Immediately after the funeral, I left the desolate Château, the
desolate Countess, the country of France soon to be made desolate, and,
after nearly four years' absence, returned to my native land.
On Southampton Quay Lord Tawborough awaited me.
I saw him from the boat before I landed, and he saw me. I braved
myself for the greeting: I would be pleasant, natural, would look him
frankly in the eyes. I came down the little landing-bridge, we shook
hands, for one half-instant of time I looked into his eyes; then
self-consciousness and joy rolled through me like a tide, my heart beat
unreasonably, I forgot who or where I was. When I got over the worst
of it, I was conscious of how foolish I had been, and I flushed to
think what he might be thinking. I still dared not look. He was busying
himself with my luggage. We got into a cab, into a train....
If it was not love that filled me, what was it? If it was not love
that I had seen for that swift second in his eyes, what was its name?
Or was I once more judging others by my romantic self-conscious self,
lending them looks and emotions they had never sought to borrow? Yet
had he made this journey to Southampton for cousinship's sake, or
through courtesy to my Grandmother, or for my mother's sake--or for
any sake but mine? I knew that he had not. Then I must tell him I was
"another's." How--without absurdity, immodesty? For I did not know, by
any solid sign or certain token, that he loved me at all. He sat in
the corner of the carriage reading his newspaper. I sat in my corner
reading mine--the first English newspaper I had ever touched.
It was the last stage of our journey; we had changed at Exeter on to
the North Devon line. He suddenly threw his newspaper aside and looked
me bravely in the face, though he could not completely master his
trembling eyes.
"Well, Miss Traies" (my name since my twenty-first birthday, when the
lawyers had slain Miss Lee), "what are your plans? What are you going
to do with your life? What is the program?" Would-be banteringly.
"You know," I replied. "I am coming home to help and look after my
Grandmother and my Great-Aunt."
"They are old."
"So will you be one day."
"Perhaps I am old already. Do not mock at my poor grey hairs! But I
wonder if I want to wait until I am as old as your Great-Aunt for some
one to look after me. Young men want looking after, Miss Traies, as
well as old women. Old age is lonely, but youth is lonelier. Perhaps
there are younger folk than your good Grandmother and Great-Aunt whom
you could help. There are men in the world too."
"I know," I said, realizing that in speaking aloud of my love of Robbie
for the first time in all the years I should be doing the kindest thing
to my dear friend the Stranger, and should at the same time be bringing
that love magically nearer reality. For if I spoke of him, he was real:
to utter his name to another human being made him suddenly part of this
visible world. From this uttering of his name to meeting him was but a
matter of hours--days. Devon was a little place: green fields and red
loam flashed quickly past: as I spoke of him I saw him coming nearer.
"I know--maybe there _is_ a man in the world I shall help--help him for
all his life."
I could not look.
"Do I know him?" he asked. His voice was odd, toneless: steadied by
supernatural effort: nearest despair, though still caressing hope.
"No," I replied shortly.
In the silence that followed I could see nothing, think nothing; hear
nothing but my own negation ringing in my ears, harsher and more brutal
as each second passed.
My cruelty filled me with exquisite pity: the insolent eternal offering
from the soul that is not suffering to the soul that is. Poor heart,
it could not be! My eyes were my chief difficulty: but the carriage
window held resources. He went back to his _Times_.
Odd, crowding sensations overcame me as the train drew up in Tawborough
station, the same to which, once upon a time, Satan Had Come--and
the North Devon odour (western, immemorial, unmistakable: the smell
of broad tidal rivers that are the sea, yet not the sea) filled
my nostrils. We drove across the bridge: for the first moment the
bright town spread out before me across the river wore the cardboard
strangeness of a foreign land. There was an almost imperceptible
instant of confusion, while my senses adjusted themselves to the
changed physical world, and then the buildings around me--we had
crossed the bridge by now--seemed normal, inevitable; and France was a
dream I had to struggle to remember.
The same odd moment of physically-felt spiritual adjustment was
repeated at the house, where my Grandmother stood at the gate of Number
Eight to greet me. It was not so much that she was frailer, thinner,
older, it was that she was a different person, or rather that the I
who now beheld her was a different person from the I who had known her
before, and to the new me she was a new creature. As I kissed her the
years rolled back, my own self changed, and she was Grandmother of old.
