was heard of would hardly enable you to remarry in time for that. But
what on earth do you want to go to America for?”
“I don’t want to go there particularly. But Gerald has to go, and I
naturally want to go with him. He’s got work there.”
“Oh, well, of course, if you insist upon living with him, emigration
will be his only chance of supporting himself—and you. You’ve probably
ruined his career here. Yes! Since he has had the misfortune to love
you, my child, he’d better try the States.”
“Do you really think that?” murmured Agatha, turning pale.
“Of course I do. It’s obvious to any one. His practice here will fall to
pieces as soon as ever this scandal comes out. Bound to! His best type
of patients are exactly the sort of people who would have nothing
further to do with him. People that one knows. But, tell me, is this
work in America well paid?”
“Not very, I believe.”
“And have you considered how you will like straitened circumstances
in—in—wherever it is?”
“New York.”
“New York? Oh, it’s quite impossible! My dear Agatha, you’ve never been
there. I have, so I know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t stand a
week of it. It’s the most entertaining place—for the very rich. But
only for the very rich. Unbearable otherwise. You surely can’t
contemplate such a thing? You don’t know what you are doing.”
“Well . . . you see . . . I love him.”
“Love him! But eight years ago you loved John.”
“I was mistaken. I didn’t.”
“How do you know that this is not a mistake?”
“I always loved Gerald. But I didn’t always know it.”
“Then you did very wrong to marry John, that’s all I can say.”
“I know.”
“I can’t understand it. But then I never could understand these things.
I can’t understand how you, of all people, could be so ill-bred.”
“Do you think it is ill-bred?”
“Yes, I do. It’s very vulgar. But it’s the same everywhere nowadays. In
all the books one reads, on the stage, all over the place. All these
violent passions! It’s the war, I suppose. But that sort of thing has
always rather disgusted me. I daresay I’m out of date, but it revolts
me.”
Agatha reflected mournfully upon her recent sentimental journey. It
seemed, at that particular moment, to have been all customs houses and
rough crossings. She could not remember any violent passions anywhere.
“I don’t think you are quite fair,” she said defensively. “I don’t think
Gerald and I are very passionate people, whatever else we might be
accused of.”
“But if you haven’t even the very inadequate excuse of passion, why in
Heaven’s name have you misconducted yourselves in so frightful a manner?
Do explain yourself, Agatha! You told me just now, with some fervour,
that you love him.”
“So I do! So I do!”
“Very well, then. What, exactly, do you mean by that?”
“Oh, don’t you know what I mean?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“Well”—began Agatha laboriously, feeling how hopeless was her task,
“he’s the only person in the world that I’ve ever wanted to—to make
happy—to give to—to make sacrifices——”
“I see!” said Mrs. Cocks drily. “And what sacrifices have you made for
him so far? Apart, I mean, from the loss of principle, position, and
reputation, which was, after all, mutual.”
Agatha considered, with a shock of dismay. The past months, reviewed in
the light of her mother’s derisive irony, did not seem to be very full
of sacrifices, as far as she was concerned. She had in no way requited
his unremitting vigilance for her happiness. So far, he had been the
victim of their escapade. “No,” she said candidly. “I’ve not done much
for him as yet. But I’m going to.”
“No you won’t. You never will. Don’t deceive yourself, Agatha. You
aren’t that type of woman, though you may occasionally wish you were.
You are the sort of woman who takes, who accepts sacrifice; the prize
and privilege of successful men, not the helpmate of their failures. You
were expensive to produce and you are even more expensive to—to keep.
Don’t wince like that! It’s a very useful type, and stimulates nine
tenths of the culture and civilization in the world. But you are
frightfully mistaken if you think you can change your nature. You have
never, in all your life, put up with anything you disliked or done
anything you didn’t want to. You can’t begin now.”
“I’m not so very old.”
“Too old to change your character. And anyhow it’s unfair to experiment
on poor Gerald. If you think you can go with him to America and be a
good wife to him in poverty and discomfort, you’ll make the mistake of
your life. You haven’t the strength of character. You’ll bring misery
and disillusion on him. Have you thought of the consequences, supposing
you couldn’t stand it?”
“Other women——”
“Other women are trained in harder schools. Just consider for a moment
the sort of middle age you are storing up for yourselves.”
Agatha had a moment’s horrible vision of herself growing old, an
inefficient, fretful figure, clouding his life with her querulous
demands and eclipsed beauty. Had she that generous love which survives
the hard middle years? Hastily banishing the nightmare, she said with
decision:
“There will be hard times, of course. But we shall get along as other
people do.”
“Don’t make the mistake of supposing that you have a noble character
because you would like to have one. It’s rank folly.”
“But I’ve burnt my boats. I’m his, now. I must go where he goes. People
may not know it yet, but that doesn’t alter the essential fact. It’s
true that I’m taking great risks. But I must. I can’t leave him, Mother,
whatever you say.”
“You must leave him for a little time, at any rate. I’d hoped to
persuade you of that without being forced to tell you something which I
really have no business to speak of, since I promised not to. But you
compel me.”
“Oh, no, don’t, if you oughtn’t!” cried Agatha, shrinking back.
“I’m afraid I must, for nothing else will make you see reason. Besides,
it’s something which you have every right to know, and which you ought
to have been told long ago. In fact I spoke pretty plainly to Marian
about it. I said that she had absolutely no right to keep it from us.
It—it explains why John is not getting a divorce. I went to see Marian
soon after you left Braxhall, to talk things over, you understand, and
find out what John meant to do. And after a good many preliminaries I
began to gather how ill he really is.”
“Ill! Is he ill?”
“Very ill, dear. He has been for some months past. He was when you were
at Braxhall. I got it out of Marian that he’d seen a specialist just
before that time. It was that old heart trouble, you know.”
“But I knew he’d seen a specialist. He saw Sir Newman Crawley. But he
was quite reassuring.”
“I’m afraid he wasn’t. You were most unjustifiably kept in the dark. His
verdict was very grave.”
“Grave! . . . What did he say?”
“This is bound to be rather a shock to you, dear. He—he practically
told John that he was—dying. He gave very little hope of his recovery.”
“Mother! Oh, Mother! No!”
“He said that it would probably be quick,” said Mrs. Cocks, looking into
the fire. “A few months, he said.”
“But he said all this before we went to Braxhall? Before we went?”
“Yes. Of course he should have told you.”
“Before we went.”
“I consider that you should have been told at once. I suppose he wanted
to spare you, poor boy, as nothing could be done. Still, I might have
been told. But he only confided in Marian, who of course told Lois, and
Hubert, and Cynthia, and Sir Thomas, and Dolly, and James for all I
know, but elected to keep it secret from the people most concerned. But
had you absolutely no idea of it?”
“What?”
