golden hour before dinner, Reggie, as an amateur botanist, explained the
native flowers blossoming luxuriously all around them. To an American
they would be entirely strange—the gay, yellow Tom Thumb; the sea pinks
which they called thrift, almost like American red clover in color, Nora
told Reggie; the snowy bell-shaped campion, and the pink stone-crop
covering the rocks.
In the midst of Reggie’s talk, Major West walked over to the edge of the
cliff, and stood there tossing slate chips over the steep side. Nora
joined him. Down—down—the stones rattled, until they could no longer be
heard. The rocky walls, unrelieved by lichens, were blue-black
zigzagging ravines against which the waves beat with a muttering,
menacing thunder.
‘And to think that all these flowers grow close up to the edge of such
horror,’ Nora whispered, as the spray struck the slate columns far
below.
Major West nodded, turning his blue eyes, half-closed in a smile, toward
her. ‘Jolly old show—the sea with the tide rushing in,’ he said, as they
confronted the limitless expanse of convulsive green waste, upon which
not even a sail was visible.
Above Doscastle Strand early in the afternoon when the tide was low, the
three of them looked down upon the groups of men, women, and children
seated on the rocks, lying out on the smooth white sand, or plunging
into the sea. The children, as they threw themselves with shouts against
the crests of waves, were like sporting elves, mere midgets of humanity.
Even the men and women had a comically insignificant aspect, funny
little wiggles of arms and legs, puny struts of importance up and down.
Upon the height one felt Olympic grandeur and serenity, detachment from
the pigmy concerns of earth.
‘Don’t you ever go down to swim?’ Nora asked Major West one day.
‘Not of late. I haven’t been swimming this summer.’
The day Reggie had church duties which carried him off to Exeter, Major
West and Nora visited the caves, reached by a steep trail cut into the
cliff. They entered the murky chamber and looked out upon the tossing,
watery plain which could not reach them. But as the tide rose higher,
the waves sent laps of water into the cave. One drew farther back. The
water next time came closer. Soon the cave was filled with a great
clamor. The sea shouted, boomed like a cannon. Nora scrambled hastily up
the steep path to escape the crashing terror of the ocean-filled caves.
‘You make me think of a Himalaya goat,’ he said, coming on more slowly
behind her.
While they rested on the grassy slopes at the top, he talked carelessly
about India, his expeditions in the hills, the sunsets over the
Mediterranean when he was going to Egypt. One gathered that he had been
everywhere.
She, in turn, launched out on her favorite political topics.
‘I didn’t believe women really cared about that sort of thing,’ he
commented. ‘But you Americans are different, I see.’
‘No, I don’t think we are.’
‘Then you’ve been with men more—talked with them—got their point of
view.’
‘Oh!’ Nora gasped, looking at him with wide-open eyes. Then she laughed.
As she reflected on his magnificent conclusion, she laughed harder and
harder. The delight—the wonder—the ridiculousness of fooling people that
way. That she—from men—she could not stop laughing.
‘Do—do help me,’ she begged. ‘I——’ Again ripples of helpless mirth swept
over her, waves, torrents. She could never stop.
‘I know what will make you stop laughing,’ Major West said, looking down
at her with uplifted brows.
‘Tell me,’ she entreated between her seizures. ‘Anything.’
‘You wouldn’t like it.’
‘Yes—yes.’
‘You are very lovely when you laugh that way.’ He pronounced the words
with triumphant calm.
She looked solemn in an instant.
‘See—I knew I could make you stop.’
‘But I—I must tell you why—why I laughed.’ She hesitated. ‘Some other
time.’
The next morning she found him pacing back and forth at the end of Mrs.
Pentillie’s lane.
‘I thought I’d catch you here,’ he began carelessly. ‘Shall we walk
toward Doscastle Strand?’
He sprawled lazily upon a mound of thyme, sniffing at it, then with his
head raised against his clenched hands, regarded Nora seated near him
with his disturbing, direct gaze. His eyes were like bottomless
wells—depths she could not measure—his face a handsome, unintelligible
defence. He had none of Reggie’s comforting simplicity. She felt as if
he were highly amused at her American gawkishness.
‘Do you know, I do like you, Miss Deming,’ he said. ‘Really.’ He gave a
short laugh when he saw a flush spreading to her hair, flaming in the
sunshine. ‘Usually I detest young girls. Their chatter bores me—their
chatter about themselves. But you—you converse so wisely, you know.’
‘I—I’m not so young,’ she protested.
‘Oh, come.’
‘I’m—I’m thirty-two,’ she confessed.
‘Magnificent. Now I understand why we get on so well together. Poor
Reggie! He’s shocked at the way American parents let their young charge
about unguarded. He’s been trying to take care of you during your
Cornwall sojourn. And you—why you’re almost my generation. I’m close to
forty.’
She noticed for the first time the threads of grey in his hair, the deep
lines around his eyes and mouth. ‘I’m going to tell you why I laughed so
hard yesterday, when you——’
‘I haven’t an idea what I said or did.’
‘You said I’d talked to men a lot—had their point of view.’
‘Well, you have, you know.’
‘But not from talking to men. Only to women.’
‘Come, now. That’s a bit thick. Even American women——’
‘Yes, I’m serious. I’ve lived all my life in hives of women.’
‘Good God! Not really?’
‘It’s true. I have. It’s a man’s world I’ve wanted to know—tried to
know. What ought to be everybody’s world. But women all the time—caught
in petty squabbles and backstair talk. Nothing big—nothing——’
‘But isn’t that what the dear creatures want?’
‘No,’ Nora contradicted, beating her fist against a rock. ‘No—no. So
many of us—what we want—I can’t explain. It’s endless. I can’t make you
see. What we have, it’s pitiful—stifling. I can’t stand it any more!’
She burst into unexpected tears, and threw herself face downward on the
ground.
She was so ashamed—women and their tears—how she hated them! And she had
degraded herself even more by pretending it was intellectual
participation in the lives of men she wanted. He would know. He couldn’t
help guessing. How he would despise her—weak, ridiculous creature. But
she was helpless—no control before this man. No one before—this
way——What—what had changed her?
She rose quickly, tried to plan escape. If she could run away, not see
the kindness—the pity in his eyes.
‘I’m—ashamed—ashamed,’ she murmured, her eyes still brimming over with
tears.
He seized her hand so that she could not escape. ‘No—no,’ he protested.
‘I understand. But a man’s world isn’t what you think. It’s a rotten
bore—most of it.’
He was like her. He had missed something. The more she saw of this dark,
grim friend of Reggie’s, the surer she felt that some reason lay behind
his reticence, his consistent distaste for talking about the adventurous
life she envied. She had thought first that he was a cynic, a man of the
world who tossed everything serious away from him. But when he told her
of his childhood, especially of his mother who died when he was nine, a
wistful boyishness replaced his usual mocking tone.
‘I come of an army family,’ he confided one day when the two of them
were searching out new cliff heights, new views far away from the
rectory. ‘Sandhurst was as inevitable for me as Oxford for Reggie. When
I was a youngster, my mother used to talk about Parliament. She was keen
about one’s social responsibilities. Perhaps if she had lived——But
Parliament’s an awful bore, they tell me. All talk and muddling along.
The army didn’t give me time to get bored—constant excitement—first one
part of the world and then another. But after a time——’ He broke off
suddenly and began to talk of other things.
His references to the army were always that way, apologetic,
unenthusiastic. He hated the army. She was sure of it. The conviction
gave her an unaccountable upliftment.
After dinner one night Major West came upon Nora perched on the top of
the stile listening to the skylarks.
‘Reggie’s driven me off. He’s in solemn session with the vestry.’ He sat
down beside her.
The sun was glorious fire close to the sea, which turned pink, lavender,
grey-green as the sun dipped lower and lower. Above them larks, faint
specks in the darkening sky, continued to sing.
‘Let’s walk,’ Nora suggested, drawing her coat around her. ‘It’s cold
the moment the sun is gone.’
As they skirted the edge of the cliff, the shadows imperceptibly crept
toward them, but they walked on. The stunted trees, the hedges, the
hollows were changed into black shapes which rose up suddenly all
around. Nora stumbled in a tangle of gorse.
‘We’ve lost it,’ she said, as Major West took her arm and tried to guide
her back to the path.
Below them the sea moaned, the circling gulls cried. Another step, and
the sea made a nearer clamor. The edge of the cliff, they now realized
for the first time, was lost in darkness. Major West struck a match. The
feeble little circle of light intensified the thick night surrounding
them.
