Chapter II: Part 2

She had made a grave mistake, if only she’d known it—leaving him here by himself today, with his time free to think about her, and memories of her dark side still fresh in his mind. For Stella had her dark side, like the moon, though generally you saw as little of it as the moon’s. In nearly all ways she was Peter’s satisfaction. He loved her with body and mind, indeed with a sort of spiritual yearning. He loved her for her beauty, her sense, her warmth, her affectionate disposition which expressed itself naturally in love, her freedom from affectation, and also from any pretensions to wit or cleverness, and other things which he distrusted. But for two things he loved her not—her religion and her attitude towards his family.

Hitherto neither had troubled him much. Their meetings had been so few that they had had but little talk of anything save love. He had merely realised that though she held the country round Vinehall and Leasan as dear as even his idolatry demanded she was very little impressed with the importance of the family to whom that country belonged. But up in London that had scarcely mattered. He had also realised that Stella, as she put it, “tried to be good.” At first he had thought her wanton—her ready reception of his advances, her ardent affection, her unguarded manner, had made him think she was like the many young women filling London in those years, escaped from quiet homes into a new atmosphere of freedom and amorousness, making the most of what might be short-lived opportunities. But he was glad when he discovered his mistake. Peter approved of virtue in women, though he had occasionally taken advantage of its absence. He certainly would never have married a woman who was not virtuous, and he soon discovered that he wanted to marry Stella.

But in those days everything flowed like a stream—nothing was firm, nothing stood still. Things were different now—they could flow no longer, they must be established; it was now that Peter realised how much greater these two drawbacks were than they had seemed at first. Stella’s religion did not consist merely in preserving his treasure whole till he was ready to claim it, but in queer ways of denial and squander, exacting laws, embarrassing consecrations. And her attitude towards the family gave him almost a feeling of insult—she was so casual, so unaware ... she did not seem to trouble herself with its requirements and prohibitions. She did not seem to realise that the House of Alard was the biggest thing on earth—so big that it could crush her and Peter, their hope and romance, into dust. But she would soon find out what it was—whether they married or not, she would find out.

Sometimes—for instance, today—he was almost savagely glad when he thought how sure she was to find out. Sometimes he was angry with her for her attitude towards the family, and for all that she took for granted in his. He knew that she expected him to marry her whatever happened—with a naïvety which occasionally charmed but more often irritated him. She imagined that if his father refused to let them live at Starvecrow, he would take her and live with her in some cottage on five hundred a year ... and watch the place go to ruin without him. She would be sorry not to have Starvecrow, but she would not care about anything else—she would not fret in the least about the estate or the outraged feelings of those who looked to him to help them. She would not even have cared if his father had had it in his power—which he had not—to prevent her ever becoming Lady Alard. Stella did not care two pins about being Lady Alard—all she wanted was to be Mrs. Peter. He had loved her for her disinterestedness, but now he realised that it had its drawbacks. He saw that his choice had fallen on a woman who was not a good choice for Alard—not merely because she had no money, but because she had no pride. He could not picture her at Conster—lady of the Manor. He could picture her at Starvecrow, but not at Conster.

... He bowed his head upon the table—it felt heavy with his thought. Stella was the sweetest, loveliest thing in life, and sometimes he felt that her winning was worth any sacrifice, and that he would pay her price not only with his own renunciation but with all the hopes of his house. But some unmovable, fundamental part of him showed her to him as an infatuation, a witch-light, leading him away from the just claims of his people and his land, urging him to a cruel betrayal of those who trusted to him for rescue.

After all, he had known her only a year. In a sense, of course, he had known her from her childhood, when she had first come with her father to Vinehall, but he had not loved her till he had met her in London a year ago. Only a year.... To Peter’s conservative soul a year was nothing. For nearly two hundred years the Alards had owned Starvecrow—and they had been at Conster for three hundred more. Was he going to sacrifice those century-old associations for the passion of a short year? He had loved her only a year, and these places he had loved all his life—and not his life only, but the lives of those who had come before him, forefathers whose spirit lived in him, with love for the land which was his and theirs.

