clothes. Two or three wore medals; the rest had a brave line of ribbons
on their coats. At their head marched two standard-bearers with the
adequate device: “_Wanted in 1914. Not wanted now._”
“They’ve had their hell; and they’re not through with it yet,” I said.
It was the first time that I had encountered the searing reproach of
that device; and, as I described it to O’Rane, I recalled—as in a dream
of some other life—that I was the editor of a political review and that
I had been sent to study unemployment. There was an external world,
then. At this moment my uncle was probably taking the chair at our
weekly dinner.
As the tramp of feet grew fainter, O’Rane half rose in his seat and then
subsided with a groan:
“No, I _can’t_! It’s _not_ my business to pay other people’s debts. The
state turned these men into soldiers, in a moment of blue funk; the
state must turn them back into civilians. Sometimes I see so red that I
want to hold this country to ransom. ‘You’ve no use for these fellows,’
I want to say. ‘Well, now I’m going to shew you what would have happened
if they hadn’t come forward when they did.’ After a week of Belgian
atrocities, there’d be a marked increase in popular gratitude! And I
thought this war would produce a . . . spirit of fraternity!”
I had hoped for it, even if I had not expected it after the first months
of 1915. Quick conversions are never permanent: and permanent
conversions are never quick. Our drive that day, past great estates and
big manufacturing towns, might have been chosen as an object-lesson in
the aggressive competition that strangles fraternity at birth.
That night, when we lay at Gloucester, and next day, as we drove through
the soul-searching loveliness of the Stroud valley, we talked of
education and the gospel of humanity, as we had not talked since our
Indian summer at Cannes; and once or twice, for ten or fifteen minutes
at a time, I forgot to think consciously of Barbara. H. G. Wells, after
years of criticism, was turning teacher on his own account; and _The
Outline of History_ was conspicuous in every house and railway carriage
I entered at this time. One man at least was pleading for the universal
spirit; and his plea gave food for thought to the people who had shouted
for blood and gold in the 1918 election. The havoc which Keynes had made
in the economics of the peace-treaty was completed by the havoc which
Wells made of its history and its spiritual trend.
“And yet,” I exclaimed in sudden reaction, “those books have left things
where they were!” The treaty, which could not be enforced, had to be
modified: the British representatives had to explain why their crazy
election-pledges could not be fulfilled. At regular intervals Germany
threatened to default; France retaliated with a threat of further
occupation; a flustered knot of prime ministers collected at the first
convenient watering-place; and a punctual press announced that the
results of the conference were wholly satisfactory. “I sometimes despair
of education. . . . And, damn it, Raney, you haven’t told me what to do
when I get back to London!”
“You’ve not yet told me what you want to do. . . . It’s strange how
people can hold mutually destructive opinions at the same moment! Lucien
de Grammont talks piteously about German ‘revenge’ at a time when the
French are pouring Senegalese troops into the occupied area!”
“Roger Dainton will tell you that a restored Germany means a new war and
that an unrestored Germany is losing us our best customer.” . . .
At O’Rane’s skilled prompting, we argued our way farther west and
farther until, at the end of a week, we stalled the car and strolled on
foot, because we had reached Land’s End. Surrounded by water, in the
spray and wind of the last rocky outposts of England, I felt my sanity
and self-control returning to me; but a single day without the
distraction of driving brought back the obsession. I flung myself into a
voluminous report on _Unemployment and Public Feeling_, only to discover
that my four folios might have been compressed into the single word
“indifference”. There was no question of class or party: every one
flabbily deplored the breakdown of industry, flabbily pitied the
unemployed, flabbily felt that somebody should do something. Accent and
idiom might change, but the stale thought and worn expression changed
only by becoming more stale: the wayside tap echoed the slipshod
reasoning of an Atlantic liner; a benighted book-maker in a forgotten
Cornish village talked of trades unions in a way that I had thought only
possible in my father-in-law; and there were Roger Daintons manipulating
beer-engines in every bar.
I reminded O’Rane of his scheme for endowing schools and buying papers
till the education of an entire people proceeded from a single pair of
lips.
“I still believe a press-monopoly is possible,” he answered, “but who’s
to be trusted with it? Horatio Bottomley is a political messiah to
several millions; but I’d never give a messiah the power of a messiah
unless he were ready to die as a messiah.”
“Talleyrand’s advice to those about to found new religions,” I said.