“Don’t gape like that! I don’t believe you’ve heard a word I’ve been
saying.”
“I’m sorry. But what have I done! Oh, what have I done! I might have
known.”
“Of course, if you’d known, this . . . regrettable precipitancy . . .”
“Oh, hardly that! We’d been in love for ten years.”
“And did quite well without each other. It’s a pity you couldn’t keep it
up a little longer.”
“Oh, Mother, don’t! Don’t be so cruel. Anyhow, it’s not that I’m
thinking of. But I’ve been so unkind to him. Oh, perhaps it’s not true!”
“I’m afraid it is, dear.”
Mrs. Cocks put a few stitches into her rug. Agatha was walking
distractedly about the room, delving into the past.
“Poor John! Oh, I ought to have known! But why? Why didn’t he tell me? I
don’t blame him, though. I know quite well why he didn’t. I was
abominable to him and let him see I didn’t love him. Oh, but of course I
wouldn’t have left him if I’d known. At least, not like that. But then,
what would I have been worth even if I had stayed, if it was only for
that? I don’t wonder he didn’t tell me. He would have, if I’d treated
him better.”
“I don’t know that it makes so very much difference to John,” said Mrs.
Cocks dispassionately. “The injury which you’ve inflicted upon him would
be the same whether he were well or ill. I don’t expect he feels it any
more bitterly on that score.”
“I’m not thinking of that so much as the hateful way I baited him before
I left him.”
“And I’m not really thinking of John at all. And it’s rather sentimental
in you, Agatha, to do so at this late hour. If you were going to
consider his feelings you should have done so sooner. No! I’m thinking
of the perfectly unnecessary way in which you have compromised
yourself.”
“I don’t see what else could have happened really,” said Agatha
dejectedly, as she sat down again. “Once it was a declared thing between
me and Gerald, I suppose I must have gone to him. Only it would never
have come to such a point, that time at Braxhall, if I’d known about
John. How horrible it all is! However, it’s done now and can’t be
undone. I must try to think what is best to do next.”
“Quite so. And you have to remember that your reputation is still
undamaged. The family will remain silent for John’s sake.”
“But that can’t last for long.”
“I hope you’ll see the sense, now, of coming to me here, at least until
. . .”
“But, my dear Mother, what’s the use of that? If I go to New York in six
weeks’ time with Gerald, what’s the use?”
“I think you must wait here quietly until you can join him to be
married.”
“Oh, no! We couldn’t be separated like that.”
“I think you owe it to John. I really do.” Mrs. Cocks was playing her
last card and her face bore traces of anxiety. “So far you haven’t
brought public disgrace on him. And that is what he minds; you know
quite well it is. If you leave Gerald now and live here with me for a
month or two you will save your husband’s name from dishonour. I think
you’ve no right to refuse that to a dying man.”
“I must see what Gerald thinks,” said Agatha uncertainly. “He will know
what is right. He has a finer conscience than I have.”
“Has he, indeed?” said Mrs. Cocks.
“I can see your point of view. I’ll put it to him.”
“I’m sure he’ll think as I do. Let him go out to New York, and you can
follow him when you are free. After a decent interval. Surely it would
be better, from all points of view? We might both go out; it would look
more respectable. And then you could marry him out there. I know it
sounds callous to talk about the future in this cold-blooded way, but
one must look ahead.”
“It—it would be bound to be fairly soon, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, quite. I gather there is, practically speaking, no doubt about
that.”
Mrs. Cocks longed to add: “You needn’t be afraid your husband will not
die,” but she checked herself in time and continued relentlessly:
“For one thing, if it’s all decently and respectably done, and you don’t
compromise yourselves by rushing off together before you can be properly
married, it will be so much easier for you to return to England
eventually. Supposing Gerald changed his mind about his work and wanted
to come back and take up his London practice? You would infinitely
prefer that in your heart of hearts, wouldn’t you? You don’t surely want
to spend the rest of your life in New York?”
Agatha shivered.
“Why invite a scandal when you can avoid it? I should have thought your
affection for Gerald would have made you consider his position and
career a little more.”
“You see,” exclaimed Agatha, “I rather think it is on my account that he
has accepted this work in New York. I think he thought, poor dear, that
it would be easier for me. And if that is so, I don’t think I ought to
let him go without me.”
“Well, at least, come here until you go. Don’t go on blatantly living
with him as long as you are in London. I really think you should have
more consideration for all our feelings than to do that. Besides, the
Talisman is such a respectable place! It’s where all the head-mistresses
go when they come up to attend conferences. I shouldn’t wonder if you
got turned out when the management discover who you are. And they are
bound to do that before long. How shall you like that?”
“Oh, it is difficult! I’ll go off now and consult him,” conceded Agatha.
“Stay to lunch first. There is plenty of time.”
Mrs. Cocks was unwilling to let Agatha go until she had forced her to a
decision.
“But I said I’d be back for lunch. He will wait for me.”
“Ring him up and tell him you are staying here.”
“I could do that.”
Agatha went to the telephone. As she waited for Gerald, she said
reflectively:
“It wouldn’t be a long separation. Only six weeks.”
“What, child?” Mrs. Cocks looked up from her rug. “Oh! Oh, no! Not long.
The most married people are sometimes parted for as long as that.”
Agatha addressed herself to the telephone:
“Oh, Gerald, is that you? I’m speaking from South Kensington. I’m
stopping to lunch, so don’t wait for me. . . . Oh, not badly. . . . I’ll
tell you when I get back. . . . I don’t quite know. . . . If I’m not
back by tea-time, ring me up, will you? Good-bye, then.”
She hung up the receiver, and found that her mother was looking her over
with approving eyes.
“You’re in very good looks, my dear. You’ve quite got back your colour.
I don’t know when I’ve seen you look better. Corsica has evidently built
you up. Come down to lunch.”
The two women strolled downstairs. Agatha stifled a small pang of
compunction at the thought of poor Gerald lunching in the hotel all by
himself. As a matter of fact he had taken the opportunity to escape from
the menu cards and the sweet peas and maidenhair fern and all the
flummery which so exasperated him at an hotel meal. He had sought an
eating-house near Guy’s, a haunt of his bachelor days, where he was
almost sure of picking up a friend to share his chops and beer.
4
Hubert, borne as far as Cowper in his passion for the eighteenth
century, had re-read the “Winter Morning’s Walk.” He became enchanted
with it and insisted upon reading extracts to Lois in spite of her
visible absorption in a volume of Marcel Proust. The next day was
bitterly cold, and he was very anxious that they should set forth upon a
Winter Morning’s Walk of their own, but she would not be persuaded. In
the afternoon, therefore, feeling every inch a country gentleman, he set
off by himself. He strode through several farmyards and looked severely
at some pigs. He thrashed with his stick at such poor weeds as the
season had spared. His hope was that if he crossed a sufficient number
of fields, and climbed a few score stiles, he might, permeated by the
beauties of the wintry landscape, achieve that mood of philosophic
reverie which gives distinction to the poets of Cowper’s age. If fields
and hedges failed to produce the right effect he might try a country
churchyard.