‘Don’t move,’ he said, exploring the ground around them with his cane.
‘We may be close to the edge.’
The undulating folds of grey, dark blue, black, shut out the trees, the
hedges. The tinkle of a sheep bell, the twitter of a sleepy bird broke
the silence between the regular beat of the waves far below.
He took a cautious step backward, drawing her by the hand after him.
Another step backward. He lit a second match.
‘This seems to be a path.’
Slowly they made their way, stumbling over rocks, over roots, over deep,
moist furze, the ground rising up against their feet unexpectedly.
Major West bent over Nora. ‘You’re all right?’ he asked. ‘You aren’t
afraid?’ He laughed at his question.
‘No, no, not afraid,’ she insisted in an unnatural, weak voice. The
nearness of his face to hers, brushing it almost, his shoulder against
hers, the pressure of his arm overpowered her with the sense of their
intimacy, the night bringing them together, enclosing them in a small,
dark room. No, she wasn’t afraid, hovering, maybe, on the edge of the
precipice. They stood motionless, then once more advanced one step at a
time.
At last Mrs. Pentillie’s lights winked in the distance.
‘We were close to the edge,’ Nora said.
‘Yes, I didn’t tell you. Back there, when I reached out with my stick,
there was nothing.’
‘Oh,’ she shuddered.
Then they plunged through the caverns of the hedge toward the lighted
windows and the sound of voices in the drawing-room. They crossed the
lawn unobserved, and Nora guided him to the main road on the other side.
‘Good-night,’ she said hastily, drawing her hand away from his and
hurrying back to the house.
In her room she sank down on the floor in front of the low window. She
was trembling all over. She clutched the sill, and leaned her head over
her tightly clasped hands. No, she hadn’t been afraid out there lost in
the night. But now——In the darkness beyond, the waves crashed toward her
nearer and nearer. Like the rattle of the sea in the caves. Something
swept over her, chilled her, burned her, leaped over her head, and
engulfed her. When she emerged, she was breathless, gasping, as if she
had been fighting against the waves.
IV
Major West was waiting for Nora outside the rectory gate.
‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, as she came up to him in her moss-green hat and
dress, ‘you’re the color of the sea this morning.’ Then with a sigh, he
added, ‘Poor old Reggie—old Reggie in Exeter,’ and both of them laughed
together.
The larks were swooping up from the ground with flashes of song and
soaring toward the clouds. Timid lambs peered out from behind the
shelter of their mothers at the intruders in their pleasant green
pasture. There were foot-bridges to cross over little streams, with
forget-me-nots clustering around them, their tender, unforgettable blue
eyes blinking up toward the sun. Around interrupting cliffs, following
steep trails up and down, sometimes leaving the sea and coming back to
it gladly again, Nora and Major West tramped toward Roswithiel. From
time to time they flopped down upon a soft bank of flowers to rest.
Flowers were everywhere. One stepped upon them, lay upon them in this
profuse summer season. They lost the trail, floundered in streams and
swampy ground, leaped over pools, found the trail again. The whole
expedition was a gigantic game of hide-and-seek against a prankish
Nature with her tests of endurance.
On a hillside high above the sea, they sat down to eat their luncheon.
Sticking up over the trees behind them was the steeple of Roswithiel
church.
‘It’s a silent little church. There aren’t any bells,’ Major West
explained. ‘They were bringing them by ship from Plymouth, so the story
goes, and there was a wreck in sight of the town. The natives say that
on calm nights they can hear the bells ringing from the depths of the
sea. Reggie can tell you all about it.’
‘It’s a pretty story,’ Nora commented, looking across the meadow where
men were haying. From the fragrance of the new-mown hay and the peace of
the church tower, one turned back to the sea. She peered down—down the
scarred black cliffs—at the sea, rising and falling, high ridges, low
ridges, then a great mountain of heaving, destructive ocean.
A middle-aged woman panted up toward their hilltop. She was staying in
Roswithiel, she said, a very pretty place, but lonely.
‘I heard you laughing together,’ she added, apologizing for her
intrusion, ‘and I felt I must come up. Just the sound of voices
sometimes——My husband and I, when we were young like you, came to
Cornwall for our holidays. But it was a mistake for me to come back
here.’
They begged her to share their luncheon, but she refused. If they didn’t
mind, she’d like to chat with them a bit before she went back to her
lodgings. They had looked so happy sitting there together on the
hillside that she had envied them. Every one ought to be happy. That was
what life was for.
Beyond a twist in the trail, they dropped down into Roswithiel, with its
whitewashed cottages lined up along the narrow stream trickling in from
the sea, where the ducks paddled up and down, the granite quay and
lighthouse mere toys beside the solid wall of rock behind the village.
Hedges of valerian bent their fragrant rosy blossoms over the water.
Children waded in the shallow pools. Old men sat idle in the sunshine.
Scarcely a human sound. Nora and Major West, perched on a hillock
commanding the diminutive settlement, looked down upon the quiet scene.
‘How sweet—how very sweet it all is,’ breathed Nora.
Neville West sat holding one knee between his hands, his eyes blinking
in the brilliant sunshine.
At tea-time they found a retreat from the sun, which had grown steadily
hotter, a cool, dim room, with walls tinted yellow, and yellow curtains
and yellow poppies on the tables painted a cool green.
‘All your color scheme,’ laughed Major West, as they entered.
‘Tea—tea—oceans of tea,’ begged Nora, pouring a cup of tea for him out
of a green-and-yellow teapot.
Beyond the window where they sat, an old mill-wheel turned and splashed
up cool columns of water. Drip—drip. There was green moss on the
silver-grey wood of the wheel, mossy depths in the water. As it turned,
Nora felt the streams flowing gently over her, refreshing her, making
her over. Perhaps she had been happy before. But never like this—knowing
she was happy—sure that this exquisite, beautiful moment was all for
her.
They finished their lettuce sandwiches, and began on scones, with honey
and Cornish cream, and cup after cup of tea, steaming hot, smelling like
pressed rose leaves.
A deep sigh from her companion. She looked up. There was a queer twist
to his face, as if he were in pain.
‘What is it?’
‘I want to stay here forever,’ he said. ‘Here—just like this.’
‘And I—I too,’ she added.
The waitress had left them. They sat regarding each other, neither one
remembering to look away. He was pulling at the petals of the yellow
poppies between them. Those long brown fingers——She dropped her eyes.
‘Sitting here—you and I—I suddenly remembered—never before—the quiet.
After so many years. In the army they were always packing me off
somewhere. After Sandhurst it was China. Next Egypt.’ He held a poppy
petal between his fingers, crushing it, letting it fall. ‘I was married
the night before we started for Cairo. Three years of it. My children
were born there. I remember the trials of getting milk for them. Goat’s
milk it was. And they are great girls now. With their mother in
Brighton. Molly, the oldest, going to dancing parties.’ He rubbed his
hand over his eyes. ‘I’m glad they’re girls—she can manage them—see
that——’
Nora poured out a cup of cold tea and drank it in great gulps, the
sickening stuff nearly choking her. Of course, she ought to have known
that he was married. A man with his charm, his handsome face. As the
clergyman’s widow had said, all women——
‘Until the war I was a soldier who had never seen a battle. Just dress
parade. Always in some show or other. My wife liked the excitement—the
social responsibilities. She managed it all superbly. And then the war.
I was twenty-eight, a spoiled boy who had danced at Embassy balls, army
balls. At first I couldn’t take it all in. I went around in a funk, a
daze. I—a professional soldier. I was no good. And then—we all got
spinning around. Orders from on top. At last the front lines. A sporting
chance—facing danger every moment—your men such sporting chaps. Every
day we thought they’d get us. We didn’t care. Soon we wanted them to end
it for us. It’s like a nightmare. You keep thinking you’ll wake up. The
blood—quivering bodies—reeking—reeking—the shrieks—squeals. I never wake
up in the morning without seeing and hearing it all over
again—smelling—the horror of it.’
Nora swallowed a second nauseous gulp of tea. A few moments before, she
had been happy.
‘Nothing touched me. Not a scratch. On leave, constant excitement. It’s
the way of our family. They fancied it was what I needed. My wife and
I—those few days—she with colonels, generals—I carrying on with young
girls—bold, pretty things. I hated them back at the front.’
Nora’s tea-cup rattled against the saucer. She sat bent over the table,
her face shaded by her hands.
