IV

Joyce was sleeping—“as sound as a bell,” said the nurse. Bertram had

finished his dinner alone, hating his loneliness, and the deliberately

cheerful way in which he had to answer the chatty remarks of Edith, the

maid, who waited on him with a sense of drama in the house, and a desire

to express comradeship. In his heart, though he liked the girl, he

wished her at the devil, because of his fretted nerves, and refused a

second serve of fruit jelly with an impatience which he tried to

disguise by a “Thank you very much, Edith. Nothing more—for goodness’

sake!” Then he went into his study, shut the door, and tried to settle

down at his desk to some writing. He had no concentration of mind. The

ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece annoyed him desperately. It had

been playing tattoos in his brain during those hours when its fast

little ticking seemed to be hurrying Joyce’s life away. Well, she was

all right now, thank God, unless the nurse and doctor were lying to him.

He went over to the mantelpiece, took up Joyce’s photograph, and kissed

it. He would try to be less irritable and get a grip on that absurd

temper of his. Then he swore softly because the telephone bell rang

again. That was about the tenth time in the last hour. Joyce’s friends

desired to know how she was getting on. Why the deuce didn’t they have

the decency to leave him alone, and to leave the telephone alone, at

such a time?

“Is that Mr. Pollard? Oh, forgive me, but can you tell me how dear Joyce

is getting on?”

That was the usual way of putting it. His answers were brief. “Quite

well, thanks!” then a slam down with the receiver. He wasn’t going to

give them any details.

A man’s voice had spoken to him on the ’phone. “That you, Bertram? . . .

Oh, I’m Kenneth Murless. How’s Joyce?”

What right had Kenneth to ask such a question at such a time? It was

like his impertinence! . . . And yet, somehow, because of Joyce, who

liked Kenneth, he felt constrained to give a civil answer.

“Getting on well.”

“Give her my love, old man,” said Kenneth’s voice on the wire; “say I’m

frightfully sorry about her loss.”

His love! Bertram’s face flushed deeply as he stood by the plaguey

instrument. That was going a bit too far!

“I’m afraid she’s not well enough to get anybody’s love just yet,” he

said icily.

“All my sympathy to you, old man,” answered Kenneth.

This time Bertram had slammed down the receiver. He had no desire

whatever for Kenneth’s sympathy. He wished the fellow would get his

Grecian nose down to his job at the Foreign Office and keep it there.

Otherwise it might be in danger of getting broken one day.

That last ring he had answered took the frown off his forehead after he

had listened to the first words over the wire.

“Oh, is that you, mother? Yes, Joyce seems out of danger now. . . . Come

round? . . . Well, is the governor at the House to-night? . . . The

Irish debate? Oh, yes, I forgot that monstrous farce. All right. I’ll

come, then.”

He remembered there were other tragedies in life besides his own, more

death than that of his still-born child when he bought an evening paper

at the Underground station in the High Street, Kensington, on his way to

his father’s house in Sloane Street.

“Six deaths in Dublin to-day. Serious Ambush. More reprisals.”

Those were the headings on the front page, and he felt sick at the

words, and wouldn’t read the details. The same thing as usual. British

officers fired at and killed by boys in civilian clothes. Young Irishmen

dragged out of their beds and shot in cold blood by “unknown men, said

to be in uniform.” Irish homes burnt by the military. Raids, bomb

outrages, searches—the usual daily record of anarchy in Ireland which

was becoming intolerable in his soul because of his divided allegiance

as half an Irishman and half an Englishman, half a democrat and half a

Tory, half a Protestant and half a Catholic, at least, he hoped, a

Christian. He opened the paper as he sat in the district train, and saw

his father’s name on the centre page:

“Great Speech by Mr. Michael Pollard, K.C.:

Defends Government Policy of Reprisals.”

Bertram crushed the paper in his hands, and dropped it on the seat by

his side. It was his father’s field night. He would enjoy himself vastly

upholding the “absolute necessity of putting down these murders with the

firm hand of British Justice,” appealing to the old Mosaic law of an eye

for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, denouncing those who would treat with

rebels to the Crown and “shake hands with murder.”

Well, it would keep the governor late at the House. That was the only

comfort. He would be able to see his mother alone, and avoid a savage

altercation with his father, who treated him as a traitor to the British

Empire—Bertram Pollard, D.S.O., M.C., who had been three times wounded

in the Great War, and loved England with a kind of passion.

“Mother!”

She met him in the hall of the house in Sloane Street, and at the sight

of her little figure and sad face, his jangled nerves, so tautly drawn

during Joyce’s long ordeal, gave a kind of snap, and when he put his

arms round her he dropped his forehead on to her shoulder, and his eyes

filled with tears, as in the old days when he came home from school, or

left her after the holidays.

