Peter was not to be let off so easily as in the simplicity of his heart

he had imagined. He had transgressed the laws of matrimony as Vera

understood them, by refusing to say that he had never really loved

Stella. He ought properly to have said that he had never really loved

anyone until he met his wife, but that, Peter told himself, was nonsense

in a man of his age. He told it to himself all the more vehemently

because he had an uneasy feeling that a year ago he would have said what

Vera wanted, that he himself would have believed she was the only woman

he had really loved.

The next morning he went into her room as usual while she was having her

breakfast, and they said the usual things to each other as if nothing

had happened. But Peter felt awkward and ill at ease—he wanted,

childishly, to “make it up,” but did not know how to get through the

invisible wall she had built round herself. Also he knew that she would

accept nothing less than a recantation of all that he had said

yesterday—he would have to tell her that he had never loved Stella, that

all that part of his life had been dreaming and self-deception. And he

would not say it. With a queer obstinacy, whose roots he would not

examine, he refused to deny his past, even to make the present happier

and the future more secure.

“What are you doing today?” asked Vera coolly, as she stirred her

coffee.

“I’m going over to an auction at Canterbury—they’re selling off some old

government stuff.”

As a matter of fact, he had not meant to go, but now he felt that he

must do something to get himself out of the house for the day.

“Then you won’t be in for lunch?”

“No—not much before dinner, I expect.”

“Shall you go in the car?”

“Only as far as Ashford—I’ll take the train from there.”

It was all deadly. Going out of her room, going out of the house, he was

conscious of a deep sense of depression and futility. Vera was

displeased with him because he would not be disloyal to the past....

After all, he supposed it was pretty natural and most women were like

that ... but Vera was different in the way she showed her displeasure—if

only she’d say things!—become angry and coaxing like other women—like

Stella when he had displeased her. He remembered her once when she had

been angry—how differently she had behaved—with such frankness, such

warmth, such wheedling.... Vera had just turned to ice, and expressed

herself in negations and reserves. He hated that—it was all wrong,

somehow.

He fretted and brooded the whole way to Ashford. It was not till he was

nearly there that he remembered he had an appointment with Godfrey at

Starvecrow that afternoon. Vera was making him not only a bad husband

but a bad farmer.

§ 7

Godfrey did not forget his appointment. He arrived punctually at three

o’clock, and not finding Peter at home, waited with the patience of his

kind. A further symptom of Peter’s demoralization was his forgetting to

tell anyone at Starvecrow when he would be back, so Godfrey, who was

really anxious to have his matter settled and could scarcely believe

that anything so important to himself should seem trivial in the stress

of another’s life, felt sure that Mr. Alard would soon come in, and

having hitched his reins and assured himself that Madge would stand for

ever, went into the office and waited.

Here Jenny Alard found him at about half-past three, just wondering

whether it would be good manners for him to smoke. She had come up to

see Vera, but finding she had gone out in the car, looked in at the

office door in hopes of finding Peter. Godfrey was sitting rather

stiffly in the gate-backed chair, turning his box of gaspers over and

over in his large brown hands. Jenny came into the room and greeted him

at once. She and her family always took pains to be cordial to their

social inferiors. If the man in the office had been an acquaintance of

her own rank, she would probably have bowed to him, made some excuse and

gone out to look for her brother—but such behaviour would never do for

anyone who might imagine it contained a slight.

“Good afternoon. Are you waiting for my brother? Do you know when he’ll

be in?”

He rose to greet her, and as they shook hands she realised what a shadow

his inferiority was. He stood before her six feet high, erect,

sun-burned—his thick hair and bright eyes proclaiming his health, his

good clothes proclaiming his prosperity, a certain alert and simple air

of confidence speaking of a life free from conflict and burden.

“Mr. Alard made an appointment for three. But they tell me he’s gone to

Canterbury.”

“It’s a shame to keep you waiting. You’re busy, I expect.”

“Not so terrible—and it’s the first time he’s done it. I reckon

something’s gone wrong with the car.”

“He hasn’t got the car—Mrs. Alard is out in it. Perhaps he’s missed his

train.”

“If he’s done that he won’t be here for some time, and I can’t afford to

wait much longer. I’ve a man coming to Fourhouses about some pigs after

tea.”

“I expect there’s a time-table somewhere—let’s look.”

She rummaged among the papers at the top of the desk—auction catalogues,

advertisements for cattle foods and farm implements—and at last drew out

a local time-table. Their heads bent over it together, and she became

conscious of a scent as of straw and clean stables coming from his

clothes. She groped among the pages not knowing her way, and then

noticed that his hands were restless as if his greater custom were

impatient of her ignorance.

“No—it’s page sixty-four—I remember ... two pages back ... no, not

there—you’ve missed it.”

His hands hovered as if they longed to turn over the leaves, but

evidently he forbade them—and she guessed that he shrank from the chance

of touching hers. She looked at his hands—they were well-shaped, except

for the fingers which work had spoiled, they were brown, strong,

lean—she liked them exceedingly. They were clean, but not as Peter’s or

Jim’s or her father’s hands were clean; they suggested effort rather

than custom—that he washed when he was dirty in order to be clean rather

than when he was clean in order to prevent his ever being dirty.... What

a queer way her thoughts were running, and all because of his hands——

Well, she would like to touch them ... it was funny how he held back

even from such a natural contact as this—typical of his class, in which

there was always consciousness between the sexes ... no careless, casual

contacts, no hail-fellow and hearty comradeship, but always man and

woman, some phase of courtship ... romance....

“I can’t find it.”

She thrust the book into his hands, and their fingers touched· He begged

her pardon—then found the page. She did not notice what he said—her

pulses were hammering. She was excited not so much by him as by herself.

Why had her whole being lit up so suddenly?—What had set it alight? Was

it just this simple deferential consciousness of sex between them, so

much more natural than the comradeship which was the good form of her

class? Sex-consciousness was after all more natural than

sex-unconsciousness, the bridling of the flirt more natural than the

indifference of the “woman who has no nonsense about her.” She felt a

deep blush spreading over her face—she became entirely conscious before

him, uneasy under his alert, dignified gaze.

He was picking up his hat—he was saying something about the

two-forty-five being in long ago and his having no time to wait till the

four-forty.

“I’ll call in tomorrow—I’ll leave word with Elias that I’ll call in at

twelve tomorrow.”

“I’m so sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing,” she faltered.

“Oh, it’s no matter. I’m not busy today. Mr. Alard must have missed his

train.”

She found herself going out of the room before him. His smart gig stood

outside the door—the mare whinnied at the sight of him. Jenny thought

how good it must be to drive horse-flesh instead of machinery.

“You haven’t taken to a motor-car yet, I see.”

“I don’t think I ever shall. It ud feel unfriendly.”

“Yes, I expect it would after this”—and she patted the mare’s sleek

neck.

“A horse knows you, you see—and where you go wrong often he’ll go

right—but a car, a machine, that’s got no sense nor kindness in it, and

when you do the wrong thing there’s nothing that’ll save you.”

Jenny nodded. He warmed to his subject.

“Besides, you get fond of an animal in a way you can’t of a machine.

This Madge, here. I’ve raised her from a filly, and when I take her out

of the shafts she’ll follow me round the yard for a bit of sugar—and you

heard her call to me just now when I came out? That’s her way. You may

pay three thousand pounds for a Rolls Royce car but it won’t never say

good evening.”

He laughed at his own joke, showing his big splendid teeth, and giving

Jenny an impression of sweetness and happiness that melted into her

other impressions like honey.

“Did she recognise you when you came back from the war?—You were in

Mesopotamia weren’t you?”

“Yes—three years. I can’t say as she properly recognised me, but now

I’ve been back a twelve-month I think she fits me into things that

happened to her before I left, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I understand.”

He had been talking to her with his foot on the step, ready to get into

his gig. Then suddenly he seemed to remember that she did not live at

Starvecrow, that she too had a journey before her and no trap to take

her home.

“Can I give you a lift, Miss Alard?—I’m passing Conster.”

“Yes—thank you very much,” said Jenny.

§ 8

That evening, sitting at dinner with her family, she felt vaguely

ashamed of herself—she had let herself go too far. As she watched her

mother’s diamond rings flashing over her plate, as she listened to her

father cynically demolishing the Washington conference, as she

contemplated Doris eating asparagus in the gross and clumsy manner

achieved only by the well-bred, the afternoon’s adventure took

discreditable colours in her mind. What had made her feel like that

towards Godfrey? Surely it was the same emotion which draws a man

towards a pretty housemaid. The young farmer was good-looking and

well-built—he had attracted her physically—and her body had mocked at

the barriers set up by her mind, by education, birth, breeding and

tradition.

She wondered guiltily what Jim would think of her if he knew. He would

probably see a fresh reason for congratulating himself on the rupture of

those loose yet hampering ties which had bound them for so long. She had

never felt like that towards Jim, though she had accepted the physical

element in their relation—thought, indeed, sometimes, that it was unduly

preponderating, holding them together when ideas and ambitions would

have drawn them apart. Was it possible after all that Godfrey’s

attraction had not been merely physical—that there had been an allure in

his simple, unaccustomed outlook on life as well as in his splendid

frame?

Gervase came in late to dinner, and being tired did not talk much. After

the meal was over, and Jenny was playing bridge with her parents and

Doris, he sat in the window, turning over the pages of a book and

looking out between the curtains at the pale Spring stars. When Lady

Alard’s losses made her decide she was too tired to play any more and

the game was broken up, Jenny went over and sat beside him. It had

struck her that perhaps his life at the works, his association with

working men, might enable him to shed some light on her problem. Not

that she meant to confide in him, but there seemed to be in Gervase now

a growing sanity of judgment; she had a new, odd respect for the

experiences of the little brother’s mind.

“Gervase,” she said—“I suppose you could never make friends with anyone

at the shop?”

“No—I’m afraid I couldn’t. At least not with anyone there now. But we

get on all right together.”

“I suppose it’s the difference in education.”

“Partly—but chiefly the difference in our way of looking at things.”

“Surely that’s due to education.”

“Yes, if by education you mean breeding—the whole life. It’s not that we

want different things, but we want them in a different way.”

“Do all men want the same things?”

He smiled.

“Yes—we all want money, women, and God.”

Jenny felt a little shocked.

“Some want one most, and some want another most,” continued Gervase—“and

we’re most different in our ways of wanting money and most alike in our

ways of wanting God.”

“How do you want money in different ways?”

“It’s not only the fact that what’s wealth to them is often poverty to

us—it’s chiefly that they get their pleasure out of the necessities of

life and we out of the luxuries. It’s never given you any actual

pleasure, I suppose, to think that you’ve got a good house to live in

and plenty to eat—but to those chaps it’s a real happiness and I’m not

talking of those who’ve ever had to go without.”

Jenny was silent a moment. She hesitated over her next question.

“And what’s the difference in your ideas about women?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Their talk about women makes me sick—I feel in that matter we’ve got

the pull over them. When men of our own set get on the subject, it’s

different altogether, even at its worst. But I sometimes think that this

is because their ideal of women is really so high that they don’t look

upon a certain class of them as women at all.”

“You think their ideal of women in general is high?”

“Yes, that’s why their women are either good or bad. They won’t stand

the intervening stages the way we do. They expect a great deal of the

women they make their wives.”

“I suppose that a friendship between a woman of our class and a man of

theirs would be much more difficult than a friendship between two men of

different classes.”

“It would be quite impossible. They don’t understand friendship between

men and women for one thing. I’m not sure that they haven’t got too much

sense.”

Jenny rose and moved away. She found the conversation vaguely

disturbing. Though, after all, she cried impatiently to herself, why

should she? They hadn’t been discussing Godfrey—only the men where

Gervase worked, who belonged altogether to a different class. But

Godfrey, yeoman farmer of Fourhouses, solid, comfortable, respectable,

able to buy land from impoverished Alard ... why should she think of him

as in a class beneath her? Her parents would think so certainly, but

that was because their ideas had grown old and stiff with Alard’s

age ... mentally Alard was suffering from arterial sclerosis ... oh, for

some new blood!