‘Men beside me—dying like pigs in a slaughtering pen. But I—up to the
end—I thought if I lived to see it over—I’d kill myself. Never another
war then. But they sent me to Mesopotamia afterward. We were quartered
in an old Turkish fort. Nothing to do. Just thinking. The men spent
their time with field glasses ready for a glimpse at a Turkish woman.
Any woman—when they saw her, they called to the others. All
that—thinking—it came to me—I knew I hated the army—hated it. And when I
remembered that young boys like me—brought up on family traditions
of the obligation to serve one’s country, to preserve the
Empire—killing—killing other men, I wanted to save them. All those days
with nothing to do—the idea tortured me that there was no one—no one but
me to tell them. Your serene years with time to give to books—I’ve
envied you that. I read when I could. Adventure tales—then history.
Thucydides over and over. But a soldier trying to write a book——’ He
shook his head. ‘He’s like a plough boy with a pen. But I began to write
for the cadets at Sandhurst. Four, six, eight hours a day. Sometimes
nothing would come. The men lolling around me—their interminable
stories—of women mostly. To escape I began writing again. Maybe I stuck
at it too close. At last they sent me home—home for a rest. I wanted to
finish my book. Only rest—complete rest they said. But how does one
rest?’
Nora lifted herself out of her chair. They must go back. They had a long
way to go. How could she drag herself over all those weary miles—up and
down—hour after hour? She was so tired. Every bone cried out against the
pull of that endless journey before they saw the tower of Reggie’s
church. But now that they knew the trail, they plodded along more
quickly than they had in the morning, though with all the elasticity,
the keen sense of discovery gone.
In the meadows, which a few hours before had been so cool and moist, the
hot sun beat down upon the little streams, which sent up steaming fumes.
In the shadow of the rocks the ewes lay, indifferent to the poor lambs
bleating and crying for the mothers they had lost. This way and that
they scampered, seeking here, there, behind a bush, a rock, stupidly
missing the place where their hot, bad-tempered mothers lay concealed.
Nora tried to help them. ‘Here, poor thing, here is your mother.’ But
they plunged away from her in fear. Like people—so stupid—just missing
what they most wanted. ‘They will never find their mothers,’ Nora cried
out to the silent man beside her. But he didn’t seem to hear her, as he
stamped along over the spongy earth. A deep flush had spread over his
face. Then he was very pale.
He fell on the ground close to the scanty shade of some stunted
evergreen trees.
‘Let’s rest a moment,’ he said in a queer, gasping voice.
She had a vivid memory of her mother during her last sickness. ‘You are
ill!’ she exclaimed in terror. She got a cup out of the picnic bag and
ran for some water from the stream they had passed. She spilled it over
his face, his hands. Small beads of perspiration stood out on his
forehead. Bending down over him, she rubbed his hands. A faint color
came back to his face, the sickly pallor retreated.
‘I—I’m sorry,’ he breathed, turning toward her. ‘I haven’t been well.
I——’
‘We walked too far.’
‘No—I’m all right now. Quite all right, I assure you.’
Her tears splashed down upon his hands, which she was rubbing between
hers.
‘I’m sorry—I—I couldn’t spare you—seeing—me. It’s my heart. I—I want to
tell you. I can’t last long, they say. I came down to Reggie. He knows.
A month—six months——’
She covered her face with her hands.
‘Oh, please,’ he begged. ‘It doesn’t matter, really. It’s been so
delightful to-day. If—a minute ago——’
‘I—I care,’ she wept, shaken with sobs.
‘Until a few days ago—living or dying—it didn’t matter,’ he confessed.
‘But now I—I want to live. Now when it’s too late. Living—it can be
sweet, enduring. I’ve found out. I want it——Darling, I——’
From his broken words she pieced together what he meant, what both of
them meant, as they clung to each other in the shade of the scrubby
pines around which the lost lambs still straggled with their
heart-breaking cries.
But it was no use. They must go back, he to Reggie, she to Adeline Pinks
and the rest of Mrs. Pentillie’s guests waiting in their best clothes in
the summer-house for the tinkle of the dinner bell. The tide was coming
up, the sun dipping lower and lower. They rose, and, after one last
embrace, went on slowly, heavily down the trail.
V
Nora had one day more in Cornwall. A lady from Manchester was coming to
take her room as soon as she was gone. Nora and Neville met after dinner
on the black cliff glowering down upon Doscastle Strand.
‘Nora, can’t we, your last day, go back to Roswithiel?’
‘If you wish,’ she agreed feebly. In the depths of her present misery
what they did no longer mattered.
On the second expedition, the sun shone with the same beautiful yellow
gleam as the first time, but sun, blue sea, floating gulls, the flowers
under their feet—none of it existed for them. Nothing was real but their
wretchedness, their parting in the morning. As they ate their luncheon
in the cool tea-room, the water dripped off the mossy mill-wheel, the
little waitress hovered over them with the same flattering attentions as
before, but the food they tried to eat was tasteless.
As they followed the single street of the village joining a highway
farther on, Neville said, ‘I meant to spare you, Nora. Never to let you
know. That night on the cliff—when we might——’
‘Didn’t you know that day on the train——’
‘Of course. I forgot. When I entered the carriage and saw you sitting
there——’
‘You were hidden behind your newspaper. You couldn’t see me. You didn’t
even look at me then.’
‘I was hiding a blushing, schoolboy face, my darling.’
They had moments like this, when they were almost gay with each other,
like happy lovers, alternating tenderness and playful scorn.
‘What’s this?’ Nora pointed to a break in the rows of evergreen, a path
sun-flaked and fragrant. ‘Shall we see where it goes?’
At the end of the road, they discovered what appeared to be a
gentleman’s estate, surrounded by a wall of the tumbling slate of
Cornwall hedges, covered with stone-crop, with foxgloves growing in the
crevices. A little farther they got a glimpse of a grey stone house,
yellow with lichen, its sharply pointed gables giving it a venerable
aspect, as it stood on a hill overlooking the sea. The gate stood open.
On it was a sign: ‘Gentleman’s Residence To Let. Caretaker Within.’
‘Could we go in, Neville? At home I love to prowl around empty houses.’
They walked boldly up the driveway, with its little green islands of
weeds, its straggling edges. To the south of the house was an unkempt,
luxurious garden, giant geraniums, fuchsias in festoons tumbling over
the garden wall, great heights of myrtle. Snapdragons and white pinks
had sprung up, seeding themselves, in the neglected borders.
A woman in a brown dress appeared from around the corner of the house.
She had a pale face spotted with brown, the color of her dress, large,
hollow brown eyes, a nervous twitch to her lips.
‘Would you care to see the house?’ she asked them in a bleak,
disheartened voice. ‘I’ll be glad to show it to you.’
Nora turned to her companion. ‘Could we, Neville? I’d like to see it.’
‘If you wish.’
The caretaker tried to smile encouragingly. ‘It’s a pleasant old place.
We thought it was let for the season. They paid money down. And then the
last moment the lady decided not to come.’ She ushered them into the
house. ‘My husband an’ me—we do all the work here. You see how dry an’
sunny it is inside, madam. Not like some o’ these old stone houses.’
In the drawing-room, through the windows opening out upon the wall of
fuchsias and myrtle, the sunshine poured in, and lay in golden squares
upon the dark floors and brown walls, flickered upon the chairs and
sofas in their crash covers.
‘I could take ’em off in a minute, madam, if you’d care to see. The
cretonne’s all been washed for the summer. See—just this one. My
lady—she planned the pink in ’em to match the fuchsias outside. Kind of
a rose really—the color. She loved this room. But one lone lady in this
house—an’ since the war you know how it’s gone with those that’s had
plenty before. An’ her in cheap lodgings in Westgate—it’s sad to think
about.’
They followed her upstairs, where she displayed one room after the
other. She did her job thoroughly, as well as she could.
‘Folks hasn’t the money,’ she concluded when they had seen the last
room. ‘That’s why a house like this stands vacant. Last year we had an
American family. Money was nothin’ to ’em. But I didn’t care much for
’em. My lady kept one room for herself. No place is home to her like
this. An’ they—they treated her like a servant. I couldn’t stand it. She
didn’t seem to notice—just worked with the flowers an’ sat there in the
sun near the garden wall.’
They went downstairs, stood in the hall a moment, the caretaker talking
on and on, so they couldn’t go.
‘If I could rent it—even a month—a week or two—now it’s so late in the
season,’ she urged, following them out of the front door.
Neville bowed. ‘Could we have a little time to consider—talk it over
together?’
