Monica knew when she waked next morning that her ordeal was close at
hand. Last night had been a foretaste of it, though she and Celia had
taken refuge in music and had played persistently for an hour after
their silent dinner. There was now the long day to be got through before
she could see Clive, and her bruised and trembling heart shrank from the
heavy hours. She wrote letters all morning; sprightly letters, wondering
at herself as she turned the crisp sentences and made the merry quips.
She sat down to her piano and doggedly practised the passages where she
had failed last night. And after lunch she started for a long walk,
telling Miriam that she would not be back till after tea-time. Clive
might stop to see her on his way from the station. If he did not come
she would send for him. She was fixed on that. She would not pass
another night with this spectre between them. To-night, before they
slept, she and Hester and Clive should know all. And meanwhile she could
walk and walk.
The afternoon lights were slanting over the quiet stubble fields when
she came, after a round that had led her through miles of country, to
the little wood behind The Crofts where the primroses grew in spring.
She had walked blindly, not caring where she went, and when she found
herself now so near Hester, she knew a moment of panic. Not for anything
must Hester see her.
She left the wood and climbed the hill with hurrying footsteps,
following a sheep-track that led to the summit, where Clive and Celia
had come last night, and sitting down to rest for a moment she retraced
the scene; Hester’s dark form reclining here, her angry eyes as she had
raised herself and watched the two approach her. What had Hester felt on
seeing them there, so confidently together? Had not a dim presage
crossed her mind of her own dispossession? And how had she dared show
anger towards Clive?
From where she sat she could see Oddley Green below her, her little
house with its curling smoke and the thin line of the fountain on the
lawn; all the roads laid out and the railway line with its bordering
copses; and then her eye was drawn suddenly near; for there, appearing
over the crest of the hill, was little Robin in his blue linen smock,
walking slowly towards her, as if in sad meditation. Robin was a sad
little boy; she thought it again as she watched him. The deep flaw in
his parents’ union revealed itself, perhaps, in the child’s gravity. It
was as if he felt a lack in the very air he breathed. He did not see her
until he was quite near, and then, after looking at her in amazement, he
ran forward and threw himself into her arms.
‘My darling,’ said Monica, enfolding him and looking into the troubled
little face—‘what are you doing up here all by yourself?’
‘Mummy lets me come here by myself sometimes,’ said Robin after a
moment; ‘we often come up here together. It’s Nannie’s afternoon out
to-day, you see.’
‘Yes.—But does Mummy know you are up here now—alone?’ Monica smoothed
back the fair hair from his forehead.
‘No,’ said Robin, after a hesitation, ‘she doesn’t know. But she told me
to run away. She’s crying.’
‘Crying!’ Monica’s voice could not control its sharpness. ‘Why?’
Again Robin hesitated, as though inhibitions too mature for his years
strove with the childish hungering for comfort. Then his own eyes filled
with tears and he lifted them to his grandmother, saying: ‘I liked that
Captain; he made the fountain go and put in the fish, and I liked him.
But why does he make Mummy cry?—He’s with her down there now.’
Monica felt her blood stand still. With her down there now: and Hester
was crying.
‘Well, you see,’ she said, finding calm words among blazing thoughts,
‘Captain Ingpen and Mummy are old friends and old friends often have sad
things to talk of.—If I were you, darling’—she was thinking intently and
while she thought she still stroked Robin’s hair and looked into his
eyes, ‘I would run back home now and go quietly into the nursery, and
wait for Mummy there. She would not like to think of you wandering about
like this.’
‘But I’m not wandering. I’m with you,’ said Robin.
What truth was this, uttered by the innocent lips? With her. Her arm
held him more closely, while her blazing thoughts paused and scorched
her and her mind, so girlish still, so inexperienced, shrank from the
visions that Robin’s words had set before her. She rose to her feet
involuntarily and keeping Robin’s hand stood gazing down at the fading
October day. Hester had no right to Robin.
‘Darling, I think you had better come back with me,’ she said. ‘Mummy is
busy with her friend and Daddy would rather you were with me, I feel
sure. Perhaps you could spend the night with me.—Wouldn’t you like that,
Robin?’
