The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Victim and The Worm
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Victim and The Worm
Author: Phyllis Bottome
Release date: March 4, 2025 [eBook #75526]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923
Credits: Mardi Desjardins and the online Distributed Proofreaders team with page images generously made available by HathiTrust
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTIM AND THE WORM ***
THE VICTIM
_and_ THE WORM
PHYLLIS BOTTOME
* * * * *
THE VICTIM
_and_ THE WORM
BY
PHYLLIS BOTTOME
AUTHOR OF “THE KINGFISHER,” “THE DARK TOWER,” “A
SERVANT OF REALITY,” “THE SECOND FIDDLE,” ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
[Illustration]
THE VICTIM _and_ THE WORM. I
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE VICTIM 7
THE WORM 177
THE VICTIM
CHAPTER I
Oliver P. Brett sat under the shade of a giant yew and regarded a hedge
of red and purple fuchsias with thoughtful eyes.
“These bees,” he said to himself, “(if they ain’t wasps which is just as
likely), make the calmest sound in the universe.
“They act brisk, but they hum as if they were dreaming. They’re like the
English.
“You could make a skipping run over the face of the earth and not find a
quieter place to decline in than England, and yet while you’re declining
the English get things done. They’re slow but they go on, and they go on
after everything else has stopped.
“I put my flashiest into giving them a boost when they needed it most,
and they tried hard to turn me down for showing them how. Mad! I was so
mad that if I could have got my papers in a hurry I’d have gone out of
this old country as fast as their kindergarten railway cars would have
taken me. But they hung me up over my papers—just the same as they hung
me up over my gas—and by the time they knew what my mother’s maiden
name was, and what made my great-aunt kick the bucket at 92, they’d
decided to have a go at the gas after all. I’d have lost time if I’d
gone elsewhere then, so I stayed.
“That ain’t gas the Germans used to start off with—that was just a
little parlour scent squirted out so as to surprise the troops that
weren’t looking for perfumes at the moment, but it looked bad. I admit
it looked real bad. Those Canadians and all were splendid chaps, and it
riles me to think they stood and died of it; they needn’t have died of
it, if they hadn’t drunk it in wrong, and breathed too quick. Why, when
I practised at it myself (after we got some over to experiment with) I
sat kind of near the cylinder, and smoked a cigar right into it. I
wasted that cigar, but I got no more harm than a turtle dove swallowing
a gnat. _My_ gas—well—it’s a real gas! Thinking don’t matter to it,
any more than Christian Science matters to a jug of prussic acid half
way down your throat.
“But gee! How long it took these English to see it! They just kinder
felt they ought to be good about war.
“I guess they don’t feel that way now; it’s been submarined out of them.
“If we could have morally won this war—we wouldn’t have needed to have
started it. We had all the morals in a row on our side sitting on the
Belgian fence; but a good knock down blow at the fence kinder dispersed
the morals.
“That’s the way war acts. You can have morals before, and you can have
morals after; in between you want to study the swiftest kicks.”
Mr. Brett leaned back still further in his steamer chair, and drew his
hat almost over his keen half shut eyes.
“I guess,” he continued to himself dreamily, “that I shall just sit here
and watch the English till I pan out. America’s my home, but I don’t
want to die in it. I should feel too lively. You can live just as dead
here as you like. No newspaper men, no prominent citizens, no delegates,
nothing to keep up, and no one thinking how many million dollars you own
and trying to creep inside them.
“I’ve had my fight and Theodora’s dead; and I guess I feel played out.
If there was a harp here I’d think I was in Heaven, but so long as
Theodora’s in the next world I’m a good deal better off in this.”
Oliver P. Brett sighed retrospectively at a passing butterfly. There was
something in the tilt of its white and flashing wings that reminded him
of Theodora.
“It wiggle woggles to put you off,” said Mr. Brett thoughtfully,
watching the insect’s tortuous approach to the fuchsias, which was
causing much confusion to a more direct and simple minded bee, “but it
knows what it’s about. That’s like Theodora too.
“She wanted to die, and she always had to do what she wanted, and on
that occasion she hadn’t time to change her mind before she really _was_
dead. The Almighty acted spry and took her at her word, which was more
than I ever succeeded in doing.”
Mr. Brett’s thoughts at this point did not stop, but they ceased to take
the form of words; they crystallized into pictures. For the first time
for forty years he was resting.
In the quiet, old, creeper-covered, brick house behind him there was no
one to thwart or work against him.
There were half a dozen perfectly trained English servants who knew
nothing about him but his superficial tastes, which they studied as
easily and silently as possible to satisfy. And then there was Elise.
Elise was his unmarried daughter; it made Mr. Brett’s sardonic deep
lined mouth smile tenderly when he thought of Elise. She slipped in and
out of the big sweet rooms as if she were a shaft of travelling
sunshine.
Elise was as pretty as a picture, and as gentle as the fall of dew on
the wide emerald lawns.
She was generally to be found in the garden, and when she was in the
house she never looked as if it belonged to her. She looked as if she
were one of the flowers waiting on a side table to be arranged by the
stiff backed parlour-maid.
Yet Elise could have had half a dozen houses if she had wanted them. She
was dimly aware that her father would never set a limit to her desires,
but it made it still simpler that she had very few, and that he
satisfied them all without her asking him for anything. All except one.
Unfortunately, this one wish was a very strong and frequent wish, and
all Papa ever said when Elise expressed it was, “Why, no, Elise. I guess
I don’t see my way to it.”
It really did look as if Papa was cruel about Hermione.
Elise knew that it was not the fault of her beautiful and enchanting
elder sister that her marriage with a Roumanian Prince had turned out a
disastrous failure. In spite of her wit, her beauty and her charm,
nobody had ever breathed a word against Hermione. Her virtue was as
undisturbed as her complexion.
She was bereft of her husband (a comfort under the circumstances, but a
comfort which could always be used as a grievance), and, by the
wickedest of European laws, she was parted from her only child.
She lived (Papa no doubt gave her a great deal of money to live on) the
life of a broken-hearted invalid in the best apartments that the Ritz
could offer.
She wrote that she didn’t like Paris, but Papa wouldn’t have her come to
stay at Mambles.
When the air raids became troublesome in Paris, Hermione was moved with
an extraordinary amount of care and the best attentions of the highest
officials in France and England, with all her papers especially signed
and eased of their usual restrictions, to London.
Papa found two trained nurses for her and a house in one of the quietest
of London squares, but he did not relax his inexplicable refusal to have
Hermione at Mambles.
“Why, no, Elise,” he repeated. “You can go up to see Hermione (if she
isn’t too ill to speak, and I don’t understand that her illnesses take
that form), as long as you won’t make her any deathbed promises. I
should object to that. But I don’t want her down here.
“You just tell her it’s a dull place and damp, unless you find she
hankers after damp and wants it dull—then you tell her it’s lively and
dry as a bone.
“You can take Whisket and go and stay at Claridge’s Hotel, stay there
just as long as you want, and remember, if you stay after you’ve stopped
wanting, I shall send John to bring you away.
“I notice John is as good as a rain gauge about your feelings, and I
will say for John, though he has all the faults of the English that rile
me most, if he puts his foot on a wasp he gets the wasp.
“Hermione will probably say it’ll kill her to have you leave her, but
don’t you believe it. Hermione is so tough she can die that way 365
times in the year and start up all over again on New Year’s Day with
resolutions of ill health that would weaken a hefty elephant.
“People who can stand dying as often as Hermione, don’t die—not under
sixty.”
Elise flushed painfully, and set her delicate, weak little mouth into
stiffness.
It was hard not to be angry with Papa, and she had to remind herself of
his tragedy in order to forgive him.
Papa’s tragedy was that he had lost his only son in France and that the
telegram announcing it had killed Mamma on the spot.
Mamma had opposed Arnold’s going from the first, and curiously enough,
Papa, who always seemed so much more fond of Arnold than Mamma ever was,
hadn’t stopped it. Mamma said that as long as his country wasn’t in, why
should Arnold fight?
Mamma despised the English anyway. If Arnold had wanted to go in with
the French, and taken a good staff appointment, not anywhere near the
front, Mamma wouldn’t have minded.
The French were smart and Mamma adored Paris. She said if Papa chose to
back Arnold and help the French Government, they’d be sure to give
Arnold just the kind of job she wanted for him, and a lovely uniform.
But Papa had just come right over to England with Arnold, and done
unspoken of, mysterious things for the English Government, who didn’t
appreciate him, or make any fuss over any of them; and after all Papa
had done, Arnold only got the plainest commission in a line regiment,
and was killed before America came in.
Mamma had died with the whole household round her in the hall—they had
all rushed in terrified at the scream she gave when she opened the
telegram.
She screamed till they were all there, and then she said “My son!” like
a person on the stage, and fell forward.
Papa had picked her up and laid her down on the sofa without looking at
her.
When he did look at her, he found that she was dead.
Papa never said anything at all about Mamma’s death, which showed how
much he felt it. But that night when he was sitting up with Elise, who
had fallen seriously ill from shock, he said to her quite cheerfully:
“I think we can feel happy about Arnold now. I used to think he’d live
to carry out my plans—but he’s done a better thing than that—he’s died
carrying out his own. I want you to remember that you’ve got a man in
your family to be proud of Elise. Lots of men die for their country, but
Arnold did a bigger thing than that—he died for the future. He was up
against the best army in the world, because he felt that if we knocked
it out, there wouldn’t have to be any more armies.
“I guess I’ll stay over here in England and see the thing through. They
want petrol and I can raise petrol. But if you feel badly, honey, I’ll
see you safely home again. You’ve only got to say the word.
“You’ve got your life before you, and our own country is the finest in
the world for young life—don’t you worry any about me. I find England
feels like a cushion in the small of my back, but you’re too young to
need a cushion.”
“I’d rather stay with you, Papa,” Elise asserted.
That had been her great decision, and she had never regretted it; even
when Papa was most unkind about Hermione.
Mr. Brett’s eyes lost their smile. His mind ceased to rest on the
picture of Elise. They hardened a little as if what they rested on was
the face of an enemy; then they became fixed. It was not wholly grief
that held the imagination of Mr. Brett, though down whatever avenue of
thought his fancy carried him, this one picture always met him at the
end. The picture that held him was that of a small hillside near Ypres.
He had visited this sector of the front on one of his many silent
unnoticeable missions. He wanted to see how his gas worked, and where
his son was buried.
When the officer conducting him had pointed out that on account of a
promiscuous shell fire that morning, the situation was not a healthy one
for the living, Mr. Brett had given a curious little laugh and replied,
“Why, I guess I’ve been quite lately in a more unhealthy spot than
this.”
The officer supposed that Mr. Brett was referring to the Chemin des
Dames, in which quarter the quiet American had also had some business to
transact. But Mr. Brett had not been thinking of that famous and
precarious ridge—his mind had returned to a large south room in the
Hotel Ritz in Paris where he had last watched Princess Girla drinking
excellent chocolate before the air raids had persuaded her to leave for
a more convenient spot.
“I guess,” Mr. Brett observed, regarding a shell-burst to the left of
them with lacklustre eyes, “you men up here in the front don’t know what
danger is.”
The young officer looked offended, but Mr. Brett patted him gently on
the shoulder.
“Sure, you know all about death,” he said kindly, “but when you get away
from here, you’ll have to start afresh and learn something about life,
and as far as I can see the worry about life is—that it goes on. Death
only stops.”
The A.D.C. pointed to a small stick in the ground.
“We think Captain Brett is buried here,” he explained. “We aren’t
perfectly certain because, as you see, the place has been a good deal
shelled lately and there are a lot of graves.”
“It’s near enough,” said Mr. Brett quietly, as if he were talking to
himself. “He lies where good men lie. He’s had a short life and a clean
death. I don’t need to worry any more about Arnold.”
Mr. Brett had gone on steadily with his inventions and his adaptations,
but, when he sat under the yew tree and watched the bees in the fuchsia
hedge, the sunshine and the flowers had a trick of fading out and
leaving in their places a shell-swept muddy hillside under a low grey
sky.
CHAPTER II
Mr. Brett was aroused from his reverie by a firm, heavy tread along the
brick path. He tilted his hat further back and watched the approaching
figure with a kindly eye.
Mr. Brett liked John Sterling; he had chosen him three years previously
out of fifty applicants to be his private secretary, and he had had no
reason to regret it.
Mr. Brett had not been moved by sentimental reasons in his choice of a
secretary, though John Sterling had distinguished himself by dogged
pluck, where all were plucky, and lost an arm at Mons.
The reasons that decided the great inventor to take the unknown young
Englishman were two. He explained them to one of his business friends
afterwards.
“He knows what he doesn’t know,” Mr. Brett observed with satisfaction,
“and he’s not too sharp to learn.
“I don’t want a sharp man. I’m kinder sharp myself. I had a brainy young
secretary once who kept on having good ideas. He’d have ’em before
breakfast and right on up to supper time. They kept him so busy, and me
so busy listening to them, and pointing out from time to time where they
wouldn’t work, that none of my own ideas panned out. I had to bounce
him. I said, ‘Look here, my son, I paid you to carry out my notions, and
I find I’m being loaded down with yours. Now I can stand quite a lot of
other men’s notions, in general conversation, or once a week when I’m
preparing my soul for Heaven—but not over my desk in my office. I just
kinder like to keep that desk for any little notions of my own.’ Of
course he was too sharp to see that, so he got bounced.
“Now John Sterling hasn’t got any ideas except how to carry out mine.
“All the other candidates made pace by telling me what they could do.
They ought all to have been Prime Ministers—and they knew it—they’d
have been thrown away as private secretaries. But John sat there looking
at me with those steady grey eyes of his, and all he said was, ‘If you
tell me what to do I think I can do it. I write a plain hand.’
“I guess the universe is going to remain just the way it was before John
came into it. But that’ll suit me all right. I haven’t any quarrel with
the universe.”
“You’re earlier than usual, John,” observed Mr. Brett as his secretary
reached him, “and you’ve overlooked your tea. Has anything in that
little village of yours on the Thames discomposed you?”
“No, Sir, everything has gone straight,” said John Sterling, taking a
seat opposite his chief and drawing out some notes.
“I just took down what some of the Committee said in case you wanted to
run over it. They were very disappointed you couldn’t be there. Young
Simpson the engineer has sent in his report. He said he’d been over some
of that Cork country you mentioned and it didn’t look like petrol; but
he admitted it hasn’t been tested.”
“Well, you write to young Simpson,” said Mr. Brett, “and ask him if a
germ looks like typhoid. Tell him if it does, not to worry about testing
for oil. I’ll find another engineer. I guess he’s mistaken his vocation,
and thought I wanted an artist to paint me a cork tree.
“Did you make any statement to the Committee, John, or did you just sit
there and hear it talk its hind legs off?”
“No, Sir, I didn’t make any statements,” replied John. “They weren’t
deciding anything in particular, and I thought if I just put down their
main points you’d say what you wanted done after considering them.”
“I could say it before as far as that goes,” said Mr. Brett wearily.
“You’ve got to have a Committee same as you have to have an umbrella in
case it rains—but I just naturally hate walking about with an
umbrella—I’d rather have both hands free.
“You haven’t said yet, John, why you didn’t stop with Elise and have
your tea?”
John Sterling drew a deep breath. He folded up his notes and met his
employer’s eyes across them.
Mr. Brett had long dark eyes with no expression in them. All his
expression was in his smile; but he very seldom smiled. He was smiling
now with an encouraging friendliness.
“I wanted to speak to you before I saw Elise,” began John nervously.
“You may feel you’d rather I didn’t see her afterwards. The fact is—I’m
afraid Mr. Brett I want to marry her. I can’t help it. I have only two
hundred a year besides my salary and I’m nobody in particular. I have no
earthly business to ask for a millionaire’s daughter, but I don’t want
her to have a penny except what I can make, and I’ve seen enough of her
to know that she doesn’t care about money either!”
John stopped defensively.
Mr. Brett was laughing softly.
“Of course she don’t care about money,” he said. “That man that was fed
by ravens in the wilderness didn’t hanker after meat either. He had
enough.
“See here, John, have you said anything to Elise?”
“No,” said John Sterling. “That’s why I didn’t go in to tea. I know I
shall the next time I am alone with her, unless you turn me down.”
Mr. Brett laughed again.
“You’re a good boy, John,” he said, “and on this occasion I accept the
European method of tackling the parent first.
“Elise is young. She’s full young. Unless Theodora misdirected me, Elise
was nineteen last birthday. It kinder goes against the grain with me to
think of her marrying yet awhile.
“But maybe it would go against the grain later on too. Parents are apt
to jib at their children for being made the same way as themselves.
They’d like to check ’em with a little spiritual gin, and keep them down
to clock-work dolls.
“Elise has always been a child to me, and for a long time she was a sick
child.
“I kept her away from home at a Sanatorium by the sea for four years. I
guess she’s told you about it. There ain’t anything organic the matter
with Elise now, but she’s frail.”
“I’d take care of her,” John interjected quietly and without emphasis;
but his tone was convincing.
Mr. Brett nodded. “Sure you’d take care of her,” he agreed. “But it
won’t be quite the kind of care you mean, John, that you’ll have to
take. It’s a taller order.
“I see I’ll have to go into this thing with you pretty thoroughly.
“I warned my first son-in-law, but he was a Roumanian, and he hadn’t
made much study of nervous temperaments. Roumanians sound kind of
playful and romantic, but when they aren’t pleased I understand they get
rough. He said nobody in his family had ever had nerves, and as it was
about fifteen hundred years old, it was what you might call an
encouraging record. But Hermione broke it. She is a high-strung American
woman and she showed that Roumanian family what nerves mean—she showed
it them from start to finish.”
Mr. Brett looked away from John Sterling and drew a long breath.
“Now John,” he said, “I guess I’ve got to go into things deeper with you
than I did with that Roumanian Prince. I’ll go slow and you follow
slow—there are things I can’t say, and there are things I must.
“Did you know you’re the first secretary I ever had in my house?”
John nodded.
“But you don’t know why?” asked Mr. Brett. “I didn’t have a secretary to
live in till Theodora died. After that I had. It was more convenient.
The reason I didn’t have one before was that in two days he’d have been
Theodora’s secretary or he’d have been out of the house.
“I expect you know that Theodora means the gift of God?
“Well, Theodora was no slouch of a gift: she was what the French call a
‘Maîtresse femme.’ I presume that means a winner, don’t it? Sometimes
Theodora won because she’d extracted my kick—sometimes she won because
she was at death’s door, and made me feel the draught from under it—and
sometimes she won because I didn’t know what she was up to. But she
always won.
“Now Elise isn’t like her mother. She’s got no nervous energy, but she’s
got no resistance to nervous energy either. I guess I used all the
resistance up in my home life from day to day, and hadn’t any to hand on
to the child.
“Marriage is a queer thing, John, and the results of it are queerer.
“Most young people think marriage is going to set them free to do what
they like. It doesn’t. It ties them up to do what they like.
“There ain’t any harm in being tied up, providing you like what you’re
tied up to, and go on liking it.
“If you don’t marry you get tied up sooner or later, to your business,
or your habits, or maybe to a dog.
“But they ain’t quite so incessant. Nothing is so incessant as marriage.
Even parents die sooner or later, and children grow up.
“It’s not so easy to get rid of a contemporary, bar murder, and there’s
nothing, not even in the new divorce laws, to justify the murder of one
married person by the other.
“Now don’t run away with the idea that I’m against marriage. If there is
a place where you can go most wrong, you can bank on it that it’s the
place where you can go most right.
“All I say is choose your partner and then look out for squalls. You get
to know which way the wind’s blowing and act according.
“Now you take Elise. Naturally she has to see her sister sometimes. And
_that’s_ what’s going to be the matter with your marriage.
“Hermione is her mother all over again. She’s just full of nervous
energy. You haven’t met her but you will; and she won’t like Elise’s
marrying. First thing she don’t want Elise _to_ marry—and second she’s
got a grudge against marriage. Well, when Hermione don’t like things
they very seldom happen.”
John laughed reassuringly.
“I knew there would be a good many solid reasons against my marrying
Elise, Sir,” he said, “but I don’t think I need worry about the
influence of a sister-in-law. If Elise loves me, and I would never have
dared to come to you if I hadn’t hoped she did, the Princess Girla won’t
stand in my way.”
Mr. Brett smoked in silence for a few minutes. He made no reply to this
jaunty forecast; but he said, after a pause:
“Well, John—nothing else does. I like you. I trust you. It don’t matter
to me a row of pebbles whether you have money or not, or who your
great-grandparents thought they were.
“I’ve got enough money for anything any of my family are likely to want
this side of Judgment; and it’s this generation I keep my eye on—not
family vaults.
“You’ve got the kind of grit I’d like in Elise’s husband. You have horse
sense and you’ll be gentle with her.
“But mind, Theodora and Hermione could get ill and recover conveniently
to suit themselves. It won’t be so with Elise.
“If she gets ill, it’ll be because she can’t help it, and she’ll not be
able to get better to suit either you or herself.”
“I don’t see why she should get ill,” said John sturdily.
“She got ill before,” said Mr. Brett, withdrawing his cigar and speaking
slowly and impressively, “because her mother and Hermione couldn’t get
on. They pulled two ways and Elise loved them both—she was one of the
ways they pulled. They all but tore her life out. I got her away and
kept her away for four years, the doctors helping me; then mercifully
Hermione married, and started in on that Roumanian Prince.
“Elise is all right under one influence; but she can’t stand two. What
you’ve got to see to, John, is that the influence is yours.”
“Do you really mean, Sir,” asked John, trembling for the first time in
his life, with excitement and felicity, “that you give your consent to
our marriage?”
Mr. Brett held out his hand unsmilingly, but with great heartiness.
“I’ll back you, John, with the last ounce I’ve got,” he said quietly.
“Cut along now and get that cold tea.”
“I can’t thank you,” John exclaimed. “It’s too jolly fine of you.” Then
he hurried off to Elise.
Mr. Brett looked after his solid figure with a curious solemnity.
“All that talk of mine,” he said to himself, “has been so much cotton
batting. John only took out of it what he wanted.
“I bought my wisdom dear, but wisdom’s a mighty cheap goods second hand
and it don’t hardly seem to pay for its keep.”
CHAPTER III
Elise sat in the big dark drawing-room with the tea things before her.
She knew that it was half an hour after John’s usual time, but there was
nothing expectant in her attitude. She was doing embroidery. As she bent
her head over her work, the sun caught her light gold hair and made a
glory of it. She was finishing the wing of a bee drawing honey from a
larkspur. The design was her own and when it was finished she was going
to give it to Hermione.
Sometimes Elise thought she ought to do war work, but on the whole she
believed that making Papa comfortable was war work.
Papa invented wonderful things for the Allies, and he had diabetes.
The diet system of a famous Viennese doctor had saved Mr. Brett’s life
and might indefinitely prolong it. But a good deal depended on his
keeping still and having his mind at rest. Elise knew that one of the
things which rested Mr. Brett’s mind most was seeing her at Mambles, and
watching her come in and out of the long French windows to see if there
were anything he wanted. Hermione had pointed out to Elise that she was
wasting her life, and Elise had felt rather upset, but she had gone on
wasting it.
From the age of fifteen Hermione had sat on piazzas black with young
men. When she took a country excursion young men followed her as a
string of ducks follow their leader across a field. When she was in
town, she drew the young men away from other girls with the faultless
placidity of a magnet.
Elise might not have achieved so long a line of ducks, or such
responsive needles, but she could certainly draw young men. Hermione
told her that she ought to go to America and draw them. She would
literally have New York, or if she preferred it, Washington, at her
feet. Elise had listened quietly to these dazzling pictures. It was
difficult to tell Hermione without appearing unpatriotic that she did
not want New York, or even Washington, at her feet. So she said a little
vaguely that Europe was very interesting just now. Hermione skimmed the
vagueness off the top of Elise’s mind.
“Europe isn’t Mambles,” she said with some sharpness, and she offered
Elise London; but the mere thought of London petrified Elise. She had a
dread of its indiscriminate, sophisticated rabble, its precedences and
pitfalls, its stiff old families and their lax young offshoots.
The life of a social circle had always petrified Elise, but Hermione,
even when she was almost dead, thought of people in circles.
Mercifully Papa said that when Elise wanted London she could go to
Harrod’s Stores; he wasn’t going to live in a place where you could get
everything, including air raids, at first hand when he didn’t need to.
“If you want to be quick,” he explained, “you go to a quick country and
you naturally take the quickest place in it. But if you want to be slow,
you go to a slow country and you go to the slowest place in it. I’ll
hunt about till I find the slowest place in England.”
At length Papa had found Mambles. A very few country people called on
the Bretts slowly and as if it didn’t matter. They talked about wasps,
and how the best plan was to get the milkman to bring your coal from the
station on the milk cart. They were chiefly old ladies who called, and
they seemed quite satisfied with being old ladies, indeed they made
Elise feel as if she ought to be rather apologetic for being so young,
but as if they would agree to overlook it on account of her not being at
all noisy.
Elise was very quiet. She had no American accent, and only the faintest
interrogative note at the end of her sentences, which sounded
submissive.
In her loveliness and her quietness with her enormous expectations and
her extraordinarily small claims, Elise won a place for herself in the
neighbourhood which, if she had known it, was as rare as it was
enviable.
Nobody who didn’t play games had ever been so liked before.—When John
came in at the window Elise looked up at him over her embroidery as if
it were his usual time.
Her eyes were very wide and blue, as blue as the azure delphiniums in
front of the drawing-room window.
They were set some distance apart, the shape of her small face was oval,
and her little mouth was tenderly curved and very sensitive. It was
without humour.
“It must have been very hot in London,” Elise said gently. “Is Papa all
right in the garden?”
“It’s heavenly to be here,” said John, “and anywhere that isn’t here is
as bad as London. I had to go first to Mr. Brett, but I came as soon as
I could. Yes, he’s all right. He says he can just sit in the sun without
an overcoat, so he expects to read in the paper that the heat is
tropical.”
“I hope the tea isn’t cold,” said Elise, devoting herself to the tea
table.
John didn’t want any tea, but he watched her with fascinated eyes.
It seemed to him that no one ever had such small white hands or had so
wonderfully manipulated tea cups and copper kettles. Elise never asked
people twice what their tastes were; she persistently studied tastes,
and she never forgot them. If she had had an analytical mind she would
have known that there was nothing she enjoyed so much as supplying the
wants of others, and that nothing so dismayed her as when those wants
conflicted.
“I had to see Mr. Brett before I saw you,” John repeated. He seemed
unable to take his eyes off Elise’s face, or to say anything which
didn’t explain why he hadn’t been there before.
“Why certainly,” agreed Elise, noting with disapproval but without
reproof that John was neglecting his tea. “I know it’s the greatest
comfort to Papa your going up to town and seeing people for him, it
saves him so much fatigue, and he relies so on your judgment. He says
you’re the only man who doesn’t have to tell him all you said yourself
in reply to what the other people said.”
Elise broke off under John’s supplicating eyes: he was looking at her as
if he wanted more than she was giving him, more than either her
attention or his tea. Elise’s breath came quickly, and the heavy row of
pink pearls round her small white throat rose and fell spasmodically.
“When I first saw you,” said John irrelevantly, “you were wearing those
pearls, and you had your hair up for the first time.”
Elise smiled faintly. “I remember,” she said. “Papa had just given them
to me because Hermione said I ought only to wear white, and I wanted to
wear pink. Of course Hermione was right—in America that summer girls
were only wearing white; but Papa said it didn’t matter what the other
girls wore. You could have lilies and pinks in the same garden without
any one’s throat being cut. So he gave me these. And you said if I were
an English girl and only sixteen years old I’d still be a flapper, and I
didn’t know what a flapper was, but I do now. I know lots of English
things.”
“Do you like England?” asked John earnestly, as if it were a personal
question. “Does it seem like home to you now, Elise?”
She hesitated a moment, then she said gently, “I should think any
country seems like home when the people you love are in it. You see what
I like best is being with the people I like as long as I know which to
attend to first.” Elise gave the ghost of a sigh, then she smiled
because she did not want John to know that she had voiced her only
grief. She didn’t want any one to be inconvenienced by knowing that she
had a grief at all.
There are many people who love to spare others pain and enjoy carrying
their brothers’ burdens; but they do not mind an audience. Elise never
wanted any one to know that she was bearing anything.
“Elise,” said John firmly, “do you know what I want? I want you to
attend to me first?”
Elise drew a quick breath, her eyes lingered on John’s, a little
startled, but not at all distressed. She had long ago wanted to attend
to John first. Her clear colourless skin became suffused with a deep
rose blush. Elise knew that John loved her, but she had not known, she
did not know now, what his love meant to her. John’s love for her was
three years old. Mambles was full of it, it was the background of her
life; she had grown used to its protectiveness.
A little frown fixed itself between her tender brows.