She smiled, retreated, as they stood out near the fuchsias in the
sunshine.
‘Nora, could you—you and I for a few days together? Coming this way—the
old place—it’s like a kind of childhood dream. As if we’d been here
before. Darling—if you could——’
She swayed toward him. To make a decision such as this, in a chance
moment, standing there, the eye of the worried caretaker upon her——
‘I’d arrange everything, dearest, everything. You know what we’ve
said—that if we could have only a short space of time together—not
cheated out of everything——You, dearest, that night in the churchyard
waiting for Reggie——’
‘Yes, I—I know,’ she gasped, clutching his hand.
‘I mustn’t—I ought not—appeal to you that way. My being—not well. But if
it ended to-morrow—and you and I—even a few hours——’
‘I—I’m afraid,’ she shuddered.
‘If I felt that I’d lived—ever——You told me that you—nothing you really
wanted—until you and I——’
‘Yes,’ she agreed sadly.
‘I must—I must snatch at it before it’s too late. Happiness for us
both.’
She locked her hands tightly together.
‘A real home with you—how I’ve longed for it, my darling.’
Of course she would do anything to make him happy. He knew she would.
Hand in hand, they went back to the caretaker. Yes, they would take the
house for two weeks. It fitted in well with their plans. They could come
in the morning.
VI
Mrs. Pentillie’s dinner was over when Nora returned, but they sent a
tray upstairs to her room. She was very tired, she explained, and had
some packing to finish. In the morning they crowded around the jingle
when Mr. Pentillie was ready to take her to the station. Adeline Pinks
and her aunt both kissed Nora, Mrs. Pentillie hoped she would come
again. The Quaker husband and wife invited her to visit them in
Sheffield before she went back to America. She took the London train,
got off at the next station, and there Neville waited for her according
to their plan.
‘No, no, I’m not sorry,’ she assured him when he took her in his arms.
‘My darling,’ he whispered over and over again, ‘my generous darling
girl.’
Mrs. Tamar, who regarded all residents in her mistress’s house as
interlopers to be endured only for the sake of profit, took good care of
them. It was her duty. But she had no interest in these strangers, or
any others. Nice enough people. No trouble. Tearing around the cliffs on
bright days and not in the house much. This, Neville declared, was Mrs.
Tamar’s estimate of Nora and him. She served them at meals in her brown
dresses, which were always of the same cut and color, a part of her,
like an outer skin, hide, or plumage, over which she wore white aprons
several sizes too large. Neville carved the joints, Nora poured the
coffee in the oak-panelled dining-room with the rough stone floor, the
candles on the table making long shadows over the two of them and Mrs.
Tamar, as she came in and out. A bent little man, Mr. Tamar, with whom
they seldom spoke, worked, when his wife’s eye was upon him, in the
vegetable garden back of the house.
Every morning, when they went through the garden and over the stile in
the stone hedge toward the sea, the only person they ever met was a lame
old man, Mr. Bunny, from the farmhouse he pointed at between them and
Roswithiel. With his dog, he was going after his sheep, which fed in the
grassy crevices of the rocks close to the sea.
‘You want to watch him bring up the sheep?’ he asked Nora one morning as
he limped past her. He always addressed her instead of Neville. ‘They’re
a stubborn flock, them sheep, but he gets ’em.’
The dog was barking and circling round his master. ‘Go for ’em, Roy,’ he
commanded at last.
He hobbled down the steep trail, Nora after him. Neville would wait at
the top. It was, Nora agreed, a splendid sight to see the dog assemble
the sheep and bring them in a sober procession away from their favorite
feeding-grounds.
‘I told you he’d do it,’ chuckled Mr. Bunny. Then he examined Nora with
his funny little eyes. ‘American lady, be ye? We have ’em hereabouts. I
read an American book once, when I was a lad. About a fugitive slave.
Ran away from his master. Through swamps and rivers. I knowed that book
most by heart. Every winter—sittin’ tight up t’ the fire, I’d read it
over ag’in.’
In Nora he saw reflected the glory of this remarkable volume of his
youth. He repeated over and over again, as they climbed the cliff, the
one story he had read.
Neville sat in the bright morning sunshine waiting for Nora. He turned
his eyes, with their indolent, half-cynical tilt upon her, and responded
to her smile with the expression, at once bantering and tender, which so
instantly transformed him.
‘I missed you so—my darling.’ She sat down close to him, pressing his
hand. ‘Those few minutes. I was like a forlorn little boy—like one of
those lambs you felt so sorry for that day—lost from its mother.’
A week passed. Sun, rain, it made no difference to them. Sometimes Mrs.
Tamar’s eyes upon them had a less bleak look. They were happy people.
Even Mrs. Tamar must know that.
The larks had never sung with more emancipated delight in their song
than during those flying, flying days. Nora and Neville were like larks.
Swooping up and up—never out of breath, those marvellous birds, always
singing, always seeking the sun.
The two of them sitting quietly on a rock high above the sea told each
other that their bodies had dropped away, that everything had dropped
away, the past, the future. Memory was gone. But for the present they
had a kind of transfigured experience, sharpened senses, a keenness of
sight, hearing, smell, which had never been theirs before. And never
were they tired—in the morning, or at night. This was living what only a
few knew—the marks of it on their faces. People passing them on the
street saw that here were human beings who were different. Not poor
creatures breathing, filling their lungs with air, letting it out again,
respiration, heartbeats, food, digestion, pains. Not that alone. But
full crowded vital existence for them. Making beauty of it, reality.
Mrs. Tamar—surely even Mrs. Tamar could see that they were happy.
In the night Nora sometimes awoke from troubled dreams with a muffled
cry of fear. Or at dawn when the first light stole into the room, she
had a moment of terror when she looked at the motionless figure lying
beside her so still. But he was sleeping peacefully, and she, too, slept
again. If he had any such moments, she never knew. Their two weeks were
almost over. They might stay three, four, on and on through the summer.
One day and then another—that was all.
One blustering morning they had climbed down to a shelter in the rocks,
where they could look out for miles over the sea and at the same time be
protected from the wind. They could see Mr. Bunny hobbling down after
his sheep, leaping with the help of his stick from one rock to another
like a goat.
‘Wonderful old chap—that Bunny of yours, Nora,’ said Neville lazily as
he puffed at his pipe.
The peace of their snug little chamber was so perfect that they were
reluctant to leave it at lunch-time.
‘But we’ll come back and spend the afternoon,’ Nora said, looking down
at Mr. Bunny not far below them.
At the top Neville paused. The same deep flush and then the pallor.
‘Just a minute—if I lie here——’
Mr. Bunny was not far away. She called to him, her voice carried forward
by the wind. He saw her, waved, began to turn his direction toward her.
‘Nora—I—my dearest.’ His eyes closed. ‘Reggie—to him——My dear—dear——’
She clung to his chilly hand, held his head against her breast.
A voice behind her. Mr. Bunny was saying something. ‘He’s gone—gone,’ he
whispered close to her ear.
They were a long way beyond the house, close to the Roswithiel Road,
which went on to Trebavas. She remembered Mr. Bunny’s horse and wagon
making journeys between the two villages.
‘Take him to—to his friend—the rector in Trebavas,’ she gasped out.
‘Quick! Quick!’
Mr. Bunny placed a horny finger on Neville’s white cheek, felt at his
heart. He shook his head. ‘He’s dead. While I was standin’ here behind
ye.’
But Mr. Bunny understood that he was to go after his horse and wagon,
fortunately all ready to start to Trebavas after dinner. In his stupid,
bewildered way he followed her directions as best he could.
All the way to Trebavas she sat on the floor of the jolting wagon
holding Neville in her arms. But she knew as well as Mr. Bunny that
nothing could be done. They halted outside the rectory gate. The lazy
horse waited with drooping head until his master came back with the
clergyman.
Reggie looked at Nora, then at the burden in her arms. He and Mr. Bunny
carried the limp figure into the house, climbed the stairs, and laid him
on the bed, Nora following them. Then the old man, muttering to himself,
clumped awkwardly down the stairs.
Reggie knelt beside his friend. Then he rose and held out his hand to
Nora. They had not spoken a word.
‘Let me—let me get you some tea,’ he said. ‘You must be very tired.’
He led her out of the room. In a few confused words she tried to tell
him what had happened. While she talked, his tortured eyes never left
her face.
‘I—I must get away before you send—for—for his wife. She mustn’t know.
He was with you—with you all the time. When he—you found him——’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I understand.’
