1
Stephen ought to have gone to England that summer; at Morton there had
been a change of agent, and once again certain questions had arisen
which required her careful personal attention. But time had not softened
Anna’s attitude to Mary, and time had not lessened Stephen’s
exasperation—the more so as Mary no longer hid the bitterness that she
felt at this treatment. So Stephen tackled the business by writing a
number of long and wearisome letters, unwilling to set foot again in the
house where Mary Llewellyn would not be welcome. But as always the
thought of England wounded, bringing with it the old familiar
longing—homesick she would feel as she sat at her desk writing those
wearisome business letters. For even as Jamie must crave for the grey,
wind-swept street and the wind-swept uplands of Beedles, so Stephen must
crave for the curving hills, for the long green hedges and pastures of
Morton. Jamie openly wept when such moods were upon her, but the
easement of tears was denied to Stephen.
In August Jamie and Barbara joined them in a villa that Stephen had
taken at Houlgate. Mary hoped that the bathing would do Barbara good;
she was not at all well. Jamie worried about her. And indeed the girl
had grown very frail, so frail that the housework now tried her sorely;
when alone she must sit down and hold her side for the pain that was
never mentioned to Jamie. Then too, all was not well between them these
days; poverty, even hunger at times, the sense of being unwanted
outcasts, the knowledge that the people to whom they belonged—good and
honest people—both abhorred and despised them, such things as these had
proved very bad housemates for sensitive souls like Barbara and Jamie.
Large, helpless, untidy and intensely forlorn, Jamie would struggle to
finish her opera; but quite often these days she would tear up her work,
knowing that what she had written was unworthy. When this happened she
would sigh and peer round the studio, vaguely conscious that something
was not as it had been, vaguely distressed by the dirt of the place to
which she herself had helped to contribute—Jamie, who had never before
noticed dirt, would feel aggrieved by its noxious presence. Getting up
she would wipe the keys of the piano with Barbara’s one clean towel
dipped in water.
‘Can’t play,’ she would grumble, ‘these keys are all sticky.’
‘Oh, Jamie—my towel—go and fetch the duster!’
The quarrel that ensued would start Barbara’s cough, which in turn would
start Jamie’s nerves vibrating. Then compassion, together with
unreasoning anger and a sudden uprush of sex-frustration, would make her
feel well-nigh beside herself—since owing to Barbara’s failing health,
these two could be lovers now in name only. And this forced abstinence
told on Jamie’s work as well as her nerves, destroying her music, for
those who maintain that the North is cold, might just as well tell us
that hell is freezing. Yet she did her best, the poor uncouth creature,
to subjugate the love of the flesh to the pure and more selfless love of
the spirit—the flesh did not have it all its own way with Jamie.
That summer she made a great effort to talk, to unburden herself when
alone with Stephen; and Stephen tried hard to console and advise, while
knowing that she could help very little. All her offers of money to ease
the strain were refused point-blank, sometimes almost with rudeness—she
felt very anxious indeed about Jamie.
Mary in her turn was deeply concerned; her affection for Barbara had
never wavered, and she sat for long hours in the garden with the girl
who seemed too weak to bathe, and whom walking exhausted.
‘Let us help,’ she pleaded, stroking Barbara’s thin hand, ‘after all,
we’re much better off than you are. Aren’t you two like ourselves? Then
why mayn’t we help?’
Barbara slowly shook her head: ‘I’m all right—please don’t talk about
money to Jamie.’
But Mary could see that she was far from all right; the warm weather was
proving of little avail, even care and good food and sunshine and rest
seemed unable to ease that incessant coughing.
‘You ought to see a specialist at once,’ she told Barbara rather sharply
one morning.
But Barbara shook her head yet again: ‘Don’t, Mary—don’t, please . . .
you’ll be frightening Jamie.’
2
After their return to Paris in the autumn, Jamie sometimes joined the
nocturnal parties; going rather grimly from bar to bar, and drinking too
much of the crème-de-menthe that reminded her of the bull’s eyes at
Beedles. She had never cared for these parties before, but now she was
clumsily trying to escape, for a few hours at least, from the pain of
existence. Barbara usually stayed at home or spent the evening with
Stephen and Mary. But Stephen and Mary would not always be there, for
now they also went out fairly often; and where was there to go to except
the bars? Nowhere else could two women dance together without causing
comment and ridicule, without being looked upon as freaks, argued Mary.
So rather than let the girl go without her, Stephen would lay aside her
work—she had recently started to write her fourth novel.
Sometimes, it is true, their friends came to them, a less sordid and far
less exhausting business; but even at their own house the drink was too
free: ‘We can’t be the only couple to refuse to give people a brandy and
soda,’ said Mary, ‘Valérie’s parties are awfully dull; that’s because
she’s allowed herself to grow cranky!’
And thus, very gradually just at first, Mary’s finer perceptions began
to coarsen.
3
The months passed, and now more than a year had slipped by, yet
Stephen’s novel remained unfinished; for Mary’s face stood between her
and her work—surely the mouth and the eyes had hardened?
