THE FOOLS’ PROGRESS
I
Lois said:
“I hate to disturb you, dear, but isn’t it time you went to dress?”
“I expect so,” said Hubert without moving.
“Very well, then. . . .”
He sniffed appreciatively the warmth of the peat fire and turned a
gloomy eye upon the uninviting dusk beyond the window.
“I don’t want to go,” he said, not for the first time.
“I’m sorry if it bores you, but I really think you should.”
Lois spoke with decision, looking a little like her mother. There was
already a hint of the same massive contours about her jaw. He, for his
peace of mind, did not observe it for he had risen to tap the barometer.
“I shouldn’t wonder if there was a frost to-night,” he protested.
“Take the foot-warmer and the fur rug,” she advised.
Making a final effort against the benevolent pressure which was forcing
him out of his house on so unpleasant an evening, he turned on her and
said:
“Look here! I don’t really see why I should go. They don’t particularly
expect me. It won’t be in the least rude if I don’t turn up. They don’t
want me. They are your friends, you know; and if you don’t go, I don’t
see why I should. And it’s the kind of thing that bores me stiff.”
“I’m sorry I can’t come,” she pleaded, “but I really oughtn’t to, you
know. It wouldn’t be a suitable party for a young woman in my
interesting condition.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use such vulgar expressions,” he complained. “I
can’t think where you pick them up. ‘Interesting condition’ is very
low.”
“I got it out of Dickens: it’s mid-Victorian. But I could say much
worse. I could say ‘in the family way.’ ‘A party in the family way.’
. . .”
Hubert drew himself up into a mid-Victorian husband and thundered:
“Be silent, ma’am, and don’t pollute my house with such coarse
expressions. . . .”
He was interrupted by the parlourmaid who came to carry out the tea.
Hastily he left off being Mr. Caudle and picked up the London _Mercury_.
Lois crossed to the window and drew the blue linen curtains, shutting
out the chilly twilight. She could afford to make jokes about her
condition, since it scarcely troubled her at all. Though she was nearly
seven months gone, her cheeks still bloomed and she moved buoyantly.
The clock struck, and Hubert remarked with relief:
“It’s only six. I needn’t dress yet.”
“The car is ordered for a quarter to seven, and you’ll take all of three
quarters of an hour.”
“But that will get me up to town at seven-thirty, and I don’t need to be
there before nine, surely?”
“You’ll want dinner first. Aren’t you dining at Eaton Square? I told
Mother you would be, when I rang her up this morning.”
“Uncommonly officious of you, Lois! I never authorized you to say such a
thing. I’d meant to dine here and go up afterward, if I felt inclined,
and if it wasn’t too cold. But this absolutely pledges me. I suppose
your mother is expecting me now?”
“I’m afraid so, dear.”
“All the same, I don’t see why I should have to go to the Martins’ if I
don’t want to. What, exactly, do you expect me to do when I get there?”
“Oh, my dear Hubert! We’ve been into all this before.”
“Yes, you’ve told me what I ought to do, but not how I’m to do it. I’m
to lead the fellow round, I suppose, and introduce him to all the people
you and your mother think he ought to know.”
“That’s the idea.”
“And what earthly good do you think that’s going to do him or them?
Haven’t you learnt by this time that it’s quite impossible for the
family to run him?”
“But, Hubert, this is the whole object of getting him and Dolly to come
and live at Hampstead.”
“I never could see any object in their living at Hampstead.”
“Of course, Chelsea would have been better, but Dolly had all these
ideas about the children getting good air. And there are artists at
Hampstead. But the point of the whole thing is to get him into congenial
society; to get him to meet more people and get known a little. I’ve
been so pleased about his getting this invitation to the Martins’. It’s
just the sort of thing we want. He will meet exactly the right people.”
“All right, let him meet them! What good do you think that will do? What
sort of impression is James likely to make on the right people, or they
on him? Can’t you see that he would much sooner stay at home with his
Dolly?”
“Dolly is invited too, to-night.”
“Is she? Then I don’t really think I need go. She’ll look after him
quite capably. I sha’n’t go. I’ll run up and dine with your mother and
come back.”
“Oh, Hubert, please! Remember James is my stepbrother.”
“Whom you’ve always understood. I know.”
“Don’t interrupt! Yes, I do understand him. I discovered him long before
any one else, now didn’t I? Ages before you did.”
“It’s a pity you didn’t discover him a little sooner over that Braxhall
affair.”
She put her hand over his mouth and stopped him. The smouldering
bitterness in his heart was instantly quenched: he caught her fingers
and kissed them.
“All right!” He sighed. “I’ll do my best; I promise I will. I’ll go.
Only you see, I don’t think it will do any good. I’m coming to the
conclusion that our cue is to leave him absolutely alone. He’s of age,
and a married man, and what not, and I shouldn’t wonder if he knows what
he wants better than we do. Honestly, my dear, I think your mother is
making a mistake in trying to turn him into a tame family genius at this
time of day. But I’ll do what I can.”
“It’s just that he needs to know a few more people and go about rather
more,” repeated Lois with conviction. “He’s never been among really
congenial people—creative artists.”
Hubert was silent, since he disagreed with her. He sat by her side and
absorbed regretfully the beauty and comfort of his home, still but half
resigned to his enforced departure. They were in the living room. There
was nothing so Victorian as a drawing room in Hubert’s house; only a
library, a hall dining room, a music room, and a living room, besides a
billiard room in the garden, and quite enough too, as Dolly had observed
when she heard of it. The house, which was called Killigrew’s Croft,
suited Hubert and Lois very well. It was in Buckinghamshire, near
Amersham, within easy reach of town, yet sufficiently out of it to pass
as country. Outside it was rather ordinary and suggested the placid
comfort of a retired stockbroker. But the interior was very Georgian.
The carpetless floors, the severe whitewashed walls, the Russian linen,
the black divans with their brilliant cushions, the John drawings, and
the peat fires were all there. Hubert liked it immensely, and felt that
it was exactly right. So, had he been born a generation earlier, would
he have regarded a Morris paper and Willow Pattern china. But he did not
suppose that his house was at all individual, having spent his life in
homes exactly like it. Lois, born in Manchester, and reared at Lyndon,
was still inclined to regard it as unique. She thought it a great deal
more tasteful than the home of her girlhood, and often argued with
Hubert about it. She could not grasp his admiration for a house so
unlike his own.
“Looking at this, one would never think you admired Lyndon,” she would
say, comparing the yellow washed walls of her living room with the
Chinese paper in Agatha’s drawing room, all strange birds and exotic
vegetation. “It’s so crowded! Every sort of style, all mixed up. Think
of those lacquered cabinets and the Queen Anne Talbois cheek by jowl in
Agatha’s bedroom.”
“I never was in Agatha’s bedroom,” said Hubert wistfully. “What was it
like?”
“Like nothing on earth. A wonderful Elizabethan bed, all hung with old
Italian tapestries. And, I think, an Aubusson carpet. And a Louis Quinze
dressing table, and a crystal jug and basin from somewhere in Hungary.
And, by way of pictures, a Gainsborough portrait, and a landscape,
Cotman, I think, and ‘The Rake’s Progress’ in funny little black frames
all along the chimneypiece. And a good deal of carved jade and ivory
lying around. It was just like all the other rooms in the house, only
she had seized on the very best things.”
