with them... Eric! I could have killed him! So cool and collected... He
_knows_ how he’s treated me, he _knows_ he’s been a brute and a liar—”
“Steady on, Ivy,” Eric urged, as her voice became tremulous.
“He always frightened me, because nothing seemed to make any impression
on him. When he was flying, he was inconceivably brave; people have
told me. He’d have been given the V. C. again and again, if any one had
known. When he crashed, it would have killed any other man, but, though
he’s not allowed to fly any more, it’s made no other difference. He
frightens me, because I can’t do anything with him. That night—he let
me do all the talking... He’s a brute.”
Eric was disquieted that Gaymer should have seen them together. Most
men would be glad to be relieved so promptly of their responsibilities,
but under his mask of indifference Gaymer was capable of being piqued
at finding himself so quickly supplanted; it was almost an invitation
to see whether he could reestablish his ascendancy, a challenge to his
idleness and vanity, his taste for mischief and his love of power.
“Don’t have anything to do with him,” Eric urged.
“I want to punish him.”
“You may only punish yourself—and me.”
A taxi had been ordered to wait for them at Paddington, and they
escaped with relief from the crowded train and drove to the Cromwell
Road. It was the first moment of privacy since the morning, and Ivy
caught his hand and pressed it eagerly.
“Eric, I want to cry!,” she gasped, throwing her arms around him and
hiding her face on his shoulder. “I’ve wanted to all day, you’ve been
so wonderful! What can you _see_ in me? I _will_ try to repay you,
though I never can. Eric, tell me it’s all true and that you’re not
playing with me!”
“I’m no good at jokes of that kind.” She had slipped half to the floor,
and he lifted her on to his knees; with a gentle pressure she drew his
head to her bosom and laid a cold, tear-stained cheek against his.
“Ivy, this is not my idea of taking a month to think _calmly_—”
“I don’t want a month!,” she cried, tightening the grip of her arms as
though he were trying to escape.
“Dear child, you _must_ steady yourself! We shall be at your father’s
house in a minute, and you can’t go in like this. Dry your eyes, Ivy
darling. You said you couldn’t see why I was doing this; don’t you see
it’s because I want you? But, however much I want you, I can’t take you
till I’m sure that I can make you happy. Wait a month—”
“I can’t wait a month!”
It was on his lips to say “a week,” but he stopped himself in time.
There was always a temptation to do what a woman asked, when she was
unhappy; but the one way to make a happy woman unhappy, an unhappy
woman unhappier, was to yield to her. And in his overnight sanity,
before she fired his blood, he had promised Gaisford to take time
before risking a double tragedy.
“A month, Ivy,” he repeated. “You must find out the sort of creature
you’re marrying.”
“I shall never see you,” she pouted.
“You shall see me all day and every day, if you like. My secretary went
for a holiday on Saturday. Do you remember once offering yourself for
the position? I don’t mind now. You can tell your aunt and say you’re
coming as a great favour to me. _Then_ we shall see how quickly you get
tired of me... Sit still, you little eel!”
Ivy had slipped on to the floor again and laid her head on his knees:
“Tired of you... _Tired_ of you! I _love_ you. And I can never thank
you or be worthy of you—” She stopped abruptly and sprang up. “Eric! My
darling!”
The taxi came to a standstill, and he helped her out. As they stood
decorously on the steps of her father’s house, he looked at his watch
and said:
“Eight hours ago you were respectfully calling me ‘Mr. Lane.’”
He saw her shivering; and her eyes filled with fear:
“Eight hours ago—seven and a half—I prayed that our train might have a
collision... Is her ladyship expecting us, Henry?”
