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diff --git a/37189.txt b/37189.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7718966 --- /dev/null +++ b/37189.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3428 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Return of the Soldier + +Author: Rebecca West + +Release Date: August 24, 2011 [EBook #37189] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + +[Illustration: frontispiece] + + + + +THE RETURN +OF THE SOLDIER + +BY +REBECCA WEST + +NEW [Illustration: colophon] YORK + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + +COPYRIGHT, 1918, +BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + +THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER +-C- +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +He lay there in the confiding relaxation of +a child _Frontispiece_ + + FACING + PAGE + +"Give it a brush now and then, like a good +soul" 6 + +She would get into the four-foot punt that +was used as a ferry and bring it over very +slowly 66 + +"I oughtn't to do it, ought I?" 176 + + + + +THE RETURN +OF THE SOLDIER + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +"Ah, don't begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty. "If a woman began to worry in +these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight! +Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting +was really hot, he'd have found some way of telling me instead of just +leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.' He'll be all right." + +We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again, now +that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped +the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room, +so full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, +which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the +house. It was the first lavish day of spring, and the sunlight was +pouring through the tall, arched windows and the flowered curtains so +brightly that in the old days a fat fist would certainly have been +raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud. +Sunlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft +rugs, patterned with strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which +should have been gravely watched for hours, on the white paint and the +blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse, which had been +Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed +what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out +Mary and her little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the +mantelpiece, under the loved print of the snarling tiger, in attitudes +that were at once angular and relaxed, as though they were ready for +play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from drowsing +in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the +woolly white dog and the black cat with eyes that roll. Everything was +there except Oliver. I turned away so that I might not spy on Kitty +revisiting her dead. But she called after me: + +"Come here, Jenny. I'm going to dry my hair." And when I looked again I +saw that her golden hair was all about her shoulders and that she wore +over her frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds. She looked +so like a girl on a magazine cover that one expected to find a large "15 +cents" somewhere attached to her person. She had taken Nanny's big +basket-chair from its place by the high-chair, and was pushing it over +to the middle window. "I always come in here when Emery has washed my +hair. It's the sunniest room in the house. I wish Chris wouldn't have +it kept as a nursery when there's no chance--" She sat down, swept her +hair over the back of the chair into the sunlight, and held out to me +her tortoiseshell hair-brush. "Give it a brush now and then, like a good +soul; but be careful. Tortoise snaps so!" + +I took the brush and turned to the window, leaning my forehead against +the glass and staring unobservantly at the view. You probably know the +beauty of that view; for when Chris rebuilt Baldry Court after his +marriage he handed it over to architects who had not so much the wild +eye of the artist as the knowing wink of the manicurist, and between +them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable +photographs in the illustrated papers. The house lies on the crest of +Harrowweald, and from its windows the eye drops to miles of emerald +pasture-land lying wet and brilliant under a westward line of sleek +hills; blue with distance and distant woods, while nearer it range the +suave decorum of the lawn and the Lebanon cedar, the branches of which +are like darkness made palpable, and the minatory gauntnesses of the +topmost pines in the wood that breaks downward, its bare boughs a close +texture of browns and purples, from the pond on the edge of the hill. + +[Illustration: "Give it a brush now and then, like a good soul"] + +That day its beauty was an affront to me, because, like most +Englishwomen of my time, I was wishing for the return of a soldier. +Disregarding the national interest and everything else except the keen +prehensile gesture of our hearts toward him, I wanted to snatch my +Cousin Christopher from the wars and seal him in this green pleasantness +his wife and I now looked upon. Of late I had had bad dreams about him. +By nights I saw Chris running across the brown rottenness of +No-Man's-Land, starting back here because he trod upon a hand, not even +looking there because of the awfulness of an unburied head, and not till +my dream was packed full of horror did I see him pitch forward on his +knees as he reached safety, if it was that. For on the war-films I have +seen men slip down as softly from the trench-parapet, and none but the +grimmer philosophers could say that they had reached safety by their +fall. And when I escaped into wakefulness it was only to lie stiff and +think of stories I had heard in the boyish voice of the modern +subaltern, which rings indomitable, yet has most of its gay notes +flattened: "We were all of us in a barn one night, and a shell came +along. My pal sang out, 'Help me, old man; I've got no legs!' and I had +to answer, 'I can't, old man; I've got no hands!'" Well, such are the +dreams of Englishwomen to-day. I could not complain, but I wished for +the return of our soldier. So I said: + +"I wish we could hear from Chris. It is a fortnight since he wrote." + +And then it was that Kitty wailed, "Ah, don't begin to fuss!" and bent +over her image in a hand-mirror as one might bend for refreshment over +scented flowers. + +I tried to build about me such a little globe of ease as always +ensphered her, and thought of all that remained good in our lives though +Chris was gone. I was sure that we were preserved from the reproach of +luxury, because we had made a fine place for Chris, one little part of +the world that was, so far as surfaces could make it so, good enough for +his amazing goodness. Here we had nourished that surpassing amiability +which was so habitual that one took it as one of his physical +characteristics, and regarded any lapse into bad temper as a calamity as +startling as the breaking of a leg; here we had made happiness +inevitable for him. I could shut my eyes and think of innumerable +proofs of how well we had succeeded, for there never was so visibly +contented a man. And I recalled all that he did one morning just a year +ago when he went to the front. + +First he had sat in the morning-room and talked and stared out on the +lawns that already had the desolation of an empty stage, although he had +not yet gone; then broke off suddenly and went about the house, looking +into many rooms. He went to the stables and looked at the horses and had +the dogs brought out; he refrained from touching them or speaking to +them, as though he felt himself already infected with the squalor of war +and did not want to contaminate their bright physical well-being. Then +he went to the edge of the wood and stood staring down into the clumps +of dark-leaved rhododendrons and the yellow tangle of last year's +bracken and the cold winter black of the trees. (From this very window I +had spied on him.) Then he moved broodingly back to the house to be +with his wife until the moment of his going, when Kitty and I stood on +the steps to see him motor off to Waterloo. He kissed us both. As he +bent over me I noticed once again how his hair was of two colors, brown +and gold. Then he got into the car, put on his Tommy air, and said: "So +long! I'll write you from Berlin!" and as he spoke his head dropped +back, and he set a hard stare on the house. That meant, I knew, that he +loved the life he had lived with us and desired to carry with him to the +dreary place of death and dirt the complete memory of everything about +his home, on which his mind could brush when things were at their worst, +as a man might finger an amulet through his shirt. This house, this life +with us, was the core of his heart. + +"If he could come back!" I said. "He was so happy here!" + +And Kitty answered: + +"He could not have been happier." + +It was important that he should have been happy, for, you see, he was +not like other city men. When we had played together as children in that +wood he had always shown great faith in the imminence of the improbable. +He thought that the birch-tree would really stir and shrink and quicken +into an enchanted princess, that he really was a red Indian, and that +his disguise would suddenly fall from him at the right sundown, that at +any moment a tiger might lift red fangs through the bracken, and he +expected these things with a stronger motion of the imagination than the +ordinary child's make-believe. And from a thousand intimations, from his +occasional clear fixity of gaze on good things as though they were about +to dissolve into better, from the passionate anticipation with which he +went to new countries or met new people, I was aware that this faith had +persisted into his adult life. He had exchanged his expectation of +becoming a red Indian for the equally wistful aspiration of becoming +completely reconciled to life. It was his hopeless hope that some time +he would have an experience that would act on his life like alchemy, +turning to gold all the dark metals of events, and from that revelation +he would go on his way rich with an inextinguishable joy. There had +been, of course, no chance of his ever getting it. Literally there +wasn't room to swing a revelation in his crowded life. First of all, at +his father's death he had been obliged to take over a business that was +weighted by the needs of a mob of female relatives who were all useless +either in the old way, with antimacassars, or in the new way, with +golf-clubs; then Kitty had come along and picked up his conception of +normal expenditure, and carelessly stretched it as a woman stretches a +new glove on her hand. Then there had been the difficult task of +learning to live after the death of his little son. It had lain on us, +the responsibility, which gave us dignity, to compensate him for his +lack of free adventure by arranging him a gracious life. But now, just +because our performance had been so brilliantly adequate, how dreary was +the empty stage! + +We were not, perhaps, specially contemptible women, because nothing +could ever really become a part of our life until it had been referred +to Chris's attention. I remember thinking, as the parlor-maid came in +with a card on the tray, how little it mattered who had called and what +flag of prettiness or wit she flew, since there was no chance that Chris +would come in and stand over her, his fairness red in the firelight, and +show her that detached attention, such as an unmusical man pays to good +music, which men of anchored affections give to attractive women. + +Kitty read from the card: + +"'Mrs. William Grey, Mariposa, Ladysmith Road, Wealdstone,' I don't know +anybody in _Wealdstone_." That is the name of the red suburban stain +which fouls the fields three miles nearer London than Harrowweald. One +cannot now protect one's environment as one once could. "Do I know her, +Ward? Has she been here before?" + +"Oh, no, ma'am." The parlor-maid smiled superciliously. "She said she +had news for you." From her tone one could deduce an over-confiding +explanation made by a shabby visitor while using the door-mat almost too +zealously. + +Kitty pondered, then said: + +"I'll come down." As the girl went, Kitty took up the amber hair-pins +from her lap and began swathing her hair about her head. "Last year's +fashion," she commented; "but I fancy it'll do for a person with that +sort of address." She stood up, and threw her little silk +dressing-jacket over the rocking-horse. "I'm seeing her because she may +need something, and I specially want to be kind to people while Chris is +away. One wants to deserve well of heaven." For a minute she was aloof +in radiance, but as we linked arms and went out into the corridor she +became more mortal, with a pout. "The people that come breaking into +one's nice, quiet day!" she moaned reproachfully, and as we came to the +head of the broad stair-case she leaned over the white balustrade to +peer down on the hall, and squeezed my arm. "Look!" she whispered. + +Just beneath us, in one of Kitty's prettiest chintz arm-chairs, sat a +middle-aged woman. She wore a yellowish raincoat and a black hat with +plumes. The sticky straw hat had only lately been renovated by something +out of a little bottle bought at the chemist's. She had rolled her black +thread gloves into a ball on her lap, so that she could turn her gray +alpaca skirt well above her muddy boots and adjust its brush-braid with +a seamed red hand that looked even more worn when she presently raised +it to touch the glistening flowers of the pink azalea that stood on a +table beside her. Kitty shivered, then muttered: + +"Let's get this over," and ran down the stairs. On the last step she +paused and said with conscientious sweetness, "Mrs. Grey!" + +"Yes," answered the visitor. She lifted to Kitty a sallow and relaxed +face the expression of which gave me a sharp, pitying pang of +prepossession in her favor: it was beautiful that so plain a woman +should so ardently rejoice in another's loveliness. "Are you Mrs. +Baldry?" she asked, almost as if she were glad about it, and stood up. +The bones of her bad stays clicked as she moved. Well, she was not so +bad. Her body was long and round and shapely, and with a noble +squareness of the shoulders; her fair hair curled diffidently about a +good brow; her gray eyes, though they were remote, as if anything worth +looking at in her life had kept a long way off, were full of tenderness; +and though she was slender, there was something about her of the +wholesome, endearing heaviness of the ox or the trusted big dog. Yet she +was bad enough. She was repulsively furred with neglect and poverty, as +even a good glove that has dropped down behind a bed in a hotel and has +lain undisturbed for a day or two is repulsive when the chambermaid +retrieves it from the dust and fluff. + +She flung at us as we sat down: + +"My general maid is sister to your second housemaid." + +It left us at a loss. + +"You've come about a reference?" asked Kitty. + +"Oh, no. I've had Gladys two years now, and I've always found her a very +good girl. I want no reference." With her finger-nail she followed the +burst seam of the dark pigskin purse that slid about on her shiny alpaca +lap. "But girls talk, you know. You mustn't blame them." She seemed to +be caught in a thicket of embarrassment, and sat staring up at the +azalea. + +With the hardness of a woman who sees before her the curse of women's +lives, a domestic row, Kitty said that she took no interest in servants' +gossip. + +"Oh, it isn't--" her eyes brimmed as though we had been +unkind--"servants' gossip that I wanted to talk about. I only mentioned +Gladys"--she continued to trace the burst seam of her purse--"because +that's how I heard you didn't know." + +"What don't I know?" + +Her head drooped a little. + +"About Mr. Baldry. Forgive me, I don't know his rank." + +"Captain Baldry," supplied Kitty, wonderingly. "What is it that I don't +know?" + +She looked far away from us, to the open door and its view of dark pines +and pale March sunshine, and appeared to swallow something. + +"Why, that he's hurt," she gently said. + +"Wounded, you mean?" asked Kitty. + +Her rusty plumes oscillated as she moved her mild face about with an air +of perplexity. + +"Yes," she said, "he's wounded." + +Kitty's bright eyes met mine, and we obeyed that mysterious human +impulse to smile triumphantly at the spectacle of a fellow-creature +occupied in baseness. For this news was not true. It could not possibly +be true. The War Office would have wired to us immediately if Chris had +been wounded. This was such a fraud as one sees recorded in the papers +that meticulously record squalor in paragraphs headed, "Heartless Fraud +on Soldier's Wife." Presently she would say that she had gone to some +expense to come here with her news and that she was poor, and at the +first generous look on our faces there would come some tale of trouble +that would disgust the imagination by pictures of yellow-wood furniture +that a landlord oddly desired to seize and a pallid child with bandages +round its throat. I cast down my eyes and shivered at the horror. Yet +there was something about the physical quality of the woman, unlovely +though she was, which preserved the occasion from utter baseness. I felt +sure that had it not been for the tyrannous emptiness of that evil, +shiny pigskin purse that jerked about on her trembling knees the poor +driven creature would have chosen ways of candor and gentleness. It was, +strangely enough, only when I looked at Kitty and marked how her +brightly colored prettiness arched over this plain criminal as though +she were a splendid bird of prey and this her sluggish insect food that +I felt the moment degrading. + +Kitty was, I felt, being a little too clever over it. + +"How is he wounded?" she asked. + +The caller traced a pattern on the carpet with her blunt toe. + +"I don't know how to put it; he's not exactly wounded. A shell burst--" + +"Concussion?" suggested Kitty. + +She answered with an odd glibness and humility, as though tendering us a +term she had long brooded over without arriving at comprehension, and +hoping that our superior intelligences would make something of it: + +"Shell-shock." Our faces did not illumine, so she dragged on lamely, +"Anyway, he's not well." Again she played with her purse. Her face was +visibly damp. + +"Not well? Is he dangerously ill?" + +"Oh, no." She was too kind to harrow us. "Not dangerously ill." + +Kitty brutally permitted a silence to fall. Our caller could not bear +it, and broke it in a voice that nervousness had turned to a funny, +diffident croak. + +"He's in the Queen Mary Hospital at Boulogne." We did not speak, and she +began to flush and wriggle on her seat, and stooped forward to fumble +under the legs of her chair for her umbrella. The sight of its green +seams and unveracious tortoiseshell handle disgusted Kitty into speech. + +"How do you know all this?" + +Our visitor met her eyes. This was evidently a moment for which she had +steeled herself, and she rose to it with a catch of her breath. "A man +who used to be a clerk along with my husband is in Mr. Baldry's +regiment." Her voice croaked even more piteously, and her eyes begged: +"Leave it at that! Leave it at that! If you only knew--" + +"And what regiment is that?" pursued Kitty. + +The poor sallow face shone with sweat. + +"I never thought to ask," she said. + +"Well, your friend's name--" + +Mrs. Grey moved on her seat so suddenly and violently that the pigskin +purse fell from her lap and lay at my feet. I supposed that she cast it +from her purposely because its emptiness had brought her to this +humiliation, and that the scene would close presently in a few quiet +tears. + +I hoped that Kitty would let her go without scarring her too much with +words and would not mind if I gave her a little money. There was no +doubt in my mind but that this queer, ugly episode in which this woman +butted like a clumsy animal at a gate she was not intelligent enough to +open would dissolve and be replaced by some more pleasing