It was only half-past three when she started, and she would be half an
hour too early for Celia and Norah’s tea-party, but they would be glad
to see her and there would be thus an opportunity to make some casual
enquiry about Aunt Harriet. Clive and Hester were to come, and Captain
Ingpen would surely be there: more surely because of this morning; his
was the task of nonchalance and unawareness; all that was left him to do
was to watch her and to hold his hand, hoping that by some stroke of
fortune she would be baffled and perhaps satisfied. Her heart was sick
and heavy in her side as she thought of him, and with him now came the
thought of Jeremy and of the other little dog;—but the lassitude that
had fallen upon her tumult was in itself a strength. What she needed was
stillness and calm; and it gave her this. She could promise herself that
even the sight of the three together, Hester, Ingpen and Clive,—would
not make her quail, and as she stepped out into the sunlight, the heavy
beating of her heart, the bright hot sun, brought back, by some odd
trick of association, just such another day in London, twenty-five years
ago, when she had set forth down the dusty little street in West
Kensington to make her way to the unknown London of the City and
publishers’ offices for her first business interview. She had been
horribly frightened, no doubt, though not until this minute had she
known it—so armed had she been with Clive and Winchester and Oxford—and
looking back, really understanding at last that girl of twenty-five
years ago, she saw her as incredibly ignorant of herself and of life.
Until then she had only seen life from the deck of a ship, her father’s
gallant craft, with its stout engine throbbing beneath one, its pennons
flying above. But now her father was dead, and she was to know what it
was to swim in the open sea alone, and the first intimation of the
contrast had come to her from the manner of the editors who received
her. Until then, in her relations with men, she had met with implicit
homage, with deference or assiduity, and had taken them for granted as a
woman’s due. It was revealed to her, now, in the cool jocose eye, the
note of familiarity that greeted her, that to the employing male a woman
in search of work was in a very different category from a woman secure
and independent. The editor was kind and had agreed to take her series
of articles on the French countryside; but her cheek had oddly burned
as, not waiting for the lift, she had run down the steep, echoing stone
staircase. Things, perhaps, were better for women now;—because of Hester
and her kind. And as she paused thus, looking back into the past, she
saw Hester approaching her from across the green.
Hester had just come down from The Crofts and was evidently arrayed for
the tea-party in her best dark blue coat and skirt. She wore a red silk
jumper and a small red hat, and, among the geese and ducks and care-free
dogs, advanced with steady deliberation. Monica stood still at her gate,
fixing her with a guarded eye. Her instinct that morning in meeting
Captain Ingpen had been well justified; she had waited for him to speak
first. She would wait for Hester to speak first now.
There was no hesitation in Hester’s demeanour and, as far as Monica
could perceive, no calculation. Her eyes were set in mauve circles,
almost as though she had wept—but Monica could not imagine that Hester
had been weeping—and the ageing lines that ran along her cheeks were
apparent and seemed to drag at the corners of her mouth with a bitter
savour. And what she said at once—what she had come to say—was: ‘I am
very sorry about yesterday, Monica. Clive told me that you felt I had
been rude. I didn’t mean to be and I beg your pardon.’
So unexpected were these words, so astonishing to Monica’s ear, that for
a moment she felt that Hester had struck her between the eyes. She stood
there stunned. Then, as the singing in her head subsided, she saw a clue
given into her hand. Hester suspected nothing and, because she was
unsuspicious, might reveal everything. Her apology was part of her plot.
How little it could cost her to apologize to Clive’s mother when she had
everything to gain by keeping him quiet. It was of Clive she was
thinking. She would never dream, Monica was sure of that as she looked
at her, of casting him off. She intended to keep husband and lover.
Monica felt herself armed and she seized her opportunity. ‘That’s very
nice of you, Hester, very nice indeed,’ she said; ‘I _was_ rather
startled.’ And she went on, not too casually—for of course Hester would
see that she intended to make herself disagreeable: ‘But really—after
what Clive told me, I perfectly understand. It wasn’t really me you were
angry with at all, was it?—though of course at the moment I could not be
expected to see that.’
Hester’s eye lighted from its brooding calm. It fixed itself on her
mother-in-law and the sullen, dragging line in her cheek deepened. ‘What
Clive told you? What has Clive got to do with it?’ she questioned
haughtily.
