_My own dear_—
I’ve been thinking about you all today—I’ve been thinking about you
terribly. I took my gun out this morning after duck, but I had a
rotten day because I was thinking of you all the time. I had lunch
down by the Mocksteeple, and Stella, I wanted you so that I could have
cried. Then afterwards when I was at home I wanted you. I went in to
Lambard and we cut some pales, but all the time I was thinking of you.
And now I can think no longer—I must write and tell you what I’ve
thought.
Child, I want to marry you. You’ve known that for a long time, haven’t
you? But I wanted to wait till the end of the war. I don’t believe in
marrying a girl and then going out and getting killed, though that is
what a lot of chaps did. Well, anyhow the war’s over. So will you
marry me, Stella child? But I must tell you this. My people will be
dead against it, because they’re looking to me to save the family by
making a rich marriage. It sounds dreadful, but it’s not really so bad
as it sounds, because if we don’t pick up somehow we shall probably go
smash and lose almost everything, including Starvecrow. But I don’t
care. I love you better than anything in the world. Only I must
prepare you for having to marry me quietly somewhere and living with
me in London for a bit. My father won’t have me as agent, I’m quite
sure, if I do this, but perhaps he’ll come round after a time. Anyhow
Stella, darling, if we have each other, the rest won’t matter, will
it? What does it matter even if we have to sell our land and go out of
Conster? They’ve got no real claim on me. Let Jenny marry somebody
rich, or Doris—it’s not too late. But I don’t see why I should
sacrifice my life to the family, and yours too, darling child. For I
couldn’t do this if I didn’t believe that you love me as much as I
love you.
I think this is the longest letter than I have ever written to you,
but then it is so important. Dearest, we must meet and talk things
over. The Greenings are going into Hastings on Tuesday to look at a
house, so will you come to me at Starvecrow?
My kisses, you sweet, and all my love. PETER.
It was nearly midnight when he had finished writing at the table in his
bedroom. He folded up the letter and slipped it under the blotting
paper, before getting into bed and sleeping soundly.
But the next morning he tore it to pieces.
§ 16
On the last day of the old year Mary Pembroke came down to Conster
Manor, arriving expensively with a great deal of luggage. Her beauty was
altogether of a more sophisticated kind than Jenny’s and more exotic
than Doris’s—which, though at thirty-eight extinct in the realm of
nature, still lived in the realm of art. Mary was thirty-one, tall and
supple, with an arresting fineness about her, and a vibrant, ardent
quality.
The family was a little restless as they surrounded her in the
drawing-room at tea. She had that same element of unexpectedness as
Gervase, but with the difference that Gervase was as yet raw and young
and under control. Mary gave an impression of being more grown up than
anyone, even than Lady Alard and Sir John; life with her was altogether
a more acute affair.
Only Lady Alard enquired after the absent Julian.
“I wonder he didn’t come down with you,” she murmured. “I sent him a
very special invitation.”
“Bah!” said Sir John.
“Why do you say ‘Bah,’ dear?”
“Doris, tell your mother why I said ‘Bah.’”
“Oh, Father, how do I know?”
“You must be very stupid, then. I give leave to any one of you to
explain why I said ‘Bah,’” and Sir John stumped out of the room.
“Really, your father is impossible,” sighed Lady Alard.
Mary did not talk much—her tongue skimmed the surface of Christmas: the
dances they had been to, the people they had had to dinner. She looked
fagged and anxious—strung. At her first opportunity she went upstairs to
take off her travelling clothes and dress for dinner. Of dressing and
undressing Mary made always a lovely ceremony—very different from
Jenny’s hasty scuffle and Doris’s veiled mysteries. She lingered over it
as over a thing she loved; and Jenny loved to watch her—all the careful,
charming details, the graceful acts and poses, the sweet scents. Mary
moved like the priest of her own beauty, with her dressing table for
altar and her maid for acolyte—the latter an olive-skinned French girl,
who with a topknot of black hair gave a touch of chinoiserie to the
proceedings.
When Mary had slipped off her travelling dress, and wrapped in a
Mandarin’s coat of black and rose and gold, had let Gisèle unpin her
hair, she sent the girl away.
“Je prendrai mon bain à sept heures—vous reviendrez.”
She leaned back in her armchair, her delicate bare ankles crossed, her
feet in their brocade mules resting on the fender, and gazed into the
fire. Jenny moved about the room for a few moments, looking at brushes
and boxes and jars. She had always been more Mary’s friend than Doris,
whose attitude had that peculiar savour of the elder, unmarried sister
towards the younger married one. But Jenny with Mary was not the same as
Jenny with Gervase—her youth easily took colour from its surroundings,
and with Mary she was less frank, more hushed, more unquiet. When she
had done looking at her things, she came and sat down opposite her on
the other side of the fire.
“Well—how’s life?” asked Mary.
“Oh, pretty dull.”
