I hope this letter finds you in the best of health, and I hope you will not think I am taking a liberty to ask if you could meet me by the Tillingham Bridge on the road from Brede Eye to Horns Cross next Thursday afternoon at three p.m. I have something very particular to say to you. Ever since you were kind enough to call this morning and said you would come back any time I wanted I have been thinking that perhaps you would like my freindship. Dear Miss Alard, I hope you do not think I am taking a liberty, and if you do not want my freindship perhaps you will kindly let me know. But ever since you came over with Mr. Peter Alard I thought perhaps you would like my freindship. I must not say any more. But I would like to talk to you on Thursday at three p.m. if you will meet me on the Tillingham Bridge by Dinglesden Farm. I think that is better than me coming to your house—[“yes, I think so too,” said Jenny]—and I should be very much obliged if you would come. My dear Miss Alard I hope you do not think I am taking a liberty on so short an acquaintance, but I feel I should like to be your friend. If you would rather not have my freindship perhaps you will kindly let me know. Having no more to say, I will now draw to a close.
Jenny was half surprised to find herself choking with laughter.
“Here I am, down to brass tacks,” she thought to herself—“I must put this letter with the best parlour and the Sunday clothes” ... then suddenly, deep in her heart—“Oh, the darling! the darling!”
“Your letters seem to be amusing,” said Doris from the other end of the table.
“Yes, they are.”
“I wish mine were. I never seem to get anything but bills. I’m glad you’re more lucky—though I expect it makes a difference not hearing from Jim.”
“Oh, we never corresponded much—we met too often.”
“It was always the other way round with me ... the piles of letters I used to get.... I expect you remember.”
Jenny could remember nothing but a fat letter which appeared every other day for about three weeks, from an Indian civil servant who was presumptuous enough to think himself fit to mate with Alard.
“Well, I’ve had my good times,” continued Doris, “so I oughtn’t to grumble. Things seem to have been different when I was your age. Either it was because there were more men about, or”—she smiled reminiscently. “Anyhow, there weren’t any gaps between. I put an end to it all a little while ago—I had to—one finds these things too wearing ... and I didn’t want to go on like Ninon de l’Enclos—I don’t think it’s dignified.”
“Perhaps not,” said Jenny absently. She was wondering what Doris would say to her letter if she could see it.
After breakfast she took it up to the old schoolroom and read it again. This time it did not make her laugh. Rather, she felt inclined to cry. She thought of Ben Godfrey sitting at the kitchen table with a sheet of note-paper and a penny bottle of ink before him—she saw him wiping his forehead and biting his penholder—she saw him writing out the note over and over again because of the blots and smudges that would come. Yes, she must remember the debit side—that he was not always the splendid young man she saw walking over his fields or driving his trap. There were occasions on which he would appear common, loutish, ignorant.... But, and this was the change—she saw that she loved him all the better for these occasions—these betraying circumstances of letter writing, best parlour and best clothes, which seemed to strip him of his splendour and show him to her as something humble, pathetic and dear.
“Dear Mr. Godfrey,” she said to herself—“I shall be very humbly grateful for your freindship ... and I can’t imagine it spelt any other way.”
She found it very difficult to answer the letter, as she was uncertain of the etiquette which ruled these occasions. Evidently one said little, but said it very often. In the end all she did was to write saying she would meet him on the Tillingham bridge, as he suggested. She thought it was rather rash of him to appoint a tryst on her father’s land, but they could easily go off the road on to the marsh, where they were not likely to be seen.
She posted the letter herself in the box at the end of the drive, then gave herself up to another twenty-four hours’ in reality of waiting.
§ 17
The next day was heavy with the threat of thunder. The ragged sky hung low over the trees, and clouds of dust blew down the lanes, through the aisles of the fennel. Jenny was exactly punctual at her tryst. She did not know whether or not he would expect to be kept waiting, but she had resolved to weigh this new adventure by no false standards of coquetry, and walked boldly on to Dinglesden bridge just as the thin chimes of Conster’s stable-clock came across the fields.
He was nowhere in sight, but in a couple of minutes he appeared, riding this time on a big-boned brown horse, who swung him along at a slow, lurching pace. Evidently he had not expected to find her there before him.
Directly he caught sight of her he jerked the reins and finished the last hundred yards at a canter, pulling up beside her on the crest of the bridge.
“Good-day, Miss Alard. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”
She was pale with shyness. Hitherto she had never, under any circumstances, felt ill at ease with a man, but now she was incomprehensibly too shy to speak. He had dismounted, and was leading his horse towards the gate opening on the marsh by Dinglesden Farm. She found herself walking beside him.
“Bit thundery,” he remarked—“maybe we’ll have a storm.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m not sure—it may blow over. I hope it does, for I’ve still a couple of fields uncut.”
“The hay’s been good this year.”
“Not so bad—but a bit stalky.”
They were through the gate now, walking side by side over the grass-grown, heavy rutted track that leads past the barns of Dinglesden down the Tillingham marsh, between the river and the hop-gardens. Jenny was glad they were off the road—soon they would be out of sight of it. The hop-gardens that covered the slope and threw a steamy, drowsy scent into the heaviness of the day, would hide them completely from anyone who went by. She began to feel very much alone with Godfrey ... and still neither of them spoke. They had not spoken since they had left the road.
Only a few hundred yards brought them to the turn of the valley, where the Tillingham swings southward towards Rye. Behind them the farm and the bridge were shut out by the sloping hop-gardens, before them the marsh wound, a green street, between the sorrel-rusted meadows, with the Mocksteeple standing gaunt and solitary on the hill below Barline.