Still unwilling to let Mary go without her, she dragged wearily round to
the bars and cafés, observing with growing anxiety that Mary now drank
as did all the others—not too much perhaps, but quite enough to give
her a cheerful outlook on existence.
The next morning she was often deeply depressed, in the grip of a rather
tearful reaction: ‘It’s too beastly—why do we do it?’ she would ask.
And Stephen would answer: ‘God knows I don’t want to, but I won’t let
you go to such places without me. Can’t we give it all up? It’s
appallingly sordid!’
Then Mary would flare out with sudden anger, her mood changing as she
felt a slight tug on the bridle. Were they to have no friends? she would
ask. Were they to sit still and let the world crush them? If they were
reduced to the bars of Paris, whose fault was that? Not hers and not
Stephen’s. Oh, no, it was the fault of the Lady Annas and the Lady
Masseys who had closed their doors, so afraid were they of
contamination!
Stephen would sit with her head on her hand, searching her sorely
troubled mind for some ray of light, some adequate answer.
4
That winter Barbara fell very ill. Jamie rushed round to the house one
morning, hatless, and with deeply tormented eyes: ‘Mary, please
come—Barbara can’t get up, it’s a pain in her side. Oh, my God—we
quarrelled . . .’ Her voice was shrill and she spoke very fast:
‘Listen—last night—there was snow on the ground, it was cold—I was
angry . . . I can’t remember . . . but I know I was angry—I get like
that. She went out—she stayed out for quite two hours, and when she
came back she was shivering so. Oh, my God, but why did we quarrel,
whatever? She can’t move; it’s an awful pain in her side . . .’
Stephen said quietly: ‘We’ll come almost at once, but first I’m going to
ring up my own doctor.’
5
Barbara was lying in the tiny room with the eye-shaped window that would
not open. The stove had gone out in the studio, and the air was heavy
with cold and dampness. On the piano lay some remnants of manuscript
music torn up on the previous evening by Jamie.
Barbara opened her eyes: ‘Is that you, my bairn?’
They had never heard Barbara call her that before—the great, lumbering,
big-boned, long-legged Jamie.
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Come here close . . .’ The voice drifted away.
‘I’m here—oh, I’m here! I’ve got hold of your hand. Look at me, open
your eyes again—Barbara, listen, I’m here—don’t you feel me?’
Stephen tried to restrain the shrill, agonized voice: ‘Don’t speak so
loud, Jamie, perhaps she’s sleeping;’ but she knew very well that this
was not so; the girl was not sleeping now, but unconscious.
Mary found some fuel and lighted the stove, then she started to tidy the
disordered studio. Flakes of flue lay here and there on the floor; thick
dust was filming the top of the piano. Barbara had been waging a losing
fight—strange that so mean a thing as this dust should, in the end,
have been able to conquer. Food there was none, and putting on her coat
Mary finally went forth in quest of milk and other things likely to come
in useful. At the foot of the stairs she was met by the concierge; the
woman looked glum, as though deeply aggrieved by this sudden and very
unreasonable illness. Mary thrust some money into her hand, then hurried
away intent on her shopping.
When she returned the doctor was there; he was talking very gravely to
Stephen: ‘It’s double pneumonia, a pretty bad case—the girl’s heart’s
so weak. I’ll send in a nurse. What about the friend, will she be any
good?’
‘I’ll help with the nursing if she isn’t,’ said Mary.
Stephen said: ‘You do understand about the bills—the nurse and all
that?’
The doctor nodded.
They forced Jamie to eat: ‘For Barbara’s sake . . . Jamie, we’re with
you, you’re not alone, Jamie.’
She peered with her red-rimmed, short-sighted eyes, only half
understanding, but she did as they told her. Then she got up without so
much as a word, and went back to the room with the eye-shaped window.
Still in silence she squatted on the floor by the bed, like a dumb,
faithful dog who endured without speaking. And they let her alone, let
her have her poor way, for this was not their Calvary but Jamie’s.
The nurse arrived, a calm, practical woman: ‘You’d better lie down for a
bit,’ she told Jamie, and in silence Jamie lay down on the floor.
‘No, my dear—please go and lie down in the studio.’
She got up slowly to obey this new voice, lying down, with her face to
the wall, on the divan.
The nurse turned to Stephen: ‘Is she a relation?’
Stephen hesitated, then she shook her head.
‘That’s a pity, in a serious case like this I’d like to be in touch with
some relation, some one who has a right to decide things. You know what
I mean—it’s double pneumonia.’
Stephen said dully: ‘No—she’s not a relation.’
‘Just a friend?’ the nurse queried.
‘Just a friend,’ muttered Stephen.
6
They went back that evening and stayed the night. Mary helped with the
nursing; Stephen looked after Jamie.
‘Is she a little—I mean the friend—is she mental at all, do you know?’
The nurse whispered, ‘I can’t get her to speak—she’s anxious, of
course; still, all the same, it doesn’t seem natural.’
Stephen said: ‘No—it doesn’t seem natural to you.’ And she suddenly
flushed to the roots of her hair. Dear God, the outrage of this for
Jamie!
