“_How--d’you--do!_” shouted three piercing voices, and three
spoons banged ruthlessly upon the table-cloth.
“Barbara! I’ve just told you _not_ to bang with your spoon! And
you too, Toppety. I won’t have it!”
“That’s their mother,” said Viola’s hostess in an undertone. Then,
encouragingly to her sister-in-law: “They won’t hurt the spoons, Nina.”
The mother, still glaring at her disobedient young, ignored the comment.
“Now for goodness’ sake try and eat nicely. Try and show Miss Marvell
that you aren’t little pigs.”
Loud grunts from the far end of the table threw the children into
ecstasies of delight. Nina turned impatiently to the squire:
“Dad, can you explain to Phil that if _he_ won’t behave, he can’t
expect small children to?”
“I was only clearing my throat, Nina,” said the offender plaintively.
“Mayn’t I clear my throat? Must I smother in the cause of education?”
Madeleine interposed.
“We’ll get Uncle Walter to put Uncle Phil in the big sty with the pigs,
shall we, Podge? Then he can clear his horrid throat all day. Freda,
Miss Marvell wants one of those cakes. Pass them along, please.”
Viola had hardly taken a cake between her fingers when a loud wail from
Toppety attracted general notice.
“What in the world----!” began Madeleine.
“Toppety! What _is_ it, ducky?”
“Collywobbles, probably,” observed an unsympathetic uncle. “I don’t
wonder, after all those caramels.”
Gradually the grievance was explained. Toppety, between her sobs,
accused ‘Miss Marble’ of taking the only bun with a cherry on it. There
was general laughter. Viola walked round the table to the disgruntled
gourmet.
“There,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Put it on the edge of the plate and
eat it last of all. They taste twice as nice at the end.”
Toppety gazed solemnly at her benefactor.
“How will I know it tastes nicer if I don’t have another one now?”
“How will you know? Well, when you’ve eaten this one--at the
end--you’ll tell me how nice it was and then I’ll tell you how less
nice it would have been, if you’d eaten it sooner. Then you’ll know,
won’t you?”
The small girl nodded gravely. Clearly the arrangement satisfied her.
She built a small ring of crumbs and placed the cherry in the middle.
“Look!” she cried loudly. “Moses in the burning bush!”.
Again the table laughed.
“Really, Nina!” said Madeleine. “Your theology--!”
“Bulrushes, darling,” maternally corrective.
Toppety gave her mother a questioning glance. Then she shook her head
emphatically.
“These aren’t bulrushes,” she said. “They’re burning bushes. Aren’t
they, Bar?”
The elder sister studied the crumbs thoughtfully.
“I think there’s a bulrush or two among them,” she ventured.
“So’s mine,” shouted Podge suddenly. “Mine’s all bulrushes!”
For a few minutes longer tea went its disjointed way. Then Madeleine
turned to Viola.
“Shall we get out of this?” she asked.
“Aunty Mad! You’re to play General Post after tea! You promised to! You
promised to be a parcel from Tring to Timbuctoo!”
“I’ll come, sweetheart. I’ll come. You finish your tea and in a quarter
of an hour I’ll be a lovely parcel. Will that do?”
She ushered Viola from the room, then led the way upstairs. In a
small, untidy sitting-room they settled before a brightly-burning fire.
“What jolly kids,” said Viola.
She was feeling friendly and at home. It had needed determination to
leave her chair and to cope with Toppety over the solitary cherry, but
once she had plunged, the task had proved easy and strangely pleasant.
“Rather pickles,” replied Madeleine. “But there’s nothing to spoil
here. We always have kids of some kind, rioting about. These are one of
my brothers’ children. He’s not here.”
“I thought the one who grunted was the father!” cried Viola.
“Phil! Oh, dear no! He’s not at that stage yet. He’s only engaged. To
Freda, the girl with the dimple.”