‘Help me—help me to get away.’
She must allow him to drive her to the station as soon as the doctor
went away. Then he could send a wire to Neville’s wife from Pelreath. He
waited below while she went upstairs. When she returned, he was standing
in the centre of the room where she had left him.
At the station, they had a few minutes to wait. He took her hand,
holding it as if he had forgotten to release it.
‘You will—you will write me when you are safe in London. I shall not
rest until I hear.’ There was something in his eyes which made her heart
beat with fresh pain. ‘You will. Promise me. And afterward—in
America——If I could know you were all right—quite all right.’
She nodded her head, unable to speak. The train was coming. Reggie still
clung to her hand. ‘If ever—anything—anything I can do. For Neville and
me both—a kindness.’
The evening glow swept Reggie’s face as she, from the train, watched him
standing on the wind-swept platform, surrounded by the desolate Cornish
moors. She closed her eyes and locked her lips tight together.
VII
In the American Express Office in London Nora found a long-delayed cable
and a letter from the President of Petersfield. She stood in the room
crowded with her countrymen and read the cable. It meant nothing. They
wanted her—for what? She read the letter. They had created a new office
at Petersfield, that of dean, an academic as well as a social dean, the
President was careful to explain, whose function it would be to assist
him in building up a new kind of Petersfield. She was the unanimous
choice of the faculty, the alumnæ, the trustees. The new Petersfield,
she, Nora Deming, could help to make a force in American education.
Nora tottered toward a divan against the wall. She read the letter once
more. Then she began to laugh. She laughed until the tears ran down her
cheeks. She mopped them away, but again they splashed upon her face, her
hands, the letter which she held in her trembling fingers. The Americans
all around her paid no attention to the small red-haired woman laughing
there on the sofa. They were busy reading their letters. So she went on
and on, all by herself, with shaking, hysterical laughter.
CHAPTER III
I
Nora was on the train taking her from Maronac to Petersfield. During the
week she had spent in Maronac, Mrs. Pancratz, the Bohemian woman who had
been Cordelia’s helper in periods of stress, serving her at the end, had
protected Nora from every one: from Lizzie Guildford arriving the first
day, insisting that Nora would want to see her, even from Della coming
to show her little boy. From the front window one morning she had caught
a glimpse of Amy Henderson hurrying to Weyhausen’s store, still looking
like a girl of twenty, as elaborately fashionable as she had been then.
But she could not bring herself to see any of them. She must have a
sanctuary, a hiding-place for her bruised body. Every day, as the
echoing house became more and more dismantled, she had the desperate
sense that it was being torn away from her, one wall after another, one
board, another, until there would be no place, nothing behind which she
could stifle her mad, quivering passion, her helpless cries. It was over
at last. The house, on the edge of the new industrial district which had
sprung up since the war, was sold to the Aluminum Company, and the heavy
mahogany and walnut furniture made by the old English cabinet worker,
the friend of Cordelia’s father, was on its way to Petersfield.
Nora would never see Maronac again. On the last night, before she went
to her room in the German hotel across the river, where she and Cordelia
had often eaten their Sunday dinners, she had walked down to the beach,
and in the beating wind which made her cling to the railing walked out
on the pier toward the lighthouse, winking over the lake. She had looked
down at the churning water, had hesitated, loosened her hand clutching
the iron support, and then turned and gone slowly back toward the town.
In an hour, she would be back in Petersfield, back to the old life. In
the night, when she had lain in her berth hour after hour listening to
the clicking rails, she had marvelled at the meek obedience of the human
spirit. Why was she going back to Petersfield? What could she do there
or anywhere?
From the first, that night in the Exeter hotel, the cathedral chimes
jangling mad tunes through her head, those other terrible nights in the
Bedford Place lodging-house in London, on the boat coming home, she had
never had any illusions. What sentimentalists had written, babbled among
themselves about living in the spirit, not allowing the dead to depart
from one’s life, holding them close to the heart, keeping them, she had
never, even in her quieter, exhausted moments, heeded. All of life
crowded into a few feverishly happy days, and then wrenched from her.
She was only an automaton now, jerked about with no will of her own. She
had clutched at Petersfield as the first support which had offered
itself, and now she clung to it with feeble desperation.
With only a few minutes left before she must get off the train, see the
mob of students gathered at the station, direct her hazy, jaded powers
sufficiently to descend and be conveyed to the college, she shut her
eyes before the prospect of what she had driven herself to do.
The porter was beside her. ‘Brush ye off, madam?’
The familiar Petersfield hills spun past her. Some strange girls were
chattering the familiar college jargon at the opposite end of the car.
She put on her hat, stood motionless while the porter worked with his
brush, and then fell against the seat, the car whirling round and round
in nauseous circles.
The train was slowing up. She looked out. There stood the girls, in
their brilliant sport clothes and graceful shorn heads, talking and
laughing together, waving toward the train. Youth was beautiful—so full
of hope. She, once, like them——The same old station, the steps, the lame
porter who always remembered her. She felt something crashing within
her, the blood coursing swiftly through her veins. The old life
unchanged. Tears dropped unnoticed from her eyes.
This was her life, here in Petersfield. The lame man took her bag,
touched his cap. With downcast eyes she passed through the animated,
darting crowd on the platform, and her taxi carried her quickly to the
college and through its gates. The buildings draped in ivy, the advanced
guard of students in white, yellow, lavender, rose, fluttering over the
green of the lawns like butterflies, the grey towers rising above old
trees—never since she came there as a freshman for the first time had
the beauty of Petersfield so touched her, encompassed her. Here, after
all, was the place where she must find peace.
Ruth Ewing in Faculty Hall held Nora in her arms and kissed her. ‘I’ve
missed you so, my dear. No one else here like you. Why didn’t you tell
us when you were coming? We wanted to be down at the station to welcome
you, our distinguished member from foreign parts. Miss Steele trotted
over twice this morning to see if you had arrived.’
‘I’m glad to be back,’ Nora said quickly, conscious that Ruth’s
scientific eye was upon her.
‘You look tired, my dear. You mustn’t be too ambitious right away.’
‘How is Miss Steele?’
‘I must warn you. She’s very changed. It’s high blood pressure and a
kind of nervous exhaustion. Of course, she ought to rest.’
‘It would kill her,’ Nora reminded her.
‘Yes, I know. But she’s killing herself this way. She’s so rebellious
against her infirmity. A kind of mad rage. She has falling spells. Last
year she was brought home twice in a very bad condition. But she won’t
stop. We’re hoping you can do something with her.’
‘Never. I’ll never interfere with her.’
Ruth Ewing shook her head.
While Nora was unpacking, one visitor after another came into her room,
all of them with hearty congratulations for themselves and for
Petersfield that she was to be their Dean. Nora listened to them
quietly, trying to respond to what their conception of a dean must be.
Judicial and enigmatic, possibly. But how did one look that? On the
campus the students she had known, stopped her, told her how glad they
were she was back, how much they had missed her.
Before dinner that night Miss Steele plunged into her room.
‘Well,’ she began with a vigorous handshake. ‘I told them to get you
here, Nora. I refused to listen, to consider any one else. If we’re to
be reformed, I told them, let one of our own who knows us cast the first
stone.’
‘I don’t know about stones,’ Nora laughed.
Miss Steele sat down. She now wore two sets of spectacles, one on top of
the other, but in spite of them she betrayed the indecisive movements of
a person whose sight is fast going. When she was in repose, her face
dropped into strange, bewildered lines. Her hands twitched as she tried
to hold them tightly together. She scraped back and forth on the bare
floor one foot encased in the Congress boot which had inspired campus
humor for twenty years.
‘Have they told you?’ she burst out finally. ‘The President will talk to
you when you see him in the morning. They tell me I ought to resign—hint
at it. Advise me to rest—to give myself a little leisure to write my
books. Leisure after all these years! What would I do with it? Without
my students, why should I write books? I write to help them. If I—if I
resign——’
‘How ridiculous! You to give up. I shan’t listen to such nonsense.’
‘You mean it, Nora? You don’t think for the good of the college——’
‘I’m depending on you to get me started here.’
‘That’s what I hoped. But I—I’m an old woman.’
‘You’re a wise woman also,’ Nora added. ‘I shall tell the President that
without you to run the department——’
Miss Steele took out her handkerchief—she always bought the large
squares devoted usually to masculine necessity—and blew her nose like a
trumpet. According to her old-fashioned ladylike code nothing could have
been more degrading than such a public exhibition. But a show of emotion
belonged to even lower depths. At times one must choose the lesser of
two evils.