composition in +which we would take our proper parts; in which, that is, she would turn +from our rightness ashamed. Yet she cried: + +"But Chris is ill!" + +It took only a second for the compact insolence of the moment to +penetrate, the amazing impertinence of the use of his name, the +accusation of callousness she brought against us whose passion for Chris +was our point of honor, because we would not shriek at her false news, +the impudently bright, indignant gaze she flung at us, the lift of her +voice that pretended she could not understand our coolness and +irrelevance. I pushed the purse away from me with my toe, and hated her +as the rich hate the poor as insect things that will struggle out of the +crannies which are their decent home and introduce ugliness to the light +of day. And Kitty said in a voice shaken with pitilessness: + +"You are impertinent. I know exactly what you are doing. You have read +in the 'Harrow Observer' or somewhere that my husband is at the front, +and you come to tell this story because you think that you will get some +money. I've read of such cases in the papers. You forget that if +anything had happened to my husband the War Office would have told me. +You should think yourself very lucky that I don't hand you over to the +police." She shrilled a little before she came to the end. "Please go!" + +"Kitty!" I breathed. I was so ashamed that such a scene should spring +from Chris's peril at the front that I wanted to go out into the garden +and sit by the pond until the poor thing had removed her deplorable +umbrella, her unpardonable raincoat, her poor frustrated fraud. But Mrs. +Grey, who had begun childishly and deliberately, "It's _you_ who are +being--" and had desisted simply because she realized that there were no +harsh notes on her lyre, and that she could not strike these chords +that others found so easy, had fixed me with a certain wet, clear, +patient gaze. It is the gift of animals and those of peasant stock. From +the least regarded, from an old horse nosing over a gate, or a drab in a +work-house ward, it wrings the heart. From this woman--I said +checkingly: + +"Kitty!" and reconciled her in an undertone. "There's some mistake. Got +the name wrong, perhaps. Please tell us all about it." + +Mrs. Grey began a forward movement like a curtsy. She was groveling +after that purse. When she rose, her face was pink from stooping, and +her dignity swam uncertainly in a sea of half-shed tears. She said: + +"I'm sorry I've upset you. But when you know a thing like that it isn't +in flesh and blood to keep it from his wife. I am a married woman +myself, and I know. I knew Mr. Baldry fifteen years ago." Her voice +freely confessed that she had taken a liberty. "Quite a friend of the +family he was." She had added that touch to soften the crude +surprisingness of her announcement. It hardly did. "We lost sight of +each other. It's fifteen years since we last met. I had never seen nor +heard of him nor thought to do again till I got this a week ago." + +She undid the purse and took out a telegram. I knew suddenly that all +she said was true; for that was why her hands had clasped that purse. + +"He isn't well! He isn't well!" she said pleadingly. "He's lost his +memory, and thinks--thinks he still knows me." + +She passed the telegram to Kitty, who read it, and laid it on her knee. + +"See," said Mrs. Grey, "it's addressed to Margaret Allington, my maiden +name, and I've been married these ten years. And it was sent to my old +home, Monkey Island, at Bray. Father kept the inn there. It's fifteen +years since we left it. I never should have got this telegram if me and +my husband hadn't been down there last September and told the folks who +keep it now who I was." + +Kitty folded up the telegram and said in a little voice: + +"This is a likely story." + +Again Mrs. Grey's eyes brimmed. "People are rude to one," she visibly +said, but surely not nice people like this. She simply continued to sit. + +Kitty cried out, as though arguing: + +"There's nothing about shell-shock in this wire." + +Our visitor melted into a trembling shyness. + +"There was a letter, too." + +Kitty held out her hand. + +She gasped: + +"Oh, no, I couldn't do that!" + +"I must have it," said Kitty. + +The caller's eyes grew great. She rose and dived clumsily for her +umbrella, which had again slipped under the chair. + +"I can't," she cried, and scurried to the open door like a pelted dog. +She would have run down the steps at once had not some tender thought +arrested her. She turned to me trustfully and stammered, "He is at that +hospital I said," as if, since I had dealt her no direct blow, I might +be able to salve the news she brought from the general wreck of manners. +And then Kitty's stiff pallor struck to her heart, and cried +comfortingly across the distance, "I tell you, I haven't seen him for +fifteen years." She faced about, pushed down her hat on her head, and +ran down the steps to the gravel. "They won't understand!" we heard her +sob. + +For a long time we watched her as she went along the drive, her +yellowish raincoat looking sick and bright in the sharp sunshine, her +black plumes nodding like the pines above, her cheap boots making her +walk on her heels, a spreading stain on the fabric of our life. When she +was quite hidden by the dark clump of rhododendrons at the corner, Kitty +turned and went to the fireplace. She laid her arms against the oak +mantel-piece and cooled her face against her arms. + +When at last I followed her she said: + +"Do you believe her?" + +I started. I had forgotten that we had ever disbelieved her. + +"Yes," I replied. + +"What can it mean?" She dropped her arms and stared at me imploringly. +"Think, think, of something it can mean which isn't detestable!" + +"It's all a mystery," I said; and added madly, because nobody had ever +been cross with Kitty, "You didn't help to clear it up." + +"Oh, I know you think I was rude," she petulantly moaned; "but you're +so slow you don't see what it means. Either it means that he's mad, our +Chris, our splendid, sane Chris, all broken and queer, not knowing us--I +can't bear to think of that. It can't be true. But if he isn't--Jenny, +there was nothing in that telegram to show he'd lost his memory. It was +just affection--a name that might have been a pet name, things that it +was a little common to put in a telegram. It's queer he should have +written such a message, queer that he shouldn't have told me about +knowing her, queer that he ever should have known such a woman. It shows +there are bits of him we don't know. Things may be awfully wrong. It's +all such a breach of trust! I resent it." + +I was appalled by these stiff, dignified gestures that seemed to be +plucking Chris's soul from his body, tormented though it was by this +unknown calamity. + +"But Chris is ill!" I cried. + +She stared at me. + +"You're saying what she said." + +Indeed, there seemed no better words than those Mrs. Grey had used. I +repeated: + +"But he is ill!" + +She laid her face against her arms again. + +"What does that matter?" she wailed. "If he could send that telegram, he +is no longer ours." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +I was sorry the next morning that the post comes too late at Harrowweald +to be brought up with the morning tea and waits for one at the breakfast +table; for under Kitty's fixed gaze I had to open a letter which bore +the Boulogne postmark and was addressed in the writing of Frank Baldry, +Chris's cousin, who is in the church. He wrote: + + DEAR JENNY: + + You will have to break it to Kitty and try to make her take it as + quietly as possible. This sentence will sound ominous as a start, + but I'm so full of the extraordinary thing that has happened to + Chris that I feel as if every living creature was in possession of + the facts. I don't know how much you know about it, so I'd better + begin at the beginning. Last Thursday I got a wire from Chris, + saying that he had had concussion, though not seriously, and was in + a hospital about a mile from Boulogne, where he would be glad to + see me. It struck me as odd that it had been sent to Ollenshaws, + where I was curate fifteen years ago. Fortunately, I have always + kept in touch with Sumpter, whom I regard as a specimen of the very + best type of country clergymen, and he forwarded it without + unnecessary delay. I started that evening, and looked hard for you + and Kitty on the boat; but came to the conclusion I should probably + find you at the hospital. + + After having breakfasted in the town,--how superior French cooking + is! I would have looked in vain for such coffee, such an omelet, in + my own parish,--I went off to look for the hospital. It is a girls' + school, which has been taken over by the Red Cross, with fair-sized + grounds and plenty of nice dry paths under the _tilleuls_. I could + not see Chris for an hour, so I sat down on a bench by a funny, + little round pond, with a stone coping, very French. Some wounded + soldiers who came out to sit in the sun were rather rude because I + was not in khaki, even when I explained that I was a priest of God + and that the feeling of the bishops was strongly against the + enlistment of the clergy. I do feel that the church has lost its + grip on the masses. + + Then a nurse came out and took me in to see Chris. He is in a nice + room, with a southern exposure, with three other officers, who + seemed very decent (not the "new army," I am glad to say). He was + better than I had expected, but did not look quite himself. For one + thing, he was oddly boisterous. He seemed glad to see me, and told + me he could remember nothing about his concussion, but that he + wanted to get back to Harrowweald. He talked a lot about the wood + and the upper pond and wanted to know if the daffies were out yet, + and when he would be allowed to travel, because he felt that he + would get well at once if only he could get home. And then he was + silent for a minute, as though he was holding something back. It + will perhaps help you to realize the difficulty of my position when + you understand that all this happened before I had been in the room + five minutes! + + Without flickering an eyelid, quite easily and naturally, he gave + me the surprising information that he was in love with a girl + called Margaret Allington, who is the daughter of a man who keeps + the inn on Monkey Island, at Bray on the Thames. He uttered some + appreciations of this woman which I was too upset to note. I + gasped, "How long has this been going on?" He laughed at my + surprise, and said, "Ever since I went down to stay with Uncle + Ambrose at Dorney after I'd got my B.Sc." Fifteen years ago! I was + still staring at him, unable to believe this barefaced admission of + a deception carried on for years, when he went on to say that, + though he had wired to her and she had wired a message in return, + she hadn't said anything about coming over to see him. "Now," he + said quite coolly, "I know old Allington's had a bad season,--oh, + I'm quite well up in the innkeeping business these days,--and I + think it may quite possibly be a lack of funds that is keeping her + away. I've lost my check-book somewhere in the scrim, and so I + wonder if you'd send her some money. Or, better still, for she's a + shy country thing, you might fetch her." + + I stared. "Chris," I said, "I know the war is making some of us + very lax, and I can only ascribe to that the shamelessness with + which you admit the existence of a long-standing intrigue; but when + it comes to asking me to go over to England and fetch the woman--" + He interrupted me with a sneer that we parsons are inveterately + eighteenth century and have our minds perpetually inflamed by + visions of squires' sons seducing country wenches, and declared + that he meant to marry this Margaret Allington. "Oh, indeed!" I + said. "And may I ask what Kitty says to this arrangement?" "Who the + devil is Kitty?" he asked blankly. "Kitty is your wife," I said + quietly, but firmly. He sat up and shouted: "I haven't got a wife! + Has some woman been turning up with a cock-and-bull story of being + my wife? Because it's the damnedest lie!" + + I determined to settle the matter by sharp, common-sense handling. + "Chris," I said, "you have evidently lost your memory. You were + married to Kitty Ellis at St. George's, Hanover Square, on the + third, or it may have been the fourth"--you know my wretched memory + for dates--"of February, in 1906." He turned very pale and asked + what year this was. "1916," I told him. He fell back in a fainting + condition. The nurse came, and said I had done it all right this + time, so she at least seemed to have known that he required a rude + awakening, although the doctor, a very nice man, Winchester and + New, told me he had known nothing of Chris's delusions. + + An hour later I was called back into the room. Chris was looking at + himself in a hand-mirror, which he threw on the floor as I entered. + "You are right," he said; "I'm not twenty-one, but thirty-six." He + said he felt lonely and afraid, and that I must bring Margaret + Allington to him at once or he would die. Suddenly he stopped + raving and asked, "Is father all right?" I prayed for guidance, and + answered, "Your father passed away twelve years ago." He said, + "Good God! can't you say he _died_," and he turned over and lay + with his back to me. I have never before seen a strong man weep, + and it is indeed a terrible sight. He moaned a lot, and began to + call for this Margaret. Then he turned over again and said, "Now + tell us all about this Kitty that I've married." I told him she was + a beautiful little woman, and mentioned that she had a charming and + cultivated soprano voice. He said very fractiously: "I don't like + little women, and I hate anybody, male or female, who sings. O God, + I don't like this Kitty. Take her away!" And then he began to rave + again about this woman. He said that he was consumed with desire + for her and that he would never rest until he once more held her in + his arms. I had no suspicion that Chris had this side to his + nature, and it was almost a relief when he fainted again. + + I have not seen him since, and it is evening; but I have had a long + talk with the doctor, who says that he has satisfied himself that + Chris is suffering from a loss of memory extending over a period of + fifteen years. He says that though, of course, it will be an + occasion of great trial to us all, he thinks that, in view of + Chris's expressed longing for Harrowweald, he ought to be taken + home, and advises me to make all arrangements for bringing him back + some time next week. I hope I shall be upheld in this difficult + enterprise. + + In the meantime I leave it to you to prepare Kitty for this + terrible shock. I could have wished it were a woman of a different + type who was to see my poor cousin through these dark days, but + convey to her my deepest sympathy. Indeed, I never realized the + horror of warfare until I saw my cousin, of whose probity I am as + firmly convinced as of my own wantonly repudiating his most sacred + obligations. + + Yours ever, + + FRANK. + +Over my shoulder Kitty muttered: + +"And he always pretended he liked my singing." Then she gripped my arm +and shrieked in a possessive fury: "Bring him home! Bring him home!" + +So, a week later, they brought Chris home. + +From breakfast-time that day the house was pervaded with a +day-before-the-funeral feeling. Although all duties arising from the +occasion had been performed, one could settle to nothing else. Chris was +expected at one, but then there came a telegram to say he was delayed +till the late afternoon. So Kitty, whose beauty was as changed in grief +from its ordinary seeming as a rose in moonlight is different from a +rose by day, took me down after lunch to the greenhouses and had a +snappishly competent conversation about the year's vegetables with Pipe, +the gardener. Then Kitty went into the drawing-room and filled the house +with the desolate merriment of an inattentively played pianola, while I +sat in the hall and wrote letters and noticed how sad dance-music has +sounded ever since the war began. After that she started a savage raid +of domestic efficiency, and made the housemaids cry because the brass +handles of the tall-boys were not bright enough and because there was +only ten-to-one instead of a hundred-to-one risk of breaking a leg on +the parquet. Then she had tea, and hated the soda-cake. She was a +little, shrunk thing, huddled in the arm-chair farthest from the light, +when at last the big car came nosing up the drive through the dark. + +We stood up. Through the thudding of the engines came the sound of +Chris's great male voice which always had in it a note like the baying +of a big dog. "Thanks, I can manage by myself." I heard, amazed, his +step ring strong upon the stone, for I had felt his absence as a kind of +death from which he would emerge ghostlike, impalpable. And then he +stood in the doorway, the gloom blurring his outlines like fur, the +faint, clear candle-light catching the fair down on his face. He did +not see me, in my dark dress, or huddled Kitty, and with the sleepy +smile of one who returns to a dear, familiar place to rest he walked +into the hall and laid down his stick and his khaki cap beside the +candlestick on the oak table. With both hands he felt the old wood, and +stood humming happily through his teeth. + +I cried out, because I had seen that his hair was of three colors now, +brown and gold and silver. + +With a quick turn of the head, he found me out in the shadows. + +"Hullo, Jenny!" he said, and gripped my hands. + +"O Chris, I am so glad!" I stuttered, and then could say no more for +shame that I was thirty-five instead of twenty. For his eyes had +hardened in the midst of his welcome, as though he had trusted that I at +least would have been no party to this conspiracy to deny that he was +young, and he said: + +"I've dropped Frank in town. My temper's of the convalescent type." He +might as well have said, "I've dropped Frank, who had grown old, like +you." + +"Chris," I went on, "it's so wonderful to have you safe." + +"Safe," he repeated. He sighed very deeply and continued to hold my +hands. There was a rustle in the shadows, and he dropped my hands. + +The face that looked out of the dimness to him was very white, and her +upper lip was lifted over her teeth in a distressed grimace. It was +immediately as plain as though he had shouted it that this sad mask +meant nothing to him. He knew not because memory had given him any +insight into her heart, but because there is an instinctive kindliness +in him which makes him wise about all suffering, that it would hurt her +if he asked if this was his wife; but his body involuntarily began a +gesture of inquiry before he realized that that, too, would hurt her, +and he checked it half-way. So, through a silence, he stood before her +slightly bent, as though he had been maimed. + +"I am your wife." There was a weak, wailing anger behind the words. + +"Kitty," he said softly and kindly. He looked around for some +graciousness to make the scene less wounding, and stooped to kiss her; +but he could not. The thought of another woman made him unable to +breathe, sent the blood running under his skin. + +With a toss, like a child saying, "Well, if you don't want to, I'm sure +I wouldn't for the world!" Kitty withdrew from the suspended caress. He +watched her retreat into the shadows as though she were a symbol of this +new life by which he was baffled and oppressed, until the darkness +outside became filled with the sound like the surf which we always hear +at Harrowweald on angry evenings, and his eyes became distant, and his +lips smiled. "Up here--in this old place--how one hears the pines!" + +She cried out from the other end of the room, as though she were +speaking with some one behind a shut door: + +"I've ordered dinner at seven. I thought you'd probably have missed a +meal or two, or would want to go to bed early." She said it very +smartly, with her head on one side like a bird, as if she was pleading +that he would find her very clever about ordering dinner and thinking of +his comfort. + +"Good," he said. "I'd better dress now, hadn't I?" He looked up the +stair-case, and would have gone up had I not held him