When Jane stood at her window and looked across the sea, she saw what
might have been a picture of life at Luttrell Marches during those first
few days. Such a smooth stretch of water, pleasant to the eye, where
blue and green, amethyst, grey and silver came and went, and under the
play of colour and the shifting light and shade of day and evening, the
unchanging black of rocks which showed for an instant and then left one
guessing whether anything had really broken the beauty and the peace.
Over the surface all was pleasant enough, but incidents, some of them
almost negligible in themselves, kept recurring to remind Jane that
there were rocks beneath the sea.
The first incident came up suddenly whilst she was writing Lady
Heritage’s letters on the second day.
She had beside her a little pile of correspondence, mostly about
trifles. Upon each letter there was scrawled, “Yes”—“No”—“Tell them I’ll
think it over,” or some such direction.
Presently Jane arrived at a letter in French, upon which Lady Heritage
had written, “Make an English translation and enclose to Mrs. Blunt.”
Mrs. Blunt’s own letter lay immediately underneath. It contained
inquiries about some conditions of factory labour amongst women in
France.
The French letter was an excellent exposition of the said conditions.
Jane sat looking at it, and wondering whether Renata could have
translated a single line of it, and how much ignorance it would behove
her to display.
After a moment’s thought she turned round and said timidly, “May I have
a dictionary, please?”
Lady Heritage looked up from the papers before her. She frowned and
said:
“A dictionary?”
“Yes, for the French letter.”
“You don’t know French, then?”
Jane met the half-sarcastic look with protest.
“Oh yes, I _do_. But, if I might have a dictionary——”
Lady Heritage pointed to the bookcase and went back to her papers.
An imp of mischief entered into Jane.
She took the dictionary and spent the next half-hour in producing a
translation with just the right amount of faults in it. She put it down
in front of her employer with a feeling of triumph.
“Please, will this do?”
Lady Heritage looked, frowned, and tore the paper across.
“I thought you said you knew French?”
Jane fidgeted with her pen:
“Of course I know I’m not _really_ good at it, but I looked out all the
words I didn’t know.”
“There must have been a good many,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and the
imp made Jane raise innocent eyes and say:
“Oh, there _were_!”
She went back to her table, and Lady Heritage spoke over her shoulder to
Mr. Ember, who appeared to be searching for a book at the far end of the
room. She spoke in French—the low, rapid French of the woman to whom one
language is the same as another.
“What do they teach at English schools, can you tell me, Jeffrey? This
girl says she knows French, and if she can follow one word I am saying
now——” She broke off and shrugged. “Yet I dare say she went to an
expensive school. Now, I had a Bavarian maid, educated in the ordinary
village school, and she spoke English with ease, and French better than
any English schoolgirl I’ve come across. Wait whilst I try her in
something else.”
She turned back to Jane.
“Just send the original to Mrs. Blunt—I haven’t time to bother with
it—and make a note for me. I want it inserted after para three on the
second page of that typewritten article that came back this morning.”
Jane supposed she might be allowed to know what a “para” was. She turned
over the leaves of the typescript and waited for the dictation. The last
sentence read, “Woman through all the ages is at the disposal and under
the autocratic rule of man, but it is not of her own volition.”
She wondered what was to come next, and waited, keenly on the alert.
Lady Heritage began to speak:
“Write it in as neatly as possible, please; it’s only one sentence: ‘It
is Man who has forced “das ewig Weibliche” upon us.’”
Jane wrote, “It is man——” and then stopped. She repeated the words aloud
and looked expectant.
“‘Das ewig Weibliche’”—there was a slight grimness in Lady Heritage’s
tone.
“I’m afraid—” faltered Jane.
“Never heard the quotation?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t know any German, then?”
“I’m _so_ sorry,” said Jane.
“My dear girl, what did they teach you at that school of yours? By the
way, where was it?”
“At Ilfracombe.”
“English education is a disgrace,” said Lady Heritage, and went back to
her papers.
It was next day that she turned suddenly to Jane:
“By the way, you were at school at Ilfracombe—can you give me the name
of a china shop there? I want some of that blue Devonshire pottery for a
girls’ club I’m interested in.”
Jane had a moment of panic. Renata’s shoes had fitted her too easily.
She had felt secure, and then to have her security shattered by a trifle
like this!
“A china shop?” she said meditatively; then, after a pause, “It’s
awfully stupid of me—I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name.”
Lady Heritage stared.
“A shop that you must have passed hundreds of times?”
“It’s very stupid of me.”
Lady Heritage smiled with a sudden brilliance. “Well, it is rather,” she
said.
It was on the fourth day that Jane really caught her first glimpse of
the black rocks.