“You wouldn’t,” she murmured, “if I did like you John, want me to ever
give up Papa? You see he hasn’t any one now—not Mamma, or Arnold, and
just being wonderful must be so dull, if it only means outsiders.”
John shook his head.
“Never,” he said emphatically. “There isn’t a man on earth I admire and
like as I do your father. I consider it an honour to work for him. I
don’t ever want to take you away from him; but I do want to have you as
well.”
“More than this?” Elise asked gently.
“A great deal more than this,” said John with unmistakable solidity.
Elise’s eyes wavered; she wanted of course that John should have what he
wanted. It would be lovely to make his eyes stop looking anxious, and
smile. But, on the other hand, her mind was full of an apprehensive
picture. How would Hermione bear it? She had seen Hermione bearing
things she didn’t like before. John would probably bear them very much
better.
“But Hermione,” Elise said under her breath, “you won’t want me ever to
give up Hermione?”
“I don’t suppose for a moment I shall want you to give up your sister,”
John said in a more measured tone than he had used in referring to Mr.
Brett. “Why should you, darling, have to give up anything? I only want
you to have more.”
Elise did not reply that in her small but deeply felt experience having
more had invariably implied certain renunciations. She only said, “You
don’t know Hermione, John; but if you did, you’d feel the way I do about
her, and you’d help me so that she and dear Papa could understand each
other better. Hermione’s heart is broken, that’s what makes her so ill,
and sometimes so—difficult.
“Don’t you think if your heart’s broken, you just have to act difficult
at times? Papa’s so clever, but he’s been too happy himself to realise
about Hermione. Why he and Mamma had just an ideal marriage. I never
heard Papa say one sharp word to Mamma, so naturally he can’t feel the
way I do about Hermione. I haven’t been able to _do_ anything, but oh,
John—don’t you think that perhaps you and I together could work it so
that Papa could understand Hermione?”
John had a very great respect for Mr. Brett’s judgment, but he belonged
to the younger generation, and he knew how misguided parents are apt to
be about their children, and how wise children necessarily are about
their parents. He decided to keep an open mind on the subject of
Hermione.
“My dearest,” he said fervently, “I will always help you in whatever you
want—all my strength is yours.”
Elise gave a soft sigh of relief. All John’s strength would do
beautifully.
Very slowly she lifted her blue eyes again, and John knew that he had
received his signal.
He kneeled down beside her and kissed her. There seemed to both of them
to be nothing in the world so simple or so straightforward as their
love.
CHAPTER IV
John called twice upon Hermione in London. On each occasion he was told
that the Princess was extremely sorry but she was too ill to receive
visitors. However, Elise assured him that Hermione had been “perfectly
lovely” about their marriage.
Everything was “perfectly lovely.” Mr. Brett cracked jokes all day long;
John had never looked so radiant; the neighbourhood rejoiced openly that
it was to keep Elise, suitably attached to an Englishman who understood
and respected the game laws; the servants showed a well bred toleration
for John. John’s relations (he turned out to have very few and they all
lived in Yorkshire) wrote charming letters; but in spite of all these
advantages there was a slight hitch somewhere.
It took John some time to discover, in all the flutter of delight around
him, where the hitch was. Mr. Brett was unchanged. He moved as usual
very slowly and carefully about the house and garden, reposed in long
chairs, took the points in or out of schemes, and smiled more
benevolently than usual at his secretary.
Elise continued to declare with obvious evasiveness that she was “too
happy for words,” but John, who had a persistent nature and was clear
sighted where he loved, asked why, if she was too happy for words, her
eyelids should be red?
Elise confessed at last, with tears, that there was just one thing she
wanted most dreadfully and couldn’t get.
Hermione wished to spend the last few weeks before their marriage at
Mambles, and Papa wouldn’t allow it. He was quite adamant, he had said:
“After you’re married this house is yours, you can have whom you like to
it—including me—but until I hand you over to John, Hermione stays
away. If she’s tired of London she can hire in the country. England
ain’t full.”
If Elise wanted, she could go to London and see Hermione; but that,
Elise explained to John, wasn’t what Hermione meant. Hermione was too
sick to enjoy London. She had a feeling that if she could lie on a long
chair in the garden and just watch Elise’s happiness, it would make up
for the loss of her own.
Hermione had been perfectly lovely about it.
Couldn’t John make Papa change his mind?
It was awkward for John to try, for on that very morning Mr. Brett had
presented him with Mambles.
“I shall settle Mambles on you, with an income on Elise,” Mr. Brett had
explained, with his eyes half shut, “and then if you and Elise want me
to stay on as she says, I’ll decline here. I may have years to decline
in, I may only have months, or, according to one doctor, I may not
decline at all, but go out splashless. But I want you and Elise to live
in your own home here at Mambles, not mine—it don’t do to start living
in other people’s homes. Dying can be done anywhere, it’s not as
important as it looks.”
After this renunciation on the part of Mr. Brett it seemed ungracious to
present him with a speedy request for another.
But Elise’s tears overcame John’s scruples. He found Mr. Brett in the
library by the open door which led on to the south terrace. He was
watching the birds fluttering about the edge of a stone bath.
“They’re having the deuce of a time,” he explained to John, without
turning his eyes, “step quiet so as not to disturb them. A whole raft
get round the rim together and shove—just like humans.”
“Mr. Brett,” said John resolutely, “I’ve been talking to Elise.”
“Sure,” agreed his father-in-law reassuringly. “As long as she don’t
fire you, let her talk: the great point with a woman is to have
everything out on the carpet. Whatever she thinks you don’t want her to
say, she’s got to say anyway; but if she puts it off, she gets
cold-blooded about it, the way Jael felt to Sisera when she planted that
nail, and palmed off the butter. If Jael had been encouraged to speak
right out and tell Sisera what she thought of him when he first arrived,
she wouldn’t have driven in that nail, she’d have put it away for the
first Hoodoo that made her keep things back.”
“Elise and I haven’t quarrelled,” explained John, ignoring this
unpleasant analogy, “but I have found her upset. It seems she wants
Hermione to stay here before our marriage, and if you’ll forgive me
saying so, Sir, I don’t see why she shouldn’t have her.”
“I’ll forgive you right along, John,” said Mr. Brett with a chuckle.
“I’m prepared to forgive anybody anything once it’s happened, but I’m
not prepared to let things happen that I don’t want to have to forgive.
And I’m damned if I’ll have Hermione inside this house before your
marriage.”
“I don’t quite see why—” said John a little resentfully.
Mr. Brett pulled his lean slanting limbs together and sat up straight;
he even stopped watching the birds. He looked at John attentively.
“Now, see here my son,” he observed, “marriage is tough. It takes a lot
of what you might call hand to hand breaking, with the law against you,
to spoil a marriage. Engagements is just the opposite, they break as
easily as a grasshopper’s hind leg—I guess that’s about the thinnest
thing in nature. You just keep calm and wait. You’ll have Mambles and
Hermione too, soon enough.”
“But Elise says,” urged John, faithful but faint-hearted, “that her
sister’s been wonderful about our engagement. She’s awfully keen for
Elise to be happy, and she thinks—from what Elise has said—that I’m
the man to make her so.”
“John,” said Mr. Brett grimly, “you’re so innocent a white owl would get
you! I’ve watched white owls, they show up in the dark, and that’s
against them, and they squeak before they’ve got their mouse, and that’s
against them too. I should reckon a white owl loses ten to one on each
mouse, every doggone evening of its life; but you’d be the time it got
home with the bacon.
“Of course Hermione is perfectly lovely about your marriage. She’d be
perfectly lovely about your engagement, when she’d broken it. Perfect
loveliness is Hermione’s line. I’ve never once seen that girl get riled,
and I’ve said things to her that’d make a lizard get on to its hind legs
and roar.
“All she ever said back was, ‘Dear Papa, I guess you’ve got the
indigestion I had.’ She’d given it to me.”
“But are you quite sure,” said John reflectively, “that you do full
justice to her? Sometimes you sound to me as if you were prejudiced
against Hermione.”
Mr. Brett did not laugh at this ingenuous suggestion of John’s. He
remained silent for a moment or two, then he said gently,
“John, do you in general think I know what I’m about?”
“I’ve never known you wrong, Sir,” said John with conviction. “You know
I have implicit confidence in your judgment—only—”
“Only,” interrupted Mr. Brett, holding up a warning forefinger and
shooting a glance at John that was as sharp as the edge of a knife,
“when it’s about the happiness of the one creature in the world I care
more for than one of those sparrows—you think I’m liable to judge
wrong?”
John had never seen Mr. Brett roused before. In a flash he saw what his
employer was like, and understood why, when he spoke even in his
flattest voice, his committees and employees jumped to obey him. John
was conscious that he was confronted by the power of a dynamic mind.
It was a benevolent power, but it was not the kind of power to gainsay.
John felt suddenly convinced that Mr. Brett was right even if Elise
thought he wasn’t.
“I see I’ve made a mistake in pressing the matter, Sir,” he muttered.
Mr. Brett nodded. “Never you mind, John,” he said kindly, “a man who
isn’t liable to be made a fool of by the woman he’s in love with would
make a very bad husband. Maybe he’d remain a bachelor. I don’t like to
upset Elise any more than you like to see her upset—that’s why I mean
to keep the upsets down to a good limit. It’s strain enough on a young
girl getting married; she don’t want to add not getting married on to
the top of it.”
Mr. Brett dismissed the subject and transferred his attention to the
bird bath.
“There—” he said, “now those sparrows have had all the bath they want,
but they sit on just the same: they’re going to prevent any of the other
birds having a dip—and they’ll do it too—unless I shy a stone at ’em.
They’re the most high-strung birds I know. Hand me over a round pebble
before you go, John.”
The controversy ended in Elise and Mr. Brett going to Claridge’s Hotel
for a flying visit. London never suited Mr. Brett, and on this occasion
it suited him less than usual. His long heavy-jawed face turned as grey
as his light summer suit; but it was a great convenience for dressmakers
and Hermione had been perfectly lovely about it, though she was afraid
she was too ill to see John.
The Bretts had a large private sitting-room in which their meals were
always served. Mr. Brett said he could never get over the feeling that
it was unfriendly not to know people in public dining-rooms and pay for
their food. It made him feel uncomfortable to think of their separate
bills.
John had come to dine after a long day in the City. The table was
beautifully set, and decorated with blue and purple sweet peas. He saw
with a slight feeling of surprise that it was laid for four. No one was
in the room when he entered, but after a few minutes the door opened
softly behind him, and he turned to greet an unknown guest.
A woman stood quite still in the open doorway. A long white, chiffon
velvet cloak hung over her shoulders and a white gauze wrap framed her
head and face—out of its softness shone the hard glitter of diamonds.
Her eyes were fixed on John. They were luminous grey eyes with
exquisitely chiselled eyelids, and very long fair lashes.
Her features were cut as clear as the features on a coin; she had no
colour in her face except for her lips, which were the deepest carmine.
They looked as if they were painted, but they were not painted. Hermione
sometimes bit her lips before she came into a room, but she never used
artificial aids, unless they looked perfectly natural.
As she glided forward into the room, her gauze wrap fell on to her
shoulders, and revealed a crown of thick fair hair, as vivid as a
sunbeam. She held out both her hands, and murmured softly:
“John, it _is_ John?”
John had an absurd moment of sheer panic. Who was this lovely and
perfectly strange woman who called him John?
He was a good young man, but for one awful moment he wondered if this
lady had any previous right to his Christian name?
She held his hands, and it appeared as if she might be intending to kiss
him. John looked as non-committal as only a man of his race and class
can look in a moment of danger. Hermione did not kiss him: she pressed
his hands, sighed deeply and sank gracefully into the easiest chair in
the room.
“To think I have not seen you till to-night,” she murmured. “I am
Hermione.”
John felt relieved, but guilty. He forgot that he had been twice turned
away from the Princess Girla’s door—and apologised.
Hermione smiled wistfully and forgivingly up at him.
“Oh, I know! I know!” she said, “I have been through it all. I have come
out the other side now! But I can make allowances for lovers. Isn’t it
all too wonderful! And now I have seen you I can be glad. My dear little
Elise! You won’t take her wholly away from me, will you?”
John murmured that he shouldn’t think of such a thing, and sought refuge
by looking at his boots. There was a peculiarly thrilling tone to
Hermione’s voice which made him feel as if he were in church having his
better feelings appealed to, and John always looked at his boots in an
emotional crisis.
“Let us be quite frank with each other,” Hermione said with great
gentleness.
“The word marriage is hateful to me. It has the sound of death in it.
Believe me, John—marriage can be as cruel as the grave.”
John cleared his throat and prayed that Elise might come in. He had no
idea that any one could speak so intimately to him in so short a time.
“Just at first,” said Hermione, “I faltered—Elise is dearer to me than
any other creature. I had hoped to spare her the bitterness of
experience. I did not want to see her as other women are—forgive my
speaking in French—_une femme initiée_. But now I have seen you I feel
a weight off my heart. You are a loyal, faithful Englishman—I think I
can trust that dear child to you, John—I think I can say with an easy
mind—‘Take my child—’”
Hermione’s voice quivered, but she kept her grave, controlled eyes on
John. John felt profoundly uncomfortable, but he was also deeply
touched. No one who listened to Hermione ever measured the sense of her
words—her low silvery voice entrapped them like a magic flute. John
forgot that Elise happened to be Mr. Brett’s daughter—and that as
Hermione had married very young and was considerably older than Elise,
she had, as a matter of fact, seen very little of her. It seemed to him
that he was receiving a sacred charge—and though he could not be
eloquent in reply, the quick responsive look he gave his future
sister-in-law was one of the finest tributes to her power which Hermione
had ever received.
Before she had time to fix this impression any deeper the door opened
again and Mr. Brett came in.
“Well, Hermione,” he said, without a change of countenance, “your
resurrections contradict the hymn—they don’t come off in the morning.”
Hermione said nothing: she waited until her father had walked the length
of the room towards them, then with a little movement of grace and
affection she threw herself into his arms.
“Dear, dear Papa,” she murmured.
There was an instant of complete unresponsiveness on her parent’s part
before Hermione with equal grace disengaged herself and retook the
easiest chair in the room.
“Dear Papa,” she murmured, “how terribly aged and different you look. I
must speak to darling Elise about it—these young people are perhaps a
little blind in their great happiness. Suffering gives one eyes!”
Hermione spoke perfect English and when she said Papa she laid the
stress on the last syllable.
“I must beg you not to worry your sister, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett
quietly. “If you think I look ill, I’d be obliged if you’d grieve in
secret. I don’t happen to be specially ill, so you don’t need to grieve
unless you want to.”
“I shall have to depend on John, then,” said Hermione, turning her
beautiful magnetic gaze upon her future brother-in-law. “He must tell me
everything—since I am exiled. I feel already as if I could depend on
John!”
Mr. Brett’s half closed eyes met his brilliant daughter’s. Something
passed between them as vivid and as antagonistic as the report of a
pistol, but there was no explosion.
They looked at each other until Elise, flushed with excitement, came in
to greet them. She gave a little cry of joy as she caught sight of her
sister.
“How too perfectly sweet of you, Hermione!” she cried. “I hardly dared
hope you’d come. I told them to set for you, but I was so afraid you’d
be too sick—I didn’t even warn John!”
Hermione closed the sentence with a kiss.
“Why, honey,” she said, “did you suppose I wouldn’t just be _alive_ to
please you?”
Hermione said this beautifully, with an exquisite maternal gentleness
which hung about her like a sunny atmosphere.
John was unable to say afterwards what Hermione did with the situation,
but she certainly transformed rather an awkward little family dinner
party into a successful pageant.
All her challenges were soft as gossamer, but they made John sit up. He
felt himself growing brilliant to meet them. He said some really neat
things about the war, sound, sensible things with a flavour to them. He
revised the Cabinet and explained the subtle points of allied diplomacy.
He saw that Elise was proud of him.
Elise was transformed also; she had more colour in her, and more life,
and she was, strangely enough, more American. She sat up, very straight
and slim, with a little triumphant flush on her cheeks. Her pink pearls
were twisted round her throat and she wore a rest gown of pink and
silver brocade. Nothing ever made Elise feel so sure of herself as the
sight of those she loved appearing to their advantage.
Hermione leaned back in her easy chair, and every now and then the light
caught the diamonds round her throat and in her hair; but they were the
only things that shone about her.
A less clever woman than Hermione might have tried to impress John with
her own personality and she would have failed. John was too deeply in
love to notice any personality that did not contribute to the credit of
his beloved.
Mr. Brett sat in impenetrable silence. He poured out their wine and
handed cigarettes, and he ate with his usual indifference the small and
regulated dishes which kept him alive.
When Elise tried to make him talk (and even in her finest flights Elise
never forgot him) he responded to her with unvarying gentleness, but he
never started a subject, and neither illustration nor analysis escaped
him.
His silence made him look a little churlish, and Hermione added just the
least edge to his churlishness by the careful manner in which she
avoided rubbing it in. It was as if she silently conveyed to her
companions, “Just see how careful I am not to show him up! I could, you
know, by a turn of the wrist, make him look sulky, and even say
something to me which would sound downright rude. But I sha’n’t. I let
him off. He _is_ a bear with a sore head, but I won’t even let you know
how thoroughly I understand that the sore head is levelled solely at
me.”
The evening passed like a draught of southern wine. At last Hermione
rose slowly to her feet, holding on to the armchair with her white,
emaciated hand. John’s eyes fell on it, and he realised with a shock of
pity how thin Hermione was, and, as his eyes met hers, how suffering.
She smiled an heroic, unflinching smile back at him.
“Honey,” she said to Elise, “it’s time your little old sister ran away.”
In an instant Elise was by her side; the two sisters left the room with
their arms round each other’s waists. John held the door open for them
to pass. He was about to accompany them to see if he could help
Hermione, when Mr. Brett called him back.
“Well?” said Mr. Brett. He lifted a grey face in which the humour seemed
curiously overlaid by pain. “Well, John Sterling,” he said, “you’ve seen
Hermione. What do you make of her?”
John hesitated. Mr. Brett’s face was in shadow, he did not notice that
Mr. Brett looked ill, because that was the way he usually looked. People
were so accustomed to seeing Mr. Brett ill that they sometimes thought
he must be accustomed to the sensation.
“Surely,” John said at last a little uncomfortably, “she’s very fond of
her sister?”
“No she ain’t,” said Mr. Brett positively, “she’s only fond of one
person on God’s earth, and that person is Hermione; and she’s just a
little mite, not as much as I should like, afraid of me.”
Elise re-entered, exultant with happiness. She did not notice her
father, who was half concealed by a heavy curtain. She threw her arms
around her lover’s neck.
“Oh, John,” she cried breathlessly, “isn’t Hermione perfect? Isn’t she
just too sweet? She says you’re the _only_ man in the world she could
have trusted me with.”
“God help you John,” said Mr. Brett under his breath. Neither of them
heard him. He got up softly and crept out of the room.
CHAPTER V
John had been married six weeks. Four of them had been spent with an
Angel in Paradise, and two of them at Mambles with Elise.
John had had a hard and lonely young life. He had plodded seriously
through an orphaned childhood and into the sharpest crisis in history.
He had seen and read of the death of all his friends and come out of the
shambles with one arm, and no observable future.
Then without effort or warning he had been admitted into work that moved
nations; and into a friendship that saved his heart.
For three years he had held Arcady against all the enemies of life. And
now, young, poor and maimed, he was master of his happiness, and owner
of Mambles. It was enough to turn the head of a young man of any
imagination, but it had not turned John’s. He behaved at Mambles as he
had behaved at Mons. He looked about steadily for his duty and did it.
Guns, disaster, and the sheer edge of danger had never deflected John at
Mons; roses, young love, and luxury did not deflect him at Mambles. John
felt that it was his plain duty to invite his sister-in-law to stay with
his wife, and he invited her.
It was in the Dutch garden that John had seen and accepted the duty
which in a fortnight had changed an angel into Elise, and Paradise into
Mambles.
The moon shone big and yellow over the Dutch garden, it gave a haunting
ghost light to the pale pink geraniums and the standard heliotrope
rising in mauve clusters above the borders. The air was drunk with
sweetness. It seemed as if time had consented to stand still and
acknowledge the permanence of joy.
Elise leaning on John’s arm said suddenly, “And John, when may I have
Hermione to stay?”
John had felt a momentary pang at her words, because he was so happy
that he felt it an inconvenience to recognise the existence of other
people.
Then he readjusted himself to the more perfect pleasure of pleasing
Elise.
“Whenever you like, dearest,” he replied bravely if untruthfully. “Tell
her we shall both be delighted to have her.”
Then one of them sighed.
When John told Mr. Brett what he had done, his father-in-law took his
cigar out of his mouth and said in measured accents, “Well, John
Sterling, I guess you feel you’ve done your duty. When a man does the
plumb foolishest thing he can lay his hands on, naturally he has to find
the highest motives for doing it; and a high motive is as easy to find
as a barn door fowl; but it won’t lay any eggs for you. You can run
round expecting your conscience to applaud you, and maybe your
conscience will. I notice a man’s conscience comes when he calls it as
quick as a cat after milk, but don’t come round for the approval of
Oliver P. Brett!
“No, Sir! I respect a lunatic because he’s dangerous—but I don’t
respect a normal man when he starts whistling for trouble; he can get
all he wants without whistling.”
John looked haughty and said nothing. He had been so much admired lately
by Elise that he felt whatever he did must be right.
Neither John nor Elise objected to Mr. Brett’s presence in their
household. Mr. Brett’s personality was a strong one, but it was
singularly unobtrusive.
He lived in the library which was a room John didn’t like, and in odd
corners of the garden where the lovers never saw him.
Mr. Brett possessed that quality of ease and complete detachment which
is only to be found in strong people who go their own way and do not
want other people to accompany them.
John had never found the yoke of his secretaryship heavy. The work was
astonishingly interesting and it would have been difficult to say which
of the two men cared for it most.
It was not his return to work after the most perfect month of his
existence which had so suddenly changed the paces of time, and checked
John’s visions. Still John was loth to put the change down to the
arrival of his charming sister-in-law, although she had arrived rather
more copiously than anybody had intended. Hermione appeared within five
hours of Elise’s invitation. Her exhausted household might have
explained the swiftness of her move, but it did not appear precipitate
to Hermione. She lay on a sofa with eau de Cologne on her forehead and
gave the most admirable orders. Elise’s message came at eleven o’clock
in the morning and Hermione moved with ten boxes, two Pomeranians, a
medicine chest, a confidential maid, and a trained nurse, by a three
o’clock train. She looked wonderfully fresh on her arrival and had not
forgotten to wire for the electric brougham to meet her, because she
could not stand the jolting of an ordinary car. She broke the news by
telegram that she was bringing her maid and a trained nurse to save
Elise trouble. The Pomeranians broke themselves.
A wild and harrowing few minutes was spent on the lawn by John, two
gardeners and the chauffeur, in baffling Bodger, John’s bull terrier, in
his masterly attempt to account for both the Pomeranians.
The yap of a Pom irritated Bodger in the same manner that in classical
tales the bleat of the kid is said to excite the tiger.
A persuasive kick from John, conveniently placed, temporarily relieved
the situation. Bodger was led away foaming at the mouth.
Hermione said most sweetly to John as soon as a human voice could be
heard above the canine din, “Dear John, how unfortunate that you have a
bull terrier! But I daresay you will be able to get rid of it quite
soon.” It had not occurred to Hermione that John was not the kind of
person to get rid of favourite bull terriers lightly.
Hermione came to Mambles with the best intentions. She liked John, and
she felt, with all the tenderness of a whale for sprats, that if she
could swallow John and Elise she would always be perfectly sweet to
them. But whales do not like sprats who refuse to be swallowed. It took
Hermione some days to realise that John, with every wish to please her
superficially, would not change his habits to save her life. Hermione
did not ask much of John, but she did expect him to be malleable. Elise
had always been malleable. She had the habits which suited Hermione, but
there was a change now. She had suddenly taken to having the habits that
suited John.
Hermione was not rude to John, and she was tenderness itself to Elise,
but slowly, with graceful and increasing tenacity, she began to put
pressure on Elise. There was no open strife between her and her
brother-in-law, but at the end of a fortnight John had said “Damn” to
Elise. He had not meant to say it, but the previous evening had been an
exceedingly trying one, and John had been more polite than his nature
could sustain. The evening had culminated in John’s trying to save the
broken remnants of his remarkably good temper by starting an impersonal
topic.
“I shall have the lawn mowed to-morrow,” he observed as pleasantly as he
could manage, and Hermione replied,
“What a pity to cut off the dear little daisies’ heads!”
Elise said, “Yes, _must_ it be mown, John?” and John had explained
briefly, with an unfortunate edge to his voice, that English lawns were
wholly incompatible with the heads of daisies. The subject a little
abruptly withered, and if Elise had been married longer she would have
known that subjects which abruptly wither need very careful handling if
they are to be revived in any satisfactory manner.
Elise came into John’s dressing room while he was shaving, and announced
quite cheerfully that the lawn mustn’t be mown to-day on any account,
because Hermione had a terrible headache and couldn’t bear the sound of
a mowing machine under her window.
John said “Damn” with his face all over lather, which made it sound
fiercer, and Elise exclaimed,
“Why, John, I think you’re real mean!”
Then they looked at each other aghast.
Elise wore her blue silk dressing gown and a lace cap covered with pink
rosebuds. A fortnight ago John had told her that when she wore it he
felt that he was entertaining the Madonna.
It was obvious that he was unprepared to give Elise a suitable
entertainment in this character at present.
Elise retreated into her bedroom, and John continued shaving. He did not
countermand the mowing machine.
It began ten minutes later and went on for a quarter of an hour. Every
minute of that time John and Elise heard the lawn-mower, as if they had
been the heads of the daisies expecting immediate execution.
Hermione heard it too, but she knew that she was not going on hearing
it. She had never been in the position of a threatened daisy.
In a quarter of an hour John told the gardener to stop. The gardener
pointed out that it would look rather queer, as he had only just had
time to make a stripe across the lawn.
John used language which he could only have heard from a Cavalry General
confronted by an ill-cooked meal, and retreated into the shrubbery. The
gardener said, “My word! The new master has a tongue!” and went into the
kitchen to tell the cook, trusting on the strength of his recital to be
given a glass of cider.
John missed Bodger. There are moments in life when only a rather large
white bull terrier, personally devoted, but publicly ferocious, can
minister to a mind diseased. John had to go on missing Bodger because he
was chained (for the first time in his life) in the stable yard, and if
he was unchained there would have been no more Pomeranians.
John had never liked small dogs, and Bichon and Bichette had a strange
craze for getting under his feet and tripping him up. They had not been
trained to do this by Hermione; they had never been trained at all, with
the result that they got into everybody’s way and on to everybody’s
nerves, except Hermione’s. It sometimes seemed as if Hermione had very
strong nerves.
John proceeded down the shrubbery path, frowning.
He had everything in the world that he wanted, including all that he
could never have reasonably expected to obtain; and the only thing that
he could think of was that the lawn was not properly mowed.
Elise, his honeymoon and Mambles became insignificant and obscure
objects in the distant recesses of his brain.
Mambles lay outstretched before him, sunny, fruitful, silent, rich with
the dews of the morning; but all John saw was an uneven strip of lawn
without daisies, between broad spaces of green, insolently alive with
daisies.
At the end of the shrubbery John found his father-in-law on a campstool
doing a pen and ink drawing of some hollyhocks against a bit of
sixteenth century wall.
Mr. Brett did exquisite pen and ink drawings, and if he had had no other
faculty he could have made a living out of it.
John felt an access of irritation at the sight of the steady placidity
of his father-in-law. It seemed to him it would have been more
sympathetic of Mr. Brett to be doing nothing and to be in an irritated
state of mind.
During the last two weeks Mr. Brett had remained bafflingly aloof from
the domestic situation. He had not even seemed conscious that there was
one, he had taken nobody’s part and he had never corrected or restrained
Hermione.
He had not avoided the society of his invalid daughter, he invariably
offered her his chair when she came into a room, and helped to fetch
some of the things she wanted. (No one person could have possibly
fetched them all.)
John supposed that this was Mr. Brett’s way of keeping the peace, but he
thought he might have had more tacit support from his father-in-law.
Mr. Brett could not have failed to hear the approach of his son-in-law,
because both Bichon and Bichette accompanied John by the simple process
of hurling themselves between his legs and shrieking at irregular
intervals.
When they reached the end of the shrubbery they caught sight of Mr.
Brett, and burst into rapturous greetings a semi-tone higher up the
scale and continuous.
Mr. Brett went on drawing his delicate fine lines and did not turn his
head.
John puffed at his pipe and watched his father-in-law sulkily.
There were plenty of things for John to do, but John did not feel in the
mood for doing any of them, and he resented the fact that Mr. Brett did
not give him the provocation of suggesting that he should begin doing
them.
