Ellen could not understand why Richard whispered explosively as they
turned away from the window: "Pin up your hair! Quickly! We must go down
at once!" or why he hurried her downstairs without giving her time to
use her brush and comb. When they got down into the old parlour Richard
went to the side door that opened into the farmyard and flung it open,
beginning a sentence of greeting, but there was nothing to be seen but
the grey sheds, the wood-pile, and the puddle-pocked ground. He uttered
an exasperated exclamation, and drew it to, saying to Ellen: "Open the
front door! Please, dear." She did so, but saw nothing save the dark and
narrow garden and the black trees against the white north sky. "What in
Christ's name are they doing?" Richard burst out, and flung open the
side door again. Both put their heads out over the threshold to see if
the two visitors were standing about anywhere, and a gust of wind that
was making the trees beat their arms darted down on the house and turned
the draught between the two open doors into a hurricane. Ellen squealed
as her door banged and struck her shoulder before she had time to steer
clear of it. "Oh, my poor darling!" said Richard, and he was coming
towards her, when they heard the glug-glug-glug of water dripping from
the table to the floor, and saw that the draught had overturned a vase
filled with silver boughs of honesty. He picked it up and uttered
another bark of exasperation, for it had cracked across and he had cut
his hand on the sharp edge of the china.
"Oh, damn! oh, damn! oh, damn!" he cried, in a voice that rage made
high-pitched and childish, sucking his finger in between the words.
"What a filthy mess!" He looked down on the wet tablecloth and the two
halves of the vase lying in the bedabbled leaves with an expression of
distaste so far out of proportion to its occasion that Ellen remembered
uneasily how several times that day she had noticed in him traces of a
desperate, nervous tidiness like Marion's. "If you ring for one of the
maids she'll soon clear it up," she said soothingly, and moved towards
the bell. But he took his bleeding finger away from his lips and waved
it at her, crying: "No! no! I don't want either of the servants round
till I've found that fool and that woman! This is some new
folly--probably I'll have to get him away before mother comes! Come on!
Perhaps they're hanging about the garden, though God knows why!" After
making a savage movement towards the broken vase, as if he could not
bear to leave the disorder as it was, and checking it abruptly,
jarringly, he rushed into the dining-room, and Ellen followed him.
The two were there, their faces pressed against the window-panes. Behind
them the grey waste of stormy shallow waters, and the salt-dimmed
pastures, and the black range of the Kentish hills, hung with
grape-purple rainclouds, made it apparent how much greater dignity
belongs to the earth and sea than to those who people them. As Richard
and Ellen halted at the door the faces receded from the glass. The woman
stepped backwards and, looking as if she were being moved on by a
policeman, passed suddenly out of sight beyond the window's edge.
Richard crossed the room and opened the French window, but by the time
he had unlocked it the man in uniform, who had been beckoning to his
companion with long bony hands, had gone in search of her. As Richard
put his head round the door to bid them enter, the wind, which was now
rushing round the house, made itself felt as a chill commotion, an icy
anger of the air, in which both he and Ellen shivered. Presently the
pair in uniform appeared again, but at some distance across the lawn,
and too intensely absorbed in argument to pay any attention to him.
"Oh, damn! oh, damn!" sobbed Richard. The wind was blowing earth-daubed
leaves off the flowerbeds through the open door into the prim room. He
stepped into the gale and shouted: "Roger! Roger! Come in!"
Roger waved his arms, which were too long for the sleeves of his coat,
and from his mouthings it was evident that he was shouting back, but the
wind took it all. In anger Richard stepped back into the room and made
as if to close the doors, and at that the two on the lawn ran towards
the house, with that look which common people have when they run for a
train, as if their feet were buckling up under them. Richard held the
door wide again, but when the couple reached the path in front of the
house they were once more seized with a doubt about entering and came to
a standstill.
"Come in," said Richard; "come in."
The man took off his cap and ran his hands through his pale, long hair.
"Is mother in?" he demanded in a thin, whistling voice.
"Come in," said Richard; "come in."
The man began: "Well, if mother's not in, I don't know--"
Richard fixed his eyes on the woman's face. "Come in," he said softly,
brutally, loathingly. Ellen shivered to hear him speak thus to a woman
and to see a woman take it thus, for at once the stranger moved forward
to the window and stepped into the room. As she brushed by him she
cringingly bowed her shoulders a little, and looked up at him as he
stood a head and shoulders higher than herself. He looked back steadily
and made no sign of seeing her save by a slight compression of the lips,
until she passed on with dragging feet and stood listlessly in the
middle of the room. It was evident that they completely understood one
another, and yet their understanding sprung from no recollection of any
previous encounter, for into the eyes of neither did there come any
flash of recognition. There could be no doubt that Richard was feeling
nothing but contempt for this woman, and her peaked yet rich-coloured
face expressed only sick sullenness; yet Ellen felt a rage like
jealousy.
Richard turned again to the garden, and said: "Come in."
"Now don't be high-handed, old man," expostulated the stranger. But then
he seemed to remember something, and stretched out both his arms, held
them rigid, and opened his mouth wide as if to speak very loudly. But no
sound came, and his arms dropped, and his long bony hands pawed the air.
Then suddenly his arms shot out again, and he exclaimed very quickly in
a high, strained voice: "Pride has always been your besetting sin,
Richard. You aren't a bad chap in any way that I know of. But you're
proud. And it doesn't become any of us to be proud"--his spirit was
shaking the words out of his faltering flesh--"for we're all miserable
sinners. You needn't order me"--he spoke more glibly now, the flesh and
the spirit seemed in complete agreement--"to come out of the garden like
that. I wish Poppy hadn't gone in." He caught his breath with something
like a sob; but the woman in uniform made no movement, and turned her
eyes to Richard's face as if it were he that must give the order. "I've
got a reason for staying out here. I know mother's not got Jesus. If
she's ashamed of me now that I'm one of Jesus' soldiers, I won't come
in. I'll go and wrestle on my knees for her soul, but I won't hurt her
by coming in. So here I stay till she tells me to come in."
"But she's out," said Richard.