§ 9

Peter was vexed with himself for having forgotten Godfrey’s

appointment—not that he thought his forgetfulness would jeopardise the

business between Conster and Fourhouses, but such a lapse pointed

degradingly to causes beneath it. He had been careless and forgetful as

a farmer because he was unhappy as a husband. His private life was

hurting him and its convulsions had put his business life out of order.

On his return from Canterbury there was a reconciliation between him and

Vera. His long day of futile loneliness had broken his spirit—he could

endure their estrangement no longer, and in order to make peace was

willing to stoop to treacheries which in the morning he had held beneath

his honour. He had made Stella a burnt offering to peace. No—he said to

Vera—he had never really loved her—she had just been “one of the others”

before he met his wife.... He took her glowing memory and put it in the

prison house where he had shut up the loves of a month and a week and a

day ... he saw her in that frail company, looking at him from between

the bars, telling him that she did not belong there. But he spoke to her

roughly in his heart—“Yes you do—you’re one of the thieves who stole a

bit of the love I was keeping for Vera—just that.”

Vera, after the first frigidities, graciously accepted his contrition.

As he was willing to acknowledge that he had never really loved Stella,

she was willing to drop the other half of the argument and allow that he

was not belatedly in love with her now. Once more there was love and

harmony at Starvecrow—warmth in the low rooms, where the firelight

leaped on creamy walls and the rustle of Vera’s silk seemed to live like

an echo, a voluptuous ghost. The cold, thin Spring seemed shut outside

the house—the interior of Starvecrow, its ceilings, doors, walls and

furniture meant more to Peter now than its barns and stacks and cobbled

yard, even than its free woods and fields.

The cold, thin Spring warmed and thickened in the woods. The floods

receded from the Tillingham marshes, and the river ran through a golden

street of buttercups to the sea. The winter sowings put a bloom of vivid

green into the wheat fields, the blossom of apple, cherry, pear and plum

drifted from the boughs of the orchard to the grass, leaving the first

green hardness of the fruits among the leaves; and as the outer world

grew warm and living, once more the heart of the house grew cold. Peter

and Vera were not estranged, but the warm dusk of their rapture had

given place to the usual daylight, in which Peter saw the ugly things

his peace contained.

He was not blinded by the wonder that had happened, by the knowledge

that probably, almost certainly, Vera was to have a child—that there

would be an heir to Conster and Alard, and lovely Starvecrow would not

go to strangers. He felt intensely relieved that his fears would not be

realised, that he was not inevitably building for Gervase to throw

down—but there was less glamour about the event than he had anticipated,

it could not set his heart at rest, nor make Vera shine with all the old

light of the honeymoon.

He had always thought and heard that expecting a child brings husband

and wife even closer together than the first days of love—he was vexed

that the charm did not work. Was it because of his feeling that if the

child were a girl it might just as well not be born? That was certainly

the wrong thing to feel, for much as he longed for an heir, he should

not forget that a girl would be his child, the child of the woman he

loved. Then one day he had a dreadful realisation—the conviction that if

he were waiting for Stella’s child it would all have been different,

that he would have thought of the child as much as now he thought of the

heir. Of course he would still have wanted an heir, but he would not

have had the feeling that if it did not give him a boy his wife’s

childbearing was in vain.... In vain—in vain.... He would not have known

that word which now he found in his mind so often—“Marriage in vain if

there is no child ... childbearing in vain if there is no heir.” He saw

his marriage as a mere tool of Alard’s use, a prop to that sinking

edifice of the Squires.... He felt as miserable as in the first days of

the cold, thin Spring.

§ 10

He now no longer denied that in one sense he had made a mistake in

marrying Vera. He still found her brilliant and beautiful, a charming if

sometimes a too sophisticated companion. But she was not the wife of his

heart and imagination. Her personality stood queerly detached from the

rest of his life—apart from his ideas of home and family. He felt coldly

angry with her for the ways in which she refused or failed to fulfil his

yearnings, and he could never, he felt, quite forgive her for having

demanded Stella as a sacrifice. His denial of his love for Stella, which

he had made in the interests of peace, now pierced his memory like a

thorn—partly he reproached himself, and partly he reproached Vera. And

there was a reproach for Stella too.

But he still told himself that he was glad he had married Vera. After

all, he had got what he wanted. All he no longer had was the illusion

that had fed him for a year after marriage, the illusion that in taking

Vera he had done the best thing for himself as a man as well as an

Alard. He could no longer tell himself that Vera was a better wife and a

sweeter woman than he would have found Stella—that even without family

considerations he had still made the happiest choice. That dream had

played its part, and now might well die, and yet leave him with the

thought that he had chosen well.

He need not look upon his marriage as mercenary because it was practical

rather than romantic, nor himself as a fool because he had been heated

and dizzied into taking a step he could never have taken in cold blood.

He had always planned to marry money for the sake of Alard and

Starvecrow, and he could never have done so without the illusion of

love. Nature had merely helped him carry out what he had unnaturally

planned.... And Starvecrow was safe, established—and under his careful

stewardship the huge, staggering Conster estate would one day recover

steadiness. The interest on the mortgages was always punctually paid,

and he had hopes of being able in a year or two to pay off some of the

mortgages themselves. By the time he became Sir Peter Alard he might be

in a fair way of clearing the property.... So why regret the romance he

had never chosen?

He told himself he would regret nothing if he was sure that Stella would

not marry Gervase—that having very properly shut romance out of his own

house, he should not have to see it come next door. In his clearer

moments he realised that this attitude was unreasonable, or that, if

reasonable, it pointed to an unhealthy state of affairs, but he could

never quite bully or persuade himself out of it. He had to confess that

it would be intolerable to have to welcome as a sister the woman he had

denied himself as a wife. Anything, even total estrangement, would be

better than that—better than having to watch her making his brother’s

home the free and happy place she might have made his own, throwing her

sweetness and her courage into the risks of his brother’s life, bearing

his brother’s children, made after all the mother of Alards ... perhaps

the mother of Alard’s heir. This last thought tormented him most. He saw

a preposterous genealogical table:

JOHN ALARD

|

+----------------+----------------+

| |

Peter Alard = Vera Asher Gervase Alard = Stella Mount

(died without male issue) |

+-----+-------+---------+

| | | |

John Peter George Gervase

From the family’s decaying trunk he saw a new healthy branch springing

through the grafting in of Stella’s life—healthy but alien, for the

children Stella gave Gervase would not be Alards in the true sense of

the children she might have given Peter. They would be soaked in their

father’s disloyal ideas. His bad sense, his bad form. John, Peter,

George and Gervase would probably smash up what was left of the

tradition and the estate.... Peter saw them selling Starvecrow, selling

Conster, opening shops and works, marrying indiscriminately.... He hated

these insurgent nephews his mind had begotten.

Now and then he told himself that his fears were ill-founded. If Stella

was going to marry Gervase surely something definite would be known

about it by this time. She was not so young that she could afford to

wait indefinitely. But against this he knew that Gervase was scarcely

twenty-one, and that neither of them had a penny. A long, public

engagement would be difficult for many reasons. There might be some

secret understanding. His brother still spent most of his Sundays at

Vinehall... better not deceive himself with the idea that he went merely

for devotional reasons, to gratify this newly-formed taste which to

Peter smacked as unseemly as an appetite. No, he went to see Stella, sit

with her, talk with her ... kiss her, hold her on his knee, feel the

softness of her hair between his fingers ... oh damn!—if only he knew

definitely one way or the other, he could choke down his imagination....

His imagination was making a hopeless fool of him with its strokings and

its kisses—with its John, Peter, George and Gervase....

His uneasiness finally drove him to take what a little earlier would

have seemed an impossible way out of his difficulties. One day, at the

end of the brooding of a lonely walk, he met Stella unexpectedly in

Icklesham street, and after the inevitable platitudes of greeting

followed the first wild plunges of his mind.

“I say, Stella—forgive my asking you—but am I to congratulate you and

Gervase?”

The colour rushed over her face, and he had an uneasy moment, wondering

whether he had guessed right or merely been impertinent.

“No—you’ll never have to do that,” she answered firmly the next minute.

“I—I beg your pardon.”

He was flushing too, partly with relief, partly with apprehension at the

rejoiced, violent beating of his heart.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter a bit. Other members of your family have been

half-asking—hinting ... so I’d rather you asked outright. Of course,

seeing that I’m seven years older than Gervase, one would have

thought ... but I suppose people must have something to talk about.”

He assented weakly—and it suddenly struck him that she was wondering why

he had asked her instead of Gervase.

“As a matter of fact,” she continued, “I don’t see so much of him as

people think. He comes over to us on Sundays, but that’s partly for

Father Luce. He serves the Parish Mass, and they both have lunch with us

afterwards—and in the afternoon he helps with the children.”

Peter felt inexpressibly relieved that there was no truth in his picture

of Gervase and Stella in the afternoon—no kisses, no strokings of her

hair, which was like fine silk between your fingers ... like a child’s

hair.... Fresh and bright and living as ever, it curled up under the

brim of her hat ... he wondered if she saw how he was staring at it—yes,

she must, for she put up her hand rather nervously and pushed a curl

under the straw.

“Please contradict anything you hear said about him and me,” she said.

“Yes, I promise I will. It was Vera put it into my head. She said she

was quite sure Gervase was in love with you.”

“Well, please contradict it—it will be annoying for Gervase as well as

for me.”

A sudden fear seized Peter—a new fear—much more unreasonable and selfish

than the old one. It expressed itself with the same suddenness as it

came, and before he could check himself he had said—

“Stella ... there isn’t ... there isn’t anyone else?”

He knew that moment that he had given himself away, and he could not

find comfort in any thought of her not having noticed. For a few seconds

she stared at him silently with her bright perplexed eyes. Then she

said—

“No, there isn’t.... But, Peter, why shouldn’t there be?”

He murmured something silly and surly—he was annoyed with her for not

tactfully turning the conversation and covering his blunder.

“I’m nearly twenty-eight,” she continued—“and if I can manage to fall in

love, I shall marry.”

“Oh, don’t wait for that,” he said, still angry—“you can marry perfectly

well without it. I have, and it’s been most successful.”

He knew that he had hurt her in the soft places of her heart; and with

his knowledge a fire kindled, setting strange hot cruelties ablaze.

“Besides, it’s easy enough to fall in love, you know—I’ve done it lots

of times, and so have you, I expect—easy enough to fall in love and just

as easy to fall out.”

She answered him sweetly.

“Oh, I can do both—I’ve done both—but it’s not been easy, not a bit.”

“Well, I’ll wish you luck.”

He took off his hat and passed on. For a quarter of a mile he hated her.

He hated her because he had wounded her, and because she would not be

proud enough to hide the wound—because from outside his life she still

troubled it—because he had lied to her—because he had treated her

badly—because he had once loved her and because he had denied it—because

he loved her still and could not deny it any more.

§ 11

He was so busy hating and loving her that he did not notice the large

car that passed him at the cross roads till he heard it slithering to a

stop. Then he looked up and saw it was his mother’s. Jenny stuck her

head out of the window.

“Hullo, Peter! Like a lift home?”

“No thanks, I’m not going home. I’ve got to call at Fourhouses.”

“Haven’t you finished that dreadful business yet?” asked Lady Alard in a

tragic voice. The selling of thirty acres to the farm which had

originally owned them struck her as the deepest humiliation the family

had had yet to swallow.

“Yes—the agreement’s been signed, but there’s a few minor matters

cropped up over the transfer.”

“Why don’t you make him come and see you? Why should you walk six miles

across country to interview a man like Godfrey?”

“Because I wanted a walk,” said Peter shortly.

“You’ve got terribly restless lately. This is the second time I’ve met

you tramping about like a—like a——”

“I call it very sensible of him,” said Jenny—“we’re a lazy lot—rolling

about in cars. I’ve half a mind to get down and walk with him.”

“But he’s going to Fourhouses, dear.”

“Never mind—I’d like to see Fourhouses.”

“Your shoes are too thin for walking.”

“Not on a day like this.”

Peter opened the door—he was anxious for Jenny’s company, she would take

his thoughts off recent complications. He helped her out, and signed to

Appleby to drive on.

“We’ve been paying calls in Winchelsea,” said Jenny with a grimace—“Oh,

Peter, this is a dog’s life.”

