SHE opened the wide door into a hall which blazed with a yellow carpet
and led the way into a room which was lighted with a shaded
reading-lamp. The room instantly appealed to Pamela with a sense of
dear familiarity. It was filled with furniture and china from the
Buttery.
“Sit down. It is Mrs. Nick Hone’s chair. She used to stand her
washing-tub on it; Tim says it is worth five pounds.”
A little fire burned in the grate although it was a summer night. On
the bare table of brown oak was a tray set with tea things.
“I always like a cup of tea when I come home from a party; it makes me
sleep. I’ll get another cup. You remember Mrs. Silas Daborn’s corner
cupboard?” She opened it and brought out the china.
Pamela looked about her hungrily, silently, at the familiar dumb things
which seemed alive that night: warm, vital things that knew her. The
hideous china figures on the shelves grinned affably--at a former
neighbor.
“You must drink this hot.”
Pamela began to cry again as the cup was held to her mouth.
“Ssh. No. Drink the tea. Tell me everything and have a big cry
afterward.”
She drank obediently, draining the cup. Then she said in a heartfelt,
passionate way, as if she were an ardent convert to a new belief:
“There is nothing like another woman when one is miserable.”
“Nothing. Men are excellent--when we are happy. At other times they
bully us--with the best intentions--putting all our emotions down to
hysteria.”
“Men are never excellent at any time. They have brought me misery. You
pay for one moment of delight with a day of anguish.”
“This tray,” said Barbara Clutton, evidently thinking it politic to
turn the conversation, “was Mrs. Bert Hone’s. You were with me when I
bought it. Do you remember how deaf she was, and how the old man
swore--most picturesque swears! Do you remember what I said that day
about your brother Edred? How is he?”
Pamela started up at the name.
“I must tell you everything,” she cried energetically. “It isn’t fair
to sit here, to stay in your house without telling you everything.”
She told it all without another moment of hesitation: told every little
thing. She didn’t care how her story would be received. She
relentlessly dissected all her emotions--however unworthy. She detailed
all her experiences--however unsavory. It was a relief to be absolutely
frank at last, to have no concealment whatever from at least one
person. It was a very long story; she touched it up almost lovingly.
The night wore away. She drained herself of all the bitterness, all
the delight and shame and misery of three years.
The fire died out. Hushed sounds in the streets beyond the smugly drawn
curtains, a cold, dull light breaking through a chink and marking the
wall, were suggestive. Barbara Clutton, who had listened without one
word of comment, started to her feet and dragged back the curtains.
It was broad daylight in the streets outside. She put her arm around
Pamela’s shoulders, with a gesture much more eloquently tender and
sympathetic than a torrent of words would have been, and drew her to
the window.
“Did you ever see such an exquisite flush of pink?” she said, pointing
to the sky. “I’ll open the window. There! Such air on one’s cheeks, in
one’s thick eyes. We ought to go for a walk while the world is empty.”
“I wonder what it is like at this moment at Folly Corner, in my
garden,” Pamela said abstractedly.
“Ah! Folly Corner. What a garden, what a dim old house, packed with
ghosts, guilt, dead dreams, and delights! What a collection of
furniture; I’d like Tim to see it. And you put all that behind you for
a tinsel thing. My poor Pamela! But then you are a woman. Let us talk
over your plans. You’ve got to finish your life--that is a piece of
work we are not allowed to throw aside. Let us make plans.”
“I haven’t any--only desires,” Pamela returned in a shamefaced way.
“Desires! Are you thinking of Jethro? The dawn, the quiet has brought
it all back--Folly Corner.”
“That is past--impossible. I was thinking of Edred. I had better go
back. You see, he didn’t mean to shame me. He didn’t know that she was
alive all the time. He is a victim of circumstances. He needs pity.
I’ll go back. I’ll say nothing about it. That will be the best. You
don’t know how fond I am of him! It is terrible; it frightens me
sometimes. Nothing kills it--not even last night; not even the bruises
on my body. I’ll go back. You must forget to-night. I’m not a fit
person for you--or any nice woman--to know.”