“I thought,” Mr. Brett observed by-and-bye, “that I heard the sound of a
lawn mower about half an hour since, but I guess I was mistaken: it
seems to have stopped.”
The vials of John’s wrath were unloosed.
“It has stopped,” he said furiously, and then he gave a reproduction in
a slightly milder form of what he had said to the gardener. He concluded
by kicking Bichon into the nearest hedge. This broke off two handsome
gladioli of which John had been justly proud, and did nothing to
dishearten the vocal explosions of the Poms.
When their shrieks had died away into the distance, Mr. Brett spoke
again.
“Does it matter seriously?” he asked, “about that old lawn?”
It seemed to John the weakest thing he had ever heard his father-in-law
say. He tried to explain that the lawn was a symbol and mowing it a
fixed religious principle, but it was always difficult to explain
symbols to Mr. Brett.
“Well,” said his father-in-law patiently, “I guess I wouldn’t let a
little thing like a principle worry me. If you want peace, John, you
better let symbols rip. I never knew a man keep peaceful with a raft of
symbols around him.”
Then John broke down. He poured out the accumulated bitterness of the
last fortnight.
“Now, John,” said Mr. Brett gently, when John’s category came to an end.
“Let’s give all those other things the go bye. When you get irritated,
it helps a heap to stick to one fact. I get more comfort out of a solid
fact than I get out of a whole pack of fine arguments.
“Let’s get back to the mowing machine.
“Either you ought not to have started mowing that lawn, or else you
should have gone on mowing it until it was finished.”
“Yes, I know that,” said John, whose temper was already a trifle
soothed. “That stripe looks awful—just in front of the house too!”
“I wasn’t thinking of the stripe,” said Mr. Brett, starting on a fresh
hollyhock. “I guess you and I could stand a stripe on a piece of grass
as well as a Zebra stands it on his back, if we had to. What I was
thinking of was your future.
“I daresay you think I’ve been kind of tea-coseying out of your
situation, sitting under an embroidered cushion and keeping warm, don’t
you, John? Well!—I was waiting for that symbol of yours to come along.
It don’t do to butt in before a man hollers. As long as you thought I
had a prejudice against Hermione I should only have made things worse,
and Hermione would have got in under my skin. Now I’ll give you all I’ve
got on the subject; and I’ll go right on giving it to you.
“There’s just two ways of treating Hermione. The best way—miles and
miles the best way—is to have nothing at all to do with her. It’s too
late to think of that now. The other way is never to let her rile you.
“Give in to her when it don’t cost any one else too much, and don’t give
in to her when it does, but never splutter.
“Now I don’t want to be critical, but I reckon you spluttered about that
lawn.
“Don’t you splutter again, John, it gives her pleasure every time, and
if I were you I should continue so that Hermione couldn’t get any
pleasure that way.
“It may seem to you a thin consolation—maybe it is—but at my age thin
consolations count.”
“I haven’t told you everything,” said John in a contrite voice. “This
morning I upset Elise.”
“That’s bad,” said Mr. Brett sympathetically. “That’s too bad, John. For
Elise’ll have to get upset enough anyway.”
“I wasn’t fit to marry her,” John groaned. “I never knew I had such a
beast of a temper!”
“Don’t you yield to remorse, John,” said Mr. Brett with sudden emphasis.
“I don’t know anything as weakening to the moral fibre as remorse, it
wears your nerves to a frazzle and takes all the lift out of your next
kick. I expect you’ve the same kind of temper as anybody else has, when
they’re stung by a hornet.
“You asked for trouble when you invited Hermione to stay with you, and
you’ve got trouble, but you don’t need to double up under it. You keep
on smiling and be sure you are right. You stick to the facts.
“This is your place, that lawn’s your lawn. If Hermione don’t like the
sound of a mowing machine, you tell Elise how sorry you are the country
don’t suit Hermione. It’s the smile Elise wants, and what Hermione wants
ain’t coming her way at present. If retributive justice ever comes off
I’d like to be there. I’ve tarried the Lord’s leisure quite a while.”
John laughed and wheeled towards the house. He felt reinvigorated, and
almost unashamed.
He would kiss Elise and have the lawn mowed before lunch.
When Mr. Brett came in at lunch time, the lawn was mowed, the stripe had
disappeared. Elise looked perfectly happy and Hermione had moved her
room.
“She said,” Elise explained a little apologetically to her father, “that
your room was the only one in the house where she couldn’t hear the lawn
being mowed, and she was sure you wouldn’t mind my putting her into it!”
John glanced quickly at his father-in-law, but Mr. Brett was calmly
peeling a ripe tomato which, with a small, square piece of cheese,
comprised his entire lunch.
“Sure, Elise,” he said cheerfully. “I’m pleased as Punch to change that
room. I kinder dislike the frogs moaning down by the pond in that
guttural way they have—the same as if they were interned aliens. You
tell Hermione I’m real pleased to pass her on those frogs—”
CHAPTER VI
The Princess Girla had a very strong sense of duty; from her earliest
years she had believed in doing right, and she had known that she ought
to have what she wanted. There was a moral compulsion behind her
simplest desires; and she never undertook anything without explaining to
God what she expected from His co-operation.
She often saw with sympathy the suffering in which people were involved
while carrying out her wishes.
This insight never deflected Hermione’s will, but it made her charming
to serve.
She was extremely generous in ways which caused her no inconvenience,
and her manner in getting her wants made known was little short of
exquisite. Hermione’s confidential maid, who was a Roman Catholic,
firmly believed that if the Princess could be led to embrace the true
faith, she would eventually be canonised.
Hermione was of the stuff out of which the most perfect Mother Superiors
are made. As a lady Abbess she would have been feared and adored by all
her nuns, and no one except, perhaps, an impotent Father Confessor in a
moment of rebellion, would have thought of deposing her.
The trained nurse believed that Hermione suffered from a mysterious
disease not yet discovered by the doctors. Hermione had suggested to her
that nurses really understood illness far more thoroughly than medical
men; and she gave the nurse five guineas a week, and a series of
beautiful hats.
Nurse Davies frequently told people that the Princess Girla often
reminded her of Florence Nightingale and Joan of Arc. Her body was
pathetically frail but her spirit was indomitable.
Torture was nothing to her.
Hermione had an iron self-control even as a child. She had behaved
faultlessly. No one had ever had to correct her manners. She had had a
young and jealous mother, who first adored and spoiled her, and when
Hermione reached the age of fifteen, had turned against her with an
antagonism as fierce as it was secret. Hermione had for a time meditated
a friendly alliance with her father, but she gave up the idea when she
discovered that Mr. Brett refused to take her on her own valuation, and
never permitted any criticism of his wife. Theodora fought her daughter
for every human soul that came into the house. They both had beauty and
wit, Theodora had experience and Hermione youth. They were very evenly
matched combatants, but the extra weight of authority possessed by
Theodora weighed down the scale. Hermione decided at eighteen that she
would leave her home. She gained her father’s consent to travel with
friends of his to Europe; but she went without her mother’s approval.
Theodora resented Europe, except for clothes. She would have liked to
rule in Paris but Mr. Brett had refused to give her any assistance.
European countries were strange as well as illusory. They would not
permit Theodora to rule without her husband. So she turned her back upon
Europe and took up New York. But an instinct warned her that Hermione
would conquer the old world, and leave her perpetually dissatisfied with
the new.
When Hermione left America she decided never to return to it except as a
visitor, and when she could take precedence of her mother.
She met Prince Girla in Paris, kept him on a tight rope for a year, and
then married him. Her precedence was now assured, but she was
disappointed when she discovered that in spite of Prince Girla’s
connection with the ruling family of Roumania, the fact that he belonged
to a younger branch (quite precluding succession) gave her much less
social importance than she had expected. They both spoke French
perfectly, so that language was no barrier between them. Prince Girla
had heavy debts, but he was madly in love with Hermione.
He would have shot himself if he had failed to win her, although it is
improbable that he would have suggested marrying her if she had not been
able to bring him a magnificent dowry.
At nineteen there was only one thing that Hermione did not know about
life—and that was marriage. She had spent much time and ingenuity upon
the subject, but marriage is the one experience upon which no
correlation of facts, however careful, has much practical bearing.
It took Hermione three days of personal experience to understand married
life, but it took her longer than this to teach her husband.
Hermione said afterwards, to her greatest friends, that she was afraid
she was not material enough for marriage. In the Roman Catholic Church
marriage is accepted as one of the lesser sacraments, but if Hermione
had been the Pope she would have altered this definition.
Prince Girla did the best he could with a spiritual tie, but he had not
been brought up on those principles, and he was very much in love.
The whole affair was disastrous, and it was complicated by the birth of
a boy within a year of the marriage. The Girla family took this as a
sign of grace, and not as an omen of destruction. Their rejoicing was
premature. Hermione went through her trial with an incredulous serenity.
She could not believe that Providence really meant to play her such a
trick, but when she found it had, she decided to make the occasion
final.
She would never have another child, nor did she mean to be
inconvenienced by the one she possessed.
Hermione did nothing to defy the marriage law; she would have thought it
very wrong to defy a law as well as rather foolish when it could be so
easily adapted to her convenience without defiance. She became seriously
ill.
No doctor could quite understand the cause of the Princess’s illness
(its chief symptom was the enforced absence of her husband for two
years), but of the fact itself there could be no reasonable doubt.
Hermione barely ate enough to keep herself alive, she was as frail as a
leaf, and suffered intensely, with heroic fortitude—but she chose her
sufferings.
At the end of two years Prince Girla had had enough of it, he still
admired Hermione but he wanted a wife. He insisted upon an interview and
he told her in fluent French with the extreme clarity of the Latin mind
what he thought of her.
Hermione lay on a sofa with her eyes shut, breathing softly. There were
moments in his long and emphatic speeches when Prince Girla pulled
himself up short and wondered if Hermione, who was as still as a statue,
was really alive at all.
But Hermione was alive; she waited until the Prince had said all that
had accumulated in his goaded and troubled spirit for the space of two
years, then she slowly opened her eyes, and selecting a few gentle words
which had occurred to her while he was stamping about the room, she
uttered them. They were perfectly wifely phrases and they gave Prince
Girla no justification whatever for what took place.
He struck Hermione.
This was the end of the marriage.
Prince Girla could not get a divorce on account of his religion, nor was
Hermione anxious for one.
She preferred to keep her title, and she had had enough of marriage.
Prince Girla apologised for the blow, and from time to time offered
abject terms of reconciliation; but Hermione refused to see him again.
She said she forgave him from the bottom of her heart and mentioned
meeting him at the judgment seat of Heaven where there was—as she was
thankful to reflect—no marrying nor giving in marriage, but she would
not meet him upon earth where the arrangements were less satisfactory.
Her relations-in-law wrote her letters which Hermione described as
“terribly Roumanian,” but they failed either to move her, or, as they
subsequently attempted, to cause her social destruction.
Hermione despised the Roumanian court which she privately described as
“potty,” and in the larger field of Europe her character remained
unblemished. She lived with perfect discretion; she was a Princess, and
she had an enormous income. She made no complaints, and yet every one
who mattered knew that Girla had beaten her black and blue continually.
Men raved against her ill-treatment and black-balled Girla out of their
clubs; but Hermione’s best and strongest supporters were those of her
own sex. She accepted passively and up to a certain point the admiration
of men; at this point she definitely checked it; but she made efforts to
attract women, and their admiration never became inconvenient to her.
Hermione was said to have a purifying influence over young married
women, and if they sometimes became very unhappy with their husbands,
she became an increasing support to them.
It was with this theory in mind that the Princess Girla came to Mambles.
If she had been able to help other young married women, how much more
ought she not to help Elise?
In her first twenty-four hours Hermione had pointed out to her sister,
with infinite tact and gentleness, that there is a selfishness of two,
as well as a selfishness of one, and that Elise might very easily fall
into it.
That evening Elise forbore to go out into the garden with John, and sang
Gounod’s “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” instead, in the presence of
the assembled family. John had never appreciated sacred music, and he
hated Gounod from that hour.
Hermione warned Elise how soon she could exhaust the affections of her
husband by permitting a demonstrative regard.
“Do not rebuff him,” she explained gently, “but evade him.”
Elise tried to evade John, and neither of them liked it.
Hermione told Elise how difficult young married life is, and Elise, to
whom it had come as easily as sunshine, began to see in it obstacles and
perils to John’s happiness and her own, which would have been
exaggerated in a jungle exclusively tenanted by wild beasts.
It never occurred to Elise that Hermione could be wrong; because
Hermione loved her so much and had been so unhappy herself, and only
wanted to save and shield Elise from a similar unhappiness.
Elise became pale with apprehension over the disasters and pitfalls
which lay ahead of herself and John, and even for the gardener’s wife
who had been married the week before, and did not look as if it had made
any difference.
Elise would have liked to ask her father’s help but that might seem as
if she had not perfect confidence in John, and she would have loved to
talk to John about it, only that might seem as if she had not perfect
confidence in Hermione, so that she decided to keep her anxieties to
herself.
She struggled manfully on, evading John, and seeing that Mr. Brett was
regularly and carefully attended to, even when he wanted to be left
alone.
“I should never,” Hermione carefully explained to Elise, “leave dear
Papa to stroll about by himself, or even sit for any length of time,
without running in to see if he is still alive. At any moment we may
lose him.”
Of course Hermione could not take this duty upon herself, partly because
of Mr. Brett’s inexplicable dislike to her company, brought on, no
doubt, by a diseased state of mind; and partly because her own health
required the utmost watchfulness and repose. But Elise could make a
point of running in and out and following Mr. Brett up, without any
grave consequences to anybody, and if it interrupted her persistent
tête-à-tête with John, so much the more precious would she make this
rare companionship.
“I do not want you ever to think of me,” Hermione said tenderly, “if I
never see your face from one day’s end to the other, Childie, I shall
not complain! All yesterday I sat alone, hour after hour, while you went
fishing with John. I thought of Papa once or twice and I was anxious at
your staying out so late—but for the rest, I want you to dismiss your
little old sister from your mind. I am one of those whose path in life
is cut out for loneliness.”
Of course Hermione’s path was very rarely lonely at Mambles. Elise made
constant opportunities to be with her sister, her little feet grew weary
with running to and fro, her heart beat fast with suppressed fears, and
she often lay awake for hours haunted by remorse. Had she neglected
Hermione? Would Papa die suddenly while she was out of the room? Was
John’s crossness when she left him quite the reward she had expected
from her evasive tactfulness?
The cook, too, was difficult. She said she couldn’t see the sense of the
Princess’s meals. She had no objection to Mr. Brett’s, which were no
trouble, and took place at the same time as other people’s, though she
wondered that he could keep alive on them, such stuff would kill a
healthy rabbit if exclusively condemned to it! But the Princess liked
her meals to be ordered at different times on different days, so that
nobody knew when they sat down how soon they would have to be up again,
and they were all new-fangled dishes which had to be cooked just
right—a slice off anything cold, even off a loaf of bread, was simply
sent down again as so much rat poison.
Elise wrinkled her delicate eyebrows, and wondered distractedly if she
ought to get an extra cook for Hermione, and if she did, wouldn’t she
(cooks’ tempers being what they were) have to ask John to build an extra
kitchen, and would John build an extra kitchen while there was a war on?
She would have liked to consult John about it, but Hermione had
expressly told her, “Never take your domestic difficulties to your
husband, many married lives are ruined by just that lack of self-control
on the part of young wives. Always meet him with a smiling face and tell
him that everything is perfectly easy.”
Life became more and more complicated for Elise, and she often wondered
if she would have been able to bear it at all if Hermione had not been
there.
This state of tension was unexpectedly broken by Bodger.
One Sunday afternoon they were all sitting out on the lawn having tea.
Mr. Brett had a glass of milk with digestive biscuits, Hermione had
chocolate with whipped cream and savoury sandwiches, and John and Elise
real tea with bread and butter. The Poms took what they could get from
each table, and shrieked over it.
It was a lovely south-west day, high clouds sailed swiftly overhead,
passing each other on different levels, in a clear blue sky. The garden
was full of light movements, travelling scents and midsummer colours.
John had moved the wind-screen five times for Hermione, quite
good-naturedly. Elise was just wondering whether it would affect her
married life irreparably if she should suggest a walk with John after
tea, when Bodger, having gnawed through a substantial rope and missed
the detaining hand of the stable boy by a fraction of a second, burst
upon the scene.
The peaceful lawn rocked in chaos. There was a table between Bodger and
one Pom: for a fleeting moment the rampart stood erect, and then in
jangled pieces bestrewed the lawn.
Mr. Brett reached out an arm, seized the Pom nearest him, and stuffed
it, screaming, into a capacious pocket; John ought to have caught the
other Pom—he nearly caught it, but unfortunately the sight of Bodger
passing imperturbably through hot chocolate and whipped cream (it was
Hermione’s table he had overturned) checked him, by a gust of laughter.
The chuckle cost him the life of the Pom.
Bichon dived past him, making foolishly away from Hermione towards the
open lawn. Hermione screamed and deflected Bodger from her chair. He was
on the Pom’s trail in a second and an instant later Bichon was
painlessly shaken into Eternity.
John caught Bodger only a moment afterwards, but there was nothing left
to catch of Bichon: he had entered upon the first unbroken silence of
his career.
John beat Bodger sternly and without mercy, but Bodger merely licked his
lips, writhed as a matter of form, and hunted for the other Pom, out of
the corner of a wicked eye.
Bichette had hysterics in Mr. Brett’s waistcoat.
Hermione missed a great opportunity. She should have fainted, probably
she would have fainted, only a spontaneous faint comes off quicker than
one which is premeditated. Before she had time to think of it, Elise had
forestalled her.
Elise had spent a long hot day trying to make everybody happy and
comfortable, and bloodshed upon the top of these efforts was more than
she could stand.
“Now,” said Hermione with her grey eyes cold with hatred, “perhaps John
you will be content to part with that unspeakable monster, when you see
what it has done to your poor wife!”
“Hermione,” said Mr. Brett, suddenly depositing the remaining Pom upon
her lap. “Quit this lawn and take this demented muff with you. You and
your dogs between you have done enough mischief for one bright summer’s
day.”
Hermione murmured that dear Papa was of course upset, but she did leave
the lawn with Bichette under her arm, casting a glance of terror and
aversion at the recumbent, contemplative form of Bodger.
John was on his knees beside his wife.
“She’s round, John,” said Mr. Brett very gently. “I guess the thing that
will suit her best is for you to stay there quietly with her till dinner
time.”
Elise whispered that she was perfectly all right, but some one must go
at once to help and comfort Hermione.
“Sure,” agreed Mr. Brett with alacrity. “I’ll go right in and see to
Hermione. I’ve assisted her some already, but it ain’t anything to what
I _might_ do if I put my mind to it.”
Mr. Brett moved off with unusual quickness across the lawn, and in a fit
of absent-mindedness called out “Good dog” as he passed Bodger.
CHAPTER VII
When Mr. Brett reached the house his steps became slower. The look on
his face was that of a man who foresees and dreads the weight of a task
which he has already experienced.
He was not going to evade it, but he halted to measure his strength
before he adjusted himself to the familiar yoke.
The large entrance hall of Mambles was a serene and sunny place.
It was filled with flowers and the still clear light of the retreating
sun. A flight of shallow steps led to the upper regions of the house.
Mr. Brett stood still for a moment, resting unseeing eyes upon his
collection of household treasures.
He had furnished Mambles to suit his taste and relinquished it to suit
the tastes of others. There was nothing in it that had not the personal
note of his selective mind, and there was nothing that he had regretted
relinquishing to Elise and John.
He walked up the shallow stairs slowly and with effort.
“What I _can_ take easy I will,” he said to himself reflectively.
Hermione had moved into Mr. Brett’s rooms in the left wing of the house.
The rooms were neither as large nor as luxuriously furnished as those
which had been prepared for her by Elise; but they had suited Mr. Brett.
Mr. Brett knocked at the sitting-room door, a rustle of starched
petticoats and the reproving face of Nurse Davies answered him.
“The Princess is resting, and must not be disturbed,” she said with
low-voiced emphasis.
Mr. Brett’s eyes narrowed a little and then became curiously fixed.
“You can go downstairs,” he said quietly, “and stay there until I send
for you.”
Nurse Davies was spoilt and authoritative, her profession had raised her
in the social scale with a jerk, and some of the jerk adhered to her
manners. She opened her lips to bring Mr. Brett to his senses, and then
shut them again with an impression that her own senses were suddenly
needed elsewhere.
Mr. Brett was only an old man dying of diabetes, but as she explained
afterwards downstairs to the housekeeper, his eyes were uncanny, and she
had never been able to stand against anything at all queer.
Mr. Brett stood aside until she had passed him and then walked into
Hermione’s sitting room.
Hermione lay on the sofa by the open window. She had had time to change
into a white satin dressing gown trimmed with swansdown, and to look
very ill. She was surrounded by smelling salts and heart tonics, her
eyes were closed, but she had heard what had taken place between her
father and Nurse Davies outside her door, and she would have recalled
the latter if she had not thought that it would be wiser to appear
beyond the power of speech.
Mr. Brett looked at her speculatively, pulled forward a chair, hitched
it backward, and picking up a yesterday’s “Times” proceeded to rustle
its leaves briskly.
Hermione’s eyelids trembled nervously.
“Please Papa,” she murmured faintly, “do not make that noise, my nerves
are too unstrung to bear it.”
“Very well, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett slowly and distinctly, “if you
want that I shall stop reading ‘The Times’ you can open your eyes and
sit up. If you’re too exhausted to speak I shall sit right here and
rustle.
“Nobody has ever been known to suffer physically from the rustling of a
newspaper and I’m going to see if maybe it won’t revive you.”
The Princess set her lips in a long thin line, which was unbecoming to
her, and there was a long pause during which Mr. Brett rustled
systematically, and Hermione was conscious of the afflicting sound in
every nerve of her body.
An unwonted flush came over her countenance, she drew her cushions a
little higher with a jerk, and opened her eyes.
“If you wish to speak to me, Papa,” she said with dignity, “I should not
dream of refusing to listen to you, however much pain it costs me.”
Mr. Brett laid down “The Times” with satisfaction.
“That’s the way I like to hear you talk, Hermione,” he observed
cheerfully, “because that’s exactly what I’ve come up here to do. I’ve
come up here to make things painful for you.”
Hermione raised incredulous and exasperating eyebrows, but she made no
comment on her father’s preposterous project.
“When I was a young man,” Mr. Brett continued in his slow unemotional
drawl, “I made quite a study of mules. I had to drive ’em, and if you
have to drive a mule you want to study it.
“Now the doggonest thing a mule can do to a human being is to baulk. You
can light out from a kicking mule and you can drag a rearing mule down,
but if a mule baulks, you want to revise the Catechism and put in a
special clause to permit swearing. But I got wise to the mule’s
temperament after a bit. I used to give ’em something they liked just
out of reach of their noses—say carrots—and if that didn’t do, I put
something behind them so unpleasant that it kinder induced them to
prance forward unexpectedly in the direction I was wanting them to go.
When I say unexpectedly, I mean unexpectedly to the mules.
“Can you think of anything you would like to have, Hermione?”
“Dear Papa,” said his daughter sweetly, “I have lived so long abroad
that I hardly understand your quaint way of putting things. I am sure
you mean to be funny, but American humour escapes me.”
Mr. Brett did not smile but his eyes lighted appreciatively.
“You don’t lose anything, Hermione,” he said gently. “I guess you have
quite a wit of your own.
“Don’t you think it’s time you went back to Paris? There hasn’t been an
air raid for some while.”
Hermione’s flush deepened.
“I don’t expect you to understand me,” she said pathetically. “You never
have, but I feel that my first duty is to Elise. I left Paris to come to
her, not to escape air raids.”
“If you want a house on the Champs Elysées,” said Mr. Brett
meditatively, “with a garden—say the word. I happen to know that I
could procure one by wire.”
“I should have thought you were clever enough not to offer me a bribe,”
said Hermione coldly. She had always wanted a house in the Champs
Elysées big enough for entertaining on a large scale.
“I should refuse a palace rather than neglect a duty.”
Mr. Brett pushed his chair back until the front legs of it waved
dangerously in the air.
“I have known calls,” he replied impressively, “to higher duties come
out of palaces. In fact they generally do. Duties dwindle with the rent.
I don’t mean a bribe, but I suggest an opening. You have remarkable
powers, Hermione, and there are opportunities in Europe just now which
may not occur again, and which, if you hanker after celebrity, would
pick and dry it for you while you waited. I might be able—if I saw the
point of it—to push some of these opportunities your way.”
Hermione looked at Mr. Brett. Something flashed into her eyes, and was
gone again in a moment. She was an ambitious woman and hitherto she had
had to practise her struggles in secret and alone.
No one had ever seen her struggle, but though she had retained an
outward and gracious passivity, Hermione had felt the strain of her
efforts, and there were heights to which, without assistance, she could
not, however gracefully, climb.
Mr. Brett had never backed his family’s social yearnings before. He had
markedly refrained from using his extraordinary powers for any personal
purposes.
He was making a great concession to his eldest daughter, and she knew
it. Her heart beat faster than if she had been assisting at the process
of a palpitation; then her innate violence of will reasserted itself. If
she accepted any concession from her father, she must lay down her will
as the price of it. Hermione shivered as if the room were cold. Her will
was her religion—she called it for the moment, her cross.
Hermione was of the stuff out of which persecutors are made. It is very
nearly the same stuff which creates martyrs, except that in the case of
martyrs vindictiveness does not appear essential.
Hermione could bear much to keep her will intact, even the relinquishing
of a life-long ambition; still she did not like relinquishing anything,
and she breathed quickly; then she said with her voice a trifle strained
and high,
“I daresay you do not believe me, but my desire to save and protect
Elise is stronger than any personal wish of my own.”
Mr. Brett let his chair descend slowly and carefully from its precarious
angle.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “if that is so, Hermione, carrots is
dead.”
Mr. Brett could talk perfectly good grammar when he chose, but he
avoided it in the presence of his eldest daughter. The perfection of her
own manner, he often observed, was distinction enough for any family.
“I don’t know what else you think you can do against me,” said Hermione
defensively, “but I warn you that if you attempt to drive me away from
here I shall appeal to Elise, both against you—and against John!
“You have apparently succeeded in poisoning his not very acute intellect
against me, but my poor darling little sister will stand by me—whatever
you may choose to say or do.”
“She might stand against me,” agreed Mr. Brett reflectively. “I don’t
remember that I’ve ever done a thing to hurt her since she was
born—still that don’t make any difference, but I don’t advise you to
calculate that Elise’ll stand against John. You’re her poor
broken-hearted sister all right, all right, but John’s her young
husband. If she sees John’s heart being cut into, yours won’t have much
of a chance.
“She knows she can’t make you happy.
“You’ve chosen your sorrows and sit on them with the clinch of a
domestic fowl, but Elise can make John happy, and I guess—take it by
and large—she will.
“But I don’t mind admitting to you, Hermione, that I don’t want this tug
of war to come off. Tugs of war suit some people—a frail,
broken-hearted, high-brow like yourself finds nourishment in a tug of
war; but normal people don’t; and while the dust and the yells are
heartening you all up, an unselfish, sensitive girl like Elise gets cut
as thin as a wood shaving. I’d take some trouble to keep Elise happy.
“Say, Hermione, have you ever been happy? I don’t mean top-dog
happy—but _real_ happy, like a field of buttercups in the sun?”
Hermione’s lips quivered.
“Happiness,” she said, “is not for me.”
“Sunshine is for everybody,” said Mr. Brett gently, “who’ll let the sun
alone, and like it.
“Before you came Elise was happy. She was just like a little open cup
filled with gold; you never saw the child so gay; and John was happy; he
is the quiet kind that has to hide itself to feel at home, but he sure
_was_ at home. They didn’t need any saving—then.
“I used to take a power of comfort sitting out under the old yew tree,
thinking of those two children off somewhere—with their happiness.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted,” said Hermione hurriedly. “Unthinking
happiness is the shutting out of life—it leads to selfishness and
satiety.”
“Don’t you believe it, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett impressively. “It’s
decayed teeth give us the toothache, not sweets. Happiness and
unhappiness ain’t selfish or unselfish, it depends on who’s got them.
“Marie Antoinette was just as unhappy as she could live, but she kicked
her throne over and got the guillotine into the family for a necklace of
diamonds. You couldn’t make Elise and John selfish, not if you set out
and offered them Bond Street.
“I don’t know much about religion, what with one thing and another I
guess it’s kept me dodging; but I remember being told that by their
fruits ye shall know them. Fruits Hermione—that sounds like good sense
don’t it, and good sense ought to make good religion. Well, how about
your fruits?”
“I don’t know what you mean—” said Hermione icily. She would have
tossed her head if the pillows had not been too low for it.