Peter would not have liked himself to spend an afternoon paying calls,

but he regarded it as part of a woman’s duty, and rather disapproved of

Jenny’s rebellion. He liked her, and admired her for her young well-bred

loveliness, but lately he had begun to think she was getting too like

Gervase....

“Somebody must pay calls,” he said a little gruffly.

“Why?” asked Jenny.

“Don’t be silly, my dear. You know it’s a social necessity.”

“Well, it oughtn’t to be—just knowing a lot of dull people because they

live in the same neighbourhood and are of the same social standing as

ourselves—keeping up our intercourse by means of perfunctory visits

which we hate paying as much as they hate receiving ... carefully

dodging the tea-hour, so that there’ll be no chance of any real

hospitality...”

“So that’s how you choose to describe it——”

“That’s how it is.”

Peter said nothing. He told himself emphatically that Stella probably

had exactly the same ideas. Now Vera, for all her intellect and

modernity, never shirked her social obligations. Oh, he had done right,

after all.

Jenny was enjoying the walk, in spite of her thin shoes and the

gruffness of her companion—in spite of some feelings of trepidation at

her own recklessness. She was going to see Godfrey again after an

interval of nearly two months ... she was going to see him through her

own deliberate choice and contrivance. Directly Peter had mentioned

Fourhouses she had made up her mind to go with him. If Godfrey’s

attraction had not been merely good health and good looks, but his

character, his circumstances, she would know more of her own feelings

when she saw him in his proper setting, against the background of

Fourhouses. His background at present was her own revolt against the

conditions of her life—for two months she had seen him standing like a

symbolic figure of emancipation among the conventions, restrictions and

sacrifices which her position demanded. Life had been very hard for her

during those months, or perhaps not so hard as heavy. She had missed the

habit of her relation to Jim Parish and felt the humiliation of its

breaking off—the humiliation of meeting him casually as he dangled after

an heiress.... “He’ll do like Peter—he’ll make himself fall in love with

a girl with money and live happy ever afterwards.” She had felt the

galling pettiness of the social round, the hollowness of the disguises

which her family had adopted, the falseness of the standards which they

had set up. “We must at all costs have as many acres of land as we can

keep together—we must have our car and our menservants—our position as a

‘county family.’ We call ourselves the New Poor, though we have all

these. But we’re not lying, because in order to keep them we’ve given up

all the really good things of life—comfort and tranquillity and freedom

and love. So we’re Poor indeed.”

She was frankly curious to see the home of the man whose values were not

upside down, who had not sacrificed essentials to appearances, who found

his pleasure in common things, who, poorer than the poverty of Alard,

yet called himself rich. Godfrey had captured her imagination, first no

doubt through his virile attraction, but maintaining his hold through

the contrast of her brief glimpse of him with the life that was daily

disappointing her. She asked Peter one or two questions about

Fourhouses. It ran to about four hundred acres, mostly pasture. Godfrey

grew wheat, as well as conservatively maintaining his hop-gardens, but

the strength of the farm was in livestock. His father had died twelve

years ago, leaving the place in surprisingly good condition for those

days of rampant free trade—he had a mother and two sisters living with

him, Peter believed. Yes, he had always liked Godfrey, a sober, steady,

practical fellow, who had done well for himself and his farm.

§ 12

Fourhouses showed plainly the origin of its name. The original

dwelling-house was a sturdy, square structure to which some far-back

yeoman had added a gabled wing. An inheritor had added another wing, and

a third had incorporated one of the barns—the result was many sprawling

inequalities of roof and wall. No one seemed to have thought about the

building as a whole, intent only on his own improvements, so that the

very materials as well as the style of its construction were

diverse—brick, tile, stone, timber—Tudor austerity, Elizabethan

ornament, Georgian convention.

There was no one about in the yard, so Peter walked up to the front door

and rang the bell. It was answered by a pretty, shy young woman whose

pleasant gown was covered by an apron.

“Good afternoon, Miss Godfrey. Is your brother in?”

“Yes, Mr. Alard. If you’ll step into the parlour I’ll tell him you’re

here.”

Jenny glanced at Peter, asking silently for an introduction. But her

brother seemed abstracted, and forgot the courtesy he had practised at

Starvecrow.

The young woman ushered them into a little stuffy room beside the door.

There was a table in the middle of it covered by a thick velvet cloth,

in the midst of which some musky plant was enthroned in a painted pot.

There were more plants in the window, their leaves obscuring the

daylight, which came through them like green water oozing through reeds.

Jenny felt a pang of disappointment—this little room which was evidently

considered the household’s best showed her with a sharp check the

essential difference between Alard and Godfrey. Here was a worse

difference than between rough and smooth, coarse and delicate, vulgar

and refined—it was all the difference between good taste and bad taste.

Ben Godfrey’s best clothes would be like this parlour—he would look far

more remote from her in them than he looked in his broadcloth and

gaiters.

Fortunately he was not wearing his best clothes when he came in a few

minutes later. He came stooping under the low door, all the haymaking’s

brown on his face since their last meeting.

“Well, this is good of you, Mr. Alard, coming all this way. Why didn’t

you send me a line to call around at Starvecrow? Good evening, Miss

Alard—have you walked all the way from Conster too?”

“Oh no, I drove as far as Icklesham. The car’s making me lazy.”

“Well, you’ve had a good walk anyway. Won’t you come in and have a cup

of tea? We’re just sitting down to it.”

It was six o’clock and neither Peter nor Jenny had remembered that there

were human beings who took tea at this hour.

“Thank you so much,” said Jenny—“I’ll be glad.” She had had her tea at

Conster before leaving to pay the calls, but she said to herself “If I

go in now and see them all having six o’clock tea together, it’ll finish

it.” Since she had seen the parlour she had thought it would be a good

job if she finished it.

Godfrey led the way down a flagged passage into the oldest part of the

house. The room where his family were having tea had evidently once been

a kitchen, but was now no longer used as such, though the fireplace and

cupboards remained. The floor was covered with brick, and the walls

bulged in and out of huge beams, evidently ship’s timber and riddled

with the salt that had once caked them. Similar beams lay across the

ceiling and curved into the wall, showing their origin in a ship’s

ribs—some Tudor seafarer had settled down ashore and built his ship into

his house. Long casement windows let in the fullness of the evening sun,

raking over the fields from Snowden in the west—its light spilled on the

cloth, on the blue and white cups, on the loaf and the black teapot, on

the pleasant faces and broad backs of the women sitting round.

“This is my mother—Miss Alard; and my sister Jane, and my sister

Lily....” He performed his introductions shyly. The women stood up and

shook hands—Jane Godfrey found a chair for Jenny, and Mrs. Godfrey

poured her out a cup of very strong tea. There was a moment’s constraint

and some remarks about the weather but soon an easier atmosphere

prevailed. This was partly due to Peter, who was always at his best with

those who were not socially his equals. Jenny had often noticed how

charming and friendly he was with his father’s tenants and the village

people, whereas with his own class he was often gruff and inarticulate.

She knew that this was not due to any democratic tastes, but simply to

the special effort which his code and tradition demanded of him on such

occasions. She had never realised so plainly the advantages of birth and

breeding, as when at such times she saw her unsociable brother exert

himself, not to patronage but to perfect ease.

She herself found very little to say—she was too busy observing her

surroundings. The “best parlour” atmosphere had entirely vanished—the

contrast which the kitchen at Fourhouses presented with the drawing-room

at Conster was all in the former’s favour. She found a comfort, dignity

and ease which were absent from the Alard ceremonial of afternoon tea,

in spite of Wills and the Sèvres china. Whether it was the free spill of

the sunshine on table and floor, the solid, simple look of the

furniture, the wonder of the old ship’s beams, or the sweet unhurried

manners of the company, she could not say, but the whole effect was safe

and soothing—there was an air of quiet enjoyment, of emphasis on the

fact that a good meal eaten in good company was a source of pleasure and

congratulation to all concerned.

She ate a substantial tea of bread and butter and lettuce, listening

while Peter and Ben Godfrey talked post-war politics, now and then

responding to a shy word from one of the Godfrey women. She was

reluctant to praise what she saw around her, to comment on the charm and

dignity of the house, for fear she should seem to patronize—but a remark

ventured on its age found Mrs. Godfrey eager to talk of her home and

able to tell much of its history. After tea she offered to show Jenny

the upstairs rooms.

“This is a fine old house, I’ve been told. The other day a gentleman

came over from Rye on purpose to see it.”

They walked up and down a number of small twisting passages, broken with

steps and wanting light. Rooms led inconveniently out of one

another—windows were high under the ceiling or plumb with the floor.

There was a great deal of what was really good and lovely—old

timber-work, old cupboards, a fine dresser, a gate-legged table and a

couple of tallboys—and a great deal that recalled the best parlour, the

iron bedsteads, marble-topped washstands, flower-painted mirrors and

garlanded wall-paper of the new rural tradition. All, however, was good

of its kind, comfortable and in sound repair. Mrs. Godfrey was proud of

it all equally.

“But I suppose, Miss Alard, you don’t find it much of a house compared

to your own.”

“I think it’s lovely,” said Jenny—“much more exciting than Conster.”

Mrs. Godfrey was not sure whether a house had any right to be exciting,

so she made no reply. They went downstairs again, and fearing the best

parlour, Jenny suggested that they should go out into the yard and find

the men.

“They must have finished their business by now.”

“They’ll be in Ben’s office—leastways in what he calls his office,” said

Mrs. Godfrey with a small tolerant laugh.

She led the way into one of the barns where a corner was boarded off

into a little room. Here stood a second-hand roll-topped desk and a

really good yew-backed chair. The walls were covered with scale-maps of

the district and advertisements for cattle food, very much after the

style of the office at Starvecrow. Jenny looked round for some

individual mark of Ben, but saw none, unless the straightness and order

of it all were an index to his character.

“He’ll be showing Mr. Alard the stock—he’s proud of his stock,” said

Mrs. Godfrey, and sure enough the next minute they heard voices in the

yard, and saw Godfrey and Peter coming out of the cow-shed.

“Here you are,” cried Peter to his sister—“I want you to look at Mr.

Godfrey’s Sussex cattle. He’s got the finest I’ve seen in the district.”

Jenny could not speak for a moment. She had seen a look in Godfrey’s

eyes when they fell on her that deprived her of speech. Her heart was

violently turned to the man from his surroundings in which she had

sought a refuge for her self-respect—Fourhouses, its beauties and its

uglinesses, became dim, and she saw only what she had seen at first and

been ashamed of—the man whom she could—whom she must—love.

§ 13

Having tea at Fourhouses had not “finished it”; and she was glad, in

spite of the best parlour. The Godfreys’ life might be wofully lacking

in ornament, but she had seen enough to know that it was sound in

fundamentals. Here was the house built on a rock, lacking style perhaps,

but standing firm against the storms—while Alard was the house built on

the sand, the sand of a crumbled and obsolete tradition, still lovely as

it faced the lightning with its towers, but with its whole structure

shaken by the world’s unrest.

She did not take in many impressions of her last few minutes at the

farm. The outhouses and stables, tools and stock, were only a part of

this bewildered turning of herself. They scarcely seemed outside her,

but merged into the chaotic thought processes which her mind was slowly

shaking into order. A quarter of an hour later she found herself walking

with Peter along the road that winds at the back of Icklesham mill....

“Uncommon good sort of people, those Godfreys,” her brother was saying.

“Yes, I liked them very much.”

“I think there’s no class in England to equal the old-fashioned yeoman

farmer. I’d be sorry to see him die out.”

“Do you think he will die out?”

“Well—land is always getting more and more of a problem. There aren’t

many who can keep things up as well as Godfrey. He’s had the sense to go

for livestock—it’s the only thing that pays nowadays. Of course the

farmers are better off than we are—they aren’t hit the same way by

taxation. But rates are high, and labour’s dear and damn bad. I really

don’t know what’s going to become of the land, but I think the yeoman

will last longer than the Squire. Government supports him, and won’t do

a thing for us.”

Jenny said nothing. She felt unequal to a discussion in her present

mood.

“I envy Godfrey in a lot of ways,” continued Peter—“he’s been able to do

for his place things that would save ours if only we could afford them.