He had observed that the fellows usually begin by cataloguing the
scenery, and he obediently scrutinized the view, moving the eye, as the
poet directs, “from joy to joy.” But, gaze as he would, he remained
cold. Emphatically that, for a bleak, black wind swept from the steely
sky and whistled over the stubble, nearly flaying him. His nose turned
blue and his eyes began to water; it was the kind of day when no clothes
seem thick enough.
“It needs a frost, I suppose,” he reflected, “and snow, and icicles
hanging from the old barn roof, and what not. Something more like a
Christmas card.”
He thought sadly of Madeira, where they had intended to spend the
winter, and, as a fresh gale came down the hill, he wondered if Madeira
would really be warm enough. The shortening afternoon gave him a good
excuse for turning homeward.
Having reached his garden, however, he perceived Lois at the window of
the living room, and immediately underwent a recrudescence of the
country gentleman. She beckoned to him but he ignored her and began a
solemn tour of the estate, minutely examining each much-pruned rose bush
in the bed under the window. He hoped that he did not look too cold and
miserable. Lois opened the long window and called to him to come in, but
he hardly heard her in the frenzy of excitement with which he stooped
over an extremely small bush. Then he straightened himself.
“Lois!” he called. “Just come and look here!”
“What at?” she called back, shivering in the window. “Do come in out of
the cold. I’ve had a letter.”
“I do believe . . .” he said, in deep concern, “. . . I’m very much
afraid it’s the blight!”
“The what?”
“The blight! . . . Er—rose blight.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Of course there is.”
She came out and joined him.
“I don’t see anything wrong,” she said.
“I don’t like that funny reddish colour at the end of that twig,” he
commented anxiously.
“Aren’t they always like that at this time of year? And, anyhow, you
can’t do anything about it, even if it is. You don’t know what to do.”
Hubert looked pained at such an accusation. He said, with becoming
gravity:
“I’ll have to consult with Saunders.”
“Now, do come in. I’ve something I want to talk to you about.”
He followed her into the genial warmth of the living room and just
managed to suppress a sigh of ecstasy as the window closed behind them.
“I had a nice bracing walk,” he told her. “Pity you wouldn’t come. Those
pigs at the old farm are very fine. I had a look at them.”
But she was so intent upon a communication which she wished to make that
she had no time to be a country gentleman’s wife. She did not even
notice that he was aggrieved about it.
“It’s the most extraordinary thing,” she said, “and you will have to
speak to James. He pays too little consideration, really, to poor
Mother’s feelings, and it’s disgusting after all she’s done for him.”
“How often have I told you,” said Hubert furiously, his grievance taking
shape, “how often have I told you that I will not speak to James about
things? Why should I? He’s more trouble than he’s worth. If anything is
to be done with him, one of you women had better talk to his precious
Dolly. That’s the only way to deal with him.”
“Dolly is as bad as he is. She’s worse. They are both disgusting, but he
has some excuse. He’s always been eccentric, and anyhow, men have
different standards. But Dolly shouldn’t countenance it. At least, one
expects people of her class to value respectability. One would think she
would be more particular.”
“What have they been doing now? I thought Dolly was too respectable, if
anything. That was your mother’s view when last we discussed her.”
“Mother writes that she really can’t go there any longer. She can’t
countenance the way they receive Agatha. She says that Agatha is up at
Hampstead so often that one can never be really quite sure of not
meeting her.”
“But, Lois—I told you that at the Martins’ party the other week we
all——”
“That’s different. That’s in public. Of course, in a private family
affair like this, one has to behave civilly in front of people. Dolly
and James did quite right: I was glad to hear that they had that much
_savoir-faire_. But it’s quite a different thing asking her to their
house.”
“It’s rather funny, when you think how very lately it was Agatha we all
blamed for receiving them. But really, my dear, I think it’s entirely
their business who they ask to their house.”
“Have their family no claims? When you think of what we have all done
for them! Where would they be if it wasn’t for us? You’d think James
would have more feeling of loyalty to his brother. You’d think a
respectable creature like Dolly would draw the line somewhere.”
“I daresay she does.”
“I tell you she doesn’t. If, knowing the facts, she can go on asking
Agatha to her house, it shows that she doesn’t.”
“I don’t see that follows,” argued Hubert. “It merely shows that she
wouldn’t draw the line where you do. Her conventions are not the same as
yours.”
The word conventions drew her fire, as he knew it would. She plunged
after it, off the main track of her indignation.
“Conventions? Who is talking of conventions? I don’t consider myself a
very conventional person. . . .”
“Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. As people go I should say I was very tolerably
broadminded. Anyhow, I’m much less conventional than you are.”
“Very possibly,” agreed Hubert in an irritating voice.
“So you can’t talk.”
Hubert said nothing, but picked up the evening paper and settled himself
in a comfortable chair by the fire. Lois, finding herself in a
cul-de-sac, made one of those unexpectedly swift returns to the main
issue which so often surprised him:
“Anyhow this question of James and Dolly has nothing to do with
convention.”
“I should have thought it had.”
“It’s—it’s simply a matter of decent feeling.”
“Same thing,” Hubert was heard to mumble.
“It’s not. It isn’t at all the same thing.”
“I think it is.”
“I say it isn’t.”
“What attitude,” demanded Hubert, after a pause, “should decent feeling
have prompted Dolly to adopt toward her sinning sister?”
“Don’t be flippant, Hubert! I feel very strongly about this.”
“I observe that you do. But I’m not joking, Lois. I want to know. How
should Dolly behave to Agatha?”
“She should make it quite clear—as soon as she has the opportunity to
do it privately, I mean—she should make it obvious that she disapproves
of her.”
“But, I just put it to you, supposing she doesn’t disapprove?”
“Well, then, she should.”
“Why?”
“Oh, Hubert! How can you ask? And she pretends to be religious!”
“But her kindness to Agatha may be on religious grounds, you know.
Eating with publicans and sinners, even with scribes and pharisees, has
been sanctioned by an unimpeachable precedent.”
“Yes, perhaps. But it isn’t only religion. It’s the flagrant disregard
of all social . . .”
Since convention was the only word which suggested itself to her, Lois
left this sentence unfinished and went on to the third item in her
charge.
“They ought to remember what they owe to the family.”
“But what do they owe?”
“What does any one owe? If I had treated you as Agatha treated John,
would you like to see your relations welcoming me with open arms?”
Hubert was struck by this.
“No, I can’t say I should,” he said thoughtfully. “A little hurt, I
should be.”