‘Why—he has everything to do with it. He found me very much upset; and
he was upset, too. He was as much at sea as I was really—to account for
your temper, though he felt sure that I misunderstood you;—but when I
told him that Captain Ingpen was there, everything became clear. Your
dislike of him—because of the past—was so intense.’
Ah. That did draw the blood! Not a shred of doubt—or of hope—survived in
Monica as she seemed to see it trickle, as though from a dagger blow.
This was to taste, in one sharp moment, knowledge and hatred and
vengeance. For Hester was white to the lips. White, with the gauntly
circled eyes, as she stood there and as she said: ‘Because of the past?
What do you mean? I don’t understand you.’
No; she did not; nor should she. Hester should be left to grope, irate,
perplexed and meshed, until she tumbled into the pit dug for her.
‘Why, you had known him—very well, I suppose,’ said Monica. ‘And I
suppose you had quarrelled with him, since the sight of him could
discompose you as much as it did yesterday, and the other night. I
understood the other night, too, and your behaviour to me then, after
what Clive said.’
Hester carried a small, stumpy sunshade—a red sunshade that matched her
hat and jumper (all was very nicely thought out)—and now her hands
grasped it tightly and fiercely, as fiercely as though she restrained
herself from hurling it at her mother-in-law’s head.—‘Clive never said
it! Clive could not have said such a thing! I never spoke of him to
Clive!’ she exclaimed, and her lip lifted from her teeth as she clenched
them in what was almost a snarl of fury. The blaze of the conflagration
was indeed revealing. A wide landscape, till then unseen, leaped into
view. Clive had not dared to tell his wife of his surmise. His mother
remembered now how deep had been his discomposure. Clive, too, had his
intuitions. And through it all—all that she was seeing—Monica was aware
that Hester, at all events, was telling no lies and that, illumined by
the lurid moment, she was looking almost beautiful.
She could not pause for Hester’s beauty. She held her thought steady,
like a sword in her hand, and its edge was in her voice as she said:
‘That’s very strange: That shows Clive’s insight. I did not gather from
him how long or how well you had known Captain Ingpen, but what he made
me see was that you disliked him so bitterly that you could not control
yourself in his presence. If you had said nothing at all of him to
Clive, it only shows us how deeply he felt it for himself. He
understands you through and through, doesn’t he, Hester? You are
touched, I am sure, by such devotion and such insight.’
The eyes of the Byzantine Madonna were on her as she uttered these
penetrating phrases; the old image reasserted itself and Monica found
herself wondering at them, the great irises almost encircled with white,
so wide, so fixed was their ominous stare; down at her; across at her;
as if from high up, as if through the half-pagan, half-sacred darkness
of a vast basilica. Stonily, repudiatingly, Hester stared at her and, in
all her cruel security, Monica felt as if a rigid hand had been thrust
out from hieratic vestments to push her away, to strike her down, to
annihilate her. ‘You know nothing about Clive and me,’ said Hester,
‘absolutely nothing. You never have. I am not touched. He had no right
to say such things to you and not to me.’
‘No right to defend you? No right to tell his mother that he understood
his wife?’ Monica found the words with difficulty. Her sword had been
turned in her hand.
‘I don’t need defences,’ said Hester, moving now away. ‘When I want
Clive to defend me with you, I’ll tell him so. He has no right to make
up stories about his wife in order to placate his mother and then to
conceal from her what he has been doing.—But that side of it concerns
him and me;—not you.—That is all I have to say.’ She walked off towards
the station-road.
‘You remember, perhaps, that Celia and Norah expect you to tea?’ Monica
slightly raised her voice to follow her with an icy conciseness. ‘I
understood that you and Clive were coming.’
Hester paused to listen, her back to her. ‘I perfectly remember,’ she
said, not turning her head. ‘I don’t care to come. I don’t care to smile
and pretend after this scene; you give me too much of it to do as it is.
I shall take the train to town and not get back until after dinner:—you
may tell Clive so if you see him. I am not such an actress as you are.’
She walked rapidly away.