A tinge of cold disgust came into Mrs. Clutton’s dark eyes.
“I won’t wrong you by believing that you’re serious,” she said at last,
with some distaste--with a great deal more seriousness than she usually
allowed herself. “Go back! It would be immoral, horrible. You can’t do
it. You can’t possibly mean what you say. We won’t mention him again.
You must stay here; things will arrange themselves--they always do.”
“But Mr. Clutton?”
“Tim. He has gone abroad as war correspondent. It is as well. We
quarrel if we are together too long, or we grow apathetic, which is
worse. I’d rather have isolated episodes of rapture than a
matter-of-fact, unbroken affection. I could never endure the kind of
husband who calls you ‘my dear,’ who draws you a check without
grumbling, who politely wishes you good-morning when you meet at the
breakfast table and asks anxiously if you are sure his shirts are aired.
“We are happy, prosperous. Tim makes money, although brains, as a rule,
are a positive hindrance to worldly success. We know lots of clever
people. To them I am only Tim’s wife: I used to hope that he would be
only my husband. We rush through society; he the kite, I the tail. I
used to think I was clever--I’m merely voluble. I can’t even succeed in
being positively stupid: in a brilliant age like this it’s a
distinction to be unmistakably stupid. Nancy has been up to stay with
me. I took her about. She made a tremendous sensation--with her
complexion, her red locks, her gift of silence. People said she had an
air, was uncommonly clever. She is going to be married to Mr. Minns,
the Liddleshorn curate. And some people say that Mr. Jayne is to be
married too--they talk of Maria Furlonger. Isabel Crisp has married
that prig Egbert Turle. He has bought old Dr. Smith’s practice at
Liddleshorn. Mrs. Turle--she came up with Nancy--says that old Gainah
is wonderfully active, more active than ever. Why! You are nearly
asleep. We’ll go upstairs. There is a room ready. Annie Jayne was to
have spent the night here on Monday. She has at last decided to have
false teeth--greatly against her will: her mother had only six stumps
in her head when she died. But the baby--there’s another since your
time--had an attack of rose rash, whatever that may be. It sounds
pretty.”
She led the way upstairs softly. The house was most luxurious, and the
tail of her gown, as she swept it over the thick carpets, was like a
molten stream of silver.
Pamela fell asleep in a mahogany bed draped with some wonderful fabric
full of color and of bold design. When she woke the sun was fierce in
the room. Her limbs felt stiff and her head muddled. She started up on
her elbow, looking wildly round for her own possessions--the big toilet
table, the winged, ugly wardrobe with the long glass. Her tea-gown, all
frilled and limp and pale on a chair by the bed, was eloquent. It
brought back the nightmare: the person in brown; Sutton, with his
atrocious proposal and disclosure; the long walk, the meeting with her
hostess. She looked over the side of the bed. Her slippers were kicked
off, soles upward. There was a round hole in one, the other had broken
away at the side. Her black silk stockings, lying near, had holes, too.
She fell back despairingly on the square pillow, its frill tickling her
cheeks. Where was the use of waking?
The door opened, and Barbara Clutton stole in. When she saw that her
guest was awake she sat down on the edge of the bed. Then, as Pamela,
like a child, lifted her face, she jumped up and kissed her gravely
between the widely set, melancholy eyes.
“I was always fond of you,” she said, going back to the foot of the
bed. “I always suspected you of drama. I’ve a plan. You must stay
here--it will be a charity to me. When Tim comes home--we’ll see! I
shan’t want you then.” She made a little frank grimace. “When Tim comes
home I want no one--until the first rapture of reunion wears off.
We are like a couple of very juvenile lovers--but we don’t keep up the
strain for long. He won’t return for a couple of months at the very
least. We can have a splendid time, you and I together. There is only
one thing I must insist on--one thing.” The disgustful expression of
the night before momentarily hardened her laughing face. “You must vow,
by something solemn--what binding instrument can we get for you to kiss
or swear by? There is really nothing but a back glass--which is
frivolous--and a poker, which is threatening. Give me your bare word.