“What, no excitements? How’s Jim?”
“Oh, just the same as usual. He hangs about, but he knows it’s no good,
and so do I—and he knows that I know it’s no good, and I know that he
knows that I know—” and Jenny laughed wryly.
“Hasn’t he any prospects?”
“None whatever—at least none that are called prospects in our set,
though I expect they’d sound pretty fine to anyone else. He’ll have Cock
Marling when his father dies.”
“You shouldn’t have fallen in love with a landed proprietor, Jen.”
“Oh, well, it’s done now and I can’t help it.”
“You don’t sound infatuated.”
“I’m not, but I’m in love right enough. It’s all the hanging about and
uncertainty that makes me sound bored—in self-defence one has to grow a
thick skin.”
Mary did not speak for a moment but seemed to slip through the firelight
into a dream.
“Yes,” she said at last—“a thick skin or a hard heart. If the average
woman’s heart could be looked at under a microscope I expect it would be
seen to be covered with little spikes and scales and callouses—a regular
hard heart. Or perhaps it would be inflamed and tender ... I believe
inflammation is a defence, against disease—or poison. But after all,
nothing’s much good—the enemy always gets his knife in somehow.”
She turned away her eyes from Jenny, and the younger sister felt
abashed—and just because she was abashed and awkward and shy, for that
very reason, she blurted out——
“How’s Julian?”
“Oh, quite well, thank you. I persuaded him not to come down because he
and father always get on so badly.”
“It’s a pity they do.”
“A very great pity. But I can’t help it. I did my best to persuade him
to advance the money, but he’s not a man who’ll lend without good
security, even to a relation. I’m sorry, because if he would stand by
the family, I shouldn’t feel I’d been quite such a fool to marry him.”
Though the fiction of Mary being happily married was kept up only by
Lady Alard, it gave Jenny a faint shock to hear her sister speak openly
of failure. Her feelings of awkwardness and shyness returned, and a deep
colour stained her cheeks. What should you say?—should you take any
notice?... It was your sister.
“Mary, have you ... are you ... I mean, is it really quite hopeless?”
“Oh, quite,” said Mary.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t thought.”
Jenny crossed and uncrossed her large feet—she looked at her sister’s
little mules, motionless upon the fender.
“Is he—I mean, does he—treat you badly?”
Mary laughed.
“Oh, no—husbands in our class don’t as a rule, unless they’re qualifying
for statutory cruelty. Julian isn’t cruel—he’s very kind—indeed probably
most people would say he was a model husband. I simply can’t endure him,
that’s all.”
“Incompatibility of temperament.”
“That’s a very fine name for it, but I daresay it’s the right one.
Julian and I are two different sorts of people, and we’ve found it
out—at least I have. Also he’s disappointed because we’ve been married
seven years and I haven’t had a child—and he lets me see he’s
disappointed. And now he’s begun to be jealous—that’s put the lid on.”
She leaned back in her chair, her hands folded on her lap, without
movement and yet, it seemed, without rest. Her body was alert and
strung, and her motionlessness was that of a taut bowstring or a
watching animal. As Jenny’s eyes swept over her, taking in both her
vitality and her immaculacy, a new conjecture seized her, a sudden
question.
“Mary—are you ... are you in love?—with someone else, I mean.”
“No—what makes you think so?”
“It’s how you look.”
“Jen, you’re not old enough yet to know how a woman looks when she’s in
love. Your own face in the glass won’t tell you.”
“It’s not your face—it’s the way you behave—the way you dress. You seem
to worship yourself....”
“So you think I must be in love—you can’t conceive that my efforts to be
beautiful should be inspired by anything but the wish to please some
man! Jen, you’re like all men, but, I’d hoped, only a few women—you
can’t imagine a woman wanting to be beautiful for her own sake. Oh, my
dear, it’s just because I’m not in love that I must please myself. If I
was in love I shouldn’t bother half so much—I’d know I pleased somebody
else, which one can do with much less trouble than one can please
oneself. I shouldn’t bother about my own exactions any more. The day you
see me with untidy hair and an unpowdered skin you’ll know I’m in love
with somebody who loves me, and haven’t got to please myself any more.”
“But, Mary ... there’s Charles. Don’t you love Charles?”
“No, I don’t. I know it’s very silly of me not to love the man my
husband’s jealous of, but such is the fact. Nobody but Julian would have
made a row about Charles—he’s just a pleasant, well-bred, oldish man,
who’s simple enough to be restful. He’s more than twenty years older
than I am, which I know isn’t everything, but counts for a good deal. I
liked going about with him because he’s so remote from all the fatigue
and fret and worry of that side of life. It was almost like going about
with another woman, except that one had the advantage of a man’s
protection and point of view.”
“Does he love you?”