“It’s very good of you to have come,” said Ben.
“I—I wanted to come.”
He checked his horse, and they stood still.
“You—you don’t think it cheek—I mean, that I’m taking a liberty—in wanting to know you?”
“No....”
“When you came that evening to the farm, I—I wanted to say all sorts of things, and I didn’t like ... for I didn’t know....”
“I should like to be your friend.”
Her voice came firmly at last.
“I should like to be your friend,” she repeated.
She knew what the word “friend” meant in his ears. “My friend” was what a girl of his class would say when she meant “my lover.”
“Well, then....”
He took her hand and blushed.
“Let’s sit down for a bit,” he said.
A stripped and fallen tree lay on the grass, and they sat down on it when he had hitched his horse to the fence of the hop-garden. Long hours seemed to roll by as they sat there side by side ... the sun came out for a moment or two, sending the shadow of the hop-bines racing over the ground. There was a pulse of thunder behind the meadows in the north. Then suddenly, for some unfathomable reason, Jenny began to cry.
At first he seemed paralysed with astonishment, while she leaned forward over her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. But the next moment his arms came round her, drawing her gently up against him, her cheek against his homespun coat that smelt of stables.
“My dear ... my little thing ... don’t cry! What is it?—Are you unhappy? What have I done?”
She could not speak—she could only lift her face to his, trying to smile, trying to tell him with her streaming eyes that she was not unhappy, only silly, only tired. He seemed to understand, for he drew her closer, and she could feel his whole body trembling as he put his mouth shyly against hers.
One or two drops of rain splashed into the ruts, and a moan of wind suddenly came through the hop-bines. He lifted his head, still trembling. He looked at her sidelong, as if for a moment he expected her to be angry with him, to chide his presumption. He would have taken away his arm, but she held it about her.
“You’ll get wet,” he said reluctantly—“we should ought to move.”
“I don’t care—I don’t want to move. Let me stay like this.”
“Then you aren’t angry with me for——”
“Why should I be?”
“Well, we aren’t long acquainted....”
§ 18
During the next two months Jenny grew sweetly familiar with that strip of marsh between the hop-gardens and the River Tillingham. The Mocksteeple, standing out on the hill above the river’s southward bend, had become one of many joyful signs. Once more the drab, ridiculous thing looked down on Alard loves, though now it was not a cynical Alard Squire making sport of the country girls, but an Alard girl tasting true love for the first time with a yeoman. Her earlier love affairs, even that latest one with Jim Parish, became thin, frail things in comparison.
Godfrey was contemptuous of Jim.
“He couldn’t have loved you, or he’d never have let you go. He’d have let his place go first.”
“Would you let Fourhouses go for me, Ben?”
“Reckon I would.”
“Thank God you haven’t got to choose.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t got to choose, for I’d like to show you.” “Well, I’m glad, for whichever way you chose it ud be hard for you.”
“No—not hard.”
“You don’t know, because you’re safe; you haven’t even got to think of it. But I’m sorry for some of our men—yes, for Jim Parish, and even for Peter. You see, it’s not merely choosing for themselves. They have their families to consider. You can’t dish all your relations just because you want to get married.”
Love was making her soft in judgment.
“No relation that had any heart would stand in the way of a young chap’s marrying a good girl. My mother ud sooner turn out and live in a cottage than see me go without a wife.”
“But would you turn your mother out, Ben?”
“We’d all go out together—for my wife.”
His love-making was a delightful blend of diffidence and ardour. At first it had been difficult to show him that she was touchable, approachable to caresses. Yet once she had shown him the way, he had required no more leading. He had a warm, gentle nature, expressing itself naturally in fondness. His love for her seemed to consist in equal parts of passion and affection. It lacked the self-regarding element to which she was accustomed, and though it held all the eager qualities of fire, there was about it a simplicity and a shyness which were new to her. After a time she discovered that he had a mind like a young girl’s, and an experience very nearly as white. He had spent his life in the society of animals and good women, and the animals had taught him to regard them not as symbols of license but as symbols of order, and the women had taught him that they were something more than animals. He had the fundamental cleanness of a man who takes nature naturally.
There had been another surprise for her, too, and this had lain in his attitude towards her position and her family. She discovered that his deference for her was entirely for her as a woman, and he had no particular respect for her as an Alard. His courtship would have been as diffident if she had been the daughter of the farmer of Glasseye or the farmer of Ellenwhorne. He was grateful to her for loving him, and infinitely careful of her love, as a privilege which might be withdrawn, but he saw no condescension in her loving him, no recklessness in her seeking him. Indeed, the only time she found a stiffness in him was when she told him that their love would have to be secret as far as her family was concerned. He had come to see her openly and innocently at Conster, and though luckily her people had been out, and she had been able to convey to the servants that he had only called on business, she had had to warn him that he must not come again.
“But why not?—I’m not ashamed of loving you.”
“It isn’t that, Ben.”
“Nor ashamed of myself, neither.”
“Oh, darling, can’t you understand that it’s because of my parents—what they’ll think and say—and do, if they get the chance?”
“You mean they won’t hold with us marrying?”
“No—they won’t hold with it at all.”
“I expect they’d like you to marry a lord.”
“It isn’t so much a lord that they want as someone with money.”
“Well, I’ve got plenty of that, my lovely.”
“Not what they’d call plenty—they want a really rich man, who’ll be able to put us on our feet again.”