§ 11

The Christmas tension at the Manor was relieved at dinnertime by the arrival of George Alard and his wife, Dr. Mount and Stella, and a young man supposed to be in love with Jenny. A family newly settled at the Furnace had also been invited and though it had always been the custom at Conster to invite one or two outside people to the Christmas dinner, Rose Alard considered that this year’s hospitality had gone too far.

“It’s all very well to have Dr. Mount and Stella,” she said to Doris, “but who are these Hursts? They haven’t been at the Furnace six months.”

“They’re very rich, I believe,” said Doris.

“They may be—but no one knows how they made their money. I expect it was in trade,” and Rose sniffed, as if she smelt it.

“There’s a young man, I think; perhaps he’ll marry Jenny—he’s too young for me.”

“But Jenny’s engaged to Jim Parish, isn’t she?”

“Not that it counts—he hasn’t got a bean, or any prospects either. We don’t talk of them as engaged.”

“Is she in love with him?”

“How can I possibly tell?” snapped Doris, who had had a trying afternoon with her mother, and had also been given “The Christian Year” for the second time as a present from Rose.

“Well, don’t bite my head off. I’m sure I hope she isn’t, and that she’ll captivate this young Hurst, whoever he is. Then it won’t be so bad having them here, though otherwise I should feel inclined to protest; for poor George is worn out after four services and two sermons, and it’s rather hard to expect him to talk to strangers—especially on Christmas day.”

Doris swallowed her resentment audibly—she would not condescend to quarrel with Rose, whom she looked upon much as Rose herself looked upon the Hursts, George having married rather meanly in the suburb of his first curacy.

When the Hursts arrived, they consisted of agreeable, vulgar parents, a smart, modern-looking daughter and a good-looking son. Unfortunately, the son was soon deprived of his excuse as a possible husband for Jenny by his mother’s ready reference to “Billy’s feeonsay”—but it struck both Rose and Doris separately and simultaneously that it would do just as well if the daughter Dolly married Peter. She really was an extraordinarily attractive girl, with her thick golden hair cut square upon her ears like a mediæval page’s. She was clever, too—had read all the new books and even met some of the new authors. Never, thought Rose and Doris, had wealth been so attractively baited or “trade” been so effectively disguised. It was a pity Peter was in such bad form tonight, sitting there beside her, half-silent, almost sullen.

Peter knew that Dolly Hurst was attractive, he knew that she was clever, he knew that she was rich, he knew that she had come out of the gutter—and he guessed that his people had asked her to Conster tonight in hopes that through him her riches might save the house of Alard. All this knowledge crowned by such a guess had the effect of striking him dumb, and by the time Wills and the footmen had ushered in with much ceremony a huge, burnt turkey, his neighbour had almost entirely given up her efforts to “draw him out,” and had turned in despair to George Alard on her right.

Peter sat gazing unhappily at Stella. She was next to Gervase, and was evidently amusing him, to judge by the laughter which came across the table. That was so like Stella ... she could always make you laugh. She wasn’t a bit clever, but she saw and said things in a funny way. She was looking devilish pretty tonight, too—her hair was done in such a pretty way, low over her forehead and ears, and her little head was round and shining like a bun ... the little darling ... and how well that blue frock became her—showing her dear, lovely neck ... yes, he thought he’d seen it before, but it looked as good as new. Stella was never tumbled—except just after he had kissed her ... the little sweet.

He was reacting from his thoughts of her that morning—he felt a little ashamed of them. After all, why shouldn’t she have gone to church if she wanted to? Wasn’t it better than having no religion at all, like many of the hard young women of his class who shocked his war-born agnosticism with theirs?—or than having a religion which involved the whole solar system and a diet of nuts? And as for her treatment of his family—surely her indifference was better than the eager subservience more usually found—reverence for a title, an estate, and a place in the charmed exclusiveness of the “County.” No, he would be a fool if he sacrificed Stella for any person or thing whatsoever. He had her to consider, too. She loved him, and he knew that, though no troth had yet passed between them, she considered herself bound to the future. What would she say if she knew he did not consider himself so bound?... Well, he must bind himself—or let her go free.

