The flag, so casually suggested, became in effect a very favourite toy,
both with Beaufort and his stepson. The one was a very ordinary little
boy, the other a highly cultivated man. But they seemed to take equal
pleasure in the flutter of the flag from the blue and white staff which
Tom had painted with so much trouble, and in rushing out to pull it down
when Lady Car in her little pony carriage drove from the door. They
sometimes tumbled over each other in their haste and zeal to perform
this office. And Beau’s legs were so much the longest. It gave him a
great and scarcely just advantage over Tom.
Carry was pleased, she was touched and flattered, and such vanity as she
had was so delicately ministered to, that for some time this little
folly which took the air of homage to her, made her feel happy. To see
the grave and gentle philosopher, with a long swift stride, almost
stepping over the children to get at the cord, and pull up the
fluttering flag, a brilliant piece of colour among the bare trees, as
she appeared with her ponies in the little avenue! It was a little
absurd, but so sweet. Edward did it, she allowed herself to imagine, as
he had said, for a lesson to Tom--to teach him thus broadly though
symbolically the honour that was due to his mother--not to Carry
individually who never claimed homage, but to the mother whose claims,
perhaps, the boy was not sufficiently conscious of. This was not at all
the lesson which Beaufort had intended to teach Tom--but what did that
matter? It had a certain effect in that way, though none in the way that
Beaufort intended. It did give Tom an impression of the importance of
his mother. ‘Mother’s not just a woman like the rest,’ he said to Janet.
‘She is what you may call a great lady, Jan, don’t you know? There’s
Mrs. Howard and that sort; you don’t run up flags for them. Mother’s
really something like the Queen--it’s in earnest. Beau thinks so. I can
tell you he’s awfully proud of mother. And so am I too.’
‘Oh, Tom, so am I.’
‘Yes, but you’re just natural. You don’t understand. But me and Beau
know why we do it,’ said Tom. And when he got back to school if he did
not boast so much of his place in Scotland, having acquired an uneasy
sort of doubt of its magnificence, he intimated that his parentage was
not like that of the others. ‘When my people drive from the door the
flag goes down,’ he said. ‘It’s such fun rushing and getting hold of the
rope and up with a tug, as soon as they come into the avenue. Sometimes,
when it’s been raining, the rope won’t run. It’s such fun,’ cried Tom,
while even Harrison major’s mouth was closed. The flag was beyond him.
As for Janet, she looked on staring and observed everything, and drew
many silent conclusions never perhaps to be revealed.
But when the holidays were over Carry’s anxious expectations and
suspense increased again. Beaufort kept to his new toy even when Tom was
gone. He would interrupt his studies, springing up, whatever he was
doing, to pull down or put up that flag, till poor Carry’s heart grew
sick of the little formula which accompanied all her movements. She
began to feel that he liked to be disturbed and that idling forth into
the air to perform this little ceremony was more delightful to him than
to get on with that work, which, so far as she could make out, was not
yet begun. He had found more notebooks after Tom went away, but the
notebooks now began to pall a little. And slowly, slowly, Carry’s eyes
began to open. She never whispered it to herself, but she began to
understand, as the years went on many things that were never put into
words. She became first of all very sick of the notebooks and the
wonderful number of them, and all those tantalising scraps which never
came to anything. Her own little poem which she had begun had gone no
further. The dawning of genius--but the dawn was still going on. It had
never come to be day yet. Would it ever come? Slowly, reluctantly, this
began to be revealed to her, broken by many gleams of better hope, by
moments when she said to herself that she was the most unjust woman in
the world, grudging her husband the leisure in which alone great
thoughts can develop--grudging him the very quiet which it had been the
desire of her heart to attain for him. The most unjust of women! not his
wife and assistant, but his judge, and so hard a one! It was bitter
sweet to Carry to be able thus to condemn herself; but it did not change
the position of affairs.
One evening they were seated together in a happy mood. It was summer,
and it was some years after the incidents above described. Carry by this
time knew almost everything about Beaufort, and what he could not or
would not do. And yet her expectations were not quenched. For it is
hard to obliterate hope in a woman; and now and then at intervals there
would still spring up little impulses in him, and for a few days she
would forget (yet all the same never forget) her dolorous discoveries
and certainties. It was after one of those _élans_ when he had displayed
every appearance of being at work for several days, and Lady Car’s heart
despite of a thousand experiences had risen again, that in the evening,
in a very sweet summer twilight, they sat together and watched the stars
coming out over the tops of the waving trees. Janet, now grown almost to
her full height--she was never very tall--had been wandering about
flitting among the flowers in her white frock not unlike (at a distance)
one of the great white lilies which stood about in all the borders. It
was early in July, the time when these flowers are at their sweetest.