“I do not think you can find that I have done anything wrong.”
Mr. Brett ignored Hermione’s negative standard.
“I don’t say much about your childhood,” he began impartially. “You took
credit for what was given you in the way of looks and wit, you practised
them up a lot, and then fought your mother with them, to take away from
her what she’d been given, along the same lines. Maybe it was your
fault, maybe it was hers. All I know is you fought.
“Later you fought me to get hold of Arnold, and make a pink sugar pet
lamb of him. Well, you had me there; for quite a time you took the bones
out of Arnold. I daresay you would have ruined him, but you had other
fish to fry, and then the war came along, and Arnold headed right, and
got his quittance.
“You fought your mother for Elise too, and you know what happens when
two dogs get on to a bone? Well, that’s what happened to Elise. Then I
consented for you to go to Europe. It struck me people in Europe had
always liked fighting, and you were getting wasted in a civilised
country like America.
“You made a mistake in marrying a European, because European men expect
to have a life of their own, but by gosh—Prince Girla made a greater
mistake in marrying you!
“Hermione Brett, if that young man is put into a low place in the next
world, make no mistake about it—you’ll foot the bill! You’ve driven him
towards vice more surely than any poor girl who gets a hardly earned
living by it—and it wasn’t your profession. You had money. Then you
brought a child into the world and left it. There may be a shabbier
trick to play on the universe than that, but I don’t know it. I guess
speculating with trust funds is a kind action compared with leaving a
little child to grow up motherless.”
“I did not leave my child!” cried Hermione passionately. “He was taken
from me!”
“No, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett inexorably. “Your husband said he wanted
the child to grow up in his own country, but he would _not_ separate it
from you if you would live there, and let him come into the house for
three months of the year, so that he could be with the child part of the
time. You could have kept it. He offered to draw up a deed of separation
on those lines—and you refused.”
“I couldn’t live in Roumania,” said Hermione sharply. “The climate would
have killed me, and Girla’s word was not to be trusted.”
“His deed was,” said Mr. Brett imperturbably. “Very large financial
interests hung on his keeping his word. I drew it up myself, and I had
guaranties.”
There was a long silence. Mr. Brett sighed heavily. The dark pockets
under his eyes looked deeper than ever.
“I think I’ll die before you,” he said, as if he were speaking to
himself.
“I think I’ll die pretty quick. I’d rather. There’s lots of mistakes
I’ve made; some of them lie on me pretty heavy at times, but I’ve come
short of blasphemy. I haven’t called what I wanted ‘the will of God.’
But what’s going to pull you through when you come to the other side,
Hermione, I don’t know. You’ve lied to yourself so thick and bad, there
isn’t anything in you that ain’t what you don’t expect; and you’ve
deceived a crowd of people! Your wits helped you, and your looks; and
all the people who depended on you, or ought to have depended on you,
you’ve let down.
“Well, I’m your father. Seeing what you are don’t let me out of that.
But I’ve told you the truth, and it don’t let you out either.
“If you want to try to get the better of me now—start trying. I don’t
say you won’t be able to do a cruel bit of harm before I down you, but I
guess I’m going to down you, if that Viennese doctor was worth what I
gave him to stiffen me up.”
Mr. Brett rose wearily, as he spoke, and wandered to the south window;
from it he could see Elise and John upon the lawn. John was reading out
loud to her. John read out loud with great monotony, but no elocution
could have sounded more impressive to Elise.
“I don’t know, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett unexpectedly, “that the person
I’m not sorriest for after all, isn’t yourself.”
Hermione made no answer to this statement. She lay as still as a statue
with her face turned to the wall.
Mr. Brett saw that the sun was in her eyes and he pulled the blind down
gently to shield her face before he left the room.
CHAPTER VIII
Mr. Brett was suddenly aroused from his sleep by the sight of John in a
green dressing gown standing at the foot of his bed.
John had switched the light on and there was no more colour in his face
than on a blank sheet of paper.
“Hermione’s ill,” he said urgently. “I hate to disturb you, but she’s
most awfully ill; we’ve got a doctor, he’s with her now. Can’t you hear
her screaming?”
Mr. Brett listened. Mambles was a solid, deep-built house and his rooms
were on the opposite wing to his daughter’s, but he could distinctly
hear a high travelling sound like the shriek of wind in a broken
chimney.
“Well, she ain’t dying from lung complaint,” said Mr. Brett after a
pause.
He made no effort to get up, he merely eyed John with sardonic
thoughtfulness over the bedclothes.
“What do you want me to do about it?” he asked.
“The doctor thought I ought to tell you,” said John a little
reproachfully. “Nothing seems able to soothe her. Every now and then she
screams for you. It’s awful to see her, her eyes are nearly starting out
of her head. She never stops screaming.”
“I’ll have to see the doctor before I get up,” said Mr. Brett
consideringly. “What’s been done to soothe her anyway?”
John hesitated.
“The doctor gave her a powerful sedative,” he explained, “and of course
we kept saying everything we thought could help. I promised to get rid
of Bodger.”
Mr. Brett was suddenly contorted by a spasm of silent laughter.
“John,” he murmured as soon as he could speak, “you’re a good boy, but
you don’t show staying power. That bull terrier’s a trump card: you
don’t want to throw him, in the first round. He’s more of a symbol than
a streaky lawn. Don’t you do anything hasty with Bodger. You have him
farmed out and we’ll have him back some day bringing his sheaves with
him. But I don’t want to get up unless I have to, it’ll disturb my
digestion. You send that doctor man in to talk to me and get Elise back
into her own room. Hermione has her nurse and she can scream just as
well with her as she can with a crowd of people standing round gaping at
her, but maybe she won’t want to.”
“I don’t think you understand, Sir, how ill she is,” said John gravely.
“She is quite delirious; she doesn’t know whether we are there or not.”
Mr. Brett shook his head.
“I fancy she’s just as conscious as she needs to be to make her points,”
he said drily. “Unconsciousness sets in with Hermione when other people
want to make theirs. She won’t forget to ask what you’ve done about
Bodger first thing to-morrow morning.”
John withdrew, unconvinced and shocked. As he opened the door a rush of
sound passed into the room.
Mr. Brett lay perfectly still listening to it.
Theodora had suffered from screaming attacks when she was angry (and
when she thought she was hurt she was always angry), but she had never
been seriously frightened. There was something curious to Mr. Brett in
the sound of his daughter’s voice. It was a note of fear, and as he was
registering this new note, the doctor came hurriedly into the room.
Dr. Raymond had motored over from the nearest small town. He was a
clever and keen young man who had overworked himself in France and been
sent into the country to recuperate. Mr. Brett looked at him
attentively.
“What do you think my daughter’s got an attack of?” he asked.
“To tell you the truth,” said Dr. Raymond, “I don’t know—there’s an
hysterical element in it of course, but there was nothing to indicate
this kind of seizure when I saw her before. Her temperature is 106 and
her pulse is like a jig-saw puzzle—the attack may turn to meningitis or
some other acute brain trouble, and I suppose it has been produced by
shock. They tell me she saw her dog killed this afternoon. The
seriousness of her condition is that she isn’t in a fit state to stand
any additional illness. It may be the dog of course, but she keeps
calling out for you.”
“No, it ain’t the dog,” said Mr. Brett reflectively. “What she’s got an
attack of, is the truth. It’s rare, but I don’t believe that as a
disease it’s fatal.
“I told her what I thought of her this afternoon, and what she wants now
is for me to take it all back. Well! I don’t see it that way. I didn’t
tell her for fun. I told her because I thought she right down needed it.
“The burnt child dreads the fire, but you don’t want to stop the child
dreading it, you want to stop it being burned. Now what do you
anticipate will happen if she’s left to scream?”
“Neither her heart nor her brain will stand much more of it,” said Dr.
Raymond gravely. “I can’t answer for the consequences if she keeps
calling for you and you don’t go—anything may happen. On the other hand
she may not recognise you even if you’re there. Her brain is caught on
one point and sticks there, the excitement keeps mounting and nothing
I’ve been able to do has touched it.”
“She’ll recognise me all right,” said Mr. Brett with conviction, “and
she’ll get off her point—when she’s made it. If she was the only person
concerned I’d leave things the way they are. But I’ve got my other
daughter to consider, and that does me in. If I come along to the
Princess Girla, I want you to undertake to get Mrs. Sterling back to bed
and keep her there.”
Dr. Raymond agreed with alacrity, and hurried back to his patient.
Mr. Brett got up slowly and put on his bedroom slippers with reluctance.
He was by no means convinced that he was doing the right thing, but he
felt that neither Elise nor John would have understood his running
counter to the doctor.
The servants, white and trembling, were all assembled in the big hall
listening to the acute and terrible sound that filled the house. Mr.
Brett looked at them contemplatively over the banisters.
“You can all make tracks for bed,” he said in his steady soothing drawl.
“You can take my word for it—when there’s that amount of noise in an
illness there’s no immediate danger. All except the cook, and she can
send up some hot drinks to Mr. and Mrs. Sterling’s apartments.”
Then he opened Hermione’s door and walked to the foot of her bed. Even
Mr. Brett was momentarily impressed by Hermione’s appearance. Her face
was hardly human, it was wild and strained beyond recognition, her fixed
eyes had an awful stare in them of blank terror. She had reached the
acutest point of consciousness, beyond which the mind passes out of the
power of personality.
“I’m not! I’m not! I’m not!” screamed Hermione.
In the absolute stillness of the room her tones gathered an incredible
beating force: they neither changed their accent nor their sound, but
swung on like the regular rise and fall of a piston rod in an engine.
Elise knelt in a crumpled heap on the floor by her sister’s bed, trying
to hold one of Hermione’s burning, restless hands. The other clutched
and plucked persistently at the counterpane.
Nurse Davies made ice packs by the bedside. John and Dr. Raymond clung
together by the window as if their mutual impotence was a protection to
them.
Mr. Brett faced his daughter consideringly. He fixed his quiet,
dominating eyes upon hers, without anxiety. For one astonishing moment
the room emptied itself of sound. Mr. Brett said steadily and gently,
“Hermione, I guess you have me beat.”
Nobody knew what he meant or guessed that in that instant’s pause he had
passed a life sentence upon himself.
His words hardly reached Hermione’s maddened and excited brain, but
something in his presence succeeded in breaking in upon the morbid
concentration of her mind. The pupils of her eyes contracted suddenly:
she had recognised him.
A few moments later the screaming began again, but it had lost its
regularity, there were moments when it fell into vague mutterings.
Dr. Raymond stepped forward and felt her pulse again.
“I think the sedative is taking hold now,” he said with satisfaction.
Mr. Brett drew an arm chair forward beside the bed.
“I’ll stay here till morning,” he said to the doctor. “You carry out
your part of the programme now. I guess the Princess don’t need an
audience for a nap.”
Dr. Raymond cleared the room except for Nurse Davies, and after giving
her a few orders withdrew. It was a puzzling case, but there was no
doubt the brain crisis was over.
Mr. Brett drew out of his dressing-gown pocket a small and much worn
book. It was called “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine,”
by Frank Stockton. Mr. Brett preferred it to any other novel.
Hermione still screamed at irregular intervals, but during one of her
quieter moments Mr. Brett said to the Nurse,
“Now Nurse Davies it isn’t going to do a mite of good the two of us
Agag-ing round. You just go into the next room and get a little rest. If
there’s any change in the Princess’s condition I’ll wake you.”
Nurse Davies hesitated, but to her surprise Hermione slowly opened her
eyes and looked at her with apparent consciousness.
“Yes,” she said, “leave me with my father.” Then she closed her eyes
again.
When Mr. Brett and Hermione were alone, Mr. Brett drew up the blind and
opened the window near him, then he returned to his arm chair, pulled a
thick rug over his knees, arranged the reading lamp, so that it shed a
light over Hermione’s face, and settled to his reading.
For an hour or more Hermione slept the deep sleep of intense exhaustion,
then she woke with a start and fixed her strained eyes on her father’s
face.
“Is that you Papa?” she asked quickly. “Am I going to die?”
Mr. Brett shook his head.
“No, Hermione,” he said, “you’ll live on yet a while. I’m not a betting
man, but I’d take odds on it. Do you want that I should read out loud to
you ‘The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine’? I don’t know a
book more calculated to soothe the sick or enliven the down-hearted. I
don’t say it’s like life—but it’s the way life might be like if we took
irregular things more regularly.”
Hermione shook her head.
“No, I don’t want to be read to,” she whispered. “I want to talk to you.
I think I can now. I can see what I want to say.”
Mr. Brett leaned forward and lit a spirit lamp beside the bed.
“Well,” he said, “let’s have some soup first. You can talk all you like
on soup, but if you start on an empty stomach there’s no saying where
you’ll land up on.”
Hermione drank the soup with perfect docility, and leaning back on her
pillow began to speak in a low, fevered voice, with momentary pauses,
but without intermission. Her eyes fixed themselves on Mr. Brett’s face
with the intensity of the Ancient Mariner.
Mr. Brett put down “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine,”
and leaned forward so that he could catch her low, hurrying voice
without effort. The night light cast weird shadows on his grey face and
deep-set, patient eyes. He listened without attempting to interrupt
Hermione. She began with the story of her childhood. In the long hours
of her delirium her mind had built up and stored an attractive pageant
of her character, set in the gloomy pitfalls of her life.
She told her father of the inner desolation of her childhood, her
mother’s neglect, her nurse’s carelessness, his own inability to
understand her or foster her affection for him.
“You said I was a fighter,” she exclaimed bitterly, “this is what I had
to fight.”
She passed on swiftly to her girlhood, its outward triumphs and the
shadowed internecine struggle between her beautiful young mother and
herself. She struck again and again at the man beside her, pointing out
to him his neglect, his lazy partisanship of his wife, chosen out of
selfishness and fear.
“You never helped me,” she said bitterly, “you only wanted peace.”
She spoke of his careless consent to her European travels, the
unsuitable chaperonage that had thrown her, young and inexperienced,
into the fastest American set in Paris.
Without hesitation or restraint she gave him the story of her marriage.
Mr. Brett had heard it before, but there were details she had spared
him, moments of her dressed-up sacrifices and of her attitude of
outraged womanhood, which convinced her of her own sincerity. He was
spared nothing now. He was told of every physical brutality and of every
irregular, inconsiderate word forced out of Prince Girla. Hermione had
never forgotten a word that had displeased her, nor had she ever let his
tenderness or repentance wash out a single stain.
There had never been a moment when Hermione was not in her own eyes an
heroic, persecuted figure. She had kept her code unspotted from an alien
and repulsive world. The mere facts of life were outrages upon her
delicacy of temperament, and her rigid acceptance of propriety was a
loophole by which she had escaped self-surrender.
Her low, exhausted voice moved on with the persistence of a gimlet. She
stood surrounded by her negative virtues, covered with the insults of
her foes, as St. Sebastian stands in old Tuscan pictures, imperturbable
under a lacework of arrows.
Her eyes never left her father’s face: this picture, this continuous
exposition of herself, was her answer to him.
She had been horribly startled by the unveiling of his point of view;
her self-control had been stabbed into an acute resistance.
Now with the force of her delirium behind her she pinned him against her
own interpretation of herself. She dared him with her exhausted, fevered
eyes not to believe that she was faultless.
In the grey shadows of the gathering dawn she seemed to threaten him
with her death.
“Do you understand me?” she murmured at last. “Do you see now what I’ve
had to bear and what I’m really like?”
“Why, yes, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett patiently. “I guess I see what
you’re like.”
Her eyes questioned him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his
expression which revealed any latent sarcasm.
Mr. Brett had no expression in his face at all, beyond his grave
attentiveness.
Hermione was completely exhausted now: she had spoken for nearly two
hours without a pause. She closed her searching eyes and slept.
Mr. Brett looked out of the open window. It was a still dawn, full of
the returning movements of arrested life.
Outside in the grey garden the stars were pale in a cloudy sky, the
small battered moon was surrounded by an opalescent fiery ring.
The silence was broken by the scurry and hoot of hunting owls. A heavy
mist swept over the garden and blotted out the shapes of the trees.
Mr. Brett did not take up again “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs.
Aleshine.” Even that immortal classic failed to rouse any amusement in
him.
Hermione breathed with the refreshing regularity of a child; her beauty
slowly reasserted itself, but Mr. Brett did not see the beauty in her
face: he noticed instead, with a pang at his heart, the lines of
selfishness and unwavering vanity which her own character had engraved
upon it.
“I reckon,” he said to himself, “that ‘the last enemy to be destroyed’
_is_ vanity. Murder isn’t a habit, cruelty can’t get on long without
conceit. Lies run to it. I never knew a humble liar.
“Vanity is the toughest human quality there is—and it’s the most vital.
You take it out with a trowel and it gets back with a spade.
“It’s trapped Hermione just the way it trapped Theodora.
“She just had to be thought smart, saint-like and brainy. She couldn’t
face a back seat. Hermione don’t care a row of buttons what I think on
any other subject, but she’d care what a roadside hog thought of the
figure she made passing by. I cut into her because she saw I despised
her. Then she lay and brooded till her vanity got so fire-heated it came
mighty near burning her up. Poor child! She’s got a lot of qualities put
into that fire of hers, and there ain’t any of ’em that’ll come out
again. I startled her but I won’t have changed her. You can always
startle a person out of themselves for a moment, and they thresh round
and think they’ll never go back again, but it’s the same person
threshing who was sitting quiet before the shock. Threshing don’t change
them. I had to do it, and I guess it’ll turn out somehow the way I
meant. Most things answer to a handle if you ain’t afraid to turn it and
will take the consequences. There was a dog’s chance I could have
squeezed out without having to pay all I had, but I wasn’t the dog that
had that chance.”
Mr. Brett leaned back in his arm chair and turned his face towards the
open window. The light was beating slowly through the white mist into
the room.
Hermione slept steadily; there was nothing further to do for her.
Death lay definitely behind her.
Death lay in front of Mr. Brett and it was the only thing that was still
in front of him.
CHAPTER IX
For several days after her attack, Hermione was very weak and prostrate.
She was able, however, on the following morning to refer indirectly to
Bodger. She asked in a low, broken whisper if Bichette was perfectly
safe. Bichette was full in view at the moment, noisily engaged in eating
creamed chicken at the foot of Hermione’s bed; and Hermione was
instantly told that Bodger was no longer on the premises.
After this enquiry Hermione closed her eyes and retired into a state of
even completer exhaustion.
She was physically prostrate but her mind was vividly alert. Hermione
was thinking out several problems. She had her conscience to deal with,
and her future life.
Her conscience was a comparatively easy affair: even in a high fever,
she had been able to justify herself to her own complete satisfaction.
Hermione had a little manual of “Self-Examination” questions which
always lay beside her bed, and she could go through the whole list with
perfect confidence day or night. But did her father sufficiently believe
in her? And was it worth while that he should? Hermione did not put
these two questions to herself as crudely as this—she saw them, as she
would have expressed it, “on a higher plane.” It was her duty to make
her father realise that she was a power for good in the world, and he
had not yet appeared to think so with sufficient conviction; if she had
succeeded in convincing him, might she not, with him at her side, win
moral successes upon a larger scale? Hermione told herself that she must
not be ambitious about spiritual openings and she emptied her mind—with
an effort of concentration and by the help of several ejaculatory
prayers—of all memory of the house and garden in the Champs Elysées.
But on the other hand she had been broken-hearted and helpful to young
wives for several years; perhaps more was now asked of her. She could
not, in justice to herself, change her ideal, but she might change the
channel of her efforts. Perhaps Papa was right—he had distinctly spoken
of a wider field—the time might have arrived for her to make fresh
efforts. Papa was worldly, of course, and hideously astray if he
expected her to give up her present situation for the sake of any
material profit. But she had never intended to stay permanently with
Elise and John, and her father was her first duty.
They might live in Paris, which was dryer than London, and therefore, no
doubt, more suitable for diabetics. Papa could not really care for
Mambles or he would not have given it to John.
Hermione was the person who really _ought_ to make a home for her
father. Perhaps this was what he had always felt, and the singular tone
of misinformed bitterness with which he had addressed her had been
caused by a feeling of neglect.
Hermione lay with her eyes shut, reconstructing the neglected past of
Mr. Brett and the rose-coloured future with which she intended to
present him. Yes—she was prepared to sacrifice Elise and John to give
herself up to her ill and aged parent. The house in the Champs Elysées
shot through her mind again, but would she have the physical strength to
entertain properly? And how large was the garden? It was no use her
undertaking what she could not carry through.
Hermione had had a long career full of excitements, and even perils; but
she had foreseen the excitements and been able as a rule to terminate
any dangers which had arisen from them. But the night of her attack she
had neither foreseen how ill she would be, nor been able to control it.
A sensation which she had not roused in herself had frightened her. She
had suddenly felt that something might happen to her which she could not
prevent.
Hermione shivered a little as she realised how very near she had been to
that final trickster, Immortality.
She had often spoken of longing for death, and she had even experienced
baffling moments of exasperation with human material, when she had
thought of death as a supreme restfulness where she would be enshrined
forever in the right, beyond the criticism of ignorant Roumanians; but
these moments of longing had come to her when she knew she wasn’t going
to die. She had never been conscious of any desire for death when it was
at all likely. At the birth of her child, for instance, the very idea of
her own insecurity had shocked her, and she had neither forgotten nor
forgiven those preposterous, precipitate hours.
The night of her attack reminded her of them: something had turned on
her and forced her beyond her pace.
Might this happen again? And what steps should she take to prevent it?
She remembered that the doctor had been no use, but her father had.
The instant her eyes met his, this violent force in her had recognised a
resistance stronger than her own, and had yielded to it. But she was not
going to speak to her father about it.
He might be an asset for the future, and you do not tell assets that
they have the power of control.
It would be a great help to have Papa with her, if he could influence
her at a moment when she wished to be influenced, but Hermione felt that
she must first make sure of her need. Perhaps she would have got better
in any case; and she had a wholesome dread of undue personal influence.
Hermione decided to send for Dr. Raymond and ask him how ill she had
been.
Hermione did not like Dr. Raymond; she had always been accustomed to
make intimate friends with her doctors, and she had spared no pains to
create a happy relationship. They admired her first, and they admired
her symptoms afterwards. But Dr. Raymond had evaded his opportunities.
He was a busy man who did not want hurried intimacies with attractive
women patients.
He insisted from the first on only being told Hermione’s symptoms, and
he insisted upon them merely to assure her that they were not of much
importance. He was a young man and he had come straight from a military
hospital in France. Still, he was honest.
Hermione always realised the useful qualities of the people she
disliked; and she knew that if she asked Dr. Raymond a straight question
he would produce a straight answer, and keep both question and answer to
himself.
It was difficult to Hermione to listen to what she did not wish to hear,
and it very rarely occurred to her to be necessary; but when it did
occur to her she had never been known to shirk it.
She waited till she felt she had sufficient physical strength to deal
with the occasion successfully, and on the third day after her illness,
she told Nurse Davies that she would see Dr. Raymond alone.
Dr. Raymond did not come immediately he was telephoned for, and when he
did come he began their conversation by bluntly telling Hermione that
she looked a great deal better.
He sat opposite her, waving his hat tiresomely in his hand, as if he
wanted to go. Hermione ignored his clumsiness with difficulty.
“I should like you to tell me,” she said quietly, “two things—then I
need not detain you further. Was I dangerously ill the other night? And
in your opinion could I ever become normally well?”
Dr. Raymond stopped swinging his hat and looked at her with sudden
attention.
He had often wanted to speak straight to the Princess Girla, but she had
never given him the least opportunity. Now that she had given him the
opportunity he felt that it would be brutal to take too great an
advantage of it; besides he respected her for her frankness.
Hermione leaned back on her pillow, flushed, and with her grey eyes very
wide open and steady. She knew exactly what effect her frankness would
have upon Dr. Raymond and she realised that it would be easier to hear
an unpalatable truth if it should be presented to her with respect.
“You were very ill indeed the other night,” Dr. Raymond said after a
short pause, meeting her eyes with equal steadiness. “I think it is
possible you might have died, but I think it is more probable that you
might have gone out of your mind. You have a very excitable brain, and
it was keyed up on one point rather tighter than it could stand.”
Hermione nodded.
“I know I am unduly sensitive,” she murmured, “something had been said
to me which I could not break away from in my mind, although I was
conscious of its complete unfairness.”
Dr. Raymond’s eyes seemed to grow smaller and keener. He no longer
desired to spare the Princess anything; it flashed across him that she
would always spare herself.
“As to your future condition,” he went on, “I must tell you frankly that
it depends on you. There are people whose sensitiveness about their own
sensations presupposes physical ill health.
“I do not wish to sound impertinent, but ill health when there is no
organic cause for it is chiefly egoism.
“It comes from the fact that personal sensation is more interesting than
outside facts. We all of us, even the strongest, have physical
sensations which, if they interest us too much, become accentuated and
may produce disease.
“You have a very powerful will, Princess Girla, and if your mind should
become sufficiently interested on any outside line, I see no reason why
you should not become normally strong, providing you pay attention to
common sense, eat regular and healthy meals, and take enough fresh air
and exercise.
“On the other hand, a few more such serious nerve and brain attacks will
land you in a permanently bad physical condition out of which it would
be practically impossible to break. You are an interesting invalid now,
but as your ill health becomes chronic, you will become less and less
interesting and more and more of an invalid.
“That is all I can tell you; the choice lies in your own hands.”
Hermione’s eyes remained steady, although they became a trifle glassy in
expression.
“Thank you,” she said gently, “and may I ask when you came to this
conclusion about my case?”
“I think I thought so, more or less, the first time I saw you,” said Dr.
Raymond reflectively.
Hermione lowered her eyes. They became fixed upon Dr. Raymond’s hat.
“How very curious,” she said, “that you did not let me know what you
thought on that first occasion. Let me see, I think this must be your
twelfth visit?
“It will be perhaps unnecessary for you to call again as I understand
that my case is in my own hands—and has always been so.”
Dr. Raymond never knew how he got out of the Princess Girla’s room. He
felt profoundly uncomfortable and he was conscious that he looked a
fool.
Hermione said nothing further to him, but she watched him step on his
hat, and nearly overturn his chair. He carried away the impression that
Hermione thought he had deliberately made a case out of her for money.
Hermione’s quiet eyes could say a great deal, and Dr. Raymond forgot
that he had told the Princess Girla that she was guilty of egoism in the
shock of being considered not only an inefficient, but a dishonest
practitioner.
Hermione saw with satisfaction the impression that she had produced. She
did not even smile at Dr. Raymond’s undignified exit. She was not easily
amused, but she enjoyed it. Dr. Raymond had told her what she felt it
necessary to know, and she had made him suffer for the inconvenience of
truth.
Somebody has always to suffer in the cause of truth, and it is usually
the person who attaches the greater importance to it.
CHAPTER X
If you devote your life to studying the feelings of others you may get a
little overtired, and see things out of proportion, but you are not
likely to be mistaken in what these feelings are.
During Hermione’s convalescence Elise discovered that there was an
alteration in her father. Mr. Brett appeared superficially the same, but
there was, so Elise fancied, an undercurrent of restlessness in him.
He did not walk any further than usual, and he was always to be found in
his accustomed haunts, but behind his quiet eyes and his unperturbed
domestic comments there was a strange new grip of attention.
He knew that he was seeing the fuchsia hedges and the bird bath for the
last time. He would not often sit under the giant black yew, and watch
the retreating harvest fields stretch yellow and pale to the Downs’
edge.
He would not often see Elise standing at the top of a flight of steps,
balancing a white parasol over her sunny hair.
Mr. Brett did not look at Elise with emotion, he was not an emotional
man, but he looked at her with a prolonged attentiveness.
Elise did not ask him any questions, but she became daily more and more
conscious that change was in the air.
She came out oftener to look at her father, to share his gentle prowls
to the garden’s edge, and sit with him in the last patches of the
retreating sun.
Summer was drawing slowly to an end at Mambles, the colour of the garden
had changed, the delicate, myriad shades of the flowers had singled and
massed themselves into the hard and flaunting gold of sunflowers, dull
mauves, and stalwart reds and browns. Only a bush of pale blue flax
burned on as if it were still June.
The birds were all about the sky, practising unendingly their migratory
flights. They broke and clustered and spread open fans above the garden
hedges, crying instead of singing their last songs. The garden at
Mambles was full of their agitated wings and leave-takings.
John alone noticed no sign of change, except in the weather, and Elise
forbore to tell him of her premonitions.
She had discovered that John did not like changes and that it was better
to let them happen to him of their own accord than to prepare him for
them with a prevision that might look like consent. Elise was no doubt
very bad for men because she always altered herself to suit their
conveniences. She never expected attention, and she made John feel that
his wishes were a pleasure to her, and his tastes and habits part of the
fixed laws of the universe.
