miraculousness of Beatrice’s war-time journey. The romance of the girl’s
coming sufficed its hour.
Yet the journey’s self was a romance: a romance of one girl’s
persistence. There had been so many difficulties—her parents, the U. S.
passport office, British Admiralty regulations; but Beatrice, smile in
her eyes and fear at her heart, surmounted them one by one. The call
came! and she must answer the call. Nothing else mattered. . . .
Beatrice was thinking of these things as the taxi circled away from
Henley Station; took the Harpsden road. So much lay behind her; so much
she had yet to face. Of the past, nothing remained except the big trunk
clumsily roped beside the driver, the suit-case at her feet.
This England amazed her. She had expected to find at least some
semblance to her own country; but, except for the language, everything
seemed foreign—foreign and rather hostile. Also, nobody cared.
Personalities didn’t exist. She was Beatrice Cochrane: she told herself
this several times, as though she might forget it—and for all England
cared she might have been Sally Smith. England had welcomed her gruffly
in the pitch darkness of a choppy sea; pitch darkness out of which men
from low decks had shouted to men on high. England had decanted her as
an “alien”; fussed over her passport; shoved her into a train; told her
to pull down the blinds in case of air-raids—and left her to her own
devices. . . . The rest of her journey seemed to Beatrice’s fantasy a
threading of her way through millions of soldiers. She had never seen so
many soldiers. And nobody cared!
Even the soldier at her side—the thin careworn man who looked so like
Francis—didn’t seem particularly interested. After his first spasm of
surprise, he had subsided into Englishness. Apparently, he took it for
granted that she was going to stay with him, to marry his cousin.
Obviously, he neither knew nor wanted to know what his wife had written
to her, or why.
“Jolly, isn’t it?” said Peter. “The country, I mean.”
“Yes. Very—jolly.” She didn’t really think it “jolly”; she thought it
rather disappointing. And they were going too fast to see much more than
hedges and fields switching by. The fields looked very small; the
roadside cottages they passed, very modern.
“Is Sunflowers far from Henley?” she asked.
“About another five miles.”
A golf-course flashed by; more hedges; a tumble-down-looking farm-house.
She began to think, shyly, about Francis. What would he say to her, she
to him? Had she done right in dashing half across the world at a letter
from an unknown Englishwoman? . . .
Peter leaned forward, said to the driver: “Take the Arlsfield road when
you come to it. Straight on through the village and then up to Tebbits’
Farm.”
The man merely nodded. They came to a village-green; shot across it.
More hedges—a red-brick townlet. Now, the road rose straight ahead of
them; looking forward over her bobbing trunk, Beatrice saw a
tree-crowned ridge.
“Oh,” she said suddenly, “what a lovely house!”
“That’s Sunflowers.” He did not seem particularly proud of the place;
but he jumped out of the car politely enough; swung the gate for it to
enter; ran to the front door. The door was open; and Beatrice saw a
woman standing in the doorway—a tall golden-haired woman.
“Pat,” ejaculated Peter, “there’s a girl—”
“I know,” said Patricia, “I’ve been expecting her.”
The next moment, Beatrice found herself being helped out of the car;
shaken hands with; asked if she’d like to wash before tea.
“I must ask Peter one question first; you don’t mind, do you? He’s just
been up for his Board, and I want to know what they’ve done to him.
Peter!”
“Yes, dear. . . .”
Beatrice tried not to listen; but she couldn’t help hearing the brief
colloquy: “What happened?” “Oh, they fired me out. _Napoo._ _Fini._”
Then Patricia took her by the arm; rushed her through a brightly
furnished hall, up some blue-carpeted stairs to a chintz-curtained
room—and there, without any warning at all, her hostess burst into
tears.
The American girl put a tentative hand on the English-woman’s arm: “What
is it? Oh, do tell me what it is? Has anything happened to Mr.
Jameson—anything bad, I mean?”
“No, nothing bad. Just something wonderful”—Patricia smiled through her
tears. “Excuse me for welcoming you so stupidly. But it’s been such a
strain—nearly three years of it—and now that it’s really over, I”—she
dabbed viciously at her eyes—“I’m a little upset, that’s all. Do please
forgive me, Miss Cochrane.”
“Forgive?”—Beatrice’s gray eyes smiled up into her new friend’s face.
“It’s I who ought to be forgiven. You wanted to talk to each other—and
I was in the way. Do go down to him. I’ll be quite all right. . . .”