“And for Dolly and James especially, when you think of everything that
has been done for them. Mother, and John, and you, and the Bragges. If
you think how we’ve all helped in James’s career! You don’t remember,
because you didn’t know us then, but I do, how Mother worried herself
getting him good lessons and sending him to Paris and all. It’s really
rather wonderful when you think she isn’t his real mother. And she had
to stand no end of criticism from his own relations for not sending him
away to school; that old Major Talbot and Mrs. Gordon Clewer—all quite
odious about it, and insinuating all sorts of things. They none of them
could see that she was keeping him at home because she thought he would
develop better there, and that a boy of his temperament couldn’t be
treated like the average. And then think how John let him go on living
at Lyndon, just letting him paint and go his own way without a word of
criticism! Not many young artists have such obliging brothers. And then
his marriage! I don’t see how he could possibly have married if the
family hadn’t been so nice about it. He never considered, I suppose,
when he was allowed to marry with so little trouble, what a blow it was
to all of us. We all had to make sacrifices. And then think of the
trouble you took to get him work! And Cynthia and Tom and the way he
treated them. And the whole business of the Hampstead move. Mother was
up there every day for a week, seeing about it. And you taking such
trouble to introduce him to people; turning out on cold nights to take
him to evening parties which bored you frightfully. Oh, I know it’s a
privilege to have him in the family, but it’s a great burden too! And
he’s not a scrap grateful!”
Hubert meditated on this catalogue in some awe and said:
“He certainly has a good deal to thank us all for. But do I understand
that your mother actually met Agatha at Hampstead?”
“Yes. She went up to see Dolly about a servant or something. And James
calmly took her into the sitting room, where she found Agatha helping
Dolly to make herself a blouse, if you please! You’d have thought they’d
have the sense, under the circumstances, to show Mother into another
room. It was most awkward.”
“And what happened?”
“I’ll read you what mother writes.”
Lois picked up a letter and read:
“‘Though I was very much taken aback, I was not, on the whole, sorry to
have an opportunity of expressing my feelings. I was a little afraid
lest my manner at Mrs. Townshend’s might have been misunderstood. . . .’
“You see,” explained Lois, “they had met before. Mrs. Cocks, since she
got Agatha to go back to her, has taken her about a good deal. She wants
to whitewash her as much as possible, I suppose. And Mother met them at
an ‘At Home’ and had to be civil, or people would have thought it odd.”
She resumed her reading:
“‘I said nothing. I just said: “Oh, Dorothy, if you’ll excuse
me, I’ll come another time. Or perhaps, if Lady Clewer is not
going to be here for long, I could wait in the studio until she
is gone.” Just like that, taking no direct notice of her at all.
James, as you may imagine, failed to grasp my meaning, and said:
“Why do you call her Lady Clewer?” But I think his wife
understood. I went and sat in the studio. Would you believe me,
I was there for twenty minutes before Dorothy came in. Even then
she did not apologize. I said very little; I told her that I
could not visit at Hampstead while such disagreeable things are
likely to happen. She tried to excuse herself, of course, by
saying that they had not expected me. But, as I said, that only
makes it worse. It’s admitting that they do these things behind
my back.’”
“She just ignored her,” said Hubert thoughtfully. “If it had been you,
Lois, what would you have done? Would you have done the same?”
“I think so. If I had had the presence of mind. But I’d have got
flustered; Mother is always so sure of herself.”
“But I don’t understand. I don’t quite get your point of view. I’ve
known you receive people who, to put it baldly, were no better than
Agatha, and who had fewer claims on your affection. And, after all, the
scandal has never been public, and she’s living quietly with her mother
now.”
“Yes, but it’s the family side of it.”
“You mean that you are ready to accord a toleration outside the family
which you withhold inside it?”
“Of course, I might have known that you would take Agatha’s part,” cried
Lois angrily. “All men do, it seems.”
“Oh, good heavens!” groaned Hubert. “Why can’t you keep to the point,
Lois? These digressions make all our discussions so lengthy.”
“That’s exactly like you! When I bring up an argument you can’t answer,
you always call it a digression. You know quite well that you can’t be
unbiassed about Agatha. You can’t deny it.”
“I don’t deny it. But I deny that it has anything to do with the point.
I want to extract from you some explanation of your most unreasonable
definition——”
“Very well, then, if you admit that you are biassed where she is
concerned, it seems to me that your whole position is unsound.”
“—your most unreasonable definition of toleration as——”
“Hubert! I wish you’d listen to me and not try to interrupt so
constantly. It’s very bad manners, and we’d get on so much better if you
ever listened.”
“On the contrary, you interrupted me. But we’ll let that pass. I’ll
listen in silence until you’ve quite finished, if you will try to
abstain from hurling unanswerable but perfectly irrelevant truths at me
and asking me to deny them. It gives you a specious air of victory, but
it doesn’t in the least disprove my point, you know.”
“I’m glad you admit that they are truths. Since you admit that, where
Agatha is concerned, you are not qualified to hold an opinion——”
“I’ve admitted no such thing!”
“Hubert! You are perfectly impossible! If you won’t let me speak, I
won’t try.”
And Lois bent to poke the fire with hands that shook with wrath.
“Since you must drag personalities into this discussion,” went on
Hubert, more gently, “I’d like to say this. It doesn’t seem to me that
you can be very friendly with a person, fond of them and accepting
kindness from them, and then suddenly chuck them. Agatha has been very
kind to us both, Lois, and we have been fond of her. It seems to me to
give her a claim on us. And I expect Dolly feels that way too. She owes
a lot to Agatha. You don’t mean to tell me that you can, at a moment’s
notice, forget the friendship of years? It’s so unlike your usual
generosity of temper.”
She said nothing, but kept her face averted. He was suddenly aware that
she was on the point of tears, and he instantly grew remorseful. The
quarrel became insignificant, and he asked himself angrily why she
should not be unreasonable if she wished. He cursed himself for having
lost his temper and was glad when tea appeared, since it would give him
an opportunity of ministering to her.
“Wouldn’t you like to have it on the sofa?” he suggested. “Let me pour
out.”
She refused coldly and they began the meal in an uncomfortable silence.
She was wondering whether any man ever ends any argument with his wife
without suggesting a cup of tea or a lie down. She wondered this because
it simply did not occur to her that husbands have more forcible weapons
at their command. The occasion of James and the window, the only
occasion in her life when she had not been treated like a lady, had
faded from her mind. It did not lead her to speculate why it was that
Hubert never boxed her ears when she annoyed him.
He was seeking a topic which might mollify her. At last he inquired if
her mother’s letter had any news of John.
“Gone down to shoot at Lyndon,” said Lois shortly.
“Has he got friends with him?”
“I believe so.”
“I shouldn’t have thought it was very good for him, should you?”