He’s broken fifteen acres of marsh by the Brede River and gets nine

bushels to the acre. Then you saw his cattle.... Something to be proud

of there. If we could only go in for cattle-breeding on a large scale we

might get the farms to pay.”

“I like the way they live,” said Jenny—“they seem so quiet and

solid—so—so without a struggle.”

“Oh, Godfrey must be pretty well off, I suppose. I don’t know how he’s

made his money—I expect his father did it for him. But he paid us cash

down for the land, and doesn’t seem to feel it.”

“I don’t suppose they’re better off than we are. It’s simply that they

aren’t in the mess we’re in—and they haven’t got to keep up appearances.

They’re free, so they’re contented.”

Peter evidently suspected a fling at Alard in this speech, for he

answered gravely.

“All the same, it’s up to us to stand by our own class. I daresay the

Godfreys are happier and more comfortable than we are, but we can’t ever

be like them. We can’t shelve our responsibilities. We’ve got a

tradition as old as theirs, and we have to stick to it, even if at

present it seems to be going under. Personally I’m proud of it.”

Again Jenny felt herself unable to argue, to tell Peter, as Gervase

would have done, that what he called responsibilities were only

encumbrances, that what he called tradition was only a false standard.

Instead she was acutely conscious of her disloyalty to her people’s

cause, of how near she stood to betraying it.

She had not quite realised this before, she had not grasped the full

implications of the inward movements of her heart. She had seen herself

first, in bitter shame, as a young woman whose sexual consciousness had

been stirred by a young man of a lower class; then she had seen herself

as enticed not merely by his health and comeliness but by his happy

independence, his freedom from the shackles that bound her—till at last

he had become a symbol of the life outside the Alard tradition, of the

open country beyond the Alard estate, a contrast to all that was petty,

arbitrary and artificial in her surroundings. And now, this evening, at

Fourhouses, she had met the man again, and met him without shame. She

knew now that she was attracted to him not merely in spite of his class

but because of it—because he belonged to the honourable class of the

land’s freemen. He appealed to her as a man, speaking to her with his

eyes the language that is common to all men, and he appealed to her as a

freeman, because she knew that if she went to him she would be free—free

of all the numberless restrictions and distresses that bound her youth.

The problem before her now was not whether she should be ashamed or not

ashamed of his attraction, but whether she should yield to it or turn

away. She faced these new thoughts during the rest of her walk with

Peter, between the dry, abstracted phrases of her conversation—during

dinner and the long dreary evening of cards and desultory talk—and at

last, in greater peace, when she had gone to bed and lay watching the

grey moonlight that moved among the trees of the plantation.

What was she to do? What had she done? Had she fallen in love with

Godfrey? Was she going to tear her life out of its groove and merge it

with his, just on the strength of those three meetings? She did not

know—she was not sure. She could not be in love yet, but she felt sure

that she was going to be. At least so she should have said if he had

been a man of her own class. Then why should she act any differently

because he was not? Her defiance grew. Godfrey’s class was a good

class—his family was old, substantial and respected. It was silly and

snobbish to talk as if he belonged to some menial order—though, hang it

all, any order was better than the order of impoverished country

families to which she belonged.

Resentfully Jenny surveyed her tribe. She saw the great families of the

Kent and Sussex borders struggling to show the world the same front that

they had shown before they were shaken. She saw them failing in that

struggle one by one—here a great house was closed, and for sale, with no

buyers because of its unwieldy vastness and long disrepair—here another

was shorn of its estate stripped off it in building plots and small

holdings—yet another had lost its freedom in mortgages, and kept its

acres only at the price of being bound to their ruin. There was no need

for Gervase to tell that the Squires, having outlived their day, were

going under—her broken romance with Jim Parish had shown her that. She

had realised then that it was not likely that she would ever marry into

her own class. The young men who were her friends and associates in the

life of the county must marry wealth. Peter had gone outside the county

and married money—she too one day would have to go outside and marry

money—or marry where money did not matter. The days were gone when Manor

mated with Manor and Grange with Grange—mighty alliances like the

marriages of Kings. Nowadays, just as Kings could no longer mate with

the blood royal but sought consorts among their subjects, so the Squires

must seek their wives outside the strict circle of the “county”—and not

even in the professional classes, which were nearly as hard-hit as

themselves, but in the classes of aspiring trade, nouveaux-riches,

war-profiteers....

Jenny grimaced—yet, after all, what else was there to do? Remain a

spinster like Doris, or induce some hot-blooded heir of impoverished

acres to forget them in a moment of romance, from which he would wake

one day to reproach her.... No, she would have to be like the rest and

marry outside the tribe. But since she must go out, why shouldn’t she go

out in the direction she chose? Why was it very right and proper to

marry into trade as long as it is wealthy, and somehow all wrong if it

is not? Why was Peter without reproach for marrying Vera Asher, whose

grandfather had kept a clothes-mart in the city, while she would never

be forgiven if she married Ben Godfrey, whose grandfather, with his

father and fathers before him, had been a yeoman farmer of ancient land?

The answer of course was plain, and she must not be cynical in giving

it. If she acknowledged that the excuse was money she must also

acknowledge that it was money for the family’s sake—money to keep the

family alive, to save its estates from dispersal and its roof from

strangers. These men and women married into a class beneath them to save

their families. But if they did so to save their families, why shouldn’t

she do so to save herself? Why was there always this talk of the group,

the tribe, the clan, while the individual was sacrificed and pushed

under? Both she and Jim Parish had been sacrificed to his family....

Doris had been sacrificed to hers ... and there was Mary, sacrificed to

the family’s good name, escaping, it is true, at the last, but not till

after her wings had been broken ... there was Peter, marrying a rich

woman and becoming dull and stuffy and precise in consequence. Only

Gervase so far had not been sacrificed—probably he would never be, for

he had already chosen his escape. And she—she now had her chance ... but

she did not know if she would take it.

Lying there in the white break of the dawn, her mind strung with

sleeplessness, she faced the danger. If she did not escape Alard would

have her—she would have to offer herself to it either as Doris had

offered herself or as Peter had offered himself.... Why should she? Why

should she sacrifice her youth to prop its age—an age which must

inevitably end in death. “Things can’t go on much longer—it’s only a

question of putting off the end.” If the house was bound to fall, why

should she be buried in the ruins?... She had a momentary pang—for she

knew that Peter had great schemes for Alard, great dreams for it—that he

hoped to save it and give it back, even in the midst of the world’s

shaking, some of its former greatness. But she could not help that. For

Peter the family might be the biggest thing in life—for her it was not,

and she would be betraying the best of herself if she did not put it

second to other things. What she wanted most in the world was love—love,

peace, settlement, the beauty of content ... these no one but Ben

Godfrey could give her.

The sky was faintly pink behind the firs. A single bird’s note dropped

into the still air. She heard a movement in the room next to hers—she

and Gervase still slept at the top of the house in the two little rooms

they had had as girl and boy. Her brother was getting up—first, she

knew, to serve the altar at Vinehall, then to drive away over the

Kentish hills to his work among bolts and screws and nuts and rods and

grease ... there is more than one way out of the City of Destruction.

§ 14

After that she must have slept, for when she next opened her eyes she

had made up her mind. Jenny was not naturally irresolute but she was

diffident, and this problem of escape was the biggest she had ever had

to tackle. However, sleep had straightened out the twisted workings of

her thought—the way was clear at last.

She sprang out of bed, alive with a glowing sense of determination. She

knew that she had a great deal to plan and to do. This love affair,

apart from its significance, was entirely different from any other she

had had. Her intuition told her that she would have to make the

openings, carry on all the initial stages of the wooing. She would have

to show Godfrey that she cared, or his modesty would make him hang back.

In common language she would have to “make the running.” Rather to her

surprise, she found that she enjoyed the prospect. She remembered once

being a little shocked by Stella Mount, who had confided that she liked

making love herself just as much as being made love to.... Well, Jenny

was not exactly going to make love, but she was going to do something

just as forward, just as far from the code of well-bred people—she was

going to show a man in a class beneath her that she cared for him, that

she wanted his admiration, his courtship....

She hurried over her bath and dressing, urged by the conviction that she

must act, take irretraceable steps, before she had time to think again.

She had already thought enough—more thought would only muddle her, wrap

her in clouds. Action would make things clearer than any amount of

reflection. She would go over to Fourhouses—a litter of collie pups she

had confusedly admired the day before would give her an excuse for a

visit, an excuse which would yet be frail enough to show that it alone

had not brought her there.

She was the first at breakfast that morning, and hoped that no one else

would come down while she was in the room. Her father was generally the

earliest, but today she did not hear his footstep till she was leaving

the table. There were two doors out of the breakfast-room, and Jenny

vanished guiltily through one as Sir John came in at the other. She was

ashamed of herself for such Palais Royal tactics, but felt she would

stoop to them rather than risk having her resolution scotched by the

sight of her father.

She had decided to go on foot to Fourhouses—not only would it mean a

more unobtrusive departure from Conster, but it would show Godfrey her

determination. The purchase of a puppy she had scarcely noticed the day

before was a flimsy excuse for walking five miles across country the

first thing next morning. He would be bound to see at least part of its

significance—and she had known and appraised enough men to realise that

his was the warm, ready type which does not have to see the whole road

clear before it advances.

The early day was warm; a thick haze clotted the air, which was full of

the scents of grass and dust, of the meadowsweet and the drying hay. The

little lanes were already stuffy with sunshine, and before Jenny had

come to Brede she realised that the light tweed suit she had put on was

too heavy, and her summer-felt hat was making a band of moisture round

her head, so that her hair lay draggled on her brows. She took off her

coat and slung it over her arm ... phew! how airless this part of the

country was, with its old, old lanes, trodden by a hundred generations

of hobnails to the depth of fosses ... when she was across the marsh

with its trickery of dykes she would leave the road and take to the

fields. The way had not seemed so long yesterday in the cool of the

evening.... What would Peter say if he could see her now?—Poor old

Peter! It would be dreadful for him if she carried out her scheme. He

felt about things more strongly than anyone.... She was sorry for Peter.

Then she wondered what Godfrey would think when he saw her, arriving hot

and tired and breathless, with her trumped up excuse for seeing him

again. Would he despise her?—Perhaps, after all, he did not particularly

care about her—she was a fool to be so sure that he did. He probably had

that slow, admiring way with all women. Besides, it’s ridiculous to go

by the look in a man’s eyes ... silly ... schoolgirlish ...

novel-reading-old-maidish ... she was losing her balance in her hatred

of things. She would probably find out that he was in love with some

girl of his own class.... Her heart beat painfully at such an idea and

her ridiculous mind denied it, but she knew that her mind was only

obeying her heart.

... Or he might fail to see anything significant in her coming. He

probably had one of those slow-moving country brains on which everything

is lost but the direct hit. He most likely was a dull dog ... and she

had thought he could make her happy—Jenny Alard, with her quick mind,

high breeding and specialised education. Her longing to escape had

driven her into fancying herself in love. All she wanted was to get away

from home—and this door stood open. Beyond it she might find even worse

restrictions and futilities than those from which she fled.

She was losing heart, and almost lost purpose as well. She stopped in

the lane at the foot of Snailham hill, and looked back towards the

north. Conster was hidden behind the ridge of Udimore but she was still

on Alard ground—there was Crouch’s Farm beside the Brede River—and

Little Float and Cockmartin, both Alard farms—and all that green width

of marsh was Alard’s, with its dotted sheep. She had a preposterous

feeling that if she walked off the estate on to Godfrey’s land it would

be too late to turn back ... if she was going back she must go back now.

She stood in the pebbly marle, looking over the marsh to the trees where

Udimore church showed a hummock of roof. She tried to examine herself,

to find out in a few giddy seconds why she was going to Fourhouses. Was

it simply because she was tired of convention—of county shams—of having

to go without things she wanted in order to have things she didn’t

want?—or was she in love with Ben Godfrey, and going to him in spite of

the efforts of her class instinct to keep her back? She suddenly knew

that the latter was the only good reason. If it was true that she had

fallen in love with Godfrey the second time she had seen him—that

afternoon, weeks back, at Starvecrow—and if all this hatred of Alard

ways, this ramp against convention, was no genuine revolt against either

but just the effort of her mind to justify her heart—then she had better

go forward. But if, on the other hand, she really hated her life and was

willing to take any way of escape—particularly if her unrest was due to

the collapse of her affair with Jim Parish—if she was going to

Fourhouses only to escape from Conster—then she had better turn back.