Viola, while she talked easily with her new acquaintance, allowed
her imagination to contrast this shabby, chaotic household with the
spaced splendours of Morvane. Even during the September parties, when
every room was full, when meals were festive banquets and conversation
crowded laughter, there had been lacking the good temper and
contentment of the one untidy, normal tea-hour she had experienced at
Clonsall. And yet, even at the height of her satisfaction with this new
domesticity, she told herself that it lacked something, a something of
sensibility, a something of significance.
“May I come and see you again?” she asked suddenly. Madeleine turned
with a ready smile.
“As often as ever you like. We are always here.”
“Is Mr. Gray out all day?”
“Walter, you mean? No, not usually. He’s in and out. He has a lot to
do. A keen farmer, you see, for good money reasons. Though it’s not
farming as Mr. Plethern would understand it--that sort needs more
capital than we can manage.”
Viola sighed.
“I wish Charles cared enough to take it up,” she said. On an impulse to
confidence she went farther: “He gets so bored being here, and it’s my
fault.”
“Hardly a fault, surely?”
Viola did not reply. She had gone questing along another trail.
“Why, if you are so fond of children, aren’t you married? There must
have been heaps of opportunities.”
Madeleine shook her head.
“Not what you’d call opportunities, my dear. Besides, I have to keep
things going in the house. I couldn’t leave Walter in the lurch.” After
a pause, she added: “But I’d love babies of my own. Wouldn’t you?”
Viola stared gravely into the fire.
“I haven’t got so far,” she said. “At present I’m too interested in
their preliminaries.”
“Oh----!” The voice was unsteady with shocked astonishment.
Viola shook her head and smiled into the glowing coals.
“Sorry, but I meant something less piquant. I meant that I’m still so
puzzled over men and--and all this love business.”
“You queer girl!” cried Madeleine. “Did you never have dolls and play
at house? The usual procedure surely? Men come into it last of all.”
“Do they? How they’d hate to think it! Perhaps, then, I’m a hideous
freak; but honestly that’s how I feel. You see I’ve been alone with men
so much. First with my father, after mother--died. Then over here with
Charles. In Canada I never thought much either way. I just read and
learnt things in a stupid bookish way, without understanding an atom
of them _really_. But over here--well, I rather butted my head
against it and saw stars. I’m still uncertain which are stars and which
are--oh, sunspots....”
Madeleine watched her guest with lightly contemptuous perplexity.
Viola’s problem meant little to her who had grown up in a large
English family, unquestioning, placid-minded, trained to accept love
and its complications as things she would encounter when she must, as
things, till then, that no nice girl thought or spoke about. She was
unpuzzled, because she never thought of puzzlement; incurious, because
in her simple, busy mind she had nor power nor inclination to ponder
her own complexities and those of others.
“I shouldn’t worry my head about things of that kind,” she advised
briskly. “Life isn’t long enough. When you get to know people round
about and are interested in gardening or dog-breeding or whatever it
may be, you’ll find that sort of tiresome nonsense will be crowded out.”
Viola felt a sudden irritation. She was disappointed. The girl was
going to fail her after all. The charm, the gaiety, the friendliness
meant little enough if all they covered was this bustling obtuseness.
“Tiresome nonsense!” Was it a woman’s part to live for jollity and
competence and, when a good God sent them, babies? Was it a woman’s
pride glibly to brush aside as nonsense all the sweet dizziness of love
that had made words and music of the ages? Daniel, hot-eyed beneath
a harvest moon; Charles, hot-eyed against the darkness of a Roman
corridor, loomed hauntingly across her brain. Sex conflict--the phrase
recurred from books read but not a quarter understood. Where was the
conflict with such a girl as Madeleine? Where was the struggle when
one wrestler stood aloof, efficient in the daily round, indifferent to
life’s crowning victory? ‘If I’m a freak,’ she proudly thought, ‘thank
God I am! At least I’m not afraid to be alive!’
The door burst open.
“Aunty Mad! The game! The game!”