The man in uniform was discomfited. The light went out of his face and
his mouth remained open. He shifted his weight from one foot to the
other and muttered: "Ooh-er, is she?"
"Yes," said Richard pleasantly. "She's gone over to Friar's End, but
she'll be back any time now. I wish you'd come in. I haven't seen you
for years, and I'd like to swap yarns with you about what we've been
doing all the time."
"You'd have the most to tell," answered the other wistfully. "You've
been here, there, and everywhere in foreign parts. And I haven't been
doing nothing at all. Except--" he added, brightening up, "being saved."
"That's your own fault," Richard told him. "I've often wondered why you
didn't try your luck abroad. You'd have been sure to hold your own.
Well, anyway, come in and have some tea. I don't know what mother would
say to me if she came in and found I'd let you stay out in the cold.
She'd be awfully upset."
"Do you think she would?" the man in uniform asked, and seemed to
ponder. He looked up at the grey sky and shivered. "'Tis getting
coldish. And the cloth this uniform is made from isn't the sort that
keeps out cold weather. God knows I don't want to grumble at the uniform
I wear for Jesus' sake, but me having been in the drapery, I can't help
noticing when a thing is cheap." He stared down at his toes for a time,
lifting alternately his heels and pressing them down into the wet
gravel; then raised his head and said nonchalantly: "Well, old man, I
think I will come in after all." But he halted yet again when he got one
foot over the threshold. "Mind you, I'm not coming in just because it's
cold," he began, but Richard, exclaimed, "Yes, yes! Of course I know
you're not!" and gripped him by the arm and pulled him into the room. He
did not seem to resent the rough treatment at all, and went over at once
to the woman in uniform, and, looking happily about him, cried: "Isn't
this a lovely home? I always say there's nobody got such a nice home as
my mother."
His voice whistled; and Ellen in her mind's eye saw a vision of some
clumsy, half-bestial creature wandering in primeval swamps, feeling joy
and yet knowing no joyful word or song, and so plucking a reed and
breathing down it, and in his ignorance being pleased at the poor noise.
She felt pity and loathing, and looked across the room at Richard,
meaning to tell him by a smile that she would help him to be kind to
Roger. But Richard was still occupying himself with the window,
examining with an air of irascibility a stain of blood which his cut
finger had left on the white paint near the lock. His eyes travelled
from it to the muddy footprints of the two who had come in from the
garden and to the spatter of earth-daubed leaves on the polished floor,
and his mouth drew down at the corners in a grimace of passion that made
Ellen long to run to him and kiss him and bid him not give way to the
madness of order so prevalent in this house. But he did not even look at
her, so she could do nothing for him.
He went forward to Roger, determinedly sweetening his face, and shook
his hand heartily. "It's good that you should have turned up just at
this moment, for I'm going to be married before long to Miss Melville,
whom I met in Scotland when I was working at Aberfay. Ellen, this is my
brother, Roger."
Roger took Ellen's hand and then seemed to remember something. After
exchanging a portentous glance with the woman in uniform, he looked
steadfastly into her face and said sombrely: "I hope all's well with
you, sister! I hope all's well with you!"
"Pairfectly," answered Ellen; and after a pause added, shyly: "And I'm
pleased to meet you. I hope anyone that's dear to Richard will be
friends with me."
He flung his head backwards and cried, in that whistling voice: "Yes,
I'll be that! And I'm a friend worth having now I've got Jesus! And He's
given me Poppy too! Aha, old man!" With a little difficulty he put both
his thumbs inside the corked edge of his armholes and began to stride up
and down, taking steps unnaturally long for thin legs. "You aren't the
only man who's thought of getting married! Great minds think alike, they
say!" With a flourish he stretched out his hand, and it was plain that
he thought he would touch the woman in uniform, though he was some feet
away. Richard's and Ellen's eyes met; it was repulsive to see a man
dizzied by so small a draught of excitement. "Richard, Miss Melville,
this is Lieutenant Poppy, who's going to be my wife."
It was difficult to know what to do, for the woman in uniform, although
she made a murmuring noise, preserved that unillumined aspect which
conveyed, more fully than silence could have done, that her soul was
glumly silent. But they went and greeted her, and looked into the matted
darkness of her eyes.
"We're going to be married as soon as I've served my year of probation.
That's a long time ahead, for I've only been at it a fortnight. I expect
you'll be getting married much sooner. Things always went easier with
you than me," he complained. "But it'll be a happy day when it comes,
and I get the two blessings at the same time, becoming a full soldier of
Jesus and marrying Poppy. She's nearly a full soldier already. She
joined the Army seven months ago."
"Do you preach in the streets?" asked Richard.
Roger's eyes filled with water. Ellen reflected that he must be
curiously sensitive for one so dull-witted, for the rage and disgust
behind the question had hardly shown their heads. "Yes, I do!" he said
pettishly. "And if Jesus doesn't object, I don't see why you should."
"I don't object at all," Richard assured him amiably. "I only wondered
what sort of work you did. I suppose you haven't come to work at the
Hallelujah Colony here, have you?"
"That's just what I've done!" answered Roger joyfully. "I joined up at
Margate and I've laboured there for three weeks. I didn't do so bad. Did
I, Poppy? Not for a start? No one could exactly shine at street
preaching at first, you know. They will laugh so. But I didn't do worse
than other people when they begin, did I, Poppy? However, they've
transferred me over here to the Colony, to do clerk work." He added with
a touch of defiance: "And, of course, they'll want me to take services
too, sometimes. In fact I'm going to take a service this evening."
"How long are you to be here?"
"Maybe always. They may feel I do the best work for Jesus here." He drew
a deep, shuddering breath, and took his cap off and threw it on the
table with a convulsive gesture. "If mother doesn't turn me away because
I've given myself to Jesus," he said with that whistling note, "I'll be
able to see her every day."
"She won't turn you away."
There was folly, there was innocence in Roger's failure to notice that
Richard was speaking not in reassurance but in grimness, as one might
speak who sees a doom, fire or flood travelling down on to the place
where he stood. "You ought to know, old chap," he murmured hopefully.
"She's always shown her heart to you, like she never has to me.... I
don't know.... Oh, I've prayed...."
