Joyce spent the rest of the morning in her Mother’s room, and Bertram
was left to amuse himself alone. It was not very amusing. He was aware
of a sense of isolation, not for the first time, in this distinguished
household. Lord Ottery, after some minutes of almost intimate
conversation, and that episode of holding on to Bertram’s arm, became
absent-minded, and then, as though dismissing a footman, gave Bertram to
understand that he wished to be left alone in the library, while he
pursued his studies on The Black Death.
Bertram strolled round the stables, where most of the stalls were empty,
though Ottery still kept a few hacks, and Alban had his hunter,
“Lightning.”
He passed a few words with the grooms, and found himself reminiscing on
the war. One of them had been with “his lordship,” meaning Alban,
Viscount Bellairs, in the Grenadier Guards, and had been hit on the same
day of July ’16 in the attack on Morval and Lesbœufs. Afterwards, for
the second time, at Fontaine Notre Dame, below Bourlon Wood, in November
of ’17. Remembered the great Tank attack in November ’20? Lord, yes!
Major Pollard was there with his machine guns? Fancy that! . . . Well,
it seemed a long time ago, and like a dream.
“Care to go through it all again?” asked Bertram.
The two men laughed, appreciating some hidden joke, not to be put into
words.
Something was said about the strike.
“Them Labour chaps ought to be mowed down by machine guns,” said one of
the men. “Dirty tykes!”
He was amazed when Bertram said he thought they had some justice on
their side. It struck him “all of a heap.” They were all bloody
Bolsheviks, begging his pardon.
Bertram himself was astonished at this point of view of men who had
fought in the War and were of the same class as those in the world of
“labour” they denounced. As he sauntered away, after a few light
remarks, he supposed they were survivals of English feudalism. Their
outlook was limited to the horizon of this old house. They belonged to
the Family. They were for the maintenance of the Old Order which paid
their wages, gave them perquisites, belonged to their tradition of
service. The War hadn’t changed their mentality much. Strange!
He strolled round to the lake, and found Alban sitting on the end of the
punt, smoking a cigarette and reading the _Sporting Times_, with his
back to the wind. He was in an old heather-green jacket and grey,
moss-stained trousers, with a cap at the back of his head, and looked
better like that, to Bertram’s yes, than in his town clothes, with white
spats and all.
“Good morning!” said Bertram, with more geniality than he quite felt,
not having much affection for his brother-in-law.
Alban glanced over the top of the _Sporting Times_, and allowed himself
to show a faint surprise.
“Hullo! Come down with Joyce?”
Assured on this point, he became absorbed again in his pink paper.
Bertram waited a little while for the condescension of another remark.
Not obtaining that favour, he strolled away again, cursing inwardly at
the incivility of his brother-in-law.
“A damned cad!” he said to himself. “An insufferable snob!”
And yet, as he had to admit to his sense of fairness, there was no
reason why Alban should have engaged in chatty conversation. He himself
resented fellows who were always “yapping.” Alban wanted to read the
_Sporting Times_. There was heaps of room in the park for Bertram.
“It’s the Irish strain in me,” thought Bertram. “I’m always suspecting
uncivil treatment when none is meant. It’s the ‘persecution’ mania. I’ll
have to check it.”
Yet, in spite of all these arguments, his moodiness was increased at the
luncheon table because of the almost complete ignoring of his presence
by Joyce and her family. Not a word was said about the sale of the
house—servants being present—and there was some general gossip, mostly
by Alban and Lady Ottery, of a social and political kind. The Prime
Minister had gone to Chequers Court for Easter, with his usual gang. The
War Office had drawn up a complete programme in case the strike led to
any rioting. General Bellasis was organising a Home Defence Corps. All
ex-officers would be asked to join.
“Doesn’t it seem unnecessary?” asked Bertram.
Alban looked at him coldly, as he might have stared at a junior
subaltern of the Guards Mess, after an impertinent remark.
“Extremely necessary,” he answered.
Lord Ottery put in a remark.
“Bellasis is coming down for the week-end, he tells me. We shall hear
all about it.”
Bertram glanced at Joyce, and wondered whether she had suggested this
visit. He detested Bellasis. Joyce seemed to be aware of his look, for
she flushed, ever so slightly, though she did not meet his eyes. She had
been crying again, he thought. Most unusual for Joyce. He felt very
sorry for her. Sitting there at the old dining-table, under the portrait
of Rupert Bellairs, fifth Earl, by Lely, it was impossible to believe
that Holme Ottery was up for sale.
How like Joyce was to that fellow! He hadn’t noticed it before. Although
Charles II’s favourite had a plump pink face, softened by long ringlets,
he had the same kind of eyes and nose as Joyce’s, with the same glint of
steel in the eyes. She sat next to her Mother, crumbling her bread and
looking thoroughly “vexed.” He had seen her in such moods of late, at
his own breakfast table, when she came down to breakfast.