“I can’t imagine it.”
“Just a muddle! Not any clear expression of one kind of culture. If all
the things had been English, or all French, or all Chinese!”
“But that’s England, you know, Lois. Just that! There’s nothing in
England so English as a house like Lyndon. A medley of races and
civilizations and ideas, all chucked together anyhow, and yet—not
chaos—but a whole—a living, individual whole.”
“I didn’t know you were so patriotic.”
“No more did I. I’ve always considered myself rather cosmopolitan. But
when I think of Lyndon I feel sorry. Sorry all that should go. It’s so
absolutely ours, you know, and it’s melting like snow in the sun. Now a
room like this,” he waved a hand round his living room, “you might find
in any capital in Europe at the present moment.”
“Well, if you are so discontented with it, change it! It’s yours. You
say you admire Lyndon, but you don’t copy it, I notice.”
“Copy Lyndon? Oh, Lord! Copy Lyndon! My dear girl, I couldn’t! It can’t
be copied, that’s just it. One man didn’t make it; it’s been the work of
generations. The smell of it! That smell of stone passages and beer! No
one can build a new house and put a smell like that into it. Think of
all the storms it has weathered! It’s survived the landscape gardening
of the eighteenth century, and the flagrant bad taste of the Regency,
and Victoria’s upholstered mahogany, and the æsthetic monsoon of my
childhood, Walter Crane and all that, yes, and the recent deluge of
peasant handicrafts and chromatic barbarism. These impermanent things go
over it in waves. Our house, for instance, is just part of a wave, and
quite a nice wave too. But Lyndon is a rock. The whole effect remains
essentially the same, though it emerges from each wave with a few more
things scattered over it as relics of the epoch. Lovely things—the best
that each particular tide has produced. . . . Pity it should go!”
“Why do you talk of it going? Nobody wants to burn it down.”
“A house dies with its family. Lyndon has come to an end. It’s nothing
better than a museum now. And a museum isn’t a living thing: it’s a
mausoleum for bygone cultures.”
“John may go back there in the spring, Mother says. So it won’t have
been empty for so very long. Six months can’t turn it into a museum,
surely?” she asked, with some derision.
“N—no,” he replied uncertainly.
He had always thought of Lyndon as Agatha’s house, rather than John’s,
and, to him, its history was ended upon the day when she fled to Corsica
with her accursed cousin. But he knew better than to air this idea,
especially when Lois was already a little irritated. It was, in truth,
hard upon her to have to listen to these glorifications of Lyndon when
she had spent so much of her rebellious youth in trying to escape from
it.
Pondering upon these conversations, he sat beside her, holding her hand
in somnolent content until the clock struck a quarter past six. Pressure
was again exerted by his wife. “You positively must dress,” she urged,
and he capitulated.
Upon his way to town, however, his indignation boiled up again. It was
bad enough that he should be forced to spend the evening with the
Martins. He had begun to grow out of the atmosphere of guarded
Bohemianism in which they moved, and expected to be bored. But it was
monstrous that he should have to dine with his mother-in-law as well. He
raged dimly against the conspiracy of women which netted him in. He had
always hated Eaton Square, and just now he knew that there would be
long, unsparing inquiries about Lois and her health. Besides, he might
see John, and he hated meeting John. He knew that he ought to be sorry
for the fellow; that his was the gesture of the Levite who passed by on
the other side; but he could not help it. John was too unfortunate; it
was impossible to forget that his wife had deserted him in a
particularly heartless manner, and that he was dying by inches. It was
really tactless of him, all things considered, to hang about London in
this way. He should have buried himself and his sorrows in some decently
distant place. He was not, it seemed, too ill to shoot in the country at
week-ends. Hubert thought that he should stay there altogether.
He supposed that John was right, on the whole, not to plunge into the
scandals of a divorce. It was decent of him, anyhow. But it made the
affair so unofficial: so preposterously delicate. One never knew where
one was. It was impossible to talk to any one of the Clewer connection
for five minutes without getting on dangerous ground. The thing had
become a question of clan loyalty, and everybody in the family was
expected to lie fluently in the cause. It was a silly fiction, this
upholding of Agatha’s respectability in the public eye, for the whole
story was bound to come out sooner or later. She was showing no
disposition to leave her cavalier, and her reputation could only be held
together as long as she was content to lie concealed in Corsica. Hubert
racked his brains to remember the details of the official explanation.
Supposing Stella Martin were to ask him to-night how long Agatha would
be abroad! Should he say he didn’t know? Or was he supposed to know? He
ought to have asked Lois.
But he did not, willingly, discuss Agatha with his wife. Within the
tribal group there was, of course, no charity for the lost mistress of
Lyndon. It seemed to him sometimes that they were almost too hard on
her. He knew that she had behaved badly; she could scarcely have behaved
worse; but he could never listen to the abuse which the other women
poured out upon her without a pang, the stirrings of an emotion which
was not condemnatory. He remembered how lovely, how unlucky, and how
kind she had been. Yes, and still so young. He would much rather not
think of her at all.
Instead he thought of James, aggrievedly. Why should he be burdened with
James? He did not mind having him as a brother-in-law, at a convenient
distance. Sometimes he was rather proud of the connection. But taking
him about was another matter. It made one so horribly conspicuous.
Wrapped in these gloomy reflections he arrived in Eaton Square, and, as
the car drew up, resolved that his boy should marry an orphan. He would
do for his son what no one had done for him; he would see to it that the
lad never met any young woman encumbered with surviving relations.
He was relieved not to find John among the chesterfields in the drawing
room. When last he had dined there he had sat for a quarter of an hour
with John. Three times he had asked nervously whether there was anything
in the evening paper. John had told him thrice, with a kind of
abstracted patience; that rubber was still going down. That had been the
whole of the conversation between them. To-night, however, Marian
trailed in alone. She wore the kind of informal dinner gown which
suggests a solitary meal. She had aged conspicuously during the past
months; her elaborate brown hair was now flecked with gray, and a
settled melancholy made her face look heavier. But she was still a fine
woman, with every appearance of vigour and health. Trouble had not bowed
her white shoulders or dimmed her little blue eyes. She said that John
had gone for a week to Sussex to stay with friends.
“I like him to get the change and the interest,” she said, “though I
feel he’s hardly fit for it. He should really be nearer to good doctors.
It would be very awkward if—if he was taken ill or anything when he was
staying with people. But he won’t give in, poor boy, or be treated like
an invalid. It’s pitiful! Now, tell me how Lois is.”
Hubert immediately regretted John, whose presence would have protected
him. He said:
“Lois is very well.”
“Is she getting about a certain amount?” asked Marian tenderly.
“Oh, yes. She seems to be very energetic and active. We go quite longish
walks.”
“She must be careful not to overdo it.”
Marian sounded disapproving, but he rejoined brightly:
“She’s taking every care of herself, I’m sure.”
“It must be a very anxious time for you.”
“Oh, no,” he protested, “I’m not anxious. She seems so well.”
But she was quite determined that he should be anxious, anxiety being,
in her opinion, the only proper state of mind for him.