"Well, you'll know for yourself in a minute," said Richard. "I heard the
front door open and close a second ago."
Ellen felt a thrill of pride because he had such keen senses, for the
sound had been so soft that she had not heard it, and yet it had reached
him in the depth of his horrified absorption of his brother's being. She
longed to smile at him and tell him how she loved him for this and all
the other things, but again he wouldn't pay attention to her. Indeed, he
could not, for, as she saw from his white mask, he was wholly given up
to pain and apprehension. Her heart was wrung for him, for she saw the
case against Roger. He was sickening like something that has been fried
in insufficient fat; and that his loathsomeness proceeded from no moral
flaw made it all the more sinister. If there was not vileness in his
will to account for the impression he made, then it must be kneaded
into his general substance, and meanness be the meaning of his pallor,
and treachery the secret of the darkness of his hair. She looked at him
accusingly as he stood beside the buxom, sullen woman, who in a slum
version of the emotion of embarrassment was sucking and gnawing one of
her fingers, and she found shining in his face the light of love; true
love that keeps faith and does service even when it is used
despitefully. Perplexed, she doubted all judgment.
The doorhandle turned, and Richard stepped in front of Roger. But when
Marion slowly came into the room she did not see him or anyone else,
because she was looking down on a piece of broken china which she held
in her hand.
There was stillness till Richard whispered: "Mother."
She lifted her dark eyes and said, with inordinate melancholy, "Oh,
Richard, someone has broken the Lowestoft jug I used for flowers in the
parlour."
He answered softly: "No one broke it. The wind blew it down when I
opened the door to Roger."
Her eyes did not move from his. Her mouth was a round hole. He put out
his hand to take the piece of china from her. They both gazed down on
it, as if it were a symbol, and exchanged a long glance. She gave it to
him and, bracing herself, looked around for Roger. When she found him
she started, and stared at the braid on his coat, the brass buttons, and
the brass studs on his high collar. Then she became aware of the woman,
and, with a faint, mild smile of distracted courtesy, took stock of her
uniform. His cap, lying on the table, caught her eye, and she picked it
up and turned it round and round on her hand, reading the black letters
on the magenta ribbon.
"So you've joined the Hallelujah Army, Roger?" she said, in that
muffled, indifferent tone.
"Yes," he murmured.
"Do you preach in the streets?" Her voice shook.
"Yes," he whispered.
She gave the cap another turn on her hand. "Are you happy?" she asked,
again indifferently.
"Yes," he whispered.
She flung the cap down on the table and stretched out her arms to him.
"Oh, my boy!" she cried. "Oh, my boy, I am so glad you are happy at
last!" Love itself seemed to have spread its strong wings in the room,
and the others gazed astonished until they saw her flinch, as Roger
crumpled up and fell on her breast, and visibly force herself to be all
soft, mothering curves to him.
Ellen cast down her eyes and stared at the floor. Roger's sobbing made a
queer noise. Ahé ... ahé ... ahé.... It had an unmechanical sound, like
the sewing-machine at home before it quite wore out, or Richard's
motor-bicycle when something had gone wrong; and this spectacle of a
mother giving heaven to her son by forgery of an emotion was an
unmechanical situation. It must break down soon. She looked across at
Richard and found him digging his nails into the palms of his hands, but
not so dejected as she might have feared. It struck her that he was
finding an almost gross satisfaction in the very wrongness of the
situation which was making her grieve--which must, she realised with a
stab of pain, make everyone grieve who was not themselves tainted with
that wrongness. He would rather have things as they were, and see his
mother lacerating her soul by feigning an emotion that should have been
natural to her, and his half-brother showing himself a dolt by believing
her, than see them embracing happily as uncursed mothers and their
children do. Uneasily she shifted her eyes from his absorbed face to the
far view of the river and the marshes.
"Oh, mother!" spluttered Roger, coming up to the surface of his emotion.
"I'm a rich man now! I've got Jesus, and you, and Poppy! Mother, this is
Poppy, and I'm going to marry her as soon as I can."
The woman in uniform looked at the window when Marion turned to her, as
if she would have liked to jump through it. One could imagine her
alighting quite softly on the earth as if on pads, changing into some
small animal with a shrew's stringy snout, and running home on short
hindlegs into a drain. She moistened her lips and mumbled roughly and
abjectly: "I didn't want to come."
Marion answered smoothly: "But now that you are here, how glad I am
that you have," and took her two hands and patted them. Looking round
benevolently at Ellen and back at Lieutenant Poppy, she exclaimed: "I'm
a lucky woman to have two daughters given me in one week." She was
behaving like an old mother in an advertisement, like the silver-haired
old lady who leads the home circle in its orgy of eating Mackintosh's
toffee or who reads the _Weekly Telegraph_ in plaques at
railway-stations. The rapidity with which she had changed from the
brooding thing she generally was, with her heavy eyes and her twitching
hands perpetually testifying that the chords of her life had not been
resolved and she was on edge to hear their final music, and the
perfection with which she had assumed this bland and glossy personality
at a moment's notice, struck Ellen with wonder and admiration. She liked
the way this family turned and doubled under the attack of fate. She was
glad that she was going to become one of them, just as a boy might feel
proud on joining a pirate crew. She went over and stood beside Richard
and slipped her arm through his. Uneasily she was aware that now she,
too, was enjoying the situation, and would not have had it other than it
was. She drooped her head against Richard's shoulder, and hoped all
might be well with all of them.
"You see, mother, since I saw you I've had trouble--I've had trouble--"
Roger was stammering.
Marion turned from him to Richard. "Ring for tea," she said, "and turn
on the lights. All the lights. Even the lights we don't generally use."
Roger clung to her. "I don't want to hide anything from you, mother," he
began, but she cut him short. "Oh, what cold hands! Oh, what cold
hands!" she cried playfully, and rubbed them for him. As the lights went
up one by one, behind the cornice, in the candlesticks on the table, in
the alabaster vases on the mantelpiece, they disclosed those hands as
long and yellowish and covered with warts. The parlourmaid came in and,
over her shoulder, Marion said easily: "Tea now, Mabel. There're five of
us. And we'll have it down here at the table."