back; for the +little room in the south wing, with the fishing-rods and the old books, +went in the rebuilding, absorbed by the black-and-white magnificence +that is Kitty's bedroom. + +"Oh, I'll take you up," Kitty rang out efficiently. She pulled at his +coat-sleeve, so they started level on the lowest step. But as they went +up, the sense of his separateness beat her back; she lifted her arms as +though she struggled through a fog, and fell behind. When he reached the +top she was standing half-way down the stairs, her hands clasped under +her chin. But he did not see her. He was looking along the corridor and +saying, "This house is different." If the soul has to stay in its coffin +till the lead is struck asunder, in its captivity it speaks with such a +voice. + +She braced herself with a gallant laugh. + +"How you've forgotten!" she cried, and ran up to him, rattling her keys +and looking grave with housewifery, and I was left alone with the dusk +and the familiar things. The dusk flowed in wet and cool from the +garden, as if to put out the fire of confusion lighted on our +hearthstone, and the furniture, very visible through that soft evening +opacity with the observant brightness of old, well-polished wood, seemed +terribly aware. Strangeness had come into the house, and everything was +appalled by it, even time. For the moments dragged. It seemed to me, +half an hour later, that I had been standing for an infinite period in +the drawing-room, remembering that in the old days the blinds had never +been drawn in this room because old Mrs. Baldry had liked to see the +night gathering like a pool in the valley while the day lingered as a +white streak above the farthest hills, and perceiving in pain that the +heavy blue blinds that shroud the nine windows because a lost Zeppelin +sometimes clanks like a skeleton across the sky above us would make his +home seem even more like prison. + +I began to say what was in my mind to Kitty when she came in, but she +moved past me, remote in preoccupation, and I was silent when I saw +that she was dressed in all respects like a bride. The gown she wore on +her wedding-day ten years ago had been cut and embroidered as this white +satin was; her hair had been coiled low on her neck, as it was now. +Around her throat were her pearls, and her longer chain of diamonds +dropped, looking cruelly bright, to her white, small breasts; because +she held some needlework to her bosom, I saw that her right hand was +stiff with rings and her left hand bare save for her wedding-ring. She +dropped her load of flannel on a work-table and sat down, spreading out +her skirts, in an arm-chair by the fire. With her lower lip thrust out, +as if she were considering a menu, she lowered her head and looked down +on herself. She frowned to see that the high lights on the satin shone +scarlet from the fire, that her flesh glowed like a rose, and she +changed her seat for a high-backed chair beneath the farthest +candle-sconce. There were green curtains close by, and now the lights on +her satin gown were green like cleft ice. She looked as cold as +moonlight, as virginity, but precious; the falling candle-light struck +her hair to bright, pure gold. So she waited for him. + +There came suddenly a thud at the door. We heard Chris swear and stumble +to his feet, while one of the servants spoke helpfully. Kitty knitted +her brows, for she hates gracelessness, and a failure of physical +adjustment is the worst indignity she can conceive. + +"He's fallen down those three steps from the hall," I whispered. +"They're new." She did not listen, because she was controlling her face +into harmony with the appearance of serene virginity upon which his eyes +would fall when he entered the room. + +His fall had ruffled him and made him look very large and red, and he +breathed hard, like an animal pursued into a strange place by night, +and to his hot consciousness of his disorder the sight of Kitty, her +face and hands and bosom shining like the snow, her gown enfolding her, +and her gold hair crowning her with radiance, and the white fire of +jewels giving passion to the spectacle, was a deep refreshment. She sat +still for a time, so that he might feel this well, then raised her +ringed hand to her necklaces. + +"It seems so strange that you should not remember me," she said. "You +gave me all these." + +He answered kindly: + +"I am glad I did that. You look very beautiful in them." But as he spoke +his gaze shifted to the shadows in the corners of the room, and the +blood ran hot under his skin. He was thinking of another woman, of +another beauty. + +Kitty put up her hands as if to defend her jewels. + +In that silence dinner was announced, and we went into the dining-room. +It is the fashion at Baldry Court to use no electric light save when +there is work to be done or a great company to be entertained, and to +eat and talk by the mild clarity of many candles. That night it was a +kindly fashion, for we sat about the table with our faces veiled in +shadow, and seemed to listen in quiet contentment to the talk of our man +who had come back to us. Yet all through the meal I was near to weeping, +because whenever he thought himself unobserved he looked at the things +that were familiar to him. Dipping his head, he would glance sidewise at +the old oak paneling, and nearer things he fingered as though sight were +not intimate enough a contact. His hand caressed the arm of his chair, +because he remembered the black gleam of it, stole out and touched the +recollected salt-cellar. It was his furtiveness that was heartrending; +it was as though he were an outcast, and we who loved him stout +policemen. Was Baldry Court so sleek a place that the unhappy felt +offenders there? Then we had all been living wickedly, and he, too. As +his fingers glided here and there he talked bravely about non-committal +things: to what ponies we had been strapped when at the age of five we +were introduced to the hunting-field; how we had teased to be allowed to +keep swans in the pond above the wood, and how the yellow bills of our +intended pets had sent us shrieking homeward; and all the dear life that +makes the bland English country-side secretly adventurous. "Funny +thing," he said. "All the time I was at Boulogne I wanted to see a +kingfisher, that blue scudding down a stream, or a heron's flight round +a willow--" He checked himself suddenly; his head fell forward on his +chest. "You have no herons here, of course," he said drearily, and +fingered the arm of his chair again. Then he raised his head again, +brisk with another subject. "Do they still have trouble with foxes at +Steppy End?" + +Kitty shook her head. + +"I don't know." + +"Griffiths will know," Chris said cheerily, and swung round on his seat +to ask the butler, and found him osseous, where Griffiths was rotund; +dark, where Griffiths had been merrily mottled; strange, where Griffiths +had been a part of home, a condition of life. He sat back in his chair +as though his heart had stopped. + +When the butler who is not Griffiths had left the room he spoke gruffly. + +"Stupid of me, I know; but where is Griffiths?" + +"Dead seven years ago," said Kitty, her eyes on her plate. + +He sighed deeply in a shuddering horror. + +"I'm sorry. He was a good man." + +I cleared my throat. + +"There are new people here, Chris, but they love you as the old ones +did." + +He forced himself to smile at us both, to a gay response. + +"As if I didn't know that to-night!" + +But he did not know it. Even to me he would give no trust, because it +was Jenny the girl who had been his friend and not Jenny the woman. All +the inhabitants at this new tract of time were his enemies, all its +circumstances his prison-bars. There was suspicion in the gesture with +which, when we were back in the drawing-room he picked up the flannel +from the work-table. + +"Whose is this?" he said curiously. His mother had been a hard-riding +woman, not apt with her needle. + +"Clothes for one of the cottages," answered Kitty, breathlessly. +"We--we've a lot of responsibilities, you and I. With all of the land +you've bought, there are ever so many people to look after." + +He moved his shoulders uneasily, as if under a yoke, and, after he had +drunk his coffee, pulled up one of the blinds and went out to pace the +flagged walk under the windows. Kitty huddled carelessly by the fire, +her hands over her face, unheeding by its red glow she looked not so +virginal and bride-like; so I think she was too distracted even to plan. +I went to the piano. Through this evening of sentences cut short because +their completed meaning was always sorrow, of normal life dissolved to +tears, the chords of Beethoven sounded serenely. + +"So you like Jenny," said Kitty, suddenly, "to play Beethoven when it's +the war that's caused all this. I could have told that you would have +chosen to play German music this night of all nights." + +So I began a saraband by Purcell, a jolly thing that makes one see a +plump, sound woman dancing on a sanded floor in some old inn, with +casks of good ale all about her and a world of sunshine and May lanes +without. As I played I wondered if things like this happened when +Purcell wrote such music, empty of everything except laughter and simple +greeds and satisfactions and at worst the wail of unrequited love. Why +had modern life brought forth these horrors, which made the old +tragedies seem no more than nursery-shows? And the sky also is +different. Behind Chris's head, as he halted at the open window, a +search-light turned all ways in the night, like a sword brandished among +the stars. + +"Kitty." + +"Yes, Chris." She was sweet and obedient and alert. + +"I know my conduct must seem to you perversely insulting,"--behind him +the search-light wheeled while he gripped the sides of the window,--"but +if I do not see Margaret Allington I shall die." + +She raised her hands to her jewels, and pressed the cool globes of her +pearls into her flesh. "She lives near here," she said easily. "I will +send the car down for her to-morrow. You shall see as much of her as you +like." + +His arms fell to his sides. + +"Thank you," he muttered; "you're all being so kind--" He disengaged +himself into the darkness. + +I was amazed at Kitty's beautiful act and more amazed to find that it +had made her face ugly. Her eyes snapped as they met mine. + +"That dowd!" she said, keeping her voice low, so that he might not hear +it as he passed to and fro before the window. "That dowd!" + +This sudden abandonment of beauty and amiability meant so much in our +Kitty, whose law of life is grace, that I went over and kissed her. + +"Dear, you're taking things all the wrong way," I said. "Chris is ill--" + +"He's well enough to remember her all right," she replied unanswerably. +Her silver shoe tapped the floor; she pinched her lips for some moments. +"After all, I suppose I can sit down to it. Other women do. Teddy Rex +keeps a Gaiety girl, and Mrs. Rex has to grin and bear it." She shrugged +in answer to my silence. "What else is it, do you think? It means that +Chris is a man like other men. But I did think that bad women were +pretty. I suppose he's had so much to do with pretty ones that a plain +one's a change." + +"Kitty! Kitty! how can you!" + +But her little pink mouth went on manufacturing malice. + +"This is all a blind," she said at the end of an unpardonable sentence. +"He's pretending." + +I, who had felt his agony all the evening like a wound in my own body, +was past speech then, and I did not care what I did to stop her. I +gripped her small shoulders with my large hands, and shook her till her +jewels rattled and she scratched my fingers and gasped for breath. But I +did not mind so long as she was silent. + +Chris spoke from the darkness. + +"Jenny!" I let her go. He came in and stood over us, running his hand +through his hair unhappily. "Let's all be decent to each other," he said +heavily. "It's all such a muddle, and it's so rotten for all of us--" + +Kitty shook herself neat and stood up. + +"Why don't you say, 'Jenny, you mustn't be rude to visitors'? It's how +you feel, I know." She gathered up her needlework. "I'm going to bed. +It's been a horrid night." + +She spoke so pathetically, like a child who hasn't enjoyed a party as +much as it had thought it would, that both of us felt a stir of +tenderness toward her as she left the room. We smiled sadly at each +other as we sat down by the fire, and I perceived that, perhaps because +I was flushed and looked younger, he felt more intimate with me than he +had yet done since his return. Indeed, in the warm, friendly silence +that followed he was like a patient when tiring visitors have gone and +he is left alone with his trusted nurse; smiled under drooped lids and +then paid me the high compliment of disregard. His limbs relaxed, he +sank back into his chair. I watched him vigilantly, and was ready at +that moment when thought intruded into his drowsings and his face began +to twitch. I asked: + +"You can't remember her at all?" + +"Oh, yes," he said, without raising his eyelids, "in a sense. I know how +she bows when you meet her in the street, how she dresses when she goes +to church. I know her as one knows a woman staying in the same hotel, +just like that." + +"It's a pity you can't remember Kitty. All that a wife should be she's +been to you." + +He sat forward, warming his palms at the blaze and hunching his +shoulders as though there were a draft. His silence compelled me to look +at him, and I found his eyes, cold and incredulous and frightened, on +me. + +"Jenny, is this true?" + +"That Kitty's been a good wife?" + +"That Kitty is my wife, that I am old, that"--he waved a hand at the +altered room--"all this." + +"It is all true. She is your wife, and this place is changed, and it's +better and jollier in all sorts of ways, believe me, and fifteen years +have passed. Why, Chris, can't you see that I have grown old?" My vanity +could hardly endure his slow stare, but I kept my fingers clasped on my +lap. "You see?" + +He turned away with an assenting mutter; but I saw that deep down in +him, not to be moved by any material proof, his spirit was incredulous. + +"Tell me what seems real to you," I begged. "Chris, be a pal. I'll never +tell." + +"M-m-m," he said. His elbows were on his knees, and his hands stroked +his thick tarnished hair. I could not see his face, but I knew that his +skin was red and that his gray eyes were wet and bright. Then suddenly +he lifted his chin and laughed, like a happy swimmer breaking through a +wave that has swept him far inshore. He glowed with a radiance that +illuminated the moment till my blood tingled and I began to rub my hands +together and laugh, too. "Why, Monkey Island's real. But you don't know +old Monkey. Let me tell you." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Chris told the story lingeringly, in loving detail. From Uncle Ambrose's +gates, it seems, one took the path across the meadow where Whiston's +cows are put to graze, passed through the second stile--the one between +the two big alders--into a long straight road that ran across the flat +lands to Bray. After a mile or so there branched from it a private road +that followed a line of noble poplars down to the ferry. Between two of +them--he described it meticulously, as though it were of immense +significance--there stood a white hawthorn. In front were the +dark-green, glassy waters of an unvisited back-water, and beyond them a +bright lawn set with many walnut-trees and a few great chestnuts, well +lighted with their candles, and to the left of that a low, white house +with a green dome rising in its middle, and a veranda with a roof of +hammered iron that had gone verdigris-color with age and the Thames +weather. This was the Monkey Island Inn. The third Duke of Marlborough +had built it for a "folly," and perching there with nothing but a line +of walnut-trees and a fringe of lawn between it and the fast, full, +shining Thames, it had an eighteenth-century grace and silliness. + +Well, one sounded the bell that hung on a post, and presently Margaret +in a white dress would come out of the porch and would walk to the stone +steps down to the river. Invariably, as she passed the walnut-tree that +overhung the path, she would pick a leaf, crush it, and sniff the sweet +scent; and as she came near the steps she would shade her eyes and peer +across the water. "She is a little near-sighted; you can't imagine how +sweet it makes her look," Chris explained. (I did not say that I had +seen her, for, indeed, this Margaret I had never seen.) A sudden serene +gravity would show that she had seen one, and she would get into the +four-foot punt that was used as a ferry and bring it over very slowly, +with rather stiff movements of her long arms, to exactly the right +place. When she had got the punt up on the gravel her serious brow would +relax, and she would smile at one and shake hands and say something +friendly, like, "Father thought you'd be over this afternoon, it being +so fine; so he's saved some duck's eggs for tea." + +And then one took the pole from her and brought her back to the island, +though probably one did not mount the steps to the lawn for a long time. +It was so good to sit in the punt by the landing-stage while Margaret +dabbled her hands in the black waters and forgot her shyness as one +talked. "She's such good company. She's got an accurate mind that +would have made her a good engineer, but when she picks up facts she +kind of gives them a motherly hug. She's charity and love itself." +(Again I did not say that I had seen her.) If people drifted in to tea, +one had to talk to her while she cut the bread and butter and the +sandwiches in the kitchen, but in this year of floods few visitors cared +to try the hard rowing below Bray Lock. + +[Illustration: She would get into the four-foot punt that was used as a +ferry and bring it over very slowly] + +So usually one sat down there in the boat, talking with a sense of +leisure, as though one had all the rest of one's life in which to carry +on this conversation, and noting how the reflected ripple of the water +made a bright, vibrant, mark upon her throat, and other effects of the +scene upon her beauty, until the afternoon grew drowsy, and she said, +"Father will be wanting his tea." And they would go up and find old +Allington, in white ducks, standing in the fringe of long grasses and +cow-parsley on the other edge of the island, looking to his poultry or +his rabbits. He was a little man, with a tuft of copper-colored hair +rising from the middle of his forehead like a clown's curl, who shook +hands hard and explained very soon that he was a rough diamond. + +Then they all had tea under the walnut-tree where the canary's cage was +hanging, and the ducks' eggs would be brought out, and Mr. Allington +would talk much Thames-side gossip: how the lock-keeper at Teddington +had had his back broken by a swan, mad as swans are in May; how they +would lose their license at the Dovetail Arms if they were not careful; +and how the man who kept the inn by Surly Hall was like to die, because +after he had been cursing his daughter for two days for having run away +with a soldier from Windsor Barracks, he had suddenly seen her white +face in a clump of rushes in the river just under the hole in the +garden fence. Margaret would sit quiet, round-eyed at the world's ways, +and shy because of Chris. + +So they would sit on that bright lawn until the day was dyed with +evening blue, and Mr. Allington was more and more often obliged to leap +into the punt to chase his ducks, which had started on a trip to Bray +Lock, or to crawl into the undergrowth after rabbits similarly +demoralized by the dusk. + +Then Chris would say he had to go, and they would stand in a communing +silence while the hearty voice of Mr. Allington shouted from midstream +or under the alder-boughs a disregarded invitation to stay and have a +bite of supper. In the liquefaction of colors which happens on a summer +evening, when the green grass seemed like a precious fluid poured out on +the earth and dripping over to the river, and the chestnut candles were +no longer proud flowers, but just wet, white lights in the humid mass +of the tree, when the brown earth seemed just a little denser than the +water, Margaret also participated. + +Chris