‘Well, there’s that.’ Monica heard herself utter the absurd comment as
she stood still and watched Hester disappearing round the corner of the
road. ‘There’s that,’ she repeated and, slowly turning, she walked in
the opposite direction. She felt struck, stunned, rather than enraged;
and after she had walked for a little while it came over her that a sick
admiration for Hester coloured her detestation. Yes, Hester undoubtedly
was guilty, and had been her victim, or, rather, her trapped quarry;
yet, without insolence, without retort, could any creature have
contrived more indubitably to preserve dignity in overthrow? She had
avowed nothing; she had denied nothing. ‘She hasn’t a fibre of weakness
in her; or of meanness,’ Monica thought, hardly aware of the strangeness
of such a tribute at such a moment. ‘I almost understand why they both
fell in love with her.’ Something inviolate, unconquerable in herself
recognized and did homage to the strength of her mortal enemy.
It was already half-past four when she reached Norah’s, and she saw
Celia in the garden, bareheaded, in a very lovely little grey dress.
Here was Celia and Hester was walking away to the station. It almost
seemed to Monica, as she opened the gate and went in, that Hester was
walking out of their lives. After her anguish, her lassitude, her
stupefaction, it was now an oblivious blitheness that overtook her; the
reckless mood of a fairy-tale make-believe. Here was Celia; Clive would
soon be here and everything was to end happily as it ought to have done
years and years ago.
‘Well, my dear child,’ she said, going up to her. ‘What delicious
weather—and you match it.—That darling dress.—Where is Norah? Are you
expecting anyone except just ourselves?’
‘Only the tiniest little tea-party—for Clive and Hester;—Captain Ingpen,
Mr. and Mrs. Fellows, Rosemary Dixon and Lady Tyler. Norah is in the
drawing-room with Lady Tyler now. She came early so that she could go
early. She has a meeting at the other side of the county, as usual, and
she’s talking Women’s Institutes, as usual. I’m afraid poor Norah will
have to be Secretary after all. Her hens won’t exonerate her,’ laughed
Celia, who was merry to-day. ‘Your dress is a darling, too, Monica,’ she
went on, clasping her hands on her friend’s arm. ‘You are dazzling in
black and white,—only that’s too violent a word for anything so soft and
bright.—You are like Helen of Troy, as Clive always said—there’s
something so ageless, so “is this the face” about you, and you always
smell of violets,’ Celia sniffed at her cheek.—‘I’m sure Helen did
too—fresh violets out of the wood.—Oh, Monica, isn’t it your doing that
Captain Ingpen is going to plant all sorts of lovely things in his
wood—for the spring? I am sure it is; it’s such a dull wood now; nothing
grows there you know except a few bluebells. Won’t it be too wonderful
to pick anemones and primroses? He says we shall.—Norah thinks he is
really settling in and beginning to like it here, and if he is it must
be because of you.’
A pang shot through Monica’s heart as she heard the happy babble. Was it
possible—even yet—that it was because of her? Was it the tired dog
laying its head in her hand? But for Clive, how little power the past
would have had to harm the present, if that were so. A dark confusion
hung before her eyes, obscuring Celia and the light fairy-tale, bringing
back the thoughts of the wood;—that apprehension of leaving Clive behind
her if she went on with Captain Ingpen. To stay her hand now would be to
leave Clive behind; it would be to betray Clive if she paused to listen
to the voices of pity and tenderness that whispered in her heart. He was
a crafty, an ambiguous, an unscrupulous man, and she remembered
suddenly—Celia’s fond words of praise brought it back, placing her in a
category where beauty still had power—that a thread of flame had passed
between them, quenched from all rising, as if by a pressure from her
foot, yet, perhaps, leaving her not unscathed. ‘Yes; look deep into your
complicity,’ she told herself, while she walked so calmly, held by
Celia, and seemed to listen to her; for was it not complicity to
understand, even though she had quenched the thread of flame, why Hester
had loved him desperately and loved him, perhaps, as desperately now?—to
understand, even, why she loved him more than Clive?
There was no flame in Clive, was that it? He was light, not fire; he
illumined, he did not burn; and did she not understand the deep craving
to perish, if need be, in the flame? She felt herself tremble inwardly
as her thought, so coldly it seemed, gazed at Captain Ingpen’s ambiguous
homage. Yes; he was an unscrupulous man, for he had come seeking the old
passion and had dared to pause and offer homage on his way.