Inside the house the strangeness and the same return were again
repeated, this time less perceptibly. On the morrow I went very slowly
over the whole house, remaining for some time in each room and staring
at every corner and every article of furniture, while I summoned back
to me all the ancient happenings that connected me with each. Here was
Aunt Jael's front parlour, a little yellower, a little darker, a little
dingier than of old. There on the floor by the window was the row of
dismal etiolated plants, each in its earth-begrimed saucer. There was
her bluebeard cupboard; I opened it, and a smell of decayed fruits and
stale sweetmeats escaped; probably no one had been near it for months.
There was a jar of ginger, and a French-plum jar. I got as far as
handling the lids, but no further: what new flaming letters might not
be writ within? Besides, the plums were probably bad, while I never
_really_ cared for ginger. There too was the door that once had opened,
through which a face of nameless horror once had peeped. There was Lord
Benamuckee.
Here was the dining-room, with horsehair furniture and Axminster
carpet perhaps shabbier than I remembered them, this room which all
through my childhood, even too through my year in France, and in all
my life since, has always,--in those moments when I behold myself from
outside, when my soul flies away from my body and looks down upon it
from afar--been the visual setting and earthly ambience of Mary. Here
was the kitchen where Mrs. Cheese had lived, where Robinson Crewjoe
had stealthily been born, where my love for scrubbing floors had for
ever died. Here was the blue attic, cold, barren, airless; heavy with
memories--of misery and cruelty and tears.
After a few nights' dreams in my old bedroom--confused visions of the
Château and Fouquier and Elise and Napoleon--the four years of France
became literally no more than a dream in my memory. I remembered them
rather from the morning's impressions of these nightly visions than
from the actual happenings themselves. If indeed they were actual
happenings. For frequently I could not be sure, and would fancy that
all the complex visions of the life in France had come to me in sleep:
until Calendar and Common-Sense convinced me.
Aunt Jael seemed to share my illusions. She would ask me sometimes
where I had been, and rail at me for "stopping out" so long, treating
my absence as one of hours rather than years. Never, at any rate after
the first day or two, did she treat me as though my life at Bear Lawn
had been anything but continuous. I treated her likewise, swiftly
forgetting the first moment of contact when (as with my Grandmother)
she had seemed to me so much smaller, swarthier, dryer, older than in
my memory: a stranger who immediately, imperceptibly, became familiar
once again. She rarely got out of bed now, and her voice was huskier
and less authoritative than of old. But she cursed and railed and
threatened almost as bravely as ever. I alone had really changed, and
wondered sometimes at the earlier Mary who had taken this bad old
woman's imprecations so bitterly to heart. My new heart was too full of
the hopes of love to feed on the broodings of hate. Moreover, though
the faithful thorned stick lay on the coverlet ready to hand for use
it never struck out at me now, and the poor villainous veteran saw no
service reminiscent of his ancient glory save floor-thumpings to summon
meals--or Mary. I neither feared her nor hated her. I pitied her.
Some weeks before, Mrs. Cheese had been taken ill and had gone back to
her friends in the country. About the same time Aunt Jael had taken
permanently to her bed, and my Grandmother, who was herself rapidly
failing, had had to attend to her sister and do the household work.
Sister Briggs came to help in the kitchen in the mornings, and Simeon
Greeber charitably allowed Aunt Martha to come over for the day on one
or two occasions; but the two old women--the two dying old women--were
virtually alone in the big house, with my Grandmother, probably the
weaker of the two, struggling against pain, and against the fatigue
which marks the journey's end, to keep on her feet for her sister's
sake. I realized how selfish I had been not to have come sooner: except
that in France another old woman had needed me almost as much.
"I'm glad 'eo've come, my dearie," said my Grandmother on the night
of my return. "God has dealt very lovingly with me; but I am full of
years, and 'tis time for me to go. I have finished the work He gave
me to do. I was waiting for 'ee to come back, my dearie: now I can go
Home."
I was sobbing.
"Don't 'ee," she reproved gently. "There is no place for sorrow. Heaven
is near, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding."
One strange day I remember: the last valiant effort of Aunt Jael to
revive the splendour of her stark imperial days. Glory and Salvation
were old and frail now, especially Glory, and for a year and more, the
Empress' famous Tuesdays had been abandoned.