She stood for a moment hesitating, her heels deep in the silt of the

lane, her eyes strained towards Udimore. Then a footstep made her start

and turn round. She had the confused impression of a man and a gun, of a

recognition and a greeting, all blurred together in the mists of her

surprise. She had not expected to meet him so far from his farm, right

off his own land ... she felt a quake of disappointment, too; for the

boundaries of the two estates had now a mysterious significance, and she

was sorry that she had met him before she had left Alard ground, before

she had escaped.

“Good morning, Miss Alard. You’ve come a long way so early.”

“Yes; I was coming to Fourhouses—it struck me that you might be willing

to sell one of those collie pups you showed me yesterday.”

This was not how she had meant to speak. She knew her voice was clipped

and cold. Hang it! she might have managed to break through the wall on

this special occasion. First words are the most significant, and she had

meant hers to have a more than ordinary warmth, instead of which they

had a more than ordinary stiffness. But it was no good trying—she would

never be able so to get rid of the traditions of her class and of her

sex as to show this young man that she loved him ... if indeed she

really did love him.

He was speaking now—she forced herself to listen to what he said.

“I’d never sell you one of those—they’re not worth paying for. It’s only

I’m that soft-hearted I couldn’t think of drowning them. I got rid of

the last litter quite easily, just giving them away. So I’ll be grateful

if you’ll accept one.”

“Thank you—but I really couldn’t allow—I mean....”

“Won’t you come up to the place and look at them? You’ll see for

yourself they’re not much. I could let you have a really good

retriever-pup later, but these collies—it’s just my sister’s Lizzie that

one of our old men gave her years ago, and she’s no particular breed,

and the sire’s their dog at Wickham.”

“Thanks ever so much—but you’re out with your gun, so I won’t trouble

you to turn back.”

She wondered if he would make any explanation, offer some apology for

carrying his gun over Alard fields. But he merely urged her again to

come up to Fourhouses, and slack after her conflict, she gave way and

turned with him.

“Are you bothered much with rabbits?” she asked as they walked up the

hill. “We’re simply over-run with them at Conster.”

“They’re pretty bad, especially now the corn’s up. I generally take out

my gun when I go round the place.”

“But is this your land?—I thought I was still on ours.”

“This is the land I have just bought from your father, Miss Alard. It

was yours three months ago, but it belongs to Fourhouses now.”

§ 15

Jenny had known before that love could make her superstitious—only under

its influence had she occasionally respected the mascots, charms, black

cats and other gods of the age, or yielded to the stronger, stranger

influences of buried urgencies to touch and try.... But she was

surprised at the sudden relief which she felt at Godfrey’s words. She

tried to reason herself out of the conviction that she had definitely

crossed the frontier and could now never go back. She could not help

feeling like one of those escaped prisoners of war she had sometimes

read of during the last five years, who passed unaware the black and

orange boundary posts of Holland, and, after hiding for hours from what

they took for German sentries, found themselves at last confronted by

the friendly Dutch guards. In vain she told herself that it made no

difference whether she met Godfrey on land belonging to Conster or to

Fourhouses—she was in the grip of something stronger than reason; she

could not argue or scold herself out of her follies.

The answer to all her questionings was now pretty plain. She was coming

to Fourhouses for the man, not for escape. No need of her own could have

made a fool of her like this. She was not fancying herself in love with

Ben Godfrey—she really loved him, attracted physically at first, no

doubt, but as she advanced finding ever more and more solid reason for

attachment. She wanted him, and why in the world shouldn’t she have

him?—if he had been rich, not even the lowest rank would have made him

ineligible in her people’s eyes. But because he was only “comfortable,”

only had enough to live on in peace and happiness and dignity, her

family would be horrified at such an alliance—“a common farmer,” she

could hear them calling him, and her cheeks reddened angrily as she

walked up the hill.

“Are you tired?” asked Godfrey—“let me carry your coat—it’s a terrible

hot day.”

She let him relieve her, pleased at the accidental touch of his hand

under the stuff. She wondered if he would say “I beg your pardon” as he

had said the first time. But he was silent, indeed the whole of the way

to Fourhouses he said very little, and she wondered if he was pondering

her in his mind, perhaps asking himself why she had come, trying to

argue away his surprise, telling himself it was just a lady’s way to be

impulsive and tramp five miles to buy a mongrel pup she had scarcely

noticed the day before. Now and then his glance crept towards her,

sweeping sideways from deepset blue eyes, under the fringe of dark

lashes. She liked his eyes, because they were not the brown bovine eyes

of the mixed race who had supplanted the original South Saxons, but the

eyes of the Old People, who had been there before the Norman stirred

French syllables into the home-brew of Sussex names. They were the eyes

of her own people, though she herself had them not, and they would be

the eyes of her children ... she felt the colour mounting again, but

this time it was not the flush of indignation, and when next she felt

his gaze upon her, her own was impelled to meet it. For the first time

on that walk to Fourhouses their eyes met, and she saw that his face was

as red as hers with the stain of a happy confusion.

When they came to the farm, he invited her in, saying that he would

bring her the puppies. For a moment she saw him hesitate at the parlour

door, but to her relief he passed on, leading the way to the kitchen.

“Mother, here’s Miss Alard come again to see Lizzie’s pups”—he ushered

her in rather proudly, she thought, standing back against the door which

he flung wide open.

“You’re welcome,” said Mrs. Godfrey—“please sit down.”

She was ironing at the table, but stopped to pull forward a chair to the

window, which was open. There was no fire in this, the big outer room,

but from a smaller one within came the sound of cracking wood and

occasional bursts of singing.

“I’m afraid I’ve come at an awkward time,” said Jenny.

“Oh, no—we’re never too busy here—and Ben ull be proud to show you the

little dogs, for all he makes out to look down on them, they being no

sort of class and him a bit of a fancier as you might say. You’ve had a

hot walk, Miss Alard—can I get you a drink of milk? It’s been standing

in the cool some while and ull refresh you.”

Jenny was grateful and glad. Mrs. Godfrey fetched her the milk in a

glass from the dairy, then went back to her ironing. She was a stout,

middle-aged woman, bearing her years in a way that showed they had not

been made heavy by too much work or too much childbearing. She could

still show her good white teeth, and her hair had more gloss than grey

in it. She talked comfortably about the weather and the haymaking till

her son came back with the two most presentable of Lizzie’s family.

“If you’ll be kind enough to take one of these little chaps, Miss

Alard....”

They spent twenty minutes or so over the puppies, and in the end Jenny

made her choice and accepted his gift.

“He won’t be ready to leave his mother for a week or two yet.”

“I’ll come back and fetch him.”

“Won’t you come before then?”

They were alone in the great kitchen—Mrs. Godfrey had gone into the

inner room to heat her iron, and they stood between the table and the

window, Jenny still holding the puppy in her arms. The moment stamped

itself upon her memory like a seal. She would always remember that faint

sweet scent of freshly ironed linen, that crack of a hidden fire, that

slow ticking of a clock—and Ben Godfrey’s face before her, so brown,

strong and alive, so lovable in its broad comeliness. The last of her

reserve dropped from her—he ceased to be a problem, a choice, a

stranger; he became just a fond, friendly man, and her heart went out to

him as to a lover, forgetting all besides.

“Yes, of course I’ll come”—she said gently—“when ever you want me.”

§ 16

The rest of that day did not seem quite real—perhaps because she would

not let herself think of what she had done in the morning, what she had

committed herself to. And when the day was over and she lay flat on her

back in her bed, with the bedclothes up to her chin, the morning still

seemed like something she had watched or dreamed rather than something

she had lived.

She did not actually live till the next day at breakfast, when she

turned over the letters beside her plate. Among them lay one in

handwriting she did not know, small and laborious. She looked at the

postmark and saw it was from Icklesham, and immediately found herself

tingling and blushing. Her first impulse was to put it away and read it

in solitude later on, but a contrary impulse made her open it at

once—partly because she could not bear the suspense, and partly because

she could not bear the shame of her own foolishness. Why should she be

so sure it was from Fourhouses? Ben Godfrey was not the only person she

knew in Icklesham ... though the only person she knew who was likely to

write in that careful, half-educated hand.... Yes, it was from

Fourhouses.

_My dear Miss Alard_,

I hope this letter finds you in the best of health, and I hope you

will not think I am taking a liberty to ask if you could meet me by

the Tillingham Bridge on the road from Brede Eye to Horns Cross next

Thursday afternoon at three p.m. I have something very particular to

say to you. Ever since you were kind enough to call this morning and

said you would come back any time I wanted I have been thinking that

perhaps you would like my freindship. Dear Miss Alard, I hope you do

not think I am taking a liberty, and if you do not want my freindship

perhaps you will kindly let me know. But ever since you came over with

Mr. Peter Alard I thought perhaps you would like my freindship. I must

not say any more. But I would like to talk to you on Thursday at three

p.m. if you will meet me on the Tillingham Bridge by Dinglesden Farm.

I think that is better than me coming to your house—[“yes, I think so

too,” said Jenny]—and I should be very much obliged if you would come.

My dear Miss Alard I hope you do not think I am taking a liberty on so

short an acquaintance, but I feel I should like to be your friend. If

you would rather not have my freindship perhaps you will kindly let me

know. Having no more to say, I will now draw to a close.

Yours sincerely,

BENJAMIN GODFREY.

Jenny was half surprised to find herself choking with laughter.

“Here I am, down to brass tacks,” she thought to herself—“I must put

this letter with the best parlour and the Sunday clothes” ... then

suddenly, deep in her heart—“Oh, the darling! the darling!”

“Your letters seem to be amusing,” said Doris from the other end of the

table.

“Yes, they are.”

“I wish mine were. I never seem to get anything but bills. I’m glad

you’re more lucky—though I expect it makes a difference not hearing from

Jim.”

“Oh, we never corresponded much—we met too often.”

“It was always the other way round with me ... the piles of letters I

used to get.... I expect you remember.”

Jenny could remember nothing but a fat letter which appeared every other

day for about three weeks, from an Indian civil servant who was

presumptuous enough to think himself fit to mate with Alard.

“Well, I’ve had my good times,” continued Doris, “so I oughtn’t to

grumble. Things seem to have been different when I was your age. Either

it was because there were more men about, or”—she smiled reminiscently.

“Anyhow, there weren’t any gaps between. I put an end to it all a little

while ago—I had to—one finds these things too wearing ... and I didn’t

want to go on like Ninon de l’Enclos—I don’t think it’s dignified.”

“Perhaps not,” said Jenny absently. She was wondering what Doris would

say to her letter if she could see it.

After breakfast she took it up to the old schoolroom and read it again.

This time it did not make her laugh. Rather, she felt inclined to cry.

She thought of Ben Godfrey sitting at the kitchen table with a sheet of

note-paper and a penny bottle of ink before him—she saw him wiping his

forehead and biting his penholder—she saw him writing out the note over

and over again because of the blots and smudges that would come. Yes,

she must remember the debit side—that he was not always the splendid

young man she saw walking over his fields or driving his trap. There

were occasions on which he would appear common, loutish, ignorant....

But, and this was the change—she saw that she loved him all the better

for these occasions—these betraying circumstances of letter writing,

best parlour and best clothes, which seemed to strip him of his

splendour and show him to her as something humble, pathetic and dear.

“Dear Mr. Godfrey,” she said to herself—“I shall be very humbly grateful

for your freindship ... and I can’t imagine it spelt any other way.”

She found it very difficult to answer the letter, as she was uncertain

of the etiquette which ruled these occasions. Evidently one said little,

but said it very often. In the end all she did was to write saying she

would meet him on the Tillingham bridge, as he suggested. She thought it

was rather rash of him to appoint a tryst on her father’s land, but they

could easily go off the road on to the marsh, where they were not likely

to be seen.

She posted the letter herself in the box at the end of the drive, then

gave herself up to another twenty-four hours’ in reality of waiting.