explained this part of his story stumblingly; but I, too, have +watched people I loved in the dusk, and I know what he meant. As she sat +in the punt while he ferried himself across it was no longer visible +that her fair hair curled differently and that its rather wandering +parting was a little on one side; that her straight brows, which were a +little darker than her hair, were nearly always contracted in a frown of +conscientious speculation; that her mouth and chin were noble, yet as +delicate as flowers; that her shoulders were slightly hunched because +her young body, like a lily-stem, found it difficult to manage its own +tallness. She was then just a girl in white who lifted a white face or +drooped a dull-gold head. Then she was nearer to him than at any other +time. That he loved her in this twilight, which obscured all the +physical details which he adored, seemed to him a guarantee that theirs +was a changeless love which would persist if she were old or maimed or +disfigured. + +He stood beside the crazy post where the bell hung and watched the white +figure take the punt over the black waters, mount the gray steps, and +assume some of their grayness, become a green shade in the green +darkness of the foliage-darkened lawn, and he exulted in that guarantee. + +How long this went on he had forgotten; but it continued for some time +before there came the end of his life, the last day he could remember. I +was barred out of that day. His lips told me of its physical +appearances, while from his wet, bright eyes and his flushed skin, his +beautiful signs of a noble excitement, I tried to derive the real story. +It seemed that the day when he bicycled over to Monkey Island, happy +because Uncle Ambrose had gone up to town and he could stay to supper +with the Allingtons, was the most glorious day the year had yet brought. +The whole world seemed melting into light. Cumulus-clouds floated very +high, like lumps of white light, against a deep, glowing sky, and +dropped dazzling reflections on the beaming Thames. The trees moved not +like timber, shocked by wind, but floatingly, like weeds at the bottom +of a well of sunshine. When Margaret came out of the porch and paused, +as she always did, to crush and smell the walnut-leaf and shade her eyes +with her hand, her white dress shone like silver. + +[Illustration: He lay there in the confiding relaxation of a child] + +She brought the punt across and said very primly, "Dad will be +disappointed; he's gone up to town on business," and answered gravely, +"That is very kind of you," when he took the punt-pole from her and +said laughingly: "Never mind. I'll come and see you all the same." (I +could see them as Chris spoke, so young and pale and solemn, with the +intense light spilling all around them.) That afternoon they did not sit +in the punt by the landing-stage, but wandered about the island and +played with the rabbits and looked at the ducks and were inordinately +silent. For a long time they stood in the fringe of rough grass on the +other side of the island, and Margaret breathed contentedly that the +Thames was so beautiful. Past the spit of sand at the far end of the +island, where a great swan swanked to the empty reach that it would +protect its mate against all comers, the river opened to a silver +breadth between flat meadows stretching back to far rows of pin-thick +black poplars, until it wound away to Windsor behind a line of high +trees whose heads were bronze with unopened buds, and whose flanks were +hidden by a head of copper-beech and crimson and white hawthorn. + +Chris said he would take her down to Dorney Lock in the skiff, and she +got in very silently and obediently; but as soon as they were out in +midstream she developed a sense of duty, and said she could not leave +the inn with just that boy to look after it. And then she went into the +kitchen and, sucking in her lower lip for shyness, very conscientiously +cut piles of bread and butter in case some visitors came to tea. Just +when Chris was convincing her of the impossibility of any visitors +arriving they came, a fat woman in a luscious pink blouse and an old +chap who had been rowing in a tweed waistcoat. Chris went out, though +Margaret laughed and trembled and begged him not to, and waited on them. +It should have been a great lark, but suddenly he hated them, and when +they offered him a tip for pushing the boat off, he snarled absurdly +and ran back, miraculously relieved, to the bar-parlor. + +Still Margaret would not leave the island. "Supposing," she said, "that +Mr. Learoyd comes for his ale." But she consented to walk with him to +the wild part of the island, where poplars and alders and willows grew +round a clearing in which white willow-herb and purple figwort and here +and there a potato-flower, last ailing consequence of one of Mr. +Allington's least successful enterprises, fought down to the fringe of +iris on the river's lip. In this gentle jungle was a rustic seat, relic +of a reckless aspiration on the part of Mr. Allington to make this a +pleasure-garden, and on it they sat until a pale moon appeared above the +green corn-field on the other side of the river. "Not six yet," he said, +taking out his watch. "Not six yet," she repeated. Words seemed to bear +more significance than they had ever borne before. Then a heron flapped +gigantic in front of the moon, and swung in wide circles round the +willow-tree before them. "Oh, look!" she cried. He seized the hand she +flung upward and gathered her into his arms. They were so for long, +while the great bird's wings beat about them. + +Afterward she pulled at his hand. She wanted to go back across the lawn +and walk round the inn, which looked mournful, as unlit houses do by +dusk. They passed beside the green-and-white stucco barrier of the +veranda and stood on the three-cornered lawn that shelved high over the +stream at the island's end, regarding the river, which was now something +more wonderful than water, because it had taken to its bosom the rose +and amber glories of the sunset smoldering behind the elms and Bray +church-tower. Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as +the black notes sit on a staff of music. Then she went to the window of +the parlor and rested her cheek against the glass, looking in. The +little room was sad with twilight, and there was nothing to be seen but +Margaret's sewing-machine on the table and the enlarged photograph of +Margaret's mother over the mantel-piece, and the views of Tintern Abbey +framed in red plush, and on the floor, the marigold pattern making +itself felt through the dusk, Mr. Allington's carpet slippers. "Think of +me sitting in there," she whispered, "not knowing you loved me." Then +they went into the bar and drank milk, while she walked about fingering +familiar things with an absurd expression of exaltation, as though that +day she was fond of everything, even the handles of the beer-engine. + +When there had descended on them a night as brilliant as the day he drew +her out into the darkness, which was sweet with the scent of +walnut-leaves, and they went across the lawn, bending beneath the +chestnut-boughs, not to the wild part of the island, but to a circle of +smooth turf divided from it by a railing of wrought iron. On this stood +a small Greek temple, looking very lovely in the moonlight. He had never +brought Margaret here before, because Mr. Allington had once told him, +spatulate forefinger at his nose, that it had been built for the "dook" +for his excesses, and it was in the quality of his love for her that he +could not bear to think of her in association with anything base. But +to-night there was nothing anywhere but beauty. He lifted her in his +arms and carried her within the columns, and made her stand in a niche +above the altar. A strong stream of moonlight rushed upon her there; by +its light he could not tell if her hair was white as silver or yellow as +gold, and again he was filled with exaltation because he knew that it +would not have mattered if it had been white. His love was changeless. +Lifting her down from the niche, he told her so. + +And as he spoke, her warm body melted to nothingness in his arms. The +columns that had stood so hard and black against the quivering tide of +moonlight and starlight seemed to totter and dissolve. He was lying in a +hateful world where barbed-wire entanglements showed impish knots +against a livid sky full of blooming noise and splashes of fire and +wails for water, and his back was hurting intolerably. + +Chris fell to blowing out the candles, and I, perhaps because the +egotistical part of me was looking for something to say that would make +him feel me devoted and intimate, could not speak. + +Suddenly he desisted, stared at a candle-flame, and said: + +"If you had seen the way she rested her cheek against the glass and +looked into the little room you'd understand that I can't say, 'Yes, +Kitty's my wife, and Margaret somehow just nothing at all.'" + +"Of course you can't," I murmured sympathetically. + +We gripped hands, and he brought down on our conversation the finality +of darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Next morning it appeared that the chauffeur had taken the car up to town +to get a part replaced, and Margaret could not be brought from +Wealdstone till the afternoon. It fell to me to fetch her. "At least," +Kitty had said, "I might be spared that humiliation." Before I started I +went to the pond on the hill's edge. It is a place where autumn lives +for half the year, for even when the spring lights tongues of green fire +in the undergrowth, and the valley shows sunlit between the tree-trunks, +here the pond is fringed with yellow bracken and tinted bramble, and the +water flows amber over last winter's leaves. + +Through this brown gloom, darkened now by a surly sky, Chris was taking +the skiff, standing in the stern and using his oar like a gondolier. He +had come down here soon after breakfast, driven from the house by the +strangeness of all but the outer walls, and discontented with the +grounds because everything but this wet, intractable spot bore the marks +of Kitty's genius. After lunch there had been another attempt to settle +down, but with a grim glare at a knot of late Christmas roses bright in +a copse that fifteen years ago had been dark he went back to the +russet-eaved boat-house and this play with the skiff. It was a boy's +sport, and it was dreadful to see him turn a middle-aged face as he +brought the boat inshore. + +"I'm just going down to fetch Margaret," I said. + +He thanked me for it. + +"But, Chris, I must tell you. I've seen Margaret. She came up here, so +kind and sweet, to tell us you were wounded. She's the greatest dear in +the world, but she's not as you think of her. She's old, Chris. She +isn't beautiful any longer. She's drearily married. She's seamed and +scored and ravaged by squalid circumstances. You can't love her when you +see her." + +"Didn't I tell you last night," he said, "that that doesn't matter?" He +dipped his oar to a stroke that sent him away from me. "Bring her soon. +I shall wait for her down here." + +Wealdstone is not, in its way, a bad place; it lies in the lap of open +country, and at the end of every street rise the green hills of Harrow +and the spires of Harrow School. But all the streets are long and red +and freely articulated with railway arches, and factories spoil the +skyline with red, angular chimneys, and in front of the shops stood +little women with backs ridged by cheap stays, who tapped their upper +lips with their forefingers and made other feeble, doubtful gestures, +as though they wanted to buy something and knew that if they did they +would have to starve some other appetite. When we asked them the way +they turned to us faces sour with thrift. It was a town of people who +could not do as they liked. + +And here Margaret lived in a long road of red-brick boxes, flecked here +and there with the pink blur of almond-blossom, which debouched in a +flat field where green grass rose up rank through clay mold blackened by +coal-dust from the railway. Mariposa, which was the last house in the +road, did not even have an almond-tree. In the front garden, which +seemed to be imperfectly reclaimed from the greasy field, yellow crocus +and some sodden squills just winked, and the back, where a man was +handling a spade without mastery, presented the austere appearance of an +allotment. And not only did Margaret live in this place; she also +belonged to it. When she opened the door she gazed at me with watering +eyes, and in perplexity stroked her disordered hair with a floury hand. +Her face was sallow with heat, and beads of perspiration glittered in +the deep, dragging line between her nostrils and the corners of her +mouth. She said: + +"He's home?" + +I nodded. + +She pulled me inside and slammed the door. + +"Is he well?" she asked. + +"Quite," I answered. + +Her tense stare relaxed. She rubbed her hands on her overall and said: + +"You'll excuse me. It's the girl's day out. If you'll step into the +parlor--" + +So in her parlor I sat and told her how it was with Chris and how +greatly he desired to see her. And as I spoke of his longing I turned my +eyes away from her, because she was sitting on a sofa, upholstered in +velveteen of a sickish green, which was so low that her knees stuck up +in front of her, and she had to clasp them with her seamed, floury +hands. I could see that the skin of her face was damp. And my voice +failed me as I looked round the room, because I saw just what Margaret +had seen that evening fifteen years ago when she had laid her cheek to +the parlor window at Monkey Island. There was the enlarged photograph of +Margaret's mother over the mantelpiece, on the walls were the views of +Tintern Abbey framed in red plush, between the rickety legs of the china +cupboard was the sewing-machine, and tucked into the corner between my +chair and the fender were a pair of carpet slippers. All her life long +Margaret, who in her time had partaken of the supreme dignity of a +requited love, had lived with men who wore carpet slippers in the house. +I turned my eyes away again, and this time looked down the garden at the +figure that was not so much digging as exhibiting his incapacity to +deal with a spade. He was sneezing very frequently, and his sneezes made +the unbuckled straps at the back of his waistcoat wag violently. I +supposed him to be Mr. William Grey. + +I had finished the statement of our sad case, and I saw that though she +had not moved, clasping her knees in a set, hideous attitude, the tears +were rolling down her cheeks. + +"Oh, don't! Oh, don't!" I exclaimed, standing up. Her tear-stained +immobility touched the heart. "He's not so bad; he'll get quite well." + +"I know, I know," she said miserably. "I don't believe that anything bad +could be allowed to happen to Chris for long. And I'm sure," she said +kindly, "you're looking after him beautifully. But when a thing you had +thought had ended fifteen years ago starts all over again, and you're +very tired--" She drew a hand across her tears, her damp skin, her +rough, bagging overall. "I'm hot. I've been baking. You can't get a girl +nowadays that understands the baking." Her gaze became remote and +tender, and she said in a manner that was at once argumentative and +narrative, as though she were telling the whole story to a neighbor over +the garden wall: "I suppose I ought to say that he isn't right in his +head, and that I'm married, so we'd better not meet; but, oh," she +cried, and I felt as though, after much fumbling with damp matches and +many doubts as to whether there was any oil in the wick, I had lit the +lamp at last, "I want to see him so! It's wrong, I know it's wrong, but +I am so glad Chris wants to see me, too!" + +"You'll do him good." I found myself raising my voice to the pitch she +had suddenly attained as though to keep her at it. "Come now!" + +She dipped suddenly to compassion. + +"But the young lady?" she asked timidly. "She was upset the last time. +I've often wondered if I did right in going. Even if Chris has +forgotten, he'll want to do what's right. He couldn't bear to hurt her." + +"That's true," I said. "You do know our Chris. He watches her out of the +corner of his eye, even when he's feeling at his worst, to see she isn't +wincing. But she sent me here to-day." + +"Oh!" cried Margaret, glowing, "she must have a lovely nature!" + +I lost suddenly the thread of the conversation. I could not talk about +Kitty. She appeared to me at that moment a faceless figure with +flounces, just as most of the servants at Baldry Court appear to me as +faceless figures with caps and aprons. There were only two real people +in the world, Chris and this woman whose personality was sounding +through her squalor like a beautiful voice singing in a darkened room, +and I was absorbed in a mental vision of them. You know how the saints +and the prophets are depicted in the steel engravings in old Bibles; so +they were standing, in flowing white robes on rocks against a +pitch-black sky, a strong light beating on their eyes upturned in +ecstasy and their hand outstretched to receive the spiritual blessing of +which the fierce rays were an emanation. Into that rapt silence I +desired to break, and I whispered irrelevantly, "Oh, nothing, nothing is +too good for Chris!" while I said to myself, "If she really were like +that, solemn and beatified!" and my eyes returned to look despairingly +on her ugliness. But she really was like that. She had responded to my +irrelevant murmur of adoration by just such a solemn and beatified +appearance as I had imagined. Her grave eyes were upturned, her worn +hands lay palm upward on her knees, as though to receive the love of +which her radiance was an emanation. And then, at a sound in the +kitchen, she snatched my exaltation from me by suddenly turning dull. + +"I think that's Mr. Grey come in from his gardening. You'll excuse me." + +Through the open door I heard a voice saying in a way which suggested +that its production involved much agitation of a prominent Adam's apple: + +"Well, dear, seeing you had a friend, I thought I'd better slip up and +change my gardening trousers." I do not know what she said to him, but +her voice was soft and comforting and occasionally girlish and +interrupted by laughter, and I perceived from its sound that with +characteristic gravity she had accepted it as her mission to keep +loveliness and excitement alive in his life. + +"An old friend of mine has been wounded," was the only phrase I heard; +but when she drew him out into the garden under the window she had +evidently explained the situation away, for he listened docilely as she +said: "I've made some rock-cakes for your tea. And if I'm late for +supper, there's a dish of macaroni cheese you must put in the oven and a +tin of tomatoes to eat with it. And there is a little rhubarb and +shape." She told them off on her fingers, and then whisked him round and +buckled the wagging straps at the back of his waistcoat. He was a lank +man, with curly gray hairs growing from every place where it is +inadvisable that hairs should grow,--from the inside of his ears, from +his nostrils, on the back of his hands,--but he looked pleased when she +touched him, and he said in a devoted way: + +"Very well, dear. Don't worry about me. I'll trot along after tea and +have a game of draughts with Brown." + +She answered: + +"Yes, dear. And now get on with those cabbages. You're going to keep me +in lovely cabbages, just as you did last year, won't you, darling?" She +linked arms with him and took him back to his digging. + +When she came back into the parlor again she was wearing that yellowish +raincoat, that hat with hearse plumes nodding over its sticky straw, +that gray alpaca skirt. I first defensively clenched my hands. It would +have been such agony to the finger-tips to touch any part of her +apparel. And then I thought of Chris, to whom a second before I had +hoped to bring a serene comforter. I perceived clearly that that +ecstatic woman lifting her eyes and her hands to the benediction of love +was Margaret as she existed in eternity; but this was Margaret as she +existed in time, as the fifteen years between Monkey Island and this +damp day in Ladysmith Road had irreparably made her. Well, I had +promised