For answer, Patricia kissed the girl’s cheek. “My dear, I wouldn’t have
him see me cry for anything in the world. That was why I ran you up the
stairs so quickly.” She stepped to a bell-push by the fireplace; rang. A
servant appeared. “Bring up Miss Cochrane’s bag, please, and tell Mr.
Jameson we’ll be down for tea in twenty minutes.”
Beatrice, unpinning her hat at the mirror on the oak toilet-table,
thought to herself, “Well, some of them care anyway.”
“And now, my dear”—her hostess’ voice interrupted reverie—“let’s talk
sensibly. . . .”
When the two women at last came arm-in-arm down the staircase, it seemed
to Peter Jameson as though it was Beatrice who had been crying; but she
talked happily enough through tea-time—and refused his escort beyond
the ricks of Tebbits’ Farm. Peter, watching the slight figure dwindling
down the meadow-path into the mist of a March twilight, could not help
thinking to himself, “A girl like that is much too good for poor old
Francis.” Then, remembering that he had a bone to pick with Patricia, he
strode rapidly back to Sunflowers.
§ 4
Francis Gordon sat at his great desk by the open window. All day he had
been conscious of springtime, of a stir in his veins, a longing, a
dissatisfaction. What did springtime or any time matter to him—to
Francis Gordon? All his real springtimes lay behind: in front, stretched
nothing but a gray void of seasons—hopeless and lonely. His brave days
had gone down in dust. He was a cripple—a drag on the swift wheels of
humanity—clog in a bright machine. And his one puny Power, the power of
words he had once deemed so strong, that too availed nothing. “To
write!” he thought, “O God, to _write_ when the world’s hand is on the
sword-hilt. . . .”
He looked out across Arlsfield Park. The sun, just dipping behind
crest-line, irradiated the broad avenue of close-bitten turf. Feeding
bunnies made sable dots all about the green: a herd of deer, antlered
shadows, moved in and out among the new-leafed chestnut trees. At
avenue’s end, the hills swelled blue-purple to a rose wash of sky. . . .
But sunset’s beauty made no appeal to the heart of Francis Gordon. It
felt cold, the heart within him, heavy with the sorrows of the world.
Sunsettings and sunrisings—beauties of inanimate senseless
things—God’s mockeries at humanity! God? . . . The man laughed.
As if there were a God! He—whoever He might be—was no god, but a
devil, a torturer. Yet men tricked themselves into this idea of godhead.
Every cruelty in the world had been perpetrated in the name of some
deity. The very Beasts in Gray wore His Name for device. And he, Francis
Gordon, in the pride of his brain, had submitted to such trickery. For
the sake of this fool-god, he had renounced the one woman.
In return for that renunciation, the fool-god had promised him the Power
of Words. He was to write, to spend his life at this stupid desk. . . .
Meanwhile, _men_ fought. . . .
He began to think of his own tiny share in that great fighting. Even
there, he had not played a man’s part. Better to be one of those
tortured men he had seen in the prison-camps of the Beast, than—a spy.
Yes, a spy—it came down to that in the end. If only he had killed one
Beast, killed it with his own hands, squeezed the life-blood from its
foul throat. . . .
Now, thought of the Beast obsessed him. The horrors he had seen in the
Land of the Beast danced uncleanly sarabands in his brain. And God, the
gentle Jesus black-coated priests still whined about on Sundays, God
permitted these horrors. . . . Better then, the old gods, Thor and Odin,
whose priests dipped hands in blood and slew. . . .
A vast wave of hatred surged over the man’s soul. There could be no
happiness on earth until the Beast was exterminated; male and cub and
female, the Beast must perish. There must be one great killing! With
fire and sword, men must traverse the Country of the Beast: not only the
Beast, but all his works—his handiwork and his mind-work, the
corrupting thought and the corrupting accomplishment—all these must be
wiped out, the very memory of them be obliterated. . . . And after that,
there should be no more gods, neither Jesus nor Jehovah, neither Thor
nor Odin—only Men, men and women, walking a new clean earth, unafraid
of any Beast or any god. . . .
In his hatred, it seemed to Francis Gordon as though Power had come back
to him. In this great killing, words too might play their part. Not the
words of any fool-god, but the words of a cripple—a cripple who knew
that there was neither god nor devil, but only Man, man and the
Beast. . . .
And suddenly a Voice spoke to Francis Gordon, a stern clear Voice from
the heart of the sunset: “Thou Fool,” cried the Voice. “Thou blind Fool!
If the Beast perish, man also perishes. For this is God’s Purpose.”