‘Did Clive tell you that he took me for a drive on Saturday?’ Celia
said. ‘Robin came too and sat on my lap and we had a dear talk. It made
me feel,’ Celia smiled round at her with unclouded candour, ‘that
everything might come back again. I had tea with him and Hester
afterwards and she was so sweet to me, in her funny, terse way. I know
that Clive hopes very much we are to be friends.’
It would satisfy Celia to be illumined. She craved no flame. Monica’s
mind still followed the probing simile while she asked, schooling her
voice: ‘Do you feel that possible?’
‘Perfectly possible. I feel as if it had begun already,’ said Celia. ‘We
might never have made friends in London, but we may be friends here in
the country. Her London, I mean, could never be mine, but her country
may be. It’s quite different, isn’t it? One wants such different things
in the country.’
‘One always wants affinity, I think.’
‘But affinity grows, Monica. And funny little things can make it
grow.—I’ve never really seen Hester in her own home before,’ said Celia,
her eyes on her friend. ‘And she showed me her new dress, that red and
silver dress she got for your dinner; I never imagined Hester showing
her dresses or caring about them, but she ran up to fetch it, when Clive
asked her to—so eager and pleased—and she looked at me with such an
earnest, wistful look, and said: “Do you think she’ll like it?” as
though she were outside and wanted to come in. And I felt such a queer
little pang, Monica, for I knew you wouldn’t really like it;—that it
wasn’t a bit your sort of dress. And when you feel pangs for people, it
makes you fond of them.’
‘So you are already fond of Hester. That is indeed a great step towards
friendship.’ Monica could not quell the irony of her voice. The emotion
with which she heard Celia’s guileless recital, touched with the
breathless, headlong quality as it was—brought a sudden heat to her
cheek. ‘I certainly didn’t like the dress; it was a dress suitable to
the stage rather than to my little drawing-room; but I very much admired
Hester in it; as did everyone present.’
Celia, arrested in her advocacy, looked at her askance. It reminded her
of Clive’s look the day before.
Norah called them in to tea. The Fellows had arrived and Rosemary Dixon
who bred Angora rabbits and read French memoirs. Monica sat down by Lady
Tyler, a lean-faced woman harassed yet stimulated by unnecessary public
cares. Her garden was her relaxation and Monica asked her at once about
her gladioli so that there should be no danger of hearing about some new
committee, and as she talked, her thought passed to and fro over the
pictures Celia had put before it; Hester displaying her dress and
pretending that it had been bought to please her:—Clive and Celia
driving with Robin. Perhaps, on that Saturday, Hester and Ingpen had
already met and laid their plans. It would be part of their plan that
Clive should often take Celia out for drives; with Robin.
Mr. Fellows, the rector—a devout, submissive man who had lost three sons
in the war—was passing the tea and as Lady Tyler hastily quaffed her cup
and rose, saying she must fly to her meeting, Monica saw Clive’s face
appear in the doorway, Clive’s radiant face. She remembered, as she met
his eager eyes, that they had parted in love and trust only yesterday
and with painful effort her mind constructed the full meaning of his
radiance. He had sent Hester to her with her apology. He believed that
it had been understood and accepted, reconcilingly. He expected to find
Hester with her now and as his smile, sharp and shining, found and
rested on her, her eyes dropped before it.
‘You’re late, Clive,’ said Celia, ‘and so is Captain Ingpen.—Is Hester
with you?’
She had joined him and already his smile was stiffened to the cold
attentiveness.
‘She was coming with Mummy,’ he said. ‘No tea, thanks; I had some in the
city before starting.—Is she following you, Mummy?—You _have_ seen
Hester?’
‘Yes; I’ve seen her.’ They were standing there before her. What could
she do for Clive? What could she do for herself? Until she could see him
alone all that she could do was to present him with a clear surface. She
prayed that she kept it clear as she looked up at the two before her and
went on: ‘She didn’t come with me and asked me to tell you that she was
going to town and wouldn’t be back till after dinner.—Perhaps you and
Celia will come and dine with me—since you’ll be alone.—Robin will be
all right with Nurse, won’t he?’