‘Well, then,’ she said in her characteristic hurried fashion, ‘I must be
off.’ She wrung Nora’s hand. ‘Don’t try to do everything at once, young
woman. Our ancient evils will keep a year or two while you’re getting
started.’
‘I want to talk over a few of my ideas with you. Some of them you won’t
like, Miss Steele.’
‘Of course, I won’t. But are you running this college to please me? Some
of them won’t please the President. I know you well enough for that,
Nora Deming.’ The door banged behind her retreating figure.
That night, when the footsteps in Faculty Hall and the high, eager
voices of the girls outside had ceased, Nora, before she went to bed,
looked at herself in her mirror. Ruth Ewing had immediately seen the
change in her face with those searching, kind eyes. A few weeks ago the
daily reflection which met her was that of an ignorant, careless girl.
But already it was beginning to show faint traceries of lines. Not
caverns, trenches, only delicate pencillings around the nose and mouth,
a kind of veil over the eyes, as if their owner no longer dared to look
straight out at the world. This was age, so long delayed, but coming
quickly now at thirty-two. Age—she welcomed age. It meant the inevitable
end.
Nora took out a photograph in an old-fashioned mahogany frame and looked
at the happy-faced young woman wearing puffed sleeves and a festoon of
lace around her throat, and a little boy standing beside her, a serious,
handsome child of five or six, with a plump hand clutching the silken
folds of his mother’s dress. She regarded it steadily for several
moments, and then hid it away in the drawer of the table beside her bed.
Work—only work to drive away that cutting, scalding memory. She would
work. Never stop. Philosophers down through the ages have praised work.
One can work when everything else is torn away. One takes it up first
for relief, escape. Then in the end it is life—all of life.
But until then—until one forgets—when what she and Neville in a few
summer weeks had known was everything—even in those breathless moments
there had been time to measure it. For her, love had been immediate,
irretrievable mating, the complete kind which comes only once. She
remembered her stumbling experiments in chemistry, those mysterious
combinations, reactions which she had watched over in the laboratory,
foreign elements bearing no outward resemblance to each other, but
coming together with such instantaneous, inevitable force. Love for her
and Neville had been like that. Dwellers in far-removed parts of an
indifferent planet, living many aimless, weary years before they came
together, and then close—close.
But there was no escape from the spinning of her mind. Restless, active,
it went on and on. Reaching out into the future—carrying her tired body
along with it. It had dragged her back to this old life. Now it stood
over her, beating her into plans for action. To-morrow when she saw the
President—what was she going to tell him? What she herself had
discovered, freedom, escape from fear—that she would try to give to the
Petersfield girls.
Even on the boat bringing her home, she already understood herself. She
understood Cordelia—all women. She was sure that she saw clearly how she
could protect them from some of the taboos, the restrictions, the
detachments which had held her down. They must cease being afraid—afraid
of themselves, of sex, of truth, of life and death. She no longer feared
any of these things. Once more, as on the train, the blood leaped within
her, brought fire to her brain, warmth through her whole body. Life—one
couldn’t escape it. Even joy.
II
When Nora saw the President in the morning, he began the conversation by
lamenting the fact that Professor Steele was no longer what she once
was.
Nora drew up her small figure to the most impressively expanded deanly
proportions. ‘But even now, there is no one at Petersfield to equal
her,’ she said firmly.
‘Perhaps not—perhaps not,’ he admitted, tapping his eyeglasses nervously
against the arm of his chair. Professor Steele was a strong-minded,
exasperating woman, as Miss Deming well knew. Perhaps all strong-minded
women were exasperating. The President had his playful glances at humor.
Petersfield had been founded to produce such a race, and it had nobly
fulfilled its destiny.
Nora could follow the thoughts of the President as he sat solemnly
measuring her capacity for her new job. By the time the Dean was
forty-five, she might succeed him. Alumnæ were always clamoring to honor
their own sex. But Miss Deming looked so small and innocent sitting
there, not easily distinguishable from the undergraduates, whose
destinies she held in her thin, nervous fingers.
He repeated the future policy of Petersfield, which he had already
outlined in the letter he had sent Nora in London. Hereafter, the
college was to be restricted to the best applicants, not to the
daughters of alumnæ, those with the most flawless genealogies, or the
most eulogistic recommendations from school heads respecting charm,
school spirit, and attractive appearance. Mental tests, records of
preparatory schools, were to be the decisive factors. With hundreds
battering at its doors for admission, Petersfield could, at last, afford
to be exclusive. And for the final choice of this superior student body,
the young women who respected intelligence and learning and were willing
for four years to devote themselves to the exercise of the mind, and for
their general guidance, the new office of dean had been created. The
President’s voice took on a warm tone as he expanded his theme.
‘I’ve been thinking over many plans,’ Nora told him.
‘Oh, yes,’ agreed the President, determined that Petersfield should
march in the vanguard of the college processional.
‘Some of them may be a mistake. But this first year I’d like to make a
few experiments.’
‘We must proceed with caution,’ warned the President.
In her opening address in chapel, the new Dean announced to the students
of Petersfield that their college was in the future to be a place for
responsible women, for women who were capable of deciding their own
course of action, not for children in leading strings. But they had for
so many years been addressed in public as women and treated afterward as
wayward children that they only smiled politely at the eager, red-haired
woman, who stood, a small figure in the folds of her academic gown, on
the edge of the chapel rostrum.
By degrees Nora explained to the President what she wanted to do.
‘I want women to go to college as men do—completely free. If they make
mistakes——’
‘But I can’t see that freedom in men’s colleges has brought about
praiseworthy results. Quite the contrary.’
‘Because at the same time with freedom high standards of scholarship
have never been insisted upon. If a girl devotes herself to dancing,
musical comedies, and a tour of the men’s colleges at Prom time, and her
work suffers, she goes home. She can be social there. We criticize women
for lack of independent thinking, for shifting around instead of coming
directly to the point, for cringing before authority, for lying, for
using the feminine weapons of flattery, tears, hysteria. And these are
the great sins.’ Nora’s large reddish-brown eyes held the President in
their spell. ‘I’d rather see the girls of Petersfield drunk——’
At the Dean’s words the President fell back as if, Nora surmised sitting
quietly opposite, she had taken the paper-knife lying on the desk beside
him and stabbed him to the heart.
‘Than full of deceit,’ Nora concluded, with the suspicion of a smile
flitting over her lips.
‘Drink for women——’ the President said in an awed voice.
‘They won’t drink. They never have in my experience. We generally leave
that kind of adventurous escape from reality to men. Of course college
girls have experimented. The last class day I was here two delightful
graduates of the class of 1872 told me about three girls of their year
sitting down after dinner to see how much they could take before they
lost consciousness. They were sent home the next morning. They seem to
have got rather maudlin and wandered about. And the old ladies
themselves used to smoke pipes—corncob pipes I think they said—in their
rooms late at night with towels fastened over the keyholes. They were
very proud telling it. And girls in those days were watched over
faithfully enough, weren’t they?’
The President permitted himself to smile. But he confided to the Dean
the difficulties of his position. She was new to administrative
responsibilities. If she understood—the worst thing was the
newspapers—if reporters got hold of the slightest indiscretion——
‘But we can’t run a college with one eye on the newspapers,’ Nora
insisted.
‘That is exactly what we have to do,’ he informed her.
‘I’ll take the responsibility. If we are disgraced before the world,
I’ll resign at once. Resign any time you think I have failed to make my
policies work out for the good of the college.’
When Nora repeated to Miss Steele what she had outlined for the
President, the head of the history department suppressed something close
to a groan which rose instinctively from her throat.
‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘we’ve made mistakes enough the old way. I’m
willing to try something new. But I warn you, Nora Deming, you’re
embarking upon a stony, uphill road.’
‘I know it,’ Nora answered her.
The matrons of the residence halls, in too many cases substitutes for
the parental tyranny which some girls came to college to escape, were
ready for open rebellion when they were informed that hereafter
Petersfield girls should go and come, even to New York, as they pleased,
without questionings from them. One after another sat in the Dean’s
office, concluding lengthy objections to this dangerous policy with the
words, ‘They’re children—mere children.’
‘Of course they’re too young. But while educators are getting the junior
colleges established, we must use forcing processes to make these girls
grow up.’
Robbing college girls of their infantile charm—their dependence—women
grown grey in nursery service at Petersfield often burst into angry
tears when they left the Dean’s office.