“I don’t think so for a moment. In fact I’m quite sure he doesn’t. He
likes taking out a pretty woman, and we’ve enough differences to make us
interesting to each other, but there the matter ends. As it happens, I’m
much too fond of him to fall in love with him. It’s not a thing I’d ever
do with a man I liked as a friend. I know what love is, you see, and not
so long ago.”
“Who was that?”
“Julian,” said Mary dryly.
A feeling of panic and hopelessness came over Jenny.
“Oh, God ... then one can never know.”
§ 17
Gervase’s scheme of going into a workshop materialised more quickly than
his family, knowing his rather inconsequent nature, had expected. The
very day after he had obtained his father’s consent he drove into
Ashford and interviewed the manager of Messrs. Gillingham and Golightly,
motor engineers in the station road. After some discussion it was
arranged that he should be taken into the works as pupil on the payment
of a premium of seventy-five pounds to cover three years’ instruction,
during which time he was to receive a salary starting at five shillings
a week and rising to fifteen.
The sarcasm that greeted his first return on Saturday afternoon with his
five shillings in his pocket was equalled only by his own pride. Here at
last was money of his own, genuinely earned and worked for—money that
was not Alard’s, that was undimmed by earth, having no connection with
the land either through agriculture or landlordism. Gervase felt free
for at least an hour.
“We can launch out a bit now,” said Sir John at luncheon—“Gervase has
come to our rescue and is supporting us in our hour of need. Which shall
we pay off first, Peter?—Stonelink or Dinglesden?...”
Peter scowled—he seemed to find his father’s pleasantry more offensive
than Gervase, who merely laughed and jingled the coins in his pocket.
The youngest Alard threw himself with zest into his new life. It
certainly was a life which required enthusiasm to make it worth living.
Every morning at nine he had to be at the works, driving himself in the
Ford farm-lorry, which had been given over to his use on its supplanting
by a more recent make. He often was not back till seven or eight at
night, worn out, but with that same swelling sense of triumph with which
he had returned from his first day’s work. He was still living at home,
still dependent on his people for food and clothing if not for pocket
money, but his feet were set on a road which would take him away from
Conster, out of the Alard shadow. Thank God! he was the youngest son, or
they wouldn’t have let him go. He enjoyed the hardness of the way—the
mortification of those early risings, with the blue, star-pricked sky
and the deadly cold—the rattling drive in the Ford through all
weathers—the arrival at the works, the dirt, the din, the grease, the
breaking of his nails, his filthy overalls, his fellow workmen with
their unfamiliar oaths and class-grievances, the pottering over bolts
and screws, the foreman’s impatience with his natural carelessness—the
exhausted drive home over the darkness of the Kent road ... Gable Hook,
Tenterden, Newenden, Northiam, Beckley, going by in a flash of red
windows—the arrival at Conster almost too tired to eat—the welcome haven
of bed and the all too short sweet sleep.
Those January days in their zeal and discipline were like the first days
of faith—life ceased to be an objectless round, a slavery to
circumstances. Generally when he was at home he was acutely sensitive to
the fret of Conster, to the ceaseless fermentation of those lives, so
much in conflict and yet so combined—he had always found his holidays
depressing and been glad to go back to school. Now, though he still
lived in the house, he did not belong to it—its ambitions and its strife
did not concern him, though he was too observant and sensitive not to be
affected by what was going on.
He saw enough to realise that the two main points of tension were Mary
and Peter. Mary was still at Conster, though he understood that Julian
had written asking her to come home—February was near, and she stayed
on, though she spoke of going back. As for Peter, he had become sulky
and self-absorbed. He would not go for walks on Sundays, or shooting on
Saturday afternoons—he had all the painful, struggling manner of a plain
man with a secret—a straightforward man in the knots of a decision.
Gervase was sorry for him, but a little angry too. Over his more
monotonous jobs at the works, in his rare wakeful moments, but most of
all in his long familiar-contemptible drives to and from Ashford, he
still thought of Stella. His feeling for her remained much the same as
it had been at Christmas—a loving absorption, a warm worship. He could
not bear that she should suffer—she was so very much alive that he felt
her suffering must be sharper than other people’s. He could guess by his
own feelings a little of what she suffered in her love for Peter—and
once he got further than a guess.
During those weeks he had never met her anywhere, either at Conster or
outside it; but one Saturday at noon, as he was coming away from the
shop, he met her surprisingly on foot in the station road. He pulled up
and spoke to her, and she told him she was on her way to the station in
hopes of an early train. The Singer had broken down with magneto trouble
and she had been obliged to leave it for repair—meantime her father
wanted her back early, as there was always a lot of dispensary work to
do on a Saturday afternoon.
“Well, if you don’t mind a ride in a dying Ford....”
He hardly dared listen to her answer, he tried to read it as it came
into her eyes while he spoke.
“Of course I don’t mind. I should love it—and it’s really most
frightfully good of you.”