In a huge, barren room that had been nursery, schoolroom, den, and now
was nursery once again, Viola joined in the sport of General Post.
Later they turned the trencher. Later still they did charades. She grew
hot and tousled, but forgot her problems and her hostess’ density in
the absorbing joy of making children squeal and laugh and jump for
glee. At last:
“Time I was off,” said Viola to Madeleine.
“Come again soon,” smiled Madeleine from the open door.
Viola nodded and waved. The cart swung down the dark drive.
“It’s cold, Tom,” she said, snuggling into her furs.
“Bit sharp, miss,” replied the groom.
The cob’s hoofs beat crisply on the road. As they left Clonsall behind
and went tapping through the chilly darkness toward Morvane, the
heedless merriment of the last hour of romp died gradually away. The
old questioning began to rise and torture her. Her indignation against
Madeleine smouldered angrily. “At least I’m not afraid to be alive!”
Yet she _had_ been afraid hitherto--afraid in the library, afraid
before Daniel’s pleading urgency, afraid before Charles Plethern’s
hungry face. She tossed her little head, sitting at the elbow of the
unconscious groom. ‘I was a coward!’ she told herself. ‘I’ll be braver
next time--braver and more generous.’ On the night wind to her burning
ears came faintly from the past the words of old Mrs. Plethern, words
spoken at that first tea-party in the campanile--“It is a mistake
to give, without taking first.” No! No! A lie! Mean greed or meaner
cowardice. ‘Oh the beauty of giving!’ she thought in rhapsody--‘of
giving without thought of gain or pledge of safety! Women who give for
things material, women who give under the bland sanction of a wedding
ring----!’ Imagination mounted. She was in love with love; almost in
thought she outlawed modesty. The wraith of her foolish, erring mother
floated before her. “Poor little mother!” murmured Viola. “Poor little
mother!”
§ 4
Passed then the weeks as a slow-flowing stream, about whose placid
surface small eddies here and there tell of cross-currents or of sudden
deeps or of stones lumpishly scattered on the river-bed. If there is
a weir and waterfall ahead, such accidents are round the next bend or
the next; low reedy banks and scattered willows make a monotony of this
quiet reach.
Life seemed monotonous enough and quiet enough at Morvane, but brought
little of contentment to the three that lived it. Viola, striving by a
close interest in local things to hold her guardian to his home and to
herself, felt she was dragging a dead weight along interminable roads.
Charles was still under the influence of his rough violation of her
privacy; he felt amends were due but, beyond amiability and efforts to
forestall her wishes, knew not what amends to make. She sang to him
at nights, but he had neither the taste for music nor the sentimental
ignorance that often serves for taste to wish the ceremonies longer
than they were. If, for this reason, romantic or classic melody could
not hold him, there was another check to his appreciation of her
lighter naughtier numbers. She tried him with the French song that had
so fluttered the leaves at Lavenham; but it brought back too vividly
the past he wanted to forget, and she soon knew herself to have
blundered, noting his quick movements up and down the room, the wistful
sparkle of his eyes. The map and all it stood for fared no better.
They talked it over, canvassed its prospects. But Rockarvon unsubdued
grinned across the centre of it and Rockarvon, like so many subjects,
was taboo. She noticed Clonsall, asked him to indicate the area of the
Gray property. When he had done so, in a queer moment of perception,
pityingly but with astonishment, she guessed last summer’s scheme. Poor
silly, old thing! She laughed suddenly.
“You are a funny, old stupid, Charles,” she said affectionately.
“Why? All at once like that....”
“Oh, nothing. Just you are.”
And she gurgled uncontrollably, thinking of Walter’s canvas boots and
all the pother of the garden party.