“Reckon he’d be hard to find. You’d need fifty thousand to do that, I reckon.”
Jenny nodded.
“Thank God,” he said, “my lands free.”
“You’re lucky.”
“It’s only because I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, nor my father before me. That piece I bought from your father is the first that Fourhouses has bought for sixty years. We’re not grand landlords, us. Maybe” ... he hesitated a moment ... “your father and mother ud think you were marrying beneath you to marry me. I reckon we’re not gentry, and I was sent to the National School. But my folk have had Fourhouses two hundred year, and we’ve kept ourselves honest, for all that my grandfather married a gipsy. There was a lady I met on leave in Egypt asked me to marry her,” he added naïvely, “and Lord! she was beautiful and had lovely gowns, and was a great man’s widow. But I couldn’t feel rightly towards her, so I declined the favour she would do me, but was honoured all the same. What are you laughing at, duck?”
“Not at you.”
She realised that the war was probably in part responsible for his failure to see the barriers between them—its freedoms coupled with his own inherited consciousness of a good inheritance and an honest history. She was not sorry for this—it showed that he was aware of no maladjustments in their comradeship, in their tastes, views, thoughts, ideas, which now they exchanged freely. It made their courtship much more natural. All she feared was his resentment at her family’s attitude.
But she found him unexpectedly mild on this point. His self-respect was solid and steady enough not to be shaken by what would have upset a man standing less securely. He was proud of his yeoman birth, his prosperous farm and free inheritance, and could laugh at the contempt of struggling, foundering Conster. Moreover, he loved Jenny, and, since she loved him, could forgive those who did not think him good enough for her. He agreed that their engagement should be kept from her people, though it was known to his, till she could find a proper time for disclosing it. Meanwhile they met either at Fourhouses, where the kindly, dignified welcome of his mother and sisters saved their love from any sordid touch of the clandestine, or else, nearer Jenny’s home, at Brede Eye or the Mocksteeple.
As time went on she felt the necessity of taking at least one member of her family into her confidence—partly to make contrivance more easy, and partly as a help in the ultimate crisis which must come before long. Ben was slow in his methods, and did not belong to a class who made marriages in haste, but she knew that the last months of the year would probably be crucial. She would then have somehow to declare herself, and she saw the need for an ally.
Of course there was only Gervase. She knew that he alone was in the least likely to take her part; and in spite of her growing approach to Peter, she realised that it would be folly to turn to him now. He had married a girl whose grandfather Ben Godfrey’s grandfather would have despised, nevertheless he would be horror-stricken at the marriage she proposed to make—he would talk as if she was marrying beneath her, as if she was making herself cheap and degrading her name. She could not bear it.... No, Peter would have to stay outside. Gervase was altogether different—he had accomplished his own revolt, and would encourage hers. Besides, he had always been her special brother, and though lately his new interests and long absences had a trifle estranged them, she knew she had only to turn to him to find their old alliance standing.
It was with this special decision that she came from the Mocksteeple one evening in September. She had told Ben that she meant to confide in Gervase, and he had agreed, though she knew that he too was sorry it could not be Peter. She felt the approach of relief—it would be a relief to have someone with whom she could discuss her difficulties, on whose occasional co-operation she could depend, and whose goodwill would support her during the catastrophic days of disclosure. Gervase seemed greater to her in all these capacities than he seemed to Ben. She knew that Ben thought him a mere boy, whose knowledge of their circumstances might, far from giving them support, actually lead to their confusion. But Jenny still had her queer new respect for Gervase. No doubt he was a hothead, a rather uncritical revolutionary; but his ideas seemed lately to have grown more stable; they seemed less ready-made, more the fruit of his own thinking. His contempt of his people’s gods had no longer such a patent origin in youthful bumptiousness, but seemed rather due to the fact of his having built his own holy places. She wondered what had taught him wisdom—which of the new elements that had lately come into his life. Was it work, religion, love, or merely his growing older?
§ 19
She did not find an opportunity for speaking to him alone till after dinner. He went out, saying that he had some work to do at the garage, and as Rose Alard had dined at Conster and now made the fourth at bridge, Jenny was soon able to slip away after him.
She found him guiding an electric light bulb to and fro among the inward parts of the Ford. Gervase always did his own cleaning and repairs, which meant a lot of hard work, as the run to Ashford must be made every day, no matter how dirty the roads and the weather, and the lorry, which had long lost its youth when he first took it over, was now far advanced in unvenerable old age.
“Hullo, Jenny,” he cried when he saw her—“so you’ve escaped from the dissipations of the drawing-room.”
“Yes, Rose is playing tonight, thank heaven! and I’ve come out to talk to you.”
“That’s good. I’m sorry to be in this uncivilised place, but I can’t help it. Henry Ford has appendicitis, and I must operate at once. He’s got one wheel in the grave, I’m afraid, but with a little care and coddling I can make him last till I’m through with Ashford.”
“When will that be?”
“Next January.”
“And what will you do then?”
“Get some sort of a job, I suppose.”
She thought he looked fagged and jaded, though it might have been the light, and the ugliness of his dirty blue slops buttoned up to his collarless chin. After all, now she came to think of it, he must have a pretty hard life—up every morning at six or earlier, driving fifteen miles to and fro in all weathers, working hard all day, and then coming home late, generally to finish the day with cleaning and repairs.
“Gervase,” she said abruptly—“are you happy?”
“Yes, Jen—quite happy. Are you?”