“No.”
“But I suppose it’s a change for him.”
“I suppose so.”
“Damned uphill work!” he protested inwardly.
Her humours, however, were seldom long-lived. She was not a sulky woman.
When, after tea, he came to light her cigarette for her, she unbent and
retained him with a caress.
“I hate quarrelling,” she murmured.
“So do I.”
“What do we do it for, then?”
“I shouldn’t think we are worse than any one else.”
“We quarrel about such silly things. James!”
“Not James particularly. It might have been the new tennis courts or a
railway time-table. It was merely a little ebullition of the sex
discord.”
“No, it’s generally James. At Lyndon it was the same; he was at the
bottom of every family row I can ever remember. He’s so different from
us! Like a cuckoo in a sparrow’s nest.”
“I was thinking the other day . . . you know, I shouldn’t be in the
least surprised if he set a fashion. A cult of domesticity. I expect all
talented young men in the next generation will marry housemaids and
wheel their children out in perambulators on Sunday afternoons, and talk
in words of one syllable. It’s always the accidental, the chance result
of education and surroundings, which makes an impression on the
second-rate mind. They’ll copy his work, of course, but that’s nothing
to the way they’ll copy his personal eccentricities.”
“Hampstead and Chelsea will look very odd when they are full of people
modelled upon James. Dull too!”
The telephone bell rang and Lois went to answer it:
“Hello! Hello! Yes, it’s me! Lois speaking! Oh, yes, I’ll tell him.”
She turned to Hubert.
“It’s Mother. She wants to speak to you.”
Hubert took the receiver from her.
“Yes! . . . Yes? Oh! Oh, yes, what is it? . . . Oh! . . . Oh, I’m very
sorry! Where did you say? Oh, yes, I’ll tell her. Yes, I’ll be careful.”
He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to her. “She wants me to
break to you that John died at Lyndon this afternoon,” he said in an
aggrieved voice. “I can’t see why she couldn’t tell you herself. Shall I
offer to go up? She was speaking from Eaton Square. They’d ’phoned from
Lyndon.”
“Yes, you’d better.”
He turned to the telephone again.
“Oh, I’ve told Lois, Lady Clewer. Yes, she’s quite all right. I don’t
think you need worry about her. Shall I come up? I can come at once. Are
you alone? . . . Oh! . . . Well, ring us up if there is anything that we
can do, or if you want me for anything. . . . Oh! . . . Yes, I will if
you like. But I really think there is no need to worry.”
He put up the receiver and rejoined his wife by the fire.
“The Bragges are with her,” he said. “And she says I must on no account
leave you. I’m to ring her up last thing to-night and reassure her about
you. She seems dreadfully afraid that you’ll be very much upset.”
Lois was looking as if she could have wished herself a little more
upset. She said gravely:
“Poor John. It’s very sad.”
Hubert agreed that it was.
“I wonder if he was shooting this morning. This cold day . . .”
Hubert nodded.
“Poor Mother! She was as fond of him, you know, as if he had been her
own son. It will be very hard for her.”
The tears which she could not shed for John rose, into her eyes as she
thought of her mother’s distress.
“I’ll go up to-morrow,” she said, “and help her about getting her
things. I’ll need clothes myself.”
Her mind was occupied with the subject for some moments, and then she
said lamely:
“Of course, expecting it as we have been for the last few months, it’s
less of a shock. . . .”
It was as though she were excusing herself for not feeling more.
“It’s a queer thing,” said Hubert, “to think of James at the head of the
family. I wonder if he’ll live at Lyndon!”
Lois looked really shocked.
“Oh, Hubert! Isn’t it awful! But it must be faced, I suppose.”
“There are bound to be great changes.”
“I wonder what Agatha will do now, Hubert.”
“Do? Why she’ll marry Blair of course.”
“I’m not quite sure,” said Lois thoughtfully. “I think her mother is
working against it, you know. I think, now she has got hold of Agatha,
she will throw all her influence to delay the marriage in the hope that
it won’t come off.”
“I should have thought that it was quite inevitable.”
“Well, you know, Agatha’s position is quite assured. She isn’t publicly
compromised; she won’t have to marry him. She’s young and beautiful and
well off. Her jointure must be ample. Mrs. Cocks might well think she
could do better for herself than marry Mr. Blair.”
“Mrs. Cocks might, but I doubt if Agatha would. I won’t believe it. I
can’t believe she’d chuck Blair now. I think you do her an injustice,
Lois.”
“Well—we’ll see.”
“But could you forgive her if she turned him down?”
“No. I don’t think I could.”
“She’d brand herself as a light woman,” he said gravely.
Lois blushed at so outspoken a definition, and said quickly: “I don’t
want to be unjust to her. It all depends, I think, upon the influence of
Mrs. Cocks. I don’t want to be hard on Agatha, really I don’t. But I
feel she has every virtue except character. She has no real principles,
only nice manners. When you first get to know her you think that such
charm and kindness must have something fundamentally fine at the bottom
of it. But you gradually grow impatient with her and you end by thinking
that all her goods are in the shop window. But I’m sorry I spoke in that
petty way of her before tea.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. I’m sure I was most insufferable.”
“We must try not to quarrel when we have a family to educate.”
“Indeed we must! If I forget myself you will have to say: ‘Hubert! And
before the children too!’”
Lois laughed and they drew in closer to their bright fire. The bitter
gale outside moaned among the larches, but they did not hear it, so
entranced were they with their own living future. The storm swept the
wintry land and sang a dirge in the void chimneys of Lyndon, swaying the
tapestries in that room where John lay, so soon forgotten, in the chilly
magnificence of a bed which had once belonged to Agatha.
5
Mrs. Cocks watched her daughter tear up her fourth attempt at a letter,
and refrained from suggesting that there was a block of scribbling paper
in the writing table drawer. It was certainly a waste of good notepaper,
but it would not do to interfere at this point. Agatha took a fresh
sheet, wrote some kind of invocation at the top, and paused
despairingly.
Mrs. Cocks bent over her rug to hide a smile. She suspected that this
letter was to Gerald, and, if it was difficult to write, so much the
better. The more often Agatha tore up her beginnings, the more likely
was she to say the very things which it was most desirable that she
should say.
“My dear!” declaimed the mother to herself, recounting the history of
this crisis to an imaginary familiar, “I did nothing. Absolutely
nothing! I said nothing. I just sat still and let it work. And at the
last moment, without a word from me, she came to her senses. I never
felt more strongly how wise it is not to interfere in other people’s
affairs. As one grows older one learns the folly of it.”
It struck her that Agatha’s mourning was really a little too much
modified, even for these days of flighty widowhood. As soon as the
crucial point of Gerald Blair was settled she must have a campaign with
clothes and insist upon their being blacker. But not just yet.
Essentials must be fought out first.