Nothing must stand between John and Yorkshire pudding with beef. She
felt the same about her father, only with Mr. Brett it was horse-radish
sauce.
Elise went to Church regularly with Mr. Brett because he said he had
come to the conclusion that religion should be like tobacco, got from an
old firm and mild, but she told John quite truthfully that she loved to
hear him read free-thinking books out loud on Sunday evenings. When John
said that you could not be orthodox and honest simultaneously, Elise saw
what he meant; and when Mr. Brett said very few men were honest
anyway—even a first-class infidel rubbed all over by the higher
criticisms could tell a lie at a pinch—Elise saw an equal significance
in her father’s opinion.
Nevertheless Elise had a mind of her own, she knew what was going to
happen before anybody else did, and she never repeated facts which were
inconvenient for other people to know unless it was absolutely necessary
that they should know them.
If Elise was more with her father than she had been before Hermione’s
illness, John made up for it by being oftener with Hermione.
John had been extremely impressed by Hermione’s illness. It struck him
that nobody else realised how seriously ill she had been.
Elise had been temporarily alarmed, but having seen Hermione very ill
before and known her to recover, she seemed to think that the process
would reassert itself.
Mr. Brett went still further. He said:
“Why, John, she’s _got_ to recover—she wants to.” It was only John who
faithfully believed that Hermione’s illness was the stroke of a Higher
Power, and watched her convalescence with the painstaking anxiety which
such a belief suggested.
Hermione made a steady and courageous recovery, she dismissed Nurse
Davies with three new hats and a long list of errands to do for her in
town, and then she proceeded to eat normally and assume the habits of
other people.
It was not an easy task to undertake for any one who had been a
dangerous invalid for five years, but Hermione did not only undertake
it, she carried it out with fortitude and common sense.
A fortnight after her illness she came down to a meal and ate it without
having ordered it beforehand. The cook was thunderstruck.
Afterwards Hermione went out into the garden. She expected Elise to
accompany her, but Elise with her hand in her father’s arm wandered off
heartlessly in the direction of the village; she did not even say where
she was going, and Hermione particularly resented the mysterious
disappearances of other people. Elise was absorbed in Mr. Brett.
Hermione, watching her with aggrieved eyes, felt that it was time this
unreflecting intimacy was destroyed.
“If I let her,” she said to herself, “I believe she would put Papa
before John and ruin her life’s happiness—Elise never had any
judgment.”
Elise and Mr. Brett had gone to see Bodger. He had been boarded out in
the village with a thick chain and a large quantity of dog biscuits, but
in the evening he was allowed to go for a walk by himself, and from his
lack of appetite when he returned it was supposed he had, with gross
lack of patriotism, accounted for many rabbits. On the whole Bodger had
a happy life though he missed John.
When they returned, Mr. Brett went into the library and Hermione
advanced across the lawn to meet Elise, carrying, with obvious
difficulty, an enormous vegetable marrow.
“Dearest Hermione!” cried Elise. “What are you doing that for?”
Hermione laid the marrow reverently upon the grass and, with a lace
pocket handkerchief, delicately wiped the dirt off her long, carefully
manicured fingers.
“I did it to save you, dear,” she said panting. “I did not wish you to
be overtired after your walk—perhaps a long one—with Papa.”
“Oh, but—” cried Elise aghast, “I never _do_ pick marrows—Demster
always does!”
“Not, I think,” said Hermione gently but implacably, “for the soldiers’
hospital. I understand from Demster that the vegetables for the hospital
you always pick yourself.”
“How _very, very_ good of you,” said Elise gratefully. “You must sit
right down and rest.”
Hermione sat down but she had no intention of resting. She took an
erect, uncomfortable chair, the only one of the kind in the garden.
“Don’t trouble about me, dear,” she said meekly. “I do not mind
discomfort; but promise me you will not go again into the marrow bed
yourself?”
“Oh, why?” asked Elise remorsefully choosing the next most uncomfortable
chair she could find, because it looked so awful to lounge in the face
of a full-fledged invalid determined on discomfort.
“There are adders there,” said Hermione impressively. “It would not be
safe. I have heard that the sting of an adder can easily prove fatal.”
“Oh, but Hermione!” cried Elise. “You oughtn’t to have gone there
yourself. But are you sure there are adders? I thought—”
Hermione interrupted her smilingly.
“Dear,” she said, “I don’t grudge a personal risk to serve our splendid
men. Think what they do for us!”
Elise bit her lips and looked into the laurel bush. John had
investigated the marrow bed himself that morning and he had found there
were no adders there, but one panic-stricken slow worm, which gave up
its taste for marrows from that hour. But Elise was a generous soul. She
saw that for dramatic reasons Hermione wanted adders and she forbore to
replace them by a slow worm.
“Demster can easily take the marrow down to the hospital to-night,” she
said gently.
“Forgive me,” said Hermione bitterly, “if I have been officious. You
sometimes make me feel as if I were a little in the way.”
Elise winced as if she had been struck.
“Oh, Hermione!” was all she said.
“Do not be distressed, dear,” said Hermione kindly. “Young married
people like to feel their new authority, I know; it is a punishment I
deserve.
“I stepped out of my path to come here. I must now step back again.”
Hermione looked at the house and let her eyes wander across the garden
to the hills. She would have liked a country house to be larger than
Mambles. “It is all too simple and happy and peaceful for me here,” she
added. “You do not feel so deeply about it I know. Why should you? John
is safe—and for you the cataclysm of nations is but a humming in the
air. I cannot take it so calmly. I feel as if a knife were pressing
against me every hour.”
Elise looked conscience-stricken: she could not truthfully say she felt
the war every hour. She felt it regularly after breakfast when the
newspaper came, and from time to time during the day when there was
something she could do about it; but it did not haunt her like the
possibility of John’s wet feet.
Hermione looked haunted.
She was suffering from severe indigestion caused by carrying a heavy
marrow after an ordinary meal.
“I came to you,” Hermione said gravely, “because you called me.”
Elise did not deny this fact, but she wore a guilty air. She had called
Hermione, but she remembered that she had felt she ought to.
“I cannot say that I am sorry that I came,” Hermione continued kindly.
“I have seen your life for myself. Perhaps I have been able to remove
from your path a few of the stumbling blocks of marriage.”
“Oh, yes!” Elise interrupted gratefully. “I never knew there were so
many before!”
“But you know now,” said Hermione tenderly. “And I have seen something
else besides, something which it is quite natural that in the first
flush of your happiness you should have overlooked—Papa’s dire need.”
“His what?” cried Elise aghast.
“His need of me,” Hermione repeated briefly. Her eyes held Elise’s
firmly. Elise could not have looked away if she had wanted to. She felt
like a bird fascinated by something that is about to strike it.
“Oh,” she faltered, “I thought Papa was happy.”
“My dear!” said Hermione impatiently. “You never thought at all, your
mind was—as it is even now—drugged by the miasma of marriage. Papa has
been failing steadily. Mambles does not suit him. He needs a dry,
bracing place with plenty of life in it. He has been living here alone
with his double tragedy and there are five underground rivers in Sussex.
I wonder he has not gone mad!”
“Does he—is he—thinking of going away?” asked Elise apprehensively.
“Yes, dear,” said Hermione impressively. “Papa is coming with me to
Paris. I shall make his declining years the study of my life.”
Elise said nothing.
It was a hot, still day—not a leaf stirred in the garden, only above it
the swallows took their circling, hurrying flights; they swept across
the hedges, and through the red creepers that covered their nests
beneath the eaves, with a speed which showed nothing but the quick-blown
passage of their flight.
Outside in the fields there was an occasional sharp whir and click of a
frightened partridge.
“I thought he liked quiet,” Elise murmured after a pause.
“I daresay we shall have a garden in the Champs Elysées,” said Hermione
loftily, “that will be quiet enough for him.”
Mr. Brett appeared in the library door. He advanced slowly across the
south terrace.
“Are you warm enough out there?” he asked. “It’s what they call the heat
of the day over here, isn’t it? I guess I’ll bring a fur rug along.”
“It will be hotter in Paris,” said Hermione incisively.
Mr. Brett drew forward a long, low chair and made himself thoroughly
comfortable.
“Why, yes,” he agreed leaning back and half closing his eyes to study
the herbaceous borders at his ease. “I guess there’ll be hot moments
over there and cold ones too, as far as that goes. Have you been telling
Elise our little plans about Paris?”
“Yes,” said Hermione, “I have told her, Papa.”
Elise said nothing; her eyes rested intently on her father’s face.
Mr. Brett drew his soft hat further forward over his eyes, and stretched
out his legs in front of him.
“Hermione,” he said, “is going to devote herself to my declining years.
Say, Hermione, I tell you what it is, I want some of that devotion right
now. As you are going into the house, I’d like you to tell my man to
bring me out an overcoat.
“Do you remember that hymn, Elise, played to a waltz tune, ‘The roseate
hues of early dawn how fast they fade away—’? Well, I guess it’s
accurate; anything to do with the sun over here is liable to pretty
rapid fading.”
Hermione rose slowly and gracefully. She had not been going into the
house. She opened her lips to speak, then she shut them again, and
walked leisurely towards the open library door.
“Hermione has made a grand recovery,” said her father appreciatively.
“She reminds me of Jonah’s gourd: as far as I remember it came up in the
night and was powerful shady on the following day. But in the end it
crossed Jonah by wilting when he least expected it. Jonah miscalculated
that gourd—but he wasn’t much of a stayer as a lodger anyway.”
“Oh, Daddy!” said Elise. “Are you really going to Paris?”
Mr. Brett met her eyes; for a long time they neither of them spoke. Then
Mr. Brett said with a gentleness which his voice never held for any one
else.
“I guess you’re going to be all right here Elise—with John.”
CHAPTER XI
John looked across from the mass of papers on his desk to his
father-in-law’s impassive face.
He was a young man with a generous share of self-control, but he could
not help revealing that he was very much moved.
“You can’t really mean, Sir,” he said with a momentary trembling of his
hand, as he turned over the mass of papers, “that _all_ your work is to
be left with me. The reconstruction work as well; that I am to have the
regulation of all this and take the proceeds? It’s a tremendous
future—and a tremendous fortune!”
Mr. Brett lit a cigar in a leisurely way and tilted back his chair to
his favourite angle.
“Yes,” he agreed indifferently, “there’s money in it, there’s most
usually money in what occurs to me, but it ain’t anything to make a fuss
about. Some people breed money, and some people breed dogs. I guess I’m
what you might call a money-fancier. As for those old notes, I took ’em
while I was prowling round this garden and the English Government has
decided it wants to take them up. I made it my condition that you were
to be managing director—that’s all there is to it.
“I sha’n’t be over here any more. I can’t be in two places at once, and
I’ve run that Channel passage during this war as faithfully as if I were
a German submarine, and I guess I’m just about as tired of it as German
submarines are going to be. I’ll get along all right in Paris. Brains
don’t go bankrupt. What I have left will come in mighty useful in
France. France wants new machinery a sight more than you do. She’s
commercially as flat as a plate, but she can be built up and she’s got
to be. There’ll be plenty on the plate before France is through, and I’d
like to be one of the men who put something there. Don’t you worry about
me.”
John drew a deep breath. He could not keep still in his excitement. He
walked up and down the long library at Mambles with his visions hot
before him.
Mr. Brett looked at him with satisfaction. He liked John, and he liked
pleasing him, but he knew that he wasn’t going on pleasing him. He
waited for his bad moment with the same unshaken placidity with which he
waited for his good ones. There was no homely truth of which Mr. Brett
was fonder, or more content to practise, than that of taking the rough
with the smooth.
“If I come to pieces over it,” John demanded, “or if I get cold feet,
can I come over and see you? There’s such a lot of things to plan and
think of—you’ve given me such powers, and the plans themselves are so
big—I almost hesitate to undertake them, and yet I’d rather do it than
anything else in the world!”
“You can come over and see me as long as I’m there,” said Mr. Brett
cautiously. “But you won’t need to. You go into your own brain and pick
at that. You’ve got a-plenty.
“I’ve studied the English mind some, since I’ve been over here, and I
guess I’ve spotted what’s wrong with it. It’s as lazy as a dog! You
don’t use what you’ve got: maybe you’re frightened it would look showy,
maybe you’re so stuck on behaving the way you weren’t made that you’re
afraid your wits will let you down into behaving the way you were made;
but you’ve got wits.
“Look at your navy! When I read your newspapers I could cry. When I talk
to your high-brows I could laugh—and when I hear the muddles your
Government is liable to slide into, I wonder any of you are alive. But
when I look at your navy I see the whole thing as clear as glass. Are
there any folk—even the showiest broker in Wall Street, or the latest
quick-thinking Jap—that acts more like a live wire than the lieutenant
of one of your destroyers? Are there any men who see cooler and clearer
than one of your young admirals? Or I might say, one of your infant
middies—for they’re all as clear-eyed and hard-headed as professional
burglars! No, Sir, you can’t find men in any country quicker or more
spry than your naval officers. And why is it? I figure it out this
way—they got to be. Sea fighting is like operatic singing, you haven’t
one thing to think of, you have half a dozen—pace, sight, signals, men,
guns, the sea. The sea does it. Men need all their sap to face the sea.
You can’t soss down and get into a habit with it. You can’t trust to a
prejudice, you got to change your mind and your behaviour as quick as a
north-east gale.
“Well, John—if a man _can_ do a thing when he’s got to—all you have to
do is to apply the emergency and take away his props.
“I guess that’s all you, or any other Englishman needs. This is a soft
country and there are a lot of props in it for the well-to-do, and there
ain’t many emergencies. So the English have got used to saying, ‘That’ll
do,’ and ‘Don’t bother,’ and ‘It’ll probably come out all right without
much trouble.’ But the war’s taken away some of the props, and it’s
applied a pretty heavy pressure. So I reckon you _can_ do jobs you never
thought of now—and follow trails you never heard of—and I’m banking on
you to do it satisfactorily.”
“Well, I can’t do more than try,” said John reflectively.
“Yes you can,” said Mr. Brett incisively. “You can succeed. I never had
any hankering for an ‘also ran’.”
John laughed and Mr. Brett gave a reluctant smile. Then he said, “And
now, John, there’s one more point we’ve got to go into, and then I think
we’re wound up. I want your help on a point of domestic policy. Before I
leave here I want to be sure of one thing—”
John turned round and faced him attentively.
“Yes, Sir,” he said, “is it about Elise?”
“It has to do with Elise,” said Mr. Brett slowly. “I want your word,
John, never to invite nor to accept the offer of a visit from Hermione.
She has given me already her word that she will not suggest it, nor
accept any such invitation from you or Elise, but Hermione’s words are
apt to be fluid. Facts don’t worry her, and people who ain’t worried by
facts come through their promises like damp through an outside wall.
“Before my mind can be perfectly free I must have a solid word from you,
John—and then I’ll feel all right.”
John flushed painfully.
“I really don’t know, Sir,” he said awkwardly, “that I can agree to give
it. Of course I remember that the first part of Hermione’s visit was not
a success, and it did seem as if Elise was a little overstrained by it.
But I am sure now that all those little difficulties were caused by
Hermione’s very serious ill health. Now that she is so much better, no
one could be a more delightful guest.”
John paused. Mr. Brett regarded him thoughtfully.
“Have you forgotten the lawn-mower, John?” he asked, with a slight lift
of his heavy brows. “Or Bodger? I don’t somehow feel as if they were the
ordinary symptoms of a disease.”
John moved restlessly to the window.
“Hermione is very sensitive,” he said, with his back turned. “She felt
at a great disadvantage when she first came down. She thought I was
prejudiced against her. It is extraordinary how people will
misunderstand each other under those circumstances.”
“Sure,” said Mr. Brett in a low voice. “Folks were made to misunderstand
each other—but as far as I know, they weren’t made to hit out at every
one who don’t take them at their own valuation.”
John let this pass. He did not understand what his father-in-law meant,
but he knew that he did not wish to understand it. He was thinking of
his last talk with Hermione, and their last talk had been an appeal from
Hermione, not to his understanding, but to his emotion, and John did not
find it easy to resist appeals to his emotion.
“It seems to me you are asking a great deal,” he said after a pause,
“and more than I ought to promise—at least without her free consent. If
Hermione wishes me to promise—I will consent to do it, but I couldn’t,
as it were, do it behind her back.”
“You show remarkably good feeling, John,” said Mr. Brett cordially, “and
remarkably poor sense. I’ve often noticed the way those two things hang
together. However, you can send for Hermione and ask her in my presence
what she does wish. I guess I’d rather see for myself how she tackles
the subject. Sometimes it regulates the way a cat jumps if you’re
watching the cat. If you’ll touch the bell we’ll ask Humphreys to let
the Princess know we’d like to see her here.”
John obeyed reluctantly. He felt very up in arms about Hermione: he
would stand by her whatever happened, even if it meant the loss of his
future, but the worst of it was that it would not mean any such
sacrifice and John knew it. Mr. Brett would never recall his
generosities. Somehow or other whether John opposed him or not he would
see that John didn’t lose. It made fighting against Mr. Brett much more
difficult when one realised that he attached no penalties to his
opponent in the hour of defeat. He was not even put out with John for
insisting on the presence of Hermione.
Hermione kept them waiting ten minutes. At the end of that time she
sailed into the library as if she were leading a procession. She looked
every inch a Princess.
She wore a dress of a soft black material wonderfully lightened by
Venetian point lace. Round her neck was a long string of pearls which
fell to her waist.
“I think you want me, Papa,” she said without reproach, but as if it
were strange that she had been sent for, and not sought.
“I can’t say that I do,” said Mr. Brett. “Accurately speaking John wants
you; but I’m an interested party.”
Hermione turned her beautiful lifted head towards John. She smiled at
him, as it is possible that martyrs, if they had time to think of it,
smiled at their rather cowardly fellow Christians who had not joined
them at the stake. John hesitated and stammered. He drew a chair forward
for her, and then stood beside her as if he was there to protect and not
to challenge her.
“Yes,” he confessed, “I do want to ask you something. Your father has
suggested that I should give him a promise from Elise and myself—and I
am not prepared to do so unless I have your consent. He has asked me not
to invite nor to accept a visit from you—I gather for the rest of our
lives.”
Hermione took it wonderfully. She did not lower her raised chin, or
change the benevolent light of her clear grey eyes. She merely looked
from one man to the other. John’s eyes were fixed anxiously upon her
face, but Mr. Brett regarded without concern, but without appreciation,
the points of his patent leather slippers. He did not consider that
English servants understood patent leather.
“For the rest of our lives?” repeated Hermione. Her voice did not break,
but it literally wrung John’s heart.
“You quite understand,” he urged, “that I have made no such promise; it
has only been put to me as a condition of your father’s going with you
to Paris, and what is more, I will not make it without your agreement.”
Hermione rose to her feet, she gave an exquisite gesture of mingled
surrender and protection in the direction of her father’s unresponsive
figure.
“Thank you, John,” she said with heroic fortitude, “for having consulted
me. I don’t think we need go into the painfulness of the question—you
will know, without my speaking of it, what it means to me. I must only
urge that as far as possible Elise is spared; to put such a decision
into her hands would torture her.
“As far as I am concerned the decision is already made. Since Papa makes
it the express condition of our being together, I—consent.”
She turned and without faltering walked towards the door.
John sprang to open it for her, and as she passed out of it, he took one
of her hands in his and kissed it. It seemed to him that he had been
present at the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
He was so moved that he could hardly force himself to return to Mr.
Brett. When he spoke to his father-in-law all the friendliness and
gratitude had gone out of his voice.
“I should like to know, Sir,” he asked coldly, “how I am to explain this
extraordinary arrangement to my wife?”
Mr. Brett raised his eyes and looked at John.
“Well,” he said slowly, “my way would be _not_ to explain it. Half the
trouble in life comes from explanations. When they’re honest they hurt,
and when they’re dishonest, and most explanations are dishonest, they’re
a waste of breath.
“If the question has to come up you can tell Elise that the arrangement
is mine, that you only agreed to it at Hermione’s wish, and that she
only agreed to it in order to succour the declining years of her
hard-hearted old parent. That lets you out, that lets Hermione out—I
guess that’s all that’s necessary.”
“The fact remains,” said John inexorably, “that by your action you
deprive Hermione of her sister’s companionship.”
“Sure, Hermione can’t have us both,” said Mr. Brett with a sudden
chuckle.
“And Elise can’t have you both either,” said John, ignoring his
father-in-law’s untimely mirth.
“It’s wonderful how you put two and two together, John,” said Mr. Brett
mildly. “But don’t you feel too bad about Elise; you can bring her over
to Paris whenever you feel inclined. I don’t want to put up any
unnecessary barriers, and Hermione and I will always be pleased to see
you.”
John was silent. He loved his father-in-law, and he wanted him to
justify himself. He waited expectantly for what Mr. Brett might have to
say. But Mr. Brett made no attempt at self-justification. He too paused
a little, but without expectation, and then he recalled John’s attention
to the question of the new chrysanthemums.
Two days were given over to packing and farewells, then the electric
brougham once more drew up at the door, followed by a luggage cart for
the Princess’s ten boxes, the French maid and Bichette. Bichette’s
increasing clamour almost outbarked the ghost of Bichon, if indeed she
was not privately reinforced by his spiritual tongue.
John and Elise stood at the gate and waved their handkerchiefs until the
electric brougham glided in ease and security out of sight. Mr. Brett
did not wave: he contented himself with a long grave look at Mambles as
if he were running over in his mind some secret inventory. The Princess
and the French maid bowed farewell and all the servants, handsomely
tipped and generously inclined, stood at the windows appreciatively
watching their departure.
“It’s just too wonderful,” said Elise, turning to her husband with
sparkling eyes. “I can hardly believe it—and it’s all due to you!
You’ve brought them together just as I always hoped and prayed you
would, and oh! John, isn’t it too perfectly lovely to think that dear
Papa has _got_ Hermione?”
THE WORM
CHAPTER I
Miss Onoria Strickland lived in a semi-detached villa, and had no
nonsense about her. Many women repose through life upon lesser
attributes, they may have a handsome profile, a gift for putting on
their clothes, a skilful tongue, or a kind heart. But Miss Strickland
found rest in none of these minor alleviations of the spirit; she took
her stand triumphantly upon her direct common sense.
No one could beat her there. “What,” she would ask herself as she came
to any crisis in her life or in the lives of her neighbours, “is the
most sensible thing to do?” And when she had answered this question, she
did it; or in cases where an action of her own was not indicated, she
ordered it to be done by others.
She had lived at Little Ticklington for forty-five years, and all this
time she had had her eyes open and said whatever came into her head,
under the impression that she was expressing a peculiarly pure form of
truth.
Her friends depended upon her and feared her. When they didn’t want to
depend upon her they got out of her way.
Miss Strickland was continually discovering the deceitfulness of human
nature but she never laid her finger upon its cause.
She did not realise that the only way to keep on good terms with an
aggressive personality is by the constant practice of evasion.
Miss Onoria Strickland was an exemplary citizen. She had earned her own
living with talent and success from the age of twenty-one, and she had
been a masterful but helpful daughter to her aged parents. They aged a
little prematurely under this assistance, and died within a year of each
other.
Opinion in Little Ticklington agreed that neither could support the full
weight of Onoria’s attentions without the other.
She nursed them to the last with a rigid application of common sense,
which took the wind out of the local doctor’s sails. There was nothing
left for him to suggest but medicines, and these were ineffectual.
Onoria had never felt lonely during the lifetime of her parents.
She left home at nine o’clock every morning and returned at five o’clock
in the afternoon, except on Saturday, when she came back to lunch.
No one could have had a fuller life; she managed her parents, did the
household accounts, worked in the garden, or took Prendergast for a
walk. Prendergast was a pug dog of a self-centred and exacting nature.
He had been given to Mr. and Mrs. Strickland by an old friend of that
name, and though Onoria had protested against the use of a surname for a
pet dog, as unsuitable and even ridiculous, her father and mother had
insisted querulously and unitedly that they wanted to call the pug
“Prendergast” as a last tribute to their deceased friend; and as they
were at this time feeble, and it was bad for them to insist, Onoria had
wisely let her protest drop.
After her parents’ death, Prendergast became the pivot upon which the
household turned. Onoria was not sensible about Prendergast: she adored
him. He was the one licensed folly of her ordered life.
It must not be supposed that Romance had passed Onoria by.
It had fallen at her feet early in life, and when she discovered how
much nonsense it had about it, she had kicked it ruthlessly away.
No one will ever know why Peter Gubbins worshipped Miss Strickland. He
was a gentle, inoffensive youth, with a weak chin and bottle-neck
shoulders; his strongest tastes were for magazines and barley sugar, and
though he was easily convinced that he was unsuitable, he continued to
worship Onoria in a melancholy but resigned manner for twenty years.
Peter Gubbins was her next-door neighbour, and as the years went on a
certain element of relief mingled with his melancholy.
Miss Strickland had a piercing voice which swept across the garden, over
the wall which divided their retreats; but there was a wall.
Mr. Gubbins, who was extremely fond of poetry, often thought of those
lines in “Maud” which assure her that if she were to pass near the final
resting place of her lover: his “heart would hear her and beat,” had he
“lain for a century dead.” Mr. Gubbins was under the impression that his
own heart would act in a precisely similar manner should Onoria visit
his grave. Mr. Gubbins had a large Tabby cat called Samson, of which he
was inordinately proud.
Samson did not so much return, as passively accept, his master’s nervous
devotion.
He was inconsiderate about sleeping in a basket. Inflexible
arrangements, when they were not his own, galled him; and though he knew
his name perfectly, he had never been known to answer to it, unless he
had reason to believe that fish was at the other end.
Peter Gubbins was very fond of all small and reasonably gentle animals,
and often took Prendergast for a walk if Miss Strickland hadn’t time.
Prendergast accompanied Mr. Gubbins for the sake of the walk, but he
made it perfectly plain from the first (just as Miss Strickland herself
had done) that he thought nothing of Peter Gubbins as a companion.
Mr. Gubbins made himself useful in other ways. He really knew a great
deal more about gardens than Onoria did, and he loved them—under his
breath as it were—because Onoria was always pointing out to him how
much rubbish was talked and written upon the subject of gardens. The
Garden of Eden had started the topic, and no one had been able to let it
alone since.
Peter Gubbins had a private income and wrote occasional articles and
poems for magazines. The articles dealt with sweet peas, on which he was
an expert, and Roman Catholicism, on which he was not, but by dint of
studying the works of ex-nuns and monks, he had arrived at some very
startling theories upon the Roman Catholic religion suitable for very
low church magazines. The poems were on certain aspects of nature which
have unfortunately occurred to other persons in search of poetic
subjects; still they were occasionally published and Mr. Gubbins signed
them “Sirius.” (As he often wrote about stars, and always referred to
them as “bright,” his signature could not have been more appropriate.)
Obviously “Peter Gubbins” applauding the universe would not do.
He never showed the poems to Onoria, but they shared the articles on
Rome, and sometimes Onoria liked them, though she felt them to be too
milk and watery to do real justice to the subject. It was inconsistent
of Onoria to have such a decided bias against Rome, for she was very
fond of law and order, and considered authority final. She said “This
settles it” about a dozen times a day, and no Pope has ever made more
ex-cathedra proclamations in the twenty-four hours.
Mr. Gubbins was by no means Onoria’s greatest man friend; she merely saw
him the most.
Men liked Onoria, and Onoria liked men.
Whether she had a secret passion for any of the more virile types of
Little Ticklington will never be known.
Onoria did not shriek her emotional history upon house-tops, and as far
as the relations of the sexes were concerned, she was not modern—that
is to say she thought there should be no relation except marriage; and
even that should be concealed as far as possible.
Women she despised.
Men sought Onoria to tell her what they felt for other women, they
talked politics with her, and they took a monstrous and secret pleasure
in hearing her abuse her own sex; but with the exception of Mr. Gubbins
they did not propose to share their lives with Onoria; they preferred
the weaker sisters whom Onoria had relentlessly dissected for their
special delectation.
They enjoyed watching this merciless analysis of a suspected sex, but in
spite of their suspicions they married the subjects of the analysis.
Onoria hated women. It may have been because she had been an only girl
in a family of five, and that certain limitations and inhibitions
brought home to her early in life the disabilities of her sex without
the compensating spiritual advantages which occur later; or it may have
been that something in herself warned her that her most marked qualities
were not those that succeed in attracting, where qualities less marked
and perhaps less worthy of attention prevail. Each of her brothers in
turn gave themselves over without reprieve to an incarnate devil.
This is not their own account of the transaction; they were under the
impression that they had married singularly delightful types of
womanhood, but Onoria found these women out, tried them in the furnace
of her fraternal love and told them roundly what she thought of them.
The result of freedom of speech is often the separation of families.
Onoria quarrelled bitterly and irretrievably with each of her
sisters-in-law in turn, and never went near any of them again.