Lady Ottery had given Bertram a wintery smile, and permitted him to kiss
her cheek. He felt as though he had kissed one of the marble pillars in
St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“A sharp frost last night,” she said, and as this statement didn’t call
for much of an answer, she seemed to forget his presence, and engaged
Alban in an argument on the subject of Mrs. Asquith’s Memoirs, newly
published, of which she disapproved strongly.
“An outrage!” was her opinion, and she also believed they would be used
as propaganda by radicals who desired to destroy society, and delighted
in all such revelations of corruption in high places.
“It seems to me an extremely witty, harmless, and entertaining book,
Mother,” said Alban. “My only regret is that it contains such little
scandal. Think of all the things she might have written!”
“If we must have scandals, let us keep them to ourselves, my dear,” said
Lady Ottery, firmly. “In my young days we hushed up anything that might
prejudice our position in the public mind.”
“Most dishonest!” said Alban lightly.
“What do you think, Ottery?” asked Bertram’s mother-in-law.
“Entirely as you do, my dear,” said Lord Ottery, somewhat vaguely,
having been thinking, perhaps, of The Black Death.
Bertram expressed an opinion upon Mrs. Asquith’s portraits of “The
Souls.” He thought it would be quoted centuries hence as a picture of
English life in the ’eighties. His opinion did not seem to impress his
wife’s family or Joyce. There was no reply to his remark, and Alban
switched off the conversation to the character of his new terrier—a
cunning little devil with a hell of a lot of pluck.
“Doing anything special this afternoon, Joyce?” asked Bertram, towards
the end of this meal which had been a silent one for him.
“I’m talking business with Alban,” said Joyce, in a most determined
voice, as though announcing an ultimatum to Alban himself.
He took it as such, and groaned a little.
“Certainly, old girl, much as I hate such palavers.”
Talking business with Alban. Not for Bertram to intervene. He had no
right to “barge in” upon such discussions, though Joyce happened to be
his wife. Well, he might do a slope down into the village, and buy an
afternoon paper, or perhaps tramp over the Common, and watch the village
boys starting the season’s cricket. Holme Ottery was not very sociable
to-day to an outsider like himself.
That was what he did, and he recovered his sense of humour a little as
he watched the game of cricket between the youngsters of Ottery. He even
laughed aloud at the argumentative interruptions of the game, with wild
and angry shouts of “How’s that?” “That ain’t fair!” . . . “Who’s
umpire?” . . . “Umpire be blowed!” Youth didn’t change, in spite of
social upheavals, the passing of the Old Order, houses to let, falling
Empires, ruin in Europe, threatened strikes, any damn thing. Boyhood
survived, with its laughter, its quarrels, its passionate excitement,
its game of life. Survived, in spite of war’s massacre! Many of those
kids must have lost fathers and brothers. The shadow of the War had been
over their childhood. They’d seen women weeping at the news of death.
But it had not spoilt the spirit of youth. They’d forgotten the shadow.
Bertram wondered if any of them would live to see another Great War,
would live to die, as fathers and brothers had died, in the same old
battlefields, blown to bits, sliced by flying steel, gassed, plugged
with machine-gun bullets. Not if he could do anything to save them. Not
if his book had any luck.
How wonderful was the fruit blossom this year! The little orchards round
the Common were snowed under with white and pink petals. The April wind
was laden with scent of apple-blossom, cherry-blossom, pear-blossom, and
drenched with the stronger perfume of lilac, splendid in the cottage
gardens. It stole into his senses like an opiate. Why worry? This beauty
of England endured through the centuries, through civil strife, foreign
wars, all kind of trouble, soon forgotten. Spring had come again, with
its English loveliness, calling to his heart, putting its spell upon the
senses. Romance and love should go hand in hand in little old villages
like this. So they had gone hand in hand, a year ago, when he and Joyce
had wandered through Ottery village, not caring because the village folk
smiled to see their love, glad of their friendly, smiling glances. A
year ago! They didn’t go hand in hand just now. Something had come
between them, some coldness. Perhaps with the coming back of spring
again, their love would come back. He would woo Joyce again, as a humble
lover, as a passionate but patient lover. This very night he would sue
for her kisses, as once she had kissed him with sweet lips. He would
entice her down to the little wood beyond the lake where one night
they’d stood listening to a nightingale, with their arms about each
other, like children, like Adam and Eve, like any man and any woman in
the spring-time of life, with pulses thrilling to the tune of love,
freshly heard.
Sentiment! Romantic stuff! Well, why not?