But the mind of the man answered the Voice out of the sunset: “There is
no God. I, a cripple, am greater than any god. In mine own mind, have I
renounced Thee. Thou art the Liar of the World. There is no god save
Man.”
And God said: “Dost thou deny Me?”
“Aye,” answered the man, “by the existence of the Beast, I deny Thee. By
my own courage, I deny Thee. By the power which is mine, I deny Thee. By
every tortured body in this world, and by my own tortured body, I deny
Thee.”
“Yet thou hearest me,” said God.
Now, it was Francis Gordon who spoke. His twisted body rose from its
seat by the desk; his eyes looked unafraid into the heart of the
darkling sunset. “There is no god. God’s purpose is a fraud and a lie.
This voice which I hear is the lying voice of my own mind.”
Very faintly came the answer out of the sunset: “I am in thy mind as I
am in thy body. Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.”
Then it seemed to Francis as though some veil had been drawn back from
across the world; as though, for the first time, he saw God’s Purpose
plain. Never while earth endured would the Beast utterly perish: for God
had created the Beast even as He created man to subdue the Beast.
Without this menace of the Beast, man’s finest attribute—the very
manhood of him—would atrophy. He would become flabby, emasculate: and
in his flabbiness, he would perish.
And looking into his own mind as the Voice bade him, Francis Gordon saw
for the first time the true meaning of this dream he had christened, for
want of better name, “Anglo-Saxondom.” Anglo-Saxondom was Man’s bulwark
against the Beast: the spirit and essence of Liberty: a federation not
of leagues and treaties, of obligations and entangling alliances, not
even of common blood—but a Federation of Sentiment: a tie of mutual
thought and mutual speech and mutual Ideals. So long as this Federation,
the Federation of the English-speaking races, held together, the world
could be safe from the Beast: for this Federation was selfless, it
sought no domination save the domination of Good over Evil: it was of
the Spirit, not of the Flesh; friend of every decent human being, foe to
every Beast; God’s gift for suffering Humanity. . . .
* * * * *
A coal, dropping in the grate, aroused him from his dreaming. It had
grown almost dark. Trees and turf and hills beyond were all veiled in
misty shadows—things of the twilight, ghosts of a world. And with the
glory of the sunset, the glory of his visioning departed.
Doubt tore him as with pincers. Once again, this Voice he called God had
lied to him. The English-speaking races were not united, could never be
united. He had imagined a vain thing. . . .
“Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.” The words of the
Voice came back to him. Mockery! The Voice had lied. There was no
God. . . .
Voices! He must get away from voices. Always, he heard voices. A second
ago it had been God’s voice: now, it was the voice of a girl, _her_
voice. He could have sworn he heard her voice. Some one was coming
upstairs. Some one was opening the door. . . .
“Francis!”—more voices, would he never be done with voices—“Francis!”
His eyes, jerked suddenly from dreaming, saw a shadow glide across the
room towards him. He felt his heart give a great leap as though he were
dying.
“Beatrice!” he stammered, “Beatrice!”
Words went from them. They stood speechless. Their hands met in the
twilight. Lips faltered to lips. Then she was in his arms; and God grew
real at last. . . .
PART THIRTY-ONE
OUT OF IT
§ 1
Beatrice Cochrane stayed on at Sunflowers while the formalities of her
marriage were being arranged. Patricia found her very difficult to
understand. She combined, bewilderingly, idealism and common-sense, a
feeling for poetry with unfailing judgment of practical values.
Educationally, the Englishwoman found herself quite overmastered: the
comprehensiveness of Beatrice’s college-training made British standards
seem entirely out of date. And yet, in a way, Beatrice was
old-fashioned; she lacked, Patricia thought, adaptability; inclined to
let “ought to be” dominate “is.” Sometimes, this lack of adaptability
irritated Patricia.
Beatrice, on her part, was equally puzzled. She had, as yet, no key to
the English mentality. England, regarded from the Sunflowers viewpoint,
appeared to her a country of postponement and acceptance. Rightly or
wrongly, a thing _was_ thus and so. If right, why seek to improve. If
wrong—extraordinary, she thought, how easily the English admitted a
thing could be wrong—put up with it. Sometimes, this
putting-up-with-things made Beatrice perfectly furious!
But in spite of these fundamental Anglo-American differences Patricia
loved Beatrice, and Beatrice—frankly—adored Patricia. At the end of
three days, not only “Mrs. Jameson,” but “Mr. Jameson” and “Mr. Gordon”
disappeared from the American girl’s vocabulary: and on the evening of
April the fifth—when the last remnants of Peter’s wine-cellar
celebrated America’s entry into the lists—it was Beatrice who proposed:
“Pat! Because, just for once, she forgot to behave like an
Englishwoman.”