§ 17

The next day was heavy with the threat of thunder. The ragged sky hung

low over the trees, and clouds of dust blew down the lanes, through the

aisles of the fennel. Jenny was exactly punctual at her tryst. She did

not know whether or not he would expect to be kept waiting, but she had

resolved to weigh this new adventure by no false standards of coquetry,

and walked boldly on to Dinglesden bridge just as the thin chimes of

Conster’s stable-clock came across the fields.

He was nowhere in sight, but in a couple of minutes he appeared, riding

this time on a big-boned brown horse, who swung him along at a slow,

lurching pace. Evidently he had not expected to find her there before

him.

Directly he caught sight of her he jerked the reins and finished the

last hundred yards at a canter, pulling up beside her on the crest of

the bridge.

“Good-day, Miss Alard. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

She was pale with shyness. Hitherto she had never, under any

circumstances, felt ill at ease with a man, but now she was

incomprehensibly too shy to speak. He had dismounted, and was leading

his horse towards the gate opening on the marsh by Dinglesden Farm. She

found herself walking beside him.

“Bit thundery,” he remarked—“maybe we’ll have a storm.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’m not sure—it may blow over. I hope it does, for I’ve still a couple

of fields uncut.”

“The hay’s been good this year.”

“Not so bad—but a bit stalky.”

They were through the gate now, walking side by side over the

grass-grown, heavy rutted track that leads past the barns of Dinglesden

down the Tillingham marsh, between the river and the hop-gardens. Jenny

was glad they were off the road—soon they would be out of sight of it.

The hop-gardens that covered the slope and threw a steamy, drowsy scent

into the heaviness of the day, would hide them completely from anyone

who went by. She began to feel very much alone with Godfrey ... and

still neither of them spoke. They had not spoken since they had left the

road.

Only a few hundred yards brought them to the turn of the valley, where

the Tillingham swings southward towards Rye. Behind them the farm and

the bridge were shut out by the sloping hop-gardens, before them the

marsh wound, a green street, between the sorrel-rusted meadows, with the

Mocksteeple standing gaunt and solitary on the hill below Barline.

“It’s very good of you to have come,” said Ben.

“I—I wanted to come.”

He checked his horse, and they stood still.

“You—you don’t think it cheek—I mean, that I’m taking a liberty—in

wanting to know you?”

“No....”

“When you came that evening to the farm, I—I wanted to say all sorts of

things, and I didn’t like ... for I didn’t know....”

“I should like to be your friend.”

Her voice came firmly at last.

“I should like to be your friend,” she repeated.

She knew what the word “friend” meant in his ears. “My friend” was what

a girl of his class would say when she meant “my lover.”

“Well, then....”

He took her hand and blushed.

“Let’s sit down for a bit,” he said.

A stripped and fallen tree lay on the grass, and they sat down on it

when he had hitched his horse to the fence of the hop-garden. Long hours

seemed to roll by as they sat there side by side ... the sun came out

for a moment or two, sending the shadow of the hop-bines racing over the

ground. There was a pulse of thunder behind the meadows in the north.

Then suddenly, for some unfathomable reason, Jenny began to cry.

At first he seemed paralysed with astonishment, while she leaned forward

over her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. But the next moment his arms

came round her, drawing her gently up against him, her cheek against his

homespun coat that smelt of stables.

“My dear ... my little thing ... don’t cry! What is it?—Are you unhappy?

What have I done?”

She could not speak—she could only lift her face to his, trying to

smile, trying to tell him with her streaming eyes that she was not

unhappy, only silly, only tired. He seemed to understand, for he drew

her closer, and she could feel his whole body trembling as he put his

mouth shyly against hers.

One or two drops of rain splashed into the ruts, and a moan of wind

suddenly came through the hop-bines. He lifted his head, still

trembling. He looked at her sidelong, as if for a moment he expected her

to be angry with him, to chide his presumption. He would have taken away

his arm, but she held it about her.

“You’ll get wet,” he said reluctantly—“we should ought to move.”

“I don’t care—I don’t want to move. Let me stay like this.”

“Then you aren’t angry with me for——”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, we aren’t long acquainted....”

§ 18

During the next two months Jenny grew sweetly familiar with that strip

of marsh between the hop-gardens and the River Tillingham. The

Mocksteeple, standing out on the hill above the river’s southward bend,

had become one of many joyful signs. Once more the drab, ridiculous

thing looked down on Alard loves, though now it was not a cynical Alard

Squire making sport of the country girls, but an Alard girl tasting true

love for the first time with a yeoman. Her earlier love affairs, even

that latest one with Jim Parish, became thin, frail things in

comparison.

Godfrey was contemptuous of Jim.

“He couldn’t have loved you, or he’d never have let you go. He’d have

let his place go first.”

“Would you let Fourhouses go for me, Ben?”

“Reckon I would.”

“Thank God you haven’t got to choose.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t got to choose, for I’d like to show you.” “Well,

I’m glad, for whichever way you chose it ud be hard for you.”

“No—not hard.”

“You don’t know, because you’re safe; you haven’t even got to think of

it. But I’m sorry for some of our men—yes, for Jim Parish, and even for

Peter. You see, it’s not merely choosing for themselves. They have their

families to consider. You can’t dish all your relations just because you

want to get married.”

Love was making her soft in judgment.

“No relation that had any heart would stand in the way of a young chap’s

marrying a good girl. My mother ud sooner turn out and live in a cottage

than see me go without a wife.”

“But would you turn your mother out, Ben?”

“We’d all go out together—for my wife.”

His love-making was a delightful blend of diffidence and ardour. At

first it had been difficult to show him that she was touchable,

approachable to caresses. Yet once she had shown him the way, he had

required no more leading. He had a warm, gentle nature, expressing

itself naturally in fondness. His love for her seemed to consist in

equal parts of passion and affection. It lacked the self-regarding

element to which she was accustomed, and though it held all the eager

qualities of fire, there was about it a simplicity and a shyness which

were new to her. After a time she discovered that he had a mind like a

young girl’s, and an experience very nearly as white. He had spent his

life in the society of animals and good women, and the animals had

taught him to regard them not as symbols of license but as symbols of

order, and the women had taught him that they were something more than

animals. He had the fundamental cleanness of a man who takes nature

naturally.

There had been another surprise for her, too, and this had lain in his

attitude towards her position and her family. She discovered that his

deference for her was entirely for her as a woman, and he had no

particular respect for her as an Alard. His courtship would have been as

diffident if she had been the daughter of the farmer of Glasseye or the

farmer of Ellenwhorne. He was grateful to her for loving him, and

infinitely careful of her love, as a privilege which might be withdrawn,

but he saw no condescension in her loving him, no recklessness in her

seeking him. Indeed, the only time she found a stiffness in him was when

she told him that their love would have to be secret as far as her

family was concerned. He had come to see her openly and innocently at

Conster, and though luckily her people had been out, and she had been

able to convey to the servants that he had only called on business, she

had had to warn him that he must not come again.

“But why not?—I’m not ashamed of loving you.”

“It isn’t that, Ben.”

“Nor ashamed of myself, neither.”

“Oh, darling, can’t you understand that it’s because of my parents—what

they’ll think and say—and do, if they get the chance?”

“You mean they won’t hold with us marrying?”

“No—they won’t hold with it at all.”

“I expect they’d like you to marry a lord.”

“It isn’t so much a lord that they want as someone with money.”

“Well, I’ve got plenty of that, my lovely.”

“Not what they’d call plenty—they want a really rich man, who’ll be able

to put us on our feet again.”

“Reckon he’d be hard to find. You’d need fifty thousand to do that, I

reckon.”

Jenny nodded.

“Thank God,” he said, “my lands free.”

“You’re lucky.”

“It’s only because I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, nor my

father before me. That piece I bought from your father is the first that

Fourhouses has bought for sixty years. We’re not grand landlords, us.

Maybe” ... he hesitated a moment ... “your father and mother ud think

you were marrying beneath you to marry me. I reckon we’re not gentry,

and I was sent to the National School. But my folk have had Fourhouses

two hundred year, and we’ve kept ourselves honest, for all that my

grandfather married a gipsy. There was a lady I met on leave in Egypt

asked me to marry her,” he added naïvely, “and Lord! she was beautiful

and had lovely gowns, and was a great man’s widow. But I couldn’t feel

rightly towards her, so I declined the favour she would do me, but was

honoured all the same. What are you laughing at, duck?”

“Not at you.”

She realised that the war was probably in part responsible for his

failure to see the barriers between them—its freedoms coupled with his

own inherited consciousness of a good inheritance and an honest history.

She was not sorry for this—it showed that he was aware of no

maladjustments in their comradeship, in their tastes, views, thoughts,

ideas, which now they exchanged freely. It made their courtship much

more natural. All she feared was his resentment at her family’s

attitude.

But she found him unexpectedly mild on this point. His self-respect was

solid and steady enough not to be shaken by what would have upset a man

standing less securely. He was proud of his yeoman birth, his prosperous

farm and free inheritance, and could laugh at the contempt of

struggling, foundering Conster. Moreover, he loved Jenny, and, since she

loved him, could forgive those who did not think him good enough for

her. He agreed that their engagement should be kept from her people,

though it was known to his, till she could find a proper time for

disclosing it. Meanwhile they met either at Fourhouses, where the

kindly, dignified welcome of his mother and sisters saved their love

from any sordid touch of the clandestine, or else, nearer Jenny’s home,

at Brede Eye or the Mocksteeple.

As time went on she felt the necessity of taking at least one member of

her family into her confidence—partly to make contrivance more easy, and

partly as a help in the ultimate crisis which must come before long. Ben

was slow in his methods, and did not belong to a class who made

marriages in haste, but she knew that the last months of the year would

probably be crucial. She would then have somehow to declare herself, and

she saw the need for an ally.

Of course there was only Gervase. She knew that he alone was in the

least likely to take her part; and in spite of her growing approach to

Peter, she realised that it would be folly to turn to him now. He had

married a girl whose grandfather Ben Godfrey’s grandfather would have

despised, nevertheless he would be horror-stricken at the marriage she

proposed to make—he would talk as if she was marrying beneath her, as if

she was making herself cheap and degrading her name. She could not bear

it.... No, Peter would have to stay outside. Gervase was altogether

different—he had accomplished his own revolt, and would encourage hers.

Besides, he had always been her special brother, and though lately his

new interests and long absences had a trifle estranged them, she knew

she had only to turn to him to find their old alliance standing.

It was with this special decision that she came from the Mocksteeple one

evening in September. She had told Ben that she meant to confide in

Gervase, and he had agreed, though she knew that he too was sorry it

could not be Peter. She felt the approach of relief—it would be a relief

to have someone with whom she could discuss her difficulties, on whose

occasional co-operation she could depend, and whose goodwill would

support her during the catastrophic days of disclosure. Gervase seemed

greater to her in all these capacities than he seemed to Ben. She knew

that Ben thought him a mere boy, whose knowledge of their circumstances

might, far from giving them support, actually lead to their confusion.

But Jenny still had her queer new respect for Gervase. No doubt he was a

hothead, a rather uncritical revolutionary; but his ideas seemed lately

to have grown more stable; they seemed less ready-made, more the fruit

of his own thinking. His contempt of his people’s gods had no longer

such a patent origin in youthful bumptiousness, but seemed rather due to

the fact of his having built his own holy places. She wondered what had

taught him wisdom—which of the new elements that had lately come into

his life. Was it work, religion, love, or merely his growing older?

§ 19

She did not find an opportunity for speaking to him alone till after

dinner. He went out, saying that he had some work to do at the garage,

and as Rose Alard had dined at Conster and now made the fourth at

bridge, Jenny was soon able to slip away after him.

She found him guiding an electric light bulb to and fro among the inward

parts of the Ford. Gervase always did his own cleaning and repairs,

which meant a lot of hard work, as the run to Ashford must be made every

day, no matter how dirty the roads and the weather, and the lorry, which

had long lost its youth when he first took it over, was now far advanced

in unvenerable old age.

“Hullo, Jenny,” he cried when he saw her—“so you’ve escaped from the

dissipations of the drawing-room.”

“Yes, Rose is playing tonight, thank heaven! and I’ve come out to talk

to you.”

“That’s good. I’m sorry to be in this uncivilised place, but I can’t

help it. Henry Ford has appendicitis, and I must operate at once. He’s

got one wheel in the grave, I’m afraid, but with a little care and

coddling I can make him last till I’m through with Ashford.”