Though Ivy had only once described her home—and then in a single
sentence—, one glance at the outside and another at the hall enabled
Eric to deduce the character of the occupants and the moral atmosphere
of the house. A young footman with two wound-stripes on his livery coat
took his hat and asked whether he would like to wash before dinner. Ivy
had already run upstairs to her room, and, as he followed the footman,
Eric saw massive orderliness on every hand. In the dim hall stood a
heavy oak table, flanked by two black oak chairs and surmounted by a
presentation salver and a rack with leather-cased Bradshaw, Whittaker
and Law List. It was painfully irregular, he felt, that doors, intended
by the genius of orderliness to be shut, should have been left open;
but he was fortunate in gaining a glimpse, through one, of mahogany
side-board and massive dining-table set with eight heavy mahogany
chairs and, through another, of glass-fronted fumed-oak book-cases, a
double writing-table and red leather couches. The furniture seemed to
have been bought in sets and ordered by post; the books—each surely an
accepted classic, though Eric could see nothing of them but their calf
backs—might well have been supplied by measure. The house was lighted
by gas, and each room had its accredited box of matches. The
all-pervading solemnity filled Eric with unseemly thoughts of
irresponsible humour; he longed to transpose the match-boxes marked
“HALL” and “COAT ROOM” and to see what would happen; over the basin, as
he washed, was a mirror and shelf with two hair-brushes, one branded
“J. F. M.” and the other “VISITORS.” Perhaps Gaymer had been detected
changing the match-boxes; perhaps that was why he had been forbidden
the house....
Eric checked the impulse to laugh, as soon as Gaymer came into his
thoughts. It was easy to understand why a girl had been so desperately
anxious to escape from such a house, easy to imagine how she would
welcome any one who stretched out a hand to help her... But he had felt
no resentment towards Gaymer for two hours; a cad, yes, but a cad who
had made his contribution to Eric’s own destiny... What mattered now
was the remembrance of Ivy’s ecstatic plunge into his arms, her
quavering whisper and trembling mouth, her eyes bright with unshed
tears, a kiss that sent her soul on wings to his lips. He frowned at
his reflection in the mirror and wondered whether the judge would
suspect anything....
Ivy was not yet down when he was shewn into the grim, shadow-filled
drawing-room, but her mother welcomed him with nervous warmth. As she
turned to the light, Eric saw a thin, small woman with the incongruous
remains of a loveable, baby prettiness under her lined skin and her air
of being never at ease. While Mr. Justice Maitland was still an
unproved junior, her friends murmured that she was throwing away both
herself and the snug dowry which came to her from the family business
of wholesale chemists, but the initial advantage was first equalized
and then turned against her; the rearing of five children tied her to
the house, and her speech and outlook hinted that she had not kept pace
with her husband’s social advancement.
“It’s very good of you to let me invite myself like this,” said Eric,
as he shook hands with her. “As I reminded Ivy, you _were_ kind enough
to ask me once before, when I couldn’t come.”
“It’s a great honour, I’m sure. And I expect you’re ever so much run
after.”
The judge laid aside the book that he had been reading and raised
himself with slow solemnity from his chair.
“It’s not our _first_ meeting, Mr. Lane; you’re not likely to remember
that,” he said with austere geniality. “I knew your father in old days
and I did in fact meet you not so many months after your arrival in
this troubled world of ours. I should like to think that your kindness
to our daughter means that you are not going to drop your early friends
now that you are famous.”
The hollow click which his eye-glasses, after glissading down his nose,
struck out of his shirt-front was for a moment disconcerting; but the
bleak, formidable smile which accompanied the words apprised Eric that
his host was venturing on badinage. He hastened to smile
sympathetically, as he took in the details of appearance and manner.
Sir James Maitland was tall and spare, with a long, blue-grained jaw,
plentiful grey hair and light, steady eyes set deep under bushy brows.
His clothes, like himself, were deliberately old-fashioned; the
loose-cut trousers accentuated his thin, bent legs, and a low double
collar gave him the hungry, long neck of a vulture. Eric was prepared
to find him pompous and despotic in his grave moments and tedious in
all; he felt like a reveller who had strayed inadvertently into a
grave-yard where the distant fragrance and music that he had left were
swallowed in chilling mustiness and silence. If any one for a moment
ceased talking in that house, the brooding spirit of melancholy would
claim them all in forfeit.
“I didn’t meet Ivy till just before I left America,” he said. “I wish
I’d seen more of her.”
“I gather you gave her, if I may say so, very sound advice, _very_
sound,” said the judge. “She had heard the same sort of thing from her
parents more than once, but it is the modern fashion to disregard what
parents say. I’ve watched the growth of liberty among the girls of the
present day,” he went on, as though he were delivering a considered
judgement and defying other courts to reverse it on appeal, “and I
can’t find a single good thing to be said for it; not a single good
thing.”
“Oh, _I_ can!,” Eric answered. “A generation ago I’m sure I shouldn’t
have been allowed to take Ivy on the river alone, and we should both
have missed a very delightful day. At least, _I_ enjoyed it; I mustn’t
speak for her.”