to bring her to him. + +She said: + +"I'm ready," and against that simple view of her condition I had no +argument. But when she paused by the painted drainpipe in the hall and +peered under contracted brows for that unveracious tortoiseshell handle, +I said hastily: + +"Oh, don't trouble about an umbrella." + +"I'll maybe need it walking home," she pondered. + +"But the car will bring you back." + +"Oh, that will be lovely," she said, and laughed nervously, looking very +plain. "Do you know, I know the way we're coming together is terrible, +but I can't think of a meeting with Chris as anything but a kind of +treat. I've got a sort of party feeling now." + +As she held the gate open for me she looked back at the house. + +"It's a horrid little house, isn't it?" she asked. She evidently desired +sanction for a long-suppressed discontent. + +"It isn't very nice," I agreed. + +"They put cows sometimes into the field at the back," she went on, as if +conscientiously counting her blessings. "I like that; but otherwise it +isn't much." + +"But it's got a very pretty name," I said, laying my hand on the raised +metal letters that spelled "Mariposa" across the gate. + +"Ah, isn't it!" she exclaimed, with the smile of the inveterate +romanticist. "It's Spanish, you know, for butterfly." + +Once we were in the automobile, she became a little sullen with shyness, +because she felt herself so big and clumsy, her clothes so coarse, +against the fine upholstery, the silver vase of Christmas roses, and all +the deliberate delicacy of Kitty's car. She was afraid of the chauffeur, +as the poor are always afraid of men-servants, and ducked her head when +he got out to start the car. To recall her to ease and beauty I told her +that though Chris had told me all about their meeting, he knew nothing +of their parting, and that I wished very much to hear what had happened. + +In a deep, embarrassed voice she began to tell me about Monkey Island. +It was strange how both Chris and she spoke of it as though it were not +a place, but a magic state which largely explained the actions performed +in it. Strange, too, that both of them should describe meticulously the +one white hawthorn that stood among the poplars by the ferry-side. I +suppose a thing that one has looked at with some one one loves acquires +forever after a special significance. She said that her father had gone +there when she was fourteen. After Mrs. Arlington had been taken away by +a swift and painful death the cheer of his Windsor hostelry had become +intolerable to the man; he regarded the whole world as her grave, and +the tipsy sergeants in scarlet, the carter crying for a pint of +four-half, and even the mares dipping their mild noses to the trough in +the courtyard seemed to be defiling it by their happy, simple appetites. +So they went to Monkey Island, the utter difference of which was a +healing, and settled down happily in its green silence. All the summer +was lovely; quiet, kind people, schoolmasters who fished, men who wrote +books, married couples who still loved solitude, used to come and stay +in the bright little inn. And all the winter was lovely, too; her +temperament could see an adventure in taking up the carpets because the +Thames was coming into the coffee-room. That was the tale of her life +for four years. With her head on one side, and the air of judging this +question by the light of experience, she pronounced that she had then +been happy. + +Then one April afternoon Chris landed at the island, and by the first +clean, quick movement of tying up his boat made her his slave. I could +imagine that it would be so. He was wonderful when he was young; he +possessed in great measure the loveliness of young men, which is like +the loveliness of the spry foal or the sapling, but in him it was vexed +into a serious and moving beauty by the inhabiting soul. When the +sunlight lay on him, disclosing the gold hairs on his brown head, or +when he was subject to any other physical pleasure, there was always +reserve in his response to it. From his eyes, which, though gray, were +somehow dark with speculation, one perceived that he was distracted by +participation in some spiritual drama. To see him was to desire intimacy +with him, so that one might intervene between this body, which was +formed for happiness, and this soul, which cherished so deep a faith in +tragedy. Well, she gave Chris ducks' eggs for tea. "No one ever had +ducks' eggs like father did. It was his way of feeding them. It didn't +pay, of course, but they were good." Before the afternoon was out he +had snared them all with the silken net of his fine manners; he had +talked to father about his poultry and had walked about the runs and +shown an intelligent interest, and then, as on many succeeding days, he +had laid his charm at the girl's feet. "But I thought he must be some +one royal, and when he kept on coming, I thought it must be for the +ducks' eggs." Then her damp, dull skin flushed suddenly to a warm glory, +and she began to stammer. + +"I know all about that," I said quickly. I was more afraid that I should +feel envy or any base passion in the presence of this woman than I have +ever been of anything else in my life. "I want to hear how you came to +part." + +"Oh," she cried, "it was the silliest quarrel! We had known how we felt +for just a week. Such a week! Lovely weather we had, and father hadn't +noticed anything. I didn't want him to, because I thought father might +want the marriage soon and think any delay a slight on me, and I knew we +would have to wait. Eh! I can remember saying to myself, 'Perhaps five +years,' trying to make it as bad as could be so that if we could marry +sooner it would be a lovely surprise." She repeated with soft irony, +"Perhaps five years!" + +"Well, then, one Thursday afternoon I'd gone on the back-water with Bert +Batchard, nephew to Mr. Batchard who keeps the inn at Surly Hall. I was +laughing out loud because he did row so funny! He's a town chap, and he +was handling those oars for all the world as though they were teaspoons. +The old dinghy just sat on the water like a hen on its chicks and didn't +move, and he so sure of himself! I just sat and laughed and laughed. +Then all of a sudden, _clang! clang!_ the bell at the ferry. And there +was Chris, standing up there among the poplars, his brows straight and +black, and not a smile on him. I felt very bad. We picked him up in the +dinghy and took him across, and still he didn't smile. He and I got on +the island, and Bert, who saw there was something wrong, said, 'Well, +I'll toddle off.' And there I was on the lawn with Chris, and he angry +and somehow miles away. I remember him saying, 'Here am I coming to say +good-by, because I must go away to-night, and I find you larking with +that bounder.' And I said: 'O Chris, I've known Bert all my life through +him coming to his uncle for the holidays, and we weren't larking. It was +only that he couldn't row.' And he went on talking, and then it struck +me he wasn't trusting me as he would trust a girl of his own class, and +I told him so, and he went on being cruel. Oh, don't make me remember +the things we said to each other! It doesn't help. At last I said +something awful, and he said: 'Very well; I agree. I'll go,' and he +walked over to the boy, who was chopping wood, and got him to take him +over in the punt. As he passed me he turned away his face. Well, that's +all." + +I had got the key at last. There had been a spring at Baldry Court +fifteen years ago that was desolate for all that there was beautiful +weather. Chris had lingered with Uncle Ambrose in his Thames-side +rectory as he had never lingered before, and old Mr. Baldry was filling +the house with a sense of hot, apoplectic misery. All day he was up in +town at the office, and without explanation he had discontinued his +noontide habit of ringing up his wife. All night he used to sit in the +library looking over his papers and ledgers; often in the mornings the +housemaids would find him asleep across his desk, very red, yet looking +dead. The men he brought home to dinner treated him with a kindness and +consideration which were not the tributes that that victorious and +trumpeting personality was accustomed to exact, and in the course of +conversation with them he dropped braggart hints of impending ruin which +he would have found it humiliating to address to us directly. At last +there came a morning when he said to Mrs. Baldry across the +breakfast-table: "I've sent for Chris. If the boy's worth his salt--" It +was an appalling admission, like the groan of an old ship as her timbers +shiver, from a man who doubted the capacity of his son, as fathers +always doubt the capacity of the children born of their old age. + +It was that evening, as I went down to see the new baby at the lodge, +that I met Chris coming up the drive. Through the blue twilight his +white face had had a drowned look. I remembered it well, because my +surprise that he passed me without seeing me had made me perceive for +the first time that he had never seen me at all save in the most +cursory fashion. On the eye of his mind, I realized thenceforward, I had +hardly impinged. That night he talked till late with his father, and in +the morning he had started for Mexico to keep the mines going, to keep +the firm's head above water and Baldry Court sleek and hospitable--to +keep everything bright and splendid save only his youth, which ever +after that was dulled by care. + +Something of this I told Margaret, to which she answered, "Oh, I know +all that," and went on with her story. On Sunday, three days after their +quarrel, Mr. Allington was found dead in his bed. "I wanted Chris so +badly; but he never came, he never wrote," and she fell into a lethargic +disposition to sit all day and watch the Thames flow by, from which she +was hardly roused by finding that her father had left her nothing save +an income of twenty pounds a year from unrealizable stock. She +negotiated the transfer of the lease of the inn to a publican, and, +after exacting a promise from the new hostess that she would forward all +letters that might come, embarked upon an increasingly unfortunate +career as a mother's help. First she fell into the hands of a noble +Irish family in reduced circumstances, whose conduct in running away and +leaving her in a Brighton hotel with her wages and her bill unpaid still +distressed and perplexed her. "Why did they do it?" she asked. "I liked +them so. The baby was a darling, and Mrs. Murphy had such a nice way of +speaking. But it almost makes one think evil of people when they do a +thing like that." After two years of less sensational, but still uneasy, +adventures, she had come upon a large and needy family called Watson who +lived at Chiswick, and almost immediately Mr. William Grey, who was Mrs. +Watson's brother, had begun a courtship that I suspected of consisting +of an incessant whining up at her protective instinct. "Mr. Grey," she +said softly, as though stating his chief aim to affection, "has never +been very successful." And still no letter ever came. + +So, five years after she left Monkey Island, she married Mr. William +Grey. Soon after their marriage he lost his job and was for some time +out of work; later he developed a weak chest that needed constant +attention. "But it all helped to pass the time," she said cheerfully and +without irony. So it happened that it was not till two years after that +she had the chance of revisiting Monkey Island. At first there was no +money, and later there was the necessity of seeking the healthful +breezes of Brighton or Bognor or Southend, which were the places in +which Mr. Grey's chest oddly elected to thrive. And when these obstacles +were removed, she was lethargic; also she had heard that the inn was +not being managed as it ought to be, and she could not have borne to see +the green home of her youth defiled. But then there had come a time when +she had been very much upset,--she glared a little wildly at me as she +said this, as if she would faint if I asked her any questions,--and then +she had suddenly become obsessed with a desire to see Monkey Island once +more. + +"Well, when we got to the ferry, Mr. Grey says, 'But mercy, Margaret, +there's water all round it!' and I said, 'William, that's just it.'" +They found that the island was clean and decorous again, for it had only +recently changed hands. "Father and daughter the new people are, just +like me and dad, and Mr. Taylor's something of dad's cut, too, but he +comes from the North. But Miss Taylor's much handsomer than I ever was; +a really big woman she is, and such lovely golden hair. They were very +kind when I told them who I was; gave us duck and green peas for lunch +and I did think of dad. They were nothing like as good as his ducks, but +then I expect they paid. And then Miss Taylor took William out to look +at the garden. I knew he didn't like it, for he's always shy with a +showy woman, and I was going after them when Mr. Taylor said: 'Here, +stop a minute. I've got something here that may interest you. Just come +in here. He took me up to the roller desk in the office, and out of the +drawer he took twelve letters addressed to me in Chris's handwriting. + +"He was a kind man. He put me into a chair and called Miss Taylor in and +told her to keep William out in the garden as long as possible. At last +I said, 'But Mrs. Hitchcock did say she'd send my letters on.' And he +said, 'Mrs. Hitchcock hadn't been here three weeks before she bolted +with a bookie from Bray, and after that Hitchcock mixed his drinks and +got careless.' He said they had found these stuffed into the desk." + +"And what was in them?" + +"For a long time I did not read them; I thought it was against my duty +as a wife. But when I got that telegram saying he was wounded, I went +up-stairs and read those letters. Oh, those letters!" + +She bowed her head and wept. + +As the car swung through the gates of Baldry Court she sat up and dried +her eyes. She looked out at the strip of turf, so bright that one would +think it wet, and lighted here and there with snowdrops and scillas and +crocuses, that runs between the drive and the tangle of silver birch and +bramble and fern. There is no esthetic reason for that border; the +common outside looks lovelier where it fringes the road with dark gorse +and rough amber grasses. Its use is purely philosophic; it proclaims +that here we esteem only controlled beauty, that the wild will not have +its way within our gates, that it must be made delicate and decorated +into felicity. Surely, she must see that this was no place for beauty +that had been not mellowed, but lacerated, by time, that no one +accustomed to live here could help wincing at such external dinginess as +hers. But instead she said: "It's a big place. Chris must have worked +hard to keep all this up." The pity of this woman was like a flaming +sword. No one had ever before pitied Chris for the magnificence of +Baldry Court. It had been our pretense that by wearing costly clothes +and organizing a costly life we had been the servants of his desire. But +she revealed the truth that, although he did indeed desire a magnificent +house, it was a house not built with hands. + +But that she was wise, that the angels would of a certainty be on her +side, did not make her any the less physically offensive to our +atmosphere. All my doubts as to the wisdom of my expedition revived in +the little time we had to spend in the hall waiting for the tea which I +had ordered in the hope that it might help Margaret to compose her +distressed face. She hovered with her back to the oak table, fumbling +with her thread gloves, winking her tear-red eyes, tapping with her foot +on the carpet, throwing her weight from one leg to the other, and I +constantly contrasted her appearance by some clumsiness with the new +acquisition of Kitty's decorative genius that stood so close behind her +on the table that I was afraid it might be upset by one of her spasmodic +movements. This was a shallow black bowl in the center of which crouched +on all fours a white, naked nymph, her small head intently drooped to +the white flowers that floated on the black waters all around her. +Beside the pure black of the bowl her rusty plumes looked horrible; +beside that white nymph, eternally innocent of all but the +contemplation of beauty, her opaque skin and her suffering were +offensive; beside its air of being the coolly conceived and leisurely +executed production of a hand and brain lifted by their rare quality to +the service of the not absolutely necessary, her appearance of having +only for the moment ceased to cope with a vexed and needy environment +struck me as a cancerous blot on the fair world. Perhaps it was absurd +to pay attention to this indictment of a noble woman by a potter's toy, +but that toy happened to be also a little image of Chris's conception of +women. Exquisite we were according to our equipment, unflushed by +appetite or passion, even noble passion, our small heads bent intently +on the white flowers of luxury floating on the black waters of life, he +had known none other than us. With such a mental habit a man could not +help but wince at Margaret. I drank my tea very slowly because I +previsioned what must happen in the next five minutes. Down there by +the pond he would turn at the sound of those heavy boots on the path, +and with one glance he would assess the age of her, the rubbed surface +of her, the torn fine texture, and he would show to her squalid mask +just such a blank face as he had shown to Kitty's piteous mask the night +before. Although I had a gift for self-pity, I knew her case would then +be worse than mine; for it would be worse to see, as she would see, the +ardor in his eyes give place to kindliness than never to have ardor +there. He would hesitate; she would make one of her harassed gestures, +and trail away with that wet, patient look which was her special line. +He would go back to his boyish sport with the skiff; I hoped the brown +waters would not seem too kind. She would go back to Mariposa, sit on +her bed, and read those letters. + +"And now," she said brightly as I put down my cup, "may I see Chris?" +She had not a doubt of the enterprise. + +I took her into the drawing-room and opened one of the French windows. + +"Go past the cedars to the pond," I told her. "He is rowing there." + +"That is nice," she said. "He always looks so lovely in a boat." + +I called after her, trying to hint the possibility of a panic breakdown +to their meeting: + +"You'll find he's altered--" + +She cried gleefully: + +"Oh, I shall know him." + +As I went up-stairs I became aware that I was near to a bodily collapse; +I suppose the truth is that I was physically so jealous of Margaret that +it was making me ill. But suddenly, like a tired person dropping a +weight that they know to be precious, but cannot carry for another +minute, my mind refused to consider the situation any longer and turned +to the perception of material things. I leaned over the balustrade and +looked down at the fineness of the hall: the deliberate figure of the +nymph in her circle of black waters, the clear pink-and-white of Kitty's +chintz, the limpid surface of the oak, the broken burning of all the gay +reflected colors in the paneled walls. I said to myself, "If everything +else goes, there is always this to fall back on," and I went on, pleased +that I was wearing delicate stuffs and that I had a smooth skin, pleased +that the walls of the corridor were so soft a twilight blue, pleased +that through a far-off open door there came a stream of light that made +the carpet blaze its stronger blue. And when I saw that it was the +nursery door that was open, and that Kitty was sitting in Nanny's big +chair by the window, I did not care about the peaked face she lifted, +its fairness palely gilt by the March sunlight, or the tremendous +implications of the fact that she had come to her dead child's nursery +although she had not washed her hair. I said sternly, because she had +forgotten that we lived in the impregnable fort of a gracious life: + +"O Kitty, that poor battered thing outside!" + +She stared so grimly out into the garden that my eyes followed her +stare. + +It was one of those draggled days, common at the end of March when a +garden looks at its worst. The wind that was rolling up to check a show +of sunshine had taken away the cedar's dignity of solid blue shade, had +set the black firs beating their arms together, and had filled the sky +with glaring gray clouds that dimmed the brilliance of the crocuses. It +was to give gardens a point on days such as these, when the planned +climax of this flower-bed and that stately tree goes for nothing, that +the old gardeners raised statues in their lawns and walks, large things +with a subject, mossy Tritons or nymphs with an urn, that held the eye. +Even so in this unrestful garden one's eyes lay on the figure in the +yellow raincoat that was standing still in the middle of the lawn. + +How her near presence had been known by Chris I do not understand, but +there he was, running across the lawn as night after night I had seen +him in my dreams running across No-Man's-Land. I knew that so he would +close his eyes as he ran; I knew that so he would pitch on his knees +when he reached safety. I assumed naturally that at Margaret's feet lay +safety even before I saw her arms brace him under the armpits with a +gesture that was not passionate, but rather the movement of one carrying +a wounded man from under fire. But even when she had raised his head to +the level of her lips, the central issue was not decided. I covered my +eyes and said aloud, "In a minute he will see her face, her hands." But +although it was a long time before I looked again, they were still +clinging breast to breast. It was as though her embrace fed him, he +looked so strong as he broke away. They stood with clasped hands looking +at one another. They looked straight, they looked delightedly! And then, +as if resuming a conversation tiresomely interrupted by some social +obligation, they drew together again, and passed under the tossing +branches of the cedar to the wood beyond. I reflected, while Kitty +shrilly wept, how entirely right Chris had been in his assertion that to +lovers innumerable things do not matter. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +After the automobile had taken Margaret away Chris came to us as we sat +in the drawing-room, and, after standing for a while in the glow of the +fire, hesitantly said: + +"I want to tell you that I know it is all right. Margaret has explained +to me." + +Kitty crumpled her sewing into a white ball. + +"You mean, I suppose, that you know I'm your wife. I'm pleased that you +describe that as knowing 'it's all right,' and grateful that you have +accepted it at last--on Margaret's authority. This is an occasion that +would make any wife proud." + +Her irony was as faintly acrid as a caraway-seed, and never afterward +did she reach even that low pitch of violence; for from that mild, +forward droop of the head with which he received the mental lunge she +realized suddenly that this was no pretense and that something as +impassable as death lay between them. Thereafter his proceedings evoked +no comment but suffering. There was nothing to say when all day, save +for those hours of the afternoon that Margaret spent with him, he sat +like a blind man waiting for his darkness to lift. There was nothing to +say when he did not seem to see our flowers, yet kept till they rotted +the daffodils which Margaret brought from the garden that looked like an +allotment. + +So Kitty lay about like a broken doll, face downward on a sofa, with one +limp arm dangling to the floor, or protruding stiff feet in fantastic +slippers from the end of her curtained bed; and I tried to make my +permanent wear that mood which had mitigated the end of my journey with +Margaret--a mood of intense perception in which my strained mind settled +on every vivid object that came under my eyes and tried to identify +myself with its brightness and its lack of human passion. This does not +mean that I passed my day in a state of joyous appreciation; it means +that many times in the lanes of Harrowweald I have stood for long +looking up at a fine tracery of bare boughs against the hard, high +spring sky while the cold wind rushed through my skirts and chilled me +to the bone, because I was afraid that when I moved my body and my +attention I might begin to think. Indeed, grief is not the clear +melancholy the young believe it. It is like a siege in a tropical city. +The skin dries and the throat parches as though one were living in the +heat of the desert; water and wine taste warm in the mouth, and food is +of the substance of the sand; one snarls at one's company; thoughts +prick one through sleep like mosquitos. + +A week after my journey to Wealdstone I went to Kitty to ask her to come +for a walk with me and found her stretched on her pillows, holding a +review of her underclothing. She refused bitterly and added: + +"Be back early. Remember Dr. Gilbert Anderson is coming at half-past +four. He's our last hope. And tell that woman she must see him. He says +he wants to see everybody concerned." She continued to look wanly at the +frail, luminous silks her maid brought her as a speculator who had +cornered an article for which there had been no demand might look at his +damnably numerous, damnably unprofitable freights. So I went out alone +into a soft day, with the dispelled winter lurking above in high dark +clouds, under which there ran quick, fresh currents of air and broken +shafts of insistent sunshine that spread a gray clarity of light in +which every color showed sharp and strong. On the breast that +Harrowweald turns to the south they had set a lambing-yard. The +pale-lavender hurdles and gold-strewn straw were new gay notes on the +opaque winter green of the slope, and the apprehensive bleatings of the +ewes wound about the hill like a river of sound as they were driven up a +lane hidden by the hedge. The lines of bare elms darkening the plains +below made it seem as though the tide of winter had fallen and left this +bare and sparkling in the spring. I liked it so much that I opened the +gate and went and sat down on a tree which had been torn up by the roots +in the great gale last year, but had not yet resigned itself to death, +and was bravely decking its boughs with purple elm-flowers. + +That pleased me, too, and I wished I had some one with me to enjoy this +artless little show of the new year. I had not really wanted Kitty; the +companions I needed were Chris and Margaret. Chris would have talked, as +he loved to do when he looked at leisure on a broad valley, about ideas +which he had to exclude from his ordinary hours lest they should break +the power of business over his mind, and Margaret would have gravely +watched the argument from the shadow of her broad hat to see that it +kept true, like a housewife watching a saucepan of milk lest it should +boil over. They were naturally my friends, these gentle, speculative +people. + +Then suddenly I was stunned with jealousy. It was not their love for +each other that caused me such agony at that moment; it was the thought +of the things their eyes had rested upon together. I imagined that white +hawthorn among the poplars by the ferry on which they had looked fifteen +years ago at Monkey Island, and it was more than I could bear. I +thought how even now they might be exclaiming at the green smoke of the +first buds on the brown undergrowth by the pond, and at that I slid off +the tree-trunk and began walking very quickly down the hill. The red +cows drank from the pond cupped by the willow-roots; a raw-boned +stallion danced clumsily because warmth was running through the ground. +I found a stream in the fields and followed it till it became a shining +dike embanked with glowing green and gold mosses in the midst of woods; +and the sight of those things was no sort of joy, because my vision was +solitary. I wanted to end my desperation by leaping from a height, and I +climbed on a knoll and flung myself face downward on the dead leaves +below. + +I was now utterly cut off from Chris. Before, when I looked at him, I +knew an instant ease in the sight of the short golden down on his +cheeks, the ridge of bronze flesh above his thick, fair eyebrows. But +now I was too busy reassuring him by showing a steady, undistorted +profile crowned by a neat, proud sweep of hair instead of the +tear-darkened mask he always feared ever to have enough vitality left +over to enjoy his presence. I spoke in a calm voice full from the chest, +quite unfluted with agony; I read "Country Life" with ponderous +interest; I kept my hands, which I desired to wring, in doeskin gloves +for most of the day; I played with the dogs a great deal and wore my +thickest tweeds; I pretended that the slight heaviness of my features is +a correct indication of my temperament. The only occasion when I could +safely let the sense of him saturate me as it used was when I met +Margaret in the hall as she came or went. She was very different now; +she had a little smile in her eyes, as though she were listening to a +familiar air played far away. Her awkwardness seemed indecision as to +whether she should walk or dance to that distant music; her shabbiness +was no more repulsive than the untidiness of a child who had been so +eager to get to the party that it has not let its nurse finish fastening +its frock. Always she extended a hand in an unbuttoned black thread +glove and said, "It's another fine day again," or diffidently, as Kitty +continued to withhold her presence, "I hope Mrs. Baldry is keeping +well." Then, as our hands touched, he was with us, invoked by our common +adoration. I felt his rough male texture and saw the clear warmth of his +brown and gold coloring; I thought of him with the passion of exile. To +Margaret it was a call, and she moved past me to the garden, holding her +hands in front of her as though she bore invisible gifts, and pausing on +the step of the French window to smile to herself, as if in her heart +she turned over the precious thought: "He is here. This garden holds +him." My moment, my small sole subsistence, ended in a feeling of +jealousy as ugly and unmental as sickness. This was the saddest spring. + +Nothing could mitigate the harshness of our dejection. You may think we +were attaching an altogether fictitious importance to what was merely +the delusion of a madman. But every minute of the day, particularly at +those trying times when he strolled about the house and grounds with the +doctors, smiling courteously, but without joy, and answering their +questions with the crisp politeness of a man shaking off an inquisitive +commercial traveler in a hotel smoking-room, it became plain that if +madness means a liability to wild error about the world Chris was not +mad. It was our peculiar shame that he had rejected us when he had +attained to something saner than sanity. His very loss of memory was a +triumph over the limitations of language which prevent the mass of men +from making explicit statements about their spiritual relationships. If +he had said to Kitty and me, "I do not know you," we would have gaped; +if he had expanded his meaning and said, "You are nothing to me; my +heart is separate from your hearts," we would have wept at an unkindness +he had not intended. But by the blankness of those eyes which saw me +only as a disregarded playmate and Kitty not at all save as a stranger +who had somehow become a decorative presence in his home and the orderer +of his meals he let us know completely where we were. Even though I lay +weeping at it on the dead leaves I was sensible of the bitter rapture +which attends the discovery of any truth. I felt, indeed, a cold +intellectual pride in his refusal to remember his prosperous maturity +and his determined dwelling in the time of his first love, for it showed +him so much saner than the rest of us, who take life as it comes, loaded +with the unessential and the irritating. I was even willing to admit +that this choice of what was to him reality out of all the appearances +so copiously presented by the world, this adroit recovery of the dropped +pearl of beauty, was the act of genius I had always expected from him. +But that did not make less agonizing this exclusion from his life. + +I could not think clearly about it. I suppose that the subject of our +tragedy, written in spiritual terms, was that in Kitty he had turned +from the type of woman that makes the body conqueror of the soul and in +me the type that mediates between the soul and the body and makes them +run even and unhasty like a well-matched pair of carriage horses, and +had given himself to a woman whose bleak habit it was to champion the +soul against the body. But I saw it just as a fantastic act of cruelty +that I could think of only as a conjunction of calamitous images. I +think of it happening somewhere behind the front, at the end of a +straight road that runs by a line of ragged poplars between mud flats +made steel-bright with floods pitted by the soft, slow rain. There, past +a church that lacks its tower, stand a score of houses, each hideous +with patches of bare bricks that show like sores through the ripped-off +plaster and uncovered rafters that stick out like broken bones. There +are people still living here. A slouchy woman sits at the door of a +filthy cottage, counting some dirty linen and waving her bare arm at +some passing soldiers. And at another house there is a general store +with strings of orange onions and bunches of herbs hanging from the +roof, a brown gloom rich with garlic and humming with the flies that +live all the year round in French village shops, a black cat rubbing her +sleepiness against the lintel. It is in there that Chris is standing, +facing across the counter an old man in a blouse, with a scar running +white into the gray thickets of his beard, an old man with a smile at +once lewd and benevolent, repulsive with dirt and yet magnificent by +reason of the Olympian structure of his body. I think he is the soul of +the universe, equally cognizant and disregardful of every living thing, +to whom I am not more dear than the bare-armed slouchy woman at the +neighboring door. And Chris is leaning on the counter, his eyes glazed. +(This is his spirit; his body lies out there in the drizzle, at the +other end of the road.) He is looking down on the two crystal balls that +the old man's foul, strong hands have rolled across to him. In one he +sees Margaret, not in her raincoat and her nodding plumes, but as she is +transfigured in the light of eternity. Long he looks there; then drops a +glance to the other, just long enough to see that in its depths Kitty +and I walk in bright dresses through our glowing gardens. We had +suffered no transfiguration, for we are as we are, and there is nothing +more to us. The whole truth about us lies in our material seeming. He +sighs a deep sigh of delight and puts out his hand to the ball where +Margaret shines. His sleeve catches the other one and sends it down to +crash in a thousand pieces on the floor. The old man's smile continues +to be lewd and benevolent; he is still not more interested in me than in +the bare-armed woman. Chris is wholly inclosed in his intentness on his +chosen crystal. No one weeps for this shattering of our world. + +I stirred on the dead leaves as though I had really heard the breaking +of the globe and cried out, "Gilbert Anderson, Gilbert Anderson must +cure him." Heaven knows that I had no reason for faith in any doctor, +for during the last week so many of them, as sleek as seals with their +neatly brushed hair and their frock-coats, had stood round Chris and +looked at him with the consequenceless deliberation of a plumber. Their +most successful enterprise had been his futile hypnotism. He had +submitted to it as a good-natured man submits to being blindfolded at a +children's party, and under its influence had recovered his memory and +his middle-aged personality, had talked of Kitty with the humorous +tenderness of the English husband, and had looked possessively about +him. But as his mind came out of the control he exposed their lie that +they were dealing with a mere breakdown of the normal process by pushing +away this knowledge and turning to them the blank wall, all the blanker +because it was unconscious, of his resolution not to know. I had +accepted that it would always be so. But at that moment I had so great a +need to throw off my mood of despair, so insupportably loaded with all +the fantastic images to which my fevered mind transmuted the facts of +our tragedy, that I filled myself with a gasping, urgent faith in this +new doctor. I jumped up and pushed through the brambles to the hedge +that divided the preserves in which I was trespassing from our own +woods, breathless because I had let it go past four and I had still to +find Chris and Margaret for the doctor's visit at the half-hour. + +There had been a hardening of the light while I slept that made the +dear, familiar woods rich and sinister, and to the eye, tropical. The +jewel-bright buds on the soot-black boughs, the blue valley distances, +smudged here and there with the pink enamel of villa-roofs, and seen +between the black-and-white intricacies of the birch-trunks and the +luminous gray pillars of the beeches, hurt my wet eyes as might beauty +blazing under an equatorial sun. There was a tropical sense of danger, +too, for I walked as apprehensively as though a snake coiled under every +leaf, because I feared to come on them when he was speaking to her +without looking at her or thinking in silence while he played with her +hand. Embraces do not matter; they merely indicate the will to love, and +may as well be followed by defeat as victory. But disregard means that +now there needs to be no straining of the eyes, no stretching forth of +the hands, no pressing of the lips, because theirs is such a union that +they are no longer aware of the division of their flesh. I know it must +be so; a lonely life gives one opportunities of thinking these things +out. I could not have borne to see signs of how he had achieved this +intimacy with the woman whom a sudden widening of the downward vista +showed as she leaned her bent back, ridged by her cheap stays, against a +birch that some special skill of our forester had made wonderful for its +straight slenderness. Against the clear colors of the bright bare wood +her yellow raincoat made a muddy patch, and as a dead bough dropped near +her she made a squalid dodging movement like a hen. She was not so much +a person as an implication of dreary poverty, like an open door in a +mean house that lets out the smell of cooking cabbage and the screams of +children. Doubtlessly he sat somewhere close to her, lumpishly content. +I thought distractedly how necessary it was that Gilbert Anderson should +cure him, and tried to shout to her, but found my throat full of sobs. +So I broke my way down through the fern and bramble and stood level with +them, though still divided by some yards of broken ground. + +It was not utter dullness not to have anticipated the beauty that I saw. +No one could have told. They had taken the mackintosh rug out of the +dinghy and spread it on this little space of clear grass, I think so +that they could look at a scattering of early primroses in a pool of +white anemones at an oak-tree's foot. She had run her hands over the rug +so that it lay quite smooth and comfortable under him when at last he +felt drowsy and turned on his side to sleep. He lay there in the +confiding relaxation of a sleeping child, his hands unclenched, and his +head thrown back so that the bare throat showed defenselessly. Now he +was asleep and his face undarkened by thought, one saw how very fair he +really was. And she, her mournfully vigilant face pinkened by the cold +river of air sent by the advancing evening through the screen of +rusted-gold bracken behind her, was sitting by him, just watching. + +I have often seen people grouped like that on the common outside our +gates on Bank holidays. Most often the man has a handkerchief over his +face to shade him from the sun, and the woman squats beside him and +peers through the undergrowth to see that the children come to no harm +as they play. It has sometimes seemed to me that there was a +significance about it. You know when one goes into the damp, odorous +coolness of a church in a Catholic country and sees the kneeling +worshipers, their bodies bent stiffly and reluctantly, and yet with +abandonment as though