She referred to her brothers as “poor dear So-and-So”—in the manner of
the pious whose dead are in the hands of the Lord. She sometimes saw
them in neutral places, and she sent her nephews and nieces handsome
presents at Christmas, especially her nephews.
When Onoria asserted that her family had been ruined by women, she
firmly believed this to be the fact. People who invariably speak the
truth are sometimes misled as to the nature of fact; it is so difficult
for truthful natures to realise that they are not in possession of the
whole of that evasive quality.
At the High School Onoria taught nothing but girls. She taught them
music and singing with bitterness and with boredom for over twenty
years, and she taught them exceedingly well.
There is an excellent poem which asserts that “He who only rules by
terror does a grievous wrong,” and there is no doubt a good deal to be
said for this theory.
All Onoria’s pupils would have agreed to it with rapture; still you do
not go down the path of least resistance often if you find lions in the
way.
Even girls have the sense to make unusual efforts to avoid unusual
inconveniences, and Miss Strickland’s temper when roused was an unusual
inconvenience. She said everything that came into her head against the
girl who had failed her, and then, with the sting of a life-long
prejudice behind her, everything against the sex which had evolved her.
Onoria firmly believed that all girls were deceitful, lazy and vain, and
that the only way to deal with them was by repeated castigations of the
spirit.
Some of her pupils would have done better without these reprisals; most
people are supposed to work best under appreciation and do not begin to
find themselves until they have the confidence and sympathy of their
teachers. Such girls did not do their best work for Onoria; but they
worked. All of them worked, feverishly or steadily, to avoid the deluge
of her merciless tongue.
The level of Onoria’s pupils was high, and as she did not believe in
hidden depths, she never had to regret that she had failed to plumb
them.
“I know exactly what each of my girls can do,” she was fond of saying.
What she did not know was what the girls could have done if they hadn’t
been hers.
“I have never made a friend out of a pupil yet, thank the Lord,” she
would end up by saying to her men friends, who spent Sunday afternoons
in hearing Onoria undermine the position of women, “and what is more I
never will!” The men shook their heads in delighted admiration; they
knew they could not say as much for themselves; but they admired Onoria
for her security.
CHAPTER II
Elsie Andrews was exactly the kind of girl Miss Strickland disliked
most. Nobody really liked Elsie very much because it is difficult to
like a child who constantly squirms. She went, at school, by the name of
“The Worm.” The young have an unconscious preference for success or the
materials of success, and no one could have imagined a success being
made of Elsie.
She had long, greasy, dark hair which fell perfectly straight down her
back, and was the colour of a wet haystack. Her eyes were small and
rather weak, her chin receded, and her complexion was a pale fawn
colour.
She came into a room as if she were holding herself together with
difficulty, and was unpleasantly conscious of having broken the Ten
Commandments. If she had really broken them there would have been some
sense in it; but she never broke anything except the points of her
pencils.
Miss Strickland did not notice her, except to tell her to sit up, or to
get out of the way.
It came as a shock to the whole school when it learned that Elsie had
petitioned to be allowed to take music lessons from Miss Strickland,
instead of from the less accomplished but much milder teacher provided
for the younger girls.
It was like asking to be led into a lion’s den without having evinced
the slightest aptitude for being a Daniel.
It was supposed that Miss Strickland would make short work of her, and
that after the first or second music lesson Elsie’s whitened bones would
be left outside the music room door.
Miss Strickland herself, staring at the small bowed figure on the music
stool, felt as a rose fancier might feel if asked to entertain the most
noxious of the caterpillars.
Here was a true type of feminine nature—a prevaricating, vacillating,
cowardly little girl; and Elsie was vain too, or how would she have
dared to claim the best teacher in the school for presumably the worst
pupil?
She so exemplified everything that Miss Strickland felt women in general
were, without any of the attractions which, in the eyes of the
undiscriminating, outweigh these disadvantages, that Miss Strickland
felt a certain kindliness rise in her—the kindliness of a prophet who
sees his worst prognostications blossom into disastrous facts.
“May I ask what you think you know about music?” she shot out at the
child with a twist of her determined chin.
This was Miss Strickland’s usual preliminary to a campaign of slaughter,
and all new pupils, even if she had a kindly feeling towards them, had
to be slaughtered first.
Elsie choked, looked helplessly at her limp little fingers, and
stammered, “Nothing, please!”
Miss Strickland did not appear in the least mollified by this collapse
of confidence.
“Under the circumstances,” she replied with the easy smartness of a
licensed bully, “can you tell me why the teacher for the younger girls
was not considered sufficiently good for you?”
There was a breathless silence before Elsie, with an astonishing spasm
of courage, answered,
“I shouldn’t have learned anything from her, please.”
“‘Couldn’t’ is no doubt what you mean,” said Miss Strickland with genial
irony. “And ‘couldn’t’ will be no doubt the result of trying to learn
from me. Not even the cleverest teacher can mate a good job with a bad
tool. You are a very inefficient little girl. You don’t know how to sit
on a music stool, or how to hold your hands. Your back is a disgrace,
and your fingers are all thumbs. Let’s hear you play something. What
have you got here—rubbish? Oh, I see—worse than rubbish—the usual
Sonata by that poor Mozart—mercifully he is dead!
“Play it, and as I am not dead, pray do not make it any louder than is
strictly necessary. Keep your feet off the pedals. Pupils who don’t know
how to play their notes have an idea that they can fall back on the loud
pedal to drown their incompetence. That is not the proper use of pedals.
They were never put into a piano to reinforce blunders.”
Elsie dropped the Sonata on the floor, and in picking it up overturned
the music stool.
Miss Strickland longed to slap her. Like all highly strung musical
organisations, she loathed a sudden noise.
“Clumsy little animal!” she said under her breath.
Elsie heard her and turned a dull crimson. She arranged the Sonata with
trembling fingers and started off solemnly upon its well-known track.
Every note she played was a mistake. She altered pace, she ignored
rhythm. She tried for expression when the notes escaped her. She
wallowed desperately on through the thickening disapproval of Miss
Strickland’s portentous silence.
Miss Strickland considered that she was giving Elsie a chance.
Elsie knew exactly what the Sonata sounded like to Miss Strickland—she
had the vision of the disciple into the mind of the master.
She knew she was inflicting torture upon her ideal human being—but
still she inflicted it, having grasped that obedience is better than
sacrifice, even the sacrifice of the feelings of the one you are bound
to obey.
Blandina before the maddened cow in the Coliseum could not have shown a
more desperate courage.
At the end Miss Strickland said with deceptive calm, “You cannot like
music, it is impossible! What on earth persuaded you to suggest that I
should teach you?”
For a long while Elsie said nothing; she seemed engrossed in folding up
the Sonata. Then she lifted her rather weak eyes to Miss Strickland’s
face; she had no colour at all, her very lips were white—“Because I
liked you—” she stammered. “I wanted you to speak to me—even if you
were angry——”
Miss Strickland was not an expert in Biblical language—but there was a
quotation which attacked her mind at that moment, and which stuck in her
memory for years afterwards: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
Him.”
She was the first to look away.
If there was one thing Miss Strickland had always set her face against,
it was school-girl devotions. If she had any reason for supposing that
any particular girl was guilty of such a sentiment towards herself, she
crushed it ruthlessly within the hour of its conception.
But there was something in Elsie’s eyes which was different from
anything she had seen in the eyes of other girls.
It would not be an easy act for a strong swimmer to deprive a drowning
man of his straw. As far as life was concerned Miss Strickland was a
strong swimmer, and Elsie was a drowning man, her hopeless, helpless
eyes said it.
She had this one desire, this one strange, pitiful claim upon the
Universe, and having made it, she was prepared to drown. She said no
more.
She did not cry, she sat and trembled on her music stool, looking dumbly
at Miss Strickland’s face.
Miss Strickland hesitated. She had always worked on principle
before—girls below a certain standard were Miss Saunders’ pupils, girls
above it were hers. It is not easy to break a principle at one’s own
expense.
Then she said with conscious dryness, “Well—we must see what we can do
with you.” She had not taken away the straw. The small figure beside her
gave a long sigh of relief.
“You quite understand,” continued Miss Strickland with her usual
firmness, “that I make no promises. If you work very hard and improve, I
will try to keep you, but it will require all the work you have in you.
Now I am going to tell you, not _all_ the things that were wrong in your
playing—that would be impossible in the short time that is left to
us—but I shall point out a few of them which I shall expect you to
overcome before the next lesson.
“As you play the Sonata all wrong, I should suggest your never touching
it again and starting to learn properly something you have never seen
before. Are you listening to me attentively?”
Elsie nodded, she tried to listen attentively, but she was hearing
instead of Miss Strickland’s words the music of the spheres. The sons of
God were shouting together in a newly created world.
Her heart’s desire had been granted to Elsie. She was not going to be
abandoned by the one being on earth whom she truly loved.
It is unfortunate to have to confess at this point that both Elsie’s
parents were living.
Her father was a genial tradesman of the higher class of tradesmen; he
did not serve in his own shop, and liked to romp with his children when
he came home from business.
Mrs. Andrews was a flighty, pretentious little woman, who had overlaid
the maternal instinct by a desire to get on in the world. She would have
liked a pretty little girl to show off to her neighbours, but she
preferred boys.
She had two of them, and she had brought them up to tease and tyrannise
over their small sister. They did this without imagination or cruelty of
intention, until they were old enough for school, when they ignored her.
There were little things she could do for them in the holidays, and if
she did them all right she could live in peace.
It was a great relief to Elsie Andrews when nobody at home paid any
attention to her, but it could not quite fill the whole horizon of
youth. Miss Strickland filled the rest of it. Elsie believed in her as
the wisest, most beautiful, and grandest of earthly beings. She
sometimes wondered if Queen Victoria had ever been like her. Not in some
ways; for Elsie hugged it to her heart as a golden but guilty secret
that her goddess was “advanced.” Elsie would not have revealed it under
torture, but she had seen Miss Strickland smoke a cigarette behind the
shrubbery in the school garden. Probably Queen Victoria had never done
this; she had lacked that final Napoleonic touch of audacity.
Miss Strickland’s cigarette was the nearest thing to an adventure that
Elsie had ever known.
It took the place in her imagination of “perilous seas in faery lands
forlorn.” She never passed a tobacco shop without a thrill of memory,
and she saw, far down the vista of the years, a kindred moment for
herself. It was with the aspect of Miss Strickland’s light blue eyes and
trim, erect figure (the rest of her appearance was not very impressive)
that Elsie supposed Venus had arisen from the sea. (The blue serge coat
and skirt which invariably accompanied Miss Strickland, no doubt adhered
to her later.)
Miss Strickland was as beautiful as Venus, as grand as Queen Victoria,
as wise as Minerva. As far as Elsie was concerned, wisdom would die with
Miss Strickland. When Onoria said “That’s settled,” Elsie would rather
have disputed the last trump.
It had taken two years of dumb and invisible worship before Elsie had
dared to make this final bid for the notice of her goddess.
She knew it was final: if Miss Strickland had turned her away, she would
have sunk like a stone to the bottom of her despair. She would never
have attempted to move again. Life would have gone on all round her, but
she would not have lived. She was living now; every breathless moment of
her terrible lesson she had lived—ardour and agony combined in her. She
felt that she was moving as swiftly as the Scotch express—sparks were
flying out from the tension of her silence.
“Well,” said Miss Strickland, “you’ve had over your hour—and I think
I’ve told you enough to go on with. You haven’t talent, but don’t let
that discourage you, I never believe in little girls with talent; work
produces ability up to a certain point. There is no such thing as a
woman genius and never will be.”
Elsie looked at her in surprise.
“But you—” she murmured. “Surely you are a genius?”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Strickland, flushing half with annoyance and half
with a feeling that was not annoyance.
“I am nothing of the kind. I am merely a very hard-working person with
the natural advantages of a good ear and light fingers.”
Elsie could not believe this and she looked as if she could not believe
it; but she said nothing.
“Now run along,” said Miss Strickland briskly but not unkindly. You
cannot be unkind to a person who will not believe that you are not a
genius.
Elsie went out of the music room with her head held up and her eyes
sparkling.
Miss Strickland did not immediately ring the bell to summon her next
pupil. She felt unaccountably stirred.
“A very ordinary little girl,” she said to herself reassuringly. “A
_most_ ordinary little girl. Still I will see if something can’t be done
with her. The poor child has been shamefully neglected by some woman no
doubt. Women are the most destructive force in existence, or I should
rather say weakness. Force is creative and appertains to man. Women are
destructive because they have no force; they destroy by the conscious
exercise of their weakness.”
Then Miss Strickland rang the bell. She felt more natural after this
little fling at her old enemy, and she had succeeded in hiding from
herself why she had given way to Elsie, who should most certainly have
been returned to Miss Saunders.
CHAPTER III
Even a very dull person may achieve his aim if he has only one aim, and
devotes his entire attention to it.
Elsie’s aim in life was to please Miss Strickland. She thought of
nothing else by day, and she dreamed of nothing else by night.
All the other teachers, and the objects of their efforts, slipped past
her. She saw them vaguely as trees walking, and bumped into them from
time to time with some severity. She was considered the dunce of the
school.
The cream of her concentration was her work for the piano. She practised
as the devotee prays. She did not think any more of the actual process
than the devotee thinks of his prayers. It is the Deity which is the
object of the devotee, and it was Miss Strickland who stood for Elsie
beyond the five-finger exercises and chromatic scales; even as the
vision of Beatrice leaned towards Dante out of Paradise.
Miss Strickland was amazed at the child’s progress; she was the more
amazed because she had seen from the first with an instinct practically
unerring, that she was not dealing with talent. She still believed that
it was not talent. It was something that baffled Miss Strickland—an
ardour of obedience, a stake-like adherence to her least words, which
produced odd blunders, and sudden advances, and finally a higher level
of achievement than that of any pupil in the school.
For two years the intercourse between Miss Strickland and Elsie was
limited to forty minutes a week in the music room.
Elsie accepted Miss Strickland’s temper as the earth accepts the
ministrations of climate. Sun and shower, heat and cold were part, no
doubt, of a divine plan, and so were the sharpness and the comparative
mildness of Miss Strickland’s nerves.
Of course Elsie liked them to be mild, but when they were sharp they
seemed to her like the magnetic lightnings of the Universe.
Miss Strickland had never had a pupil whom she could hurt more. She was
often unscrupulous in the use of her power, but the absoluteness of it
in Elsie’s case stayed her hand.
Elsie had no defence against her, and she would have used none if she
had had it.
One day Miss Strickland announced,
“There is to be a concert at the end of the term, Elsie. You have
improved so much lately that I have told Miss Bretherton that you will
play at it.”
Elsie squirmed. “Oh, if you please, Miss Strickland, I can’t!” she
stammered. “I couldn’t—not before people—I’m too—I’m too afraid!”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Strickland firmly. “I am the best judge of whether
you can play or not, and I have decided that you can. It is absurd to be
afraid of people who know very little about music and have come prepared
to be easily pleased. You are not afraid to play before me, and I don’t
come prepared to be pleased, and do know a good deal about music.”
Elsie, if she could have explained, would have said, “That’s what I’m
afraid of—not pleasing you. It’s you that will care about the people.”
But it was out of the question to make a statement of this kind to Miss
Strickland, even if it had occurred to Elsie that it was the truth, and
things seldom occurred to Elsie as the truth until after what she had
been afraid of had happened.
She merely repeated in an agony, “Oh, please don’t make me play! I shall
break down! I know I shall break down! It would terrify me to disappoint
you!”
To which Miss Strickland replied, “Don’t be idiotic. I have decided upon
Mendelssohn.”
The school at Little Ticklington gave particularly good concerts.
Besides the parents, the Mayor sometimes appeared with several Town
Councillors, the Vicar, who was an Archdeacon, and various people in the
neighbourhood who thought Education ought to be encouraged and that
their presence at School Concerts encouraged it.
Miss Strickland sat at the back of the hall, so that she could hear if
the songs carried.
She had prepared all the girls carefully, and Miss Saunders, who lived
in the School, would supervise them on the platform.
Miss Strickland had not seen Elsie for three days. At her last lesson
she had played the Mendelssohn uncommonly well, but she had annoyed Miss
Strickland by opening and shutting her mouth like a fish. Miss
Strickland had told her so, and Elsie had then shut her mouth and kept
it shut, but Miss Strickland had still been annoyed. She was conscious
of something in the child that was not consenting to her will, and this
was very unusual.
Children must play at Concerts. Elsie was now fourteen, she was a great
big girl, and the Mendelssohn was very easy.
Miss Strickland told herself these reassuring facts several times before
the curtain swung vacillatingly back for the first girl to perform.
“Besides,” Miss Strickland hastily informed herself, “I take no special
interest in Elsie.”
The first girl performed as first girls generally do. She was chosen for
her hardihood and she had a little over-estimated it. Still she banged
pleasantly away, and while she was too nervous to remember any of the
finer shades of Miss Strickland’s careful teaching, she played no wrong
notes, and covered up the weakness of her execution with that merciful
solvent of pianoforte puzzles, the loud pedal.
Miss Strickland mentally provided for this young criminal a castigation
of the direst kind, short of direct profanity. Only men (who deserve it)
may have the relief of an entire language to devote to wrath. Miss
Strickland had to rely upon the fervency of her emotion. Then she
listened, with the grim patience of a teacher who is not involved in the
subject, to a bad recitation.
After this there were several excellent and charming songs with
choruses. Miss Strickland had taught them to the school, and in one case
written the song herself.
They went with a vim, and gave her a certain amount of very slight
pleasure. And then Elsie appeared.
She was dressed in a heavy white muslin dress which revealed her thick
ankles and pitilessly broad-toed shoes.
It was the wrong kind of muslin, trimmed with tawdry embroidery and girt
about the untamed breadth of her waist by a harsh blue sash. Her hair
lay lankly down her back, evading where it could the ministrations of a
similarly harsh blue ribbon.
Elsie moved heavily and stared at the audience with the eyes of a sleep
walker.
Miss Strickland had particularly told Elsie to keep her mouth shut, her
head up and her chin in. The results of these attempts upon the figure
are usually beneficial to young performers, but nothing could do much
for Elsie’s figure; it remained thick and uncertain, with a tendency to
bulge in the wrong places.
Miss Strickland felt an unusual pang of depression when she saw Elsie,
followed by a much more usual one of rage.
Why had not Elsie’s mother chosen more suitable clothes for her? “Women
again! They only think of clothes, and they show the value of their
thought by a stupid result like this!” thought Miss Strickland sternly.
Elsie sat down clumsily on the music stool. It was lower than she had
expected it to be. Miss Saunders, the young music teacher, adjusted the
Mendelssohn.
It was “The Venetian Boat Song,” the easiest and lightest of concert
pieces.
Elsie played the first two bars quite faultlessly. Miss Strickland was
about to breathe a sigh of relief, when, to her horror, the girl stopped
abruptly and took her hands off the piano. Then she played the first two
bars over again, and stopped once more.
There was a long silence in the hall, a breathless, inconvenient
silence, and then Elsie turned slowly on her music stool away from the
piano and faced the audience. She looked like some one delivering
themselves into the hands of Red Indians for torture. She faced them
with her hands in her lap and her eyes fixed, not so much appealingly as
hopelessly, upon the audience.
She did not cry; it was the expression of an immovable despair. She
neither stirred nor spoke, she only looked straight in front of her as
if she saw the end of Hope.
Miss Strickland felt as if the child’s gaze fixed itself upon her heart.
Before she had time to move, Miss Saunders had stepped forward at a sign
from Miss Bretherton, and led Elsie away.
It was obviously impossible for any one who looked like that to play
“The Venetian Boat Song.”
Miss Saunders (who wanted Elsie to enjoy the tea afterwards) led her to
the back row of little girls.
Elsie went with her passively and sank into her seat like a thing
frozen.
Miss Strickland had once watched a baby rabbit holding itself together
to look like a leaf—its fear had fixed it into the landscape.
Elsie looked like that. She did not move for half an hour; she was as
anxious as the baby rabbit to escape all observation.
A group of charmingly dressed girls came on to the stage and danced.
There were no more hitches. Everything else was beautifully done; and
when it was over Elsie asked if she might go and rest. She said she had
a headache.
Miss Saunders, who was sympathetic and didn’t know what else to
say—agreed readily. The other girls stared at Elsie, but no one was
cruel enough, or kind enough, to say anything to her. They all felt that
she was interesting to talk about, but uncomfortable to talk to, and
they left her alone.
Miss Strickland decided to do the same. She took her tea on the lawn and
ate some particularly good strawberries without enjoying them.
Then she went to look for Elsie. There were very few places where Elsie
had any right to be. She wasn’t in the empty school room, or in the
small ante-room used by the teachers before they went into their
classes. She was in the dressing room behind a curtain, lying on the
boots and shoes.
It was only by the faintest of creaks that her presence was disclosed to
Miss Strickland. She lay there in a crumpled heap of muslin and anguish,
sobbing as if her heart would break.
It was very pitiful to see her. Miss Strickland knelt down by Elsie’s
side and tried to speak, but to her surprise she found it difficult. She
said “My dear child,” twice over, the first time her voice actually
shook. Then she recovered herself.
“Stop grovelling among those boots!” she exclaimed sharply. This was
better. Elsie sat up, and made an enormous effort to control herself,
but the sobs had got possession of her: they shook her down among the
boots again.
Miss Strickland frowned. “It’s all my fault,” she found herself saying.
“I ought not to have made you play, and you really mustn’t be so
distressed about it. People often make mistakes. One can retrieve them.
I daresay,” said Miss Strickland mercifully, but without accuracy, “I
daresay I’ve broken down myself before now, but I shouldn’t give way
about it. I know that it was not carelessness on your part. On the
contrary, you were trying too hard!”
“Oh!” gasped Elsie, “don’t you hate me? You must—I know you must! You
see I can’t—I’m no good. I never was any good! And I never will be! I’m
like that!”
Miss Strickland was shocked. She disliked over-confidence
(over-confident people always do) but this child’s formidable
hopelessness was worse than any over-confidence. She was behaving as if
there were a flaw in the Universe; and in Miss Strickland’s Universe
there had never been a flaw. She had disliked many occurrences but she
had felt equal to them, whether she disliked them or not. She did not
feel equal to what was happening now. She said, “My dear, you mustn’t be
silly. If you weren’t some good you wouldn’t be here!”
Elsie replied, “But I know I’m not, and I don’t want to be here, I’d
rather be dead.”
“That’s sillier still,” Miss Strickland answered doubtfully, “and it’s
also very wrong.”
“What does it matter if it’s wrong or not—if you hate me—” sobbed
Elsie. “Nothing matters to me except that!”
Miss Strickland stared at her uncomfortably. She still did not know what
action was the most sensible to take.
An instinct told her what to do, but she was not used to instincts, and
felt flurried by having one. Her instinct told her to take the child in
her arms.
She compromised with it, and kissed Elsie, a little reluctantly, on the
cheek.
“I don’t hate you at all, child,” she said kindly. “You’re a very good,
painstaking little girl, and I am very fond of you.”
Then Miss Strickland arrived at the nearest she was ever likely to get
to a miracle.
She saw a plain little girl, made plainer by a convulsive fit of crying,
turn perfectly beautiful. It was like watching a black and windswept
country yielding to the sun. Across Elsie’s face light spread: the light
of an infinite gratitude, a preposterous faith, an overwhelming love.
Her eyes met Miss Strickland’s and held hers almost against her will.
“Then,” the child said slowly, “I’m glad I broke down.”
It was the truth, and Miss Strickland with her love of truth should have
recognised it; but she had already recognised a great deal more than it
was at all comfortable to recognise. She really couldn’t go on
recognising things which were so far from sensible, whether they were
true or not.
“Well, don’t let us have any more nonsense,” she said briskly. “Wipe
your eyes, and brush, as far as you can, the dust off your frock. You
really should not have lain down on boots and shoes, it was most
unsuitable. You’d better come and see Miss Bretherton; she has been
asking about you on the lawn, and she’s no more angry with you than I
am.”
“Please may I go home?” Elsie pleaded. “I’m quite happy now, only I
don’t want to see any one else. You see nobody else matters.”
Miss Strickland hesitated. Head mistresses always matter. Still she had
pressed the point about Elsie’s playing and it had proved a mistake.
Onoria made a point of learning from her mistakes, when she saw them.
Perhaps it was better to waive the point. The child looked dreadful, she
could make excuses for her to Miss Bretherton, and excuses are tidier
and more malleable than tear-stained little girls.
“Very well,” Miss Strickland said at last, “you may go home if you want
to—” But there was something in Elsie’s eyes which still held hers.
“If I might,” whispered Elsie bravely, “play you ‘The Venetian Boat
Song’—before I go?”
Miss Strickland nodded. She led the way into a small practice room, out
of reach of the festivities on the lawn. Then she sat down on a hard
cane chair and listened to “The Venetian Boat Song” for perhaps the
500th time.
It did not sound at all familiar to her.
Elsie played it as Miss Strickland had never heard it played before. For
the only time in her life music was captured by Elsie’s faithful,
clumsy, little fingers. She played it dreamily, tenderly, with ardour
and with grace, as Mendelssohn himself might have played it—who had the
heart of a child.
There was a little silence after the last notes sounded.
“That,” Elsie explained as she turned round slowly on her music stool,
“was the way I had meant to play it.”
CHAPTER IV
Onoria Strickland had an imagination that centralised its own
experiences.
She believed that for pure drama Little Ticklington outshone Paris. Its
crimes were more lurid, its adventures more romantic, its types of
character more truly representative of human nature. Her own career
often seemed to Onoria Napoleonic, and her friends and her enemies were
always larger than life.
At first she undertook Elsie Andrews as a conscientious educator
undertakes bad material, but as the years passed and Elsie’s affection
stood solidly across Onoria’s pathway as immovable as granite, she began
to find in Elsie strange and exotic virtues.
“That girl,” she would announce, “has the mind of the Fourteenth
Century—mature and adventurous!
“She will do something one day. She is not like modern girls; she has
character. Not that silly thing they call temperament, thank
goodness!—temperament wobbles and stings like a jellyfish, and arrives
nowhere—but good solid English character! Elsie won’t set the Thames on
fire perhaps, but she hasn’t set out with any such theory. Mercifully
she knows her limitations as a woman. What she has set out to do she
will accomplish in spite of all obstacles—I call that dignified.”
Elsie knew just what Onoria thought of her, because Onoria always told
her friends exactly what she thought of them, even when it was nice.
(After her twenty-first birthday Miss Strickland became “Onoria” to
Elsie.)
It was difficult for Elsie to believe that she was dignified, but she
knew that she had a kind of strength.
She found in herself a fund of resistance enabling her to guard her
friendship with Onoria. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Andrews liked it; Mrs.
Andrews because, like many mothers, it seemed to her unnecessary that
her children should form any ties outside their home; Mr. Andrews
because he foresaw that this concentration of his daughter’s heart might
damage her future prospects.
“If she gets into tagging round for ever after an old maid,” he
explained to his wife, “she won’t marry. Why don’t you smarten her up a
bit and take her out with you?”
But Elsie wouldn’t be smartened up. She did not refuse new clothes, but
she did not respond to them; and you cannot make a dead weight look
chic. Mrs. Andrews tried. She would have liked a daughter she could take
with her to tea parties, not one who practised Beethoven and read
Shakespeare.
Elsie loathed tea parties. She followed her mother on those rare
occasions when she had failed to elude her as one who follows a corpse
to the grave. People soon stopped asking Mrs. Andrews to bring her
daughter.
Then Mr. Andrews bought Elsie a tennis racket to play with the young
people.
She went out after the house was locked up at night and broke it against
an oak tree in the garden. It was this act that convinced Onoria that
Elsie had in her the spirit of the Fourteenth Century.
If there was one thing Elsie disliked more than tea parties with her
mother’s friends, it was tennis with young people.
She could not play tennis and she disliked young people. They believed
all the things Onoria said were not so—and they carried on
conversations that were not solely for the sake of conversation. They
seemed to wish to attract each other.
Elsie knew that the fault lay in the women and she would have talked to
the young men if they had looked at her, but they did not seem to see
that she was there; and you cannot carry on a conversation with young
men who do not look at you—however great your respect may be for the
masculine sex.
Onoria explained Elsie’s position to her kindly but firmly.
“You are not a man’s woman,” she said to her, “and you had better make
up your mind to it once and for all. I know men. They are hoodwinked and
misled by appearances, owing no doubt to the false upbringing they
receive from their mothers, but there it is—they rarely understand true
merit until they have provided themselves with the contrary. You are not
a marrying woman. Realise this and don’t hanker. There are many other
things in life.”