“If it wasn’t for John,” she said, “I could be with you a great deal
more.”
“Thank God for John,” thought Hubert; “he has his uses.”
“It would be a great relief to me if I could be with Lois and make quite
sure . . .”
“Dinner is served, my lady.”
“She’ll begin again in the dining room,” thought Hubert as he armed her
downstairs.
But he had forgotten the servants. She could not begin again while they
were present. Indeed, she ate most of her meal in silence, for she was
so preoccupied with John’s misfortunes, James’s misdoings, and Lois’s
condition as to be really unable to talk of anything else. Hubert was
permitted to enjoy the very good food in peace, and when, at length,
they were left alone together, he short-circuited a return to Lois by
plunging into the question of James.
“I understand,” he said, “that I am, as it were, to chaperon him at this
party?”
“Oh, Hubert, if you would! And if you’d give him a hint, just a little
hint, now and then, how to behave, it would be so kind. I’m so glad he’s
been asked; this sort of thing is so good for him. I’m rather
disappointed, you know, in the results of the Hampstead move. I had
hoped for better things. It was such a piece of work to get them to move
at all. He was so stubborn; I don’t think he’d have given in if their
landlord at Bramfield hadn’t given them notice. Then I talked to
Dorothy, and got her to see all the educational advantages of having the
children near London. Just imagine, she and James had contemplated
sending them to the little village school near by! I was horrified. I
didn’t like to say what I thought to Dorothy, for of course she was at a
National School herself, but I spoke to James and asked him how he could
think of it. And he said she had been to the school one day to have a
look at it herself, and was quite satisfied with it. It was a very small
school, and he said”—Marian blushed at such coarseness—“he said that
she only saw one child that she was at all doubtful about, and she
caught it coming out and had a look at its head, and was quite
reassured.”
“Not really?” said Hubert with a grin.
“I don’t see anything funny in it,” said Marian. “I feel it’s all rather
sad. What is to become of those poor little children? Still, I persuaded
Dorothy in the end. I pointed out what a much better studio James could
have, which she appreciated. She admitted that it was always rather
difficult getting models, and so on, when they lived so far out in the
country. And, of course, when she saw reason the battle was won. He
always does what she wishes.”
“But you aren’t satisfied with the result?”
“Well, you see, I wanted him to know more people. You’ve no idea,
Hubert, how curious people are about him. People who’ve seen his
pictures. I’ve been asked about him so often by people who are anxious
to meet him. But I don’t know. It seems hopeless! Living at Hampstead
hasn’t done him a bit of good; it hasn’t altered him in the very least.
As I say to people . . . that unfortunate marriage! It will be a drag on
him all his life. It makes his house quite impossible. I took Mrs.
Downsmith there the other day to call, and really that girl has
absolutely no idea how to do things. Tea! You should have seen it!
Shrimp paste in a pot, and we were offered eggs. And after tea they
played us tunes upon that awful gramophone. I really didn’t know which
way to look, and I could see that Mrs. Downsmith thought it all most
extraordinary. Coming home I said what I could about artists’ households
being always rather Bohemian, and she said: ‘Bohemian isn’t the word I’d
have used somehow.’”
“No, it’s the respectability which baffled her, I expect. If James and
his family lived in romantic squalor in a one-room studio, they would be
much more conventional.”
“It’s very sad. But I feel that if we could get him right away—away
from his wife . . .”
“She’s invited to-night.”
“Oh, is she? I am sorry. That is unfortunate! It’s quite unnecessary
that she should be asked to places with him. That is a pity!”
“But he won’t go anywhere without her.”
“Oh dear, how difficult it all is! Of course, people can’t be expected
to invite her to their houses. She oughtn’t to expect it. Can’t she see
what a drag she is on him?”
“But she’s quite respectable.”
“Y—yes. But impossible socially. It would have been better . . .”
Marian broke off and did not state what would have been better. Hubert
inferred that Dolly would have been less of a drawback if she had come
from a meaner stock or were not properly married.
Coffee came in. Marian had instituted a small coffee-making machine on a
wheeled table and brewed the drink herself before leaving the dining
room. Agatha had had one at Lyndon, and there were coffee percolators
now at Braxhall and Killigrew’s Croft. But Hubert thought it a pity.
They none of them did it properly; even Lois fussed over it. No woman
could make coffee as the peccant Agatha had made it, lazy and amused,
with one eye on the bubbling percolator and all her attention for her
guests. He could even remember tenderly the evening when, absorbed in
somebody’s witty conversation (it must surely have been his own) she had
forgotten to fasten something or other and the whole thing had blown up,
spattering half-a-dozen shirt fronts. Alas, poor Agatha! It was dreadful
to think of her abdication; to imagine her drinking her coffee in some
grubby Corsican inn, counting Lyndon well lost for love of the
insignificant, the quite undeserving Blair. Hubert would not believe it.
A moment later he learnt that he need not believe it, for Agatha was no
longer in Corsica.
“There is one thing,” said Marian mysteriously, as she poured two
cupfuls of water into the percolator, “that I wish you’d tell Lois. That
is, if you think that it won’t upset her in any way.”
“Yes?” he said, hurrying her past Lois.
“I couldn’t tell her this morning on the telephone, because one never
knows what the servants may not overhear. One has to speak so clearly;
I’ve often been annoyed about it. But I’ve heard that Agatha and—and
her cousin are back in town. I’m keeping it from John, of course.”
“Oh, really?” murmured Hubert, feeling uncomfortable, but strangely
excited.
“If it’s true, it’s most inconsiderate of them,” pursued Marian
weightily. “The least they could do was to keep away. But I met Lady
Peel yesterday, and she told me that she had just been with Ellen, with
Mrs. Cocks, I mean, and that she said that she was expecting Agatha home
shortly. It was most awkward for me, because I had just said she would
be abroad some months longer. I thought Lady Peel looked a little
queerly at me. It’s a pity that Mrs. Cocks has not got a more reticent
nature. I can never be quite sure how much she tells people.”
“But perhaps Agatha is coming home alone,” suggested Hubert.
“I’m afraid not. I mean I’m afraid they are both coming, and it’s too
much to hope that they are not coming together. I was determined to make
sure, so I sent Miss Barrington, who is absolutely discreet, round to
Harley Street this morning to ask when he was expected back. She saw a
parlourmaid who said he was coming to-day or to-morrow, she believed,
but that she didn’t think he was coming there, and he wouldn’t be seeing
patients yet awhile, and she could forward letters but couldn’t give an
address. So it looks like it.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It does look rather like it.”
“Will you tell Lois, or shall I write a note to her?”
“Oh, I’ll tell her.”
Hubert could not see why the tidings should disturb his wife to any
great extent.
“Of course, it’s hard on John,” he added with some compunction.
“I shall keep it from him as long as possible. It’s very upsetting for
us all. I only hope Lois . . .”
“It’s really time I got off,” exclaimed Hubert, glancing at the clock.
“I’d better get to this place punctually, hadn’t I? No knowing what
James mightn’t be up to if I left him to himself.”
And he fled.
2
On his way to Chelsea Hubert’s brain was busy with this new development
of affairs. Ought he to tell anybody who inquired to-night that Agatha
was now back in London? And what on earth was going to happen next? Of
one thing he was certain, knowing the family: there would be scenes and
indignant letters and diplomatic discussions. What a confounded nuisance
it all was.