The air was full of their delicate fragrance, yet not too full; for
there was a little warm breeze which blew it over the whole country away
to the heather and gorse on the Haslemere side, and brought back faint
echoes of wilder scents, the breath of the earth and of the moors. Janet
had been roaming about, never without a glance through the branches at
the two figures on the lawn. She was like one of the lilies at a
distance, tall for fourteen, though not tall for a full-grown woman, and
slim too in the angularity of her age, though of a square solid
construction which contradicted all poetical symbols. She had always an
eye upon them wherever she went. Nothing had changed her spectator
attitude, not even the development of many tender and loyal feelings
altogether unknown to the outer world. So far as appeared outside, Janet
was still the same steady little champion of her brother that she had
been from her baby days, and not much more. The pair who were seated on
the lawn were as always conscious of the girl’s presence, which was a
certain restraint upon their freedom. There was not between them all the
same ease that generally exists in a family. Though she was quite out of
hearing, they did not even talk with perfect freedom. When she had gone
to bed, called by the all-authoritative nurse of whom even her mistress
was a little afraid, Beaufort drew a long breath. He had a sort of
habitual tenderness for Janet as a child who had grown up under his eyes
and was one of the accessories of daily life. But yet he was more at his
ease when she was gone. ‘How dark it is getting!’ he said; ‘the light
comes from the lilies not from the sky, and Janet’s white frock, now she
has gone, has taken a little away.’
‘My poor little Janet,’ said Lady Car. ‘I wish I could think she would
be one of those who give light.’
‘Like her mother. It is a pity they are so little like you Carry. Both
the same type, and that so much inferior. But children are very perverse
in their resemblances as much as in other things.’
‘Nobody can say Janet is perverse,’ said Lady Car with that parental
feeling which, though not enthusiastic itself, can bear no remark upon
the children who are its very own; and then she went back to a more
interesting subject. ‘Edward, in that chapter you have just begun----’
‘My dearest, let us throw all the chapters to the winds. In this calm
and sweetness what do we want with those wretched little philosophical
pretences? The world as far as we can see it seems all at peace.’
‘But there is trouble in it, Edward, all the same, trouble to be set
right.’
‘Not much, so far as we can see. There is nothing very far wrong in our
little town: every “poor person,” as you ladies call them, has
half-a-dozen soft philanthropists after him to set him right; and we
don’t even see the town. Look at all those dim lines of country, Carry.
What a breadth in them, and no harm anywhere, the earth almost as soft
as the sky! Don’t let us think of anything, but only how sweet it all
is. I am glad that shrubbery was cut away. I like to see over half the
world--which is what we are doing--as far as eye can carry, it comes to
much the same. May I light my cigarette?’
‘Edward,’ she cried, ‘it is all quite true. There is not much harm just
here; but think how much there is in the world, how helpless the poor
people are, how little, how little they can do. And what does it matter
that we all try a little in the way of charity? Right principles are the
only things that can set us all right. I have heard you say a hundred
times--in the old days----’
‘You have heard me say a great deal of nonsense in the old days.’
‘Was it all nonsense,’ cried Lady Car, ‘all that was said and thought
then? There seemed so many splendid things we could do; set up a
standard of higher justice, show a better way both to the poor and the
rich, and--and other things. I love the landscape and the sweet evening,
Edward, oh so much! and to sit and look at them with you, and to feel
all the peace around us, and the quiet, and that there is no reason why
we should not be happy; but better than that I should love to see you
lift up that standard, and show the better way, you who can do it, you
who understand all the problems. That is what I wish, that is what I
have always wished--above all, above all!’ she cried, clasping her
hands. The enthusiasm of her sensitive nature overwhelmed Carry. She
could not contain herself any longer. ‘I would rather even not have been
happy and seen you great and doing great work,’ she said.
He stretched out his hand and took hers which he held and caressed
softly. ‘My dear little enthusiast!’ he said.
‘Don’t say that, Edward!’ she cried quickly; ‘that was all very well in
the old days, which you say were nonsense. I was only a girl then, but
now I am middle-aged and not to be put off in that way. I am not a
little enthusiast, I am an anxious woman. You should not put me off with
phrases of the past.’
