1
At seventeen Stephen was taller than Anna, who had used to be considered
quite tall for a woman, but Stephen was nearly as tall as her
father—not a beauty this, in the eyes of the neighbours.
Colonel Antrim would shake his head and remark: ‘I like ’em plump and
compact, it’s more taking.’
Then his wife, who was certainly plump and compact, so compact in her
stays that she felt rather breathless, would say: ‘But then Stephen is
very unusual, almost—well, almost a wee bit unnatural—such a pity,
poor child, it’s a terrible drawback; young men do hate that sort of
thing, don’t they?’
But in spite of all this Stephen’s figure was handsome in a flat,
broad-shouldered and slim flanked fashion; and her movements were
purposeful, having fine poise, she moved with the easy assurance of the
athlete. Her hands, although large for a woman, were slender and
meticulously tended; she was proud of her hands. In face she had changed
very little since childhood, still having Sir Philip’s wide, tolerant
expression. What change there was only tended to strengthen the
extraordinary likeness between father and daughter, for now that the
bones of her face showed more clearly, as the childish fullness had
gradually diminished, the formation of the resolute jaw was Sir
Philip’s. His too the strong chin with its shade of a cleft; the well
modelled, sensitive lips were his also. A fine face, very pleasing, yet
with something about it that went ill with the hats on which Anna
insisted—large hats trimmed with ribbons or roses or daisies, and
supposed to be softening to the features.
Staring at her own reflection in the glass, Stephen would feel just a
little uneasy: ‘_Am_ I queer looking or not?’ she would wonder, ‘Suppose
I wore my hair more like Mother’s?’ and then she would undo her
splendid, thick hair, and would part it in the middle and draw it back
loosely.
The result was always far from becoming, so that Stephen would hastily
plait it again. She now wore the plait screwed up very tightly in the
nape of her neck with a bow of black ribbon. Anna hated this fashion and
constantly said so, but Stephen was stubborn: ‘I’ve tried your way,
Mother, and I look like a scarecrow; you’re beautiful, darling, but your
young daughter isn’t, which is jolly hard on you.’
‘She makes no effort to improve her appearance,’ Anna would reproach,
very gravely.
These days there was constant warfare between them on the subject of
clothes; quite a seemly warfare, for Stephen was learning to control her
hot temper, and Anna was seldom anything but gentle. Nevertheless it was
open warfare, the inevitable clash of two opposing natures who sought to
express themselves in apparel, since clothes, after all, are a form of
self-expression. The victory would be now on this side, now on that;
sometimes Stephen would appear in a thick woollen jersey, or a suit of
rough tweeds surreptitiously ordered from the excellent tailor in
Malvern. Sometimes Anna would triumph, having journeyed to London to
procure soft and very expensive dresses, which her daughter must wear in
order to please her, because she would come home quite tired by such
journeys. On the whole, Anna got her own way at this time, for Stephen
would suddenly give up the contest, reduced to submission by Anna’s
disappointment, always more efficacious than mere disapproval.
‘Here, give it to me!’ she would say rather gruffly, grabbing the
delicate dress from her mother.
Then off she would rush and put it on all wrong, so that Anna would sigh
in a kind of desperation, and would pat, readjust, unfasten and fasten,
striving to make peace between wearer and model, whose inimical feelings
were evidently mutual.
Came a day when Stephen was suddenly outspoken: ‘It’s my face,’ she
announced, ‘something’s wrong with my face.’
‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Anna, and her cheeks flushed a little, as though
the girl’s words had been an offence, then she turned away quickly to
hide her expression.
But Stephen had seen that fleeting expression, and she stood very still
when her mother had left her, her own face growing heavy and sombre with
anger, with a sense of some uncomprehended injustice. She wrenched off
the dress and hurled it from her, longing intensely to rend it, to hurt
it, longing to hurt herself in the process, yet filled all the while
with that sense of injustice. But this mood changed abruptly to one of
self pity; she wanted to sit down and weep over Stephen; on a sudden
impulse she wanted to pray over Stephen as though she were some one
apart, yet terribly personal too in her trouble. Going over to the dress
she smoothed it out slowly; it seemed to have acquired an enormous
importance; it seemed to have acquired the importance of prayer, the
poor, crumpled thing lying crushed and dejected. Yet Stephen, these
days, was not given to prayer, God had grown so unreal, so hard to
believe in since she had studied Comparative Religion; engrossed in her
studies she had somehow mislaid Him. But now, here she was, very wishful
to pray, while not knowing how to explain her dilemma: ‘I’m terribly
unhappy, dear, improbable God—’ would not be a very propitious
beginning. And yet at this moment she was wanting a God and a tangible
one, very kind and paternal; a God with a white flowing beard and wide
forehead, a benevolent parent Who would lean out of Heaven and turn His
face sideways the better to listen from His cloud, upheld by cherubs and
angels. What she wanted was a wise old family God, surrounded by endless
heavenly relations. In spite of her troubles she began to laugh weakly,
and the laughter was good for it killed self pity; nor can it have
offended that Venerable Person whose image persists in the hearts of
small children.