“There is nothing like Providence,” she reflected. “When you think of
the risks the child has run, she is really likely to come out of them
very well.”
Agatha was reading Gerald’s letter over again. He wrote:
“DEAREST LOVE:
“This is an impossible situation to comment on, isn’t it? I
shall never, for the rest of my life, escape from remorse when I
think of poor Clewer, and I expect you feel pretty much the
same. I’m desperately sorry about it, and I don’t wonder if his
relations feel inclined to shower all sorts of curses on our
heads.
“But now about us, since it’s no use maundering over follies
which can’t be remedied. Dearest, I can’t help being very glad
that we can get things put straight before I sail, though it
sounds brutal to say so. I’m arranging about a special licence
immediately and would like to see you as soon as possible, for
we shall have a good deal to talk over and settle. When can you
see me? I’m not supposing that you can possibly manage to sail
as soon as I do, since it’s such short notice, so I’m taking no
steps about fixing up your passage until I hear from you. Is
that right? I have, in fact, made up my mind to do without you
for some months longer, but you must try to come over as soon as
ever you can, for you’ve no idea how much I miss you all the
time.
“I’m getting intensely keen on the job, you’ll be glad to hear;
the more I learn of it the more I like it, which is uncommon
luck.
“Ever yours,
“G.”
It was such a confident letter. Not even “Shall I see about a special
licence?” but “I am arranging about a special licence immediately.” Its
confidence appalled her. She felt totally unable to tell him that she
was unsure in her own mind; that she doubted her power to be happy in
New York or to make him so. She took a fresh sheet and wrote:
“MY DEAR LOVE:
“I’m glad you’ve been so prompt about all arrangements. Come and
see me early to-morrow. I rather think I could manage to be
ready to sail when you do, if it’s possible to book my passage
as late as this. I cannot endure a further separation as late as
this. I cannot endure a further separation if it can be avoided.
But we will discuss that when you come.
“Always your loving
“AGATHA.”
She then reverted to an earlier page, on which she had written “Dearest
Gerald,” and added:
“I’m afraid you’ll think I’m failing you horribly, but I really
think it would be a pity for us to get married in such a hurry.
We must allow a decent interval to elapse. My leaving you and
coming here was a concession to the proprieties, and having gone
that far, we might as well do the thing thoroughly. Couldn’t you
go out for a year or eighteen months, and then, if you liked the
work, I could join you and we could be married? Or you could
come back if you had decided against remaining in New York. I
don’t want to make you feel I’m backing out, my dear, but I
think it’s rather a pity to let ourselves be rushed in any way.
There is no need. We have behaved badly about John, and I feel
that it would be bad taste, under the circumstances, to force
things blatantly upon the world by getting married the moment I
am free.
“I can see you any time. I go out in the afternoons occasionally
for a short walk, but otherwise I’m pretty sure to be in, as I’m
not, naturally, going about very much just now. I do want to
preserve decorum, as far as possible, in this very difficult
position.
“Ever yours most affectionately,
“AGATHA.
“Don’t be angry with me for feeling all this, Gerald dear.”
These letters she placed side by side and looked from one to the other
helplessly. Then she rewrote the second, leaving out the words “There is
no need,” for she blushed when she thought of Gerald reading them. But
still, she could not decide which to send. The second letter, even when
amended, was a contemptible production; she knew what Gerald would think
of it. But she considered that it would be even more cowardly to send
the first unless she was sure that she could live up to it. She would be
jeopardizing his happiness in order to sustain her own self-esteem.
Glancing furtively at her mother she blessed the rugs which were
apparently so all-absorbing. Advice and interference at this moment
would be the last straw. But her perplexities had evidently passed
unnoticed. She sat weighing one letter against the other until the maid
came in with the afternoon post. There was a note directed to her in
Dolly’s neat board-school hand:
“MY DEAR AGATHA:
“Can you come up some time, quite soon, please, and see James
and I? We are very much upset about something, and would like
your advice. We would come to you only James is working very
hard all day now and in the evening it’s difficult for us both
to get away as the girl goes out. So we hope you won’t mind us
asking you to come, dear Agatha, and that you are feeling
alright and not too much worried by the Trouble in the Family.
“With very much love from us both, yours affectly,
“DOLLY AND JAMES CLEWER.” . . .
Agatha determined to go up to Hampstead that very afternoon. Also she
would postpone her decision about these letters she had written until
after her visit. It struck her that her point of view depended
enormously upon domicile, and a few hours in another _milieu_ might
throw fresh light on the situation. She reacted to life so differently
in different places, and the most decisive step of her career had been
taken because she had been at Bramfield and at Braxhall upon the same
day.
She put the two letters into two envelopes and tucked them away into her
handbag. She would post one when she got back from Hampstead. Then she
said to her mother:
“I’m just off to see Dolly and James.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Cocks doubtfully. “All the way to Hampstead? How will
you go?”
She had reason to suspect the influence of Dolly and James.
“I can go by Tube.”
“I don’t know that I quite like that. After all, child, you are, in the
eyes of the world, a very recent widow. It isn’t quite the thing to go
rushing round London in Tubes like this.”
“It’s very unlikely I’ll meet any one we know. I’ll keep down my veil.
I’m afraid I must go.”
“Very well,” sighed Mrs. Cocks, who was afraid to draw the rope too
tight. “But I think you ought to be back for tea. It isn’t really decent
that you should be going out at all, except for a little exercise in the
gardens. Of course, it’s dull, but one must observe some forms. Why
don’t you occupy your mind with some solid reading? When your father
died, I remember, I read all through Prescott’s ‘Conquest of Mexico,’
during the first few weeks of mourning. Of course it’s a little heavy.
But why don’t you read Mme. de Sévigné? She’s very amusing. I’ll look
her out for you.”
“I’ll try to be back for tea,” conceded Agatha, and escaped.
An unpleasant wind, icy and dusty, blew in her face as she picked her
way up the hill from the Tube station. It was an unbecoming day and she
felt blue and pinched; she had a suspicion that she looked old.
Hampstead, usually so pleasing a place, seemed to her dirty, noisy, and
incredibly cold. She tried to sustain herself with memories of the
warmth of Corsica; of long days by the sea, watching its blue glint
through the arbutus trees. But then, the South could be squalid too.
Remembering the smell in the inns and the flies on the ceilings, she
thought that it could be worse. On the whole squalor in warm countries
was more intolerable than squalor in cold. New York, so she understood,
was given to extremes of climate; torrid in summer, frigid in winter, it
was probably squalid all the time.
Turning a corner by South Kensington Station she had caught a glimpse of
herself in a long glass by a shop door. She had seen a pallid,
disgusted-looking lady, well over thirty, whom she had scarcely
recognized. She had never known that it was possible to look so
commonplace, and the idea nauseated her. She tried to believe that Venus
herself would appear insignificant in such unkind weather, and then
remembered a young woman of about her own age who had passed her a
moment later and whose beauty was preserved by a closed car and Russian
sables.