“Oh, Gervase....”
He looked up at the change in her voice.
“I’ve something to tell you,” she said hurriedly—“I’m going to be married.”
“What! To Jim Parish?”
“Oh, no, not to him. That’s all over. Gervase, I want you to stand by me; that’s why I’m telling you this. I’m making a great venture. I’m marrying Ben Godfrey.”
“Ben Godfrey....”
He repeated the name vaguely. Evidently it conveyed nothing to him. He was so much away that he heard little of the talk of the estate.
“Yes. The farmer of Fourhouses. Don’t you know him? I’ve known him three months, and we love each other. Father and Mother and Peter and everyone will be wild when they know. That’s why I want to have you on my side.”
“Jenny, dear....” He carefully deposited Henry Ford’s appendix on the shelf, wiped his oily fingers on a piece of rag, and came and sat beside her on the packing case where she had perched herself—“Jenny, dear, this is too exciting for words. Do tell me more about it.”
Jenny told him as much as she could—how meeting Ben Godfrey had set her mind on a new adventure and a new revolt—how she had resolved not to let her chance slip by, but had let him know she cared—how eager and sweet his response had been, and how happy life was now, with meeting and love-making. Her manner, her looks, her hesitations told him as much as her words.
“You will stand by me, won’t you, Gervase?”
“Of course I will, Jen. But do you mind if I ask you one or two questions?”
“Ask whatever you like. As you’re going to help me, you’ve a right to know.”
“Well, are you quite sure this is going to last?”
“My dear! I never thought you’d ask that.”
“I daresay it sounds a silly and impertinent question. But I must ask it. Do you think he’s pulled your heart away from your judgment? And do you think it’s possible that you may have been driven towards him by reaction, the reaction from all that long, meandering, backboneless affair with Jim Parish, and all the silly, trivial things that did for it at last? Don’t be angry with me. I must put that side of the question to you, or I’d never forgive myself.”
“Do you think I’ve never put it to myself? Oh, Gervase, it was exactly what I thought at the beginning. I told myself it was only reaction—only because I was bored. But when I met him at Fourhouses I couldn’t help seeing it was more than that, and now I know it’s real—I know, I know.”
“Have you tastes and ideas in common?”
“Yes, plenty. He has very much the same sort of abstract ideas as I have—thinks the same about the war and all that. And he’s read, too—he loves Kipling, and Robert Service’s poems, though he reads boys’ books as well. He really has a better literary taste than I have—you know what Vera thinks of my reading. And he’s travelled much more than I have, seen more of the world. He’s been in Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and Greece, and France. And yet he’s so simple and unassuming. He’s much more of a ‘gentleman’ in his speech and manners than lots of men I know.”
“Have you ever seen him in his Sunday clothes?”
“Yes, I have, and survived. He wears a ready-made brown suit with a white stripe in it. And that’s the worst there is about him.”
“What are his people like?”
“They’re darlings. His mother is solid and comfortable and motherly, and the girls are about my own age, but with much better manners. When Ben and I are married, the others will live in a part of the house which is really quite separate from the rest—has a separate door and kitchen—the newest of the four houses. Oh, I tell you, Gervase, I’ve faced everything—tastes, ideas, family, Sunday clothes—and there’s nothing that isn’t worth having, or at least worth putting up with for the sake of the rest, for the sake of real comfort, real peace, real freedom, real love....”
Her eyes began to fill, and he felt her warm, sobbing breath on his cheek.
“Jennie, I want to kiss you. But I should have to make too many preparations first—take off my slops, wash my hands with soda, and clean my teeth, because I’ve been smoking woodbines all day. So I think I’d better put it off till Sunday. But I do congratulate you, dear—not only on being in love but on being so brave. I think you’re brave, Jenny; it’s so much more difficult for a woman to break away than for a man. But you’d never have found happiness in the family groove, and sometimes I was afraid that ... never mind, I’m not afraid now.”
“And you’ll stand by me, Gervase?”
“Of course I will. But you’ve got to show me the young man. I won’t stand by an abstraction. I want to see if I like him as flesh and blood.”
“I’ll take you over to Fourhouses on Saturday afternoon. And I’m quite sure you’ll like him.”
“I’ve made up my mind to, so he’ll be a pretty hopeless washout if I don’t. I wonder that I haven’t ever met him, but I expect it’s being away so much.”
Jenny was about to enlarge further on her young man’s qualities, when she remembered that there is nothing more tiresome to an unprosperous lover than the rhapsodies of someone whose love is successful and satisfied. Gervase had loved Stella Mount for two years—everybody said so—but nothing seemed to have come of it. It must distress him to hear of her happiness which had come so quickly. She wondered if his worn, fagged look were perhaps less due to hardship than to some distress of his love. She was so happy that she could not bear to think of anyone being miserable, especially Gervase, whom, next to Ben, she loved better than all the world. She checked her outpourings, and took his grimy, oil-stained hand in hers, laying it gently in her satin lap.
“Kid—do tell me. How are things between you and Stella?”
“There aren’t any ‘things’ between me and Stella.”
“Oh, Gervase, don’t tell me you’re not in love with her.”
“I won’t tell you anything so silly. Of course I’m in love with her, but it’s not a love that will ever give her to me. It can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t care for me in that way. I don’t suppose she thinks of me as anything but a boy.”
“Doesn’t she know you love her?”
“She may—I daresay she does. But I’m sure she doesn’t love me.”
“Have you ever asked her?”
“No.”