None of the older professors had suspected the iron will of the quiet
young woman they remembered in the history department, with great
scholarly promise, Professor Steele and others had said. That she had
already converted to her sudden revolutions the President, Professor
Steele, Professor Ewing, and others old and responsible enough to know
better, seemed incredible. They could only wait for disaster to tumble
down upon her, to tumble down upon them all.
There were days when the Dean no longer looked young. One could almost
imagine her as an old woman. Those who watched her with hostility were
conscious of the grim, settled lines of her mouth, the fixed light in
her eyes. Even Professor Steele admitted that her favorite pupil was a
changed person. So emotionless, they said among themselves, almost like
a man. She seemed indifferent to their concerted attacks, their united
antagonism. She showed no resentment, treated them with an unchanged
courtesy, deference almost, which was more maddening than blows. At
times she smiled at them with the sweetness of a pitying angel.
For her teaching her critics gave her generous praise. They approved of
her honesty, her unwillingness to use cheap tricks to win the guileless
undergraduate heart, so defenceless against high-sounding words. If
students crowded Miss Deming’s brilliant lectures, it was because she
had a vivid creative power, a concentration of thought, which Miss
Steele admitted she had never equalled even in her best days. The
professors who attended her public lectures on contemporary Europe told
her that she knew so much more than history. If Miss Deming had had less
energy to spread over all of Petersfield, she might have had only
friends there.
Two months later, the college had still escaped the newspapers. But
daily the President foresaw disaster ahead. To all outward appearance,
however, the undergraduates seemed to go on the same way. They may not
have had time to measure the extent of new privileges. Already a small
weeping procession of the unfit had been reunited to their parents, but
not many. The surprisingly meagre number encouraged the promoters of the
new entrance requirements. The right kind of students didn’t seem to
need police regulation.
At the meetings of the committee on instruction the Dean proposed for
the next year a larger faculty. For years it had been inadequate to
handle students effectively. New buildings went up, but the teaching
staff had had almost no increase in numbers. Miss Deming also wanted
more men to teach at Petersfield—not mere men, but the best men. They
needn’t live in Petersfield. It would be better for them if they didn’t.
Men who had made distinguished contributions to history, science,
literature, the arts could be induced to spend part of their time at a
college so easily available from New York. Of course such a policy was
expensive. But it was time Petersfield spent money on brains as well as
on bricks.
‘What about introducing good women into men’s colleges?’ interrupted
Professor Steele.
‘I admit they need good women as much as we need good men. But it’s not
within our power to reform men’s colleges,’ Nora told her.
‘You have moments of illumination, young woman,’ snorted Miss Steele
amidst general laughter.
The introduction of good men was accepted calmly enough by the faculty.
Perhaps they were too feminine at Petersfield. But when the Dean one
night at dinner in Faculty House expanded another of her theories, that
of introducing married women, mothers with children, into their teaching
ranks, even Professor Steele, who was a guest that night, thought she
also must interfere.
‘Married women getting everything—even the jobs away from us, who depend
on them,’ she shouted at Nora.
‘Well,’ Nora smiled, ‘I might compromise on widows.’
‘Widows!’ they chorused.
‘Mothers who have children to support—if they have academic equipment
equal to ours—are surely not objectionable. The very best widows,’ she
added, looking around the table.
In Ruth Ewing’s room after dinner, Nora was examined further by her old
friend. ‘Why are you so keen about widows? Really, my dear, you put on
all the airs of a successfully married woman.’
Ruth’s scientific detachment encouraged frankness. ‘Because they
wouldn’t idealize the facts of life, sentimentalize them, be timid about
what we stigmatize too often as nastiness, the low side of life, what
only men can talk about now without blushing.’ In her haste Nora’s words
tumbled over one another.
‘Where did you get so much wisdom? In England, my dear?’
Nora blushed. ‘I know I’m right,’ she answered.
One afternoon, following an unusually exhausting session with the old
régime, Nora walked rapidly out of town along the Eastchester Pike, with
the snowless fields of late November stretching out on all sides a
dreary brown. Turning away from the main thoroughfare and going up a
little hill, she discovered a road nearly hidden by a clump of cedar
trees, which she had never seen before. It appeared so quiet and
untravelled, with an atmosphere of such peace and seclusion, that she
felt as if she had opened a secret door leading quite out of the world.
Perched on a hillock at a twist in the road was a small pumpkin-colored
house with green blinds, with the hills sweeping around it. When she
approached, she found it untenanted, the front door blowing back and
forth on its hinges. It was of the usual Dutch cottage style, consisting
of a large room with a fireplace opening off from the narrow hall which
divided the house, two rooms on the other side for a dining-room and
kitchen, and three low bedrooms upstairs. The plaster had long since
dropped from the walls, a few panes of glass were broken, but the floors
were solid, the foundations strong.
The poor little place—Nora loved it. She wanted it. If she had a home,
it might be safe to drive herself less relentlessly. Already she was
tired—very tired, and this quiet, lonely house——
A week later Nora had bought the pumpkin-colored cottage, and an
architect was contriving the smallest possible number of renovations.
The stream at the foot of the hill, the closeness to Eastchester Pike,
made his plans so simple that the contractor prophesied Miss Deming
would eat her Christmas dinner in her own home. But Nora, understanding
the characteristic optimism of his business, estimated that the joys of
her own fireside would be delayed until February or early March.
III
A few days before Christmas, Margaret Campbell entered the Dean’s
office. She had been a student of Nora’s two years before, an eccentric
but able girl, kept in college by scholarships. Nora, with her memory
for detail, remembered that her father was a farmer in Iowa.
The girl took the seat Nora offered her, but stared in front of her
without speaking.
‘You wanted to consult me about something?’ Nora began to encourage her.
She gulped, worked her hands nervously together, and then the words shot
out after a painful effort. ‘I—I can’t come back to college after
Christmas.’
‘The scholarship isn’t enough? I’m sure we can help you a little. You’re
a senior, with a good record. I’m sure a loan to tide you over this last
year can easily be managed.’
‘It isn’t money. I know how to get along without money.’
‘Tell me, please.’
‘It’s—I—I’m going to have a child. I’ve got to go home, I suppose.’
Margaret Campbell, not pretty or frivolous, with a kind of rigid Scotch
Calvinism about her, was the last student who would seem likely to bring
such a problem to the Dean’s office.
She looked at Nora with a defiant and tearless despair, adding, ‘An Iowa
farm is not the place I want to go to now.’
At first she refused to make any explanations. Finally she began to cry.
No one would understand, Dean Deming least of all. She had a job in New
York the preceding summer and shared an apartment with a Petersfield
girl who had graduated the year before. On the street one day she met
the boy she had invited to her Prom. Just a boy. A stranger to her. One
of her friends had arranged about his coming. Junior Prom was the first
college party she had ever attended. The girls said she must go. One of
them lent her a dress, another a light evening wrap. She bought nothing
but slippers, not stockings even. She hadn’t seen the boy since. But he
was working in New York, too, last summer, knew almost no one. She asked
him to the apartment. They went out together a little. Then her
friend—the other girl—had her summer vacation. She was gone two weeks.
And then——
He was still in college. A junior. Younger than she. And with no money.
She hadn’t told him. He wasn’t even in love with her, wrote to her only
seldom, was planning to study medicine if he could manage it. And she—if
it hadn’t been for this——No, she didn’t love him. He wasn’t the kind
she’d want to marry. If all this trouble——She hated him. He ought to
have known better. He was so sure that he——Only in the end did she admit
that the blame was equally hers.
At first she had desperate thoughts. Now she didn’t care. But she didn’t
want to go home. If there were some kind of institution—she would
work—do anything—if she could hide what had happened from her parents.
‘It was never having any fun,’ she wept, hiding her face on Nora’s desk.
‘Working every summer—working at anything I could get here at college.
Finally hating everything——And I knew I was the kind that wouldn’t get
married. When I saw the other girls——’
‘Yes,’ Nora agreed, ‘I can understand that.’
Nora’s interview with the President was long and painful. Even though
Margaret Campbell’s disgrace had no connection with the Dean’s reforms,
it roused all his fears. Nora saw all that she had worked for threatened
with immediate destruction. But she reminded him of similar tragedies in
Petersfield history. She assumed the burden of all the arrangements: the
place in the country, no other than Amelia’s colony, where Margaret
could support herself for three or four months working for the
emancipated; she sent the announcement to the college paper that
Margaret Campbell because of illness would be unable to return to
college until the next fall; and the day before Christmas she settled
Margaret under Amelia’s care.