She was writing in the library, dealing with an apparently endless
stream of begging letters, requests for interviews, invitations to speak
at meetings or to join committees.
In four days Jane had discovered that Lady Heritage was up to her eyes
in a dozen movements relating to feminist activities, women’s labour,
and social reform.
Newspapers, pamphlets, and reports littered a table which ran the whole
length of the room. Jane was required to open all these as they came,
and separate those which dealt with social reform and the innumerable
scientific treatises and reviews. These latter arrived in every European
language.
Jane sat writing. The day was clear and lovely, the air sun-warmed and
yet fresh as if it had passed over snow. April has days like this, and
they fill every healthy person with a longing to be out, to stop
working, and take holiday.
The windows of the library looked out upon the gravel terrace above the
sea. The sun was on the blue water.
Jane put down her pen and looked at the hyacinths in the grey stone
urns. They were blue too. A yellow butterfly played round them. She sat
up and went to the window.
Lady Heritage and Mr. Ember were walking up and down the terrace, Lady
Heritage bareheaded, all in white with not even a scarf, and Jeffrey
Ember with a muffler round his neck, and the inevitable fur coat. They
were coming towards her, and Jane stood back so that the curtains made a
screen. She watched Raymond Heritage as she had watched the sea and the
flowers, for sheer joy in her beauty.
Raymond’s face was towards her, and she was speaking.
Not a word reached Jane’s ears, but as she looked at those beautiful
lips, their movements spelt words to her—words and sentences. She would
have drawn back or looked away, but the first sentence that she read
riveted her attention too closely.
“Are you satisfied about her Jeffrey?”
Ember _must_ have spoken, but his head was turned away. Then Raymond
spoke again.
“Nor am I—not entirely. She seems intelligent and unintelligent by
turns, unbelievably stupid in one direction and quick in another.” They
passed level with the window, and so on to the end of the terrace. Jane
went round the table to the other side of the window and waited for them
to come back.
Ember’s face was towards her when they turned, too far away for her to
see anything. But, as they came nearer, she saw that he was speaking.
Not easy to read from, however, with those straight, thin lips that
moved so little. There was only one word she was sure of—“overheard.”
It was too tantalising. If she had to wait until they reached the far
end of the terrace and turned again, what might she not miss?
As the thought passed through her mind Lady Heritage stopped, walked
slowly to the grey stone wall, and sat down on it, motioning to Ember to
do the same.
Jane could see both faces now, and Raymond was saying, “If she overheard
anything, would she have the intelligence to be dangerous?—that is what
I ask myself.”
Ember’s lips just moved, but the movements made no sense.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Lady Heritage; “despise not thine enemy.”
She changed her position, leaned forward, displaying a statuesque
profile, and appeared to be speaking fast and earnestly. Then Jane saw
her lips again, and they were saying, “Anything but Formula ‘A.’”
Jane gripped the curtain which she held until the gold galon which
bordered it marked her hand with its acorn pattern.
“Formula ‘A’!” everything swam round her while she heard Renata’s
gasping voice:
“He said ‘With Formula “A” you have the key. When Formula “B” is also
complete, you will have the lock for that key to fit; then the treasures
of the world are yours.’”
The mist cleared from her eyes; she looked again.
Raymond Heritage had risen to her feet. Ember and she looked out to sea
for a moment, then crossed the gravel towards the house. They were
talking of the sunshine and the spring air.
“My bulbs have done well,” Lady Heritage said.
They passed out of sight.
Two days later Jane, coming down the corridor to the library, was aware
of voices in conversation. She opened the door and saw Jeffrey Ember
with his back to her. He had pulled a deep leather chair close to the
fire, and was bending forward to warm his hands. Lady Heritage stood a
yard or two away. She had a large bunch of violets in one hand; with the
other she leaned against the black marble mantel.
She and Ember were talking in German. Both glanced round, and Raymond
asked:
“What is it?”
“The letters for the post,” said Jane.
They went on talking whilst she sorted and stamped the letters.
“Which of us is the better judge of character, it comes to that.”
Speaking German, Lady Heritage’s deep voice sounded deeper than ever.
“Do we take different sides then?”
“I don’t know. I thought your verdict was inclined to be ‘Guilty, but
recommended to mercy,’ whereas mine——” She hesitated—stopped rather—for
there was no hesitation in her manner.
Ember made a gesture with the hand that held his cigarette.
“Expound.”
“I doubt the guilt. But if I did not doubt, I should have no mercy at
all.”