At which reference to forbidden topics, Peter’s wife blushed perfectly
scarlet, and looked appealingly to Francis for protection. But Francis
Gordon only laughed, “It’s the least you deserve for interfering.”
“And I think,” went on Beatrice, “that while drinking Pat’s health we
ought not to forget another person whose name also begins with P. . . .”
“Meaning me?” interrupted Peter.
“No, sir,”—her eyes twinkled with fun—“meaning my future”—she laughed
outright—“butler. Prout!”
“Lord,” said Francis Gordon. “This is what comes of getting engaged to a
Democrat.”
“Republican,” corrected Beatrice. “And I don’t believe you know the
difference yet.”
Her fiancé subsided into adoring silence. . . . For already even the
unobservant Peter saw quite clearly who would rule the roost at Glen
Cottage!
And apparently this tender “bossing” was just the one thing needful to
Francis Gordon’s temperament. He expanded under it; became positively
human. His very physique seemed to improve: the hopeless shuffle became
a mere limp; he carried his head erect, his shoulders unbowed. She
forbade him to use the word “cripple”; and for two pins she would have
taken away his stick. “But it makes me so interesting,” he protested
laughingly. “My dear man”—Beatrice drawled the words in
imitation—“there’s only one thing really interesting about anybody.”
“And that?” he queried. “Is the work they mean to do in the world.”
On this question of work, the girl brooked no doubting. She believed in
his work; and for her sake if for nobody else’s—(“there is nobody
else,” he remonstrated: “there’s everybody else in the world,” she told
him)—he must succeed. “You’ve got to count,” she said. “You’ve got to
be _somebody_.” She did not desire money for him—she had so much money
that Francis, when he first heard of it, almost wanted to cry off the
marriage; but she did desire success. Until he won that “success,”
neither he nor she would move from Glen Cottage. . . .
But as this is only indirectly the tale of Francis and Beatrice, we must
not analyse them too deeply. It suffices that they are utterly happy in
each other; that Love, which is finer than reason, does not blind but
rather gives them clear vision. They know, as they tolerate, each
other’s faults: and though Fame has not yet quite come to Glen Cottage,
they feel they can already hear the beating of his wings. . . . And if
they are a trifle “cranky” on the subject of “Anglo-Saxondom,” if they
set the unity of the English-speaking races above the pipe-dreams of the
internationalists,—that blame, if blame it be, their very love-story
excuses. . . .
§ 2
All through his cousin’s wedding in the little church at Arlsfield,
Peter—who gave away the bride—felt conscious of a reasonless but
ever-growing depression. It seemed to him as though—Francis
married—his last man-friend would vanish. Almost he grudged the veiled
girl her obvious happiness. . . .
And this feeling of depression did not wear off as the easy April days
slipped by. Rather, it increased. All the man in Peter resented
ill-health; resented the lack of male companionship; resented idleness.
And idleness, Heron Baynet assured him, was imperative: two hours of
manual labour in the garden and one trip to London about finance, proved
the correctness of Heron Baynet’s contention.
He began to worry about the future. His pension, thirty shillings a week
subject to revision, barely paid a third of his assurance premiums—the
children must be sent to school—the expenses of Sunflowers rose hourly
with the tide of war-extravagance which had swept over England. “Things
can’t go on like this,” exactly represents Peter’s attitude.
He decided to go back into the tobacco-business—and reversed decision
as soon as reached. The mere thought of London nauseated him. Somehow,
he could no longer imagine himself at a desk. . . . Patricia, consulted
on this point, agreed so strenuously that Peter became suspicious. “Why
shouldn’t I go back?” he remonstrated. “It’s the only trade I know. The
Imperial would give me a job tomorrow.” . . . Nevertheless, he discarded
the idea.
The tobacco-business, like the Army, lay behind him. He was out of the
one as he was out of the other. But memories of both still haunted his
mind. Of the two lives he had lived, he missed the military one most.
Maurice Beresford, Elkins, Schornstein and the Bramsons seemed petty
figures compared with the Weasel and General Blacklock, Conway and
Sandiland and Charlie Henry. But letters from the Brigade dwindled and
dwindled, soon ceased altogether; till only an occasional poem by
Purves, who continued his conquering campaign in the Press, and Alice
Stark’s gossipy letters to Patricia, reminded of khaki.