He gazed up at her with his pure eyes. ‘But I can’t leave Mummy,’ he
said.
A flush rose to Monica’s cheek. She felt herself rebuked. ‘Of course
not,’ she said. ‘Only till Daddy comes. He will fetch you.’
‘Won’t you come home with me?’ said Robin after a moment. ‘Won’t you
come to the nursery and sit with me and wait for Mummy, too?’
‘No. I can’t do that!’ Monica exclaimed, to herself, rather than to the
child. ‘You come with me till Daddy fetches you.’
‘Mummy wouldn’t like it,’ said Robin, still eyeing her; and as she
looked down at his firm sad face she saw Clive in him; Clive’s strength.
‘She doesn’t like me to go unless she knows.’
‘But she told you to run away.’
‘She didn’t mean so far away. She meant the nursery. Perhaps she’ll be
there now, Grannie. I think I’ll go back and see.’
Little angel; little faithful, trusting angel; loyal like his father,
and betrayed like him. What was there to do but yield to such innocence?
She stooped and kissed his forehead. ‘Very well, darling; if you feel
that. Yes; run home.’
When she had seen him disappear over the brow of the hill she turned and
walked swiftly down to Oddley Green. She was trembling, shuddering with
fury and as she went her walk insensibly became a run. She felt like a
hare with the hounds at its heels, and a terror was upon her that before
she reached safety she might see Ingpen.
Clive’s car stood before her cottage. He was waiting for her. He was
there, standing at the window, watching her, as she came up the path.
She stood for a moment in the hall and put her stick very softly into
the stand, as though afraid of waking someone. As she entered the
drawing-room Clive turned to her from the window but he did not move
towards her. Miriam had set the tea-table in readiness; the kettle
whispered on its stand. Absurdly, grotesquely, she heard herself saying,
as she paused by the door and glanced at her son: ‘Will you have some
tea?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Clive. He did not move. He watched her as she sank
down on a chair beside the door. ‘I want to talk to you, Mother,’ he
said. ‘Are you too tired? Would you rather go up and rest first? I can
wait. I can wait for as long as you like.’
‘No; I am not too tired,’ said Monica. She could sit upright on the
chair and she certainly could not go and rest while he waited.
Clive leaned back against the window-frame, his arms folded. ‘It’s
this,’ he said. ‘You are cruelly unfair to Hester; and you always have
been.’
‘Yes; I see. Yes;—I thought that was what you were going to say,’ said
Monica. ‘Won’t you sit down, Clive? You look tired.’
‘No; I’d rather stand.—You do own it, then. You do see it. From the very
beginning it has been,’ said Clive. ‘And from the very beginning it has
spoiled everything.’
‘Not everything, Clive? You have had your happiness. She didn’t see.’
‘No; that’s true. Hester didn’t see. She’s simpler than you and I are
and she didn’t expect to be cared for; didn’t ask it, or didn’t think it
made any difference. That was a little stupid of Hester,’ said Clive,
and across the room the white sincerity of his face flashed at her like
a sword. ‘She had never met a relation like ours. Her own family life
had been wretched. She didn’t in a way take parents seriously; just as a
girl of her type doesn’t take the past seriously; doesn’t know that it
counts, counts horribly, in the present. They are stupid in that way,’
Clive repeated, staring down for a moment at the floor.
‘Then, since she was too stupid to see, what do you blame me for?’ asked
Monica. This was all irrelevant; this was all enmeshing; but she must
let Clive speak. She could not strike him down among these thickets of
misunderstanding. But the briars sprang up with every word she uttered
and Clive was eyeing her with a look of scorn as he answered: ‘She did
see. She began to feel I was unhappy. She was not too stupid to feel
that, though I tried to hide it from her. I tried to hide from you both,
to pretend to you both that you got on and that I was contented with
your relation. I thought that if I went on pretending long enough it
might grow; you might begin to see her a little more truly, and do her
some degree of justice. But Hester saw what you failed to see; that I
was wretched. And how are we to go on now, when you show her as well as
me that you hate her?’