He longed to talk to her, but his opportunity dragged. To his restlessness it seemed as if the others were trying to keep them apart. There was Gervase, silly fool, going out with the women as usual and sitting beside her in the drawing-room—there was George, sillier fool, keeping the men back in the dining-room while he told Mr. Hurst exactly why he had not gone for an army chaplain. Then directly they had joined the ladies, both Doris and Rose shot up simultaneously from beside Dolly Hurst and disposed of themselves one beside Lady Alard, the other beside Stella. He had to sit down and try again to be intelligent. It was worse than ever, for he was watching all the time for Miss Hurst to empty her coffee-cup—then he would go and put it down on the Sheraton table, which was not so far from Stella, and after that he would sit down beside Stella no matter how aggressively Rose was sitting on her other side.

The coffee-cup was emptied in the middle of a discussion on the relative reputations of Wells and Galsworthy. Peter immediately forgot what he was saying....

“Let me put your cup down for you.”

He did not wait for a reply, but the next minute he was on the other side of the room. He realised that he had been incredibly silly and rude, but it was too late to atone, for Jim Parish, Jenny’s ineligible young man, had sat down in the chair he had left.

Stella was talking to Rose, but she turned round when Peter came up and made room beside her on the sofa. Rose felt annoyed—she thought Stella’s manner was “encouraging,” and began to say something about the sofa being too cramped for three. However, at that moment Lady Alard called her to come and hear about Mrs. Hurst’s experiences in London on Armistice Day, and she had regretfully to leave the two ineligibles together, with the further complication that the third ineligible was sitting beside Dolly Hurst—and though Jim Parish was supposed to be in love with Jenny, everyone knew he was just as much in need of a rich wife as Peter.

“Stella,” said Peter in a low voice—“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! What for, my dear?”

He realised that of course she did not know what he had been thinking of her that morning.

“Everything,” he mumbled, apologizing vaguely for the future as well as the past.

Stella had thought that perhaps this evening “something would happen.” At Conster—on Christmas night ... the combination seemed imperative. But Peter did not, as she had hoped, draw her out of that crowded, overheated room into some quiet corner of the house or under the cold, dark curtains of the night. Peter could not quite decide against the family—he must give it time to plead. He leaned back on the sofa, his eyes half-closed, tired and silent, yet with a curious peace at his heart.

“You’re tired, boy,” said Stella—“what have you been doing today?”

“I’ve had a hateful day—and I _was_ tired—dog tired; but I’m not tired any longer now—now I’m with you.”

“Oh, Peter, am I restful?”

“Yes, my dear.”

Stella was satisfied. She felt that was enough—she did not ask anything more of the night.

§ 12

It was Gervase, not Peter, who lay awake that night, thinking of Stella Mount. He had been glad when he was told to take her in to dinner, and the meal which had been so unspeakably trying to his brother had passed delightfully for him. On his other side sat Doris, deep in conversation with Charles Hurst, so he did not have to bother about her—he could talk to Stella, who was so easy to talk to....

Afterwards in the drawing-room he had not felt so easy. He knew that he must not monopolise Stella, for she was Peter’s. So when he heard the men crossing the hall, he made some excuse and left her, to see Rose sit down by her side directly Peter came in. He was glad when poor old Peter had managed to get near her at last ... though he hadn’t seemed to make much of his opportunities. He had sat beside her, stupid and silent, scarcely speaking a word all the evening through.

Upstairs in bed, in his little misshapen room under the north gable, where he had slept ever since the night-nursery was given up, Gervase shut his eyes and thought of Stella. She came before the darkness of his closed eyes in her shining blue dress—a dress like midnight.... She was the first woman he had really noticed since in far-back childish days he had had an infatuation for his rather dull daily governess—his “beautiful Miss Turner” as he had called her and thought of her still.... But Stella was different—she was less of a cloud and a goddess, more of a breathing person. He wondered—was he falling in love? It was silly to fall in love with Stella, who was six years older than he ... though people said that when boys fell in love it was generally with women older than themselves. But he mustn’t do it. Stella was Peter’s.... Was she?... Or was it merely true that he wanted to take her and she wanted to be taken?

He did not think there was any engagement, any promise. Circumstances might finally keep them apart. Rose, Doris, Jenny, his father and mother—the whole family—did not want Peter to marry Stella Mount whose face was her fortune. It was the same everlasting need of money that was making the same people, except Jenny of course, shrug at poor Jim Parish, whose people in their turn shrugged at portionless Jenny. Money—money ... that was what the Squires wanted—what they must have if their names were to remain in the old places.

