Jim went out of Mr. Egerton’s study firm in his rage and his disgust. He
felt that it would be right to take Viola away from this place of moral
obliquity, where consequences and conveniences swallowed up sin, where a
man could be offered a bribe out of the very principles for which his
life was given.
But he was not to leave the house in quite so self-justified a frame of
mind. A footman met him as he crossed the hall and said that Mrs.
Egerton would like to see him. Would he come upstairs?
Viola had not told Jim anything about her mother. She had hoped that a
miracle might take place when they met, and miracles take place more
easily without preparation.
If only Jim and her mother could like each other!
Anger and violence could force their way into Mr. Egerton’s library;
tobacco and leather were a suitable background for the rougher qualities
of men; but they were incredible in Mrs. Egerton’s boudoir.
She possessed probably the best set of Louis Quatorze furniture in
London. It was so delicate, so slender, so dim in its soft gold and pale
brocades, the tapering of the slender chair legs and the inimitable
lightness of the matchless curves, that Jim hardly dared sit down at
all. He felt as if he had got by mistake into an old French fan.
Mrs. Egerton sat gracefully erect by the side of a high, slender table.
There was nothing on it but a cut glass bowl out of which sprang mauve
orchids.
She was dressed in a cloudy gray, her head and neck rose with formidable
distinctness from its vague, soft folds. All the ease and lightness of
the room and all its tensity of perfect form were matched by her.
She motioned to Jim to sit opposite to her, without speaking.
Her silence forced upon him so strong a sense of his helplessness and
clumsiness that if he had dared he would have turned and fled.
But he did not dare. He moved among the wand-like furniture in an agony
of discomfort. Suppose it should break under him!
Mrs. Egerton fixed her eyes upon him as impersonally as if he was
something she was looking at through the windows of a train.
‘I suppose,’ she said at last, ‘that you are Mr. Barton?’ She seemed to
have some lingering hope that he might be a man come to see about the
electric lights.
Jim nodded. His throat was parched and dry, his big hands shook. All the
years of his culture and his experience were wiped out, and he was back
at Warren Manor again, without any of its protective kindliness to
support him.
‘You have seen my husband,’ Mrs. Egerton went on tranquilly. ‘Has he
succeeded in convincing you that you have made a great mistake?’
Jim shook his head. He had this conviction now, but Mr. Egerton had not
produced it.
‘I can only hope,’ Mrs. Egerton said, ‘that I shall be more successful.
Mr. Barton, I am sure you are a good young man and I have heard you are
a very sensible one. Frankly, do you not think such an idea as a
marriage between yourself and my daughter preposterous?’
‘I see it might look so,’ Jim faltered, ‘if——’
‘I know what you are going to say,’ Mrs. Egerton interrupted him deftly,
as if she were saving him trouble, ‘If my unfortunate child had not lost
her heart to you. But, Mr. Barton, children—and Viola is only a
child—have no fixity of affection. It is barely three months since she
told me she had lost her heart to—your employer—Mr. Ainley.’
‘He isn’t my employer.’ Jim flushed and stumbled over the word, which
struck him as if he had been a thief stealing silver out of his master’s
pantry.
‘Your former employer,’ Mrs. Egerton corrected herself. ‘I believe I am
right in understanding that you have been a dock labourer?’
Jim bowed his head.
‘And before that?’ Mrs. Egerton inquired.
‘I was at Cambridge,’ muttered Jim, but it sounded incredible. Mrs.
Egerton waved Cambridge away.
‘And you had, I fancy,’ she said, ‘some other manual calling?’
‘I served on a barge,’ said Jim.
Mrs. Egerton’s eyebrows, which were like Viola’s, arched and
extraordinarily fine, lifted. She accepted the barge.
‘You must have been very young then,’ she said consideringly, ‘so that
perhaps before that——?
‘I was in prison,’ said Jim desperately.
‘I forget what for?’ Mrs. Egerton asked in even tones.
‘I killed my father,’ said Jim. It sounded much worse like this than
when Mr. Egerton had shouted it at him downstairs.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Egerton. She did not say anything more.
Jim had forgotten Viola. He wanted to get up and creep away from that
light gold room into the mercy of the dark. A very clear-toned French
clock ticked on inexorably.
The door opened softly and Viola came in. She did not trust her parents,
she knew their affections were unscrupulous. She had to see Jim with her
own eyes. She saw him sitting shamed in the middle of the shining room.
Mrs. Egerton did not move when Viola came in. She merely said, ‘Turn on
the light, dear.’
There was plenty of light in the room before, but this made it worse. It
was delicate, shaded light, but it penetrated and showed up everything.
It showed up Jim’s shame.
Viola did not look like a reinforcement. She came in very quietly
without a greeting, and sat on the other side of her mother. She looked
across at Jim as if she were judging him.
‘I have no doubt,’ said Mrs. Egerton gently, ‘that my husband has dealt
with what he considers your unsuitability for Viola. I am sure you will
not be surprised that this has occurred to us?’
‘No,’ said Jim, suddenly lifting up his head and looking desperately
from one to the other. ‘I—I see it.’
‘Naturally,’ agreed Mrs. Egerton smoothly. ‘Being a sensible man, Mr.
Barton, you would see it, though from our point of view, hardly
sufficiently strongly. But perhaps it has not occurred to you that the
other side of the situation is equally unfortunate. Viola is just as
little suited to you.’ She paused a moment. Viola turned towards her
mother with a little movement of entreaty, but her mother ignored it.
She had not once looked at her daughter since she came into the room. ‘I
do not know,’ Mrs. Egerton continued, ‘if you feel perfectly at home
here. I should hardly suppose it; but even if you assured me that it was
true, I am convinced that in your surroundings and with what I imagine
to be the circumstances and connections of your life, Viola could not be
at home.’