For the world, war went on; but for Peter it had stopped dead. He saw it
from afar: spectator and not participant. His lack of interest in it
amazed him almost as much as the glorious credulity of the civilians
with whom he occasionally discussed its official versions—perversions.
Finally, in a fit of ungovernable annoyance over a picture of “cheery
wounded” after the battle of Messines, he barred the topic altogether.
Patricia made no objection; but the children demurred furiously.
“If Daddy isn’t going to tell us about killing Germans,” threatened
Primula one evening, “I shall refuse to go to sleep.”
“You bloodthirsty little wretch,” began Peter; and till their mother
intervened, “bloodthirsty” became _the_ school-room adjective.
However, Evelyn and Primula’s passion for the word “bloodthirsty” paled
into insignificance at the coming of Peter’s brother Arthur. Arthur had
“got a job” at the Godstone flying-school; and you never knew, as you
sat at lessons or romped in the garden, what particular moment might not
bring the drone of Arthur’s engine, high up in the air, like an enormous
bee. He used to come swooping across country, from behind the trees at
the back of the paddock; and you could always tell if it were Uncle
Arthur because _his_ engine made a funny noise—buzz, stop, buzz, stop,
buzz—when he meant to land in Tebbits’ pasture. Once, too, Uncle Arthur
stunted, really “stunted,” for nearly twenty minutes, miles up, right
over the roof. . . . But Arthur never repeated that blissful
performance; his “falling leaf” proving too much for Peter’s nerves.
“You neurasthenic old idiot,” growled the flying man, “there’s no danger
at all. One just shuts off the engine. . . .”
“I know all about that,” said Peter, “but to see you turning over and
over sideways frightens me out of my wits. Besides, if anything
happened, you’d be court-martialled.”
“By the Archangel Gabriel, I suppose,” grinned Arthur; and soared off
into the blue.
“Now that,” thought Peter, “is a man’s life. Whereas mine.” . . . And
again depression gripped him.
§ 3
May come gloriously. Hawthorn hedges donned their ruddiest coral;
orchard foamed below the gravel terrace; wild cherry spangled blossom
against the greenery of new-leaved beech woods beyond the paddock. Peter
didn’t care. Frankly, he was bored to tears. He wanted something to do.
He missed his horses. If you couldn’t hunt in May, at least you could
ride. What _did_ one do with oneself in the country during that rotten
month, May? Fish perhaps? He dallied a day with his trout-rod, unearthed
some rather dingy flies; hired a push-bike in Arlsfield (Peter detested
Arlsfield); and cycled to Henley. The may-fly was on the water; not a
fish would bite. Fish on the lower Thames rarely _do_ bite. Still, that
day re-introduced him to the river.
Next time, he left the trout-rod and took Patricia. Tebbits lent them
his trap for the day; and they enjoyed themselves. He sculled her up to
Wargrave; she paddled him home down the backwater.
“Good pals, you and I, aren’t we, Pat,” he said to her as they drove
back through the twilight.
“Yes, dear.” She had abandoned her love-dreams. Love, as she saw love in
the eyes of Francis and Beatrice, was not for her. She must satisfy
herself with palship, be content among the ranks and files of matrimony.
“I have been a fool,” she thought, “a sentimental fool. Love is not for
me. I am just an average woman, an average middle-class woman. And like
all women, I have expected too much of life. Life has been very kind to
me; I mustn’t grumble. Life has given him back to me. Isn’t that
enough?”
She looked at the man by her side. He drove steadily, wrist giving to
horse’s mouth. A loose dust-coat hid the lines of his figure: under it,
legs, feet and ankles showed white in boating-attire. Soft hat, brim
down-turned, shadowed the thin face, the serious eyes.
Again she thought, “I have been a fool. Life holds nothing better than
this: to be one’s husband’s friend. Love is only for the very young. We
are old married people. We have been married over ten years. I will be
reasonable. I will content myself with the much that is mine. He has
always been good to me. He has always been faithful to me. I have the
children.”
The mare trotted on, steadily, soberly, resigned to loose bit, to
ungalling collar and easy load. Even so, Patricia resigned herself to
matrimony. . . .
Peter set down his wife at Sunflowers, drove on to Tebbits’ alone. “Back
in half-an-hour,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll just help the old
man unharness Kitty.” But old man Tebbits would never unharness the
brown mare again! He had died an hour back; painlessly; asleep in the
vast wooden chair Charlie had made for him.
“He always slept his few minutes after his dish of tea,” explained Miss
Tebbits. “And when I tried to wake him, I found I couldn’t.”