Gervase felt rather angry with Peter. He was angry to think that he who had the power was divided as to the will. How was it possible that he could stumble at such a choice? What was money, position, land or inheritance compared to simple, solid happiness?... He buried his face in the pillow, and a kind of horror seized him at the cruel ways of things. It was as if a bogey was in the room—the kind that used to be there when he was a child, but no longer visible in the heeling shadows round the nightlight, rather an invisible sickness, the fetish of the Alards dancing in triumph over Stella and Peter.

It was strange that he should be so hurt by what was after all not his tragedy—he was not really in love with Stella, only felt that, given freedom for her and a few more years for him, he could have been and would have been. And he was not so much hurt as frightened. He was afraid because life seemed to him at once so trivial and so gross. The things over which people agonised were, after all, small shoddy things—earth and halfpence; to see them have such power to crush hopes and deform lives was like seeing a noble tree eaten up by insects. In time he too would be eaten up ... No, no! He must save himself, somehow. He must find happiness somewhere. But how?

When he tried to think, he was afraid. He remembered what he used to do in the old days when he was so dreadfully afraid in this room. He used to draw up his knees to his chin and pray—pray frantically in his fear. That was before he had heard about the Ninety-nine Just Sheep being left for the one that was lost; directly he had heard that story he had given up saying his prayers, for fear he should be a Just Sheep, when he would so much rather be the lost one, because the shepherd loved it and had carried it in his arms.... He must have been a queer sort of kid. Now all that was gone—religion ... the school chapel, confirmation classes, manly Christians, the Bishop’s sleeves ... he could scarcely realise those dim delicate raptures he had had as a child—his passionate interest in that dear Friend and God walking the earth ... all the wonderful things he had pondered in his heart. Religion was so different after you were grown up. It became an affair of earth and halfpence like everything else.

Stella’s religion still seemed to have some colour left in it, some life, some youth. It was more like his childhood’s faith than anything he had met so far. She had told him tonight that there were two Christmas trees in church, one each side of the Altar, all bright with the glass balls and birds that had made his childhood’s Christmas trees seem almost supernatural.... Yggdrasils decked for the eternal Yule ... he was falling asleep.... He was sorry for Stella. She had told him too about the Christmas Crib, the little straw house she had built in the church for Mary and Joseph and the Baby, for the ox and the ass and the shepherds and their dogs and the lambs they could not leave behind.... She had told him that she never thought of Christ as being born in Bethlehem, but in the barn at the back of the Plough Inn at Udimore.... He saw the long road running into the sunrise, wet and shining, red with an angry morning. Someone was coming along it carrying a lamb ... was it the lost sheep—or just one of the lambs the shepherds could not leave behind? ... all along the road the trees were hung with glass balls and many-coloured birds. He could feel Stella beside him, though he could not see her. She was trying to make him come with her to the inn. She was saying “Come, Peter—oh, do come, Peter,” and he seemed to be Peter going with her. Then suddenly he knew he was not Peter, and the earth roared and the trees flew up into the sky, which shook and flamed.... He must be falling asleep.

§ 13

Gervase’s feelings towards Alard being what they were, anybody might wonder he should think of giving up Oxford for the family’s sake. Indeed, he almost changed his mind in the throes of that wakeful, resentful night, and resolved to take his expensive way to Christ’s or Balliol. But by morning he had come to see himself more clearly and to laugh at his own pretences. He wasn’t “giving up” Oxford—he didn’t want to go there—he had always shrunk from the thought of Oxford life with its patterns and conventions—and then at the end of it he would still be his father’s youngest son, drawing a youngest son’s allowance from depleted coffers. He would far rather learn his job as an engineer and win an early independence. Going to his work every morning, meeting all sorts of men, rough and smooth, no longer feeling irrevocably shut up in a class, a cult, a tradition ... in that way he might really win freedom and defy the house of Alard. “My name’s Gervase Alard,” he said to himself—“and I’m damned if Gervase shall be sacrificed to Alard, for he’s the most important of the two.”

If only he could persuade his father to see as he saw—not quite, of course, but near enough to let him make a start. Peter had not seen very well, still he had nearly agreed when the argument was broken up. Sir John must be found in a propitious hour.