When she had entered upon the silent residential quarter in which Dolly
and James were established she unfastened her handbag and drew forth the
first letter that she had written to Gerald. She glanced through its
honest, loving sentences, and then tore it up into very small fragments.
These she scattered to the implacable wind to be blown for ever about
the Heath from the gray ruffled pond to Parliament Hill.
Then she mounted James’s doorstep and rang the bell. The girl admitted
her and said that Lady Clewer had just run around to the grocer’s, but
Sir James was in his studio. James at the same moment appeared at the
end of the passage and greeted her joyfully.
“Dolly’s out,” he said, “but she’ll be in in a minute. Come into the
studio where it’s warm. We have a fire there.”
He led her down the hall where Clewer mackintoshes hung in symmetrical
rows, through a covered passage, into the large comfortable studio which
had been built out into the yard behind. She paused on the threshold
with a cry of surprise, for against the wall, in a good light, there
leaned that portrait of James’s mother which had once hung in Eaton
Square.
“How did that get here?” she said.
“Mamma made me bring it back after the—the funeral,” he explained. “I’m
very glad to have it. It’s good, don’t you think?”
“I’ve always thought it good.”
He looked at it attentively and then pronounced:
“Too many of them altogether.”
“What? Portraits?”
“No. Lady Clewers. There’s this one, and there’s Mamma, and there’s you,
and now there’s poor Dolly, who detests it. That’s too many.”
“There certainly does seem to be rather a crowd of us.”
“It’s a good thing you won’t be one for much longer. I suppose you will
be getting married soon?”
“Well—yes—sometime, I suppose.”
“It will be nice for you to be an honest woman again,” said James
kindly.
Agatha agreed that it would be nice, recognizing some conjecture of
Dolly’s in this artless repetition.
“You’ll find you are much happier altogether when you have got out of
the family,” he assured her. “Did Dolly tell you how worried we are?”
“No. She only said something. . . .”
“There she is back! I heard someone at the back door. I’ll just call to
her that you are here.”
He leant out of a window which gave him a view of the tradesmen’s
entrance and shouted:
“Dolly! Dollee! Agatha’s here! Oh, it isn’t Dolly, it’s a man. What is
it? Oh, the Gas! Oh, yes, can’t you come again when my wife is in? I
don’t know where it is, do you? Very well, then, I’ll let you in. Can
you show me how to do it or do you do it yourself? You’d much better
wait till my wife comes in. Yes, I’m Sir James Clewer all right. Oh,
Dolly! There you are! Agatha and the Gas are here.”
Dolly dealt with the Gas and came up into the studio. She wore a new
black dress of far more lugubrious appearance than Agatha’s gray furs,
and looked unexpectedly bereaved. She kissed Agatha with a perplexed
mournfulness and dragged a chair up to the fire for her.
“How nice of you to come so quick,” she said. “Has James been telling
you? What do you think?”
“I haven’t told her yet,” said James, fetching chairs for himself and
Dolly. “It’s Mamma’s newest idea, Agatha.”
“It isn’t as if it wasn’t bad enough us coming into a title we never
wanted,” began Dolly wearily. “We don’t like being Sir James and Lady
Clewer all of a sudden. It isn’t what I expected when I married James.
It doesn’t suit our style of living. But what must be, must, and since
it’s the will of God I suppose we oughtn’t to complain.”
“I don’t suppose it’s the will of God at all,” interposed James. “Why
should it be? Why should He want to make me a baronet, I should like to
know?”
“If He hadn’t, He wouldn’t of let your poor brother die,” explained
Dolly severely. “But what I mean to say is this. We don’t want to let it
upset us more than we can help, do we?”
“You see,” continued James, “Mamma came up here yesterday and wanted to
know when we were going to move into Lyndon.”
“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” said Dolly. “Just when
I’d got that range put into the back parlour and the whole house
papered. I didn’t want overmuch to come here: I didn’t think it near so
healthy for the children. But since we are here I’d sooner stay. There’s
no question but it’s better for James and his painting.”
“Yes, this house suits us,” said James. “We’ve got everything here how
we like it. Do you think it’s fair to make us live at Lyndon, Agatha?
She says that it’s my duty now to keep up my position.”
“And the worst of it is, there’s a lot in it,” said Dolly sadly. “I
sometimes think that he ought to go. There ought to be some of the
family live at the House. I quite see that.”
“What I feel,” said the hopeful James, “is that it’s so much more your
house than ours, Agatha. It’s just the place for you, and you and Blair
would do much better there than we would. Now you are going to be
married, couldn’t you go and live there and be the family for us? You
like Lyndon, don’t you? Better than any other place? I know you do. Then
do please go!”
“Oh, dear James, it’s quite impossible.”
“Wouldn’t Blair like it?”
“He’s going to America in a fortnight,” she said quickly.
“What? For ever and ever?”
“For some time, I’m afraid.”
“But aren’t you going too?”
“N—not yet.”
“But you will eventually, I suppose. Oh, dear! Then that puts an end to
my best plan,” said James dolefully.
Dolly was almost tearful.
“Oh, Agatha, I am sorry! We shall miss you ever so! I don’t really know
however we’ll get on without you, so kind as you’ve been. But you must
write to us a lot.”
Agatha felt too jaded and dejected to tell them that she had practically
decided not to go. It would have needed so much explanation. They had
supported and encouraged her in every vicissitude, so far, believing
that she was bound to Gerald as they were bound to each other. This
deliberate desertion they would never understand. She could picture
quite clearly Dolly’s look of startled disapprobation and James’s
compassionate gravity. She wondered why she knew so well how James would
look. Hadn’t he, once before, looked on her with pity and proffered
advice which she had not taken? Her mind swung back to her wedding day
and she remembered that he had said:
“Don’t go if you don’t want to. . . . They are very silly, you know, but
you shouldn’t pay any attention to them. I don’t. . . .”
Bending her head toward the fire, so that they might not see her
twisting face, she said to James and his wife:
“No, I’m afraid you must count me out as far as a tenant for Lyndon
goes. But really, I don’t see why you should worry. I shouldn’t let them
make you go if you don’t want to. You’ve always been the most sensible
person I know, James, about refusing to let other people interfere with
you. You’ve never allowed them, so far, to distract you from anything
you want to do, or confuse your ideas as to the essential things for
your own happiness. Why should you allow it now? I certainly wouldn’t go
and live at Lyndon if I were you. It would upset your life horribly. Oh,
you’ve done so well up till now! Don’t let them persuade you against
your will! You mustn’t go.”
“I don’t want to,” he said. “But Dolly thinks . . .”