She donned the new dress with infinite precaution, pulling out its bows
and arranging its ruffles. Her large hands were clumsy but now they were
willing, very penitent hands full or deep resignation. They fumbled and
paused, then continued to fumble with the endless small fastenings so
cunningly hidden. She sighed once or twice but the sighs were quite
patient, so perhaps in this wise, after all, Stephen prayed.
2
Anna worried continually over her daughter; for one thing Stephen was a
social disaster, yet at seventeen many a girl was presented, but the
bare idea of this had terrified Stephen, and so it had had to be
abandoned. At garden parties she was always a failure, seemingly ill at
ease and ungracious. She shook hands much too hard, digging rings into
fingers, this from sheer automatic nervous reaction. She spoke not at
all, or else gabbled too freely, so that Anna grew vague in her own
conversation; all eyes and ears she would be as she listened—it was
certainly terribly hard on Anna. But if hard on Anna, it was harder on
Stephen who dreaded these festive gatherings intensely; indeed her dread
of them lacked all proportion, becoming a kind of unreasoning obsession.
Every vestige of self-confidence seemed to desert her, so that Puddle,
supposing she happened to be present would find herself grimly comparing
this Stephen with the graceful, light-footed, proficient young athlete,
with the clever and somewhat opinionated student who was fast
outstripping her own powers as a teacher. Yes, Puddle would sit there
grimly comparing, and would feel not a little uneasy as she did so. Then
something of her pupil’s distress would reach her, so that perforce she
would have to share it and as like as not she would want to shake
Stephen.
‘Good Lord,’ she would think, ‘why can’t she hit back? It’s absurd, it’s
outrageous to be so disgruntled by a handful of petty, half-educated
yokels—a girl with her brain too, it’s simply outrageous! She’ll have
to tackle life more forcibly than this, if she’s not going to let
herself go under!’
But Stephen, completely oblivious of Puddle, would be deep in the throes
of her old suspicion, the suspicion that had haunted her ever since
childhood—she would fancy that people were laughing at her. So
sensitive was she, that a half-heard sentence, a word, a glance, made
her inwardly crumble. It might well be that people were not even
thinking about her, much less discussing her appearance—no good, she
would always imagine that the word, the glance, had some purely personal
meaning. She would twitch at her hat with inadequate fingers, or walk
clumsily, slouching a little as she did so, until Anna would whisper:
‘Hold your back up, you’re stooping.’
Or Puddle exclaim crossly: ‘What on earth’s the matter, Stephen!’
All of which only added to Stephen’s tribulation by making her still
more self-conscious.
With other young girls she had nothing in common, while they, in their
turn, found her irritating. She was shy to primness regarding certain
subjects, and would actually blush if they happened to be mentioned.
This would strike her companions as queer and absurd—after all, between
girls—surely every one knew that at times one ought not to get one’s
feet wet, that one didn’t play games, not at certain times—there was
nothing to make all this fuss about surely! To see Stephen Gordon’s
expression of horror if one so much as threw out a hint on the subject,
was to feel that the thing must in some way be shameful, a kind of
disgrace, a humiliation! And then she was odd about other things too;
there were so many things that she didn’t like mentioned.
In the end, they completely lost patience with her, and they left her
alone with her fads and her fancies, disliking the check that her
presence imposed, disliking to feel that they dare not allude to even
the necessary functions of nature without being made to feel immodest.
But at times Stephen hated her own isolation, and then she would make
little awkward advances, while her eyes would grow rather apologetic,
like the eyes of a dog who has been out of favour. She would try to
appear quite at ease with her companions, as she joined in their
light-hearted conversation. Strolling up to a group of young girls at a
party, she would grin as though their small jokes amused her, or else
listen gravely while they talked about clothes or some popular actor who
had visited Malvern. As long as they refrained from too intimate
details, she would fondly imagine that her interest passed muster. There
she would stand with her strong arms folded, and her face somewhat
strained in an effort of attention. While despising these girls, she yet
longed to be like them—yes, indeed, at such moments she longed to be
like them. It would suddenly strike her that they seemed very happy,
very sure of themselves as they gossiped together. There was something
so secure in their feminine conclaves, a secure sense of oneness, of
mutual understanding; each in turn understood the other’s ambitions.
They might have their jealousies, their quarrels even, but always she
discerned, underneath, that sense of oneness.