“Well, then ... Gervase!”
“One can find out that sort of thing without asking.”
“Indeed one can’t—not with a girl like Stella. If you didn’t speak, she’d probably try very hard not to influence you in any way, because she realises that there are difficulties, and would be afraid of leading you further than you felt inclined.”
“I haven’t seen so very much of her lately. We never meet except on Sundays. I can’t help thinking that she’s trying to keep me at a distance.”
“Perhaps she’s surprised at your not speaking. How long have you been friends?”
“About three years, I suppose.”
“And all that time people have been bracketing you together, and you’ve said nothing. I expect she’s wondering why on earth you don’t make love to her.”
“I shouldn’t dare.”
“Not to Stella?—She seems to me a girl one could make love to very easily.”
“I agree—once she’d said ‘yes.’ But she’s a girl one couldn’t take risks with—she’d be too easily lost. I’ve a feeling that if I made a move in that direction without being sure of her, she’d simply go away—fade out. And I’m terrified of losing the little I’ve got of her.”
“But you may lose her through not being bold enough. It sickens a girl frightfully when a man hangs round and doesn’t speak. The reason that she seems to avoid you now may be that she’s offended.”
“Jenny, you don’t know Stella. She’s so candid, so transparent, that if she had any such feelings about me, I’d be sure to see it. No, I think she stands away simply because she’s found out that people are talking, and wants to keep me at a distance.”
“But you can’t be sure. You may be quite mistaken. If I was a man I’d never let things go by default like that. She won’t ‘fade out’ if you do the thing properly. Women are always pleased to be asked in marriage—at least if they’re human, and Stella’s human if she’s nothing else.”
“And so am I. That’s why I can’t bear the thought of her saying ‘no.’”
“I’ll be surprised if she says ‘no.’ But anyhow I’d rather lose a good thing through its being refused me than through not having the spirit to ask for it.”
“Yes, I think you’re right there.”
He fell into a kind of abstraction, stroking his chin with one hand, while the other still lay in her lap. Then he rose suddenly and went over to the shelf where he had put his tools.
“Well, I can’t leave Henry Ford with his inside out while I talk about my own silly affairs. You may be right, Jen—I dunno. But I’m frightfully, ever so, glad about you—you dear.”
“Thank you, Gervase. It’s such a relief to have you on my side.”
“When are you going to spring it on the family?”
“Oh, not just yet—not till Christmas, perhaps. We want to have everything settled first.”
“I think you’re wise.”
“Remember, you’re coming with me to Fourhouses on Saturday.”
“Rather! That’s part of the bargain. I must see the young man.”
“And I’m sure you’ll like him.”
“I can very nearly promise to like him.”
She went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Good night, old boy. I must be going in now—I suppose you’re here till bed time?”
“And beyond—good night, Jenny.”
“Gervase, you’re getting thin—I can feel your bones.”
“I’d be ashamed if you couldn’t. And do run along—I’ve just had a vision of Wills carrying in the barley water tray. Clairvoyantly I can see him tripping over Mother’s footstool, clairaudiently I can hear Father saying ‘Damn you, Wills. Can’t you look where you’re going?’... Leave the busy surgeon now, there’s a dear.”
He stepped back from under her hands, and thoughtfully held up Henry Ford’s appendix to the light.
§ 20
Jenny had made more impression than she knew on Gervase’s ideas of Stella. Hitherto he had always tacitly accepted a tolerated position—she had allowed him to go for walks with her, to come and see her on Sundays, to write to her, to talk to her endlessly on the dull topic of himself; she had always been friendly, interested, patient, but he had felt that if she loved him she would not have been quite all these—not quite so kind or friendly or patient. And lately she had withdrawn herself—she had found herself too busy to go for walks, and in her father’s house there was always the doctor or the priest. He respected and thought he understood her detachment. People were “talking,” as long ago they had “talked” about her and Peter, and she wanted this new, unfounded gossip to die.
Now it struck him that there was a chance that Jenny might be right, and that Stella fled before the gossip not because she wanted to disprove it, but because she wished it better founded, was perhaps a little vexed with him that it was not. Of course, if all these three years she had been wanting him to speak.... For the first time he saw a certain selfishness in his conduct—he was ashamed to realise that he had been content with his position as hopeless lover, so content that he had never given a thought to wondering if it pleased her. There had been a subtle self-indulgence in his silent devotion.... “Lord! I believe it’s as bad as if I’d pestered her.”
But he really could not believe that if Stella loved him he would not know it. One of her chief qualities was candour, and she was impulsive enough to make him think that she would readily give expression to any attraction that she felt. If Jenny, who was so much more cold and diffident, could have been quickened by love into taking the first step towards Ben Godfrey, how much more swiftly and decisively would ardent Stella move when her heart drove her. Of course she might see the drawbacks and dangers of marrying a man so much younger than herself—she might have held back for his sake ... perhaps that was why she was holding back now.... But he did not really think so—love was the last emotion that a nature like Stella’s could hide, however resolute her will.
There seemed no way of solving his doubts but to do as Jenny suggested and to ask her. He shrank from putting his fate to the test.... But that was only part of this same selfishness he had discovered. By speaking, he could harm nobody but himself. He might indeed turn himself out of Paradise, that garden of hopeless loving service which was home to him now. But he could not hurt or offend Stella—she could not accuse him of precipitancy after three years—and if it was true that she cared, as might be just possible, then he would have put an end to a ridiculous and intolerable state of things.