“Goodness knows I don’t want to neither,” broke in Dolly. “But there
ought to be the family living in a place like that. James has got a duty
toward it. He’s a rich man now and, of course, he’ll find it much harder
to know how to act right. It says in the Bible that it’s easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle——”
“That isn’t as bad as it sounds,” interrupted James in an instructive
voice. “Miss Barrington explained it to Cynthia and me once. And she
said that the eye of a needle was really a gate in the walls of
Jerusalem.”
“If the Lord had meant that He’d of said so,” replied Dolly with
conviction. “Anyhow the meaning’s plain. It’s much more difficult for
James to go to Heaven now than it used to be, so we’ve got to be more
careful how we behave. We are the Family now. We don’t want to be, but
we are. And we’ve got this house; we don’t want it but we’ve got it.
It’s the state of life to which we have been called.”
“Well, I’m not going,” announced James, who had evidently made up his
mind. “Nobody can be called to two states at once and I shall stay here
and paint. You can go if you’d like, Dolly; I won’t interfere with what
you think is right.”
“James Clewer! What a shocking thing to say! We can’t be parted, and you
didn’t ought to speak of it, not even in fun.”
“I’m not in fun.”
He rose and crossed to the wall where his mother’s picture stood. After
looking at it for a few seconds he said again:
“I’m not in fun. You ought to know that. You know, you both know, how I
hated that place! Even after you came, Agatha, it was never the sort of
place I like, though it was better. Things were quite different for me
when once I got away from it. It may be very beautiful, and so on, but
it isn’t my sort of house and never will be, not if I’m the Family fifty
times over. I won’t have my children living there. I’ve got away and got
my own place for them, and if we went back they’d never have a free
moment. We’ve got a duty to them. I’m sorry, Dolly; I know I generally
do what you want, but this time I’m not going to.”
Dolly, after the shortest of pauses, signified a tranquil acquiescence
in a decision which she saw to be irrevocable. She turned to Agatha and
asked:
“And what do you think we should do with the house, then?”
“What about your stepmother, James?” asked Agatha. “She’s the person who
has always run it really. Would she like to go on there?”
“We hadn’t thought of her,” said James.
“After all,” pursued Agatha, “she’s lived there a great number of years.
And done it very well. Couldn’t you ask her to stay on for a bit? Later
you might feel differently about going back yourselves.”
“That would be almost as bad as letting it,” objected Dolly. “I mean,
I’m sure she’s a kind woman and very good to the poor and all, but I
don’t like her way of doing things. She doesn’t do them quite like the
lady of such a house ought to do. She isn’t like you, Agatha, for
instance.”
“Dolly, I think you are much too feudal. You want to put the clock back.
You want to revive a state of things which is past and gone for ever.
What did I do for Lyndon when I had it? I enjoyed it very much; it
suited me to live in it, but I did nothing for it and in the end I
disgraced it. I know I belong by race to the ‘Bless the Squire and His
Relations’ galley, but it’s out of date, all that sort of thing. I never
made the smallest attempt to uphold it. It’s she, with all her modern
activities, and her dairies, and her laundries, and village institutes,
who is ready to shoulder responsibility. I know she domineers, but think
how she works! Think of all the dull hard work she’s done since she came
to Lyndon! She’s what is called middle class, but she’s ready to take on
all the unpaid public work, she and her like. Lyndon’s hers. I belong to
a class which is of no account now.”
“They do say that these people, what made their money in trade, are
getting into all the old houses nowadays,” agreed Dolly.
“If we went to live there ourselves, you know, Dolly, we couldn’t push
her out of it. She’s dug herself in all right,” said James, “and how
should we like that?”
“Well, we needn’t decide all in a minute,” concluded Dolly. “Let’s think
it over. I daresay you are right, Agatha. I wish you didn’t have to go
to America all of a sudden. I’d been counting on you to set us right in
quite a lot of things. We’ll often need someone to advise us now. Oh,
dear!”
She sighed lengthily. Agatha had never seen her so unsure of herself.
“What date are you sailing?” asked James suddenly. “Couldn’t we all come
and see you off?”
“I don’t quite know,” replied Agatha. “It’s such very short notice.”
“Why aren’t you going when he is?”
“Well, my passage isn’t booked for one thing.”
“Oh, I see!” he exclaimed, enlightened. “You wouldn’t have gone if John
hadn’t died.”
“Hush, James!” admonished Dolly.
“But I don’t see why,” he complained. “If she could go to Corsica, why
not to America?”
“There are plenty of reasons,” said Dolly tactfully, “which might not
occur to a gentleman. But I do wish you could go same time he does,
Agatha. It will be a job for you to go alone. I should hate it if James
was to go and leave me to get by myself.”
Agatha had a vision of the courageous Dolly and her children, harassed
but indomitable, loaded with strange luggage and armed with third-class
tickets, setting forth to the ends of the earth in pursuit of James. She
jumped up and began to pull her furs round her.
“You’ll stay to tea, won’t you?” exclaimed Dolly. “If you’ll excuse me
while I get it. I sent the girl out with the children when I came in.”
“No, do you know I don’t think I can. I said to my mother that I’d be in
for tea.”
Agatha’s heart was as bleak as the skies outside and she wanted to
escape from Dolly and James and their insufferable security in each
other. Some of her misery was written in her face, for James said
quickly:
“I’ll walk with you down to the station.”
Dolly stood on the doorstep and watched them to the corner of the
street. The wind, swirling in bitter gusts, blew her bright hair round
her face and fluttered her black skirts, revealing the serviceable green
petticoat beneath. When the strange couple, James broad and shambling,
Agatha slim and elegant, had disappeared, she sighed and turned into the
house to get James his tea.
“Aren’t your feet very cold?” asked James, seizing Agatha’s arm and
piloting her down the hill. “You ought to wear woollen stockings like
Dolly does.”
Agatha did not reply: she was much embarrassed by the long veil which
hung from her little hat. It blew all ways at once, and wound itself
round James’s neck, and round every lamp-post that they passed. They
came to a pillar-box and she reflected that, with the fountain pen in
her bag, she could have addressed her letter. She would have posted it
if she had been alone: but such a deed could scarcely be perpetrated on
the arm of the upright James.
At the station he took her ticket while she tucked her loosened hair
under her hat and redraped her veil becomingly. He put her into the lift
and stepped back, waiting to see the last of her. He gave her a
painstaking, reassuring smile; a mute kindness spoke in it, and she had
a sudden desire to run back to him and lay all her case before him.
The impulse came too late. She had barely sketched a movement forward
when the iron gates clanged between them and she was plunged into the
abyss.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where
multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer
errors occur.
Book cover is placed in the public domain.
[The end of _The Ladies of Lyndon_, by Margaret Kennedy.]