“When will that be?”

“Next January.”

“And what will you do then?”

“Get some sort of a job, I suppose.”

She thought he looked fagged and jaded, though it might have been the

light, and the ugliness of his dirty blue slops buttoned up to his

collarless chin. After all, now she came to think of it, he must have a

pretty hard life—up every morning at six or earlier, driving fifteen

miles to and fro in all weathers, working hard all day, and then coming

home late, generally to finish the day with cleaning and repairs.

“Gervase,” she said abruptly—“are you happy?”

“Yes, Jen—quite happy. Are you?”

“Oh, Gervase....”

He looked up at the change in her voice.

“I’ve something to tell you,” she said hurriedly—“I’m going to be

married.”

“What! To Jim Parish?”

“Oh, no, not to him. That’s all over. Gervase, I want you to stand by

me; that’s why I’m telling you this. I’m making a great venture. I’m

marrying Ben Godfrey.”

“Ben Godfrey....”

He repeated the name vaguely. Evidently it conveyed nothing to him. He

was so much away that he heard little of the talk of the estate.

“Yes. The farmer of Fourhouses. Don’t you know him? I’ve known him three

months, and we love each other. Father and Mother and Peter and everyone

will be wild when they know. That’s why I want to have you on my side.”

“Jenny, dear....” He carefully deposited Henry Ford’s appendix on the

shelf, wiped his oily fingers on a piece of rag, and came and sat beside

her on the packing case where she had perched herself—“Jenny, dear, this

is too exciting for words. Do tell me more about it.”

Jenny told him as much as she could—how meeting Ben Godfrey had set her

mind on a new adventure and a new revolt—how she had resolved not to let

her chance slip by, but had let him know she cared—how eager and sweet

his response had been, and how happy life was now, with meeting and

love-making. Her manner, her looks, her hesitations told him as much as

her words.

“You will stand by me, won’t you, Gervase?”

“Of course I will, Jen. But do you mind if I ask you one or two

questions?”

“Ask whatever you like. As you’re going to help me, you’ve a right to

know.”

“Well, are you quite sure this is going to last?”

“My dear! I never thought you’d ask that.”

“I daresay it sounds a silly and impertinent question. But I must ask

it. Do you think he’s pulled your heart away from your judgment? And do

you think it’s possible that you may have been driven towards him by

reaction, the reaction from all that long, meandering, backboneless

affair with Jim Parish, and all the silly, trivial things that did for

it at last? Don’t be angry with me. I must put that side of the question

to you, or I’d never forgive myself.”

“Do you think I’ve never put it to myself? Oh, Gervase, it was exactly

what I thought at the beginning. I told myself it was only reaction—only

because I was bored. But when I met him at Fourhouses I couldn’t help

seeing it was more than that, and now I know it’s real—I know, I

_know_.”

“Have you tastes and ideas in common?”

“Yes, plenty. He has very much the same sort of abstract ideas as I

have—thinks the same about the war and all that. And he’s read, too—he

loves Kipling, and Robert Service’s poems, though he reads boys’ books

as well. He really has a better literary taste than I have—you know what

Vera thinks of my reading. And he’s travelled much more than I have,

seen more of the world. He’s been in Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and Greece,

and France. And yet he’s so simple and unassuming. He’s much more of a

‘gentleman’ in his speech and manners than lots of men I know.”

“Have you ever seen him in his Sunday clothes?”

“Yes, I have, and survived. He wears a ready-made brown suit with a

white stripe in it. And that’s the worst there is about him.”

“What are his people like?”

“They’re darlings. His mother is solid and comfortable and motherly, and

the girls are about my own age, but with much better manners. When Ben

and I are married, the others will live in a part of the house which is

really quite separate from the rest—has a separate door and kitchen—the

newest of the four houses. Oh, I tell you, Gervase, I’ve faced

everything—tastes, ideas, family, Sunday clothes—and there’s nothing

that isn’t worth having, or at least worth putting up with for the sake

of the rest, for the sake of real comfort, real peace, real freedom,

real love....”

Her eyes began to fill, and he felt her warm, sobbing breath on his

cheek.

“Jennie, I want to kiss you. But I should have to make too many

preparations first—take off my slops, wash my hands with soda, and clean

my teeth, because I’ve been smoking woodbines all day. So I think I’d

better put it off till Sunday. But I do congratulate you, dear—not only

on being in love but on being so brave. I think you’re brave, Jenny;

it’s so much more difficult for a woman to break away than for a man.

But you’d never have found happiness in the family groove, and sometimes

I was afraid that ... never mind, I’m not afraid now.”

“And you’ll stand by me, Gervase?”

“Of course I will. But you’ve got to show me the young man. I won’t

stand by an abstraction. I want to see if I like him as flesh and

blood.”

“I’ll take you over to Fourhouses on Saturday afternoon. And I’m quite

sure you’ll like him.”

“I’ve made up my mind to, so he’ll be a pretty hopeless washout if I

don’t. I wonder that I haven’t ever met him, but I expect it’s being

away so much.”

Jenny was about to enlarge further on her young man’s qualities, when

she remembered that there is nothing more tiresome to an unprosperous

lover than the rhapsodies of someone whose love is successful and

satisfied. Gervase had loved Stella Mount for two years—everybody said

so—but nothing seemed to have come of it. It must distress him to hear

of her happiness which had come so quickly. She wondered if his worn,

fagged look were perhaps less due to hardship than to some distress of

his love. She was so happy that she could not bear to think of anyone

being miserable, especially Gervase, whom, next to Ben, she loved better

than all the world. She checked her outpourings, and took his grimy,

oil-stained hand in hers, laying it gently in her satin lap.

“Kid—do tell me. How are things between you and Stella?”

“There aren’t any ‘things’ between me and Stella.”

“Oh, Gervase, don’t tell me you’re not in love with her.”

“I won’t tell you anything so silly. Of course I’m in love with her, but

it’s not a love that will ever give her to me. It can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because she doesn’t care for me in that way. I don’t suppose she thinks

of me as anything but a boy.”

“Doesn’t she know you love her?”

“She may—I daresay she does. But I’m sure she doesn’t love me.”

“Have you ever asked her?”

“No.”

“Well, then ... Gervase!”

“One can find out that sort of thing without asking.”

“Indeed one can’t—not with a girl like Stella. If you didn’t speak,

she’d probably try very hard not to influence you in any way, because

she realises that there are difficulties, and would be afraid of leading

you further than you felt inclined.”

“I haven’t seen so very much of her lately. We never meet except on

Sundays. I can’t help thinking that she’s trying to keep me at a

distance.”

“Perhaps she’s surprised at your not speaking. How long have you been

friends?”

“About three years, I suppose.”

“And all that time people have been bracketing you together, and you’ve

said nothing. I expect she’s wondering why on earth you don’t make love

to her.”

“I shouldn’t dare.”

“Not to Stella?—She seems to me a girl one could make love to very

easily.”

“I agree—once she’d said ‘yes.’ But she’s a girl one couldn’t take risks

with—she’d be too easily lost. I’ve a feeling that if I made a move in

that direction without being sure of her, she’d simply go away—fade out.

And I’m terrified of losing the little I’ve got of her.”

“But you may lose her through not being bold enough. It sickens a girl

frightfully when a man hangs round and doesn’t speak. The reason that

she seems to avoid you now may be that she’s offended.”

“Jenny, you don’t know Stella. She’s so candid, so transparent, that if

she had any such feelings about me, I’d be sure to see it. No, I think

she stands away simply because she’s found out that people are talking,

and wants to keep me at a distance.”

“But you can’t be sure. You may be quite mistaken. If I was a man I’d

never let things go by default like that. She won’t ‘fade out’ if you do

the thing properly. Women are always pleased to be asked in marriage—at

least if they’re human, and Stella’s human if she’s nothing else.”

“And so am I. That’s why I can’t bear the thought of her saying ‘no.’”

“I’ll be surprised if she says ‘no.’ But anyhow I’d rather lose a good

thing through its being refused me than through not having the spirit to

ask for it.”

“Yes, I think you’re right there.”

He fell into a kind of abstraction, stroking his chin with one hand,

while the other still lay in her lap. Then he rose suddenly and went

over to the shelf where he had put his tools.

“Well, I can’t leave Henry Ford with his inside out while I talk about

my own silly affairs. You may be right, Jen—I dunno. But I’m

frightfully, ever so, glad about you—you dear.”

“Thank you, Gervase. It’s such a relief to have you on my side.”

“When are you going to spring it on the family?”

“Oh, not just yet—not till Christmas, perhaps. We want to have

everything settled first.”

“I think you’re wise.”

“Remember, you’re coming with me to Fourhouses on Saturday.”

“Rather! That’s part of the bargain. I must see the young man.”

“And I’m sure you’ll like him.”

“I can very nearly promise to like him.”

She went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

“Good night, old boy. I must be going in now—I suppose you’re here till

bed time?”

“And beyond—good night, Jenny.”

“Gervase, you’re getting thin—I can feel your bones.”

“I’d be ashamed if you couldn’t. And do run along—I’ve just had a vision

of Wills carrying in the barley water tray. Clairvoyantly I can see him

tripping over Mother’s footstool, clairaudiently I can hear Father

saying ‘Damn you, Wills. Can’t you look where you’re going?’... Leave

the busy surgeon now, there’s a dear.”

He stepped back from under her hands, and thoughtfully held up Henry

Ford’s appendix to the light.

§ 20

Jenny had made more impression than she knew on Gervase’s ideas of

Stella. Hitherto he had always tacitly accepted a tolerated position—she

had allowed him to go for walks with her, to come and see her on

Sundays, to write to her, to talk to her endlessly on the dull topic of

himself; she had always been friendly, interested, patient, but he had

felt that if she loved him she would not have been quite all these—not

quite so kind or friendly or patient. And lately she had withdrawn

herself—she had found herself too busy to go for walks, and in her

father’s house there was always the doctor or the priest. He respected

and thought he understood her detachment. People were “talking,” as long

ago they had “talked” about her and Peter, and she wanted this new,

unfounded gossip to die.

Now it struck him that there was a chance that Jenny might be right, and

that Stella fled before the gossip not because she wanted to disprove

it, but because she wished it better founded, was perhaps a little vexed

with him that it was not. Of course, if all these three years she had

been wanting him to speak.... For the first time he saw a certain

selfishness in his conduct—he was ashamed to realise that he had been

content with his position as hopeless lover, so content that he had

never given a thought to wondering if it pleased her. There had been a

subtle self-indulgence in his silent devotion.... “Lord! I believe it’s

as bad as if I’d pestered her.”

But he really could not believe that if Stella loved him he would not

know it. One of her chief qualities was candour, and she was impulsive

enough to make him think that she would readily give expression to any

attraction that she felt. If Jenny, who was so much more cold and

diffident, could have been quickened by love into taking the first step

towards Ben Godfrey, how much more swiftly and decisively would ardent

Stella move when her heart drove her. Of course she might see the

drawbacks and dangers of marrying a man so much younger than herself—she

might have held back for his sake ... perhaps that was why she was

holding back now.... But he did not really think so—love was the last

emotion that a nature like Stella’s could hide, however resolute her

will.

There seemed no way of solving his doubts but to do as Jenny suggested

and to ask her. He shrank from putting his fate to the test.... But that

was only part of this same selfishness he had discovered. By speaking,

he could harm nobody but himself. He might indeed turn himself out of

Paradise, that garden of hopeless loving service which was home to him

now. But he could not hurt or offend Stella—she could not accuse him of

precipitancy after three years—and if it was true that she cared, as

might be just possible, then he would have put an end to a ridiculous

and intolerable state of things.

In this indecision he went with Jenny to Fourhouses on Saturday. He did

not talk to her about his own affairs—for hers were too engrossing for

both of them. She was desperately anxious that he should like Ben

Godfrey, not only because it would put their alliance on firm and

intimate ground, but because she wanted her brother’s friendship to

apologise and atone to her lover for the slights of the rest of her

family. As she grew in love for Ben and in experience of his worth she

came fiercely and almost unreasonably to resent what she knew would be

the attitude of her people towards him. She came more and more to see

him from his own point of view—a man as good as Alard, and more

honourably planted in the earth. She marvelled at herself now because

she had once thought that she was stooping—she laughed at her scheme for

holding out the sceptre.