Penetrating into the main reception room of Stella Martin’s house in
Cheyne Walk, he peered nervously through the heavy fog of cigarette
smoke in search of his inconvenient brother-in-law. The heat of the room
made him feel rather giddy, and he was deafened by the high, staccato
symphony of cultured conversation. He could not see Dolly or James
anywhere. Freaks he saw, of every sort and size; freaks who would make
even James look almost normal. He saw celebrities, and minor
celebrities, and people who looked like celebrities but couldn’t be,
since he did not know them. At last he saw his hostess and made his way
over to her.
Stella Martin was a lively, pretty woman with long earrings and a
cigarette perennially falling out of the corner of her mouth. She had
been a great friend of Hubert’s in his salad days, but he had begun
lately to find her rather boring. She had become Lois’s appendage, and
he still liked her well enough when she was not trying too desperately
to avoid the commonplace. He often complained to Lois that the woman
positively collected shady characters. Lois had disagreed with him and
said that Stella surrounded herself with men of talent.
“But the ladies . . .” he had expostulated.
Lois admitted that the ladies were sometimes rather odd, but maintained
that they were the kind of ladies who have had, throughout the ages, a
particular attraction for men of talent. And, anyhow, it was very
conventional of Hubert to object to them. Hubert, who had begun to
discover that there is, nowadays, a certain distinction in
conventionality, did not wilt under this taunt as much as she had hoped.
He agreed.
“We have a pretty amusing crowd to-night,” said Stella. “You know most
of them, don’t you? I’m sorry Lois couldn’t come, but I think she was
very wise not to turn out this wicked night. It’s much too cold. It was
nice of you to come, Hubert.”
“She was very sorry to have to give it up.”
“She must come up and have tea with me one day when I can have her all
to myself. Mr. and Mrs. Clewer are here, by the way; I don’t see them at
the minute, but I know I’ve shaken hands with them.”
“Oh, they are here?”
“Yes, or at least they were. You’ll find them if you look. And Lawrence
Argony may drop in later on. It will be a great feather in my cap if he
does, for you know he never will go to evening parties. Have you seen
his portrait of Garry Shandon? I haven’t, but, after all I’ve heard, I’m
longing to. Mick says Garry is rather vexed about it. But I don’t know
what else he expected, do you?”
She turned to other guests, and Hubert resumed his search for Dolly and
James. He came to the conclusion that Stella’s ladies were rather more
respectable than usual. Listening to their vehement conversation and
watching the bobbing of their bobbed heads, he decided that he was in
for an evening with London’s women of talent. Though he saw a few who
might be said to have one foot in the demi-monde, he was sure that they
had got in to-night upon some intellectual ticket. They must have
written an autobiography or a novel or something. Friends greeted him,
and he found himself pouring forth, a little absently, a small but
regular stream of witty remarks. Half of his mind was occupied with the
thought of Lois and his nice quiet house where he would rather have
been. He was immensely pleased to find that he could think of his home
with such a pang, and his impersonation of a man about town at a party
in Chelsea was spiced by the thought of the domestic fellow that he
really was. Then he caught sight of Dolly, with James beside her,
sitting on a distant divan. Very mournful they looked, in this strange
galley, and their faces, when they perceived him, lit up with a
ludicrous relief. He crossed over to them and they made room for him
with alacrity.
“Oh, but I’m glad you’ve come,” cried Dolly. “We were just wondering if
it was too soon for us to go. It’s so awkward us not knowing any of
these people.”
“Well, I can introduce you to any amount,” said Hubert, mindful of his
mission and trying not to look at James’s dress clothes. “That’s a
friend of mine over there. The man with the eyebrows. Binns, the
architect. Shall I effect an introduction?”
“No, don’t,” said James. “I want to look at him. He’s got a very nice
head, especially at the back. I couldn’t see it if I was talking to
him.”
“James says all the people here are out of drawing,” said Dolly
doubtfully.
“They are certainly a queer-looking lot,” said Hubert, agreeably
convinced that he looked quite normal himself.
“You may say so,” she affirmed with more ease. “I never saw anything
like them. I said to James when we first come in: ‘Well, the Zoo isn’t
in it!’ Not but what it isn’t a very nice party,” she added, remembering
her manners. “I always tell James it’s good for us to go into company
once in a while. But we are still so upside down, getting into the new
house; it was quite a job getting here at all to-night.”
“D’you think my clothes smell too much of camphor?” asked James. “Dolly
was very worried about it.”
“It’s the first time he’s had them on in years,” she explained. “That’s
why they fit so sort of loose on the shoulders. In the army they made
him hold himself so straight.”
“And for the same reason they fit sort of tight in front,” said James.
Hubert sniffed and said doubtfully:
“I smell something—but it isn’t like camphor exactly.”
“Oh, I expect that’s Sanitas,” explained James cheerfully. “I sprinkled
on a little. I thought it would drown the camphor.”
“Which was silly,” commented Dolly. “If anybody has to smell of
anything, camphor’s better than Sanitas.”
“And how is the new house getting on?” asked Hubert.
“Oh, nicely, thank you. There’s a studio for James that we’ve got ever
so nice. Better than anything we’ve had before.”
“It’s quite a good house,” said James. “And Dolly has made it look
exactly like our last one, so there is nothing to worry about. I thought
at first I shouldn’t like it, but I do quite.”
“There’s a basement kitchen, though,” said Dolly, “which is a nuisance.
I don’t like the children getting all their meals down there. I said to
old Lady Clewer, ‘Well, I don’t think the kitchen’s very nice.’ And she
said, ‘Perhaps you won’t be in it so much now.’ But, as I say, wherever
else should I be? But, as we’ve a room on the ground floor that we don’t
need, I’m having a nice little electric range put in there, and a sink,
and I’ll do most of my cooking there, and we’ll get our meals handy.
It’s nice and sunny. The garden at the back isn’t up to much, but
there’s always the Heath for the children to play on. Sonny has fallen
into that pond already, but that’s only what’s to be expected.”
“We had to paper the whole house,” said James. “Mamma wanted us to
distemper it, but we don’t like distemper.”
“No,” rejoined his wife. “Just like a prison or a hospital! A nice
bright paper is ever so much more cheerful. Eh, James! There’s Mr.
Argony!”
The big gun of Stella’s party was making his way slowly through the
room, growling replies to the greetings which washed round him like a
tide.
“He does do it well,” said James appreciatively. “Just like Sissy
feeding chickens.”
“Do you know him then?” asked Hubert in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” Dolly told him. “He often comes to tea with us. He and James
like to get a good talk. You know what men are! Talk the hind leg off a
donkey and then have the face to bring it up against the women. They go
on about these pictures of theirs.”
Lawrence had by now perceived them, and, shaking himself free from his
ardent acquaintances, he joined their group. Hubert, who knew him
slightly, offered his greetings. The great man stared at the trio, his
heavy eyebrows shot out in a frown of perplexity. He seemed to find them
unexpected. Having revolved them in his mind for a second or two, he
exploded:
“I have it! Brothers-in-law.”
“Stepbrothers-in-law,” corrected James. “His wife is my stepmother’s
daughter.”