Jane went out with the letters, and when she was in the corridor again
she put out her hand and leaned against the wall. It would be horrible
enough, she thought, to be tried in an open court upon some capital
count, but how far less horrible than a secret judgment where whispered
words made unknown charges, where the trial went on beneath the surface
of one’s pleasant daily life, and every word, every look, a turn of the
head, an unguarded sigh, a word too little, or a glance too much might
tip the scale and send the balance swinging down to—what?
Next day Lady Heritage was deep in her correspondence, when she suddenly
flashed into anger. Pushing back her chair, she got up and began to pace
the room. There was a letter in her hand, and as she walked she tore it
across and across, flung the fragments into the fire, and pushed a
blazing log down upon them with her foot.
Jane and Ember watched her—the former with some surprise and a good deal
of admiration, the latter with that odd something which her presence
always called out. She swung round, met his eyes, and burst into speech.
“It’s Alington—to think that I ever called that man my friend! I wonder
if there’s a single man on this earth who would translate professions of
devotion to one woman, into bare decent justice to all women.”
“What has Lord Alington done?” asked Mr. Ember, with a slight drawl.
Jane, with a thrill, identified the President of the Board of Trade.
“Nothing that I might not have expected. It is only women that are
different, Jeffrey. Men are all the same.”
“And still I don’t know what he has done,” said Jeffrey Ember.
“Oh, it’s a long story! I’ve been pressing for women inspectors in
various directions. It seems inconceivable that any one should cavil at
a woman inspector wherever women are employed. You have no idea of what
some of the conditions are. Stewardesses, for instance; I’ve a letter
there from a woman who has been working on one of the largest liners—not
a tramp steamer, mind you, but one of the biggest liners afloat. All the
passengers’ trays, all the cabin meals had to be carried up a
perpendicular iron stair like a fire-escape—not a permanent stair, you
understand, but a ladder that is let up and down. Those wretched women
had to go up and down it all day with heavy trays. They said they
couldn’t do it, and were told they had to. And that’s a little thing
compared to some of the other conditions. I want an inspector for them.”
“And Alington?”
Lady Heritage came to a halt by the long, piled-up table. She struck it
with her open hand. “Lord Alington is just a man,” she said. “He stands
for what men have always stood for, the sacred right of the vested
interest. What man ever wants to alter anything? And why should he when
the existing order gives him all he wants? It doesn’t matter where you
turn, what you do, how hard you try, the vested interest blocks the way;
you are up against the Established Order of what has always been. My
God, how I’d like to smash it all, the whole thing, the whole smug sham
which we call civilisation!”
Jane stared at her open-eyed. She had never dreamed that the statue
could wake into such vivid life as this. The colour burned in Raymond’s
cheeks, the sombre eyes were sombre still, but they held sparks as if
from inward fire.
Ember touched the hand that was clenched at the table’s edge. A sort of
tremor passed over her from head to foot. The colour died, the fire was
gone. With a complete change of manner she said:
“Alington was hardly worth all that, was he?” Then without a change of
key, but in German:
“Thank you, Jeffrey, the child’s eyes were nearly falling out of her
head. It was stupid of me; I forgot. These things carry me away.”
The door opened on her last words, and Sir William came in. He was
frowning, and appeared to be in a great hurry.
“Ridiculous business, ridiculous waste of time. These damned departments
appear to think I’ve nothing to do with my time except to answer their
infernal inquiries, and entertain any interfering jackanapes that they
choose to let loose on me.”
“What is it Father?” said Lady Heritage—“Government inspection?”
“Nonsense,” said Sir William slowly. “Henry March wants to come down for
the night.”
Jane bent forward over her papers. No one was looking at her, no one was
thinking of her, but she had felt her cheeks grow hot, and was glad of
an excuse to hide them.
She did not know whether she was very much afraid or very glad. A
feeling unfamiliar but overwhelming seemed to shake her to the depths.
She was quite unconscious of what was passing behind her.
At Henry’s name, Raymond Heritage uttered a sharp, “Oh no!” She came
quickly forward as she spoke and caught the letter from Sir William’s
hand.
“He can’t come—I can’t have him here—put him off, Father; you can make
some excuse!”
“Nonsense!” said Sir William again. “It’s a nuisance, of course—it’s an
infernal nuisance—but he’ll have to come, confound him!”
Then, as she made a half-articulate protest, he went on with increasing
loss of temper:
“Good heavens! I can’t very well tell the man I won’t have him in what
is practically his own house.”
It was Ember, not her father, who saw how frightfully pale Raymond
became. In a very low voice she said:
“No, I suppose not.”
Sir William was fidgeting. He looked at Jane’s back.
“Of course, he’s coming down on business.”
Then he broke off and stared at Jane again.
Lady Heritage nodded.
“Miss Molloy,” she said. “You can take half an hour off.”