She waved her visitors towards chairs and herself moved over to an
armchair at the hearth. All her movements were easy and her face wore a
look of blandness as she settled back among the cushions, until it
became evident that she was to be disappointed in her natural hope that
Roger would see the necessity of stopping his babble while the servant
was going in and out of the room. It was true that he did not speak when
she was actually present, but he began again on his whistling intimacies
the minute she closed the door, and when she returned cut himself short
and relapsed into a breathy silence that made it seem as if he had been
talking of something to the discredit of them all. Ellen felt disgust in
watching him, and more of this perverse pleasure in this situation,
which she ought to have whole-heartedly abhorred, when she watched
Marion. She was one of those women who wear distress like a rose in
their hair. Her eyes, which wandered between the two undesired visitors,
were star-bright and aerial-soft; under her golden, age-dusked pallor
her blood rose crimson with surprise; her face was abandoned so amazedly
to her peril that it lost all its burden of reserve, and was upturned
and candid as if she were a girl receiving her first kiss; her body,
taut in case she had to keep up and restrain Roger from some folly of
attitude or blubbering flight, recovered the animation of youth. It was
no wonder that Richard did not look at anybody but his mother.
"You see, mother, it was Poppy who brought me to Jesus," Roger said, a
second before the door closed. "I ... I'd had a bit of trouble. I'd been
very foolish.... I'll tell you about that later. It isn't because I'm
cowardly and unrepentant that I won't tell it now. I've told it once on
the Confession Bench in front of lots of people, so I'm not a coward.
And I don't believe," he declared, casting a look of dislike at Richard
and Ellen, "that the Lord would want me to tell anybody but you about
it." The servant returned, and he fell silent; with such an effect that
she looked contemptuously at her mistress as she might have if bailiffs
had been put into the house. When she had gone he began again: "It was
this way Poppy did it. After my trouble I was walking down Margate
Broadway--"
The woman in uniform made so emphatic a noise of impatience that they
all turned and looked at her. "There isn't a Broadway in Margate!" she
nearly snarled. "It's High Street, you mean. The High Street. Broadways
they call them some places. But not at Margate, not at _Margate_."
"Neither it is," said Roger adoringly. "What a memory you're got,
Poppy!"
Marion rose from the table, laying her hand on the woman's braided
shoulders as she passed. "Let's come to the table and have some tea; and
take your hat off, dear. Yes, take it off. That close bonnet can't be
very comfortable when one's tired."
Ellen stared like a rude child as the woman slowly, with shapeless red
fingers, untied her bonnet-strings and revealed herself as something at
once agelessly primitive and most modernly degenerate. The frizzed
thicket of coarse hair which broke into a line of tiny, quite circular
curls round her low forehead made Ellen remember side-streets round
Gorgie and Dalry, which the midday hooters filled with factory girls
horned under their shawls with Hinde's curlers; yet made her remember
also vases and friezes in museums where crimped, panoplied priestesses
dispensed archaic rites. Her features were so closely moulded to the
bone, her temples so protuberant, and her eyes sunk in such pits of
sockets that one had to think of a skull, a skull found in hot sand
among ruins. The ruins of some lost Nubian city, the mind ran on, for
the fulness of her lips compared with the thinness of her cheeks gave
her a negroid look; yet the smallness and poor design of her bones
marked her as reared in an English slum. But her rich colour declared
that neither that upbringing, nor any of the mean conditions which her
bearing showed had pressed in upon her since her birth, had been able to
destroy her inner resource of vitality. The final meaning of her was,
perhaps, primitive and strong. When she had stood about the room there
had been a kind of hieratic dignity about her; she had that sanctioned
effect upon the eye which is given by someone adequately imitating the
pose of some famous picture or statue. There flashed before Ellen's mind
the tail of some memory of an open place round which women stood looking
just like this; but it was gone immediately.
"Well," said Roger, "I was telling you how I got Jesus. I was going
along Margate High Street, and I saw a crowd, and I heard a band
playing. I didn't take any particular notice of it and I was going to
pass it by--think of it, mother, I was going to pass it by!--when the
band stopped and a most beautiful voice started singing. It was Poppy.
Oh, mother, you must hear Poppy sing some day. She has such a wonderful
voice. It's a very rich contralto. Before she was saved she sang on a
pier. Well, I got into the crowd, and presently I got close and I saw
her." A dreadful coyness came on him, and he turned to Poppy and, it was
plain to all of them, squeezed her hand under the table. She looked
straight in front of her with the dumb malignity of a hobbled mule that
is being teased. "Well, I knew at once. I've often envied you and mother
for going to Spain and South America, and wondered if the ladies were
really like what you see in pictures. All big and dark and handsome, but
when Poppy came along I saw I didn't have to go abroad for that! And you
know, mother, Poppy _is_ Spanish--half. Her name's Poppy Alicante. Her
mother was English, but she married a Spanish gentleman, of very good
family he was. In fact, he was a real don, wasn't he, Poppy? But he died
when she was a baby, and as he'd been tricked out of his inheritance by
a wicked uncle, there wasn't much money about, so Poppy's mother married
again, to a gentleman connected with the Navy, who lives just the other
side of the river from over here. Funny, isn't it? But it was a very
godless home, and they behaved disgracefully to Poppy, when a rich man
who saw her on the road when he was riding along in his motor-car wanted
to marry her, and she refused because she didn't love him. They were so
cruel to her that she had to leave home and earn her living, though she
never expected to. But she didn't like mixing with rough people, so as
she'd always had Jesus she joined the Army. And that's how we met."
After a pause Marion said, speaking fatuously in order to avoid the
appearance of irony: "You're quite a romantic bride, Poppy."
The woman in uniform bit into her toast and swallowed it unchewed.
"Well, I knew at once I'd met the one woman, as they say, and I hung
about just to see if I couldn't see more of her. And that's how I got
Jesus. She brought me to Him. Mother, mother," he cried, in a sudden
pale, febrile passion, "there's few have such a blessed beginning to
their marriage! We ought to be very happy, oughtn't we?"
"Yes, Roger," she answered him. "You'll be very happy--a husband that
any woman would be proud of."