Promise not to attempt to see that man; not to degrade me by going
back, by writing. You mustn’t even speak of him. It’s all terrible
tragedy to you; to me it is merely a disgraceful, unavoidable episode.
The woman in brown transforms the situation. I’m more sorry for her
than for you; we can’t help our respectable prejudices. He is never to
be mentioned. We’ll put away, if you please, the very tea-gown which he
has touched. I’ve brought you a coat and skirt--a pale blue skirt which
ought to suit you beautifully. Is it all settled?”
“All!” Pamela returned with promptitude. “I vow. I am only too grateful
to be saved--from myself.”
In that quick way--natural to Barbara Clutton--they decided it. Pamela
fell obediently into the life at Beaufort Street. It was almost
conventual. Day after day she rose from her bed, looked at the mourning
band of river and despaired. She was cut off from London; it was part
of the compact that she was not to go beyond the Chelsea end of
Sloane Street. She shopped in King’s Road. Sometimes she walked out to
Fulham, or penetrated farther still, to a lonely green, belted with red
and yellow houses. The omnibuses pulled up there. She used to stare at
them wistfully, and think of Wormwood Scrubbs and the old, dead days of
anguish.
Furtively she bought newspapers and read them with a hungry eye. She
read everything which might hold a trail of Edred. She bought City
papers, made her head ache by puzzling over market quotations. She read
accounts of frauds, read all the criminal news. She read the lists of
bankrupts, read death notices, advertisements. She never saw his name.
It seemed suddenly sponged from all the places which had formerly
placarded it.
She beat against the bars of that house by the river. She wasn’t happy;
neither she nor Barbara was happy after the first glow of novelty wore
off. They weren’t of the mold to be completely satisfied with the
companionship of their own sex.
Summer died; leaves, whirled by October gales, swept the Embankment.
Pamela was lonely, bored. She had fancied that the society of clever
people--people with the public certificate of cleverness--would be
invigorating. But the distinguished people who came to Beaufort Street
were stupid; they seemed to go out of their way to be commonplace.
“Conversational brilliance is out of fashion,” Barbara said flippantly.
Pamela was tired of Barbara Clutton, tired of her volubility, her
pettishness, her whims. She was very grateful to her, she liked her
very much, of course--she was sick to death of her.
How would it end? She studied the newspapers, for other than
sentimental reasons: she looked for a situation. That would be the
end--a situation. They would never take her back at the boarding-house
in Bloomsbury; Edred’s history, and her connection with him, was too
notorious. But there were other boarding-houses. She would go back to
the old life--that would be the end. She would help carve, talk
smoothly on safe, commonplace subjects at the dinner-table.
She knew the life. She remembered; and it turned her sick. A woman in
subservience was only half a woman. But that was to be the end. She was
to finish as she had begun. Perhaps, by years of saving, she might be
able to start a boarding-house of her own. Perhaps Jethro would help
her to do so, if Maria would permit him.
The boarding-house! She remembered the narrow hall, where the dinner
always hung on the close air; remembered the shabby manservant, the
guests. They had mostly been women, those boarders: old maids who
called each other “dear,” “darling,” “sweet one,” and gathered by twos
into corners of the big, shabby drawing-room to tear each other to
shreds. They were fussy old women, susceptible to draught, and given to
wearing ragged fur tippets in the house when an east wind was blowing.
She knew--and shuddered. But it was the only thing left.
Her thoughts flew to Folly Corner, and then to Edred. She would remind
herself reproachfully that she had not once thought of him that day.
She wanted to forget him; she tried to forget, and yet she reproached
herself because she was beginning to succeed. She must forget--it
wasn’t respectable to remember. Barbara Clutton was always impressing
that on her.