Elsie sighed and said she supposed there were. She did not sigh very
heavily because she was still quite young and there was Onoria. Besides,
the only husband she knew anything about was Mr. Andrews. He was by no
means a bad husband as husbands go, he sometimes called his wife
“Pussy,” and if no one did what he disliked, he was seldom cross; but he
was not as interesting to Elsie as Onoria.
What Elsie liked best in the world was sitting in Onoria’s garden, and
being told what to think.
Onoria was a well-informed woman with violent prejudices, and all her
information was at the disposal of her prejudices.
Her opinions were pitched battles, and her views (she intensely disliked
what she called ‘viewy’ people, but she had her own views) were like the
approaches of a distant thunderstorm. It might pass over if nothing
happened to bring it down.
To enjoy Onoria’s conversation was to confess to a taste for Punch and
Judy Shows; and, as time hardened Onoria’s method of attack, Little
Ticklington grew tired of her bludgeoning.
The men who had delighted in Onoria’s prowess had married, and with
years of domesticity their delight in prowess had gradually faded out,
or been transferred to the actions of their offspring.
Onoria disliked other people’s children and very wisely told them so. It
relieved her of many tiresome obligations, but among them it relieved
her of the presence of the parents. She had had to throw away the apple
with the core.
Onoria had fewer and fewer objects for her affection. Prendergast had
changed from being an elderly and morose Pug, into being very old and
resentful of all claims upon his attention except in the shape of well
chopped-up food. He liked the results of tenderness without its
expression.
Peter Gubbins was just as faithful, but if you have been faddy and
aggravating as a young man, you will infallibly become eccentric and
exasperating when youth has left you.
Peter Gubbins was unaware that youth had left him; he sometimes had
misgivings about Time and Onoria’s figure. Her complexion had always
been a little hard and weather beaten, but her hair retained its colour
and her voice its piercing quality; besides Onoria was three years older
than Peter.
He knew Onoria was no longer young, but she was still very, very
powerful.
Neither of them had had a severe illness, a great sorrow, or an
unexpected good fortune; and it is very easy to believe that you have
remained the same if everything else has.
Peter wrote less poetry and rather more articles, and he grew the finest
sweet peas in the neighbourhood.
There was one event which might have awakened Peter to the lapse of
years if it had not come on almost as gradually as his success with the
sweet peas. This was the introduction of Elsie; but she had been
introduced before he could connect change with her, or receive the
challenge to his personality which a young girl’s friendship will cause
the least self-conscious of men.
Elsie had not made friends with Peter at first, but after two or three
years of speechless, tepid watchfulness upon both sides, a bond had been
secretly and invisibly formed between them.
They could not have told why it was secret and they hardly knew that it
was a bond; they only knew that in each other’s society there was an
absence of insistent racket, a blissful sense of not being at their best
and liveliest, and not needing to be, which took the place of active
pleasure.
There were very few of these harmonious moments. Usually Onoria was
there, and they met under her eyes and with the volleyings of her wit,
and the tremendous onslaught of her theories, thick upon them.
But there had been June evenings when Onoria had letters to write, or
was playing over new sets of pieces with a view to her profession, when
Elsie slipped out of the long French window on to the lawn to water the
flowers, and found that Peter was watering his.
Peter joined her on these occasions and they hunted for slugs together
with an effortless ardour rarely obtained upon their separate quests.
Sometimes they combined with desperate loyalty to try to save Onoria an
exertion that they could not persuade her to give up, or planned to
appease her with a suitable birthday present.
Their talk was full of Onoria. They quoted her most strident sayings
with bursts of nervous laughter; they bulwarked their own opinions with
the justice of her utterances; and sometimes with bated breath they
confessed to each other the little difficulties which arose on their
domestic hearths, when these hearths were confronted with Onoria.
Mr. Gubbins had a housekeeper who hated Onoria and was herself a
redoubtable woman. Elsie’s family sometimes stood up and raged against
her intimacy with Onoria; they even curtailed it to music lesson days
and Sundays. They couldn’t quite destroy it because the most
authoritative of families would shrink from forbidding one of its
daughters from visiting a very respectable, middle-aged lady, who had
been her music teacher since she was a child.
“I said,” Elsie explained breathlessly behind the rhododendron bushes,
“if you stop me going to see Miss Strickland, I’ll tell the Vicar and
Miss Bretherton. You know Father thinks the world of the Vicar since
we’ve stopped going to Chapel; he’s Onoria’s second cousin too; and no
one would like to have Miss Bretherton down on them, not even Mother—so
they just glared. Glaring’s awful, of course, still it can’t do you any
real harm.”
“No,” Mr. Gubbins murmured with a long sigh of regret. “It’s not as if
your parents _cooked_ for you! If Mrs. Binns has been crossed, and
whenever she sees Onoria she seems to get crossed, she pours pepper into
everything I eat! And as I’ve often told you, I have a very delicate
throat!”
Elsie looked uneasily over the tobacco plant they were spraying.
Onoria had laughed so hard and so long upon the subject of Mr. Gubbins’
throat that it seemed to Elsie a disloyalty to let him talk about it.
What he was afraid of was cancer. He had an enlarged tonsil.
Mr. Gubbins could (as Onoria pointed out to him several times during the
course of the winter when he was always catching colds) have it taken
out. But Mr. Gubbins did not think it was bad enough for this heroic
remedy; it was only bad enough to give rise occasionally to the question
of whether the doctor really knew what he was talking about in assigning
to a pain so severe a cause so insufficiently lurid.
“What I say is,” explained Mr. Gubbins to Elsie (he never gave this
explanation to Onoria), “if he _does_ happen to be wrong and the trouble
is, as I sometimes think, malignant, I shall have to pay in the end;
he’ll get out of it all right. Doctors always do.”
“Hadn’t you perhaps better consult another doctor?” asked Elsie timidly.
She was always timid even with Mr. Gubbins, and even when she saw, as
she frequently did, the plainest way out of his troubles; and Mr.
Gubbins thought that timidity and sense were a delightful combination in
a woman.
“It’s not much use my doing that,” said Mr. Gubbins moodily. “They all
stand in together you know. Medical etiquette, as they call it, is
neither more nor less than a conspiracy against the public.
“Besides, when you come to think of it, I’ve been to Jenkins on and off
for thirty years, and I shouldn’t like to hurt his feelings, especially
as it may not be cancer after all.”
“What are you two talking about, over there in the shrubbery?” shouted
Onoria from the window.
Mr. Gubbins looked appealingly at Elsie.
They both trembled, but Mr. Gubbins trembled most.
“Slugs,” said Elsie in a wavering voice.
Her eyes fell before the accusatory ones of Mr. Gubbins. He was thinking
how true, how painfully true, Onoria’s theory was, as to the
prevarication of women.
Whatever the consequences might have been, he could not have told a lie
to Onoria. He would not have dared.
CHAPTER V
Jealousy is one of the faults which it is hardest for human beings to
confess.
It is the least successful of the vices, for by its nature it implies
that you find yourself less attractive than somebody else, and you are
conscious that in the exercise of it, you become less attractive still.
Fortunately righteous indignation often looks very like it.
Miss Onoria Strickland never dreamed that she suffered from jealousy.
She considered it a slave vice confined to women and exceptionally
feeble men.
She knew that her sisters-in-law were monsters of human iniquity; she
realised that the other school teachers belonged to a bygone age and
were unfortunate products even of that debased period. She saw that
modernity and youth had lost alike their innocence and their ardour, at
about the time when she herself had ceased to be young; and she despised
women: but she did not realise that there was a connecting link between
these criticisms, and that her own self-love was the connecting link.
She was taken completely by surprise when Peter Gubbins and Elsie
Andrews conspired behind her back to make a fool of her.
This was her instant definition of their timid attempts to form a
separate relation. Onoria might not have been so astonished if she had
been a quicker hand at reading the silences of others. But like most
great talkers, she was apt to take for granted, unless directly
contradicted, that some form of agreement had taken place. She did not
realise that the silence which gives consent is only one out of many
others far less accommodating.
Neither Elsie nor Peter had ever openly disagreed with Onoria, but their
souls had rebelled in a wordless determination—rather like that which
precedes the back kick of a mule.
They could not, for instance, see the harm of Peter Gubbins singing, to
Elsie’s accompaniment, old Scotch ballads. Peter Gubbins had a great
fancy for Scotch ballads, no knowledge of the dialect, and a tenor voice
liable to those spasmodic interludes which sometimes take place upon a
gramophone.
Onoria had, not without justice, decided that he ought not to sing in
public. She had put it to him perfectly plainly. “You only make a
painful noise,” she had asserted, “disagreeable to listen to and bad for
your weak throat, and you live in a semi-detached villa. The sooner you
break yourself of a bad habit like this, the better!”
Peter had broken himself of the habit, but he still indulged in
occasional orgies which took place while Onoria was at school.
He could only pick out the air with one finger on the piano by himself;
and to his great delight Elsie agreed to accompany him.
She arranged to come early to Onoria’s before school hours were over and
meet Peter in Onoria’s music room.
When Onoria became due, Peter hurried out of the window into the garden,
and crossed by the wall into his own domain. On Onoria’s arrival, she
found Elsie, punctual and passive, waiting for her usual rites upon the
piano.
Ostriches would have known better than Peter and Elsie. They do not,
when they plunge their heads in the sand to escape an enemy (even while
exposing the rest of their person to view), sing Scotch dialect songs
with voices like a damaged kettle.
Peter’s voice carried, and on one still day it reached Onoria coming up
the road. She had a faultless ear and she knew it was Peter’s voice, and
that it came, not out of his window, which would have been a
misdemeanour, but out of her own, which was a crime; and she knew that
Peter could not play his own accompaniments.
She hastened to the gate, but by the time she had reached it Peter had
already vanished—he did not know what he was leaving his accomplice to
face, but there is no reasonable doubt that if he had known he would
still have left her.
Onoria rushed into the music room, breathless and terrific.
“What,” she cried with piercing incisiveness, “are you doing here?”
Elsie was in the act of lifting her muff to her face—it was not much of
a protection, but she had seized upon it when she heard the front door
bang. She felt that it was the bang of a discovered crime. It took Elsie
a long time to say “Nothing—” but at last she said it; and then she
looked all round the room for a way of escape, but there was none.
It would be difficult to say which of the two criminals Onoria was
angriest with. She had been angry with Peter Gubbins all her life—for
being Peter Gubbins; his character irritated and at times eluded Onoria.
Elsie she loved; probably she was angriest with Elsie.
“Please don’t tell me lies,” she exclaimed with deadly patience. “I
heard perfectly well what you were doing, as I came up the road. I could
no more mistake Peter’s voice than a donkey braying. It came from my
room—and _you—you_, Elsie, were playing his accompaniments!”
Elsie bit a piece of fur out of her muff In anguish.
The situation was too large for her. She cowered under it, speechless
and overwhelmed. But something at the bottom of her heart told her it
was not fair and she would not be overwhelmed.
“What do you mean by such atrocious behaviour?” went on Onoria with
fluent passion. “Using my house, behind my back, to do what you _know_ I
have forbidden? How _dared_ you do such a thing, Elsie? How can you come
here now and look me in the face with that treacherous secret upon you?”
Elsie made a gesture of despair: she put the muff down; it had protected
her from nothing.
It was a late autumn evening, a river fog had crept into the room,
everything was a little indistinct, like a scene in a nightmare; only
the bitter, sharp voice of Onoria pelting at her was as distinct as a
succession of stones flung against a wall.
“Oh,” she gasped, “I didn’t mean—we didn’t think!”
“Mean! think!” cried Onoria. “What have you ever thought or meant,
either of you? How can I tell now? How can I believe you? Don’t you see
what you’ve done? You’ve undermined my confidence! How many times have
you played here without my knowledge? I don’t believe this is the
first!”
“He did like singing the Scotch ballads so,” Elsie murmured defensively.
“It was an accident the first time. We just tried them over: it didn’t
seem any harm. He had come in to dust your books for you and I was
early, so we just tried them over.”
Onoria changed her ground. She felt for a moment as if it was not so
firm as she had expected.
The crime did not stand out well against the background of Peter’s
services.
“Of course,” she said more mildly, “you mustn’t think I mind for
myself.” (What jealous person has ever minded for themselves? It is the
lowering of the beloved object which afflicts them most—and the beloved
object is always lowered by a shared dominion.) “People do not as a rule
care to have their houses used for other people’s meetings, without
their consent, but I overlook all that. Has it never occurred to you
what a scandal such performances produce? No doubt you are being talked
about all over Ticklington at this moment. If your parents knew of it
they would very rightly prevent your coming here again. And since it is
my house I am in a sense responsible for you. I have never been placed
in such an invidious position in my life—and by _you_, Elsie!”
Elsie was in tears now. She picked up the muff again, and wept bitterly
into it. She was not an easy crier and the fur choked her.
“I didn’t mean any harm,” she sobbed. “We only played ‘Over the Sea to
Skye.’ I don’t see why people should talk about it.”
“You were alone here with Peter in my absence,” said Onoria coldly.
“That is what they will talk about.”
It was very unfair of Onoria to say this because she was constantly
alone with Peter herself, and nobody in Little Ticklington had ever
talked about it. Nobody in Little Ticklington thought any more about
being alone with Peter than they would have thought of being alone with
Prendergast.
“I am speaking for your own good,” added Onoria, more gently and even
less truthfully, for like most people who think they are speaking for
the good of others, she was merely speaking to relieve her own spiteful
feelings.
The sight of Elsie’s tears softened her a little, but she mistook their
meaning. They were not tears of penitence, as Onoria believed—they were
the tears of an outraged sense of justice.
“I don’t see what particular good you think this is going to do me!”
Elsie observed between her sobs. Onoria opened her mouth to reply and
then shut it again. It took time to produce any tangible advantage to
Elsie out of the vortex of her own bad temper—finally, however, she did
produce it.
“I hope it will check you!” she said with dignity. “Before you do
something more compromising still.
“My advice to you is not to see Peter Gubbins again. I will deal with
him later, and let him know what I think of him for taking advantage of
a young and I _hope_ innocent girl!”
“I don’t see where the advantage comes,” persisted Elsie, who had
unaccountably stopped crying, “if he isn’t to sing his songs any more.”
“Don’t be puerile!” said Onoria sharply. “You know perfectly well what I
mean. None of your green girl prevarications with me!”
“No I don’t,” replied Elsie with astounding obstinacy.
“You’ve often told me, it was always women who took advantage of men,
and dragged them into things, and then complained about them afterwards.
Well, if it is—Peter couldn’t have dragged me into anything, could he?
And I’m _not_ complaining!”
Nobody likes to be convicted out of his own mouth, and Onoria liked it
less than most people.
“Please don’t make such an absurd exhibition of yourself,” she said,
with heightened colour and reduced softness. “I have told you what I
think, and how I intend to act. I am always perfectly direct and
straightforward. It is a pity that you cannot be the same. We will
discuss this question no further! Do you wish to take your music lesson
or do you not?”
Of course Elsie did not wish to take her music lesson, but habit is very
powerful, and the habit of surrender to a stronger will is probably more
difficult to break than any other habit. She gasped, put her muff down
and took her lesson, as if it were a dose of medicine.
She even kissed Onoria good-bye when she left—but if Onoria had been an
adept in kisses (which she was not) she would have felt something wrong
about it.
The complete kiss lingers—Elsie’s was without warmth and swift.
It was not accompanied by any form of apology, but Onoria felt that she
had the whip hand of the situation, and that those who hold the whip do
not need to exact apologies. She patted Elsie on the back and told her
to be a sensible girl. Elsie made a non-committal sound in her throat
and vanished hurriedly into the fog.
The fog was very dense, and she may or she may not have met Peter
Gubbins at the post box.
The scene between Peter and Onoria was far less drastic.
Onoria had quieted down before she saw him and she spoke as man to man.
She pointed out to Peter that he had taken an unwarrantable liberty with
her premises, and that he had acted in a compromising way with a girl
very nearly thirty years younger than himself.
Peter did not tell her, as the more virile type of man whom Onoria
admired might have told her, that she was a bad-minded old hen and was
talking a pack of nonsense; he took what she said with extreme
seriousness.
Peter quite saw her point about her premises and apologised.
He would not enter them again unless she were there herself.
He hoped that he had not done Elsie any harm: the practises had only
taken place six times with interludes of a week, and it had never
occurred to him that any one would dream of coupling their names
together. The bare idea of it was painful to him. Still, he quite saw
what Onoria meant. An unmarried man, even of his age, could not be too
careful, and he hoped the whole thing would blow over and not bring any
further trouble to any of them.
Onoria was quite genial and they smoked several cigarettes together and
discussed whether it was any use taking Prendergast to the vet. for a
tonic or not. They came to the conclusion that it was not.
Then Peter went home.
It was quite true that he meant to be careful, very careful indeed; but
the person of whom he meant to be careful was Onoria.
CHAPTER VI
Peter Gubbins had always taken great care of his broken heart.
In a place like Little Ticklington full of marriageable women, it was a
very important asset.
It played the part of a chaperone. No one could expect to marry a man
whose heart was as steadily and obviously broken as Peter’s.
It had never occurred to Peter to marry any one but Onoria.
He had a pleasant income for a single man, reinforced by certain small
cheques for his articles.
He lived well under his income and his cheques went into the garden. As
he often romantically said (when there was no danger of Onoria
overhearing him), his ideas literally created flowers.
He would never have confessed it even to himself, but he knew he was a
great deal better off as he was.
If he had had his heart’s desire, he would never have been able to get
rid of it afterwards, and this was equally the case with the few quiet
twinges in the direction of domesticity which had assailed him since.
There was nothing in Elsie Andrews which led Peter to change this
opinion.
At first he thought her a nice, quiet little girl; then when she shot up
into long skirts, and grew half a head taller than Onoria, he thought of
her as a sensible young woman, who never said things before you did, and
did not know what you had not told her.
Elsie made no effort, conscious or unconscious, to attract Peter, and
Peter (like many not very attractive men) was very suspicious of efforts
made to attract him.
Elsie was simply there in a pleasant, non-committal way, like a table
napkin or a bottle of ink. She was useful in the garden and sympathetic
at the piano; Samson liked her.
Peter Gubbins did not very often grasp new subjects, but when he did his
mind played upon them with the effect of a magnifying glass. It excited
him to be told that he had compromised Elsie; he had never compromised
any one before, and he was not quite sure what it involved.
Was he expected to act upon it? Or would it automatically react upon
him? Would the Andrewses mind? If they did, what form would their
minding take?
Fortunately there was nothing in writing. He remembered that he had once
sent Elsie a picture post card of a waterfall when he was away on a
holiday, but there had been no space upon it for anything but the
briefest allusion to the weather.
He hunted up old copies of an excellent magazine for which he had often
written, “Answers to Gardeners,” to see if upon another of its pages
under the heading of “Questions of Etiquette” there might not be some
case which would throw light upon his own.
But no one seemed to have gone quite so far. There was a suggestion that
no man should propose to two girls at the same time, a feat of
legerdemain perfectly foreign to Peter’s tastes; but nothing was said as
to the circumstances in which you are morally bound to propose to one.
Peter wished to continue to meet Elsie but he did not wish to be morally
bound.
He gave the matter a great deal of quiet study and reflection, but he
did nothing to precipitate the event of seeing Elsie again; he felt that
if they met by chance it would rob their meeting of any dangerous
intensity which it might otherwise have.
The meeting took place at the Post Office precisely a week later.
Elsie was standing with her back to Peter reading the notice of an
oratorio which was to be performed at a neighbouring Cathedral town.
Peter bought three ha’penny stamps and a packet of post cards before
anything striking happened.
Then Elsie turned round and gasped “Oh, Mr. Gubbins!”
Peter kept his head and paid for the post cards before he answered her.
“Oh, it’s you, Elsie, is it?” he remarked guardedly, having counted his
change. “Have you ever heard the Messiah?”
Elsie said she hadn’t, balancing first on one foot, and then on the
other.
She didn’t know whether to go out of the Post Office into the street
where anything might happen, or to remain in the shelter of the Post
Office where it would be more difficult to get away if anything did
happen.
“Do you want any stamps?” Mr. Gubbins asked kindly. Elsie flew to the
counter and bought six, then she opened her purse and found she had
already purchased a shilling’s worth.
Eventually they got into the street.
“It must be splendid,” said Elsie, referring to the Messiah. “Only I
believe Onoria said it wasn’t, so of course it can’t be. Have you ever
heard it?”
“Oh, time and time again,” said Mr. Gubbins lightly. “It is one of my
favourite entertainments, the Messiah. As a young man I went regularly
to hear it every Christmas Eve at the Albert Hall. I only gave it up
after an attack of tonsillitis I had one winter—I may have told you
about it? I date all my throat trouble from then.”
He had told Elsie about it several times, but as she merely murmured
sympathetically, he told her about it again.
After he had finished he came back to the Messiah.
“How would you like to go and hear it at the Cathedral?” he enquired.
“The organist is a friend of mine—he is going to get the soloists from
town, and I expect he’ll have got quite a good chorus together. The Dean
is allowing him to have it in the Cathedral.”
“Like it!” exclaimed Elsie. “Oh, frightfully, but you see Mother and
Father hate music, except bands on the beach, and Onoria says local
renderings of oratorios should be put down by law.”
“Well!” said Mr. Gubbins with unflinching courage. “Opinions differ
about oratorios of course. How would it be if I took you myself? I
daresay we could arrange something about it.”
Elsie looked at him as if he had suggested an expedition to Central
Africa. It was a most inspiriting look. Mr. Gubbins found it so, and a
lukewarm desire to do something desperate took possession of him.
But he meant to be very careful about it. He stage-managed this plunge
into the Forbidden Land with infinite precaution.
As human plans go it was perfect; there was nothing unarranged for
except Fate. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were to be told part of the truth.
Elsie was to break to them that she was going to hear the Messiah at
Mellingham. Mr. Gubbins did not suggest a downright lie to Elsie, but
when he said, “I daresay they’ll suppose it means with Onoria?” he paved
the way for a leakage in accuracy of which Elsie took full advantage.
Onoria was not to be told anything at all.
Elsie was to leave the Station of Little Ticklington by a one o’clock
train, and Mr. Gubbins by a one-thirty.
The journey took half an hour.
Elsie was to wait for him in a baker’s shop opposite the Cathedral; she
could have a bun and milk while she waited.
They were to come back in the same train but in a different compartment.
Short of an unfavourable interposition on the part of Providence, they
were safe.
But those who rely upon Providence to remain inactive in their favour
should not tempt it by displaying any activity of their own.
Miss Bretherton, without consulting Onoria beforehand, arranged for her
to take six pupils to the Messiah, whether she liked it or not.
She sprang this shabby trick upon her subordinate on the actual morning
of the performance.
Forty girls, in white dresses with blue sashes, upon one side and twenty
men in a variety of semi-evening clothes upon the other had scarcely
sung through the first chorus a trifle raggedly (first choruses are apt
to be a trifle ragged) before Elsie and Peter became aware of Onoria’s
eyes.
They knew they were Onoria’s eyes although she was sitting at some
little distance to the right of them, much as those who looked upon the
Medusa’s head must have been conscious that it was her head before they
turned into stone. No fate so happy awaited Peter and Elsie—if they had
been turned into stone they could have stared back. As it was they
twitched and trembled under Onoria’s ruthless gaze, conscious with a
cowering intensity of their flesh and blood.
Peter sank from terror to terror, till from the lowest depth of
cowardice, in which he contemplated leaving Elsie to her fate, he rose
to a state of rage. He became as savage and determined as a very timid
animal at bay. He would not be caught. That was what it came to. He set
his lips firmly together—Onoria or no Onoria, he would simply _not_ be
caught. It was a free country and no one could stop you if you ran away
fast enough. Of course there was Elsie; Elsie wept.
“Stop crying!” he hissed at Elsie with a snarl.
Elsie swallowed a sob abruptly and retreated into a large pocket
handkerchief.
The people sitting next to her thought she had a sensitive musical
temperament and admired her for it. They did not know what kind of a
temperament Peter had, but they did not admire him nearly so much.
The six girls, followed by Onoria with the face of an awakened Fury,
advanced down the aisle.
“We must get out of this!” said Peter hurriedly.
He grasped Elsie firmly by the arm and dragged her after him.
Onoria saw the action, and said “Elsie!” out loud in the Cathedral over
the six girls’ heads. Several people turned round. Elsie stiffened into
instant obedience, but Peter’s clutch of manly terror was greater than
Elsie’s power of womanly resistance. He had her out of the Cathedral and
half way to the Railway Station before she could turn round.
Onoria could not run after them. She had her dignity to preserve, and
the six girls to return intact.
Peter and Elsie had nothing to think of but their personal safety. They
preserved this by the skin of their teeth, and by getting, without
tickets, into a train destined for London.
They sat gasping and staring wild-eyed at each other, incapable of
further speech even if they had dared to give utterance to what was in
their hearts, in the presence of a clergyman, a market gardener, and two
elderly ladies who looked at them as if they thought that people in such
a hurry must have done something wrong.
When Elsie had got her breath again, she began to cry in gulps, as if
she were swallowing tabloids without water.
Peter stared desperately out of the window. He was trying to make up his
mind to the idea of never going back to his home, and he was remembering
Samson and the sweet peas. Oh, how wise cats were! Samson was never
involved in any social contacts beyond the point of a torn ear!
How gladly Mr. Gubbins would have let his ear be torn (in moderation) to
escape from the weeping heap of femininity opposite to him!
What nonsense it was for a man to be expected to defend women, when they
were always either the danger itself—like Onoria—or could melt out of
it into a mist of tears—like Elsie?
Every one in the railway carriage was sorry for Elsie. No one was sorry
for Mr. Gubbins. Indeed, the clergyman was beginning to be highly
suspicious of him. He was not at all sure that he was not, for the first
time in his well-chosen career, confronted by a Social Evil.
Several of our most prominent daily newspapers, during the early autumn
before the opening of Parliament, had taken up the subject of the White
Slave Traffic.
Mr. Gubbins looked ferocious, Elsie sobbed on.
The clergyman leaned forward and said tentatively, as it was surely his
duty to do, “I am afraid this young lady is somewhat distressed?”
Peter Gubbins rose to the occasion; a flash of inspiration shot through
him.
“She’s just had a tooth out,” he explained with unswerving duplicity.
Elsie stopped crying. She could not believe that Peter Gubbins had told
a lie like that at a moment’s notice.
With the natural depravity of women, she had never admired him so much
before. She gave a watery smile of affirmation.
The market gardener said sympathetically:
“Shock to the nerves, that’s what it is! I had an aunt once that had a
tooth out, she never got over it. Had hysterics she had, one after the
other, and died that day fortnight.”
“This,” said Mr. Gubbins, without moving a muscle of his face, “was only
a wisdom tooth. They come out easier.”
CHAPTER VII
Miss Strickland had great self-control, and she needed it. When her
amazed eyes rested upon Elsie and Peter Gubbins, she could hardly
believe them. Disobedience and deceit united for purposes of pleasure
had never so flaunted themselves before her in the whole course of her
career. For a week she had believed Elsie and Peter to be crushed.
Crushed as flat as a black beetle under the heel of a self-respecting
cook.
For a moment she was almost too astonished to be angry. How had they
dared? They who in general dared so little—to rush upon the knife?
But her surprise was swiftly reinforced by anger. She was in a
consecrated building and the oratorio had begun—so she remained
perfectly still although her figure became charged like an electric
battery. All the six pupils of Miss Bretherton received small
invigorating shocks from it.
They knew something was wrong—and not with them. After all the Messiah
was not going to be such a bore as they had feared.
They followed the direction of Miss Strickland’s eyes and arrived at
Elsie and Peter.
The opening chorus might have been a Salute to Adventurers. Solemnly and
gloatingly the pupils gazed at the desperate couple. Peter and Elsie
felt all these hostile eyes converging upon them, and they saw nothing
else.
The tenderness of the massed violins in the Pastoral Symphony (they were
not quite tender enough, but it is difficult for amateur violins to be
tender, and it is even more difficult for them to be sufficiently
massed) did nothing whatever to soften the atmosphere. It would have
been as useful to try the effect of Handel’s music upon terriers in a
rat hunt.
The hunt went on from end to end of the Messiah. It was conducted in
silence by seven pairs of eyes, led by Miss Strickland.
The girls ought to have been upon the side of the rats. They had no
quarrel with Elsie Andrews, who had left School before their time, they
knew Mr. Gubbins by sight and were without personal claims upon him even
in the realms of fancy. All of them disliked Miss Strickland, and yet
none of them refrained from the pursuit of the stricken quarry.
They could barely wait for the unearthly shrieks of the Hallelujah
Chorus, the separate clauses of which went off like corks from a bottle,
before they knelt for a respectful and non-committal moment in the
direction of the Altar, and proceeded to bear down upon the delinquents
through the main aisle of the Cathedral.
They thrilled with ecstasy at the resonant and piercing voice of Miss
Strickland when she said aloud in the sacred building “Elsie!” In
another moment they would have been upon the culprits had not a
remorseless family of nine interfered between them and their prey.