"Oh, I'm not nearly good enough for Poppy," he said deprecatingly. He
seemed used to Poppy's silence, and, indeed, whenever her silent absence
from speech was most marked, he bent towards her in a tender attitude
which showed a resolution to regard it as maidenly bashfulness. "Well,
to get back to my story. I stood there peering through the crowd for
another look at her, and an officer began preaching. Captain Harris it
was. I didn't take any particular notice of him." He jerked his whitish
face about contemptuously. "He's a poor preacher, isn't he, Poppy? He
never gets a grip on the crowd, does he? And they can't hear him beyond
the first few rows. I don't think I heard more than a few sentences that
first evening. If I'd had been in the Army as many years as he has, and
I couldn't preach any better than that, I'd find some other way of
serving Jesus. I would really.
"But after that"--he stopped, looked at some vision in the air before
him which filled his eyes with tears and fire, and sighed
deeply--"Captain Sampson preached the gospel. It's Captain Sampson I've
been working under since I joined the Army. Oh, mother, mother, I wish
you could hear him preach. He would give you Jesus. That first evening I
heard him I saw Jesus as plain as I see you. I saw Him then looking
fierce like He was when He scourged the moneychangers out of the temple.
But when I'm alone, I see the other Jesus, the way he was most times."
He put his head back and bleated: "'Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.' The
One that loves us when we're weak and when we fall, and loves us all the
better for it. Even you"--he looked at Richard with a faint, malign
joyfulness--"must feel the want of Him sometimes. Life can't be a path
of roses for any of us, however strong and clever we are. So I say it's
not good preaching to go on always about fighting for Jesus and being a
good soldier, and making it seem as if religion was just another trouble
we had to face." His voice broke with petulance. "It's a shame not to
show people Gentle Jesus."
He checked himself. Remorse ran red under his pale skin. "What am I
saying?" he cried out. "Captain Sampson is a holy man! If he's harsh to
those that work under him it's right he should be. God chasteneth whom
He loveth, and it's the same way with Captain Sampson I expect. It's
really a way of showing that he cares about you and is anxious about
you. And anyway, he did give me Jesus that evening. Oh, mother, it was
so wonderful!" The words rushed out of him. "He made you feel all
tingling like you do when the fire engine goes past. Oh, it's an evening
to remember! And it gave me Jesus! Oh, mother, you don't know what it's
like to find Jesus! To know"--his voice whistled exultantly over the
stricken tea-table--"that there's Somebody who really loves you!"
For one second Marion covered her face with her hands.
Unseeingly he piped on: "I'm happy now. Always happy." He broke into
thin, causeless laughter. "When I wake up in the middle of the night,
instead of feeling miserable like I used to, and remembering things that
happened at Dawlish when I was a kid, and wishing I hadn't ever been
born as I wasn't any good for anything, I just think of Jesus and feel
lovely and warm. And I've got earthly happiness as well. I've got Poppy.
Oh, I'm a lucky man, lucky man! And I've got a lifework instead of being
an odd-come-short. I'll always have something to do now. They've had
experience with all sorts of men for years and years, turning them into
soldiers for Jesus. Surely they'll be able to find some work for me,
even if they don't want me to preach. Look at what I'm going to do now.
Even if I don't do anything but clerk work, it's helping the Labour
Colony along--helping hundreds of poor souls to earn a decent living
under Bible influence when, if they weren't, there they'd be, roaming
about the streets hungry and in sin. I'll be doing my bit, won't I,
mother?"
She smiled beneficently but speechlessly.
Ellen felt contemptuous. She had read about those Hallelujah Army
Colonies for the unemployed, and had heard them denounced at labour
meetings, and they were, she knew, mere palliatives by using which the
pious gave themselves the pleasure of feeling that they were dealing
with the immense problem of poverty when they were merely taking a few
hundred men and setting them to work in uneconomic conditions. The very
consideration of them brought back the happy spasm in the throat, the
flood of fire through the veins, the conviction that amidst the
meadowsweet of some near field there lurked a dragon whose slaughter
(which would not be difficult) would restore the earth its lost
security; and all the hot, hopeful mood which filled her when she heard
talk of revolution. She hated the weak man for aggravating the offence
of his unsightliness by allying himself with the reactionary powers that
made this world as unsightly as himself. And it was like him to talk
about teaching the Bible when everybody knew that there were lots of
things that weren't true. The spectacle of this mean little intelligence
refusing to take cognisance of the truths that men like Darwin and
Huxley had worked all their lives to discover, and faced the common
hatred to proclaim, seemed to her cruel ingratitude to the great and
wanton contemning of the power of thought, which was the only tool man
had been given to help him break this prison of disordered society. She
leaned across the table and demanded in a heckling tone: "But you must
know pairfectly well that these Labour Colonies are only tackling the
fringe of the problem. There's no way of settling the question of
unemployment until the capitalist system's overturned."
He looked at her with wide eyes and assumed an air of being engaged in
desperate conflict. It was evident that his egotism was transforming
this conversation into a monstrous wrestling with Apollyon. "Ah! You're
a Socialist. They only think of giving people money. But it isn't money
people need. Oh, no. 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?' It's Jesus they need. Give them the Bible
and all their wants will be satisfied," he cried in a shrill peewit cry.
"But the Bible isn't final. There's lots of things we know more about
than the people who wrote it. Look at all yon nonsense they put in about
Adam and Eve because they didn't know about evolution. That alone shows
it's absurd to rely solely on the Bible...."
She looked round for signs of the others' approval. She knew that
Richard agreed with her, for among his Christmas presents to her had
been Huxley's Essays, and when he had talked to her of science she had
seen that research after that truth was to him a shining mystic way
which he would have declared led to God had he not been more reverent
than Church men are, and feared to use that name lest it were not sacred
enough for the ultimate sacredness. But to her amazement he kept his
eyes on the crumbs which he was picking up from the tablecloth, and
through his parted lips there sounded the faintest click of
exasperation. She looked in wonder at Marion, and found her eyes also
downcast and her forefinger tapping on her chin as if she were seeking
for some expedient to stop this dangerous chatter. Ellen despised them
both. They had been terribly exercised at the thought that Roger was
going to preach in the streets, but they did not care at all that he was
delivered over to error. She looked at him sympathetically over the
table, feeling that since these horrid people with whom she had got
entangled did not like him, he might be quite nice, and found him
exchanging a long, peculiar glance with Poppy, which was followed on
both sides by a slow, meaning nod.