Afterward, the discovery seemed less comical, for she realized of
its implications those not instantly apparent. ‘He wanted to join
Clonsall to Morvane,’ she told herself. ‘Then he must have meant
Morvane for me!’ It was the first time that questions of inheritance
had occurred to her, for when her guardian had explained Rockarvon’s
insult, her mind had been full of other, emotional aspects of the
strange adventure, and she had not thought to dwell upon the mechanics
of the undesired alliance. Now that she understood his purpose, at
least during the hatching of his absurd Clonsall plot, she began to
understand other things as well. She remembered the old lady saying
that Christopher was his uncle’s heir. When the remark was made she had
hardly noted it, so obvious had the statement seemed to be. But Charles
found it less obvious. Did Mrs. Plethern suspect as much? Then why
speak of Christopher to her? She puzzled frowningly over this latest
complication of her life, and the more she puzzled the more serious it
appeared to be. All kinds of half-appreciated tendencies returned with
a new clarity to her intelligence. Mrs. Plethern was for ever praising
James and Christopher. Now the girl thought of it, she could detect
coldness in the old woman’s attitude to Charles. Now the girl thought
of them again, she could read a fresh meaning into words spoken by Mrs.
Plethern, here and there, during their conversations of the past year.
‘I have done more than spoil his life,’ she reflected bitterly. ‘I
have made enemies for him of his family!’ She shivered a little as she
thought how James and Mrs. Plethern must detest her. It was not fear
for herself that shook her, but sorrow for Charles; sorrow to have
brought this new hostility to burden his indolent ease. ‘And if I work
to win him to the kind of life that’s worthy of him, they’ll say I’m
fortune-hunting!’ She shook herself with all the irritation of despair.
There seemed no escape. Be with him, help him, try in small measure to
repay his kindness--and the world would curse her for an intriguing
hussy, would mock him for a doting fool. Leave him alone to go his
way--What then? The answer terrified; she dared not even think of it.
Only could she rock herself to and fro in dry-eyed misery, knowing that
if he went his way he would escape for ever, that she would lose him
and that, if she lost him, all was lost.
Day after day she wrestled with her dreadful problem, growing
tired-eyed and pale and wanly tempersome. Charles watched her
anxiously. Manlike he thought of doctors and of those vague, feminine
disorders known as nerves. Would she care for a week in town? She shook
her head.
“You go,” she said.
“Try Lavenham,” he suggested.
She thought a moment. Then, with a vague idea of telling her troubles
to Belinda Grieve, assented.
“I’d like to go for a bit, if they’d have me.”
But she had not been two days in Buckinghamshire, when her hostess,
reading a letter after tea, gave a short exclamation of surprise.
“What is it?” asked Viola.
Lady Grieve looked at the girl over her spectacles.
“You’ll have to stay on with us,” was all she said.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Charles has to go a voyage,” replied the lady and threw half the
letter into Viola’s lap.
“DEAR BELINDA,--
“A most tiresome thing has happened. You remember Carruthers and know
that he came in for his uncle’s title a short while ago? At least he
thought he did, but there seems now to be trouble about proving the
succession. The old man had a son who went off the rails and died
in Pretoria. Some one has produced a story of a child born in the
Transvaal and the infant is being run for the title by some lawyers
there. Carruthers is off in his yacht to investigate and asks me to go
with him. He’s an old friend and makes a point of it. I can’t refuse.
We start in a week and I’m busy with preparations. What worries me is
who’s to look after Viola. The child----”
“May I read the rest?”
Lady Grieve shook her head.
“Not necessary, my dear. It’s all settled. You stay here.”
“But I _must_ see him before he goes!”
Viola had jumped to her feet and Lady Grieve noticed with surprise her
pale excitement.
“Perhaps he’ll come here for a night,” she suggested soothingly.
“No, no! I must go to Morvane! I must go at once! To-morrow! Dear Lady
Grieve, let me go to-morrow! I’ll come back. It’s sweet of you to want
me. I’ll come back--in a little while. But I must go home to-morrow!”
