Chapter VII

“I had quite made up my mind that you were dead,” said Dennis when, later on, he and Alan walked back to his rooms in Tavistock Square.

Alan laughed. “Did you think I’d been storming trenches single-handed, and that my V.C. had been sent home to my weeping mother?”

“Something of the sort. I knew well enough that you’d expose yourself to every possible risk—as you are doing, only on the right side, thank heaven, instead of the wrong.”

“I’m running no greater risks than you are: perhaps imprisonment, perhaps death. I should think the latter quite probable if they attempt to force us to do war-work in prison—dirty trick, that, but they are quite capable of it.”

Dennis said nothing. For himself, he had long ago contemplated these possibilities. It was different to contemplate them for Alan. He wished somehow that Alan need not incur such risks, and yet was proud of him for incurring them ... and realised that on the other side, the militarist side, they felt precisely the same: those who sent their lovers and sons to the fighting-line and dreaded their going, yet would not hold them back....

“It’s all a bloody shame,” he said aloud, “such a bloody shame....”

“Yes, and when you think of all the labour and ingenuity that are being spent in the invention of more and yet more diabolical means of destruction.... I’ve watched big guns being made, and shells in munition-factories.”

“And how did you contrive to get into a munition-factory?”

“The name of my never-sufficiently-to-be-respected father was disguise enough for my revolutionary tendencies when I was up North,” said Alan, “but when I was going about the country, trying to get at the people’s outlook in various branches of industry, I had to assume alternately the disguise of a sanitary inspector, a newspaper-reporter or a workman. I’ve been temporary railway-porter and ship-builder’s apprentice, and followed all manner of trades since I saw you last.”

“And hasn’t your father cast you off for ever yet? Mine would like to, but he can’t quite do it because of mother. She, poor dear, is the victim of the complicated Eastwold table of weights and measures, namely: Do one son and one son-in-law in the trenches outweigh one conscientious objector, or do two in the trenches equal one in quod?”

“My father’s done more than cast me off,” said Alan, “he’s tried to get me run in before now—beery old buffer, making pots of money out of the war; sitting at home and joining in the hue-and-cry: ‘We want more men—more ships—more munitions....’ They’re tearing up the young manhood fast enough to make soldiers, and tearing up the forests to get wood to line the trenches and dug-outs. There was a pine-forest I passed through in Devon—or rather the remains of a pine-forest ... a wilderness of prostrate tree-trunks, with sticky pale-red stumps, lying crippled and bruised, with their branches crushed under them. And the sight and the smell of the resin oozing from where the boughs had been sawn off was a thing that hurt you—a damnable thing!”—his voice suddenly tightened—“it was like seeing the forest bleed to death before your very eyes. And all the time men were at work hacking, hacking and sawing ... you couldn’t get away from the rasping of those saws and the dull blows of the choppers. While I watched they were stabbing at the trunk of a great giant of a tree, and I saw its crown waver and rock and sway, and heard a sort of groaning crash as it fell to the ground among the litter of mutilated boughs and bleeding roots.... And all around were neat piles of stacked-up logs and sawn planks, ready to be despatched to France. The glory of that forest once—and now——”

“I know,” replied Dennis, “they’re felling the old beech-trees around my home, too—trees that have taken centuries and centuries to grow; and when I’ve cried out at the pity of it—‘_Every tree that can be of service to the country must come down!_’ It’s terrible and wonderful, this ruthless, relentless concentration of will and effort. The men going out, and the women taking over their jobs—even inanimate nature pressed into service to ‘help to win the war!’”

Alan nodded. “Yes, and with all that force pushing against us, we’ve got to use the same concentration of will and effort to win peace.”

They had reached Tavistock Square. Dennis opened the door with his latch-key and went up to his room. Alan followed him. And thus he had once followed Alan, by the light of a guttering candle, up a rickety wooden staircase at Crannack. And thus, in imagination, he had often felt himself being followed by Alan. As they were about to enter the room, Dennis wheeled sharply round. Alan smiled back at him with half-impudent confidence. “Well?”

“All right, I only wanted to see if you were really there—you’ve had such a way of dogging my heels, just like that, and then vanishing when I turned to look at you.”

Alan said: “You were a coward to run away that time at Crannack, Dennis.”

“You know why I had to run away—why I had to make myself run away. It wasn’t easy, Alan.”

“It’s no use running away. Because you’ll never _get_ away. We’re made like that; why not look things straight in the face?”

“Antoinette said something of that kind a long while ago, without having the vaguest idea what she was talking about.”

“Antoinette?”

“The girl who was with me at the tea-shop to-day. The girl with whom I sought safety from you.”

“And did you find it?”

“Do you need to ask?”

Alan sat down on the floor, and with hands clasped round his knees, gazed into the fire.