“I like,” she said one day, in explanation of her gospel, “to be a very
respectable woman; an icily virtuous one--but yet to give the
impression of being dangerous.”
Pamela had left off laughing at her oddities--she had left off laughing
at anything. She was cultivating the prim, half-formed manner of a
spinster well over thirty. She grew fussy over trifles, became morbidly
afraid of taking cold, studied her health, her diet. She gratuitously
spied over the servants, seeing an embryo burglar in every tradesman’s
boy, running her fingers along ledges for dust, measuring the contents
of the dishes with suspicious eyes.
“I want to be of some use,” she said, in extenuation. “I’ve had great
experience in housekeeping.”
“Housekeeping!” Her hostess shrugged. “A calling artfully created by
hopelessly lazy women as a blind. My dear girl, no busy woman keeps
house; it’s a terrible confession of idleness. Suppose Cook _does_ give
away the dripping--why should I waste nervous energy in attempting to
stop her? The dripping isn’t worth it. If they refuse to burn small
cinders in the kitchen range--what matters? Figure out for yourself--I
can’t--the cost of a ton of coal, and see how much Tim loses in the
year. He pays--and it can’t be more than a box of cigars.”
Pamela said nothing. She retired to her room and her newspapers. She
looked up from the lines of advertisements, and out at the gliding
river. She thought of Folly Corner, of Jethro, in all his picturesque
environment. And then she dragged herself back to thoughts of Edred; it
was becoming an effort to remember him. She thought she would set aside
half-an-hour every day for remembrance--as if he were some
tenderly-loved dead person. She became afraid of herself. She was
hopelessly fickle, of light behaviour. She was incapable of any lasting
regard. She loved him. She loved him. But the words had become
parrot-like--they no longer tore her heart to say them. She was
forgetting him--the very thing she had once struggled in vain to do.
She was becoming indifferent: the attitude she had once prayed and
struggled for. And yet she wasn’t happy.
Tim precipitated things. He send his wife a telegram, saying that he
was on his way home. Would she care to join him in Paris for a week?
“It needn’t make any difference to you, dear,” the excited little woman
said, as her cab stood at the open door, and her wraps were carried
down the path by a lilac-gowned maid, whose streaming cap-ends whirled
about on the rude November wind.
She kissed Pamela remorsefully, conscious that she had been malicious
now and then.
“It’s difficult for two women to live together without fighting, isn’t
it?” she said ingenuously. “I wonder how they manage in a nunnery! A
novel from the inside of a nunnery would cause a sensation. I’ll
commend it to Tim. He’s quite clever enough to pass as a nun--but it
wouldn’t satisfy my unquenchable sense of propriety. I’ve been very
horrid to you now and then; but when Tim comes--we shall only stay in
Paris ten days at the outside--he will keep us in order. Of course, his
coming won’t make any difference,” she added, with obviously forced
hospitality.
“I shall get a situation,” Pamela said, in the inert way which had
become habitual. “Good-by”--they kissed again. “I’ll look after the
maids. You’ll never be able to keep that between-girl. She’s hopeless.”
The other shrugged and ran out in the wind to the cab. It drove off,
the maid came in, the door shut, an unusual silence settled over the
house. Pamela went into the dining-room and sat by the window, not even
a newspaper in her hand. She felt more lonely, more unwanted than she
had ever felt at any moment in her varied life. Barbara had been in
such a frenzy to get to her husband that she hadn’t given her a
thought--hadn’t even asked her, as a matter of form, to see her off at
the railway station.
She lunched alone and meagerly. After lunch she sat by the dining-room
window until tea came in. The maid set the tray down with a bang and
moved across to the door flouncing her black skirts.
Pamela set her mouth grimly. She knew the ways of servants; they had
decided, in the absence of their mistress, to give her a rough time.
But she was equal to any servant. She amused herself by scheming out an
elaborate house-cleaning--and then abandoned it wearily because the
house wasn’t hers. She went to bed almost directly she had eaten her
dinner. She was awake all night, lying flat and long in the bed, her
eyes open, her thoughts forced to consideration of Edred. What was he
doing? She didn’t feel much curiosity. His tenderness didn’t make her
heart throb. His brutalities no longer made it blaze and ache.