Breathless, they hacked their way to the door, only to see Elsie and
Peter arm-in-arm disappearing round a corner.
Then Miss Strickland reined them in.
She said with perfect self-control and extreme unfairness, “I don’t know
what you girls are hurrying for. There is plenty of time to catch the
train. Please walk at your usual pace and in your usual order.”
Miss Strickland never spoke twice. She had only once said “Elsie.” When
this command failed, her lips and her heart had simultaneously closed.
She had made a mistake in tactics. She saw in a flash, too late to
rectify her action, that she should have called “Peter!” not “Elsie!”
Peter had had the strength to deny her claim upon Elsie, but he would
never have had strength to deny a direct command made to himself, in a
Cathedral. Onoria knew theoretically that it is always wisest to tackle
the strongest of two culprits first. It was indeed her invariable and
most successful practise, but her heart had betrayed her, she had struck
out at her Beloved—and her Beloved had in consequence got clean away.
Onoria pulled herself together when she reached the street, and made no
more mistakes.
Her duty was to her pupils, and she did it.
Methodically, though with a heart on fire, she arranged their return
tickets and marshalled them into the train. If Elsie and Peter had been
on the Station, Onoria would have seen them but she would not have
noticed them.
She put her charges into a third class carriage marked “Ladies Only,”
took a corner seat by the window, and proceeded to bone “the Messiah”
for the delectation of her pupils.
Her trained ear had after all enabled her to listen to it sufficiently
for her to be capable of stating its faults.
Onoria had no great passion for Handel at the best of times and the
average grasp of a Local Orchestral Society is not the best of times for
Handel, but on this occasion she was vitriolic.
The girls heard her with awe.
Somebody was catching it, even if they were great and dead. They would
have preferred to see Elsie and Peter catching it because they were
alive and lived at Little Ticklington, but they could not have
everything.
Destruction always appeals to the young, and on the whole they had a far
better time than they had had any right to expect at an oratorio in a
Cathedral.
Miss Strickland saw them safely back to their respective homes. Two of
the girls were boarders and these she dropped at the School gates.
Then she turned hastily homewards.
Samson was at her door. He was a gloomy and outraged cat, wet by the
autumn mist and deprived of his invariable tea, with Mr. Gubbins’ share
of cream, and a fire-warmed knee to rest up against afterwards.
He did not so much miss Mr. Gubbins as actively resent him. He miaued
coarsely. Miss Strickland subdued a temptation to hit him sharply on the
head with her umbrella.
It was quite open to her to hit him and it would serve Peter right. But
Miss Strickland was a just woman; she reminded herself that the soul
that sinneth it shall die.
Samson was not an accessory either before or after the fact, and it was
a fact which had postponed his tea, and to which he would therefore have
definitely refused his consent if consulted.
She opened the door and Samson flew past her and consumed loudly and
without hesitation Prendergast’s neglected dinner.
Prendergast had not wanted his dinner, and he did not want it now, but
still less did he wish to see a low cat indulging itself with his sacred
rites. There had always been a state of armed neutrality between the two
animals: neither was strong enough to wholly destroy the other, so they
wisely avoided combat, but they were not friends.
Prendergast growled feebly from his basket, and gazed at his mistress
expecting her instant and effectual intervention, but Miss Strickland
sank down on a chair beside him with all her things on and her hands in
her lap.
Bridget had let the fire go out and Prendergast shivered sharply to
remind Onoria to relight it. What had she come home for if not to
relight the fire and restore comfort? But still she did not raise her
eyes—she murmured “There, there,” and “Poor old Prendie—” but her mind
was not on him. She was sitting in a curiously bowed position, as if
something within her was refusing to fight.
Samson finished the last mouthful of Prendergast’s meal, wiped his
whiskers ostentatiously in front of the basket and disappeared lightly
through a back window. He was quite willing to eat a meal in Miss
Strickland’s house but he had no intention of giving her the benefit of
his company in return.
A person who kept a moribund pug in a basket was hardly the kind of
society a cat of Samson’s standing in the neighbourhood would care to
choose as a friend.
Miss Strickland did not notice the defection of Samson; she did not for
a long while notice anything. There was an inward drama in her heart
which held her whole attention.
Something implored her to let her pride go, and keep her friends. It
told her that she was getting old and had few earthly ties, that Elsie
was dearer to her than she knew, and even Peter was a treasured habit
left over from the richer years, and that if she used her anger too
ruthlessly against them she would be condemning herself to perpetual
loneliness.
One cannot make new ties at fifty-three, too much of life has gone, too
many hopes have passed into too many memories.
One cannot explain oneself to new friends, and they cannot know how the
early generosities and charms of our characters have staled and wearied
with the weight of time.
They do not excuse our scars or realise our finished struggles. How can
they dream that our egoism was once a winged idealism set to reach the
stars? That our irritability was a vivacity of intellect condemned to a
provincial vocabulary, that even our dogmatism is but an old loyalty
stiffened into bad temper?
It is in middle age that we most need the mercy of a contemporary, and
the memory of a friend.
Onoria really wanted Elsie to be happy. She didn’t want her to grow up
into a dull, lonely old woman with a pet animal. But it was hard to give
her up to Peter.
If Peter had only been a _man_! It wasn’t, Onoria assured herself, that
she minded about her old relation to Peter. After all she never had
valued it; still he was the only man it would have been any use Onoria’s
minding.
She despised Peter, and the worst of it was that Elsie, whom she loved,
cared more for this Peter whom Onoria despised than she did for Onoria’s
opinion of him. That was the sting of stings.
Onoria had laid out Peter on the dissecting table of her wit over and
over again before Elsie, and Elsie had connived at these spiritual
post-mortems without a qualm, and all the while she planned this hideous
treachery!
Miss Strickland looked facts in the face: if she gave in, Elsie and
Peter would come back to her. They would come gladly into her sphere
again. There would be no bitterness and no reproaches. They would
just—all three of them—settle down.
But there would be one difference, one fatal difference to Onoria’s
pride. They would both of them know that they had got the better of her.
They would give her love and even respect, but it would never be “glad,
confident morning” again.
If they wanted something else which Onoria disapproved of their having,
they would combine to get it.
They might marry or not—Onoria was above the petty sting of wincing at
the legal ceremony—but they would combine—that was what she winced at.
She must choose once and for all. There are moments in life when choice
is within our own hands—though they are very rare—when we can decide
with the finality of an earthquake or a volcano what we intend to do
with our future. Pride pushed Onoria into resistance and love drew her
towards surrender.
Love urged that she would be glad to see Elsie happy, that she could not
want to hurt Elsie, that nothing but not hurting Elsie really mattered.
Love is always immoral. It slays pride, it urges that law is only a
letter and possession a bitter illusion of the senses, and that only
Freedom—the freedom to serve the beloved—counts in the eternal scheme
of things.
Love ignored Peter Gubbins and how necessary it was to give him a
lesson; it made specious excuses for Elsie’s flagrant treachery; it said
“She only deceived you because she didn’t want to hurt you—she only
disobeyed you to be happy, and after all that is what you want, isn’t
it? You want Elsie to be happy?”
Miss Strickland wavered under the pressure of love; but she only
wavered. Righteousness and self-respect rose up afresh in her.
Self-respect at the touch of which Love always dwindles out of sight and
Righteousness which so often consists in carrying out our own will, in
an imagined connection with the Deity.
“I shall do right, whatever it costs me,” Onoria said to herself at
last, and she did not know that she might as well have said, “I shall do
what I like, whatever it costs anybody else.”
It would have meant precisely the same thing.
CHAPTER VIII
It was at this point in her meditations that Prendergast moved. He
wanted attention and at last he received it. Miss Strickland made up the
fire and brought him a little warm milk with a dash of brandy in it.
Prendergast responded to the stimulant and began to wander restlessly
about the room. He could not make up his mind what he wanted. He moved
about vaguely and stiffly as one who is practising the art of walking.
His desires broke in him; and Miss Strickland, with a divine patience
gratified in turn and without hurry, each of his passing fancies.
No one who knew Onoria Strickland as she was to the world, to her
pupils, or even to her friends, could have believed in this tender,
ministering Onoria, carrying out with anxious solicitude the whims of an
old dog.
She did not leave Prendergast till he had finally decided on a return to
his basket. When his feeble snores told her that he was at rest, she
groped her way to the mantelpiece for matches, and tidied herself for
going out once more.
Miss Strickland had never in her life looked untidy and she was not
going to begin now.
She had decided to make an appeal to Elsie’s parents.
Hitherto she had considered parents unreasonable and obstructive people
who paid the piper and considered themselves entitled to call for
inappropriate tunes.
Miss Bretherton and Miss Strickland together railed and laughed in turn
at the delinquencies of parents—their ineffectual hankerings, their odd
explosions of indignation and their ineradicable faith in the production
of figs from thistles.
None of them knew what their children were really like, and all of them
thought they did. Nevertheless, Providence had provided parents with a
little brief authority, and there were moments when it came in very
usefully.
It had flashed through Onoria’s mind, at the first instant when she saw
her will defied by the truant couple, that perhaps Mrs. Andrews might be
able to do something with Elsie.
Miss Strickland did not know the Andrewses very well. She often said
that they were like glass to her and that she could read them like a
book; but Mrs. Andrews only came to tea with Miss Strickland once a
year; and Miss Strickland returned her call within a fortnight.
She had met Mr. Andrews twice, and they had had on both these occasions
acrimonious disputes on politics.
Mr. Andrews described Miss Strickland as a “strong-minded female for
whom he had no manner of use,” and Miss Strickland said Mr. Andrews was
“nothing but a hen-headed old grocer.”
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were eating their supper when Miss Strickland was
announced.
They were not surprised that Elsie was late as they neither of them knew
how long oratorios lasted; but they were frightened when they saw that
Miss Strickland was alone.
Mrs. Andrews exclaimed at once, “Where’s Elsie? Has she been run over?”
and Mr. Andrews said, “Nonsense, Mother! Of course not. Where _is_ the
child, Miss Strickland? We hold you responsible you know! We hold you
_strictly_ responsible!”
“I don’t know,” said Onoria firmly.
She took an armchair and faced the questioning parents with her usual
deliberate self-assurance. “That is what I came to ask you.”
“But surely—” Mr. and Mrs. Andrews began together. “Surely you took
Elsie to the oratorio?—she said, didn’t she, she was going this
afternoon over to Mellingham?”
“I was,” said Miss Strickland, “at the oratorio in Mellingham this
afternoon, and so was Elsie, but she was not with me.”
“Well I never!” said Mr. Andrews. “Fancy her going off like that all by
herself! It’s certainly time she was back. Girls are so independent
nowadays.”
“She was _not_ alone,” Miss Strickland said significantly.
Mr. Andrews leaned forward, “Who was she with?” he asked truculently.
“She was with Peter Gubbins,” said Miss Strickland, leaning back in her
chair.
If she had intended to create a sensation she had succeeded beyond her
wildest dreams; but the incredible part of it was the type of sensation
she had created. She had expected shame, indignation and alarm. Mr. and
Mrs. Andrews were quite obviously pleased.
Once more Onoria was confronted by the inexplicable nature of parents.
They did not wish to show their satisfaction too plainly, but the tone
in which Elsie’s mother said, “Well I never!” was one of flattered
maternal pride, and Mr. Andrews, when he had drawn a long breath,
exclaimed, “I never would have thought it!” in much the way in which he
would have greeted a smart trick of the trade.
“You can never tell with the quiet kind,” Mrs. Andrews continued
reminiscently. “I was like that myself as a girl, I never went out of my
way to attract anybody, and as to mentioning it at home—well—I’d have
been ashamed! I just let things take their course as it were—and here I
am! Dear me!”
“Shouldn’t you say Peter Gubbins was a warm man?” enquired Mr. Andrews,
ignoring this revelation of his wife’s tactics. “I’ve always understood
he had a tidy little sum put by.”
“I couldn’t possibly tell you,” said Miss Strickland, who had, during
this outburst of vulgarity, recovered her secret poise. “To tell the
truth, the idea of Elsie’s having arrived at any notion of matrimony had
not occurred to me. I merely thought that it was unfortunate she should
appear in public unchaperoned with a man who is old enough to be her
father, but who is not her father.”
“Oh, well, you know,” said Mr. Andrews, “young people will be young
people, won’t they Mother? And we all know Peter Gubbins about here.
Peter Gubbins is as safe as the Bank of England. I don’t call fifty old
for a man.”
“Appearances,” said Miss Strickland coldly, “are never safe. I had not
intended to mention it, but I see I had better put you in command of all
the facts.
“Peter Gubbins has been in the habit of meeting Elsie at my house, in my
absence, without my knowledge or consent.”
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews looked at each other. Mr. Andrews whistled.
“Dear! dear!” said Mr. Andrews after an awkward pause.
“I’m sure we’re very sorry, Miss Strickland. Elsie oughtn’t to have done
it, I allow, but if you won’t mind my saying so, you should have thought
of it before! What I mean to say is—it’s a little late in the day,
isn’t it—for you to mind what Peter Gubbins does?”
“It’s only natural,” interposed Mrs. Andrews, “for him to take to a
young girl like Elsie. We each have our turn, you know, Miss Strickland,
and then we have to stand aside and let the young ones have theirs! It’s
hard lines I know, but there it is——”
“You quite misunderstand me,” said Onoria, who had turned brick red
under this last onslaught of a parent’s imagination.
“What Peter Gubbins does, or what he fancies, is, and always has been, a
matter of perfect indifference to me. In this case, my sole concern has
been Elsie and the compromising position to which such clandestine
meetings give rise.”
It was a good sentence with a swing that took the wind out of Mr.
Andrews’ sails. Still, Miss Strickland would have preferred to fling the
vulgar truth upon the table. She wanted to say:
“My dear good people, I’ve refused Peter Gubbins dozens of times, and
Elsie is merely taking my leavings, if she does take them, but that
seems to me no good reason for carrying on behind my back!”
But education takes from us our most effective weapons. It would have
been ill-bred to make this statement, and Miss Strickland, though she
never minded being rude, did not wish to appear ill-bred; and in spite
of the excellence of her sentence she knew that the Andrewses, still
believed that Elsie had cut her out.
“Since you are not alarmed at Elsie’s having failed to return at the
termination of the oratorio,” she said, rising to her feet, “or at the
fact that she has apparently vanished into space with Peter Gubbins at
eight o’clock at night—there is nothing further to be said. I can only
congratulate you on the strength of your nerves.”
“It is a _little_ late,” Mrs. Andrews admitted. “Still——”
There was a sound at the garden gate; a moment later a loud knock
heralded the telegraph boy.
Mr. Andrews put on his glasses and read out loud: “Missed train after
oratorio—too late to return—staying with Aunt Anne—Elsie.”
“Her Aunt Anne,” explained Mr. Andrews with restored satisfaction, “is a
clergyman’s widow, who lives at Clapham. Elsie won’t come to any harm
staying with her Aunt Anne—Peter Gubbins or no Peter Gubbins.”
“Probably he’s come home,” said Mrs. Andrews comfortably. “He never was
much of a gadabout. I’m sure we’re just as grateful to you, Miss
Strickland, for coming in to tell us what you knew. You couldn’t have
been kinder if you’d been a parent yourself.”
“Thank God I’m not!” Miss Strickland energetically and rather shockingly
declared (though in a sense it would have been more shocking had she
wished to be a parent). “If I _were_ I should hardly take my
responsibilities as lightly as you do.”
“I shall write to my sister to-morrow,” said Mr. Andrews with dignity,
“and my wife will write to Elsie.”
Miss Strickland walked to the door. Her last hope had flickered out with
the mention of Aunt Anne at Clapham. A situation occupied by Aunt Anne
was impregnable.
Onoria knew herself outwitted by the ponderous stupidity of facts.
It was a cold, foggy evening, the streets of Little Ticklington were
badly lighted and empty.
It seemed a long way home. A curious stifling sense of dread overtook
Onoria. She told herself sharply that when a thing has already happened
it is silly to be afraid of its happening again.
Nevertheless she hurried, as if she might by hurrying escape what was to
overtake her.
Bridget had lit the gas in the hall, and the fire in the drawing room
burnt brightly.
Prendergast lay a little on one side in his basket.
He was not snoring as he usually did. Miss Strickland leaned over him
anxiously. He did not open his eyes or turn his head to look at her, and
then she saw that he never would again. He had made up his mind what he
wanted.
A wild impulse to rush across and tell Peter Gubbins shook Miss
Strickland.
Nobody else loved Prendergast, but Peter had loved him. He had loved him
nearly as much as he loved Samson.
Miss Strickland looked down with quivering lips at the obese form of the
dead pug. He was all she had in the world, and he had taken this
opportunity to slip out of it.
Miss Strickland was a fighter. She was a very fine fighter and up till
this moment no wave of disaster had ever been beyond her power to
surmount. But you cannot fight the memory of a dead dog.
Prendergast overwhelmed Miss Strickland. She sank on the floor beside
his basket sobbing as if her heart, which was already broken, could
break again.
“They might have left me this!” she said between her sobs.
She spoke as if Elsie and Peter between them had killed Prendergast,
although she knew that this was nonsense.
CHAPTER IX
Peter Gubbins had the type of mind which invariably sees danger in the
most unlikely places.
He apprehended it from every wayside flower. Nothing was too trivial or
too transitory for Peter to snatch from it in passing a whiff of
disaster.
He never mounted a tram without expecting to break his leg, and he never
ate a meal in a strange place without anticipating typhoid.
And yet the mere sound of Onoria’s voice had driven him helter skelter
towards the abyss of matrimony.
He raced from the Cathedral to the Station as a man flees from a burning
building: his one idea was not to be caught by Onoria. Even if he had
envisaged Onoria’s face at one end of the race and matrimony at the
other, it is probable he would have continued running in the direction
of matrimony. The true coward can only see one danger at a time, and
falls light-heartedly into any other which lies in the opposite
direction.
It says a great deal for Peter Gubbins’ heart that even in that awful
moment of panic he dragged Elsie after him.
It was not till they were safe in the train that he began to wonder how
on earth he was going to get rid of her.
The chief obstacle to murder has always been the disposal of the
body—and the problem of rescue is very similar to it; but it is easier
to dispose of a victim than to dispose of a sacred charge; villains, not
knight errants, escape the due reward of their deeds.
Peter wished with a burning longing that he could deposit Elsie in the
Cloak Room at Paddington Station, even if it involved his paying
twopence a day on her for ever.
After the tooth episode it was wonderful how Elsie cheered up.
She had found in Mr. Gubbins a prop and stay and that was all she
wanted. A flower grows without the support of a stick—but its carriage
depends on being tied to one.
Elsie held her head up, and her mind (which if timorous was always
practical) turned to Aunt Anne at Clapham.
They had a late tea in the Station and sent off Elsie’s telegram; and
then they took a taxi to Clapham.
They could have gone as conveniently and more cheaply by train, but a
taxi appealed to them both, as more buccaneerish.
Peter enjoyed feeling buccaneerish until they reached the Common; then
he began to tremble before the idea of explaining things to Aunt Anne.
He knew that he had done right, but he was aware that flight and guilt
are to many people synonymous; and few men like to explain that they
found it safer to run away.
Elsie with incredible finesse relieved him of this difficulty. She said
she thought it would be better if he left her at the door, and came back
next day. “You’ll have time then,” she explained, “to think things over,
and I know authors and people think of their plots better alone.
Whatever you decide is sure to be wonderful, and Aunt Anne will be more
likely to listen to me if you’re not there.”
Peter gave a sigh of relief. “Yes—yes,” he agreed, “perhaps the
explanation had better come from you direct. I know from personal
experience that the way to tackle a difficult situation is easier to me
if I am left alone face to face with it, as it were. Perhaps this is
merely because I am a man. Onoria would say so—but roughly speaking, I
should say that women have the same gift.”
“I don’t know if it’s a gift,” said Elise modestly, “but I can’t say
anything if other people are there—and I can’t say much if they aren’t;
but I’ll do what I can.”
Aunt Anne required a good many explanations. She had never received a
niece before at seven o’clock in the evening without a tooth-brush.
It would have been difficult for her to grasp that the survivors of
earthquakes are denuded of this effective article of toilette, and she
knew that Little Ticklington was not an earthquake district.
She followed every explanation given by Elsie with—“Still I can’t quite
see, dear, how you have arrived without your night things. I am very
glad to see you, of course, but it all sounds so precipitate.”
It was on the edge of this precipice that Elsie fell asleep.
She wisely kept Mr. Gubbins for breakfast. When they were eating kidneys
and bacon—after porridge, but before marmalade—she confessed to her
Aunt Anne that she had not only run away from the oratorio because Miss
Strickland did not like oratorios, but because Mr. Gubbins was with her
and Miss Strickland would have liked his presence even less than an
oratorio.
Aunt Anne laid down her knife and fork and gazed at Elsie—the mystery
was solved. It had been a mystery—it was now simply a crime. Aunt Anne
had not understood before why Miss Strickland should object to certain
parts of the Bible set to music. She was herself doubtful of Opera, even
if it had not been so expensive; but sacred music was surely both
educational and devout, and not even very interesting. It was
unreasonable for a high school teacher to object to such a
performance—but a young man!
Her gaze was awful, and Elsie shuddered under it, and swallowing her tea
too hurriedly, choked.
When she had stopped choking, Aunt Anne said portentously, “Is Mr.
Gubbins a young man, Elsie?”
Elsie said that that depended on what you meant by young; she had known
him for years and years, and he had grey hair and wore spectacles.
“Spectacles,” said Aunt Anne solemnly, “do not prevent youth though they
may disguise it. Grey hair is neither here nor there. Am I to gather
that there is some understanding between you and this—this Mr. Gubbins,
Elsie—perhaps unknown to your dear parents?”
Elsie wriggled and twisted. “They wouldn’t mind him,” she murmured
forlornly. “At least I don’t think so. Of course we understand each
other in a way. I play his accompaniments.”
“Elsie, you are hedging!” exclaimed Aunt Anne majestically. “I must see
this young man for myself.”
Elsie was not really hedging; if she had seen a hedge she would most
certainly have taken shelter under it, but she was not aware of the
exact danger her aunt supposed her to be avoiding.
She felt that there was something ominous in the air connected with Mr.
Gubbins, and she wriggled to appease it.
The idea of marriage conveyed nothing personal to Elsie. Marriage was
merely something that happened to other people—with a cake. She helped
herself to marmalade and hoped that Peter Gubbins would blow over.
Her aunt pursed up her lips and said, “This is dreadful!” but as Elsie
refused to fall into the trap of asking what was dreadful, she could not
follow it up in any way, except by telling Mary, the parlour-maid, to
show Mr. Gubbins, when he arrived, into her dead husband’s study.
The study of a dead clergyman is not usually an invigorating spot.
Aunt Anne was a massive lady and she sat between Peter and the door. All
the windows were closed as if on purpose. Even if Peter had had the
courage to try to escape it would have been very difficult. You cannot
get out of dead people’s rooms briskly without appearing heartless;
besides he had not the courage.
Peter was not as surprised at Aunt Anne’s attitude as Elsie would have
been, but he was more frightened.
He saw in Aunt Anne’s eye that matrimony had fallen upon him like a bolt
from the blue.
You cannot put bolts back into the blue when they have fallen, and you
could not dislodge the idea of matrimony from Aunt Anne’s mind once it
had taken root there. If young people would go to oratorios together
they ought to be married—she saw that quite plainly, even without the
lawless journey at the other end, which made the prospect, as she
explained to Peter, “simply compulsory.”
“You see,” she explained, “Elsie arrived here literally without a
tooth-brush—need I say more?”
Peter assured her that there really was no need. It contained the case
against them in a nutshell.
On the whole he was not averse to being frightened into marriage with
Elsie. One or two things had to be made perfectly plain before he would
consent to it. One was that they should not go back to Little
Ticklington on any account, and the other that the marriage should take
place as quietly as possible without wedding guests. They might have
relatives, but not friends.
It was all terribly uncertain and disintegrating, but it was not as
terrible as having to face Onoria.
Peter’s own plan had been the idea of going abroad alone, assisted by
Thomas Cook.
Of course it was a very dangerous plan, open to obvious disasters at
practically every turn, still Cook’s was a most reliable agency, and
many people had been known to return alive from trips to the Continent.
He could take a hot water bottle, Keating’s, and a small medicine chest.
But marriage would be less complicated, and it would have the advantage
of including Elsie.
Peter proposed to Elsie quite easily. He simply said, “On the whole, I
think the best way out for both of us is to be married. For a long time
I have been feeling Little Ticklington too restricted for me mentally.
One needs to be nearer the great pulse of life—not too near, of course!
I thought somewhere in the suburbs—Chiswick, for instance—there are
some nice little houses in that direction, or Turnham Green.
“I could cultivate sweet peas there, and yet attend literary causeries
in London. Of course it’s a great upheaval for both of us, especially at
my age, but looking at it all round, it appears to me the wisest course
to take—what do you feel about it?”
Elsie nodded, she wasn’t looking at it all round. She was seeing that it
involved her not having to meet Onoria just yet.
She said, yes, she thought it was the best plan, if Peter didn’t mind.
Peter said, “You must take the rough with the smooth.” Of course he had
not contemplated such a step for many years, but he thought if they were
very careful and took things quietly they might be able to manage.
He understood from Aunt Anne that you wrote to the Bishop’s Chaplain for
a license, and did not have to see the Bishop.
The conversation came to an abrupt pause, their eyes met guiltily, and
they looked away from each other.
What were they going to do about Onoria?
Peter hummed and Elsie twiddled her fingers. Onoria never allowed these
physical mitigations of self-control to take place. It was a great
relief to them.
They decided—in silence—to do nothing. It was as if they had been
married already.
Peter said he had one or two little things to do, and left her.
Aunt Anne came in and wept on Elsie’s neck; and they decided to go out
and do a little shopping.
Everything went quite smoothly. Elsie’s parents came up to town and were
very pleased when they discovered that Peter had six hundred a year in
trust funds without counting what he made by his articles.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews privately thought that marriage from Clapham was
absurd, but Peter was unexpectedly firm upon the subject.
He simply asserted that at Little Ticklington no such marriage would
ever take place.
He would marry Elsie at Clapham or he would not marry Elsie at all.
Mrs. Binns (Peter’s former housekeeper) brought Samson up to town in a
basket. Samson would not speak to Peter for several days, but he ate
heartily.
It was the night before the wedding that Peter and Elsie heard of the
death of Prendergast.
Mrs. Binns had bought Peter a China dog as a wedding present and it put
it into her head.
Elsie and Peter concealed their emotion until they were alone, then they
gazed at each other in sympathetic anguish—they could no longer keep
silence about Onoria.
“Oh!” said Elsie, “if only we could give Onoria another pug. Perhaps she
would see then that we aren’t really doing anything to upset her—and
besides she wouldn’t mind so much if she had something—you know what I
mean—something of her own to fall back upon.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself,” agreed Peter. “Between you and
me, Onoria never had quite the subtlety for cats—Samson would never
look at her—but dogs she knew through and through. I think she would
appreciate our getting her a dog. It might heal any little breach that
our—our coming together—may have appeared to cause.”
They bought a pug puppy directly after the marriage—on the way to
Chiswick. (Peter had always understood honeymoons were dangerous, so
they had decided to avoid one.)
It was an expensive animal and it relieved their feelings very much.
Onoria would have returned it to them, had she not discovered on opening
the basket that, with their usual inefficiency, they had sent the poor
little creature to her in a most deplorable condition.
First it had to be fed, and then a carbolic bath was more than
indicated, and after Onoria had spent several hours over the puppy with
a fine tooth comb and a large bath sheet, she began to feel that it
would be cruelty to send it back. It was obvious that neither of the
Gubbinses could take proper care of a dog.
Onoria never altogether lost touch with Peter and Elsie. She told them
what she thought of them when she acknowledged the pug; but letters do
not carry sound. They became used to the idea of what Onoria thought of
them; it seemed less significant at Chiswick.
Onoria spent a night with them every now and then, and once a year they
visited her for a week-end at Little Ticklington.
Of course it was not the same thing. Onoria was just the same and the
Gubbinses were not really very different; but they were more critical of
Onoria.
They did not stand up to her before her face, but they stood up to her
behind her back quite easily.
When Onoria got the better of them in argument, as she invariably did,
they would wait until she was out of earshot. Then they would smile and
say to each other with the secret consciousness of superior achievement,
“It stands to reason that an unmarried woman like Onoria can’t
understand things as we do. She hasn’t had the experience.”
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
A few obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected
without note. When multiple spellings occurred, majority use has been
employed.
A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public
domain.
[End of _The Victim and The Worm_ by Phyllis Bottome]
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTIM AND THE WORM ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law 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. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world 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. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