So she climbed up beside him, and soon her round bright eyes were
looking at him from between her fur cap and huge fur collar, as they had
looked that first morning at Starvecrow.... He felt the love rising in
his throat ... tender and silly ... he could not speak; and he soon
found that she would rather he didn’t. Not only was the Ford’s
death-rattle rather loud but she seemed to find the same encouragement
to thought as he in that long monotonous jolt through the Weald of Kent.
He did not have to lift himself far out of the stream of his thoughts
when he looked at her or spoke, but hers were evidently very far away.
With a strange mixture of melancholy and satisfaction, he realised that
he must count for little in her life—practically nothing at all. Even if
she were not Peter’s claim she could never be his—not only on account of
her age, six years older than he, but because the fact that she loved
Peter showed that it was unlikely she could ever love Gervase, Peter’s
contrast.... In his heart was a sweet ache of sorrow, the thrill which
comes with the first love-pain.
But as they ran down into Sussex, across the floods that sheeted the
Rother levels, and saw the first outposts of Alard-Monking and Horns
Cross Farms with the ragged line of Moat Wood—his heart suddenly grew
cold. In one of his sidelong glances at Stella he saw a tear hanging on
the dark stamen of an eyelash ... he looked again as soon as he dared,
and saw another on her cheek. Was it the cold?...
“Stella, are you cold?” he asked, fearing her answer.
“No, thank you, Gervase.”
He dared not ask “Why are you crying?” Also there was no need—he knew.
The sweetness had gone out of his sorrow, he no longer felt that
luxurious creep of pain—instead his heart was heavy, and dragged at his
breast. It was faint with anger.
When they came to the Throws where the road to Vinehall turns out of the
road to Leasan, he asked her if she wouldn’t come up to Conster for
tea—“and I’ll drive you home afterwards.” But again she said in her
gentle voice “No thank you, Gervase.” He wished she wouldn’t say it like
that.
§ 18
What did Peter mean?
That was the question Stella had asked herself at intervals during the
past month, that she had been asking herself all the way from Ashford to
Vinehall, and was still asking when Gervase set her down on the doorstep
of Hollingrove and drove away. What did Peter mean?
She would not believe that he meant nothing—that their friendship had
been just one of those war-time flirtations which must fade in the light
of peace. It had lasted too long, for one thing—it had lasted a year.
For a whole year they had loved each other, written to each other almost
every day, hungered for meetings, and met with kisses and passionate
playful words. It is true that he had never spoken to her of marriage
except negatively, but she knew his views and had submitted if not
agreed. All that was over now—he was no longer a soldier, holding his
life on an uncertain lease; and more, he was now the heir—their
prospects had improved from the material and practical point of view. He
might, like so many men, have found it difficult to get back into
business, recover his pre-war footing in the world; but there need be no
concern for that now—he was not only the heir, but his father’s agent,
already established with home and income, and his home that dearest of
all places, Starvecrow....
She would not believe that he had been playing with her, that he had
only taken her to pass the time, and now was looking for some decent
pretext for letting her go. He was not that sort of man at all. Peter
was loyal and honest right through. Besides, she saw no sign that his
love had grown cold. She was sure that he loved her as much as ever, but
more painfully, more doubtingly. Their meetings had lately been given
over to a sorrowful silence. He had held her in his arms in silent,
straining tenderness. He would not talk, he would not smile. What did he
mean?
Probably his family was making trouble. She had been only once to
Conster since she had dined there on Christmas Day, and it had struck
her then that Doris and Lady Alard had both seemed a little unfriendly.
Everyone in Leasan and Vinehall said that the Squire’s son would have to
marry money if he meant to keep the property going. She had often heard
people say that—but till now she had scarcely thought of it. The idea
had seemed impossible, almost grotesque. But now it did not seem quite
impossible—Peter’s behaviour, his family’s behaviour, all pointed to its
being a factor in the situation; and since she could not refuse to see
that something was keeping him silent when he ought to speak, it was
easier to believe in a difficulty of this kind than in any commonplace
cooling or change. Once she had thought that nothing, not even Alard,
could come between them—now she must alter her faith to the extent of
believing that nothing could come between them except Alard.
She could not help being a little angry with Peter for this discovery.
It seemed to her a shameful thing that money should count against love.
As for herself, she did not dare think what she would not sacrifice for
love—for Peter if occasion arose. And he, apparently, would not
sacrifice for her one acre of Conster, one tile of Starvecrow.... Was it
the difference between men and women which made the difference here? If
she was a man would she be able to see the importance of Peter’s family,
the importance of keeping his property together even at the expense of
happiness and faith? She wondered.... Meanwhile she was angry.