“‘Get yourself crucified’? Wasn’t he right? Since people began to doubt
the old heaven and hell, the churches have been losing their power: they
had less to offer, less to threaten; and their ministers became
officials instead of martyrs. Christianity was born of one martyrdom;
and it will only die when there are no more martyrs. There were martyrs
in the war, if we could only make people remember them . . .”
“But the war’s over,” I interrupted. “How can you keep that exaltation
alive in time of peace?”
The question was unanswered when I turned the head of the car, next day,
towards London. We were both shirking our private difficulties; and,
though we argued endlessly about the world as we wished to make it, the
shadow of our own narrow troubles darkened that free, generous concern
for humanity which we talked so eagerly of inculcating in people whose
narrow troubles engrossed them no less blindly.
“I’d better tell Sonia we’re on our way back,” said O’Rane. “If you’ve
any idea where we shall be to-morrow morning, I’ll say she can wire to
the post-office.”
“Is she at Crowley Court?,” I asked.
“Yes. Remember taking her down there the night Tom’s death came through?
She’d put her eyes on sticks for you over that, George.”
“She was at her wits’ end, poor child,” I began.
Then, whether or no he was spreading a snare for me, I thought of
Barbara by herself at the Abbey, reading of a “well-known playwright’s
death” and stumbling blindly through the dim, panelled rooms in vain
search of some one to comfort her.
“We can go back by way of Crowley Court,” I said. “I’ll send Babs a
telegram. If she’s still at the Abbey . . .”
“I’m entirely in your hands,” said O’Rane.
That night we lay at Exeter; and next day we headed for Southampton. As
we got into the car, I was given a telegram from Barbara:
“_All well here hope you are enjoying yourselves can you
possibly return by way of Crawleigh I need you._”
5
Only when I was committed irrevocably did I realize that I had not
decided how I was to meet her.
“I can’t pretend for five minutes,” I said. “I never could.”
“She’s . . . entitled to see her own letters,” O’Rane suggested. “You
opened this at her request . . .”
“But, good God, man, she’s my wife!,” I broke out; and, remembering the
sustained deceit of these fifteen months, I could not trust myself to
say more.
We drove our last stage with heavy hearts. Southampton was shrouded in
the first fog of the year; and, when it lifted on the confines of the
New Forest, I saw bare trees, dead leaves and all November’s decay.
Every few minutes O’Rane asked me what point we had now reached; and I
knew that for him too every turn of the road was marked by a memory and
guarded by a ghost. Through eyes half-closed I could see Jim Loring and
the Daintons striding, three abreast, on a leave-out walk from Melton to
Crowley; I could see Eric Lane piloting me through Lashmar village to
call on his father. . . . Strange! Though he was now dead, though I had
almost loved him and though we had both been punished for trying to play
a game according to its rules, I could not forgive him for flinging this
last shadow across Barbara’s life, I could not whisper his name without
a shudder.
As we drove through a country that was haunted with the shades of our
dead selves, I fell to thinking whether a man was happier in the
discontent of eighteen or the disillusion of thirty-eight. I no longer
aspired to Westminster Abbey and a nation’s gratitude; but, like other
men on the threshold of middle-age, I made the discovery,
incomprehensible to a schoolboy, that I had no heir to shelter himself
under the trees which I had planted; and love seemed almost to have been
left out of my life.
In Crawleigh village, my nerve broke and I headed for London; then, for
very shame in the reproach of O’Rane’s silence, I turned, though I knew
that no love was awaiting me here, and splashed through the floods to
the Abbey. Neave was fishing perfunctorily by the bridge and volunteered
to take the car up to the house if I wanted to look for Barbara.
“The guv’nor’s in London for this Unknown Soldier business,” he
explained. “So it’s only the four of us. Just right for a nice game of
cards.”
“How’s Babs?,” I asked, as unconcernedly as I could.
“Oh, fit as a flea,” he answered. “She’s wandering about the park,
waiting for you.”
I made a pretence of hurrying forward as the car shot ahead; then, as it
passed out of sight, I leaned against the parapet of the bridge till the
low grey line of the refectory wall deepened to black and was gradually
lost in the oncoming tide of darkness. I was still there when the first
rare lights twinkled at the windows and paled as the curtains were
drawn. Then I heard a distant whistle and turned to the house before my
impulse to hurry away got the better of me.
I was halfway to the gardens when I saw the white coil of Barbara’s
furs.