He looked in front of him again and his round eyes vacillated between
Richard and Ellen, growing rounder at each roll. Presently he swallowed
a lump in his throat and addressed himself to her. "Ah, you're an
unbeliever," he said. "Well, Captain Sampson says there's always a
reason for it if people can't believe." He moistened his lips and panted
the words out at her. "If you've been doing anything that's wrong--"
A sob prevented him. "Oh, I can't go and spoil this lovely tea, even if
I ought to for Jesus' sake!" he cried. "We're all so happy, I can't bear
to break it up by telling you what it's my duty to do! Poppy, doesn't
mother have everything nice? I've often thought of this tea-table when
I've been eating at places where they did things, roughish. Look at the
flowers. Mother always has flowers on the table, even when it's winter.
Jesus wouldn't expect me to break this up." His face became transfused
with light. "I believe Jesus loves everything that's done nicely,
whether it's a good deed or bread-and-butter cut nice and thin. That's
why," he mourned, so wistfully that all of them save the impassive woman
in uniform made a kind, friendly bending towards him, "I mind not to be
able to do anything really well. But Jesus loves me all the same. He
loves me whatever I'm like!" His brow clouded. "But because He loves me
I owe Him a debt. I ought to preach Him wherever I am, in and out of
season. But I can't spoil this. Aren't we all happy, sitting here? I'll
tell you what. They've asked me to take the Saturday evening service
to-night because the Commandant and the two under him are all down with
influenza. If you'll come and hear me I'll tell you what Jesus wants you
to hear. Oh, mother, Richard, do, do come!"
"Yes, Roger dear, we'll come."
"You won't ... make fun of it?"
"Oh no! Oh no!" Her voice was hesitant, intimate, girlishly shy. "We
haven't seen nearly as much of each other as a mother and son ought.
There are lots of things about me you don't know. For all you know, what
you said of Richard a moment ago ... might be true of me...."
"What I said about Richard?..."
"About times when one feels life too difficult and wants Someone to help
one...."
She spoke seductively, mysteriously, as if she were promising him a
pleasure; and he answered in a voluptuous whining: "Oh, mother, if I
could bring you to Jesus! Oh, Jesus! you are giving me everything I
want!" But in the midst of his rapture his face changed and he started
to his feet, so violently that his chair nearly fell backwards. "Yes,"
he cried reproachfully, "Jesus gives me everything, and this is how I
reward Him!"
They all stared at him, except Poppy, who was gloomily reading the
tea-leaves in her cup.
"I told a lie!" he answered their common mute enquiry.
"A silly, vain lie. I told you they'd asked me to take the Saturday
evening service to-night. They didn't. I offered to take it. Nobody ever
asks me to preach. They say I can't. Mind you, I don't think they're
right. I think that if they would let me practise I wouldn't speak so
badly. But that's not the point. I told a lie. I distinctly said they'd
asked me to preach because I wanted to pretend that I was making a
success of things like Richard always does. Oh, what a thing to do to
Jesus!"
"But, dear, that was only because you were speaking in a hurry. It
wasn't a deliberate lie."
"Oh, mother, you don't understand," he fairly squealed. "You haven't
been saved, you see, and you're still lax about these things. It does
matter! It was a lie! I ought to wrestle this thing out on my knees.
Mother, will it put anybody out if I go into the parlour and pray?"
Marion answered tenderly: "My dear, of course you can," but Poppy
clicked down her cup into its saucer and said in a tone of sluggish,
considered exasperation: "You haven't time. We ought to be at the chapel
half an hour before the meeting. It's a quarter to six now."
"Oh dear! oh dear! Is it as late as that? I wanted to write on a piece
of paper what I'm going to say! Now I won't have time! Oh, and I did
want to preach well! Oh, where's my cap?" He began to stumble about the
room.
Presently he caught his foot in one of the electric light cords and set
an alabaster lamp on the mantelpiece rocking on its pedestal. Richard
and Marion watched him and it with that set, horrified stare which the
anticipation of disorder always provoked in them. "Tcha!" exclaimed
Poppy contemptuously. "But it's there! On the armchair!" cried Ellen:
she could not bear the look on Richard's and Marion's faces. "Where?"
asked Poppy. It was the first time she had spoken directly to Ellen.
"There! There! Among the cushions," she answered, and rose and went
round the table to pick it up herself. Richard came and helped her.
Roger seemed a little annoyed when Richard and Ellen found the cap for
him among the cushions. Having to thank them spoiled, it could be seen,
some valedictory effect which he had planned. He stood by while they
shook hands with Poppy, who turned her head away as if to hide some
scar, and when she had gone across to Marion tried to get in his
designed tremendousness. By the working of his face, which made even
his ears move a little, they knew they must endure something very
characteristic of him. But into his weak eyes there bubbled a spring of
joyful tenderness so bright, so clear, so intense that, though it would
have seemed more fitting on the face of a child than of a man, it yet
was dignified.
"You make a handsome couple, you two!" he said.
"Richard, you're a whole lot taller than me. When I'm away from you I
forget what a difference there is between us. And the young lady, she's
fine, too."
"Come on! Come on!" said Poppy from the door.
He drew wistfully away from them. "I do hope you both come to Jesus," he
murmured, and smiled sweetly over his shoulder. "Yes, Poppy, I'm quite
ready. Why, you aren't cross with me over anything, are you, dear? Well,
good-bye, mother."
"Good-bye, Roger. And we'll come to the meeting. I'll let you out
myself, my dears."
Very pleased that she and Richard were at last alone together, Ellen sat
down on one of the armchairs at the hearth and smiled up at him. But he
would not come to her. He smiled back through the closed visor of an
overmastering preoccupation, and moved past her to the fireplace and
stood with his elbow on one end of the mantelpiece, listening to the
sounds that came in from the parlour through the half-open door:
Marion's urbane voice, thin and smooth like a stretched membrane, the
click of the front-door handle, the last mounting squeal from Roger,
which was cut short by a gruff whine from Poppy, and, loudest of all,
the silence that fell after the banging of the door. They heard the turn
of the electric switch. Marion must be standing out there in the dark.
