Mrs. Pollard was astonished and distressed when her son told her that he
wanted to use his old room for a few weeks. She guessed, in spite of his
carefully vague explanations, that something had gone wrong between him
and Joyce.
His “explanation” left much to be explained. He suggested that Joyce was
immensely upset by the proposed sale of Holme Ottery, and might stay
down there a while to see the last of the old home. But that was no
reason why he shouldn’t stay with her, or go back to the little house in
Holland Street. He countered that by saying he hated loneliness, and as
he had to keep close to town for his literary work, preferred to take up
his old bachelor quarters. Besides, it would be good to see so much of
his mother again.
“Aren’t you pleased, little mother?”
He had the humiliation of asking her to lend him some money, but to her
it was a pleasure, and she wrote him a cheque for more than he could use
in a twelve-month, and said, “With my love and blessing, dear!”
She knew he was concealing some secret from her. His face, which she
could read like an open book—so much like her own!—told her that he
was suffering a hidden wound, which hurt him horribly. He couldn’t hide
much from a mother who lay awake at night listening to his footsteps
pacing up and down in his room overhead—would he never go to
sleep?—and who heard him groan now and then, like a tortured soul.
“I’m afraid you had a bad night, dear,” she would say in the morning,
and wouldn’t believe him when he said, “Oh, no. I slept all right after
thinking out a few things.”
She accepted all his explanations for her husband’s benefit. Michael, to
whom she announced the news of his son’s home-coming, did not see any
mystery underlying it, but only inconvenience to the servants who had
been reduced in number since the break-up of the family. He had a
respectful admiration for Joyce Bellairs as the daughter of the Earl of
Ottery, and sympathised—he said—with her sentiment about the old
house. Doubtless she would wish to stay there before it was bought by
some American millionaire or some war-profiteer. Most natural and
commendable. As for Bertram, he hoped the boy would spare him political
altercations—they seemed to disagree on most subjects—and any
reference to more painful episodes which he had entirely removed from
his mind. By that, as Mrs. Pollard knew, he referred to his eldest
daughter’s German marriage, and Susan’s Irish adventure.
Bertram “spared” him everything with regard to these forbidden subjects.
He met his father only at breakfast, and exchanged a few commonplace
remarks over the eggs and bacon. Their first greeting had been
characteristic of the somewhat strained relations existing between them.
“Hulloa, father! Here’s the Prodigal back. Don’t bother about the fatted
calf.”
“Good morning, Bertram. Putting in a bachelor week? I shan’t see much of
you as I’m desperately busy.”
“Don’t worry about that, sir.”
Bertram’s father became absorbed in _The Morning Post_. After breakfast
he retired to his study for an hour. At ten o’clock he drove down to the
Temple. Occasionally he returned for dinner, but Bertram generally dined
out, if he knew that his father was expected. At midnight, or
thereabouts, Mr. Michael Pollard, K.C., M.P., having completed a day of
arduous toil on behalf of law and order and the good governance of a
great Empire, came home again, and retired to rest.
Bertram, at that time of night, was generally in his own room, pacing up
and down, not aware that every footstep was heard by his wakeful mother.
He was “thinking out a few things,” as he told her.
They were not pleasant things, nor easy. Since the war he had made a
complete failure of his life. He had made a hopeless mess of his
marriage. Here he was back again, in his bachelor state, in the little
old room where, as a boy, he had lived in a dream world of hope and
ambition. How many times he had sat on this bed, generally with one boot
off and one boot on, looking into the unknown future with a boy’s
impatience for its coming, thinking of love and its mystery, wondering
about the girl who somewhere was waiting in the world to be his mate, to
fulfil the vague and wonderful promise of life which as yet he saw only
as on the threshold of its glory. Now he knew! He had met the girl of
his vision, and she had abandoned him.
He had never thought of that possibility, when he had sat with Romance
as his source of knowledge in this little room. That was before the War
had come crashing into Romance with terrific realism. That was in old
quiet days when it had seemed adventure enough to wander through London
on journeys of exploration, and when books of travel, history, drama,
were more exciting than anything that really happened in modern life.
He used to put his head out of this window looking down on Sloane
Street, listening to the rush of traffic, after theatre time, until it
was very quiet, and only a late hansom—the last of their kind—came
with a klip-klop up the street, or a primitive “taxi” honked its horn.
The sky was always quivering with the lights of London, above the
chimney-pots, as high as the stars. The boy Bertram used to stare at
that radiance, with his room all dusk behind him, so that his mother
would be worried by his keeping awake—“reading in bed” was her
passionate dread!—and it seemed to him like a mirage of life itself,
with all its mystery and enchantment.
Ten years ago! Not more than that, though a whole life-time in
experience. Four and a half years of war had intervened, awaking Bertram
and the world out of false dreams and beatific visions. Four and a half
murderous years, crammed with death, and horror, and heroism, and
laughter, and boredom, and fear, and filth. Then a year of
marriage—worse than war. More difficult than the technique of war, more
nerve-racking, and more terrifying than death in the results of failure.
Here he was, after complete failure, back in his bachelor room, as Joyce
was in hers! Yet not back again as before. Impossible to get back to the
boy who was here in this room ten years ago. Those books on the shelves
which had meant so much then, meant nothing now, had no comfort in them,
no romance, no thrill of any kind, no wisdom. Not even Shakespeare, in
the old Leopold edition, could give Bertram any solution to his problem
of marriage with Joyce. Shelley, Browning, Laurence Housman,
Kipling—all the poets he had loved—what could they tell him now? “Damn
all!” as the men used to say in war time. Conrad, Stevenson,
Quiller-Couch, Barrie,—Lord! he could hardly bear to look at them.
Over his mantelpiece were photographs of Dorothy and Susan, and a small
boy—Digby—in knickerbockers and an Eton collar; Dorothy as a girl of
eighteen, with her hair “up” for the first time, wonderfully pretty in
an evening frock of a style now hopelessly old-fashioned; Susan as a
girl of sixteen, with a short white frock, and long black stockings,
laughing like a tomboy. The last few years of history had made a
difference to them. Dorothy was Frau von Arenburg, a “Hun’s” wife; Susan
the wife of an Irish rebel now in prison; Digby, the boy in
knickerbockers, a Black and Tan. And Bertram, their brother, staring at
these old photographs, touching his old books, sitting on his bed with
his head in his hands, was ex-Major of machine guns, now unemployed, and
ex-husband of Lady Joyce Bellairs, of Holme Ottery, in the county of
Sussex.
He had received one letter from Joyce since that night at Holme Ottery.
He had read it ten times or more, and then torn it up into small pieces.