“I’m sure she, too...” Lady Maitland turned, as the door opened. “Well,
my dear, how did you get on?”
Ivy looked past her to Eric and then turned to her mother with shining
eyes:
“It was wonderful! Mr. Lane, you’re the perfect host, you know.”
Eric bowed, noting from her form of address that she did not yet
propose to take her parents into her confidence. Lady Maitland was
looking closely at her, and he wondered what inference was being drawn
from the tell-tale, starry brightness of the eyes. Magic and poetry
were not dead so long as a man could charm that soft diamond sheen from
a girl’s eyes... He discovered that the judge was asking him a
question—and wondered what inference would be drawn from his own
tell-tale absence of mind....
“It was such a glorious day, it couldn’t help being successful,” he
said hastily. “We caught the eleven o’clock at Paddington and went to
Maidenhead....”
He was still describing their day, when Ivy’s two sisters entered with
their husbands. Eric did not hear much of Lady Maitland’s mumbled
introduction, but one woman appeared to be Rose and the other Myrtle.
Their mother evidently inclined towards horticultural prettiness; and
the judge had probably been very scornful when the names were chosen.
Scorn, indeed, seemed his fixed attitude of mind towards his family;
the sons-in-law forgot that they were promising young chancery
barristers and were only careful to avoid being committed for contempt
of court. One had travelled from Wimbledon, the other from
Beaconsfield; they came every week like fascinated rabbits... If it had
not been the middle of the Cambridge term, Ivy’s two brothers would
have completed the ceremonial, unchanging circle... The elder sisters
had Ivy’s good looks without her rebelliousness of spirit; in any
massed attack against their parents they would first hesitate and then
surrender; marriage was to them primarily an escape from the necessity
of making massed attacks on any one; they were their mother’s
daughters....
Supper was announced; and Eric found himself between the elder sister,
who never spoke, and Lady Maitland, who only stopped speaking when the
judge drowned her voice. As wine followed wine and course followed
course, Eric felt that rules could be framed for the legal profession,
binding its private life as straitly as the inhibitions of caste-law.
At one remove he had watched it in the days when he shared chambers in
Pump Court with Jack Waring and observed the grub of the pupil-room,
who lunched with fellow-grubs in Hall, developing through the chrysalis
stage of the newly-called junior into the practising barrister who
first marshalled a judge and was later bidden by younger marshals to
dine with the judge in his lodgings. From his friend’s description Eric
gathered that most barristers and all judges lived in the same kind of
house, married the same kind of wife and ate the same food. At the end
of dinner they told the same legal anecdotes before suggesting bridge.
(Mr. Justice Maitland probably disapproved of bridge on Sundays, but he
had been playing golf at Walton Heath—with other judges....)
Eric sipped a matchless sherry and sympathized with Lady Maitland over
her difficulties in obtaining butter during the war. (A small farmer
who lived near her old home in Hampshire had been willing to supply an
unlimited quantity, but the judge felt that it was bad citizenship to
exceed their ration by an ounce.) Ivy was watching them silently,
asking him with her eyes whether he now wondered why she had run away
from home; no vice could be imputed to her parents, but they were
solidly uncongenial, and in his turn Eric privately debated the
possibility of being able to break away altogether from the Cromwell
Road after marriage. To rescue her from the judge was no less important
than to rescue her from Gaymer. It would be intolerable, if he were
expected to dine there regularly; fortunately, he was at present being
treated with extravagant deference, which shewed that a reputation
still had its value; and, for a man, economic freedom consisted in
being able to patronize his father-in-law....
Strong mock-turtle soup and sherry; cold salmon and champagne that was
drinkable—and no more—(the judge had brought it out in Eric’s honour,
and it had been kept long enough to lose its quality); cold roast beef,
gooseberry tart and cheese, followed by a bottle of ’84 Dow; it was a
plain, substantial meal, spoiled by Lady Maitland’s unceasing efforts
to make her guest overeat himself and by his own need to talk in three
keys at once. The judge asked what the next play was to be and gave
himself a cue for recalling and describing the London stage as he had
known it in his youth (from the age of thirty he had been too busy to
spare time for the theatre, and nowadays—with certain illustrious
exceptions which he did not need to specify—there were no plays worth
seeing). Lady Maitland was still troubled by the butter shortage and
the difficulties of providing for a big house; it was a pain of spirit,
which wrung from her a moan whenever she could make it heard; and,
though the judge dominated the conversation with his cues and speeches,
she remained resolutely undefeated with an inexhaustible store of
food-news which she poked through the interstices of her husband’s
periods.