And now, as she felt the intentness of their gaze, she remembered that
she had said no word to Celia of Hester’s defection and knew that Celia
as well as Clive scented disaster.
‘But—didn’t she?—I mean——Hadn’t Hester anything to say to you?’ Clive’s
light was all extinguished. ‘Don’t go, Celia.’ He laid a hand on the
girl’s shoulder as she made a movement to leave them. He took refuge in
Celia, who understood him and Hester; who, already, was fond of Hester.
‘Yes; stay, Celia,’ said Monica, glancing at the girl’s pale face. ‘It
was dear of you to send her, Clive, and we had quite a little talk.
Perhaps she had some message calling her to town? She seemed quite
decided about it.—Though I reminded her of the tea.’
To see Celia standing there under Clive’s hand gave her a cutting
comfort. It put her out, but it kept them, and the future, together. It
was well, even if it put her out, that he had Celia to turn to.
‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered.
‘It’s bad of Hester,’ Celia tried to help them both as best she could,
‘because the tea-party is really given for her; but we know what a busy
person she is. Probably it was a message. Mrs. Travers may have sent for
her, Clive. You know she said on Saturday that Mrs. Travers was in some
difficulty.’
‘Yes. Perhaps it is Mrs. Travers.’ Clive looked at her unseeingly. ‘But
I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll dine, Mother’ (he called her
‘Mother’)—‘I think I’d rather wait for Hester at home. Shall we have a
little turn in the garden, Celia? Isn’t it rather hot in here?’
‘May I come—alone?’ Celia stooped to her to ask it. But it was less to
ask than to look her tenderness, to implore her to take heart.
‘The truth is that my heart is broken, Celia’—that was what Monica felt
she would have liked to reply. Even if Clive were to understand all and
to forgive all, how was she to forget that he could look at her like
that, with that pallid alienation? He saw her as cruel; he believed her
vindictive. She had driven his beloved to strange, uncharacteristic
stratagems, and as he and Celia left her Monica heard an echo of her own
specious voice as it had found the prevarications which were all that
she could give him.
She sat now alone in the drawing-room. The evening was marvellously warm
and still and all the others were in the garden. It was part of old age,
Monica thought, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the piano,
that one could never tell anybody that one’s heart was broken. No one
cared if old hearts broke; it was taken for granted that they must
break; and in silence.
She was suddenly aware that somebody was looking at her. It was as if a
presence had, soundlessly, entered the room, and opening her eyes she
saw Ingpen’s face outside the window. The sky behind his head was like
the sky in an early Italian picture; pale yet deep in tone, still,
remote and merciful; his head was dark against it and his face
featureless. She only felt his intent gaze and knew that it had searched
and summoned her. It was so a ghost might look in on one and she must
look like a ghost to him, gazing back, with her sorrowful face, from the
dusky room. So they might always remember each other, the future, not
the past, thus taking spectral shape between them. ‘Everything fades,’
she thought. But this would not fade, for it had never lived. They had
never meant more to each other than this interchange could give them.
This was their reality.
He was gone. He would not come in. He would not obtrude the jarring
world of time on the moment of possessed eternity. It was strange to
know of this man whom she must judge, condemn, and thrust forth, how
deeply, where eternity was concerned, she could trust him.
Voices of farewell were passing along the little path that led to the
garden gate and in a moment Norah entered, exclaiming: ‘Why, are you all
alone, Mrs. Wilmott? I thought Uncle Godfrey was with you. He must have
gone as soon as he came;—what’s the matter with him? My tea-party was
rather a failure, I feel, with him and Hester away. Clive has driven
Celia off to see the sunset from the hill and she’s dining with you, she
says. They asked me to say they’d come back for you.’
Her heart might be broken but it could still rouse itself and even feel
again a stir of the fairy-tale as she heard Norah’s cheerful tones.
After all, why not? Without phantasy, was not everything moving in that
direction? All her standards, all her tastes and traditions, shrank from
hateful public rendings; but Hester had walked away; and that ghost at
the window had no power over the present. Why should not beautiful
things grow up where old things had been blasted?