“My poor boy!” she said soothingly, “I understand. . . . I’m sorry about

the poor little baby.”

She took him by the hand into her small sitting-room and asked him to

tell her all the details of his ordeal.

“Joyce’s ordeal, mother!” he said, but she shook her head, and said,

“It’s worse for the men, if they’re sensitive. The agony of waiting—”

There were many things he wanted to tell his mother, this little woman

with her thin grey hair, and her worn face and kind brown eyes, to whom,

as a boy, he had told all his secrets, confessed all his peccadilloes,

and had no worse reproof than “Oh, darling!” She had spoilt him as she

had spoilt all of them, Dorothy, Susan, young Digby, and himself,

shielding them from their father’s harsh and hasty temper, his Irish

impatience, his old-fashioned Protestant intolerance—he was Southern

Irish, but Protestant—with any license of youth. She had even told

“fibs” to shield them, and they had loved her for it, and traded

abominably on her fear of “the governor” and his sudden rages.

She was more afraid of him than they had ever been. Even as small

children they had defied his authority. Dorothy had been the greatest

rebel, long before her marriage to a Prussian officer whom she had met

at Wiesbaden, in 1912, when already there was a whisper of war with

Germany—pooh-poohed by Dorothy, as by many others who knew nothing in

those days about international politics, and cared less. That was her

last rebellion. Michael Pollard, K.C., M.P., had wiped his daughter out

of his mind and heart. He hated “the Hun” worse because of her.

And Susan! . . . She took a pleasure in braving his wrath—“our Ogre,”

as she called him. She never tired of maintaining her right to breakfast

in bed, which he denounced as “the slummocky instinct of her wild Irish

blood.”

“Your blood too, father, and no fault of mine!” was her answer to that

particular argument, to which “the governor” would answer, “Thank God

the Norman strain is stronger than the Celtic, as far as I’m concerned.”

She had ridiculed his Protestant austerity, flouted his parental

commands as “Early Victorian tyranny,” and had become a Suffragette with

a joyous assertion of “liberty” which meant for her late dances and no

questions, rather than Votes for Women, at a time when Michael Pollard,

M.P. (not K.C. then) was a violent antagonist of Women’s Rights.

Bertram had taken Susan’s part in these domestic scenes, but Dorothy had

been his favourite sister, his best comrade, and her German marriage,

and long exile and silence during the years of war had made a gap in his

heart.

He spoke of her now.

“Have you heard from Doll lately?”

Mrs. Pollard looked nervously at the door and pulled out some letters

from a little bag by her side.

“Your father doesn’t know I hear from her. You know he forbade all

intercourse.”

“Rubbish!” said Bertram.

His mother confessed to a sense of guilt in having this secret from her

husband, but it was more than she could bear to be cut off for ever from

her first-born.

“She writes lovingly. Her marriage—and the War—have made no

difference, except that she defends Germany a little.”

Bertram smiled at that, and said, “I suppose it is natural, but it takes

a lot of doing, as far as the war’s concerned.” He asked about his other

sister.

“What’s Susan’s latest game?”

Mrs. Pollard looked distressed. Again she gave that frightened glance at

the door, as though her husband might come in at any moment.

“I’m afraid, Bertram! The child is devoted to the Sinn Fein cause! It’s

a passion with her, like Votes for Women used to be. Your father

threatens to turn her out of doors if she says another word on the

subject. There was a dreadful scene yesterday morning.”

Bertram could imagine it. Susan delighted in dreadful scenes. She was an

Irish rose, with many thorns, sharply pointed. No Norman coldness in

_her_ blood! None of her mother’s Devonshire softness.

Mrs. Pollard revealed more than an ordinary anxiety.

“I’m afraid Susan will get into trouble. There was a policeman here a

few days ago.”

“A policeman? Sounds like melodrama!”

“He wanted Susan to give him the address of a young Irishman named

Dennis O’Brien. Susan denied all knowledge of him, but I know she has

been corresponding with the boy.”

Bertram said, “My God!” and then begged his mother’s pardon. He hid from

her his own reason for alarm. He knew Dennis O’Brien. The boy had been

in the machine-gun corps with him, and he had heard news of him from

Ireland. It was not news to be talked of lightly. He was up to the neck

in Sinn Fein.

“Where’s Susan now?” he asked abruptly.

Mrs. Pollard’s hands fluttered up to her forehead.