The next day provided none such, for Christmas had not unexpectedly brought a return of the Squire’s twinges, but these passed off with unusual quickness, and on Innocents’ Day his indomitable pluck mounted him once again on his grey horse to ride round the farms. Gervase found him finishing his breakfast when he came down for his own, and seeing by whip and gaiters what was planned, he realised that a favourable time had come. So he rushed into his request while he was helping himself to bacon.

To his surprise his father heard him without interruption.

“Have you any bent for engineering?” he asked at the end.

“Oh, yes, Sir. I can drive any sort of car and mess about with their insides. I always was keen.”

“You’ve been keen on a good many things if I remember right, but not always proficient. All my sons have been to Oxford.”

“But think what a lot it ’ud cost you, Sir, to send me.”

“I expect it ’ud cost me nearly as much to make an engineer of you.”

“Oh, no, Sir—you’ll only have to plank down about a hundred to start with, and in time they’ll pay me some sort of a screw. And if I go into a shop at Ashford I can live at home and cost you nothing.”

“You think you’ll cost nothing to keep at home? What ull you live on, you damned fool?”

“Oh, relatively I meant, Sir. And if I get, say, fifteen bob a week, as I shall in time....”

“It’ll be a proud day for me, of course.”

“Things have changed since the war, and lots of chaps who’d have gone up to the ’Varsity now go straight into works—there’s Hugh’s friend, Tom Daubernon, opened a garage at Colchester....”

“That will be your ambition in life—to open a garage?”

“No, Sir—Alard and Co., motor-engineers and armament makers—that’s my job, and not so bad either. Think of Krupps.”

Sir John laughed half angrily.

“You impudent rascal! Have it your own way—after all, it’ll suit me better to pay down a hundred for you to cover yourself with oil and grease than a thousand for you to get drunk two nights a week at Oxford” ... a remark which affected Gervase in much the same way as the remark on “little women” had affected Peter.

The conversation was given a more romantic colour when Sir John retailed it to Peter on the edge of the big ploughed field by Glasseye Farm. Peter was going out after duck on the Tillingham marshes—he had that particularly solitary look of a man who is out alone with a gun.

“I must say I think the boy has behaved extremely well,” said his father—“it must have cost him a lot to give up Oxford. He thinks more of our position than I imagined.”

“I don’t see that it’ll add much to the dignity of our position to have him in a workshop.”

“It mayn’t add much to our dignity—but he’s only the youngest son. And what we want more than dignity is money.”

“Gervase giving up Oxford won’t save you more than a few hundred, and what’s that when it’ll take fifty thousand to pay off the mortgages?”

“You’re a sulky dog, Peter,” said Sir John. “If you’d only do as well as your brother, perhaps you could pull us out of this.”

“What d’you mean, Sir?”

“Gervase has done his best and given up the only thing he had to give up—Oxford. If you could sink your personal wishes for the family’s sake....”

Peter turned crimson and his pale Saxon eyes darkened curiously.

“D’you know what I mean?” continued his father.

“You mean marry a rich woman ... you want me to marry Dolly Hurst.”

For a moment Sir John was silent, then he said in an unexpectedly controlled voice——

“Well, what’s wrong with Dolly Hurst?”

“Nothing that I know of ... but then I know nothing ... and I don’t care.”

“I’m told,” continued the baronet, still calmly, “that you have already formed an attachment.”

“Who told you?”

“Never mind who. The point is, I understand there is such an attachment.”

Peter sought for words and found none. While he was still seeking, Sir John shook the reins, and the grey horse moved off heavily up the side of the field.

§ 14

On the spur of the hill below Barline stands that queer edifice known as Mocksteeple. It has from the distance a decided look of a steeple, its tarred cone being visible for many miles down the river Tillingham. It was built early in the eighteenth century by an eccentric Sir Giles Alard, brother of non-juring Gervase and buyer of Starvecrow. A man of gallantries, he required a spot at which to meet his lady friends, and raised up Mocksteeple for their accommodation—displaying a fine cynicism both towards the neighbours’ opinion—for his tryst was a landmark to all the district—and towards the ladies themselves, whose comforts could have been but meagrely supplied in its bare, funnel-shaped interior.