"There'll be a last one," declared Aunt Jael, and one Tuesday morning
when she felt stronger than usual, decreed a Final Feast. After dinner,
which in the regular way I had taken to her in her bed, I helped her
to dress, and got her down into the old armchair. Then, as bidden,
I sallied forth, hired a cab, drove to Brother Brawn's (robing-house
for Jordan) upon the Quay, and after infinite delay, while Glory made
minutest traditional preparations with goat's milk, rusks and bags,
haled those two mad old Christian women to Number Eight.
"Our last foregathering on earth," chuckled my Great-Aunt brightly
throughout the afternoon.
Death was discussed till tea-time: with dogmatic satisfaction by Aunt
Jael, with vulgar self-assurance by Salvation, with mystical hope by
Glory, with reverent delight by my Grandmother.
"Though Death, mind 'ee, is a pain," said Salvation; wagging her head
sagely.
"Nay, 'tis a portal," corrected Glory.
"Yes," said my Grandmother, "a portal to the Life Everlasting."
The Life Everlasting. _Yet I looked and saw joy in the four old faces._
Glory was absolved her corner penitence for this Last Tea, and the five
of us sat down when I had laid the table and got the meal ready.
Immediately a row began. Now saying grace was a strictly regulated
detail of the Tuesday ritual. Decades of dispute had not enabled Aunt
Jael to oust my Grandmother from an equal share in this privilege in
our ordinary daily life alone, and a compromise had obtained through
all the years I remember whereby Aunt Jael asked the blessing before
breakfast and dinner, and Grandmother before tea and supper. But on
Tuesdays, with two guests to be reckoned with, both of whom were as
eager in pre-prandial "testimony" as their hostesses, the position was
more complicated. Though sometimes challenged, the rule of taking turns
Tuesday by Tuesday in saying grace, had gradually become established: a
childish and democratic arrangement which can have been little to Aunt
Jael's taste, but which, despite occasional bickerings, was accepted as
early as I can remember.
It was for the privilege of asking the blessing at this Last Tea, this
ultimate spread, that the dispute now arose. Grandmother and Glory
took no part, but Aunt Jael and Salvation each swore it was her turn.
"We'll all ask a blessing," finally proposed my Grandmother. The
suggestion was accepted, and in turn the Four Graces were solemnly
declaimed.
Aunt Jael (stentorian, staccato):
"Oh Lord. Thou hast promised grace and glory to Thy Saints. Oh Lord.
Change these husks to the fruitful meats of the spirit before our
eyes. Support our footsteps to the Table of Thy bounties spread in the
wilderness; where true believers may feast among the bones of those who
sought Thee to their own destruction. Aymen."
My Grandmother (in a whisper, soft, sibilant):
"Behold us, O Lord of seedtime and harvest, set free from earthly
care for a season that we may dwell on the bounties which Thy hand
has provided. Thou preparest a table before us in the presence of our
enemies (sic). Thy dear mercies now spread before us are many: sanctify
them, we beg Thee, to our use, and us to Thy service. Make us ever
grateful, and nourish us with the meat of Thy Word. For Jee-sus' sake."
Salvation (noisily; with sticky report, sound of spoon in treacle-jar
sharply withdrawn):
"For what us are about to receive, may the Laur make we trewly
thankful."
Glory (gauntly):
"Bless er-er-er these er-er-er meats!"
And we set to.
Grandmother prayed with me continually. She was too old to kneel.
Propped up on her pillows, she would take my head upon her heart as
I half-lay half-leant upon her bed. My vanity, my worldliness, my
imperilled soul were the unvarying theme.
One night she stopped sharply in the middle of her prayer.
"Your soul, my dear, is not praying with me. The Lord tells me that
at this moment your mind is on fleshly things. Look at the eyes of
'ee! You're hankering after earthly glory, after high station in this
worldly life."
Then, after a moment's pause, shrewdly: "Has any one ever proposed to
'ee to give 'ee another station in life?"
"No. What do you mean, Grandmother? Who?"
"Nothing. Maybe no one." And she resumed her prayer.
I was more careful in pretending to listen, but ceased to listen at
all. I was trying--with the conscientious, artificially lashed-up
desperation of the egotistical soul that sees for a moment its own
nakedness--to visualize what the Stranger's misery and hunger must be
like if by some wild chance ("It is so," God shouted in my heart) he
loved me, not as I loved him, but as I loved Robbie. Ah no, it could
not be. There is never a love like our own.
" ... Send her _Thy_ love. For _Jee_-sus' sake. Aymen."