In this indecision he went with Jenny to Fourhouses on Saturday. He did not talk to her about his own affairs—for hers were too engrossing for both of them. She was desperately anxious that he should like Ben Godfrey, not only because it would put their alliance on firm and intimate ground, but because she wanted her brother’s friendship to apologise and atone to her lover for the slights of the rest of her family. As she grew in love for Ben and in experience of his worth she came fiercely and almost unreasonably to resent what she knew would be the attitude of her people towards him. She came more and more to see him from his own point of view—a man as good as Alard, and more honourably planted in the earth. She marvelled at herself now because she had once thought that she was stooping—she laughed at her scheme for holding out the sceptre.
But though she was anxious, she was not surprised that the two men should like each other. Ben Godfrey had all the qualities that Gervase admired, and young Alard was by this time quite without class consciousness, having lost even the negative kind which comes from conscientious socialism. He had had very little of congenial male society during the last two and a half years, as his work at Ashford had kept him chiefly among men with whom he had little in common. The farmer of Fourhouses belonged altogether to a different breed from the self-assertive young mechanics at Gillingham and Golightly’s ... there was no need to warn Jenny here of fatal differences in the pursuit of wealth, women and God.
Gervase was very favourably impressed by all he saw, and came home a little envious of his sister. She had found a happiness which particularly appealed to him, for it was of both common and adventurous growth. She would be happy in the common homely things of life, and yet they would not be hers in quite the common way—she would hold them as an adventurer and a discoverer, for to win them she would have dared and perhaps suffered much.
That was how Gervase wanted happiness—with double roots in security and daring. He wondered if only the kingdom of heaven was happy in that way, and if he could not find homeliness and adventure together on earth. He did not want one without the other, he did not want peace with dullness, nor excitement with unrest. He had learned that the soul could know adventure with profoundest quiet—might not the body know it too? Walking home in the sunset from Fourhouses, Gervase longed for the resurrection of the body—for his body to know what his soul knew; and his heart told him that only Stella could give him this, and that if she would not, he must go without it.
§ 21
On Sunday mornings Gervase always went to see his mother before breakfast. It was to make up, he said, for seeing so little of her during the rest of the week. Lady Alard was subtly pleased and flattered by these visits. No one else ever paid them. He would sit on the bed and talk to her—not as the rest of the family talked, in a manner carefully adapted to her imbecility, but as one intelligent being to another, about politics and books and other things she could not understand. This pleased her all the more because he was careful to suggest her part of the conversation as well as carrying on his own; he never let her expose her ignorance. And though she secretly knew he was aware of it, and that he knew that she knew, the interview never failed to raise her in her own esteem, as a mother in whom her son confided.
This particular Sunday he stayed rather longer than usual, giving her the right attitude towards Queen Victoria, as to which she had always been a little uncertain. He had just been reading Lytton Strachey’s Life, and they laughed together over the tartan upholstery of Balmoral, and shook their heads and wondered over John Brown. From John Brown the conversation somehow wandered to Gervase’s work at Ashford, and finally ended in a discussion of the days not so very far ahead when he should have finished at the workshop and be his own master.
“What shall I do with myself then, Mother? Shall I open a garage in Leasan, so that you can sack Appleby and sell the car, and hire off me? Or would you like just to sack Appleby and let me drive the car? You’d find me most steady and reliable as a shuvver, and it would be such fun having tea with the maids when you went calling.”
“I wish you’d taken up a more dignified profession. There really doesn’t seem to be anything for you to do now that isn’t rather low.”
“I’m afraid I like doing low things, Mother. But I really don’t know what I’m going to do when I leave Gillingham’s. It’s funny—but my life seems to stop at Christmas. I can’t look any further. When I first went into the works I was always making plans for what I’d do when I came out of them. But now I can’t think of anything. Well, anyhow, I’ve got more than three months yet—there’ll be time to think of something before then. Did you know that I start my holiday next week?—Ten whole, giddy days—think of that!”
“Shall you be going away?”
“No, I don’t think so. A man I was with at Winchester asked me to come and stop with his people. But he lives in Scotland, and I can’t afford the journey. Besides it wouldn’t be worth it just for a week.”
“I thought you said you’d got ten days.”
“Yes—but I’m going to spend four of them at Thunders Abbey near Brighton. Father Luce thought it would be a good idea if I went to a retreat.”
“Oh, Gervase!—is it a monastery?”
“The very same. It’s the chief house of the Order of Sacred Pity.”
“But, my dear—are you—oh, you’re not going to become a monk?”
“No fear—I’m just going into retreat for four days, for the good of my soul.”
“Well, I don’t know what a retreat is, but I feel it would do you much more good if you went to Scotland. You’re looking quite white and seedy. Are you sure your heart’s all right? You know we’ve got angina in the family. I’ve had it for years and years, and poor George died of it. I’m so afraid you’ve got it too.”
“I haven’t—honour bright. I’m looking white because I want a holiday—and I’m going to have one—for both body and soul.... And now I really must go down to breakfast or I shan’t be able to get more than my share of the kidneys.”
Sunday breakfast was an important contrast with the breakfasts of the week. On week-days he either scrambled through a meal half-cooked by the kitchen-maid, or shared the dry short-commons of Father Luce’s cottage. On Sundays he ate his way exultingly through porridge, bacon, kidneys, toast and honey, with generally three cups of coffee and a slice of melon. As a rule the family were all down together on Sunday, having no separate engagements, but an hour of united loafing before Appleby brought round the car to take to church such of them as felt inclined for it.