‘Oh! mother!’ murmured Viola.
‘My dear child,’ said Mrs. Egerton firmly, ‘I cannot pay Mr. Barton a
higher compliment than by stating facts to him, and what I have just
said _is_ a fact.’
Neither of them disputed it. All that they felt in their hearts seemed
trivial and childish confronted by their incompatibility of life.
‘I imagine,’ Mrs. Egerton continued after a pause, ‘that you are really
interested in the religious life? My daughter is not at all interested
in it. She has always disliked going to church, and I do not know if she
has what is usually called faith! Have you, darling?’
Viola made a helpless gesture with her hands.
‘I don’t know what I believe,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Is not that,’ inquired Mrs. Egerton, ‘what they call being an agnostic?
It hardly appears to be a sufficiently complete creed for a clergyman’s
wife. I doubt, Mr. Barton, if the emotion which has drawn you together
is founded on anything at all permanent. Your affection for each other
does not seem to me merely unsuitable, but quite ephemeral.
‘You are a man of integrity; you will not, I feel sure, insist on
drawing a young girl with a slight romantic attachment to you, into the
obligation of a lifetime?’
‘I shall not insist,’ said Jim. He lifted his haggard face from one to
the other.
Viola was changed. She did not look like the same person she had been in
the orchard. She was white and quiet and as utterly composed as if they
had been discussing ear-rings. All the life she had, she hid.
She belonged to that room where everything was pale and slender and had
never been roughly handled.
Suddenly she lifted her bent head and looked across at him.
‘Before Mr. Barton comes to any decision,’ she said, ‘I wish to speak to
him alone.’
‘My dear child,’ said her mother, ‘don’t you think you are going rather
far? Farther, perhaps, than Mr. Barton wants? Can you not perfectly say
anything you may have to say to him in my presence?’
‘No,’ said Viola. The two women looked at each other. Their sheathed
wills met and crossed. If Mrs. Egerton had conquered Viola before, she
would have conquered her finally now; but what had been unsubdued in
Viola at Eastbourne had grown stronger.
Mrs. Egerton hesitated and yielded. She dared not press the point. She
rose gracefully and said, ‘I will give you five minutes, then, Viola—no
more.’ It was a retreat, but she made a concession of it.
Viola sat still and rigid until the door closed softly behind her
mother. Even for a moment after she neither moved nor spoke. Then she
said quickly, almost roughly,—
‘Are you going to let me go?’
Jim was by her side in an instant.
‘Whatever I do,’ he said between his teeth, ‘is utterly unfair!’
‘Which do you owe most to?’ she asked fiercely, ‘them or me? Do you like
their way of thinking? I don’t only want you—I want to get away! I
never shall if you don’t take me!’ She spoke quickly, breathlessly, like
a creature leaving covert and fleeing, before her hunters.
‘That isn’t enough,’ said Jim despairingly; ‘nothing is enough—except
love! And I must be _sure_ if you have it! I can’t take you if I’m not
sure.’
She drew back a little before his burning eyes. They rested on her
stubbornly with a dumb passion that was all the more intense from his
physical control.
‘If I prove it to you—will you believe me?’ she asked. ‘Will you take
me then?’
‘Oh, my dear!’ he groaned, ‘will I take you!’ He turned away from her,
back to the terrible lightness of the room.
‘If there is any God at all,’ she cried under her breath, ‘He’ll send me
some chance to show you. I’m not all light and brittle—that when I
care—I care utterly so that all the other things don’t count—don’t
matter—don’t even—exist! But, oh, Jim! If you believe in prayer, pray
that this chance will come soon!’
He turned quickly back to her, and as she stood there with her hands
outstretched the door opened quietly and Mrs. Egerton came in. She moved
slowly across the wide, polished floor and resumed her seat by the mauve
orchids as if nothing unusual could possibly have been about to take
place.
‘Will you ring for tea, dear?’ she said to Viola, ‘and, Mr. Barton,
perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me what decision you have
arrived at?’
‘I can’t say I’ll give her up,’ Jim said hoarsely, ‘unless she wants it,
but I’ll wait. I’ll wait to make sure if she does want it. I know what
you say is true. It seems all wrong somehow. We’re too different. I
ought never to have come here, but you see I have.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Egerton, looking over the top of his head and
acknowledging the entrance of the footman.
‘Tea, John, please.
‘Yes, it has been extremely unfortunate, has it not? You will not be
able to stay for tea, I’m afraid?
‘I quite understand, and under the circumstances you will, I feel sure,
agree to keep the engagement, if we must call it an engagement, purely
nominal? I must ask you not to communicate with Viola in any way.
Otherwise you would not be giving absence a fair trial. Shall we say for
a year?’
Viola gave a long, low sigh.
Jim hesitated.
‘I’ll promise,’ he said, ‘not to seek an interview with her, nor to
write to her, for a year. If anything unforeseen happens meanwhile or we
meet unexpectedly—I couldn’t promise not to take advantage of it. But
I’ll take no steps whatever to bring such a meeting about.’
‘And you, Viola?’ asked Mrs. Egerton.
‘I agree to what Jim has agreed to,’ said Viola.
‘I should have liked a less restricted promise,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘but
you will be the more on your honour to keep your own restrictions. We
will not detain you, Mr. Barton.’
Jim’s eyes rested on Viola as if he were taking her image forcibly out
of a frame to keep it in his bare heart for ever.
He was as famished for her as a blind man for light.
He knew she did not know the piercing of the sword of love, her hand
rested upon its hilt, but it had never been drawn and turned against her
heart. He did not know that love has other penetrations, slower but no
less sharp than swords.
Viola lifted her eyes to him again, but they held no message; they were
wide and vacant, her heart was veiled before his search.