Monica sat silent, her eyes on the floor. It was true that she hated
Hester now; it was perhaps true that she had hated her from the
beginning; and with reason. Clive was looking at her but she could not
look at him, and if he had had a lingering hope it died then, for she
denied nothing. ‘I see it all now,’ he said, and he turned to the window
and looked out as he spoke. ‘I see now why you came down here; to get
away from her. I see why you couldn’t pretend to be glad when we came.
We can’t help hating, I suppose; but it does seem to me, Mother, that we
can help being unjust. It does seem to me that you might have put out
your hand to her, and all that she was trying to do for us both—when
once she had realized that I was suffering.’
She glanced up at him. ‘It seems to me, Clive,’ she said, her lips moved
faintly and the words just issued; ‘that it was always I who held out my
hand and Hester who did not even see it and walked past it. It seems to
me that it is you who are cruelly unjust. What you said a moment ago is
the truth. Hester never thought about me at all. She didn’t care a jot
whether I cared for her or not. All that she cared for was to have you,
and to keep you; and while she cared to keep you, I did not exist.’
‘It’s not true! It’s not true!’ Clive cried, and he turned to her again
and eyed her, fiercely, yet supplicatingly. ‘You don’t understand a girl
of Hester’s type. She hasn’t your codes and symbols; she doesn’t feel or
express things as you and I do. You don’t dream how shy and sensitive
and apprehensive she is, under that firm surface.—She’s had to keep
firm, poor darling—because she’s always had so much to face. She didn’t
know how to please you and didn’t realize when she was displeasing
you.—She was in the dark, always; for I always knew. Nothing was lost on
me. You and I saw eye to eye, while she had to walk on in the dark and
trust me.—And she has trusted me. She’s never once faltered or turned
away; till yesterday; when you pushed her too far.’
‘Oh; I pushed her too far yesterday? How did Hester put that to you?
What form did her arraignment of me take;—and of you?—For Celia informed
me that she was angry with you, too.’
‘She was angry with me because you garbled my interpretation of her to
suit your own purposes. She told me that she’d gone to you, as I asked
her to, to beg your pardon, and that you had sneered at her and thrown
her contrition in her face. She told me that you hated her and that she
could bear it no longer. It was the truth, Mother. Even Celia sees it.
Even Celia sees that you hate my wife.’
‘Clive,’ said Monica, ‘I must talk to you now.’ It was growing dark. His
flashing face was dim to her as he stood there, leaning back, his arms
tightly folded across his chest. Monica leaned forward and pressed her
hand against her brows. ‘You have said what Hester has told you to say,
and now I must speak. I am not going to defend myself. All that is past.
Perhaps what you say is true. I may have hated Hester from the
beginning. But if I did, I know now that I had reason to hate her.’ She
dropped her hand and looked across the room at him. ‘She is a bad
woman,’ she said.
He leaned against the window staring at her with no change of
countenance. It was only the look of cold attention that met her, as
though, in a trench, he awaited the approaching bomb and computed where
it was to fall.
‘That’s a Victorian word.’ She remembered the other day and his faint
laugh. ‘I don’t mean it in that way. I mean it because she has deceived
you. Hester, when she came to you, had things to hide; things to fear.
Before she met you she had a lover.’
There was silence, deep silence for a moment. Then he said: ‘I knew
that.’
‘You knew it? Since when?’
‘Since the beginning,’ said Clive. ‘She told me at the very first; down
in Cornwall.’ He looked across the room at his mother and it seemed to
her now that it was a look of hatred. She had uncovered Hester’s past;
and his; with all its suffering.
‘I see.’ She forced her lips to speak, but could not force them to speak
without a horrible irony; her astonishment, her panic, were like a
tempest shaking her. ‘I see. After such confidences, such forgivenesses
asked and granted, it was natural that I should feel something very
strange in you; as I did; and in her;—when you first brought her. That
explains everything, really.’