“Then what do you want with the girl now?”

Dennis shrugged his shoulders.

“She’s mad on you,” Alan persisted, “I could see that. But you don’t want her, Dennis—we don’t want her.... Cut her out altogether!”

Dennis answered sadly: “She is out altogether, poor Antoinette, to all intents and purposes.”

Alan turned his head with a slow smile. “Good ...” he murmured.

“Damn you, don’t talk and look like that!” Dennis blazed out in sudden rage, “you might be a woman, intolerant of all favourites but yourself!”

“I am intolerant of other favourites. And they’re no good to you, no earthly good ... are they?”

“No ...” said Dennis dully.

“You admit it! Then why continue to strive after what can’t really satisfy you?”

“Because I mustn’t take what would really satisfy me.”

“Then at least accept the fact that you are as you are, and don’t try to pervert yourself into something you never will be. We’re both right over the border-line of the normal—I more than you, because no woman could ever attract me in the least—and we’ve got to have the courage to face out that knowledge and, above all, to be true to ourselves. You want to make our love an abstraction. Believe me, you’ll only succeed in making it unnatural.”

“Unnatural, good Lord! Isn’t it that already?”

“You’ve been brooding too much in secret, Dennis, you’ve grown morbid. Why will you persist in regarding it as something vicious and degenerate? For people made as we are it’s natural and it’s beautiful to love as we love, and it’s perversion in the true sense to try and force ourselves to love differently.”

“I know ... I know all that, yet I can’t accept it as justification ... even though love like this is little short of crucifixion, as long as some remote principle nails us to the cross and forbids expression.”

“Then in God’s name, Dennis, why deny yourself and torture yourself like this?”

Dennis flung out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

Alan looked at him....

Then, very softly, he spoke. “All right, Dennis, it shall be as you say. Hang on to your foolish Quixotic principles, if you must ... if you must ... but you’ll never get away like that—never, no, never in this life....”

* * * * *

So now the shadowy danger, that she had perhaps not taken so very seriously, just because it was shadowy, had materialised in the shape of that boy. Dennis had warned her, and she had said: “Yes, I know....” With her brain she had accepted his warning, with her brain understood what it implied. But she had not felt anything. Even now the poison had not begun properly to work.... It was still difficult to overcome the initial sense of absurdity, of having to be jealous of a—man. Certainly, if Dennis had chosen to make love to her at Amberhurst, she would have given him every right to be jealous of—Hester. Crazy world ... and all these years she had lived with her eyes shut, never perceiving how crazy it was! She could not hazard any conjecture as to the future. All her previous experience was powerless to assist imagination. She was on entirely new ground now, ignorant of the significance of such landmarks as she might encounter; instinct her sole guide, and one whom her reason and her sense of humour were still half-inclined to mistrust.

At least she was glad that no decisive action was called for on her part. On the spur of the moment she had offered to back out, and he had not accepted her offer. She could remain passive now, and await developments.

Mrs. Taylor rang her up while she was awaiting them, and invited her to tea at the studio. Antoinette went, and found the Taylors’ house a low, rambling building in a tree-shaded street in Chelsea. The studio was connected with the house by a glass corridor, but it had another entrance that led through a walled passage into the street. A third door opened into a tangled garden, overgrown with weeds.

Pegeen met Antoinette at the side-entrance, and impressed her to keep silence during the brief transit from the street to the studio. She explained in her inimitable fashion that since the studio had been let to Conn O’Farrell, her husband and parents-in-law did not think it suitable for her to frequent it.

“But glory be to God, I have a latch-key of my own, so I say I’m taking a walk, and just pop out of the front door and into here by this side-entrance, when no one’s about. It’s like watch-dogs they are over me, my dear.... William’s at the office all day and Special-Constabling most nights, but he’s always telling his mother and his father to look after his ‘little floweret’—that’s me, dearie—while he’s gone.”

“So they do their duty by you!” laughed Antoinette.

“They do that, in the true Christian-martyr spirit; for it is a very, very bitter thing for Mother Taylor to have a wild Irish scaramouch like me for a daughter-in-law. Her Willie should have married one of the Vicar’s daughters from next door; they play croquet all the afternoon.... It is really a vicarage next door, my dear, and that’s the truth of it!”

Antoinette was taking in every detail of her environment. A square of blue was visible through the big skylight; an oak chest, left untidily open, disclosed a collection of gorgeous-coloured fabrics; garments of all hues and all periods; a very old carved table was littered with paints, cigarette-ends, lip-salve, pencil-stumps and chocolates; the originals of Conn’s political cartoons were upon the walls, and formed a queer contrast to the more imaginative examples of his art—the illustrations to old Irish fairy-tales and the designs for scenic decorations. And then Pegeen, with a childish and charming absence of false shame, exhibited Conn’s drawings of herself in all manner of poses....