to represent the inevitable bending of the will to +a purpose outside the individual person, or when under any sky one sees +a mother with her child in her arms, something turns in one's heart like +a sword, and one says to oneself, "If humanity forgets these attitudes +there is an end to the world." But people like me, who are not artists, +are never sure about people they don't know. So it was not until now, +when it happened to my friends, when it was my dear Chris and my dear +Margaret who sat thus englobed in peace as in a crystal sphere, that I +knew it was the most significant, as it was the loveliest, attitude in +the world. It means that the woman has gathered the soul of the man into +her soul and is keeping it warm in love and peace so that his body can +rest quiet for a little time. That is a great thing for a woman to do. I +know there are things at least as great for those women whose +independent spirits can ride fearlessly and with interest outside the +home park of their personal relationships, but independence is not the +occupation of most of us. What we desire is greatness such as this, +which had given sleep to the beloved. I had known that he was having bad +nights at Baldry Court in that new room with the jade-green painted +walls and the lapis-lazuli fireplace, which he found with surprise to be +his instead of the remembered little room with the fishing-rods; but I +had not been able to do anything about it. + +It was not fair that by the exercise of a generosity which seemed as +fortuitous a possession as a beautiful voice a woman should be able to +do such wonderful things for a man. For sleep was the least of her gifts +to him. What she had done in leading him into the quiet magic circle +out of our life, out of the splendid house which was not so much a house +as a vast piece of space partitioned off from the universe and decorated +partly for beauty and partly to make our privacy more insolent, out of +the garden where the flowers took thought as to how they should grow and +the wood made as formal as a pillared aisle by forestry, may be judged +from my anguish in being left there alone. Indeed she had been generous +to us all, for at her touch our lives had at last fallen into a pattern; +she was the sober thread the interweaving of which with our scattered +magnificences had somewhat achieved the design that otherwise would not +appear. Perhaps even her dinginess was part of her generosity, for in +order to fit into the pattern one has sometimes to forego something of +one's individual beauty. That is why women like us do not wear such +obviously lovely dresses as cocottes, but clothe ourselves in garments +that by their slight neglect of the possibilities of beauty declare that +there are such things as thrift and restraint and care for the future. +And so I could believe of Margaret that her determined dwelling in +places where there was not enough of anything, her continued exposure of +herself to the grime of squalid living, was unconsciously deliberate. +The deep internal thing that had guided Chris to forgetfulness had +guided her to poverty, so that when the time came for her meeting with +her lover there should be not one intimation of the beauty of suave +flesh to distract him from the message of her soul. I looked upward at +this supreme act of sacrifice and glowed at her private gift to me. My +sleep, though short, was now dreamless. No more did I see his body +rotting into union with that brown texture of corruption which is +No-Man's-Land; no more did I see him slipping softly down the parapet +into the trench; no more did I hear voices talking in a void: "Help me, +old man; I've got no legs--" "I can't, old man; I've got no hands." They +could not take him back to the army as he was. Only that morning as I +went through the library he had raised an appalled face from the pages +of a history of the war. + +"Jenny, it can't be true that they did that to Belgium? Those funny, +quiet, stingy people!" And his soldierly knowledge was as deeply buried +as this memory of that awful August. While her spell endured they could +not send him back into the hell of war. This wonderful, kind woman held +his body as safely as she held his soul. + +I was so grateful that I was forced to go and sit down on the rug beside +her. It was an intrusion, but I wanted to be near her. She did not look +surprised when she turned to me her puckered brows, but smiled through +the ugly fringe of vagrant hairs the weather had plucked from under the +hard rim of her hat. It was part of her loveliness that even if she did +not understand an act she could accept it. + +Presently she leaned over to me across his body and whispered: + +"He's not cold. I put the overcoat on him as soon as he was fairly off. +I've just felt his hands, and they're as warm as toast." If I had +whispered like that I would have wakened him. + +Soon he stirred, groped for her hand, and lay with his cheek against the +rough palm. He was awake, but liked to lie so. + +In a little she shook her hand away and said: + +"Get up and run along to the house and have some hot tea. You'll catch +your death lying out here." + +He caught her hand again. It was evident that for some reason the moment +was charged with ecstasy for them both. + +It seemed as though there was a softer air in this small clearing than +anywhere else in the world. I stood up, with my back against a birch and +said negligently, knowing now that nothing could really threaten them: + +"There is a doctor coming at half-past four who wants to see you both." + +It cast no shadow on their serenity. He smiled upward, still lying on +his back, and hailed me, "Hallo, Jenny." But she made him get up and +help her to fold the rug. + +"It's not right to keep a doctor waiting in these times," she declared, +"so overworked they are, poor men, since the war." As I led the way up +through the woods to the house I heard her prove her point by an +illustrative anecdote about something that had happened down her road. I +heard, too, their footsteps come to a halt for a space. I think her gray +eyes had looked at him so sweetly that he had been constrained to take +her in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +I felt, I remember with the little perk of self-approbation with which +one remembers any sort of accurate premonition even if its fulfilment +means disaster, a cold hand close round my heart as we turned the corner +of the house and came on Dr. Gilbert Anderson. I was startled, to begin +with, by his unmedical appearance. He was a little man with winking blue +eyes, a flushed and crumpled forehead, a little gray mustache that gave +him the profile of an amiable cat, and a lively taste in spotted ties, +and he lacked that appetiteless look which is affected by distinguished +practitioners. He was at once more comical and more suggestive of power +than any other doctor I had ever seen, and this difference was +emphasized by his unexpected occupation. A tennis-ball which he had +discovered somewhere had roused his sporting instincts, and he was +trying at what range it was possible to kick it between two large stones +which he had placed close together in front of the steps up to the +house. It was his chubby absorption in this amusement which accounted +for his first moment of embarrassment. + +"Nobody about in there; we professional men get so little fresh air," he +said bluffly, and blew his nose in a very large handkerchief, from the +folds of which he emerged with perfect self-possession. "You," he said +to Chris, with a naive adoption of the detective tone, "are the +patient." He rolled his blue eye on me, took a good look, and, as he +realized I did not matter, shook off the unnecessary impression like a +dog coming out of water. He faced Margaret as though she were the nurse +in charge of the case and gave her a brisk little nod. "You're Mrs. +Grey. I shall want to talk to you later. Meantime--this man. I'll come +back." He indicated by a windmill gesture that we should go into the +house, and swung off with Chris. + +She obeyed; that sort of woman always does what the doctor orders. But I +delayed for a moment to stare after this singular specialist, to +sidetrack my foreboding by pronouncing him a bounder, to wish, as my +foreboding persisted, that like a servant I could give notice because +there was "always something happening in the house." + +Then, as the obedient figure at the top of the stairs was plainly +shivering under its shoddy clothes in the rising wind that was polishing +the end of the afternoon to brightness, I hastened to lead her into the +hall. We stood about uneasily in its gloaming. Margaret looked round her +and said in a voice flattened by the despondency she evidently shared +with me: "It is nice to have everything ready that people can want and +everything in its place. I used to do it at Monkey Island Inn. It was +not grand like this, of course, but our visitors always came back a +second time." Abstractedly and yet with joy she fingered the fine work +of the table-leg. + +There was a noise above us like the fluttering of doves. Kitty was +coming downstairs in a white serge dress against which her hands were +rosy; a woman with such lovely little hands never needed to wear +flowers. By her kind of physical discipline she had reduced her grief to +no more than a slight darkening under the eyes, and for this moment she +was glowing. I knew it was because she was going to meet a new man and +anticipated the kindling of admiration in his eyes, and I smiled, +contrasting her probable prefiguring of Dr. Anderson with the amiable +rotundity we had just encountered. Not that it would have made any +difference if she had seen him. Beautiful women of her type lose, in +this matter of admiration alone, their otherwise tremendous sense of +class distinction; they are obscurely aware that it is their civilizing +mission to flash the jewel of their beauty before all men, so that they +shall desire it and work to get the wealth to buy it, and thus be +seduced by a present appetite to a tilling of the earth that serves the +future. There is, you know, really room for all of us; we each have our +peculiar use. + +"The doctor's talking to Chris outside," I said. + +"Ah," breathed Kitty. I found, though the occasion was a little grim, +some entertainment in the two women's faces, so mutually intent, so +differently fair, the one a polished surface that reflected light, like +a mirror hung opposite a window, the other a lamp grimed by the smoke of +careless use, but still giving out radiance from its burning oil. +Margaret was smiling wonderingly up at this prettiness, but Kitty seemed +to be doing some brainwork. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Grey?" she said, suddenly shaking out her +cordiality as one shakes out a fan. "It's very kind of you. Won't you go +up-stairs and take off your things?" + +"No, thank you," answered Margaret, shyly, "I shall have to go away so +soon." + +"Ah, do!" begged Kitty, prettily. + +It was, of course, that she did not want Margaret to meet the specialist +in those awful clothes; but I did not darken the situation by explaining +that this disaster had already happened. Instead, I turned to Margaret +an expression which conveyed that this was an act of hospitality the +refusal of which we would find wounding, and to that she yielded, as I +knew she would. She followed me up-stairs and along the corridors very +slowly, like a child paddling in a summer sea. She enjoyed the feeling +of the thick carpet underfoot; she looked lingeringly at the pictures on +the wall; occasionally she put a finger to touch a vase as if by that +she made its preciousness more her own. Her spirit, I could see, was as +deeply concerned about Chris as was mine; but she had such faith in life +that she retained serenity enough to enjoy what beauty she came across +in her period of waiting. Even her enjoyment was indirectly generous. +When she came into my room the backward flinging of her head and her +deep "Oh!" recalled to me what I had long forgotten, how fine were its +proportions, how clever the grooved arch above the window, how like the +evening sky my blue curtains. + +"And the lovely things you have on your dressing-table," she commented. +"You must have very good taste." The charity that changed my riches to a +merit! As I helped her to take off her raincoat and reflected that +Kitty would not be pleased when she saw that the removal of the garment +disclosed a purple blouse of stuff called moirette that servants use for +petticoats, she exclaimed softly Kitty's praises. "I know I shouldn't +make personal remarks, but Mrs. Baldry is lovely. She has three circles +round her neck. I've only two." It was a touching betrayal that she +possessed that intimate knowledge of her own person which comes to women +who have been loved. I could not for the life of me have told you how +many circles there were round my neck. Plainly discontented with herself +in the midst of all this fineness, she said diffidently, "Please, I +would like to do my hair." So I pulled the arm-chair up to the +dressing-table, and leaned on its back while she, sitting shyly on its +very edge, unpinned her two long braids, so thick, so dull. + +"You've lovely hair," I said. + +"I used to have nice hair," she mourned, "but these last few years I've +let myself go." She made half-hearted attempts to smooth the straggling +tendrils on her temples, but presently laid down her brush and clicked +her tongue against her teeth. "I hope that man's not worrying Chris," +she said. + +There was no reassurance ready, so I went to the other side of the room +to put her hat down on a chair, and stayed for a moment to pat its +plumes and wonder if nothing could be done with it. But it was, as +surgeons say, an inoperable case. So I just gloomed at it and wished I +had not let this doctor interpose his plumpness between Chris and +Margaret, who since that afternoon seemed to me as not only a woman whom +it was good to love, but, as a patron saint must appear to a Catholic, +as an intercessory being whose kindliness could be daunted only by some +special and incredibly malicious decision of the Supreme Force. I was +standing with eyes closed and my hands abstractedly stroking the hat +that was the emblem of her martyrdom, and I was thinking of her in a way +that was a prayer to her, when I heard her sharp cry. That she, whose +essence was a patient silence, should cry out sharply, startled me +strangely. I turned quickly. + +She was standing up, and in her hand she held the photograph of Oliver +that I keep on my dressing-table. It is his last photograph, the one +taken just a week before he died. + +"Who is this?" she asked. + +"The only child Chris ever had. He died five years ago." + +"Five years ago?" + +Why did it matter so? + +"Yes," I said. + +"_He_ died five years ago, my Dick." Her eyes grew great. "How old was +he?" + +"Just two." + +"My Dick was two." We both were breathing hard. "Why did he die?" + +"We never knew. He was the loveliest boy, but delicate from his birth. +At the end he just faded away, with the merest cold." + +"So did my Dick--a chill. We thought he would be up and about the next +day, and he just--" + +Her awful gesture of regret was suddenly paralyzed. She seemed to be +fighting her way to a discovery. + +"It's--it's as if," she stammered, "they each had half a life." + +I felt the usual instinct to treat her as though she were ill, because +it was evident that she was sustained by a mystic interpretation of +life. But she had already taught me something, so I stood aside while +she fell on her knees, and wondered why she did not look at the child's +photograph, but pressed it to her bosom, as though to stanch a wound. I +thought, as I have often thought before, that the childless have the +greatest joy in children, for to us they are just slips of immaturity +lovelier than the flowers and with the power over the heart, but to +mothers they are fleshly cables binding one down to such profundities of +feeling as the awful agony that now possessed her. For although I knew I +would have accepted it with rapture because it was the result of +intimacy with Chris, its awfulness appalled me. Not only did it make my +body hurt with sympathy; it shook the ground beneath my feet. For that +her serenity, which a moment before had seemed as steady as the earth +and as all-enveloping as the sky, should be so utterly dispelled made me +aware that I had of late been underestimating the cruelty of the order +of things. Lovers are frustrated; children are not begotten that should +have had the loveliest life; the pale usurpers of their birth die +young. Such a world will not suffer magic circles to endure. + +The parlor-maid knocked at the door. + +"Mrs. Baldry and Dr. Anderson are waiting in the drawing-room, ma'am." + +Margaret reassumed her majesty, and put her white face close to the +glass as she pinned up her braids. + +"I knew there was a something," she moaned, and set the hair-pins all +awry. More she could not say, though I clung to her and begged her; but +the slow gesture with which, as we were about to leave the room, she +laid her hand across the child's photograph somehow convinced me that we +were not to be victorious. + +When we went into the drawing-room we found Dr. Anderson, plump and +expository, balancing himself on the balls of his feet on the hearth-rug +and enjoying the caress of the fire on his calves, while Kitty, showing +against the dark frame of her oak chair like a white rosebud that was +still too innocent to bloom, listened with that slight reservation of +the attention customary in beautiful women. + +"A complete case of amnesia," he was saying as Margaret, white-lipped, +yet less shy than I had ever seen her, went to a seat by the window, and +I sank down on the sofa. "His unconscious self is refusing to let him +resume his relations with his normal life, and so we get this loss of +memory." + +"I've always said," declared Kitty, with an air of good sense, "that if +he would make an effort--" + +"Effort!" He jerked his round head about. "The mental life that can be +controlled by effort isn't the mental life that matters. You've been +stuffed up when you were young with talk about a thing called +self-control, a sort of barmaid of the soul that says, 'Time's up, +gentlemen,' and 'Here, you've had enough.' There's no such thing. +There's a deep self in one, the essential self, that has its wishes. And +if those wishes are suppressed by the superficial self,--the self that +makes, as you say, efforts, and usually makes them with the sole idea of +putting up a good show before the neighbors,--it takes its revenge. Into +the house of conduct erected by the superficial self it sends an +obsession, which doesn't, owing to a twist that the superficial self, +which isn't candid, gives it, seem to bear any relation to the +suppressed wish. A man who really wants to leave his wife develops a +hatred for pickled cabbage which may find vent in performances that lead +straight to the asylum. But that's all technical," he finished bluffly. +"My business to understand it, not yours. The point is, Mr. Baldry's +obsession is that he can't remember the latter years of his life. +Well,"--his winking blue eyes drew us all into a community we hardly +felt,--"what's the suppressed wish of which it's the manifestation?" + +"He wished for nothing," said Kitty. "He was fond of us, and he had a +lot of money." + +"Ah, but he did!" countered the doctor, gleefully. He seemed to be +enjoying it all. "Quite obviously he has forgotten his life here because +he is discontented with it. What clearer proof could you need than the +fact you were just telling me when these ladies came in--that the reason +the War Office didn't wire to you when he was wounded was that he had +forgotten to register his address? Don't you see what that means?" + +"Forgetfulness," shrugged Kitty. "He isn't businesslike." She had always +nourished a doubt as to whether Chris was really, as she put it, +practical, and his income and his international reputation weighed +nothing as against his evident inability to pick up pieces at sales. + +"One forgets only those things that one wants to forget. It's our +business to find out why he wanted to forget this life." + +"He can remember quite well when he is hypnotized," she said +obstructively. She had quite ceased to glow. + +"Oh, hypnotism's a silly trick. It releases the memory of a dissociated +personality which can't be related--not possibly in such an obstinate +case as this--to the waking personality. I'll do it by talking to him. +Getting him to tell his dreams." He beamed at the prospect. "But you--it +would be such a help if you would give me any clue to this discontent." + +"I tell you," said Kitty, "he was not discontented till he went mad." + +He caught the glint of her rising temper. + +"Ah," he said, "madness is an indictment not of the people one lives +with, only of the high gods. If there was anything, it's evident that it +was not your fault." A smile sugared it, and knowing that where he had +to flatter his dissecting hand had not an easy task, he turned to me, +whose general appearance suggests that flattery is not part of my daily +diet. "You, Miss Baldry, you've known him longest." + +"Nothing and everything was wrong," I said at last. "I've always felt +it." A sharp movement of Kitty's body confirmed my deep, old suspicion +that she hated me. + +He went back further than I expected. + +"His relations with his father and mother, now?" + +"His father was old when he was born, and always was a little jealous of +him. His mother was not his sort. She wanted a stupid son who would have +been satisfied with shooting." + +He laid down a remark very softly, like a hunter setting a snare. + +"He turned, then, to sex with a peculiar need." + +It was Margaret who spoke, shuffling her feet awkwardly under her +chair. + +"Yes, he was always dependent." + +We gaped at her who said this of our splendid Chris, and I saw that she +was not as she had been. There was a directness of speech, a straight +stare, that was for her a frenzy. "Doctor," she said, her mild voice +roughened, "what's the use of talking? You can't cure him,"--she caught +her lower lip with her teeth and fought back from the brink of +tears,--"make him happy, I mean. All you can do is to make him +ordinary." + +"I grant you that's all I do," he said. It queerly seemed as though he +was experiencing the relief one feels on meeting an intellectual equal. +"It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of +the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the +place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself." + +She continued without joy: + +"I know how you could bring him back--a memory so strong that it would +recall everything else in spite of his discontent." + +The little man had lost in a moment his glib assurance, his knowingness +about the pathways of the soul. + +"Well, I'm willing to learn." + +"Remind him of the boy," said Margaret. + +The doctor ceased suddenly to balance on the balls of his feet. + +"What boy?" + +"They had a boy." + +He looked at Kitty. + +"You told me nothing of this!" + +"I didn't think it mattered," she answered, and shivered and looked +cold, as she always did at the memory of her unique contact with death. +"He died five years ago." + +He dropped his head back, stared at the cornice, and said with the soft +malignity of a clever person dealing with the slow-witted. + +"These subtle discontents are often the most difficult to deal with." +Sharply he turned to Margaret. "How would you remind him?" + +"Take him something the boy wore, some toy he played with." + +Their eyes met wisely. + +"It would have to be you that did it." + +Her face assented. + +Kitty said: + +"I don't understand. How does it matter so much?" She repeated it twice +before she broke the silence that Margaret's wisdom had brought down on +us. Then Dr. Anderson, rattling the keys in his trousers-pockets and +swelling red and perturbed, answered: + +"I don't know, but it does." + +Kitty's voice soared in satisfaction. + +"Oh, then it's very simple. Mrs. Grey can do it now. Jenny, take Mrs. +Grey up to the nursery. There are lots of things up there." + +Margaret made no movement, but continued to sit with her heavy boots +resting on the edge of their soles. Dr. Anderson searched Kitty's face, +exclaimed, "Oh, well!" and flung himself into an arm-chair so suddenly +that the springs spoke. Margaret smiled at that and turned to me, "Yes, +take me to the nursery, please." Yet as I walked beside her up the +stairs I knew this compliance was not the indication of any melting of +this new steely sternness. The very breathing that I heard as I knelt +beside her at the nursery door and eased the disused lock seemed to come +from a different and a harsher body than had been hers before. I did not +wonder that she was feeling bleak, since in a few moments she was to go +out and say the words that would end all her happiness, that would +destroy all the gifts her generosity had so difficultly amassed. Well, +that is the kind of thing one has to do in this life. + +But hardly had the door opened and disclosed the empty, sunny spaces +swimming with motes before her old sweetness flowered again. She moved +forward slowly, tremulous and responsive and pleased, as though the +room's loveliness was a gift to her. She stretched out her hands to the +clear sapphire walls and the bright fresco of birds and animals with a +young delight. So, I thought, might a bride go about the house her +husband secretly prepared for her. Yet when she reached the hearth and +stood with her hands behind her on the fireguard, looking about her at +all the exquisite devices of our nursery to rivet health and amusement +on our reluctant little visitor, it was so apparent that she was a +mother that I could not imagine how it was that I had not always known +it. It has sometimes happened that painters who have kept close enough +to earth to see a heavenly vision have made pictures of the assumption +of the Blessed Virgin which do indeed show women who could bring God +into the world by the passion of their motherhood. "Let there be life," +their suspended bodies seem to cry out to the universe about them, and +the very clouds under their feet change into cherubim. As Margaret stood +there, her hands pressed palm to palm beneath her chin and a blind smile +on her face, she looked even so. + +"Oh, the fine room!" she cried. "But where's his little cot?" + +"It isn't here. This is the day nursery. The night nursery we didn't +keep. It is just bedroom now." + +Her eyes shone at the thought of the cockered childhood this had been. + +"I couldn't afford to have two nurseries. It makes all the difference to +the wee things." She hung above me for a little as I opened the ottoman +and rummaged among Oliver's clothes. "Ah, the lovely little frocks! Did +she make them? Ah, well, she'd hardly have the time, with this great +house to see to. But I don't care much for baby frocks. The babies +themselves are none the happier for them. It's all show." She went over +to the rocking-horse and gave a ghostly child a ride. For long she +hummed a tuneless song into the sunshine and retreated far away into +some maternal dream. "He was too young for this," she said. "His daddy +must have given him it. I knew it. Men always give them presents above +their age, they're in such a hurry for them to grow up. We like them to +take their time, the loves. But where's his engine? Didn't he love +puffer-trains? Of course he never saw them. You're so far from the +railway station. What a pity! He'd have loved them so. Dick was so happy +when I stopped his pram on the railway-bridge on my way back from the +shops, and he could sit up and see the puffers going by." Her distress +that Oliver had missed this humble pleasure darkened her for a minute. +"Why did he die! You didn't overtax his brain? He wasn't taught his +letters too soon?" + +"Oh, no," I said. I couldn't find the clothes I wanted. "The only thing +that taxed his little brain was the prayers his Scotch nurse taught him, +and he didn't bother much over them. He would say, 'Jesus, tender +leopard,' instead of 'Jesus, tender shepherd,' as if he liked it +better." + +"Did you ever! The things they say! He'd a Scotch nurse. They say +they're very good. I've read in the papers the Queen of Spain has one." +She had gone back to the hearth again, and was playing with the toys on +the mantelpiece. It was odd that she showed no interest in my search for +the most memorable garment. A vivacity which played above her tear-wet +strength, like a ball of St. Elmo's fire on the mast of a stout ship, +made me realize she still was strange. "The toys he had! His nurse +didn't let him have them all at once. She held him up and said, 'Baby, +you must choose!' and he said, 'Teddy, please, Nanny,' and wagged his +head at every word." + +I had laid my hand on them at last. I wished, in the strangest way, that +I had not. Yet of course it had to be. + +"That's just what he did do," I said. + +As she felt the fine kid-skin of the clockwork dog, her face began to +twitch. + +"I thought perhaps my baby had left me because I had so little to give +him. But if a baby could leave all this!" She cried flatly, as though +constant repetition in the night had made it as instinctive a reaction +to suffering as a moan, "I want a child! I want a child!" Her arms +invoked the wasted life that had been squandered in this room. "It's all +gone so wrong," she fretted, and her voice dropped to a solemn whisper. +"They each had only half a life." + +I had to steady her. She could not go to Chris and shock him not only by +her news, but also by her agony. I rose and took her the things I had +found in the ottoman and the toy cupboard. + +"I think these are the best things to take. This is one of the blue +jerseys he used to wear. This is the red ball he and his father used to +play with on the lawn." + +Her hard hunger for the child that was not melted into a tenderness for +the child that had been. She looked broodingly at what I carried, then +laid a kind hand on my arm. + +"You've chosen the very things he will remember. Oh, you poor girl!" + +I found that from her I could accept even pity. + +She nursed the jersey and the ball, changed them from arm to arm, and +held them to her face. + +"I think I know the kind of boy he was--a man from the first." She +kissed them, folded up the jersey, and neatly set the ball upon it on +the ottoman, and regarded them with tears. "There, put them back. That's +all I wanted them for. All I came up here for." + +I stared. + +"To get Chris's boy," she moaned. "You thought I meant to take them out +to Chris?" She wrung her hands; her weak voice quavered at the sternness +of her resolution. "How can I?" + +I grasped her hands. + +"Why should you bring him back?" I said. I might have known there was +deliverance in her yet. + +Her slow mind gathered speed. + +"Either I never should have come," she pleaded, "or you should let him +be." She was arguing not with me, but with the whole hostile, reasonable +world. "Mind you, I wasn't sure if I ought to come the second time, +seeing we both were married and that. I prayed and read the Bible, but +I couldn't get any help. You don't notice how little there is in the +Bible really till you go to it for help. But I've lived a hard life and +I've always done my best for William, and I know nothing in the world +matters so much as happiness. If anybody's happy, you ought to let them +be. So I came again. Let him be. If you knew how happy he was just +pottering round the garden. Men do love a garden. He could just go on. +It can go on so easily." But there was a shade of doubt in her voice; +she was pleading not only with me, but with fate. "You wouldn't let them +take him away to the asylum. You wouldn't stop me coming. The other one +might, but you'd see she didn't. Oh, do just let him be! + +"Put it like this." She made such explanatory gestures as I have seen +cabmen make over their saucers of tea round a shelter. "If my boy had +been a cripple,--he wasn't; he had the loveliest limbs,--and the +doctors had said to me, 'We'll straighten your boy's legs for you, but +he will be in pain all the rest of his life,' I'd not have let them +touch him. + +"I seemed to have to tell them that I knew a way. I suppose it would +have been sly to sit there and not tell them. I told them, anyhow. But, +oh, I can't do it! Go out and put an end to the poor love's happiness. +After the time he's had, the war and all. And then he'll have to go back +there! I can't! I can't!" + +[Illustration: "I oughtn't to do it, ought I?"] + +I felt an ecstatic sense of ease. Everything was going to be right. +Chris was to live in the interminable enjoyment of his youth and love. +There was to be a finality about his happiness which usually belongs +only to loss and calamity; he was to be as happy as a ring cast into the +sea is lost, as a man whose coffin has lain for centuries beneath the +sod is dead. Yet Margaret continued to say, and irritated me by the +implication that the matter was not settled: + +"I oughtn't to do it, ought I?" + +"Of course not! Of course not!" I cried heartily, but the attention died +in her eyes. She stared over my shoulder at the open door, where Kitty +stood. + +The poise of her head had lost its pride, the shadows under her eyes +were black like the marks of blows, and all her loveliness was diverted +to the expression of grief. She held in her arms her Chinese sleeve dog, +a once-prized pet that had fallen from favor and was now only to be met +whining upward for a little love at every passer in the corridors, and +it sprawled leaf-brown across her white frock, wriggling for joy at the +unaccustomed embrace. That she should at last have stooped to lift the +lonely little dog was a sign of her deep unhappiness. Why she had come +up I do not know, nor why her face puckered with tears as she looked in +on us. It was not that she had the slightest intimation of our decision, +for she could not have conceived that we could follow any course but +that which was obviously to her advantage. It was simply that she hated +to see this strange, ugly woman moving about among her things. She +swallowed her tears and passed on, to drift, like a dog, about the +corridors. + +Now, why did Kitty, who was the falsest thing on earth, who was in tune +with every kind of falsity, by merely suffering somehow remind us of +reality? Why did her tears reveal to me what I had learned long ago, but +had forgotten in my frenzied love, that there is a draft that we must +drink or not be fully human? I knew that one must know the truth. I knew +quite well that when one is adult one must raise to one's lips the wine +of the truth, heedless that it is not sweet like milk, but draws the +mouth with its strength, and celebrate communion with reality, or else +walk forever queer and small like a dwarf. Thirst for this sacrament had +made Chris strike away the cup of lies about life that Kitty's white +hands held to him and turn to Margaret with this vast trustful gesture +of his loss of memory. And helped by me, she had forgotten that it is +the first concern of love to safeguard the dignity of the beloved, so +that neither God in his skies nor the boy peering through the hedge +should find in all time one possibility for contempt, and had handed him +the trivial toy of happiness. We had been utterly negligent of his +future, blasphemously careless of the divine essential of his soul. For +if we left him in his magic circle there would come a time when his +delusion turned to a senile idiocy; when his joy at the sight of +Margaret disgusted the flesh because his smiling mouth was slack with +age; when one's eyes no longer followed him caressingly as he went down +to look for the first primroses in the wood, but flitted here and there +defensively to see that nobody was noticing the doddering old man. +Gamekeepers would chat kindly with him, and tap their foreheads as they +passed through the copse; callers would be tactful and dangle bright +talk before him. He who was as a flag flying from our tower would become +a queer-shaped patch of eccentricity on the country-side, the +full-mannered music of his being would become a witless piping in the +bushes. He would not be quite a man. + +I did not know how I could pierce Margaret's simplicity with this last +cruel subtlety, and turned to her, stammering. But she said: + +"Give me the jersey and the ball." + +The rebellion had gone from her eyes, and they were again the seat of +all gentle wisdom. + +"The truth's the truth," she said, "and he must know it." + +I looked up at her, gasping, yet not truly amazed; for I had always +known she could not leave her throne of righteousness for long, and she +repeated, "The truth's the truth," smiling sadly at the strange order of +this earth. + +We kissed not as women, but as lovers do; I think we each embraced that +part of Chris the other had absorbed by her love. She took the jersey +and the ball, and clasped them as though they were a child. When she got +to the door she stopped and leaned against the lintel. Her head fell +back; her eyes closed; her mouth was contorted as though she swallowed +bitter drink. + +I lay face downward on the ottoman and presently heard her poor boots go +creaking down the corridors. Through the feeling of doom that filled the +room as tangibly as a scent I stretched out to the thought of Chris. In +the deep daze of devotion which followed recollection of the fair down +on his cheek, the skin burned brown to the rim of his gray eyes, the +harsh and diffident masculinity of him, I found comfort in remembering +that there was a physical gallantry about him which would still, even +when the worst had happened, leap sometimes to the joy of life. Always, +to the very end, when the sun shone on his face or his horse took his +fences well, he would screw up his eyes and smile that little +stiff-lipped smile. I nursed a feeble glow at that. "We must ride a +lot," I planned. And then Kitty's heels tapped on the polished floor, +and her skirts swished as she sat down in the arm-chair, and I was +distressed by the sense, more tiresome than a flickering light, of some +one fretting. + +She said: + +"I wish she would hurry up. She's got to do it sooner or later." + +My spirit was asleep in horror. Out there Margaret was breaking his +heart and hers, using words like a hammer, looking wise, doing it so +well. + +"Aren't they coming back?" asked Kitty. "I wish you'd look." + +There was nothing in the garden; only a column of birds swinging across +the lake of green light that lay before the sunset. + +A long time after Kitty spoke once more: + +"Jenny, do look again." + +There had fallen a twilight which was a wistfulness of the earth. Under +the cedar-boughs I dimly saw a figure mothering something in her arms. +Almost had she dissolved into the shadows; in another moment the night +would have her. With his back turned on this fading unhappiness Chris +walked across the lawn. He was looking up under his brows at the +over-arching house as though it were a hated place to which, against all +his hopes, business had forced him to return. He stepped aside to avoid +a patch of brightness cast by a lighted window on the grass; lights in +our house were worse than darkness, affection worse than hate elsewhere. +He wore a dreadful, decent smile; I knew how his voice would resolutely +lift in greeting us. He walked not loose-limbed like a boy, as he had +done that very afternoon, but with the soldier's hard tread upon the +heel. It recalled to me that, bad as we were, we were yet not the worst +circumstance of his return. When we had lifted the yoke of our embraces +from his shoulders he would go back to that flooded trench in Flanders, +under that sky more full of flying death than clouds, to that +No-Man's-Land where bullets fall like rain on the rotting faces of the +dead. + +"Jenny, aren't they there?" Kitty asked again. + +"They're both there." + +"Is he coming back?" + +"He's coming back." + +"Jenny! Jenny! How does he look?" + +"Oh,"--how could I say it?--"every inch a soldier." + +She crept behind me to the window, peered over my shoulder and saw. + +I heard her suck in her breath with satisfaction. + +"He's cured!" she whispered slowly. "He's cured!" + +THE END + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER *** + +***** This file should be named 37189.txt or 37189.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/1/8/37189/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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