* * * * *
In the train she sat motionless, thinking, thinking. He was leaving
her for months. During those months she could decide how best to serve
him. It was a fortunate chance that took him from her now. And yet,
during those months she would lose him. Back to the past of men friends
and of wandering pleasure he would surely drift. Also the parting! Her
heart stood still. She pictured his going, his trunks and bags packed
and labelled, the last meal at Morvane, the drive to the station,
the hotel in London (of course she would see him off), the leaving of
the coast-bound train, the lonely journey home to a lonely house. She
had to clench her hands to keep them quietly at her side. ‘I must not
whisper loneliness,’ she enjoined herself. She greeted him at Morvane
with composure and with smiles.
But the composure yielded and the smiles gave place to tears when
nightly, in the solitude of her room, she allowed herself to think that
yet another day had slipped away. One by one they passed. She kept
beside him hour after hour, helping his last arrangements, talking
cheerfully of the pleasures of the voyage, watching with a pain she
scrupulously concealed his evident excitement and chafing to be gone.
“I wish you could come too,” he said once. “If there’d been a ghost of
a chance, I’d have suggested it. But there are three men only going and
it’s a business trip--”
“Please no!” she cried. “I’m a dreadful sailor. Send me a postcard now
and then. Where do you touch first?”
“We have to go via Teneriffe. The trail starts there for some curious
reason. I’ll send you a pipe of canary wine.”
“By post,” she added gaily, “with stamps stuck lightly, so that I can
get them off for the kids at Clonsall. Then I shall soak, brutishly, in
my bedroom. You’ll come back to find me a confirmed drunkard!”
Pitiful, tortured gaiety of suffering unavowed! Pitiful brightness in
eyes that cannot smile, pitiful pain in twisted lips that desperately
laugh! The last darkness of Charles’ last week at Morvane shut down
on Viola in her locked and curtained room. Now that he was so nearly
gone, she threw all comfort from her for the specious drug it was.
She wanted no months in which to think; she cared no atom for the
world’s ill-nature; only let her be near him, serve and cherish him,
and the world--for all she cared--might talk itself to lunacy. Once,
in the library, he had laid hands upon her. Blissful hour, that in
her childish folly she had drowned in angry fear! Once, by a freak
of chance, he had set eyes upon her loveliness; once what she had of
beauty had been his to see and covet. Proud flash of time, that by its
very suddenness had dazzled and affrighted her! He never touched her
now; subjects in talk that might recall her Roman nakedness by him were
edged discomfortably away. Yet in the library his hands were tender;
yet from her bedroom door his eyes had hotly gleamed.... A moment’s
madness seized her. What if this night she tempted him; what if this
night she lured him from his voyage, bound him to stay with her, held
him by all she knew of woman’s wiles for a few glorious, drunken
days?... The madness passed; she was hysterical and an idiot; he would
reject her angrily, and not for that moment only but for always. Men
have desires for what they wish to take; for what is offered they have
none or, at the best, a tired complaisance. Let him go voyaging. When
he returned she would appear the rarer for her strangeness. Already she
would withdraw herself; the hours to his departure should be hours of
cool normality. She would dismiss her fevers and her rhetorics. Away
with them! Away with them!
But in the very moment of her resolutions her tears welled up and
blinded her. Prone on her bed, her dress dishevelled, her golden hair
awry, she cried and cried....
§ 5
It happened that old Mrs. Plethern had become aware of her son’s
imminent departure for a prolonged sea voyage before the letter with
the news reached Lavenham, for he had written it from Morvane and,
after sealing it, had crossed the dark garden to his mother’s tower.
As he entered her room, the old lady made neither sign nor gesture of
welcome. She sat in her wide, flounced chair at a small card-table
upon which were piled newspapers and catalogues. Her great scrap-book
of notes, drawings and reproductions of playing cards was propped on a
chair at her side. She leaned back as her son appeared, taking off her
round, horn spectacles, passing a large, pale hand across her eyes.
“Charles? You are a rare visitor. I suppose our dear child has gone to
Lady Grieve?”