“His wife is your stepmother’s daughter?” repeated Mr. Argony.
“His—wife—is—your—stepmother’s—daughter? HIS WIFE. . . . Oh, quite
so! Quite so! How are you, Mrs. Clewer? I’m glad I found you here,
James, for I came especially to find you. Someone told me you’d be here.
Can you come round to my place to-morrow? I’ve got to talk to you about
something.”
“To-morrow is Sunday,” calculated James. “I can’t come in the morning.”
“Well, don’t come in the morning. Come in the afternoon.”
“But I could come in the morning,” went on James laboriously, “if I went
to chapel in the evening. Dolly, shall we do that?”
“Oh, settle it between you,” said Lawrence amicably. “Any time will suit
me. I shall be in all day.”
“When are you coming to tea with us again?” asked Dolly. “You haven’t
been, not for a long while.”
“Oh, I’ll come soon,” he assured her, and was taken away by his hostess.
Hubert was able to put the question which had been burning within him
ever since he became aware of an intimacy between Lawrence Argony and
the Clewers.
“I suppose you’ve heard of this portrait of Garry Shandon?” he said.
“Nobody’s seen it yet, of course, but——”
“I have,” said James.
“You have?”
“Yes,” said James, adding kindly, “it’s very good.”
Hubert gave it up and resolved to tell Lois that never again would he
undertake the social pilotage of James. It was absurd! It was like a
minnow trying to steer a whale. He was relieved when he saw Stella
descending upon them with a black-and-white-striped lady in tow.
“You three have monopolized this divan long enough,” she declared. “I
must break you up. Hubert, this is Mrs. Taylor, who wants to know if
it’s true that you and Lois have been to Madeira, and if it’s nice
there. Mr. Clewer, there are some people in the next room who are dying
to meet you. . . .”
She carried off poor James who, in his dismay, was almost clinging to
his wife.
Hubert, marooned upon the divan with the lady who wanted to know about
Madeira, found it very difficult to keep his attention fixed.
Fortunately she did not require much to set her going. He bent upon her
an interested eye, and occupied his mind with the idea of James and
Lawrence Argony. If only he could manage to convince Lois that this
friendship was of his making, how pleased she would be! But he could not
claim to have had any hand in it; James had brought it off without the
help of his relations. Still this was, surely, the sort of thing she
wanted. She would be glad when she heard of it.
“In those days,” said a voice at his side, “my state of mind was one of
wonder without curiosity.”
“How very uncomfortable!” he murmured, noting that he was no longer
listening to Mrs. Taylor but to a good-looking elderly man with gray
whiskers. Stella must have substituted this new one at some moment when
he was not attending.
“Curiosity,” said the stranger, “is necessary before any great work of
art can be produced. I trust you agree with me?”
“Quite!” concurred Hubert. “Exactly!”
His mind reverted to a picture of Dolly blowing the children’s noses,
and spreading their jam for them, while James and Argony growled
technicalities at each other across the kitchen tablecloth. Or did they
have tea in the parlour on these occasions? Perhaps Argony got an egg,
being a fellow worker.
“But don’t you think,” said the lady with the Spanish comb (at what
point had they absorbed her into the group?), “don’t you think that the
individual must realize himself before he can create?”
“He must, indeed,” said the gray whiskers. “There must be no
repressions, no inhibitions. . . .”
They seemed to be so beautifully occupied with each other that Hubert
thought he could slip away unnoticed. He became aware that Dolly was
beckoning to him across the room. She was standing half hidden by a
curtain drawn across the door of a small conservatory, and she struck
him as being a trifle flushed and in some distress. When he had joined
her, her agitation was manifest.
“I want to go home,” she said wrathfully. “I want to get away from here.
Let’s find James and be off.”
“Come and sit in here,” said Hubert soothingly. “Come and rest a little
and let me try and get you an ice or some coffee.”
He moved to take her into the conservatory but she drew back quickly.
“No,” she said. “I can’t go back in there. He’s inside still.”
“Who is?”
“That young fellow.” A fleeting smile crossed her troubled face.
“Fact is, we’d better move away. He can’t get out very well till we’ve
gone.”
“But what has he done?”
“Well . . . that’s asking! Though it isn’t so much what he’s done as
what he said. He ought to be ashamed of himself, and so I told him.”
“Oh, do please tell me what he said,” cried Hubert, edging round the
curtain to get a look at the young fellow. “I’m dying to know.”
“Oh, I couldn’t! Not to any one! Excepting only James. But this is a
shocking place! It is really. I want to get out of it quick. The sights
I saw when I was sitting in that conservatory! I never did.”
“But it can’t have been anything so very bad. . . .”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought when I first come in: Well, they look a
godless lot! And I thought right.”
Surveying her comely face and sturdy, supple figure, sharply outlined
against the black curtain, Hubert felt a kind of sympathy for the
unknown culprit. There was something very attractive about
her—primitive but compelling. And it must have been uncommonly
difficult to find anything to talk to her about.
“How did you get there?” he asked.
“Oh, Mrs. Martin introduced him and took James away. Do let’s find
James! I can’t think where he can be. I haven’t seen him this
half-hour.”
“Perhaps he’s in the other room.”
They set off in search and Dolly, perceiving Mr. Argony in the middle of
a group, ran up to him, crying:
“Oh, Mr. Argony! You haven’t seen James anywhere, I suppose?”
The people who were being fortunate enough to engage Mr. Argony’s
attention were deeply outraged and looked the intruder up and down with
amazement. She was so provincial, in her ready-made tea frock; so
plainly not of their world. Lawrence, however, beamed and reflected:
“James, when last I saw him, was sitting with a lady in a small recess
on the stairs. A remarkably beautiful lady, as far as I remember. He is
probably there still. You’d better look after him, Mrs. Clewer.”
Profoundly disturbed, she returned to Hubert and whispered: “He’s
sitting on the stairs with a beautiful lady! Isn’t that a funny thing
for him to do? I’ve never known him to do it before. Whatever can have
come over him?”
“Perhaps it’s this godless house,” suggested Hubert maliciously.
“It might be. You never know,” she said mournfully. “It’s what I
said—this is a dreadful place. He’s usually as quiet . . . But with all
these hussies . . .!”
She glared at the nearest, but he reassured her.
“That one is all right. All that powder is only camouflage. She writes
history books and is a notable matron. She has five perfectly good
children at home.”
Dolly sniffed. In order to pacify her he suggested: “Shall I go and
inspect James and his lady? Then I can report on the state of affairs.”
“He never sat on stairs before.”
“I rather thought Argony said a recess on the stairs. That is better
than actual stairs, don’t you think? More dignified?”
“I don’t think that’s any better, I don’t.”
“Oh, yes, it is. They are probably sitting on two chairs.”
“It might be a sofa. There was a sofa in that conservatory.”
“Well, I’ll go and have a look.”