“I was asked to be chairman of a committee on dramatic censorship,” he
explained. “That’s how I come to be interested in the subject.”
“You must have some more gooseberries,” insisted Lady Maitland swiftly,
as he paused. “They’re from our own garden in Norfolk. Fruit always
seems so much nicer when you’ve grown it yourself, don’t you think?...
I was telling you about that salmon. The price—but prices don’t mean
anything to a bachelor, _I’m_ sure; you just order what you fancy, and,
if it’s not in season, so much the worse for you.” She laughed at her
own audacity. “Well, the reason why salmon is so disgracefully dear is
that ever so much has been deliberately allowed to go bad so as to
force up the price of the rest. I always think it’s so wicked to waste
food, don’t you? With so much want about. The people with small fixed
incomes—I’m always so sorry for them. I had a case the other day, the
woman who used to teach my girls music—”
“I’m sure Mr. Lane doesn’t want to hear about _her_,” interposed Ivy
with more solicitude for Eric than civility to her mother. “Father, Mr.
Lane’s secretary has gone away for a holiday, and I’m going in her
place.”
The two sisters looked up with dawning interest; Lady Maitland glanced
covertly at Eric; the judge nodded slowly to give himself time to
think. Ivy had thrown out the announcement without inviting his
approval or opinion. If she wanted either, it was not fair to speak in
front of Eric, but he had not adjusted himself to the new conditions of
her emancipation....
“How does that work in with Connie’s arrangements?,” asked Lady
Maitland, when her husband’s silence began to look like discourtesy to
Eric.
“Oh, she can get on without me for a month,” Ivy answered easily.
“Don’t you think it will be fun?”
“What does Mr. Lane say?”
Eric wished that the subject had not been introduced, if it brought so
much latent antagonism to the surface.
“She will be of very great assistance to me, if you’ll let her come,”
he answered.
The judge reached out eagerly to take up the challenge:
“My dear Lane, _we_ don’t control Ivy’s movements.”
“But I shouldn’t dream of asking her to come against your wishes. We
discussed this in America, before I engaged my present secretary.”
Lady Maitland was still visibly fluttered by finding Eric at her table
and discovering him to be Ivy’s intimate friend. The wives of
barristers and judges lived to as rigid a pattern as that of their
husbands; and it was part of their guild-law to dislike the idea of any
girl’s wandering off in the morning and returning at night without
giving any account of herself or having any one to look after her. Mr.
Lane, indeed, had a big enough position of his own to make him careful
of his reputation; he seemed steady and sensible, agreeing with almost
everything that she had said....
The judge felt that he had been trapped. It was no longer possible to
launch side-long reproaches at Ivy, when the responsibility of the
decision was put into his hands. As he waited for their decision, Eric
was able to break free for a moment from their fog of timid
conventionality and ask himself what they would think if they ever
guessed why he was there at that moment.
“Well, that’s a very proper sentiment,” said the judge at length, “very
proper. I’m glad to find one person in the house who thinks that the
wishes of parents should be consulted; I’m glad that Ivy should see
that this is not merely senile perversity or malice... I’m sure we can
trust her to you, Lane. If you could discover what we’ve done to make
life insupportable to her at home,” he added caustically, “we shall be
glad of enlightenment.”
Eric laughed, because it saved an answer; but Rose and Myrtle were
sitting upright and tense in scared anticipation of a scene, while
their husbands ransacked void brains for an attractive subject of
conversation. Lady Maitland was gamely casting back to the gross
tonnage of bully-beef wantonly wasted by the expeditionary force in the
first six months of the war; but their prompt and practised contrivance
only strengthened his feeling that he had never seen a house in which
the older generation succeeded less in understanding and sympathizing
with the aspirations, the enthusiasms, even the follies of the young.