He smiled amiably and walked to the small fire that, in tribute to a
chilly evening, flickered in the grate.
“Don’t let me disturb you, mother. Go ahead with your researches.
Working up the collection, I suppose?”
She nodded heavily.
“Always working, Charles. Always working. They pity old people who have
only posterity to work for, but I find the duty a pleasant one. It is
nice to think of leaving a mark upon the future, to think that some day
some one will say: ‘Had old Rowena Plethern not done so-and-so, then
so-and-so had never happened.’ Perhaps you do not feel that way yet,
Charles? You are young and, perhaps, still ambitious?”
He laughed.
“Ambitious? Good gracious, no! Not ambitious, mother. A drone in the
hive. Jolly life, droning.”
“Well, temperaments differ,” she commented huskily. “Maybe fortunately.”
Bending over her table she shuffled papers stealthily between her
fingers. Charles feigned an interest in a page of photographs.
“What are those, mother? They look like miniatures.”
“In a sense they are; they are from a French pack of the seventeenth
century. It is in a collection at Angers. I saw it once, when I was
younger and could travel about. Very beautiful. But then so many
are beautiful. I think the sociology of playing cards is even more
remarkable than their beauty.”
“Yes, I suppose they are tell-tale little beggars,” said Charles
vaguely. “‘By their pips ye shall know them.’ That’s the idea, eh?”
“The spirit of peoples,” replied Mrs. Plethern--and, as always when
on the subject of her hobby, she spoke rather to herself than to her
hearer--“has ever been shown more clearly in their amusements than in
their laws or in their art. We know more of imperial Rome from records
of the arena or from Petronius than from any gallery of sculpture, any
street of buildings, or any legal code. I could tell strange things
of manners and morals in many countries at many times, and from cards
alone. Very strange things----” she chuckled softly. “----Indeed, not
so long ago I acquired some cards that told facts about Italy in the
age of the Grand Dukes that no historian has made clear. Unfortunately
these facts, like so many other that I could tabulate, would be denied
and disbelieved, because they would clash with polite falsities of
history and conventional adorations of the past. For example, at
Versailles under the Roi Soleil----”
Her heavy voice tolled monotonously in the stagnant air. Charles
lounged against the mantelpiece waiting for silence. His mother bored
him in her Delphic moods, but he knew better than to force a change of
subject.
When finally, like the last note of a windless organ, her voice rumbled
into quietness, he jerked himself upright and stood, hands in pockets,
before the fire.
“I have to go off again, mother,” he said abruptly. “In a few days. It
is awkward, the claim on me coming just now, but I can’t help myself.
Viola will spend much of the time at Lavenham, I expect, but while she
is here I want you to watch that she keeps amused and happy, and let me
know if there is anything I can do. Will you see to it?”
“You will be away for long?”
“I can’t say for how long. Probably for three or four months.”
He summarized the nature and purpose of his journey.
“I will look after her, Charles,” said the old lady softly, “You
can be quite easy about her. I dare say I can devise some little
distractions....”
“Good!” He nodded approvingly. “I leave her in your hands. Good night.”
She heard him pause on the landing. Another moment and he put his head
round the door.
“This lift of yours is a bit dangerous, mother. The rope is badly worn.
You ought to have it seen to.”
“I had noticed it, my son. It has been like that a long while and will
probably last my time. But I will attend to it, as you wish me to.”
Mrs. Plethern listened to his footsteps as they tapped down the stairs,
then crossed her hands and sank into deep thought. Once she glanced at
the calendar that stood on her desk, made a rapid calculation, jotted
some figures on a scrap of paper. Again she pondered, motionless,
impassive. Before going to bed she wrote a letter to James Plethern,
informing him that she would spend the night at his house in a week’s
time. She wrote another letter to Lord Rockarvon in the Rue des
Montagnards, asking whether he could conveniently leave Paris and come
to London ten days from the date of writing, also whether he could
remain, perhaps a week, perhaps three weeks, in England.