Gervase had to start earlier—directly breakfast was over. His Parish Mass was at half-past ten, in consideration for Vinehall’s Sunday dinners, since there the rich and the poor were not separated into morning and evening congregations. Also he was Master of the Ceremonies, and had to be in the sacristy well before the service began, to make the usual preparations, and exhort and threaten the clumsy little servers, who came tumbling in at the last moment with their heads full of Saturday’s football. Gervase was not a ritualist, and his aim was to achieve as casual an effect as possible, to create an atmosphere of homeliness and simplicity round the altar. But so far he had got no nearer his ideal than a hard-breathing concentration—the two torch-bearers gripped their torches as if they were to defend their lives with them, and the panting of the thurifer mingled with the racket of his cheap brass censer.
It was not till the sermon began that he had time to look for Stella. When he had taken his seat in the Sanctuary with his arms folded, and had seen that the three little boys were also sitting with their arms folded instead of in more abandoned attitudes, he was free to search for her face through the incense-cloud that floated in the nave. He found her very soon, for a ray of golden, dusty sunshine fell upon her as she sat with her arm through Dr. Mount’s. The sunshine had dredged all the warm brown and red tints out of her hair and face, giving her a queer white and golden look that made her unreal. As he looked at her, she smiled, and he found that her smile had come in response to a smile of his which had unknowingly stolen over his face as he watched her. Her smile was rather sad, and he wondered if the sadness too was a response.
Mr. Luce was delivering one of Newman’s Parochial Sermons in his own halting words, and though Gervase always made it a point of discipline to listen to sermons, however much they bored him, he found that this morning attention was almost impossible. Stella seemed to fix his thoughts so that he could not drag them from her. He knew that his attitude towards her was changing—it was becoming more disturbed, more desperate. His heart must have been ready for this change, for he did not think that Jenny’s words would have had power to work it of themselves. He wondered where it was leading him ... he wondered if it had anything to do with this feeling as of a ditch dug across his life at the end of the year.... But probably his leaving the works after Christmas would account for that. Well, anyhow, he would have to put an end to the present state of affairs—they were the result of mere selfishness and cowardice on his part. Perhaps he ought to go away—leave Stella altogether, since she did not love him and his heart was unquiet because of her ... he would have his chance to go away in January—right away.... But he could not—he could never bear to live away from her. And he had no certain knowledge that she did not love him—perhaps she did—perhaps Jenny was right after all.... “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
§ 22
After Mass, Gervase and the Vicar walked together to Hollingrove.
“I’ve heard from Thunders Abbey,” said Gervase to Luce, “and there’s a vacancy for the eighteenth. So I shall go.”
“I wonder how you’ll like it.”
“So do I. But I’m glad I’m going. They’re full up really, but Father Lawrence said I could sleep at the farm.”
“Then you’ll have to get up early. It’s fifteen minutes’ walk from the Abbey, and Mass is at half-past six and of obligation.”
“Never mind—I’m used to hardships, though I know you think I wallow in unseemly luxuries. But I’m getting keen on this, Father. Whether I like it or not, I know it will be exciting.”
“Exciting! That’s a nice thing to expect of a retreat.”
“Well, religion generally is exciting, isn’t it, so the more I get the more exciting it’s likely to be.”
“Um—too exciting perhaps.”
“What do you mean, Father?”
But Luce would not tell him, and in another minute they were at Dr. Mount’s cottage, where they always had mid-day dinner on Sundays. It was cooked by Stella herself, helped by the little maid, so she did not appear till it was ready. She had changed her frock and bore no traces of her labours beyond a face heated by the fire. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright—she looked absurdly young. How old was she, Gervase wondered? Twenty-eight or twenty-nine? But she did not look a bit over twenty. She did not look as old as he did. It must be her vitality which kept her young like this—her vitality ... and the way she did her hair. He smiled.
“What are you smiling at, Gervase?”
“At you, Stella.”
“And why at me?”
“Because you look so absurdly young. And I’ve been very knowing, and have decided that it’s the way you do your hair.”
“Really, Gervase, you’re not at all gallant. Surely I look young because I am young. If you think different you oughtn’t to say so.”
“This is a poor beginning for your career as a ladies’ man,” said Dr. Mount.
“Just as well he should start it on me,” said Stella—“then he’ll know the technique better by the time it really matters.”
Her words stabbed Gervase—they showed him how he stood with her. She did not take him seriously—or if she did, she was trying to show him that it was all no use, that he must give up thinking of her. The result was that he thought of her with concentrated anxiety for the rest of the meal, his thoughts making him strangely silent.
He was not wanted at Catechism that afternoon, so he could spend it with her, and for the first time he found the privilege unwelcome. He remembered other Sunday afternoons when he had lain blissfully slack in one of the armchairs, while Stella curled herself up in the other with a book or some sewing. They had not talked consecutively, but just exchanged a few words now and then when the processes of their minds demanded it—it had all been heavenly and comfortable and serene.... He found himself longing almost angrily to be back in his old attitude of contented hopelessness. But he knew that he could never go back, though he did not exactly know why. What had happened that he could no longer find his peace in her unrewarded service? Had he suddenly grown up and become dependent on realities—no longer to be comforted with dreams or to taste the sweet sadness of youth?