He made his way out on to the landing where some intelligent person had
turned off most of the lights. Upon each stair he fell over a couple of
fellow guests, and his passage through the obscurity was marked by a
continual stream of apologies. He became aware that Stella’s party was
not entirely confined to the middle-aged. The younger generation was
there all right, but it had not favoured the strong illumination of the
rooms above. Reaching a view of the recess he perceived that Argony had
been perfectly right. Even in that dim light he could identify one of
its occupants as James; the large face looming over the crumpled shirt
front could belong to no one else. The other, a mysterious feminine
presence, was half concealed behind a curtain, but, despite the dark and
a distance of several yards, Hubert got the impression that she was a
lovely creature. Their attitude was intimate and absorbed—their
conversation eager. Hubert hovered uncertainly, a thousand new-born
surmises seething in his brain, and then approached them.
A better view of the lady gave him pause, and he jerked backward,
speechless, wondering if he could run away. There was no time, however,
for she had turned, recognized him, and half risen. He pulled himself
together and advanced to greet her, wondering if sisters-in-law are not,
on the whole, the most trying sort of relation.
“I heard you were expected back to-day or to-morrow,” he said. “But I
didn’t think I’d see you here.”
“I came hoping to find my mother,” she explained. “I went round to South
Kensington, but she was out and the maid rather thought she would be
here. So, as I know Mrs. Martin fairly well, I came straight on. But I
hear she hasn’t come. She must have gone somewhere else!”
“I haven’t seen her,” said Hubert. “Then you got back to England . . .?”
“This morning.”
“They had an awful crossing,” appended James. “She says Blair boasted
all the way across France that he was never sick, and then he was much
sicker than she was.”
“Oh, yes . . .” said Hubert uneasily.
Agatha slipped a hand through James’s arm.
“Is Dolly here?” she asked.
“Oh, yes! I’ll go and find her and tell her you are here,” he said
joyously. “She will be pleased.”
“Tell her that I’m going in two minutes, but I’d love to see her first,”
Agatha called after him.
Hubert was left alone with her in the recess. Instinctively he drew the
curtain farther across, shielding her from the observation of passers on
the stairs. She laughed a little as she saw his gesture and sank on to
her corner of the sofa, motioning him to sit by her side. Her composure
relieved him. He had thought distractedly that he would not know what to
say to her: he now remembered her facility for silence. He need say
nothing at all if he so preferred it. He felt stealing over him that
potent serenity which he had almost forgotten, and which was part of the
charm she exerted. He told himself that she was beyond criticism; beyond
it, at least, when one was with her. In retrospect, when one had
forgotten a little what she was really like, it might be possible to
condemn her. It seemed to him as though this alcove was too small a
place in which to cabin all her marvellous beauty. She was fairer than
ever before.
Presently it occurred to her to ask:
“How’s Lois?”
“Lois is very well,” he told her, with a certain hesitation.
“She’s not here to-night?”
“No. She’s down at Killigrew’s Croft.”
“I’m sorry to have missed her.”
He said nothing, and in the pause which followed she pondered upon the
hint of reserve with which he had spoken of his wife. Did that mean that
Lois was, inevitably, one of the people who must be relinquished? It
could only mean that if she wished it herself. Hubert was not the man to
coerce his wife in such a matter. But of course it did! She sighed, for
she had been fond of Lois. Still . . . she had come back to face the
music. . . .
Clamour without told them of the approach of Dolly and James who, in
their rash descent, had fallen foul of the stair haunters. James was
heard to ask indignantly:
“Why are all the lights turned off? It’s impossible to see. Oh! Here’s
the switch.”
Light flooded the landing and staircase. Dolly stood, doubtfully, in the
entrance to the alcove, looking at Agatha with a face in which
perplexity and compassion were mingled.
“Well, Agatha,” she murmured, “if this isn’t a surprise!”
“Dear Dolly!” cried Agatha a little breathlessly, “aren’t you glad to
see me?”
“Of course I’m glad,” said Dolly, embracing her with gravity. “But I
must say——”
She paused, plainly at a loss, and James put in:
“Come upstairs and find some place where we can sit and have a good
talk. It’s so dark here.”
“I’d rather stay here if you don’t mind,” said Agatha. “There are so
many people that I know upstairs, and I’m so tired. I don’t feel up to
meeting them all. And, Hubert, I’d give anything for a drink.”
“I’ll get you a cocktail or something. Dolly, what can I get for you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say no to an ice, if you could find one. You go too,
James, and get us something to eat. I’m quite hungry, now you come to
mention it.”
Hubert and James departed and found the illuminated staircase perfectly
clear. Faint rustlings and whisperings from the darkness of an upper
flight told them whither the youthful horde had migrated. When they
returned with plates and glasses, the two women were seated close
together upon the alcove, sofa, talking with animation. Hubert heard
Dolly say:
“Well, if, as you say, they are wearing them longer in Paris, I suppose
they’ll be getting longer over here soon. I must say I’m not sorry.
These short skirts don’t suit anybody like me that’s got thick legs.”
They all sat down in the very constricted space and ate their
provisions. James observed genially:
“How the Clewer family do collect into lumps! I’ve noticed we always do
it. Draw the curtain further across, Dolly, so that nobody can notice
that we are all relations. Then Mrs. Martin won’t think she ought to
come and break us up.”
On the landing outside hung a picture which had struck Hubert’s
attention earlier in the evening. To him it suggested brawn in an
advanced stage of decomposition. But to two guests who were coming
upstairs it had, apparently, other significances. The party in the
alcove overheard the following conversation.
“Fine thing that!”
“Very fine! Lowe!”
A third was evidently being summoned upstairs.
“Come and look at this.”
“Quite good, yes,” said Lowe, after a pause for observation. “A good bit
of colour that, when you see it in the right light,” pursued the first
speaker, coming down to particulars. “Decent colours!”
“Very fine thing . . . uncompromising sincerity. . . .”
“Yes . . . rather nice colours. Let me see . . .” Lowe hesitated, “. . .
it’s a lobster, isn’t it?”
“. . . . Er, no. . . . A Madonna and Child, I believe. But of course
that’s immaterial!”
“Oh, quite! That doesn’t signify. Nice colours!”
“Yes. Good colour. . . .”
They drifted on.
Hubert and Agatha heard a strange sound which neither of them had heard
before in their lives. Dolly was, possibly, more used to it. James was
laughing loudly.
3
Agatha made no long stay at Mrs. Martin’s party but returned early to
the small hotel where she and Gerald were staying. She found him at the
writing table in their room, deeply absorbed in a publication
terrifically entitled Brain, upon which he was making notes. The set of
his mouth and the nervous, unconscious tapping of his foot as he read
told her that he was working hard. Without an interruption or a greeting
she composed herself in an armchair upon the hearth, to wait until he
had done. To her surprise a small fire was burning smokily in the grate.
He, jerking himself with an evident effort to a recollection of her
presence, inquired abstractedly whether she had seen her mother. She
told him of her fruitless quest, and said that she would go round to
South Kensington the first thing in the morning.
“Did she leave a message for you?” he asked, frowning.
“No, nothing! But Meadowes seemed to know I was expected back, so she
must have got the letter I sent her. No note or anything came for me
here, I suppose?”
“Not that I know of.”
“She might have written,” muttered Agatha.
“Was it a nice party you went to?”
“Quite nice.”
“You didn’t stay very late.”
“Not very late. Have you been working all the evening?”