But though she was anxious, she was not surprised that the two men

should like each other. Ben Godfrey had all the qualities that Gervase

admired, and young Alard was by this time quite without class

consciousness, having lost even the negative kind which comes from

conscientious socialism. He had had very little of congenial male

society during the last two and a half years, as his work at Ashford had

kept him chiefly among men with whom he had little in common. The farmer

of Fourhouses belonged altogether to a different breed from the

self-assertive young mechanics at Gillingham and Golightly’s ... there

was no need to warn Jenny here of fatal differences in the pursuit of

wealth, women and God.

Gervase was very favourably impressed by all he saw, and came home a

little envious of his sister. She had found a happiness which

particularly appealed to him, for it was of both common and adventurous

growth. She would be happy in the common homely things of life, and yet

they would not be hers in quite the common way—she would hold them as an

adventurer and a discoverer, for to win them she would have dared and

perhaps suffered much.

That was how Gervase wanted happiness—with double roots in security and

daring. He wondered if only the kingdom of heaven was happy in that way,

and if he could not find homeliness and adventure together on earth. He

did not want one without the other, he did not want peace with dullness,

nor excitement with unrest. He had learned that the soul could know

adventure with profoundest quiet—might not the body know it too? Walking

home in the sunset from Fourhouses, Gervase longed for the resurrection

of the body—for his body to know what his soul knew; and his heart told

him that only Stella could give him this, and that if she would not, he

must go without it.

§ 21

On Sunday mornings Gervase always went to see his mother before

breakfast. It was to make up, he said, for seeing so little of her

during the rest of the week. Lady Alard was subtly pleased and flattered

by these visits. No one else ever paid them. He would sit on the bed and

talk to her—not as the rest of the family talked, in a manner carefully

adapted to her imbecility, but as one intelligent being to another,

about politics and books and other things she could not understand. This

pleased her all the more because he was careful to suggest her part of

the conversation as well as carrying on his own; he never let her expose

her ignorance. And though she secretly knew he was aware of it, and that

he knew that she knew, the interview never failed to raise her in her

own esteem, as a mother in whom her son confided.

This particular Sunday he stayed rather longer than usual, giving her

the right attitude towards Queen Victoria, as to which she had always

been a little uncertain. He had just been reading Lytton Strachey’s

_Life_, and they laughed together over the tartan upholstery of

Balmoral, and shook their heads and wondered over John Brown. From John

Brown the conversation somehow wandered to Gervase’s work at Ashford,

and finally ended in a discussion of the days not so very far ahead when

he should have finished at the workshop and be his own master.

“What shall I do with myself then, Mother? Shall I open a garage in

Leasan, so that you can sack Appleby and sell the car, and hire off me?

Or would you like just to sack Appleby and let me drive the car? You’d

find me most steady and reliable as a shuvver, and it would be such fun

having tea with the maids when you went calling.”

“I wish you’d taken up a more dignified profession. There really doesn’t

seem to be anything for you to do now that isn’t rather low.”

“I’m afraid I like doing low things, Mother. But I really don’t know

what I’m going to do when I leave Gillingham’s. It’s funny—but my life

seems to stop at Christmas. I can’t look any further. When I first went

into the works I was always making plans for what I’d do when I came out

of them. But now I can’t think of anything. Well, anyhow, I’ve got more

than three months yet—there’ll be time to think of something before

then. Did you know that I start my holiday next week?—Ten whole, giddy

days—think of that!”

“Shall you be going away?”

“No, I don’t think so. A man I was with at Winchester asked me to come

and stop with his people. But he lives in Scotland, and I can’t afford

the journey. Besides it wouldn’t be worth it just for a week.”

“I thought you said you’d got ten days.”

“Yes—but I’m going to spend four of them at Thunders Abbey near

Brighton. Father Luce thought it would be a good idea if I went to a

retreat.”

“Oh, Gervase!—is it a monastery?”

“The very same. It’s the chief house of the Order of Sacred Pity.”

“But, my dear—are you—oh, you’re not going to become a monk?”

“No fear—I’m just going into retreat for four days, for the good of my

soul.”

“Well, I don’t know what a retreat is, but I feel it would do you much

more good if you went to Scotland. You’re looking quite white and seedy.

Are you sure your heart’s all right? You know we’ve got angina in the

family. I’ve had it for years and years, and poor George died of it. I’m

so afraid you’ve got it too.”

“I haven’t—honour bright. I’m looking white because I want a holiday—and

I’m going to have one—for both body and soul.... And now I really must

go down to breakfast or I shan’t be able to get more than my share of

the kidneys.”

Sunday breakfast was an important contrast with the breakfasts of the

week. On week-days he either scrambled through a meal half-cooked by the

kitchen-maid, or shared the dry short-commons of Father Luce’s cottage.

On Sundays he ate his way exultingly through porridge, bacon, kidneys,

toast and honey, with generally three cups of coffee and a slice of

melon. As a rule the family were all down together on Sunday, having no

separate engagements, but an hour of united loafing before Appleby

brought round the car to take to church such of them as felt inclined

for it.

Gervase had to start earlier—directly breakfast was over. His Parish

Mass was at half-past ten, in consideration for Vinehall’s Sunday

dinners, since there the rich and the poor were not separated into

morning and evening congregations. Also he was Master of the Ceremonies,

and had to be in the sacristy well before the service began, to make the

usual preparations, and exhort and threaten the clumsy little servers,

who came tumbling in at the last moment with their heads full of

Saturday’s football. Gervase was not a ritualist, and his aim was to

achieve as casual an effect as possible, to create an atmosphere of

homeliness and simplicity round the altar. But so far he had got no

nearer his ideal than a hard-breathing concentration—the two

torch-bearers gripped their torches as if they were to defend their

lives with them, and the panting of the thurifer mingled with the racket

of his cheap brass censer.

It was not till the sermon began that he had time to look for Stella.

When he had taken his seat in the Sanctuary with his arms folded, and

had seen that the three little boys were also sitting with their arms

folded instead of in more abandoned attitudes, he was free to search for

her face through the incense-cloud that floated in the nave. He found

her very soon, for a ray of golden, dusty sunshine fell upon her as she

sat with her arm through Dr. Mount’s. The sunshine had dredged all the

warm brown and red tints out of her hair and face, giving her a queer

white and golden look that made her unreal. As he looked at her, she

smiled, and he found that her smile had come in response to a smile of

his which had unknowingly stolen over his face as he watched her. Her

smile was rather sad, and he wondered if the sadness too was a response.

Mr. Luce was delivering one of Newman’s Parochial Sermons in his own

halting words, and though Gervase always made it a point of discipline

to listen to sermons, however much they bored him, he found that this

morning attention was almost impossible. Stella seemed to fix his

thoughts so that he could not drag them from her. He knew that his

attitude towards her was changing—it was becoming more disturbed, more

desperate. His heart must have been ready for this change, for he did

not think that Jenny’s words would have had power to work it of

themselves. He wondered where it was leading him ... he wondered if it

had anything to do with this feeling as of a ditch dug across his life

at the end of the year.... But probably his leaving the works after

Christmas would account for that. Well, anyhow, he would have to put an

end to the present state of affairs—they were the result of mere

selfishness and cowardice on his part. Perhaps he ought to go away—leave

Stella altogether, since she did not love him and his heart was unquiet

because of her ... he would have his chance to go away in January—right

away.... But he could not—he could never bear to live away from her. And

he had no certain knowledge that she did not love him—perhaps she

did—perhaps Jenny was right after all.... “In the Name of the Father and

of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

§ 22

After Mass, Gervase and the Vicar walked together to Hollingrove.

“I’ve heard from Thunders Abbey,” said Gervase to Luce, “and there’s a

vacancy for the eighteenth. So I shall go.”

“I wonder how you’ll like it.”

“So do I. But I’m glad I’m going. They’re full up really, but Father

Lawrence said I could sleep at the farm.”

“Then you’ll have to get up early. It’s fifteen minutes’ walk from the

Abbey, and Mass is at half-past six and of obligation.”

“Never mind—I’m used to hardships, though I know you think I wallow in

unseemly luxuries. But I’m getting keen on this, Father. Whether I like

it or not, I know it will be exciting.”

“Exciting! That’s a nice thing to expect of a retreat.”

“Well, religion generally is exciting, isn’t it, so the more I get the

more exciting it’s likely to be.”

“Um—too exciting perhaps.”

“What do you mean, Father?”

But Luce would not tell him, and in another minute they were at Dr.

Mount’s cottage, where they always had mid-day dinner on Sundays. It was

cooked by Stella herself, helped by the little maid, so she did not

appear till it was ready. She had changed her frock and bore no traces

of her labours beyond a face heated by the fire. Her cheeks were flushed

and her eyes bright—she looked absurdly young. How old was she, Gervase

wondered? Twenty-eight or twenty-nine? But she did not look a bit over

twenty. She did not look as old as he did. It must be her vitality which

kept her young like this—her vitality ... and the way she did her hair.

He smiled.

“What are you smiling at, Gervase?”

“At you, Stella.”

“And why at me?”

“Because you look so absurdly young. And I’ve been very knowing, and

have decided that it’s the way you do your hair.”

“Really, Gervase, you’re not at all gallant. Surely I look young because

I am young. If you think different you oughtn’t to say so.”

“This is a poor beginning for your career as a ladies’ man,” said Dr.

Mount.

“Just as well he should start it on me,” said Stella—“then he’ll know

the technique better by the time it really matters.”

Her words stabbed Gervase—they showed him how he stood with her. She did

not take him seriously—or if she did, she was trying to show him that it

was all no use, that he must give up thinking of her. The result was

that he thought of her with concentrated anxiety for the rest of the

meal, his thoughts making him strangely silent.

He was not wanted at Catechism that afternoon, so he could spend it with

her, and for the first time he found the privilege unwelcome. He

remembered other Sunday afternoons when he had lain blissfully slack in

one of the armchairs, while Stella curled herself up in the other with a

book or some sewing. They had not talked consecutively, but just

exchanged a few words now and then when the processes of their minds

demanded it—it had all been heavenly and comfortable and serene.... He

found himself longing almost angrily to be back in his old attitude of

contented hopelessness. But he knew that he could never go back, though

he did not exactly know why. What had happened that he could no longer

find his peace in her unrewarded service? Had he suddenly grown up and

become dependent on realities—no longer to be comforted with dreams or

to taste the sweet sadness of youth?

He had half a mind to go for a walk this afternoon and leave her—he knew

that she would not try to make him stay. But, in spite of all, he

hankered after her company; also there was now growing up in him a new

desire to come to grips with her, to know exactly where he

stood—whether, though she did not want his love she still wanted his

friendship, or whether she would like him to go away. So when Father

Luce went off to his Catechism, and the doctor to see a couple of

patients at Horns Cross, Gervase stayed behind in the sitting-room where

they had had their coffee, and asked Stella, according to custom, if she

would mind his pipe.

“You know, Gervase, you’re always allowed to smoke your pipe if I’m

allowed to mend my stockings. Neither is exactly correct behaviour in a

drawing-room, but if you dispense me from the rules of feminine

good-breeding, I’ll dispense you from the rules of masculine etiquette.”

“Thank you.”

He took out his pipe, and she fetched her work-basket from the back of

the sofa. Nothing could have looked more domestic than the two of them

sitting each side of the fire, he smoking, she darning, both silent. But

the unreality of it vexed him this afternoon. He could not play the

childish game he had sometimes played, of pretending they were married,

and being content. “When I became a man I put away childish things....”

He wanted to have the power to go over to her as she sat absorbed in her

work, turn up her face and kiss her—or else pick her off the chair and

set her on his knee....

“Stella,” he said gruffly.

“Well?”

“I want to speak to you.”

“What is it?”

“Well ... our friendship isn’t the same as it used to be.”

He would be furious if she contradicted him—or if she said ‘Oh, really?

I haven’t noticed anything.’ But she said at once—

“I know it isn’t.”

“And what do you put that down to?”

She hedged for the first time.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re trying to keep me at a distance.”

She did not speak, but he saw the colour burning on the face that she

bent hurriedly over her work.