Clive was silent for a moment, taking full cognizance of her intention.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not in the sense you mean. To think in the way that you
are thinking, where Hester is concerned, would be an impossibility to
anyone who loves her. I was not writhing with male jealousy. I was not
feeling her damaged goods;—as little as she was herself. That is
precisely what you do mean, isn’t it?’—Yes. He was looking at her with
hatred. She felt it flowing into her as if every vein were an inlet for
a deadly poison.—‘If I was strange,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t only because of
those sad things in her life and because I knew that you would feel as
you do feel, if we were to tell you of them. It was because Hester and I
had faced things you never dreamed of; horrible things; I in the war;
she in Russia. We weren’t ordinary happy young engaged people. I had
seen suffering that had nearly turned my brain, and she had seen cruelty
that had seared her. It was because of what we both had to hide from
other people that we came to care so much for each other, at the first.
We seemed, from the moment we saw each other, to understand. As for her
lover, she wanted me to tell you, of course. And I refused. I knew what
you would feel,’ Clive repeated, and on his sweet, pure lip she saw the
echo of her own cruel irony.
‘You will admit—she has not so altered all the codes and symbols you
inherit from me, obsolete as they are—you will admit that it is a
natural feeling.’
‘Perfectly natural. Nothing could be more natural;—like all the rest of
our primitive emotions. You see yourself as the pure and Hester as the
impure woman.’
‘Do I?’ It seemed to her that Clive had thrown knives at her and that
she felt them quivering in her throat and side.—All that suffering that
he had hidden from her, his mother, and that Hester had understood at a
glance.—‘Perhaps there is a meaning in the words, in spite of Hester’s
code. Do you subscribe also to the modern doctrine of contemporaneity in
love affairs? Are you a completely complacent husband? If your wife had
sad things in her past, are you willing that she should have pleasant
ones in her present?’ She was willing, more than willing, to hurt Clive.
He had done more than hurt her. She could not live after seeing that
cold hatred burn in his eyes.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked sternly.
Monica rose to her feet. She felt no weariness. The poison of his hatred
mounted in her, lending her a horrible strength. ‘Do you forgive your
wife everything, and your mother nothing? Are you in the plot that
brought her lover here to live? Was it acting on your part, too, the
other night? Or must I tell you—since they have hoodwinked you—that
Captain Ingpen is her lover?’
‘What are you saying? You are mad,’ said Clive. As she saw his face a
ghastly happiness filled her heart. He had been deceived. ‘You are mad,’
Clive repeated. ‘It has become a disease in you, your hatred.’
‘Ask her if it is a disease!’ Monica panted. ‘Ask her whose ring he
wears! Ask her when they saw Chartres together! Ask her why she cried
this afternoon when he was with her and Robin was sent away!—I know it
all! I have seen it all!—You unfortunate, you hoodwinked, you miserable
child!’
He stood, his face ghastly, staring, incredulous. ‘She hates him,’ he
said.
‘Does she? Ask her how she hates him? She has betrayed you.’
He had stumbled forward—the bird with the broken wing—as if with an
impulse of escape, and stopped in the middle of the room, staring around
him, seeing the way barred. His mother stood before him. ‘Hester
couldn’t lie to me,’ he said.
‘She has lied to you,’ said Monica. ‘You see now why she was so anxious
to come to live here; so that I should not be lonely any longer.’
The thirsty vengeance of her voice drew his eyes to her and he stood
there poised, and looked at her for a long moment. ‘I don’t believe
you,’ he then said. ‘If it’s true that he was her lover, it’s not true
that he is her lover now. If she has not told me, it’s because she was
afraid. Yes,’ he looked steadfastly at his mother, drawing, it seemed,
assurance from her balefulness, ‘she’s been afraid of you; and of me.
She loves me with all her heart and soul; do you understand? As I love
her. Every drop of her blood is mine and every drop of mine is hers.
Nothing could part us.—She wanted to tell me everything long ago in
Cornwall, and I refused to hear. I only knew that it was in France, long
ago, and that he was much older than she was and that he’d broken her
heart; I thought he was a Frenchman. We never spoke of it again; not
once.—And he has followed her here. He has dared to come to her and
torment her while I’m away.—And you have played detective and thought
you would rid yourself of her like that.—Good-bye, Mother.’
He did not look at her. He brushed past her to the door and left her
standing there with her head thrown back, her eyes dilated. Miriam found
her lying on the floor when she brought in the lamp and she and Cook
carried her up to her room and laid her on her bed.