He did not answer and she saw that his attention was returning to
_Brain_. Leaning back in her chair she abandoned herself to the
melancholy of undisguised fatigue until he said, without looking up from
his page:
“You’d better get to bed. Don’t wait for me. I shall be some time yet.”
“I think I’ll wait,” she said. “I want to talk to you when you’ve quite
finished.”
The silver travelling clock, one of Agatha’s wedding presents, ticked on
the mantelpiece; it looked out of place among Gerald’s pipes and tins of
tobacco. The sounds of London outside died away into post-midnight
silence. Still his pen scratched and the pages rustled. The fire sank
together and she tried with a poker to stir it into a remnant of heat.
She was exhausted by her long journey, for French second-class railway
carriages were still a new experience to her and the crossing had been a
nightmare. The disappointment of missing her mother had been the final
blow. This chilling silence staggered her; she had been quite unprepared
for it. She had expected stormy recriminations and reproaches, together
with the blessed assurance that she had an unfailing partisan. Now
everything was uncertain, and she dreaded the interview before her.
Too tired to think, she smoked several cigarettes and fell into a sort
of chilly doze. Her childish mind, straying unhappily through the void
like a lost bird, circled inevitably toward the thought of Lyndon. It
was an ark, a shelter of comfort and solace. She could sit dreaming of
her lost home by the hour, supporting herself by recollections of its
enduring beauty. It gave her escape from sordid discomfort and fretful
anxiety. In this bleak London winter she thought of warm sun, and the
lawn and cedar tree, and the smell of cut grass. But often, when she had
found the Mediterranean too hot and glaring, she had remembered the
cold, wet winds of early spring, and daffodils, and rooks blown among
the elms by the home farm.
At last Gerald shut up his book, and came across and knelt beside her,
spreading cold hands toward the sinking fire.
“I’m afraid there’s no more coal,” she said. “Are you cold? I’m glad you
had it lighted.”
“Oh, I’m quite warm. I thought you’d be cold when you came in. It’s a
bitter night.”
“You aren’t warm,” she told him, chafing his fingers gently. “You are
cold and tired. Would some Oxo warm you up?”
“Well, it would be rather nice.”
She hunted in the tray of her box and produced a small spirit lamp, a
cup, a saucepan, and a tin of Oxo cubes. She rather enjoyed making Oxo,
for it was a new accomplishment. Life in small Corsican inns without a
maid had taught her several strange things, and it was still a novelty
to minister to the needs of another person.
Gerald regarded his mistress with a faintly puzzled amusement as she
busied herself boiling the water. She was not unaware of this, and the
beginnings of resentment stirred in her tired spirit. Keenly sympathetic
though he might be in life’s more urgent stresses, he was a little
obtuse in small things. He could not realize how excessive was the
degree of adaptability demanded by her existence with him. According to
his ideas they had lived in no small luxury. He had always taken her to
far more comfortable inns than he would have selected for himself, so
anxious was he to make things easy for her.
“I saw Dolly and James,” she said.
“Oh, did you? What were they like?”
“As nice as ever. They were at the party. So was Hubert.”
“Oh! You saw him?”
“Yes. He was—just flustered.”
“But you didn’t see your mother?”
“No. That was what I was wanting to talk to you about. It struck me on
the way home that it was just as well I didn’t see her, for I’ve never
really settled what to say to her. I’ve always rather counted on her
taking the initiative. But, supposing she doesn’t, what line am I to
take?”
“Well, Agatha, say exactly what you like. I mean your relations with
your mother are entirely your affair. I’ll back you up in whatever you
say, of course. That water’s boiling!”
She began to stir the Oxo.
“Well, then, I’ll ask her if she has any idea what John is going to do,
and why he doesn’t seem to be taking any steps to divorce me. And if she
doesn’t know, I’ll try to get her to see Lady Clewer and find out. I may
say that we’re going to be married the moment I’m free, mayn’t I?”
“Of course.”
“I want to get her to see how much better it would be to end the
anomalous position we are in now; at the cost of an open scandal if need
be.”
“Yes.”
The pair paused, while Gerald sipped the Oxo, sitting at her feet. At
last he said:
“Agatha, my dear, would you care to go to America? To New York?”
“I! Why? Are you thinking of going there?”
“Yes. I’ve been offered work there. I found the letter waiting for me in
Harley Street when I went round there this afternoon. My friend Green,
who used to work with me, is running a new sort of clinic and wants me
to help him.”
He plunged into a long and highly technical description of the kind of
clinic it was. At last she said wonderingly:
“Then it would be the kind of work you like?”
“Oh, yes. Quite interesting, I think. Of course, the salary is very
small, but it would be enough, with what I’ve got, to keep us in
tolerable comfort, I imagine. But I’d only accept it if you cared to go
too.”
“Is it a permanent thing? Does it mean spending the rest of our lives
there?”
“Well, yes. It pretty well amounts to that. It will mean several years
there anyhow. I thought it mightn’t be a bad thing, if you approved,
that is to say. We could get right away.”
“But your practice here?”
He gave her a swift, surprised look, and said nothing for a few seconds.
Then he replied indifferently:
“It isn’t the sort of thing I really hanker after. I get too many of the
idle rich, and their ailments are so much alike that it becomes
monotonous. The proletariat offer a much more varied field.”
“But my mother—everyone—said that you were getting on so brilliantly
well here.”
“I had a sort of vogue with your mother’s friends. That is because just
after the war nervous breakdowns became a fashionable complaint. Soon
they’ll take to something else, and where should I be?”
“I was reading in the paper about the slump in Harley Street and how all
the specialists are doing so badly.”
“Bound to happen with the wealth of the country changing hands so
rapidly. The people who used to be ill can’t afford it now. And the New
Rich haven’t learnt to be ill yet. They still regard ill-health as a
misfortune, probably, and not as an absorbing way of spending money. It
will right itself in time.”
“Then you would really like to go to America?”
“I should quite. It depends entirely upon your decision.”
She felt at the moment that New York was the last place in the world she
would wish to live in. But she replied:
“I don’t mind particularly where I live. Really I don’t. I’ll go quite
happily anywhere that you have to go.”
“Right! I’m glad you’re so decided. I thought you might rather hate the
idea.”
“Did you indeed? You were right!” was Agatha’s inward comment.
Why on earth should it be New York? Almost any other place would have
been better. She had always disliked the idea of it, a great, noisy, new
city, perpetually in a hurry. If it had to be the States, why couldn’t
it have been Virginia, or California, or somewhere in the South? She was
all for warmth at the moment.
Gerald was saying:
“Then I’ll find out the particulars of the thing and close with Green if
it’s all satisfactory. The only drawback is that he wants me rather
soon; almost at once, in fact. I’m afraid I shall have to be off in six
weeks at the outside. That would give me time to dispose of my affairs
here. You could, of course, come over later, if you didn’t want to leave
England so soon. Or you could wait here until the divorce proceedings
were through, and then come out. In that case we could be married as
soon as you arrived, but it would mean a longish separation.”
“Does Dr. Green know of your . . . position? I mean would it make any
difference to his offer that we shall probably be in the divorce
courts?”
He shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m almost sure it wouldn’t. But I must find all
that out. In fact, I expect I’ll have to explain the circumstances to
him.”