She wished he would have things out with her, try to explain. That he
did not was probably due to the mixture of that male cowardice which
dreads a “scene” with that male stupidity which imagines that nothing
has been noticed which it has not chosen to reveal. But if he didn’t
tell her soon she would ask him herself. She knew that such a step was
not consistent with feminine dignity either ancient or modern. According
to tradition she should have drooped to the masculine whim, according to
fashion she should have asserted her indifference to it. But she could
do neither. She could not bear her own uncertainty any longer—this fear
of her hopes. Oh, she had planned so materially and wildly! She had
planned the very furnishing of Starvecrow—which room was to be which—the
dining-room, the best bedroom, the spare bedroom, Peter’s study ...
cream distemper on the walls and for each room different colours ... and
a kitchen furnished with natural oak and copper pots and pans....
The tears which up till now had only teased the back of her eyes,
brimmed over at the thought of the kitchen. The dark January afternoon,
clear under a sky full of unshed rain, was swallowed up in mist as
Stella wept for her kitchen and copper pans.
She was still on the doorstep, where she had stood to see the last of
Gervase, and even now that she was crying she did not turn into the
house. The iron-black road was empty between its draggled hedges, and
she found a certain kinship in the winter twilight, with its sharpness,
its sighing of low, rain-burdened winds. After a few moments she dried
her eyes and went down the steps to the gate. Thanks to Gervase, she had
come home nearly an hour earlier than she need—she would go and sit for
a few minutes in church. She found church a very good place for thinking
her love affairs into their right proportion with all time.
The village of Vinehall was not like the village of Leasan, which
straggled for nearly a mile each side of the high road. It was a large
village, all pressed together like a little town. Above it soared the
spire of Vinehall church, which, like many Sussex churches, stood in a
farmyard. Its lovely image lay in the farmyard pond, streaked over with
green scum and the little eddies that followed the ducks.
Stella carefully shut out a pursuing hen and went in by the tower door.
The church was full of heavy darkness. The afternoon sun had left it a
quarter of an hour ago, showing only its pale retreat through the slats
of the clerestory windows, white overhead, and night lay already in the
aisles. She groped her way to the east end, where the white star of a
lamp flickered against a pillar guarding a shrine. She flopped down on
the worn stones at the foot of the pillar, sitting back on her heels,
her hands lying loosely and meekly in her lap.
She had no sense of loneliness or fear in the dark—the white lamp spoke
to her of a presence which she could feel throughout the dark and empty
church, a presence of living quiet, of glowing peace. Outside she could
hear the fowls ducking in the yard, with every now and then the shrill
gobble-gobble of a turkey. She loved these homely sounds, which for
years had been the accompaniment of her prayers—her prayers which had no
words, but seemed to move in her heart like flames. Oh, it was good to
be here, to have this place to come to, this Presence to seek.
Now that she was here she could no longer feel angry with Peter, however
stupid, obstinate and earthy he was. Poor Peter—choosing it for himself
as well as for her ... she could not be angry with him, because she knew
that if he pulled catastrophe down upon them, he of the two would suffer
the most. Unlike her, he had no refuge, no Presence to seek, no unseen
world that could become real at a thought.... His gods were dead Squires
who had laid up wealth to be his poverty. Her God was a God who had
beggared Himself, that she through His poverty might become rich.
This beggar and lover and prisoner, her God, was with her here in the
darkness, telling her that if she too wished to be a lover she too must
become a beggar and a prisoner. She would be Peter’s beggar, Peter’s
slave. She would not let him go from her without pleading, without
fighting, but if he really must go, if this half-known monster, Alard,
was really strong enough to take him, he should not go wounded by her
detaining clutch as well as by its claws. He should not go shamed and
reproached, but with goodwill. If he really must go, and she could no
longer hold him, she would make his going easy.... He should go in
peace.... Poor Peter.
§ 19
At the end of January Mary left Conster. She could not in any spirit of
decorum put off her return longer—her husband had wired to her to come
home.
“Poor Julian,” said Lady Alard—“he must be missing you dreadfully. I
really think you ought to go back, Mary, since he can’t manage to come
here.”
Mary agreed without elaboration, and her lovely hats and shoes with the
tea-gowns and dinner-frocks which had divided the family into camps of
admiration and disapproval, were packed away by the careful, brisk
Gisèle. The next day she was driven over to Ashford, with Jenny and
Peter to see her off.
There had been no intimate talks between the sisters since the first
night of her coming. Jenny was shy, and typically English in her dislike
of the exposure of anything which seemed as if it ought to be hidden,
and Mary either felt this attitude in her sister or else shrank from
disillusioning her youth still further. They had arrived a little too
early for the train, and stood together uneasily on the platform while
Gisèle bought the tickets and superintended the luggage.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” said Jenny politely.
“So do I—but it couldn’t be helped after that telegram.”
“Julian sounded rather annoyed—I hope he won’t make a fuss when you get
back.”
“I’m not going back.”
There was a heavy silence. Neither Peter nor Jenny thought they had
quite understood.
“Wh-what do you mean?” stammered Jenny at last—“not going back to Chart?