“But aren’t you afraid that someone will see them and find out?” said Antoinette.

“Oh, there’s never a soul in here but Conn and me and our friends. The servants from the house aren’t allowed in. I do all his dusting for him, bless the lad! We want no strangers here, and for another reason that I’ll be telling you now....” Pegeen cast a glance over her shoulder, lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper, and kicking aside one of the rugs on the polished floor, disclosed a sliding panel. “Look!”

Antoinette looked, and as the panel slid back beheld a cavity some six feet deep. “A trap-door, Pegeen, a real trap-door?”

“Hush, my dear ... there are papers in there that could get the whole lot of us put in prison this very minute—” (Surely this was all a child’s game of “conspirators?”)—“we must get them safely over to Ireland and into the hands of our leaders before the month is out. We’re going together, Conn and I, when the time comes.”

... This was more lurid even than anything Antoinette had anticipated from Barnaby’s descriptions. Pegeen replaced the rug, offered her the cigarettes, and curled herself up in one of the deep armchairs. “To-night there’ll be company in the house—they have a bishop to dinner, my dear, all in gaiters, and I talking to him as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.... And Conn will stand in the glass passage, just this side of the curtain, and strain his ears for a sound of my voice among the other voices ... and after dinner maybe I’ll slip away and steal down the passage for one minute and feel his arms round me in the dark—then back again to old Gaiters, and the talk of how they’d like to have the parish church restored, and how well this bloody England is doing in the war.”

“How marvellous, Pegeen, that’s better than anything I’ve ever accomplished!” Antoinette told her of her own campaign of lies invented to elude Grand’mère’s vigilance. “It’s so neat, pretending to your parents-in-law that you are miles away, when you’re really in here, separated from them only by a curtain.”

“Yes, it was a happy thought, that curtain. I advised my mother-in-law to have it put there when we let the studio to Conn, because I said, ’tis for the look of the thing, and with artists you never know.... And she said I was after showing a bit of proper feeling at last!”

“Where did you meet Conn?” queried Antoinette, and was rewarded with the entire history of Pegeen’s life.

“I was left an orphan at the age of six, my dear, and I had two aunts in Ireland and one in England. And they played battledore and shuttlecock with me right enough, for not one of them was pleased to have me in the house with her own brats. You see,” Pegeen added with delightful simplicity, “they were never quite sure if my mother had been married to my father, so they thought it best not to give me the benefit of the doubt....” Followed the account of her marriage to Mr. Taylor, and the freakish impulse that had led her into it.

“It made me laugh so the way he said: ‘Margaret, I don’t understand you,’ every time I opened my mouth ... and when he asked me to marry him I said ‘Yes’ just to annoy my aunts, who said they never would have believed it of me.”

Antoinette suggested that in the course of Pegeen’s married life she might have heard that remark of Mr. Taylor’s once too often.

“Yes, indeed, my dear. And the night I met Conn, I felt I’d be suffocated dead by the morning if something didn’t happen! So I wandered out for a walk by myself, and there in the middle of Trafalgar Square there was a recruiting-meeting, and a man with a big banner telling all those poor fools of Englishmen to go and fight for their country.... I made a face at him—I did that! And Conn—he was in the crowd, too, with his friend Rutherford—he saw me make that face, and came and spoke to me. And, dearie, when I heard that boy’s voice, I could have put my arms round his neck and wept....”

“When Irish meets Irish,” murmured Antoinette, “it must have been rather wonderful.”

Pegeen’s greenish eyes shone. “It was that....”

* * * * *

Later on Conn came in, having just returned from Rutherford’s tribunal at the House of Commons. “They’ve not heard his case yet, but I thought I’d have time to slip down here for a cup of tea, and back again.” He drew Pegeen towards him and kissed her lips. “I’ve brought you these primroses, the first I’ve seen this spring—let’s have that great green bowl, and I’ll be arranging them while you get the food.”

Pegeen disappeared into the pantry adjoining the studio, and called to Antoinette to come and watch her fry the eggs. Conn was left dreamily putting the primroses one by one into the jade bowl.

“Wouldn’t you rather I went?” Antoinette suggested to Pegeen, “I’m sure you want to have him all to yourself.”

Pegeen laughed. “What a child for talking nonsense! We like to have you here. It’s a poor sort of hospitality that wishes one friend to go, when another arrives.”

But all the same when Conn joined them in the pantry, and kissed Pegeen’s neck as she bent over the gas-ring, Antoinette felt that she was an intruder—a feeling which, to do them justice, neither Conn nor Pegeen seemed to share. They had a composite meal of eggs and tea and cakes, all among the cigarette-ends and the lip-salve, with the massed bowl of primroses as table-decoration in the centre. Then Conn declared that he must go. “I don’t want to miss Rutherford’s speech; it’ll be worth the hearing.”