He had half a mind to go for a walk this afternoon and leave her—he knew that she would not try to make him stay. But, in spite of all, he hankered after her company; also there was now growing up in him a new desire to come to grips with her, to know exactly where he stood—whether, though she did not want his love she still wanted his friendship, or whether she would like him to go away. So when Father Luce went off to his Catechism, and the doctor to see a couple of patients at Horns Cross, Gervase stayed behind in the sitting-room where they had had their coffee, and asked Stella, according to custom, if she would mind his pipe.
“You know, Gervase, you’re always allowed to smoke your pipe if I’m allowed to mend my stockings. Neither is exactly correct behaviour in a drawing-room, but if you dispense me from the rules of feminine good-breeding, I’ll dispense you from the rules of masculine etiquette.”
“Thank you.”
He took out his pipe, and she fetched her work-basket from the back of the sofa. Nothing could have looked more domestic than the two of them sitting each side of the fire, he smoking, she darning, both silent. But the unreality of it vexed him this afternoon. He could not play the childish game he had sometimes played, of pretending they were married, and being content. “When I became a man I put away childish things....” He wanted to have the power to go over to her as she sat absorbed in her work, turn up her face and kiss her—or else pick her off the chair and set her on his knee....
“Stella,” he said gruffly.
“Well?”
“I want to speak to you.”
“What is it?”
“Well ... our friendship isn’t the same as it used to be.”
He would be furious if she contradicted him—or if she said ‘Oh, really? I haven’t noticed anything.’ But she said at once—
“I know it isn’t.”
“And what do you put that down to?”
She hedged for the first time.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re trying to keep me at a distance.”
She did not speak, but he saw the colour burning on the face that she bent hurriedly over her work.
He edged his chair closer, and repeated—
“Yes, you are, Stella—trying to keep me off.”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be sorry; but I wish you’d tell me why you’re doing it. It isn’t that you’ve only just discovered that I love you—you’ve always known that.”
“I’m wasting your time, Gervase. I shouldn’t keep you dangling after me.”
“You mean that I’ve hung about too long?”
“Oh, no....” She was obviously distressed.
“Stella, I’ve loved you for years, and you know it—you’ve always known it. But I’ve never asked anything of you or expected anything. All I’ve wanted has been to see you and talk to you and do anything for you that I could. It hasn’t done me any harm. I’m only just old enough to marry, and I have no means.... And up till a little while ago I was content. Then you changed, and seemed to be trying to put me off—it hurt me, Stella, because I couldn’t think why....”
“Oh, I can’t bear to hurt you.” To his surprise he saw that her tears were falling. She covered her face.
“Stella, my little Stella.”
By leaning forward he could put his hand on her knee. It was the first caress that he had ever given her, and the unbearable sweetness of it made him shiver. He let his hand lie for a few moments on her warm knee, and after a time she put her own over it.
“Gervase, I’m so sorry—I’m afraid I’ve treated you badly. I let you love me—you were so young at first, and I saw it made you happy, and I thought it would pass over. Then people began to talk, as they always do, and I took no notice—it seemed impossible, me being so much older than you—until I found that ... I mean, one day I met Peter, and he really thought we were engaged....”
It was not her words so much as the burst of bitter weeping that followed them which showed Gervase the real state of her heart. She still loved Peter.
“It’s nothing to regret, dear,” he said hurriedly—“you were perfectly right. And now I understand....”
“But it’s wrong, Gervase, it’s wrong....” By some instinct she seemed to have discovered that he guessed her secret ... “it’s wrong; but oh, I can’t help it! I wish I could. It seems dreadful not to be able to help it after all these years.”
She had gripped his hand in both hers—her body was stiff and trembling.
“Stella, darling, don’t be so upset. There’s nothing wrong in loving—how could there be? Surely you know that.”
“Yes I do. It’s not the loving that’s wrong, but letting my whole life be hung up by it. Letting it absorb me so that I don’t notice other men, so that I can’t bear the thought of marrying anyone else—so that I treat you badly.”
“You haven’t treated me badly, my dear. Get that out of your head at once.”
“I have—because I’ve spoilt our friendship. I couldn’t go on with it when I knew....”
“It’s high time our friendship was spoilt, Stella. It was turning into a silly form of self-indulgence on my side, and it ought to be put an end to. Hang it all! why should I get you talked about?—apart from other considerations. You’ve done me good by withdrawing yourself, because you’ve killed my calf-love. For the last few weeks I’ve loved you as a man ought—I’ve known a man’s love, though it’s been in vain....”
“Oh, Gervase....”
“Don’t think any more about me, dear; you’ve done me nothing but good.”
She had hidden her face in the arm of the chair, and he suddenly saw that he must leave her. Since she did not love him, his own love was not enough to make him less of an intruder. There were dozens of questions he wanted to ask her—answers he longed to know. But he must not. He rose and touched her shoulder.
“I’m going, my dear. It’s nearly time for Adoration. I shan’t come back next Sunday—and later, next year, I’ll be going away ... don’t fret ... it’ll all be quite easy.”
It wasn’t easy now. She held out one hand without lifting her head, and for a moment they held each other’s hands in a fierce clasp of farewell. He felt her hot, moist palm burning against his, then dropped it quickly and went out.
So that was the end. He had finished it. But Stella herself had taught him that one did not so easily finish love. He supposed that he would go on loving her as she had gone on loving Peter.
It was a quarter to four as he went into church. Quietly and methodically he lit the candles for Devotions, and watched the slight congregation assemble in the drowsy warmth of the September afternoon. He could not feel acutely—he could not even turn in his sorrow to the Sacred Victim on the Altar, whose adoration brought the children’s service to a close.