Isn’t Julian there?”
“Of course he’s there. That’s why I’m not going back. Gisèle is taking
the tickets to London.”
“But”—It was Peter who said ‘But,’ and had apparently nothing else to
say.
“Do you mean that you’re leaving him?” faltered Jenny.
“I’m not going to live with him any more. I’ve had enough.”
“But why didn’t you tell us?—tell the parents?”
“I’d rather not bring the family into it. It’s my own choice though
Julian is sure to think you’ve been influencing me. I didn’t make up my
mind till I got his telegram; then I saw quite plainly that I couldn’t
go back to him.”
“You’re not going to that other fellow—what’s his name—Commander Smith?”
cried Peter, finding his tongue rather jerkily.
“Oh, no. As I’ve told Jenny, making a mess of things with one man
doesn’t necessarily encourage me to try my luck with another. Besides,
I’m not fond of Charles—in that way. I shall probably stay at my Club
for a bit, and then go abroad.... I don’t know.... All I know is that
I’m not going back to Julian.”
“Shall you—can you divorce him?”
“No. He hasn’t been cruel or unfaithful, nor has he deserted me. I’m
deserting him. It’s simply that I can’t live with him—he gets on my
nerves—I can’t put up with either his love or his jealousy. I couldn’t
bear the thought even of having dinner with him tonight ... and yet—”
the calm voice suddenly broke—“and yet I married for love....”
Both the brother and sister were silent. Peter saw Gisèle coming up with
a porter and the luggage, and went off like a coward to meet them. Jenny
remained uneasily with Mary.
“I’m sorry to have had to do this,” continued the elder sister—“it’ll
upset the parents, I know. They don’t like Julian, but they’ll like a
scandal still less.”
“Do you think he’ll make a row?”
“I’m sure of it. For one thing, he’ll never think for a minute I haven’t
left him for someone else—for Charles. He won’t be able to imagine that
I’ve left a comfortable home and a rich husband without any counter
attraction except my freedom. By the way, I shall be rather badly
off—I’ll have only my settlements, and they won’t bring in much.”
“Oh, Mary—do you really think you’re wise?”
“Not wise, perhaps—nor good.” She pulled down her veil. “I feel that a
better or a worse woman would have made a neater job of this. The worse
would have found an easier way—the better would have stuck to the rough.
But I—oh, I’m neither—I’m neither good nor bad. All I know is that I
can’t go back to Julian, to put up with his fussing and his love and his
suspicion—and, worse still, with my own shame because I don’t love him
any more—because I’ve allowed myself to be driven out of love by
tricks—by manner—by outside things.”
“—London train—Headcorn, Tonbridge and London train—”
The porter’s shouting was a welcome interruption, though it made Jenny
realise with a blank feeling of anxiety and impotence that any time for
persuasion was at an end.
“Do you want us to tell Father and Mother?” she asked as Mary got into
the train.
“You needn’t if you’d rather not. I’ll write to them tonight.”
She leaned back in the carriage, soft, elegant, perfumed, a little
unreal, and yet conveying somehow a sense of desperate choice and mortal
straits.
Peter and Jenny scarcely spoke till they were back in the car driving
homewards. Then Jenny said with a little gasp—
“Isn’t it dreadful?”
“What?—her going away?”
“No, the fact that she married Julian for love.”
Peter said nothing.
“If she’d married out of vanity, or greed, or to please the family, it
would have been better—one would have understood what’s happened now.
But she married him for love.”
Peter still said nothing.
§ 20
He sat waiting at Starvecrow on an early day in February. Outside the
rain kept the Feast of the Purification, washing down the gutters of
Starvecrow’s mighty roof, lapping the edges of the pond into the yard,
and further away transforming all the valley of the Tillingham into a
lake—huge sheets and spreads of water, out of which the hills of Barline
and Brede Eye stood like a coast. All the air was fresh and washed and
tinkling with rain.
The fire was piled high with great logs and posts, burning with a blue
flame, for they had been pulled out of the barns of Starvecrow, which
like many in the district were built of ships’ timbers with the salt
still in them. The sound of the fire was as loud as the sound of the
rain. Both made a sorrowful music together in Peter’s head.
He sat with his hands folded together under his chin, his large light
blue eyes staring without seeing into the grey dripping world framed by
the window. The clock in the passage struck three. Stella would not come
till a quarter past. He had arranged things purposely so that he should
be alone for a bit at Starvecrow before meeting her, strengthening
himself with the old loyalties to fight the brief, sweet faithfulness of
a year.