“Darling! I was expecting you hours ago!,” she cried. “Did you have a
breakdown? I hope I didn’t upset your plans by asking you to come here,
George: I wanted you most awfully.”
I could not see her face clearly; but her voice thrilled me till I had
to bite my lip and look away. I wondered how I had existed without her
all these weeks. The long rest had given her back her old vitality. Her
eyes, when we entered the hall, were shining; and for a moment I fancied
that I was seeing her in a vision or that I was emerging from twelve
days’ delirium.
“My _dear_!,” I cried; and she laughed with childlike exultation at my
joy in her.
“Pleased to see your deserted and ill-used wife?”
“Babs . . .” Her cheeks were pink from the biting cold outside; her hair
and eye-lashes were spangled with tiny raindrops. As she flung her coat
aside and twined her arms about my neck, a familiar, faint, warm
fragrance rose from the carnations at her waist. As she clung to me and
our lips met, I could have fancied that no other man had ever made her
heart beat so quickly. “I’ve never _seen_ you like this before!,” I
cried.
“I’ve been getting well . . . for _your_ sake, sweetheart. I’ve been so
patient, so good. And I _did_ miss you so.”
“I’ve been thinking of you day and night,” I answered truthfully enough.
“The next time you go away, I’ll tell your secretary to send me a daily
telegram: ‘_Missing you dreadfully best love George._’ You’d never do it
on your own account. What’s the matter, darling?”
Unconsciously I must have drawn away from her embrace. The delirium was
returning; and I could only think of the telegram which she had sent me
the day after she asked Eric Lane to run away with her.
“Some bad news, I’m afraid. I didn’t want to spoil our first moment
together, but you’ll have to be told some time. I’ve not seen any papers
. . .”
Barbara’s hands fell from my shoulders; and she walked slowly to the
fire.
“I . . . _have_,” she whispered; and her head drooped as though I had
struck her.
“You mean . . . what . . . what _I_ mean?,” I stammered.
As she turned, her eyes were blinded with tears; and her hands groped
for support.
“Darling, if it had been any one else, should I have had to say ‘I
_need_ you’? . . . When I saw the great cruel headlines, I hoped and
prayed that I might die . . . till I knew you were being sorry for me.
You’re all I have; and I promised myself I’d repay you for all your
patience.” She could go on no longer; and her terrible tearless sobbing
shook her till I feared that her heart must break. “I _can’t_ be brave
any longer.” As she once more hid her face against my chest, I could
feel her whole body trembling in the last vain effort to restrain her
weeping. “When . . . when . . . when did you hear?”
“Twelve days ago,” I answered, as I led her to a chair.
“The day he died. You . . . didn’t tell me, George. Did you think I
shouldn’t see?”
“Strictly speaking, I didn’t hear for certain. I knew he was dying
. . .”
“There was a long article in _The Times_. Oh, so _cold_! . . . I knew he
was terribly ill. That’s what made _me_ so ill this summer, though I
couldn’t tell you before. I thought you might guess; the doctor did.
I’ve been going up and down, up and down, as he got better or worse. The
afternoon he died I fainted; and they all thought I was dead too. Now
you understand why I wrote such horrid letters: as he slipped away, I
couldn’t bear myself. I _did_ try to keep it all to myself. I knew how I
hurt you by talking about him. But no one told me anything! . . . I
couldn’t ask Lady Lane for fear she’d say I’d killed him. And he died
before I could ask him to forgive me.”
Barbara was no longer trying to control her tears; and I was no longer
thinking of anything but a means of comforting her.
“He didn’t feel there was anything to forgive,” I assured her.
“Ah, that was the way he talked!”
“It was the way he thought, Babs.”
“Then he might have spared me this!,” Barbara broke out. “Just one
word!”
As her head fell forward, I knelt down and chafed her hands.
“He may have been too weak,” I said.
“A message, then! I can’t _bear_ it! I didn’t think he _could_ be so
cruel.”
In furious self-scorn, I remembered telling O’Rane I could not pretend
for five minutes that I had not received Eric’s letter. Very little more
than five minutes had passed since Barbara and I met.
“In justice to him,” I said, “there _was_ a message. I was paraphrasing
it. He never dreamt you needed his forgiveness, he was begging for
yours. He loved you as much at the end as he’d ever done. His last
words—so faint I could hardly read them!—were ‘God bless you’. And we
must assume that he died at peace. You’d forgiven him so often, he said,
that, if God was disposed to judge him, he believed you would
intercede.”