It had really come--indifference: a body, a soul of stone. She turned
on the pillow and cried from sheer loneliness.
It rained next morning. Rain--a high fog! The most miserable morning
imaginable. She had her breakfast in the little room at the back of the
house, with a French window leading to the long, suburban garden. She
didn’t know why she turned the hasp of that window and stepped out
under the gloomy sky, into the dreary rain.
It was a very uninteresting garden; a ghastly, heart-breaking travesty
of a garden. The limp creeper on the blackened wall smutted her hand
when she touched it. The narrow borders were bare and smut-laden. From
the top of the wall a lean, gray cat looked at her with a sinister
mournfulness in its yellow eyes. The fog was in her eyes and down her
throat, the rain fell coldly on her bare head. Peals of coarse, hearty
laughter rang up from the kitchen, where the maids were romping with
the man who came every morning to fill the scuttles and clean the
boots. The gray cat stole along the wall.
She turned back to the window, not knowing why she came into the
garden, not knowing what to do with this sad day. There was a rockery
near the French window--the usual rockery, rich in clinkers. But some
blue thing stared up into the brown air boldly. She uttered a sudden
glad cry and stooped, letting her skirt brush the wet gravel. It was a
delicate blue periwinkle. There was a patch of blue periwinkle at Folly
Corner, just by the granary. Periwinkle! What nonsense was it that
Gainah told her about periwinkle? Ah, yes! If a man and his wife eat
the leaves they will ever be faithful each to the other. The blue
flower with its trail of glistening leaves was in her hand. She bit one
leaf, laughing--yet more a sob than a laugh--as she did it. She would
never be Jethro’s wife--nor any man’s. She was a tainted thing.
She stared at the flower, a long, thoughtful stare. Then she laughed
again and clapped her hands--the heavy, blinding tears in her eyes. The
world was to her one wide delicate flower of cold blue. She went
through the window, laid the trail on the table, looked at it
questioningly. Once she said to it, “Shall I? Dare I?” Then, with a
clumsy movement, she dragged herself up, hurried to the door, went up
the stairs two at a time.
The maids were making her bed. She said abruptly:
“I am going away--a visit. I may be back to-night--I cannot say. You’ll
see to everything just as if Mrs. Clutton and I were at home.”
They left her alone. She put on her things and went out of the house.
She didn’t leave a note for Barbara; she didn’t take any luggage; she
didn’t look at the house with any feeling--no lingering glance of
farewell. Her strip of needlework was hanging out of the basket. She
didn’t trouble to put it in. She might be back to-night. It was
extremely likely that she would be back. Of course she would. She was a
fool, an impudent, optimistic fool to go at all. She would be back. She
nearly rang the bell to order dinner at the usual time. She kept
assuring herself that night would find her again in London--shuddering
at every assurance. She knew very well that this journey was her last
throw. She knew very well that this journey was to decide everything.
Jethro might be married. He might be, if not already married, committed
to some nice, pure, faithful girl. Was she the sort of woman to be
introduced to a girl of that tepid, blameless description? The contempt
for mere unimpassioned, untempted virtue curled her lip.
He might be contemptuous, hard. He might be brutal; he could be
bitterly, uncompromisingly brutal when he chose. He had the reputation
of being a hard man--all the Jaynes had.
She could imagine him saying very coolly some damning, insulting thing.
She could see his ruddy patrician face as he said it, could see the
relentless glint in his cold blue eyes. Eyes a couple of shades paler
than the periwinkle; she crushed it in her hand.
She took her ticket; was fortunate enough to catch a quick train--there
were very few in the day to such an out-of-the-way place. She was quite
alone in the carriage. She watched the landscape eagerly; watched the
foul fog rise as they left London; watched the slow development of a
dazzling autumn day.