But Ellen doubted that even if he had been with her in soul as in body,
and had spoken to her the words she wished, she could have answered him
as she ought, for a part of her soul too was standing out there in the
dark with Marion. They were both of them tainted with disloyalty to
their own lives.
When Marion came in she halted at the door and turned out all the lamps
save the candlesticks on the table. She passed through the amber,
fire-shot twilight and sat down in the other armchair, and began to
polish her nails on the palm of her hands. They were all of them lapped
in dusk, veiled with it, featureless because of it. Behind them the
candlesticks cast a brilliant light on the disordered table, on the four
chairs where Richard and Marion, Roger and Poppy had sat. Ellen's chair
had been pushed back against the wall when she rose; one would not have
known that Ellen had been sitting there too.
Marion kept looking back at the illuminated table as if it were a symbol
of the situation that made them sit in the twilight without words.
Suddenly she made a sound of distress. "Oh dear! Look at the cakes that
have been left! Ellen, you can't have had anything to eat."
"I've just had too good a tea," said Ellen, using the classic Edinburgh
formula.
"But you must have an éclair or a cream bun. I got them for you. I used
to love them when I was your age." She rose and began to move round the
table, bending over the cake-plates. Ellen was reminded of the way that
her own mother used to hover above the debris of the little tea-parties
they sometimes gave in Hume Park Square, cheeping: "I think they enjoyed
their teas. Do you not think so, Ellen?" and satisfying an appetite
which she had been too solicitous and interested a hostess to more than
whet in the presence of her friends. That was how a mother ought to be,
little, sweet, and moderate.
Marion brought her an éclair on a plate. She took it and stood up,
asking meekly: "Shall I take it and eat it somewhere else? You and
Richard'll be wanting to talk things over."
"Ah, no!" Marion was startled; and Ellen, to her own distress, found
herself exulting because this mature woman, who had dived so deeply into
the tides of adult experience in which she herself had hardly been
laved, was facing the situation so inadequately. She scorned her for the
stiffness of the conciliatory gesture she attempted, for the queer notes
which her voice made when she tried to alter it from her customary tone
of indifference in saying: "But, Ellen dear, you're one of us now. We've
no affairs that aren't yours too. We only wish they were a little
gayer...." She admired the facility of her own response for not more
than a minute, for, giving her a kind, blindish smile, Marion walked
draggingly across the hearthrug and took up her position at the
disengaged side of the fireplace and rested her elbow on the
mantelpiece, even as Richard was doing at its other end. They stood side
by side, without speaking, their firelit faces glowing darkly like
rubies in shadow, their eyes set on the brilliantly lit tea-table and
its four chairs. They looked beautiful and unconquerable--this tall man
who could assail all things with his outstretched strength, this
broad-bodied woman whom nothing could assail because of her crouching
strength.
Marion stretched out her hand to the fire. Her insanely polished nails
glittered like jewels.
She said in that indifferent tone: "Well, it wasn't so bad."
Some passion shook him. "Mother! Mother! To think of him bringing that
woman into this house--to meet you and Ellen!"
"Hush, oh hush! He does not know."
"But, mother! He ought to! Anyone could see--"
"What she was. Yes, poor woman. But remember I made a bad job of Roger.
I gave him no brains."
"Mother--it mustn't happen again. She can't come here again."
She grew stern. "Richard, you must say nothing to Roger. Nor to her.
She's his love and pride. So far as he's concerned, she's a better woman
than I am. I never put my love and pride in his life. If you speak to
either of them you will ... add to my already heavy guilt. Besides ...
how can she hurt Ellen and me? She's very weak. We're very strong."
"But, mother, you saw what she was."
"More than you did. She's had a child not long since."
"A child?" He stared at her curiously, reverently. "How do you know?"
"Some people get a brown stain on their face when they're having a baby,
and afterwards it lingers on. I had it with you. Not with Roger. She has
it now." She slowly drew her fingers over her face, her eyes wide in
wonder. "It's a queer thing, birth...."
Ellen tingled with shame because such things were spoken of aloud, by
someone old. But Richard muttered huskily: "I wonder what the story
is...."
"Something horrible. She's come from a good home. Her teeth were well
looked after when she was a girl. That hair took some conscientious
torturing to make it what it is. She was caught, I suppose, by her love
of beauty. Did you ever hear anything more pathetic than her name--Poppy
Alicante?"
"I don't see anything more in it than it's an obvious lie."
"It was much more than that. Think of her as a little girl going with
her mother into a greengrocer's and hearing about Alicante grapes, and
asking what Alicante was, and being told it was in Spain, and making the
most lovely pictures of it in her mind and keeping them there ever
since. Oh, she's a poor, beauty-loving thing. That's how the handsome
sailor picked her up in Chatham High Street on Saturday night."
"No doubt you're right," he said, looking into the fire.
"And she hated giving up the child. That's why she snarls at Roger.
Until she gets another she'll be famished. It was taken over, I expect,
by a married sister or brother who've got no children of their own.
She's not allowed to see it now. Not since she left the nice place that
was found for her after she'd got over her trouble. Twenty pounds a
year--because of her lost character; and for the same reason rather more
work than the rest of the servants, who all found out about it. So she
ran away."
He interrupted her: "Supposing all that's true. And I know it is. It's
like you, mother, to read from a patch of brown skin on a woman's face
things that other people would have found out only by searching registry
records and asking the police. It's like the way you always turned your
back on the barometer and read the sky for news of the weather. You're
an old peasant woman under your skin, mother." His voice was hazed with
delight. He had forgotten the moment in the timeless joy of his love for
her. Ellen, in the shadows, stirred and coughed. He broke out again:
"Well, supposing all that's true! Are you going to be honest and be as
clear-sighted about what happened after she ran away? Mother, think of
the things that have been done to her, think of the things she's seen!"