He was sorry for Ivy and her brothers and sisters, sorry for the
common, faded, pretty mother; but he was also sorry for the blue-jawed
judge, who was a more interesting dramatic type, ruling like a
patriarch until dumb obedience changed without warning, so far as he
could see, to flaming revolt. A bigger man would not feel humiliated
that his daughter had transferred herself to a house two miles away in
the same city, because life at home rawed her nerves; the judge only
knew that this thing had been done, and he suspected that the whole
legal world of South Kensington was discussing it with malicious
interest.
At the end of dinner, the two sisters whispered to their husbands about
trains and slipped away with a murmured good-night. Left with an
untried audience, the judge returned freshly to the charge. While he
was at the bar, Maitland had won grudging tributes to the range and
depth of his knowledge; in his facts, if not in his law, he improvized
the little that he did not know, and the habit had become permanent in
his conversation. Before they had finished discussing the rival degrees
of hard work demanded of literature and the bar, Eric had detached
himself from the plans of personal interest and fatigue and was
surveying his host as a study to be committed to a certain closely
guarded note-book in his safe at home. The judge conversed
methodically: he would introduce his subject with a flourish like a
self-conscious proprietor flinging open the door of a room and asking
his visitors what they thought of _that_; after listening to half the
answer, he would raise one hand, beg leave to interrupt and develop his
theme unsparingly, only stopping when the chance of asking another
question promised him the opportunity of delivering another discourse.
“I’m afraid I shall have to be going in a moment,” said Eric, as the
judge offered him a second cigar. “I have work to do before I go to
bed.”
“Well, I’m very glad to have had this talk. You’ll come upstairs?” He
led the way to the door and paused with his fingers on the handle. “Do
you know a friend of Ivy’s called Gaymer?”
“I’ve met him a certain number of times,” Eric answered easily enough.
“What d’you think of him?”
“Oh, I hardly like to give an opinion of a man I know so little.”
The judge laughed sombrely:
“A good answer! You’re by no means as young and simple as you look,
Lane. Well, the reason I asked is this: I’m making you personally
responsible for Ivy and, if young Gaymer comes round after her, I shall
be obliged if you’ll send him about his business. Half the nonsense in
Ivy’s head comes from him. They struck up a very warm intimacy—quite
unknown to her mother and me, of course! that’s the modern method; I
only heard of it from people who were seeing them about together. So I
got my gentleman to honour me with his company at dinner; and I put it
to him—what was it all about? He pretended he didn’t understand, but I
wouldn’t have any of that. ‘I’ll thank you,’ I told him, ‘not to behave
in such a way as to cause people to gossip about my daughter. I daresay
you think I’m old-fashioned,’ I said. ‘You may think I’m wrong,’ I
said. ‘You may tell me that you’re only doing what thousands of other
men do; all I say is, I was brought up in a different school.’ And I
may tell you, Lane, that it was a school in which young men had manners
flogged into them. My gentleman stared at me very saucily and said:
‘Are you asking me my “intentions”? Nineteen-nineteen! Is that still
done? I’ve been away at the war so long that I’ve lost touch with that
sort of thing.’ Well, then I rang for his coat and hat. I’ve not seen
him since; but that was quite enough to make Ivy take his side, and
I’ve never had any doubt that he put into her head the idea of going
off and living her own life. ‘Living her own life’! How tired I am of
that phrase!...”
“I don’t encourage people to interrupt me when I’m working, judge,”
Eric reassured him.
The double doors of the drawing-room were open, and, as his head came
on a level with the landing, Eric saw Ivy sitting on a cushion at her
mother’s feet and talking with listless unconcern. She had put on her
hat, and her gloves were lying across her knees. Perhaps she was only
tired after her long day in the open air, perhaps she was goaded beyond
bearing by her father’s pin-pricks; or perhaps she had been pleading
fatigue so that he might take her away and be alone with her... As they
came into the room, her unconcern dropped from her, and she turned with
the same sheen of adoration in her eyes. He prayed that the judge might
have missed it; he ought not to have been expecting it, for they had
been talking gravely and responsibly as fathers of families, and Eric
had been commissioned to protect Ivy from undesirable acquaintances...
Lady Maitland had turned at the same moment, so she could not have seen
the glance; but, unless she were blind, she must notice that Ivy was
still transfigured....
“I was just coming down to say good-bye! Mr. Lane, what time do I come
to you to-morrow? If it’s early, I _must_ go to bed now.”
“I suppose nine o’clock’s out of the question?,” Eric hazarded.
“I can manage that.”