‘You are always a girl, Carry, if you should live to be a thousand,’ he
said with a faint laugh. ‘If you were so middle-aged as you say, you
would be content with results as we have them. Here we are, we two,
together with all the happiness we once so eagerly looked forward to,
and which seemed for a time hopeless--very well off, thanks to you. Able
to surround ourselves with everything that is delightful and pleasant,
besides the central fact of being together, able to help our poor
neighbours in a practical way: thanks to you again. Not so much as a
crumple in our bed of roses--not a thorn. My dear, that is what you
would think of, if you were middle-aged as you say.’
‘Then let me be a silly girl, as in the old times,’ she cried, ‘though
it was all nonsense, nothing but nonsense, as you say.’
‘Softly, softly,’ he said, taking her hand again, ‘let us discriminate,
Carry. Love can never be nonsense which has lasted like ours. My love,
you must not blaspheme.’
‘Love!’ she cried. Carry’s whole frame was trembling, her heart beating
to her feet, to her fingers, in her throat. She seemed to herself only
to be a slim sheath, the merest covering for that convulsive heart.
There was something like--could it be scorn in the inflection of her
voice. He took her by both hands now, throwing down the cigarette which
had betokened the entire ease of his mind, and drew her towards him.
Something like alarm had come into his tone, and something like
indignation too.
‘Carry,’ he said, holding her hands fast, ‘Carry, what do you mean? Not
that my love was nonsense, which never wavered from you, notwithstanding
everything--not that you distrust me?’
The darkness is an advantage in many an interview like this. It
prevented him from seeing all that was in Lady Car’s face, the impetuous
terrible question, the impulse of wild scepticism and unbelief, the
intolerable impatience of the idealist not to be altogether restrained.
Her eyes asked what her lips could never say. Why did you leave me to be
another man’s wife? Why let me be strained, humbled, trodden under foot?
Why expose me to all the degradations which nobody could impose on
you--and why, why? But Carry said none of these things. She could not.
There are some things which the religion of the heart forbids ever to be
put in words. She could not say them. He might have read them in her
eyes, but the darkness kept that revelation from him which would have
been more startling than anything Beaufort had ever encountered in his
life. Finally Carry, being only a woman, and a sensitive and delicate
one, fell into the universal feminine anti-climax, the foolishness of
tears. How often does their irrestrainable _non-sequitur_ put the
deepest reasons out of court, and turn the most solemn burden of the
soul into apparent foolishness--a woman’s tears, which often gain a
foolish cause, but as often lose a strong one, reducing the deep-hearted
to the level of the shallow, and placing the greatest offender in the
delightful superior position of the man who makes allowances for and
pardons! Beaufort gathered her into his arms, made her have her cry out
upon his shoulder, soothed and calmed and caressed her out of her
passion of feeling. If any one could have whispered in his ear what was
in the passionate heart that throbbed on his shoulder! but he would have
smiled and would not have believed. She was a little enthusiast, still
the same young ethereal poet as ever, a creature made up of lovely
impulses and sympathies and nerve and feelings--his sweet Carry, his
only love.
After this evening Lady Car had a little illness, nothing of any
consequence, a chill taken sitting out too late on the lawn, a headache,
probably neuralgic--a little ailment, quite simple, such as ladies often
have, keeping them, in their rooms and dressing-gowns for a day or two.
A woman scarcely respects herself who has not these little breaks from
time to time, just to show of what delicate and fragile stuff she is
made. But she emerged from her room a little different, no one could
quite tell how, with a different look in her face, quieter, less given
to restless fits, more composed and gentle. She had always been gentle,
with the softest manners in the world, so that the change was not
apparent to the vulgar. Beaufort perceived it for the first day or two,
and it gave him a faint shock, as of something invisible, some sudden
mystery between them; but the feeling passed over very quickly with a
conviction of the utter absurdity of any such impression. Janet, who had
never any words in which to convey her discoveries, and no one to say
them to if she had found the words, saw it more clearly, and knew that
something had happened, though what she could not divine. There were
some faint changes scarcely perceptible, but developing gradually, in
Lady Car’s habits too. She was less in the library with her husband,
abandoning this custom very slowly in the most natural way in the world,
compelled by other duties which naturally, with a daughter growing up,
became more important every day.