“I think I could be ready to leave England in about six weeks. It’s
really quite a long time. I’d rather not stay here and be divorced all
by myself.”
“Just as you like. Only I must go then if I’m going at all. He wants my
help in getting the thing started. Otherwise, of course, I wouldn’t
contemplate leaving you.”
“No. We’ll consider it to-morrow when I have seen my mother. We shall
know better what to do then. I can’t think why John hasn’t divorced me.
I made sure he would be very prompt about it. And he should have no
difficulties at all; his case is perfectly clear.”
“Well, you must talk to your mother about it.”
Silence again overtook them, this time prolonged and mournful. The hour
was late and the fire quite out, but neither made a move to leave the
cold hearth. Their brief, bleak colloquy had given them too much to
think about, and they crouched over the ashes, pondering. Gerald was
asking himself, with that wearing, secret uneasiness which now so
frequently assailed him, whether she would be happy in this new life. He
was beginning to feel that this beloved, yet incongruously magnificent
creature, whom he had so unexpectedly acquired, was a charge—an
obligation. Beholding her at Lyndon, he had raged against the opulence
of her setting; but a mere removal had not satisfied him. He now felt
that he must himself provide some sort of background for her; she was
more inseparable from backgrounds than he had thought. He had already
half forgotten that tide of indignant pity which had driven him to
snatch her from Braxhall. Though obstinately counting himself a happy
man, he would sometimes pause and gasp in amazement at what he had done.
Still he loved her intensely, and sustained himself with an impassioned
belief in her fortitude. Not many women would take the prospect of exile
in an alien, uncongenial country as she had taken it. But he did not
tell her this, which was a pity, for she wanted to hear it. She was
discovering that he took her virtues for granted and she was not sure
whether she liked it. But he would have thought it rather insulting to
tell her how noble she was, so he said nothing.
“That’s not an alarum clock going off upstairs?” she cried. “It must be
late! I can’t bear to think of people getting up already; I need to
recruit a lot of energy before I can even think of a new day.”
It was indeed late in the following morning when she finally dragged
herself from her bed and set out on her anxious pilgrimage to South
Kensington. Upon the road she rehearsed all that she must say, and it
seemed to her that she was quite ready for the encounter. She would
point out that she intended to go to America with Gerald, and that, in
this case, divorce would be the simplest remedy. She must display no
regret, no penitence, and no exaltation. Emotion of any sort would put
her at a disadvantage. Calm common sense was the only platform on which
to meet her mother.
As she stood on the doorstep she felt that she was very calm and
sensible indeed. But she no sooner caught sight of her parent, waiting
at the head of the stairs, than a part of her defences began to slip
from her. She had been a fool to think herself ready, when her mother
would, in every one of life’s emergencies, be always so infinitely more
prepared.
“Well, Agatha—what kind of a crossing? I was afraid it would be rough.
So sorry to have missed you last night.”
Meadowes faded away down the hall as Mrs. Cocks kissed her daughter.
They went into the drawing room and sat down on a sofa by the fire. The
hearth was dominated by a large wooden frame on which was stretched
squared canvas, half worked into a thick woolly rug. Mrs. Cocks
displayed it jubilantly.
“It’s perfectly fascinating,” she said. “You do it with this little
needle, threading it through and through—so! Of course, the designs you
get in the shop are hideous but you can do your own. I was in the
British Museum the other day, looking at their carpets, and I’ve got
several new ideas. I’ve made two already. One I gave to Lady Peel. The
other was the first I made; it isn’t very interesting. I put it in that
peculiarly draughty place on the landing by the bathroom. It’s just the
right size. You must come up and see it after lunch.”
Agatha admired the rug and wondered if her mother was being unexpectedly
subtle or more superficial than usual. She had looked for censure on the
very doorstep. Was all this talk of rugs merely meant to disconcert
her—to put her to the necessity of opening the difficult question
herself? Or was her mother really indifferent and incurious? She sat for
some time listening to inconsequent gossip, until she could bear it no
more.
“Mother,” she began, “I rather wanted to discuss some of my private
affairs with you.”
Her mother’s reply enlightened her not a little, revealing, as it did, a
carefully rehearsed attitude.
“Of course, that is as you please. But unless your plans are of a kind
that I can countenance and approve of, the less you tell me the better.
As my daughter I don’t want to lose you, so I’d really rather not hear
anything that might make things difficult between us. Remember, Agatha,
at present I know nothing of what you have been doing lately, except
that you have been abroad for a time.”
Agatha recognized this line of argument, for she had heard it before.
Mrs. Cocks had always been a little inconsistent in her ethical
conventions. The line she drew, where the social irregularities of her
friends were concerned, had strange curves in it. Agatha often thought
that she strained at gnats and swallowed camels. She would exclude one
from her house, in rigid disapprobation, and welcome another, equally
culpable, with warm cordiality. “Of course I know nothing of all that,”
was her plea on these occasions, “and I don’t see that it’s my business
to know.” A policy of invincible ignorance. She was now evidently
prepared to maintain, in the face of an outraged world, that she knew
nothing of her daughter’s misdoings.
Both women were silent for a few minutes and then Mrs. Cocks said
carelessly:
“I’ve had a fire lighted in your room, as you will be wanting to unpack
this afternoon, I expect. When are your things coming round? You haven’t
got a maid with you, I suppose? You’d better let my woman do it for
you.”
“But you weren’t expecting me to stay here, Mother?”
“Why not? I thought you might like to be here for a week or two.”
“I don’t think I can leave Gerald, thank you. We are staying at the
Talisman Hotel, you know.”
Mrs. Cocks flushed with irritation. It was really very tiresome of
Agatha to ignore her plea for reticence.
“I don’t know that I particularly want to hear about that,” she said
with cold distaste. “But since you insist upon talking in this way, may
I ask how long you intend to continue thus?”
“Until we can get married. I want John to divorce me. I can’t think why
he doesn’t. Mother! I know you think it all very wrong, but . . .”
“You can hardly expect me to approve,” broke in Mrs. Cocks, impulsively
forgetting her rôle of cool incuriosity. “You’ve dragged my pride in the
dust. I can’t possibly hold my own with Marian Clewer now, and you’ve no
idea how odious she’s been. I’m quite defenceless. When she brags of her
daughters, what am I to say of mine?”
“I’m very sorry, Mother.”
“I can’t understand it,” continued Mrs. Cocks bitterly. “I cannot
understand it. I couldn’t have believed you capable of such folly. To
risk your position and reputation like this! Because, even nowadays, you
would be considered _déclassée_ by most nice people, if it became
generally talked about. Fortunately, hardly any one does know, outside
the family. I think a lot of people guess that you are not on very good
terms with John, but nothing worse than that. If you will come to me
now, you are likely to get out of it all a great deal better than you
deserve.”
“But, Mother, I want John to divorce me, and then people must——”
“John is not going to divorce you. And very rightly. He cares for the
scandal if you don’t, and he isn’t going to have his name dragged into
publicity like this. And allow me to tell you that you will live to
thank Heaven that he had such good sense and moderation.”
“But unless he divorces me, I can’t marry Gerald.”
“I cannot see why you should be so anxious to rush into a second
marriage when you did so badly over your first.”
“But he has to go to America in six weeks and I want to marry him and go
too.”