He felt almost physically sick at the thought of what lay before him,
but he had made up his mind to go through with it—it had got to be done;
and it must be done in this way. Oh, how he had longed to send Stella a
letter, telling her that they must never see each other again, begging
her to go away and spare him! But he knew that was a coward’s escape—the
least he owed her was an explanation face to face.... What a brute he
had been to her! He had no right to have won her love if he did not mean
to keep it—and though when he had first sought her he had thought
himself free to do so, he had behaved badly in not telling her of the
new difficulties created by his becoming the heir. It was not that he
had meant to hide things from her, but he had simply shelved them in his
own mind, hoping that “something would turn up,” that Alard’s plight
would not be as bad as he had feared. Now he saw that it was infinitely
worse—and he was driven to a definite choice between his people and
Stella. If he married Stella he would have failed Alard—if he stood by
Alard he would have failed Stella. It was a cruel choice—between the two
things in the world that he loved best. But he must make it now—he could
not keep Stella hanging on indefinitely any longer. Already he could see
how uncertainty, anxiety and disappointment were telling on her. She was
looking worn and dim. She had expected him, on his return home after the
wars, to proclaim their love publicly, and he was still keeping it
hidden, though the reasons he had first given her for doing so were at
an end. She was wondering why he didn’t speak—she was hesitating whether
she should speak herself.... He guessed her struggle and knew he must
put an end to it.
Besides, now at last his choice was made. He no longer had any
uncertainty, any coil of argument to encumber him. Mary’s words on
Ashford platform had finally settled his difficulty—“And yet I married
for love.” Seven years ago Mary had loved this man from whom she was now
escaping, the very sight of whom in her home she could not bear. Love
was as uncertain as everything else—it came and it was gone. Mary had
once loved Julian as Peter now loved Stella—and look at her!... Oh, you
could never be sure. And there was so much in Stella he was not sure
of—and she might change—he might change; only places never changed—were
always the same. Starvecrow would always be to him, whether at eighteen,
thirty-eight or eighty, the same Starvecrow.... How could he fail the
centuries behind him for what might not live more than a few years? How
could he fail the faithful place for that which had change for its
essence and death for its end?
Far away he could hear the purring of a car—it drew nearer, and Peter,
clenching his hands, found the palms damp. All his skin was hot and
moist—oh, God, what had he to face? The scene that was coming would be
dreadful—he’d never get through it unless Stella helped him, and he’d no
right to expect help from her. Here she was, driving in at the gate ...
outside the door ... inside the room at last.
§ 21
He sought refuge in custom, and going up to her, laid his hands on her
shoulders and kissed her gravely. Then he began to loosen the fur
buttons of her big collar, but she put up her hand and stopped him.
“No—I’ll keep it on. I can’t stop long. Father’s waiting for me at
Barline.”
“It’s good of you to come—there’s something I’ve got to say.”
“You want to tell me we must end it.”
He had not expected her to help him so quickly. Then he suddenly
realised that his letter had probably told her a lot—his trouble must
have crept between the lines—into the lines ... he wasn’t good at hiding
things.
“Oh, Stella.”
He stood a few paces from her, and noticed—now that his thoughts were
less furiously concentrated on himself—that she was white, that all the
warm, rich colour in her cheeks was gone. He pulled forward one of the
office chairs, and she sank into it. He sat down opposite her, and took
her hand, which she did not withdraw.
“Oh, Stella, my darling ... my precious child ... it’s all no use. I’ve
hoped and I’ve tried, but it’s no good—I must let you go.”
“Why?”
The word came almost sharply—she wasn’t going to help him, then, so
much.
“Darling, I know I’m a cad. I ought never to have told you I loved you,
knowing that ... at least when Hugh died I should have told you straight
out how things were. But I couldn’t—I let myself drift, hoping matters
would improve ... and then there was the war....”
“Peter, I wish you would tell me things straight out—now’s better than
never. And honestly I can’t understand why you’re not going to marry
me.”
He was a little shocked. Tradition taught him that Stella would try to
save her face, and he had half expected her to say that she had never
thought of marrying him. After all, he had never definitely asked her,
and she might claim that this was only one of those passionate
friendships which had become so common during the war. If she had done
so, he would have conceded her the consolation without argument—a girl
ought to try and save her face; but Stella apparently did not care about
her face at all.
“Why aren’t you going to marry me? You’ve never given me any real
reason.”
“Surely you know”—his voice was a little cold.
“How can I know? I see you the heir of a huge estate, living in a big
house with apparently lots of money. You tell me again and again that
you love me—I’m your equal in birth and education. Why on earth should I
‘know’ that you can’t marry me?”
“Stella, we’re in an awful mess—all the family. The estate is mortgaged
almost up to the last acre—we can hardly manage to pay the yearly
interest, and owing to the slump in land we can’t sell.”
Stella stared at him woodenly.
“Can’t you understand?”
“No—” she said slowly—“I can’t. I’ve heard that the war has hit you—it’s
hit all the big landowners; but you’re—good heavens! you’re not poor.
Think of the servants you keep, and the motor-cars——”
“Oh, that’s my hopeless parents, who won’t give up anything they’ve been
accustomed to, and who say that it’s not worth while making ourselves
uncomfortable in small things when only something colossal can save us.