‘I won’t wait for them,’ she said. ‘I would really rather walk back on
this lovely evening, and I must tell the maids that Celia is
dining.—Won’t you come too, Norah?—The hill over The Crofts, you mean?’
‘Yes. The sunset is lovely from up there. No; I won’t dine, thank you so
much.—I’ve masses of letters to write and Celia loves a _tête-à-tête_
with you.—It’s rather wonderful to see everything turning out so well,
isn’t it? You were right and I was wrong about that, do you remember?
Celia and Hester seem really to have taken a fancy to one another,’ said
Norah. ‘And little Robin calls her Aunt Celia.—She was very much
touched.’
‘Darling Celia.—Do you remember Sonia, in “War and Peace”? Like Celia
rather. The destined aunt type. Perhaps that is what we must resign
ourselves to for her.’ Monica got up as she spoke and moved about the
room, remembering as though from far away that there were still steps to
be taken and clues to follow before the key was in her hand; the key to
set Clive free.
‘I don’t find it in the least mournful to be an aunt!’ Norah laughed.
‘All this talk about frustrated maternity amuses me. Some of the
jolliest people I’ve ever known have been aunts.—It all depends, like
everything else, on whether you have any money of your own.’
The clue was given into her hand and Monica heard her own voice saying:
‘Speaking of aunts, hadn’t you a rather wonderful one in your family?—An
old Aunt Harriet Beaton? This picture isn’t of her by any chance?—I was
hearing about her the other day.’ She had stopped before a faint pencil
drawing of an old lady in a cap.
‘Well—how did you hear of Aunt Harriet!’ said Norah, and Monica’s heart
gave a great throb as she heard her—whether of hope or fear she did not
know: ‘No; that’s not she. I’ve no picture of Aunt Harriet. She _was_
rather wonderful; but her name was Allington, not Beaton; we have no
Beatons in the family. Mother used to tell us stories about her. She
travelled all over the world and made botanical paintings of flowers in
every quarter of the globe. Mother has portfolios full of them.’
Monica heard her own weak voice again. ‘A great traveller?—Perhaps your
uncle inherits the taste from her. Yes; that is she. I muddled the name.
Was she very old when she died? Did you ever see her?’
‘I? See her? How could I? She was mother’s great-aunt and died before I
was born,’ said Norah.
So the key was in her hand and heavy was its weight. If only he had said
nothing, nothing at all, she thought, as she walked along the darkened
lanes, there might still have been a loophole; but not now. One did not
lie like that without a reason.
It was dark when she reached home. The curtains had been drawn and
chinks of light showed between them. Wondering at the foolhardiness that
had impelled her to ask Clive and Celia to dine, she paused at the gate
to draw breath. Now she had Celia to face for the evening and she did
not know how she was to bear it.
As she dressed she heard the car drive up and then drive off again, in
the direction of The Crofts; Clive returning to wait for Hester. And in
the drawing-room Celia waited for her, holding her violin, and Monica
understood in a moment all that had happened as she said, not able to
control the breathlessness: ‘Hester was up there, Monica. She had come
back and was up there on the hill: looking at the sunset, too.—And, oh,
Monica—please forgive me—but did anything happen, between you and
Hester, I mean?—Because they are very unhappy; she and Clive are
unhappy. She is angry with him, I’m afraid;—because of what
happened.—Could you tell me, do you think? Do you think I could help a
little?—Because I feel as if I understood you all and could, perhaps,
make things clearer.’
For one moment, as she looked at her, Monica knew the wild impulse to
break down before Celia, to tell her all, to ask, indeed, her help and
sympathy: but, steadying her mind, as if over a whirlpool vortex, she
said, in a cold voice: ‘Yes; I think something did happen, Celia, and
perhaps, some day, I shall be able to explain what seems strange to you.
But I can’t talk about Hester and Clive now. Not till I’ve seen Clive
again, alone. We must find other topics.—Only this I’ll say:—Hester had
no right, not the shadow of a right to be angry with him. Nothing passed
between Hester and me that gave her a right to be angry with Clive.
Don’t try to intercede for her, my dear. When I tell you my story you
will feel, I think, that it is Clive and I, not Hester, who are in need
of pity.’