Today it had sunk to a store-house and was full of hop-poles when Peter approached it from the marshes and sat down to eat his sandwiches in the sunshine that, even on a December day, had power to draw a smell of tar from its walls. At his feet squatted the spaniel Breezy, with sentimental eyes fixed on Peter’s gun and the brace of duck that lay beside it. Peter’s boots and leggings were caked with mud, and his hands were cold as they fumbled with his sandwiches. It was not a good day to have lunch out of doors, even in that tar-smelling sunshine, but anything was better than facing the family round the table at Conster—their questions, their comments, their inane remarks....

It was queer how individually and separately his family irritated him, whereas collectively they were terrible with banners. His father, his mother, Doris, Jenny, George, Gervase—so much tyranny, so much annoyance ... the Family—a war-cry, a consecration. It was probably because the Family did not merely stand for those at Conster now, but for Alards dead and gone, from the first Gervase to the last, a whole communion of saints.... If Conster had to be sold, or stripped to its bare bones, it would not be only the family now sitting at luncheon that would rise and upbraid him, but all those who slept in Leasan churchyard and in the south aisle at Winchelsea.

Beside him, facing them all, would stand only one small woman. Would her presence be enough to support him when all those forefathers were dishonoured, all those dear places reproached him?—Glasseye, Barline, Dinglesden, Snailham, Ellenwhorne, Starvecrow ... torn away from the central heart and become separate spoil ... just for Stella, whom he had loved only a year.

Leaning against the wall of the Mocksteeple, Peter seemed to hear the voice of the old ruffian who had built it speaking to him out of the tar—deriding him because he would take love for life and house it in a Manor, whereas love is best when taken for a week and housed in any convenient spot. But Peter had never been able to take love for a week. Even when he had had adventures he had taken them seriously—those independent, experience-hunting young women of his own class who had filled the place in his life which “little women” and “French dancers” had filled in his father’s. They had always found old Peter embarrassingly faithful when they changed their minds.

Now at last he had found love, true love, in which he could stay all his life—a shelter, a house, a home like Starvecrow. He would be a fool to renounce it—and there was Stella to be thought of too; he did not doubt her love for him, she would not change. Their friendship had started in the troublesome times of war and he had given her to understand that he could not marry till the war was over. Those unsettled conditions which had just the opposite effect on most men, making them jump into marriage, snatch their happiness from under the cannon wheels, had made Peter shrink from raising a permanent relation in the midst of so much chaos. Marriage, in his eyes, was settling down, a state to be entered into deliberately, with much background.... And Stella had agreed, with her lips at least, though what her heart had said was another matter.

But now the war was over, he was at home, the background was ready—she would expect.... Already he was conscious of a sharp sense of treachery. At the beginning of their love, Hugh had been alive and the Alard fortunes no direct concern of Peter’s—he had expected to go back into business and marry Stella on fifteen hundred a year. But ever since Hugh’s death he had realised that things would be different—and he had not told her. Naturally she would think his prospects improved—and he had not undeceived her, though on his last leave, nine months ago, he had guessed the bad way things were going.

He had not behaved well to her, and it was now his duty to put matters right at once, to tell her of his choice ... if he meant to choose.... Good God! he didn’t even know yet what he ought to do—even what he wanted to do. If he lost Stella he lost joy, warmth, laughter, love, the last of youth—if he lost Alard he lost the First and Last Things of his life, the very rock on which it stood. There was much in Stella which jarred him, which made him doubt the possibility of running in easy yoke with her, which made him fear that choosing her might lead to failure and regret. But also there was much in Alard which fell short of perfection—it had an awkward habit of splitting up into its component parts, into individuals, every separate one of which hurt and vexed. That way, too, might lead to emptiness. It seemed that whichever choice he made he failed somebody and ran the risk of a vain sacrifice.

But he must decide. He must not hold Stella now if he did not mean to hold her forever. He saw that. His choice must be made at once, for her sake, not in some dim, drifting future as he had at first imagined. He was not going to marry the Hurst girl—he almost hated her—and to marry a girl for her money was like prostitution, even though the money was to save not him but his. But if he was not going to marry Stella he must act immediately. He had no right to keep her half bound now that the time had come to take her entirely. Oh, Stella!...