If we moved into the Lodge tomorrow and lived on five hundred a year it
would still take us more than a lifetime to scrape up enough to free the
land.”
“Then what do you propose to do?”
“Well, don’t you see, if I live at home I can manage somehow to keep
down expenses, so that the interest on the mortgages gets paid—and when
Greening’s gone and I’m agent I can do a lot to improve the estate, and
send the value up so that we can sell some of the outlying farms over by
Stonelink and Guestling—that’ll bring in ready money, and then perhaps
I’ll be able to pay off some of the mortgages.”
“But couldn’t you do all that if you married me?”
“No, because for one thing I shouldn’t be allowed to try. Father
wouldn’t have me for agent.”
“Why?”
“Oh, Stella darling, don’t make it so difficult for me. It’s so hard for
me to tell you ... can’t you see that my people want to get money above
all things—lots of it? If I marry you it’ll be the end of all their
hopes.”
“They want you to marry money.”
“They want us all to marry money. Oh, don’t think I’m going to do it—I
couldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love. But I feel I’ve got my duty to them
as well as to you ... and it’s not only to them ... oh, Stella
sweetheart, don’t cry!”
“I—I can’t help it. Oh, Peter, it all sounds so—so dreadful, so
sordid—and so—so cruel, to you as well as to me.”
He longed to take her in his arms, but dared not, partly for fear of his
own weakness, partly for fear she would repulse him.
“Darling—I’m not explaining well; it’s so difficult. And I know it’s
sordid, but not so sordid as you think. It’s simply that I feel I must
stand by my family now—and I don’t mean just my people, you know; I mean
all the Alards ... all that ever were. I can’t let the place be sold up,
as it will have to be if I don’t save it. Think of it ... and the first
part to be sold would have to be Starvecrow, because it’s the only free,
unmortgaged land we’ve got. Oh, Stella, think of selling Starvycrow!”
She took away her hands and looked at him through her streaming tears.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that—don’t reproach me. What I’m doing is
only half selfish—the other half is unselfish, it’s sacrifice.”
“But, Peter, what does it matter if the land is sold? What good is the
land doing you?—what good will it ever do you, if it comes to that? Why
should we suffer for the land?”
“I thought you’d have understood that better.”
“I don’t understand at all.”
“Not that I must stand by my people?”
“I don’t understand why your people can’t be happy without owning all
the land in three parishes.”
“Oh, my dear....”
He tried to take her hand, but this time she pulled it away.
“It’s no good, Peter. I understand your selfish reason better than your
unselfish one. I fail to see why you should sacrifice me and yourself to
your family and their land. I can see much better how you can’t bear the
thought of losing Starvecrow. I know how you love it, because I love it
too-but much as I love it, I never could sacrifice you to it, my dear,
nor any human soul.”
“I know—I know. I’m a beast, Stella—but it’s like this ... human beings
change—even you may change—but places are always the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I love you now—but how do I know ... Mary married for love.”
“What’s Mary got to do with it?”
“She’s shown me that one can never be sure, even with love.”
“You mean to say you’re not sure if you’d be happy with me?”
“Darling, I’m as sure as I can ever be with any human being. But one
never can be quite sure, that’s the terrible thing. And oh, it would be
so ghastly if you changed—or I changed—and I had left the unchanging
place for you.”
Stella rose quietly to her feet.
“I understand now, Peter.”
For a moment she stood motionless and silent, her mouth set, her eyes
shining out beyond him. He wondered if she was praying.
“Stella—don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you—I love you. But I quite understand that you don’t love
me. Your last words have shown me that. And your not loving me explains
it all. If you really loved me all these difficulties, all these
ambitions would be like—like chaff. But you don’t love me, at least not
much; and I don’t want you, if you only love me a little. I’m relieved
in a way—I think you’d be doing a dreadful thing if you gave me up while
you really loved me. But you don’t really love me, so you’re quite right
to give me up and stand by your family and Starvecrow. Oh, I know you
love me enough to have married me if everything had been easy....”
“Stella, don’t—It isn’t that I don’t love you; it’s only that I can’t
feel sure of the future with you—I mean, there are so many things about
you I can’t understand—your way of looking at life and things....”
“Oh, I know, my dear—don’t trouble to explain to me. And don’t think I’m
angry, Peter—only sick—sick—sick. I don’t want to argue with you any
more—it’s over. And I’ll make things as easy for you as I can, and for
myself too. I’ll go away—I’ll have to. I couldn’t bear meeting you after
this—or seeing Starvecrow....”
She went to the door, and he hoped she would go straight out, but on the
threshold she suddenly turned——
“I’m not angry, Peter—I’m not angry. I was, but I’m not now ... I’m only
miserable. But I’ll be all right ... if I go away. And some day we’ll be
friends again....”
The door crashed behind her. She was gone.