The indifferent tone continued now, although she said: "Think of the
horrible things that have been done to me, think of the horrible things
I've seen! Oh, you're right, of course. Unhappy people are dangerous.
They clutch at the happy people round them and drag them down into the
vortex of their misery. But if you're going to hate anybody for doing
that, hate me. Look how I've dominated you with my misfortunes, look how
I've eaten up your life by making you feel it a duty to compensate me
for what I've endured. Hate me. But don't hate Poppy. Oh, that poor,
simple creature. Even now, after all that's happened, she'd be pleased
like a child if you took her to a fair where there were merry-go-rounds.
Oh, don't hate her. And don't hate Roger." Wildness flashed through her
like lightning through a dense dark cloud. "Don't hate him, Richard!
Take your mind off both of us. We're all right. I can manage everything
quite well. I'm hard. I haven't got all those fine feelings you think I
have. I'm quite hard. I can arrange everything beautifully. Roger's
happy in the Hallelujah Army. He's gone to Jesus for the love I ought to
have given him. I know they're thinking of turning him out. But I'll see
to it that they keep him. I'll pretend to have leanings towards their
religion, and I'll give them money from time to time so that they won't
dare get rid of him. It will be rather amusing squaring them. I shall
enjoy it. We will be all right. Leave us alone. Don't think of us. Think
of Ellen. Think of Ellen. How you hold back from your happiness!" she
cried gibingly. "I tell you, if I had had your chance of happiness when
I was young, neither my mother nor my father would have held me back
from it!"
It was as if her soul had leapt, naked and raging, from out of her mouth
when she said that. Ellen stirred among the cushions, feeling
unformulated shame. She wondered how Richard could endure hearing that
hoarse vehemence from the lips of one whom he must wish to be gentle and
unpassionate. But he was gazing at his mother trancedly and with slight
movements of his hands and feet, as if she were dancing and he desired
to join her in her spinning rhythm; and she, mad, changeable woman,
shivered and pressed her fingers against her mouth to silence herself,
and looked down on her skirt, drawling lazily: "Well, here I am,
standing about in my outdoor clothes. If there's anything I hate, it's
wearing outdoor clothes in the house. However, it'll save me changing,
and I've none too much time if I'm going to be punctual for Roger's
meeting."
She moved towards the door. He followed softly, as her shadow, and held
it open.
When he made to follow her out of the room she turned sharply. "You
needn't come."
"I promised Roger," he said falsely.
"What nonsense!" she blazed. "I'll tell him you had to stay here with
Ellen."
She banged the door on him. He stood staring at its panels, which were
rosy with firelight, and Ellen closed her eyes for weariness. After some
seconds she heard his tread and felt him bend over her. "Ellen," he
mumbled, "I must go with mother. That fool will be too awful on the
platform. I must see her through."
From the dark fey shape he made against the firelight she knew that he
was not thinking of her, that the life she had given him by her love no
longer ran in his veins. She scratched one of her wrists. If she could
have let the life he had given flow out of her veins she would have done
it. "Ay, do," she said. "I like you to be good to your mother. You never
know how long you may have her with you," she added piously and not
without cheerfulness.
He left her with a kiss that was dry and spurious like a paper flower.
She sank back into the chair and closed her eyes again, and listened for
the closing of the front door which would leave her free to weep or rage
or dance or do whatever would relieve the pressure of the moment on her
brain. She filled in the throbbing tune by thinking of the visitors. It
gave her a curious thrill, such as she might have felt if she had
gratified her ambition to carry a heavy-plumed fan like Sarah
Bernhardt's, to reflect that she had sat in the same room with a bad
woman. A desire for unspecified adult things ran through her veins, as
if she had just heard the strong initial blare of a band. Then she
checked all thoughts, for from the hall she heard the sound of argument.
The door was flung open by Marion. She moved towards the hearth with a
burly speed which marked this moment a crisis in the house of languid,
inhibited movements, and cast herself down on a low stool by the fender.
Richard followed and stood over her, the firelight driving over his face
like the glow of excited blood, the shadows lying in his eye-sockets
like blindness. She cried up at him: "No, I will not go if you come too.
How can I go and sit listening to him, with you beside me hating him!"
He swayed slowly, but did not answer. She stripped herself of coat and
furs and thrust them on him. "There. Take them up to my room. I'm not
going. I'll tell some lie. Better than you hating him like this. And
while you're up you'll find some papers on my desk about the mortgage on
Whitewebbs. Attend to these. And don't come back just now. You drive me
mad when you hate Roger so."
When he had softly shut the door she put her hand to her head and said:
"Oh, Ellen, what has happened to me? I have lost all my strength."
But her voice was still level, and she was but a squat, crouching mass
against the firelight. Ellen did not know whether she was really moved,
nor, if she were, whether she could feel comradely with such emotion,
since she had seen the woman blench at the thought of her son preaching
in the street yet stay complacid at the prospect of him being lost in
intellectual error. So she did not answer.
"You must go for a long walk with Richard to-morrow," said Marion
presently. "Over to Rochford, perhaps, where Anne Boleyn lived. It's
pretty there."
"That would be nice," Ellen answered. She liked it when they talked as
if they were merely strangers. "Do you think it will be fine to-morrow?
Richard said you were awful clever at telling the weather."
"I can't say. I only looked out for a moment. The clouds are going and
the moon's rising. But there's a queer feeling in the air to-night. It's
not like the winter or spring or summer or autumn. It's as if we had
come into some fifth season of the year." She fell silent and sat
tapping the floor with her foot; and asked more loudly but in the same
tone: "What am I to do, Ellen, to keep my sons from quarrelling over
me?"
Ellen was sure she was being mocked; grown-up people never asked one's
advice. She muttered sullenly: "I don't know"; but as she spoke she
heard from Marion's dark shape a sound of discovery such as a searcher
might make when his groping fingers closed on the lost pearl. Its
intensity convinced, and she leaned forward, crying in full friendship:
"You've thought of something to settle them?"
But Marion answered, with that indifference grown nearly to a sneer:
"Oh, no.... Oh, no...."
Ellen leaned back, hating these adults that like to keep their secrets
from the young.