Sophy spent the rest of that summer and the following winter at
Sweet-Waters. She did not wish to go among people so soon after her
divorce, besides she felt the need of self-adjustment to her new
relations with life.
That sense of being unreal in a world of unreality, which she had
mentioned to Susan Pickett on the day of the divorce, lasted for some
time. Then, in the early autumn--in her favourite month of
October--began a recrudescence of the imperishable passion for life as
opposed to mere existence, that lent her always the elemental charm of
fire. Many natures shine in the great dim of circumstance, but with
light differently derived. Some are, as one might put it,
phosphorescent. In others one divines the pinch of star-dust in the
clay--still luminous, still perfervid, as when the cosmic nebula first
spun the white hot core of things. It was this mystic fire that glowed
again in Sophy, burning clearer for the ash beneath it, even as the
humbler, yet still sacred fire of hearths, burns clearer in like case.
It was as if in resigning her desire for one supremely personal love,
Love itself had drawn nearer. Motherhood meant for her now, not only her
feeling for her little son, but an aching towards all unmothered things.
It was not _welt-schmerz_, this feeling--_welt passion_ rather.... She
was like one who has lived for years in a lovely, doorless, painted
house, lit by perfumed candles--then one day steps through a sudden
break in its wall to face the tremendous sea. Yes--life lay like that
before her--perilous but to be drowned in rather than left
unessayed--unsailed. The cosmic romance was upon her. She no longer
belittled romance to a love-tale--rather it was the adventure of a
creative god--Zeus as Poet. And this new, impassioned desire to live
fully, largely, universally, so confused her in the beginning, that she
hardly knew where first to turn--so vast were her ignorances--so
clamorous the wave-like voices that called from every side.
She felt a great thirst to know more of the vital questions of the day.
She awoke to the fact that the time was in the throes of parturition.
Something huge, cyclopean, was being born. Change already stared
iron-eyed from the cradle of the twentieth century and hammered with
fists of brass. Now was nascent its twin Disorder. She read until her
brain reeled and her heart ached. Giddy and downcast, she bared her mind
to the bludgeonings of tremendous questions which she could not
adequately comprehend. Then common sense--kind old nurse--whispered
soothingly: "'Seek not out things that are too hard for thee.' There is
a glory of the stars of Political Economy, and another of the moon of
Poetic Faculty. Thou shalt comprehend by intuition what will never be
given thee by ratiocination. For 'if a man's mind is sometimes wont to
tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above in an high tower,' a
woman's heart can divine the very stars above the tower and draw down
influences as sweet as those of Pleiades for the sustainment of her
spirit."
So Sophy left off trying to understand clearly all the "ologies" and
fly-wheel within fly-wheel movements of the day, and contented herself
with a general apprehension of the _zeitgeist_. She decided that these
gigantic sociological and political questions were for her what the
higher mathematics are to the humble arithmetician. She could
comprehend that a fourth dimension might exist, but not in what it
might consist. It consoled her to remember that in the higher
mathematics of existence as of numbers there was an "incalculable
quantity." The bigger brains, then, paused at a point higher up, just as
hers paused at one lower down.
Then again woke in her the desire to create in her own world of poetry.
All these struggles and hopes, and glees and failures--all this
turbulence of her new-straining self, she poured out in her letters to
Amaldi, and he answered them in kind. Almost every day they wrote to
each other. It seemed incredible to her that her life had once been
empty of those letters to which she now looked forward every day as to
the simple necessity of food and drink. Never once did he fail to
respond to the mood or need from which she wrote--and with so fine, so
just a discernment that sometimes he seemed to answer thoughts that she
had not written down, but that had been in her mind when she was
writing. So exquisitely true was this communication of their minds and
natures at a distance that sometimes she almost dreaded meeting him in
actuality again. Would not the charm vanish with nearness? She felt that
she could far better miss his bodily presence from her life than those
wonderful, satisfying letters.
* * * * *
The spring came and with it a new shock for Sophy. She was writing in
her old study one March morning when Harold Grey entered with the day's
paper in his hand. What he had come to show her was the notice of the
death of Lord Wychcote.