Nora tried to temper Amelia’s enthusiastic championship of this brave
girl’s motherhood by reminding her that Margaret didn’t want to be a
mother, was sure she disliked children, and that Margaret’s child,
conceived so carelessly, had not the most secure future.
‘Of course she’ll want him,’ declared Amelia, who like many feminists
thought only in terms of boy babies, ‘when she sees him. It will be
delightful to have a baby here at the colony. We’ve never had one
before.’
All that Margaret thought of was some escape from her maternal
responsibilities.
‘If I never had to see it—if you’d take it away,’ she wept when Nora
kissed her good-bye.
‘You don’t need to keep your child,’ Nora promised her, as she had
countless times before. ‘We’ll find some way.’
In January the pumpkin-colored cottage was ready for Nora. Her only
neighbor was a wealthy landowner, who had a colony of Russian tenant
farmers distributed over his expansive acres. Amelia, with her interest
in the Russian soul, had discovered them on one of Helen’s and her
week-end visits. A young husband and wife occupied the cottage only a
few steps from Nora’s front door. The woman, only a girl, always smiling
to cover her inability to speak English, was eager to work for Nora. She
was preparing for her first baby, and she needed money.
With Mitya’s help Nora placed Cordelia’s furniture in the bright fresh
rooms, the walnut bookcases going up to the ceiling, the walnut
secretary and high-backed chair, the solid table, the picture of Queen
Victoria and her grandchildren, and that of Warwick Castle. Margaret
Abington’s painting was between the two south windows. The old mirror
hung in the hall. The mahogany card-table and corner cupboard with the
Lowestoft china were placed in the dining-room.
‘Be-utiful,’ said Mitya, who was already in these first days beginning
to speak English.
But the house, after Mitya had gone home to get Peter’s supper—Peter the
Great Nora called the tall blond husband—was, in spite of its venerable,
solid beauty and its bright cretonnes, very lonely and quiet. Peter
thought Nora ought to have a dog. Mitya inclined toward a kitten.
In the clock-ticking stillness of the living-room one blustering January
night, Nora stood in the window watching the snow rise like spray—like
the sea—above the fields as the wind swept over them. Reggie had written
that people couldn’t live on memory—even perfect memory. He had written
her this when he sent Neville’s picture, the only one he had, of a
little boy and his mother. She must have something else. He was right.
Her duties at the college crowded her time, but she was so lonely, so
unutterably lonely. There was a chance that this—this fugitive thought
which visited her day and night—was after all what she needed. She would
settle it now.
She sat down at the walnut secretary and wrote to Margaret that she
would take the baby. If Margaret wanted her own child when he came, she
would waive all claim, but otherwise she wanted the baby.
IV
One morning in May Professor Deming did not meet any of her classes. She
had been called away, the announcement on the bulletin board read. She
was gone three days. In the midst of final examinations the story got
around that the Dean had adopted a baby, a very young baby already
established in her house off the Eastchester Pike. The girls thought it
was a tremendous joke. Dean Deming of all people!
Professor Steele collided with Ruth Ewing a few moments after the
astonishing report had reached her. ‘She would never take such a step
without consulting me,’ Professor Steele pronounced majestically.
Miss Ewing had to admit that she had seen the baby, a boy, a splendid,
healthy child.
‘Ridiculous. A male child at that!’ stormed Miss Steele.
‘But it turned out to be a boy,’ Ruth let out inadvertently.
‘What’s that?’ shouted Miss Steele, who, although she insisted that she
was getting deaf, had her periods of amazing audition.
‘She’ll tell you all about it.’
Miss Steele could not find Nora in the Dean’s office. Determined not to
be baffled, she started out on the country road. Nora came to the door
in answer to the violent clump of the brass knocker.
‘What’s this I hear about you, Nora?’ she demanded from the doorstep.
Nora led her into the house, guided her over the strange rugs, and
settled her in the chair near the window.
‘You shouldn’t have walked out here in the heat,’ she protested.
‘You telling me nothing,’ the older woman thundered. ‘It’s
madness—madness.’
‘I wanted to tell you. But I know how easily I’m influenced by your
opinion, Miss Steele. If you had disapproved——’
‘Of course I’d have disapproved. Old maids adopting babies. They’re all
doing it. Couldn’t you think of anything more original?’
‘You see his mother—she was a student once at Petersfield.’
‘So were you. It isn’t your child, Nora?’ Miss Steele’s eyes glittered
ironically behind her spectacles.
‘I wish he were. But I had to have him. I was sure of that. I want you
to see my baby.’
From the foot of the stairs she called to Mitya, who had just finished
giving the baby his bottle. Mitya entered the room carrying him on one
arm, and smiling at the erect, severe woman in her stiff dress.
‘Here he is,’ Nora said, taking him from Mitya. ‘Richard Tait—after my
father and the guardian who left me the money to bring him up.’ She
dangled him before Miss Steele’s disapproving eyes.
Miss Steele’s gaze wandered from the curious pink creature Nora held
before her to Mitya with her clumsy, comic figure. Mitya continued to
smile and twitter an unintelligible jargon to the baby.
‘Sit down, please. Do see how soft and warm he feels.’
Miss Steele dropped into a low chair and draped her unyielding arms
around the baby. Her hold upon him was uncertain, virginal. Nora seated
herself on a stool in front of them.
‘Every one says he’s a remarkable infant,’ Nora confided. ‘See how
strong his neck is. He’s beautifully made. Just look at his legs.’
A deep flush crept into Miss Steele’s grey cheeks. She looked
embarrassed.
‘What’s that woman doing here?’ she demanded, frowning at Mitya’s
retreating form.
‘She’s Dicky’s nurse. Mitya. I’m certainly fortunate to have her.’
‘You’ll have another young one on your hands any day, it looks to me,’
prophesied Miss Steele.
‘Yes, Mitya’s baby comes next month. She might just as well have two
babies to look after as one.’
‘A pretty mess you’ll have here. You’ll never finish your book, now.’
‘When I’m busy, Mitya will keep the children in her cottage—there at the
foot of the hill.’ Nora looked over at Dicky. He was very sleepy. He
gave a great yawn and stretched out his arms. She must call Mitya to
carry him off to bed. ‘I’ve sent for Clara, the maid I was so fond of at
Saint Ethelfreda. She’s promised to stay the rest of her life.’
Miss Steele shifted the baby in her arms and sighed. ‘Why couldn’t you
have waited, Nora, to have one of your own? I thought—perhaps at
Knickerbocker or in England.’
Cordelia’s words—the same hope.
Nora shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no—never.’ She hid her face
against the arm of Miss Steele’s chair. If she could tell her—tell her
now. There was no one else she wanted to have know. After the first
shock she would understand. But Miss Steele couldn’t be given shocks any
more. She had to be spared. Nora must make her lie down, and then have a
cup of tea before she drove her back to the college.
‘Why,’ insisted Miss Steele to her dearest pupil, ‘why did you do it,
Nora?’
Nora lifted her head and smiled. ‘Why? To counteract the feminine
influence at Petersfield, dear Miss Steele.’ Then she reached over and
kissed her old teacher on the cheek before she carried the baby to
Mitya.
THE END
NOVELS OF DISTINCTION
A MIRROR FOR WITCHES By ESTHER FORBES
A story of Salem in the days of witches and of a mortal girl who
took, as she believed, a fiend to love, daring the wrath of God
and the vengeance of man for her infernal paramour. By the author
of ‘O Genteel Lady!’
THIS WAY OUT By PHILIP LITTELL
A lively, humorous, and brilliantly ironic story of the
adventures of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.
WE SING DIANA By WANDA FRAIKEN NEFF
This story of a woman’s revolt against a woman’s world is a frank
and absorbing study of a modern woman’s inner life.
TALES FROM GREENERY STREET By DENIS MACKAIL
Enchanting stories of London newly-weds that will make new
friends for the author of ‘The Flower Show.’
CHILDREN OF THE WIND By DORIS PEEL
‘It is that rare and humorous thing, the exquisite comedy of
manners.’—Philadelphia Ledger.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Transcriber’s Notes
Duplicate headings have been removed.
The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):
[p. 116]:
... she knew no the slippery surface of the freshman mind. ...
... she knew on the slippery surface of the freshman mind. ...
[p. 117]:
... them, Nora knew, lay the peaks of the Renascence and ...
... them, Nora knew, lay the peaks of the Renaissance and ...