Breezy the spaniel came walking over Peter’s legs, and licked his hands in which his face was hidden.

§ 15

That night Peter wrote to Stella:—

_My own dear_—

I’ve been thinking about you all today—I’ve been thinking about you
terribly. I took my gun out this morning after duck, but I had a
rotten day because I was thinking of you all the time. I had lunch
down by the Mocksteeple, and Stella, I wanted you so that I could have
cried. Then afterwards when I was at home I wanted you. I went in to
Lambard and we cut some pales, but all the time I was thinking of you.
And now I can think no longer—I must write and tell you what I’ve
thought.

Child, I want to marry you. You’ve known that for a long time, haven’t
you? But I wanted to wait till the end of the war. I don’t believe in
marrying a girl and then going out and getting killed, though that is
what a lot of chaps did. Well, anyhow the war’s over. So will you
marry me, Stella child? But I must tell you this. My people will be
dead against it, because they’re looking to me to save the family by
making a rich marriage. It sounds dreadful, but it’s not really so bad
as it sounds, because if we don’t pick up somehow we shall probably go
smash and lose almost everything, including Starvecrow. But I don’t
care. I love you better than anything in the world. Only I must
prepare you for having to marry me quietly somewhere and living with
me in London for a bit. My father won’t have me as agent, I’m quite
sure, if I do this, but perhaps he’ll come round after a time. Anyhow
Stella, darling, if we have each other, the rest won’t matter, will
it? What does it matter even if we have to sell our land and go out of
Conster? They’ve got no real claim on me. Let Jenny marry somebody
rich, or Doris—it’s not too late. But I don’t see why I should
sacrifice my life to the family, and yours too, darling child. For I
couldn’t do this if I didn’t believe that you love me as much as I
love you.

I think this is the longest letter than I have ever written to you,
but then it is so important. Dearest, we must meet and talk things
over. The Greenings are going into Hastings on Tuesday to look at a
house, so will you come to me at Starvecrow?

My kisses, you sweet, and all my love. PETER.

It was nearly midnight when he had finished writing at the table in his bedroom. He folded up the letter and slipped it under the blotting paper, before getting into bed and sleeping soundly.

But the next morning he tore it to pieces.

§ 16

On the last day of the old year Mary Pembroke came down to Conster Manor, arriving expensively with a great deal of luggage. Her beauty was altogether of a more sophisticated kind than Jenny’s and more exotic than Doris’s—which, though at thirty-eight extinct in the realm of nature, still lived in the realm of art. Mary was thirty-one, tall and supple, with an arresting fineness about her, and a vibrant, ardent quality.

The family was a little restless as they surrounded her in the drawing-room at tea. She had that same element of unexpectedness as Gervase, but with the difference that Gervase was as yet raw and young and under control. Mary gave an impression of being more grown up than anyone, even than Lady Alard and Sir John; life with her was altogether a more acute affair.

Only Lady Alard enquired after the absent Julian.

“I wonder he didn’t come down with you,” she murmured. “I sent him a very special invitation.”

“Bah!” said Sir John.

“Why do you say ‘Bah,’ dear?”

“Doris, tell your mother why I said ‘Bah.’”

“Oh, Father, how do I know?”

“You must be very stupid, then. I give leave to any one of you to explain why I said ‘Bah,’” and Sir John stumped out of the room.

“Really, your father is impossible,” sighed Lady Alard.

Mary did not talk much—her tongue skimmed the surface of Christmas: the dances they had been to, the people they had had to dinner. She looked fagged and anxious—strung. At her first opportunity she went upstairs to take off her travelling clothes and dress for dinner. Of dressing and undressing Mary made always a lovely ceremony—very different from Jenny’s hasty scuffle and Doris’s veiled mysteries. She lingered over it as over a thing she loved; and Jenny loved to watch her—all the careful, charming details, the graceful acts and poses, the sweet scents. Mary moved like the priest of her own beauty, with her dressing table for altar and her maid for acolyte—the latter an olive-skinned French girl, who with a topknot of black hair gave a touch of chinoiserie to the proceedings.

When Mary had slipped off her travelling dress, and wrapped in a Mandarin’s coat of black and rose and gold, had let Gisèle unpin her hair, she sent the girl away.