Pegeen made a grimace. “I hate that person.”

Conn said warmly: “You’ve no need to say that now, Pegeen, love....”

Antoinette asked, “Is anyone else at the tribunal, Mr. O’Farrell?”

“Barnaby’s there and Dennis Blackwood. Will I give him your love, Miss de Courcy?”

“Oh, never mind about it ...” she laughed; but the thought of Dennis as a spectator at Alan’s tribunal made her heart give a sudden painful jump.

“Good-bye, Pegeen; it’s William’s night on duty, isn’t it? Will I leave the side-door open...?”

Pegeen shook her ruffled head. “It’s the footsteps I’m thinking of, Conn, the two lots of footsteps all down the gravel-path. You’ve no idea how they show up!”

“Then I’ll have to carry you”—Conn’s eyes rested fondly on her—“that’ll only make one lot.”

“There’s another way, too,” Pegeen broke into her impish laughter, “the house on the left of this stands empty. If I can get into that garden from the street and over the wall into ours——”

Conn laughed. “Then William will spot you with his lantern, burgling your own house! Well, I don’t care how you find your way in, as long as you do—after the bishop’s left....”

The door banged behind him. Antoinette reflected that here indeed were combined melodrama and romance and farce of the most highly-coloured variety. Oh, certainly romance for those two mad, delightful people who loved each other; romance in the need for secrecy, and their peculiar methods of ensuring it; melodrama in the existence of the trap-door concealing the papers; farce in the idea of the respectable household adjoining this anything but respectable studio, the vicarage next door, the stolid Special Constable patrolling the streets.

“And to think I might never have known this happiness!” said Pegeen, “that objectionable person Rutherford was for ever advising my Conn not to take the studio. He said I was a harpy and that I didn’t really love him. So Conn believed him, and would not come near me, and I thought I would kill myself.... I told that to Benny Joseph, that nice Jew-boy when he came to tea here. And I cried into his handkerchief. And he made it all right, speaking to Conn and saying I was not a harpy, and did really love him truly. Now, I’m asking you, do I look like a harpy?”

“You’re a darling,” laughed Antoinette, and Pegeen gave her a warm broad smile. “I liked you the first time I set eyes on you. I don’t know why Dennis Blackwood didn’t bring you here before; he and Mr. Barnaby often come to see Conn.... I like Dennis,” she mused, “he’s a dear fine fellow, he is that, and he plays the piano like an angel. Aren’t you of the same opinion, my dear?”

Antoinette said softly: “I am....”

“It’s glad I am to hear that! It means that there’s a great day of happiness coming for you just as it’s come for me.”

“I’m afraid not, Pegeen.”

“But why, my dear?” Pegeen came and sat on the arm of Antoinette’s chair. “Why not?”

“It—it’s difficult to say....” Incredibly difficult.

Pegeen put her arms round her with a gesture impulsive and almost maternal. “Oh, my dear, won’t you tell me what it is?” She seemed to have lost for the moment her elfin devilry, and to have become softer, less of an imp, more of a woman. “I’ve had to go through sorrow too, to know happiness.... Tell me, dear: is it another woman that’s come between you?”

“No, Pegeen, it’s not another woman....” She was beginning to feel frightened. Dennis was at the tribunal, every nerve drawn tense with the hope that Alan would get his exemption. Quickly she chased from her mind the half-hope that he would not get it. That ... was ungenerous.... Was it, though, in the face of such a dangerous enemy? How dangerous, exactly, was Alan? Could he be fought on equal terms, or was his advantage over her so great that the conflict was already decided in his favour? If only she knew.... But how, and by what standards was she to measure the power of this strange enemy? She was oppressed by fear of the unknown; longed to be able to confide in Pegeen.

“It’s not another woman, it’s——”

But that was the sort of thing one could not say. Not to anyone. Not ever.

“Then it’ll all come right in the end, you’ll see”—Pegeen was still gently stroking her hair—“he’s a silly fellow and perhaps doesn’t know his own mind yet, but one day you’ll be as happy as Conn and me, and that’s what I’m wishing you with all my heart.”

Antoinette raised her head, and with an effort smiled. “Yes, I expect it’ll all come right....” She would not spoil the picture of herself and Dennis pairing off as a secondary couple to Pegeen and Conn. But it had been hard not to tell Pegeen. Pegeen’s warm-hearted sympathy would have soothed, if not comforted her. It would have been such a relief to tell someone. But—_one could not tell that sort of thing_. However much one longed to. However frightened one was. However lonely.