In her agony of spirit, Barbara’s thoughts were reflected as clearly as
if she had spoken them. Her eyes lightened for a moment in unutterable
relief; they clouded as she looked suspiciously to see if I was
inventing this opportune comfort; then she stared through me and past me
to Eric’s death-bed six thousand miles away.
“He . . . wrote to you?,” she enquired after a long silence.
I half nodded; but, with Barbara’s eyes on mine, I could not put a lie
into words.
“The letter was to you,” I said. “I opened it with the rest.”
There was a single piteous whimper. Then she looked at me in perplexity:
“Where is it? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s in my despatch-box. . . . I didn’t want to harrow you, darling. I
think he was delirious part of the time.” . . .
“Will you get it for me?”
“I’ve told you all that matters. It will only make you miserable to read
it.”
She seemed not to have heard me; but a strangled laugh, more terrible
than her crying, shewed the worth of my comfort:
“D’you think anything can make me more miserable than I’ve been these
last twelve days?,” she asked. Then she tore herself from me and stood
with her hands pressed to her temples, staring at me in mingled
bewilderment and rage. “All the time . . .? And you . . .? The last
thing he ever wrote . . . oh, I might have reached him while there was
still time! When did you get the letter?”
“Just before I left London.”
“While he was still alive . . . Ah, God, the cruelty of kind people!”
With the tears still wet on her cheeks, she forced a smile. “And you’ve
been carrying it about ever since? George dear, you’ve punished me for
all the crimes I’ve committed and all that I shall never have time to
commit if I live to be a thousand. . . . May I have my letter?”
For an instant, as she stood limply drying her eyes, I thought of
telling her that I had destroyed the letter; then I saw that this would
never be forgiven me, even if I had not already told her that it was
with my other papers.
“It will only hurt you to read it,” I said. “Forget it! Forget _him_, if
you can. I’ve told you he had nothing but love for you . . .”
“Then why mayn’t I see it? George, I don’t understand! I’m not a child;
and, if I didn’t know you were trying to spare me, I could almost kill
you for your ghastly kindness. Pocketing it for twelve torturing days,
as though it were a bill! Pretending he was too weak to write! Saying it
was a _message_! You’ll send me mad if you’re not careful!,” she cried
hysterically. “For the last time, please give me my letter.”
“For the last time please try to forget there ever was a letter. I’ve
told you he must have been delirious when he wrote. I won’t answer for
the consequences if you read it. All this time _I’ve_ been trying to
forget it.” . . .
My voice told her all that I was trying to hide. Her eyes were startled,
then compassionate, then defiant. I thought I heard a whisper of ‘Poor
George’. She raised her eyebrows as though to ask what I was minded to
do. Getting no answer, she shrugged her shoulders and turned wearily to
the fire:
“Was that why you left London?” I said nothing. “You told me it was on
business. And you’ve been . . . sitting in judgement on me ever since.”
. . .
I took a step forward and tried to catch her hand:
“It has made no difference.” . . .
“Put it down to my curiosity!,” she taunted. “It’s not pleasant . . . to
be . . . _condemned_ unheard; but I couldn’t _bear_ to be acquitted.
Your despatch-box, you said?”
“Babs, I implore you!,” I cried, as she moved to the bell.
“You’re afraid of being certain?,” she interrupted scornfully. “I’m only
afraid of sheltering myself behind a dead man. . . . Oh, Henry, Mr.
Oakleigh wants his despatch-box. And will you see that there’s a good
fire in the tapestry-room and have his things moved in there? The . . .
peacocks make so much noise on my side of the house,” she added.
6
As I finished dressing, Barbara tapped at my door and came in with
Eric’s letter in her hand.
“If you want this, I must give it you back,” she began. Her voice had
almost left her; and the radiant vitality of an hour before had flown.
“I hope you won’t have to quote it, because these things are so terribly
vulgarized in court. Do I . . . have to be unfaithful? I wasn’t . . .
with Eric,” she added carelessly.
“I know you weren’t.”
“I meant to be, . . . if I must use that . . . unclean word. For one
moment I had a vision of perfect happiness, I forgot everything
else. . . . It would be generous of you to say you won’t use this.
Eric’s dead. And people would think he was to blame.”
“I certainly shan’t use it. Barbara, why are you talking like this?”