But Jamie seemed quite unconscious of outrage. From time to time she
stood in the doorway peering over at Barbara’s wasted face, listening to
Barbara’s painful breathing, and then she would turn her bewildered eyes
on the nurse, on Mary, but above all on Stephen.
‘Jamie—come back and sit down by the stove; Mary’s there, it’s all
right.’
Came a queer, halting voice that spoke with an effort: ‘But . . .
Stephen . . . we quarrelled.’
‘Come and sit by the stove—Mary’s with her, my dear.’
‘Hush, please,’ said the nurse, ‘you’re disturbing my patient.’
7
Barbara’s fight against death was so brief that it hardly seemed in the
nature of a struggle. Life had left her no strength to repel this last
foe—or perhaps it was that to her he seemed friendly. Just before her
death she kissed Jamie’s hand and tried to speak, but the words would
not come—those words of forgiveness and love for Jamie.
Then Jamie flung herself down by the bed, and she clung there, still in
that uncanny silence. Stephen never knew how they got her away while the
nurse performed the last merciful duties.
But when flowers had been placed in Barbara’s hands, and Mary had
lighted a couple of candles, then Jamie went back and stared quietly
down at the small, waxen face that lay on the pillow; and she turned to
the nurse:
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, ‘I think you’ve done all that there is to
do—and now I suppose you’ll want to be going?’
The nurse glanced at Stephen.
‘It’s all right, we’ll stay. I think perhaps—if you don’t mind, nurse
. . .’
‘Very well, it must be as you wish, Miss Gordon.’
When she had gone Jamie veered round abruptly and walked back into the
empty studio. Then all in a moment the floodgates gave way and she wept
and she wept like a creature demented. Bewailing the life of hardship
and exile that had sapped Barbara’s strength and weakened her spirit;
bewailing the cruel dispensation of fate that had forced them to leave
their home in the Highlands; bewailing the terrible thing that is death
to those who, still loving, must look upon it. Yet all the exquisite
pain of this parting seemed as nothing to an anguish that was far more
subtle: ‘I can’t mourn her without bringing shame on her name—I can’t
go back home now and mourn her,’ wailed Jamie; ‘oh, and I want to go
back to Beedles, I want to be home among our own people—I want them to
know how much I loved her. Oh God, oh God! I can’t even mourn her, and I
want to grieve for her home there in Beedles.’
What could they speak but inadequate words: ‘Jamie, don’t, don’t! You
loved each other—isn’t that something? Remember that, Jamie.’ They
could only speak the inadequate words that are given to people on such
occasions.
But after a while the storm seemed to pass, Jamie seemed to grow
suddenly calm and collected: ‘You two,’ she said gravely, ‘I want to
thank you for all you’ve been to Barbara and me.’
Mary started crying.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Jamie.
The evening came. Stephen lighted the lamp, then she made up the stove
while Mary laid the supper. Jamie ate a little, and she actually smiled
when Stephen poured her out a weak whiskey.
‘Drink it, Jamie—it may help you to get some sleep.’
Jamie shook her head: ‘I shall sleep without it—but I want to be left
alone to-night, Stephen.’
Mary protested but Jamie was firm: ‘I want to be left alone with her,
please—you do understand that, Stephen, don’t you?’
Stephen hesitated, then she saw Jamie’s face; it was full of a new and
calm resolution: ‘It’s my right,’ she was saying, ‘I’ve a right to be
alone with the woman I love before they—take her.’
Jamie held the lamp to light them downstairs—her hand, Stephen thought,
seemed amazingly steady.
8
The next morning when they went to the studio quite early, they heard
voices coming from the topmost landing. The concierge was standing
outside Jamie’s door, and with her was a young man, one of the tenants.
The concierge had tried the door; it was locked and no one made any
response to her knocking. She had brought Jamie up a cup of hot
coffee—Stephen saw it, the coffee had slopped into the saucer. Either
pity or the memory of Mary’s large tips, had apparently touched the
heart of this woman.
Stephen hammered loudly: ‘Jamie!’ she called, and then again and again:
‘Jamie! Jamie!’
The young man set his shoulder to a panel, and all the while he pushed
he was talking. He lived just underneath, but last night he was out, not
returning until nearly six that morning. He had heard that one of the
girls had died—the little one—she had always looked fragile.
Stephen added her strength to his; the woodwork was damp and rotten with
age, the lock suddenly gave and the door swung inwards.
Then Stephen saw: ‘Don’t come here—go back, Mary!’
But Mary followed them into the studio.
So neat, so amazingly neat it was for Jamie, she who had always been so
untidy, she who had always littered up the place with her large, awkward
person and shabby possessions, she who had always been Barbara’s despair
. . . Just a drop or two of blood on the floor, just a neat little hole
low down in her left side. She must have fired upwards with great
foresight and skill—and they had not even known that she owned a
revolver!
And so Jamie who dared not go home to Beedles for fear of shaming the
woman she loved, Jamie who dared not openly mourn lest Barbara’s name be
defiled through her mourning, Jamie had dared to go home to God—to
trust herself to His more perfect mercy, even as Barbara had gone home
before her.