“Do I ever know? Modern mothers aren’t taken into their daughters’

confidence. They come and go as they please, and resent all questioning.

It wasn’t so in my young days.”

Bertram smiled at the last words. How often he had heard them! How often

he and the two girls—rebels three—had laughed at them, years back, as

children. His brother Digby, now a “Black and Tan” in Ireland—horrible

thought!—had been too young to enjoy the joke.

He lingered on, forgetting Joyce a little, and his dead baby, feeling a

boy again with this mother whose love was restful, and

all-understanding. They talked of old times, and she wept a little

because so much was altering and she felt so much alone, now that Digby,

her baby boy, had gone to Ireland in the midst of all that terror.

She made no allusion to Joyce’s share in her loneliness. Joyce did not

seem to like her much and kept Bertram away from her more than was quite

kind.

Bertram guessed her thoughts.

“When Joyce gets better, we’ll see more of you, mother.”

“That will be nice, dear,” she answered quietly, but not hopefully.

He left her before midnight, and was back again in Holland Street before

the Houses of Parliament had finished a long debate on the Irish

situation.

He saw by next day’s papers that his father’s speech was reported

_verbatim_, but he didn’t read it.

V

Joyce was slow in getting about. “Wants cheering up,” said the nurse who

still stayed on. “But I can’t allow visitors yet. It’s up to you,

Major!”

Bertram did his best to cheer her up, and went in and out of the bedroom

bringing flowers, books, illustrated papers, and making bright remarks

about the weather and things in general. But he was not a great success.

Joyce seemed to be fretting, and was in low spirits. She brightened a

little when the nurse manicured her, and when a Truelove’s girl came to

curl her “bobbed” hair. She was also amused by the number of callers who

came to enquire about her health, sending up messages and so many

flowers that Bertram’s gift of bloom looked insignificant. Every time

she heard the bell ring she wondered which of her friends it might

be—Billy Simpson, Nat Wynne, Peter Fynde—Kenneth Murless—?

“Has Kenneth called yet?” she asked Bertram, and when he said, “Half a

dozen times, I should say!” she looked at him in an amused, challenging

way, and said, “Nice Boy! I think nurse must let me ask him to tea.”

Bertram restrained a sudden pang of jealousy. He mustn’t get back to

that absurdity. After a short silence which Joyce understood, he

suggested meekly that it might be as well to see members of the family

first—her mother, for instance, and his, and Susie, his sister. They

would be rather hurt if others were let in while they were kept out.

Joyce made a comical grimace.

“What a boy you are for the conventions! Of course I must see

Mother—though I don’t see why I should see mothers-in-law and

sisters-in-law. It would be far more fun to have Kenneth, and some of my

own set. A rowdy little tea-party to celebrate my return to Society!”

“Lord! Don’t return to that sort of thing,” said Bertram hurriedly.

“What sort of thing?” asked Joyce, coldly.

He avoided a direct answer.

“Let’s be quiet for a bit. You and me. I want to think things out. I

must get some kind of work—”

“My tea-parties won’t prevent you,” said Joyce.

She sat up in bed, and her cheeks flushed.

“Don’t let’s get back to the old arguments, Bertram. I give you a free

hand. I’m not jealous of any of your friends—though I think that

Socialist creature, Christy, has an evil influence on you. I insist on

having my own friends, and meeting them when and how I like. If you

don’t trust me, it’s an insult to my sense of honour.”

“My dear Kid!”

Bertram spoke with profound humility and compunction. Of course he

trusted her. There was no harm whatever in anything she did. He knew

perfectly well that her comradeship with Kenneth Murless was straight

and clean and sweet—although he hated it because of his jealous love of

her, hated all the people who surrounded her and edged him out of that

absolute monopoly for which he craved.

“I shall ask Kenneth to tea to-morrow,” said Joyce in a determined way,

“and, then, any of the crowd who want to see me. I’m tired of this

sick-room business. Never again, I hope, after this experience!”

“Ask any one you like,” said Bertram. He bent over to kiss her, but she

turned away from him fretfully.

For a moment he stood looking down on her, hurt by her quick movement to

avoid his caress, and by the words she had spoken, but filled with

tenderness because of his love for her. He stood like that in silence,

when there was a tap at the door, and the nurse came in with Joyce’s

mother, Lady Ottery, who went quickly to the bedside and embraced her

daughter.

“My poor darling!”

“Oh, mother,” said Joyce, “my poor little baby!”

It was the first time Bertram had heard her mention the baby, and it

touched him poignantly.

Lady Ottery said, “If only I’d been with you!” and Bertram wished in his

heart that Joyce had permitted that, but she had resisted all his

persuasion to have her mother with her.