Before she could answer, the letter had to be thrust into safety. Then,
with one hand clutching it to her breast, as though Eric’s heart were
beating against hers, she looked up and forced her mind on to my
question:
“Because father’s coming down to-morrow, and we must decide what we’re
going to do. We had to fight him pretty hard to get married, but we
shall have to fight much harder to get divorced.”
“But no one has mentioned divorce.”
“_I_ have. You said you could never forget that letter. . . . It was a
great risk for us to marry; but you were so sweet and I was so
miserable. . . . I see now that the thing never had a fair chance while
Eric was alive. I heard his voice in the streets, wherever we’d been
together, when I knew he was the other side of the world; and, as soon
as I had a chance, I rushed to him. When he wouldn’t have anything to do
with me, I _did_ try once more to make a success of our life. You wished
for a son; and I did my best, though Eric was the only man I wanted as
father of my children. Perhaps that’s why I . . . couldn’t keep him
alive, poor mite. . . . It’s funny that little things should cause such
big troubles. If I hadn’t asked you to open my letters, we _should_ have
made a success.” . . .
There was a moment’s break in her terrible composure; and she turned
away with a single dry sob.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Babs?”
“You wouldn’t have understood; you don’t understand now.”
“If I hadn’t understood . . . a little, should I have come?”
Unwittingly, I moved a step forward; and she held up her hand against me
as though I were assaulting her:
“If you’d understood, you wouldn’t have waited twelve days.”
I was goaded beyond discretion by the scorn in her voice. I had
understood and forgiven too little, it seemed, when I fancied that I had
forgiven and understood too much.
“It was . . . a startling letter,” I answered in her own measure.
“Whenever you told me you’d try to forget Eric . . .”
“You wondered for twelve days whether you could ever trust me again.”
She did not trouble to look at me, but I felt myself flushing. “As
though any other man could tear my heart out of me as Eric did! Why
_did_ you come?”
“Because _I_ needed _you_.”
Barbara’s lip curled in derision:
“Your servant’s too useful to discharge, so you pretend you haven’t
caught her stealing! When we met to-night, I noticed a difference. I
thought you must have seen in the papers about Eric’s death. When you
kissed me so tenderly, my heart leapt; and I thought you really
understood. Now I know . . .”
The incisive scorn cut deeper as her failing voice died away.
“Well?”
“You _need_ me because I’m a woman. That’s why you insult me with your
forgiveness. And that’s why you must divorce me, George. We’re divorced
in spirit; and we should both be dishonoured if we put your _need_ in
the place of love.”
In the distance I heard the gong booming for dinner. Neave’s door opened
and slammed. A cautious footfall, accompanied by a warning whistle, told
me that O’Rane was making his way downstairs.
“I shall not divorce you,” I told Barbara, “even if I could. And I
can’t. You’ll be as independent of me in Seymour Street as if you were
on a South Sea Island. But we mustn’t do anything irrevocable till we’re
more cool-headed.”
“But . . . this is impossible!,” Barbara cried.
“If we find it impossible, I shan’t try to keep you.” As I followed her
down to dinner, I wondered whether we either of us realized what we were
saying. “Coming here to-day,” I told her, “I was thinking that life only
becomes intolerable when there’s no love in it. If I can get back to the
state we were in a fortnight ago . . .”
“You’ll never do that. You’ll be very kind and attentive, as you always
are; but I married you because I thought you understood. Now you’ve
become like any other man who puts a cushion at my back or tucks a rug
round my knees. I’m utterly, utterly indifferent to you!”
On this, the first night of what she called for two years our “life in a
gilded cage”, I was chiefly concerned that her indifference should be
concealed from the sharp eyes of Neave and the abnormally sharp hearing
of O’Rane. With the same intention or in her usual reaction to an
audience, Barbara sparkled her way through dinner in a manner that set
me wondering whether I had not waked from another nightmare; but, when
we looked for her afterwards, she had disappeared; and, when I went—as
a matter of form—to bid her good-night, she answered me through a
locked door.
Neave had asked me at dinner how long I was staying; and, when I reached
my room, I found a note from Barbara:
“_If I am to come at all, I had better come to-morrow. Mother has a big
party this week-end._”
I sat down in front of the fire and tried to picture our life on the day
after to-morrow. Could Bertrand direct my paper if I found it necessary
to live in Ireland? Was Ireland tolerable or even safe? Could I afford
to keep two houses in commission if my wife refused to live with me. And
how long would Barbara endure this spiritual starvation?