Sophy took the paper from him, feeling quite dazed. She grew pale as she
read. The notice stated that Viscount Wychcote had died in his sleep at
his country seat, Dynehurst, on the night of the second of March. The
news had been wired to the _Times_ as being of interest in connection
with the divorce of Mrs. Morris Loring, whose son, by her first marriage
with Lord Wychcote's younger brother, the Hon. Cecil Chesney, would now
succeed to the title--etc., etc.
The shock was a double one to Sophy, for in addition to her sincere
affection for Gerald, there was the question of the allowance which he
had renewed immediately after her divorce. Now this allowance would
most probably be stopped. She had no idea whether Gerald had been in a
position to leave her anything, or whether, in case the property were
all entailed, she would be still given an allowance, as Bobby's mother
and guardian. In case she had to depend entirely on her own slender
income, she did not see how she could manage to live in England. She
supposed that a sum would be apportioned for Bobby's education, but even
that was only a surmise.
Within a few days, however, came a full letter from Mr. Surtees. He
explained to her that the bulk of the Wychcote property was entailed,
but that certain property which had been left to the late Lord Wychcote
in fee simple by a maternal aunt, had been willed to her (Mrs. Chesney)
by his lordship. This property consisted of the town house in Regent's
Park in which Mrs. Chesney had formerly resided, and a small estate in
Warwickshire, called Breene Manor. The Manor house was in good
condition, though not of great size. It was a Tudor building and stood
in grounds thickly wooded. The situation was salubrious and the view
fine, but there was no income from the estate, as Miss Bollinghame, the
relative from whom the late Earl inherited the property, had sold all
but a hundred acres of the original lands. He wished to explain to Mrs.
Chesney, however, that the trustees of the Wychcote property were
empowered to advance sums of money for the education and maintenance of
her son, and that the money for maintenance would be paid to her as his
guardian, in order that she might keep up a position suitable for the
young peer. Mr. Surtees ended by venturing to express to Mrs. Chesney
his opinion, as the legal adviser of the family, that it would be well
for her to come to England with her son as soon as possible.
From the receipt of this letter until two months later, when she was
settled at Breene, Sophy moved again in a world of unreality. The quiet
of the lovely old house and its surrounding woods and gardens helped to
restore her to her normal state once more; for she found Breene a place
after her own heart, strangely familiar, as though she had visited it
before in dreams. As Mr. Surtees had said, the house was Tudor, but it
had been added to and altered during so many other epochs, that it had
ended by having a flavour and architecture all its own. For some years
it had been leased, and the great walls of yew that enclosed the lawns
were smooth and massy from constant clipping. It stood in a crescent of
beech woods. Scotch firs towered behind it. To the south lay
rose-gardens sloping to an oval pond.
And this adorable old place was her own. Sophy could scarcely believe
it. The first three weeks of her return to England had been spent at
Dynehurst with Lady Wychcote. Those had been gloomy weeks indeed, for in
addition to the natural sadness of the situation, there had been
inevitable friction between her and Lady Wychcote on the subject of
Bobby's future. Sophy had known of course that this must come, but she
had hoped that it would not come so quickly. Lady Wychcote was
intolerant of the idea that Bobby should become a writer. Sophy firmly
maintained that the boy should choose his own career. Both women
controlled their tempers, but there had been some sharp passages of arms
between them. When Sophy went to her room the second night at Dynehurst,
she thanked Gerald, as though he had been alive and could hear her, for
having made it possible for her to live in a house of her own with her
son, apart from his grandmother.
While she was at Dynehurst, Olive Arundel had helped Miss Pickett to get
all in order at Breene--for Susan had consented to come and live with
Sophy for the next few years.
It was quite wonderful to drive up to the old Manor house in the late
April afternoon, and find Susan standing in the open doorway to receive
her. Behind her the light from a fire of beech logs flickered over the
dark wainscoting. Candles and lamps were lighted. The tea-table stood
ready. This was home--her home and Bobby's--this lovely, dignified old
house with its sheltering yew hedges shutting out the world until she
should need it once again.