“Mother is too dominant in time of sickness,” she had said. “Besides,

it’s not fair to her, after the War, with Rudy and Hal both killed. If

anything happened to me, she would die.”

That was like Joyce. If she had to suffer, she would suffer alone and

not drag others in. But Bertram wondered if Lady Ottery would have died

“if anything had happened” to Joyce. He thought not.

He had been with her when the news of Hal’s death had come from the War

Office. That was a year after Rudolf’s. Ottery had handed his wife the

telegram without a word. He had been hit hard, and breathed heavily,

plucking his reddish beard and staring at a distant tree with watery

eyes. It was a July afternoon, and they were all standing in the gardens

of Holme Ottery, watching the girls playing tennis on the lawns below

the terrace. Bertram had come up to get a drink. He remembered now the

look on Lady Ottery’s face, her thin, sharp-featured, powerful face.

Only for a moment did her lips and her eyelids quiver. Then she smiled

at her husband, a strange, proud smile, and said, “For England’s sake!

. . .” After that, when she moved towards her husband and took his hand,

she said: “Poor Hal has done his bit! Rudy will be glad to see him.”

Bertram had marvelled at her courage, her hardness, her love of England,

so great that she was ready to give all her sons for its safe-guarding.

He remembered telling Christy that, when he went back from leave, and he

remembered the rage with which he heard Christy denounce Lady Ottery’s

point of view and sacrificial patriotism.

“Its hellish!” he said. “We’ll never stop War as long as women like that

think their noblest duty is to breed sons for the shambles; as long as

they rejoice in the death of their well-beloved for England’s sake, or

Germany’s. It’s making a religion of the foulest stupidity in human

life. It’s upholding the tradition of war—right or wrong—as the

supreme test of virtue in a noble caste, and its blood sacrifice as a

necessary, inevitable and sacred duty. How are we going to get peace in

the world with that spirit in women?”

So he had argued on, until Bertram had told him roughly to “shut up, for

God’s sake!”

Lady Ottery had turned her house into a hospital during the War, and for

three years or more had nursed badly wounded men, never shrinking from

sights of blood or death, doing dirty and disgusting work, though never

before the war had she soiled her hands, except in the garden, among

flowers, or come in touch with the coarse and tragic aspects of life.

That was the spirit of patrician women in England, however delicate and

sheltered. It was the spirit of an old tradition. Joyce had it still,

though in many small ways she had broken with tradition, and belonged to

a new world of womanhood, careless of conventions, free of speech, in

revolt against the old code of manners.

Mother and daughter! Bertram watched them as they talked together. How

immensely different, yet how alike! Lady Ottery, with her rather

awe-inspiring dignity, plainly, almost dowdily, dressed. Joyce, with

absurd little bows on her night-dress, excited, thrusting off the

bedclothes, stretching out for a cigarette, saying “Damn” when she

dropped the match, laughing when her mother fastened up a little button

which revealed too much, announcing her intention of having a tea-party

for her “best boy,” careless of shocking this old-fashioned mother. Yet,

Bertram thought, with the same steel, the same hardihood underneath her

softness, and the same family tradition.

Lady Ottery directed her attention to Bertram for a moment, having

previously ignored him. She disliked him, as he knew, disappointed with

her daughter’s marriage to a penniless young officer, and suspicious of

his political views after one or two heated conversations. This

afternoon, however, she was unusually gracious, and remarked that he

looked worried.

Joyce told her that he was always worrying. He was suffering from some

soul complex, which she could not fathom—an uneasy conscience, or a

craving for the Higher Life.

“Too much sick-room, I expect! Husbands always get the worst of this

sort of thing. Ottery fretted unreasonably.”

She alluded to a lecture she was going to deliver in London, “The

Religion of Revolution,” and trusted (that was her word) that Bertram

would go to hear it. It would explain the cause of social unrest and

might clear up some of his little difficulties.

Bertram took the ticket she gave him, and suppressed an inclination to

groan or laugh. He could not imagine his “difficulties” being dissolved

by anything that his mother-in-law might have to say.

“I expect I’m suffering from the strain of peace,” he said with a smile,

when Lady Ottery fixed him with her lorgnette and said he looked

“hipped.”

“London’s enough to depress a laughing hyena! But I’ll take a walk in it

while you and Joyce have a private chat. I expect she’s heaps to tell

you.”

Joyce said she had nothing to tell. She wanted her mother to give her

the latest social news, the inside of the political situation, and the

state of the world generally. Was the Prime Minister still licking the

hands of Labour? Had Evelyn got her divorce yet?