Poor Stephen! She could never impose upon them; they always saw through
her as though she were a window. They knew well enough that she cared
not so much as a jot about clothes and popular actors. Conversation
would falter, then die down completely, her presence would dry up their
springs of inspiration. She spoilt things while trying to make herself
agreeable; they really liked her better when she was grumpy.
Could Stephen have met men on equal terms, she would always have chosen
them as her companions; she preferred them because of their blunt, open
outlook, and with men she had much in common—sport for instance. But
men found her too clever if she ventured to expand, and too dull if she
suddenly subsided into shyness. In addition to this there was something
about her that antagonized slightly, an unconscious presumption. Shy
though she might be, they sensed this presumption; it annoyed them, it
made them feel on the defensive. She was handsome but much too large and
unyielding both in body and mind, and they liked clinging women. They
were oak-trees, preferring the feminine ivy. It might cling rather
close, it might finally strangle, it frequently did, and yet they
preferred it, and this being so, they resented Stephen, suspecting
something of the acorn about her.
3
Stephen’s worst ordeals at this time were the dinners given in turn by a
hospitable county. They were long, these dinners, overloaded with
courses; they were heavy, being weighted with polite conversation; they
were stately, by reason of the family silver; above all they were firmly
conservative in spirit, as conservative as the marriage service itself,
and almost as insistent upon sex distinction.
‘Captain Ramsay, will you take Miss Gordon in to dinner?’
A politely crooked arm: ‘Delighted, Miss Gordon.’
Then the solemn and very ridiculous procession, animals marching into
Noah’s Ark two by two, very sure of divine protection—male and female
created He them! Stephen’s skirt would be long and her foot might get
entangled, and she with but one free hand at her disposal—the
procession would stop and she would have stopped it! Intolerable
thought, she had stopped the procession!
‘I’m so sorry, Captain Ramsay!’
‘I say, can I help you?’
‘No—it’s really—all right, I think I can manage—’
But oh, the utter confusion of spirit, the humiliating feeling that some
one must be laughing, the resentment at having to cling to his arm for
support, while Captain Ramsay looked patient.
‘Not much damage, I think you’ve just torn the frill, but I often wonder
how you women manage. Imagine a man in a dress like that, too awful to
think of—imagine me in it!’ Then a laugh, not unkindly but a trifle
self-conscious, and rather more than a trifle complacent.
Safely steered to her seat at the long dinner-table, Stephen would
struggle to smile and talk brightly, while her partner would think:
‘Lord, she’s heavy in hand; I wish I had the mother; now there’s a
lovely woman!’
And Stephen would think: ‘I’m a bore, why is it?’ Then, ‘But if I were
he I wouldn’t be a bore, I could just be myself, I’d feel perfectly
natural.’
Her face would grow splotched with resentment and worry; she would feel
her neck flush and her hands become awkward. Embarrassed, she would sit
staring down at her hands, which would seem to be growing more and more
awkward. No escape! No escape! Captain Ramsay was kind-hearted, he would
try very hard to be complimentary; his grey eyes would try to express
admiration, polite admiration as they rested on Stephen. His voice would
sound softer and more confidential, the voice that nice men reserve for
good women, protective, respectful, yet a little sex-conscious, a little
expectant of a tentative response. But Stephen would feel herself
growing more rigid with every kind word and gallant allusion. Openly
hostile she would be feeling, as poor Captain Ramsay or some other
victim was manfully trying to do his duty.
In such a mood as this she had once drunk champagne, one glass only, the
first she had ever tasted. She had gulped it all down in sheer
desperation—the result had not been Dutch courage but hiccups. Violent,
insistent, incorrigible hiccups had echoed along the whole length of the
table. One of those weird conversational lulls had been filled, as it
were, to the brim with her hiccups. Then Anna had started to talk very
loudly; Mrs. Antrim had smiled and so had their hostess. Their hostess
had finally beckoned to the butler: ‘Give Miss Gordon a glass of water,’
she had whispered. After that Stephen shunned champagne like the
plague—better hopeless depression, she decided, than hiccups!
It was strange how little her fine brain seemed able to help her when
she was trying to be social; in spite of her confident boasting to
Raftery, it did not seem able to help her at all. Perhaps is was the
clothes, for she lost all conceit the moment she was dressed as Anna
would have her; at this period clothes greatly influenced Stephen,
giving her confidence or the reverse. But be that as it might, people
thought her peculiar, and with them that was tantamount to disapproval.
And thus, it was being borne in upon Stephen, that for her there was no
real abiding city beyond the strong, friendly old gates of Morton, and
she clung more and more to her home and to her father. Perplexed and
unhappy she would seek out her father on all social occasions and would
sit down beside him. Like a very small child this large muscular
creature would sit down beside him because she felt lonely, and because
youth most rightly resents isolation, and because she had not yet learnt
her hard lesson—she had not yet learnt that the loneliest place in this
world is the no-man’s-land of sex.