“Je prendrai mon bain à sept heures—vous reviendrez.”

She leaned back in her armchair, her delicate bare ankles crossed, her feet in their brocade mules resting on the fender, and gazed into the fire. Jenny moved about the room for a few moments, looking at brushes and boxes and jars. She had always been more Mary’s friend than Doris, whose attitude had that peculiar savour of the elder, unmarried sister towards the younger married one. But Jenny with Mary was not the same as Jenny with Gervase—her youth easily took colour from its surroundings, and with Mary she was less frank, more hushed, more unquiet. When she had done looking at her things, she came and sat down opposite her on the other side of the fire.

“Well—how’s life?” asked Mary.

“Oh, pretty dull.”

“What, no excitements? How’s Jim?”

“Oh, just the same as usual. He hangs about, but he knows it’s no good, and so do I—and he knows that I know it’s no good, and I know that he knows that I know—” and Jenny laughed wryly.

“Hasn’t he any prospects?”

“None whatever—at least none that are called prospects in our set, though I expect they’d sound pretty fine to anyone else. He’ll have Cock Marling when his father dies.”

“You shouldn’t have fallen in love with a landed proprietor, Jen.”

“Oh, well, it’s done now and I can’t help it.”

“You don’t sound infatuated.”

“I’m not, but I’m in love right enough. It’s all the hanging about and uncertainty that makes me sound bored—in self-defence one has to grow a thick skin.”

Mary did not speak for a moment but seemed to slip through the firelight into a dream.

“Yes,” she said at last—“a thick skin or a hard heart. If the average woman’s heart could be looked at under a microscope I expect it would be seen to be covered with little spikes and scales and callouses—a regular hard heart. Or perhaps it would be inflamed and tender ... I believe inflammation is a defence, against disease—or poison. But after all, nothing’s much good—the enemy always gets his knife in somehow.”

She turned away her eyes from Jenny, and the younger sister felt abashed—and just because she was abashed and awkward and shy, for that very reason, she blurted out——

“How’s Julian?”

“Oh, quite well, thank you. I persuaded him not to come down because he and father always get on so badly.”

“It’s a pity they do.”

“A very great pity. But I can’t help it. I did my best to persuade him to advance the money, but he’s not a man who’ll lend without good security, even to a relation. I’m sorry, because if he would stand by the family, I shouldn’t feel I’d been quite such a fool to marry him.”

Though the fiction of Mary being happily married was kept up only by Lady Alard, it gave Jenny a faint shock to hear her sister speak openly of failure. Her feelings of awkwardness and shyness returned, and a deep colour stained her cheeks. What should you say?—should you take any notice?... It was your sister.

“Mary, have you ... are you ... I mean, is it really quite hopeless?”

“Oh, quite,” said Mary.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know—I haven’t thought.”

Jenny crossed and uncrossed her large feet—she looked at her sister’s little mules, motionless upon the fender.

“Is he—I mean, does he—treat you badly?”

Mary laughed.

“Oh, no—husbands in our class don’t as a rule, unless they’re qualifying for statutory cruelty. Julian isn’t cruel—he’s very kind—indeed probably most people would say he was a model husband. I simply can’t endure him, that’s all.”

“Incompatibility of temperament.”

“That’s a very fine name for it, but I daresay it’s the right one. Julian and I are two different sorts of people, and we’ve found it out—at least I have. Also he’s disappointed because we’ve been married seven years and I haven’t had a child—and he lets me see he’s disappointed. And now he’s begun to be jealous—that’s put the lid on.”

She leaned back in her chair, her hands folded on her lap, without movement and yet, it seemed, without rest. Her body was alert and strung, and her motionlessness was that of a taut bowstring or a watching animal. As Jenny’s eyes swept over her, taking in both her vitality and her immaculacy, a new conjecture seized her, a sudden question.

“Mary—are you ... are you in love?—with someone else, I mean.”

“No—what makes you think so?”

“It’s how you look.”

“Jen, you’re not old enough yet to know how a woman looks when she’s in love. Your own face in the glass won’t tell you.”

“It’s not your face—it’s the way you behave—the way you dress. You seem to worship yourself....”

“So you think I must be in love—you can’t conceive that my efforts to be beautiful should be inspired by anything but the wish to please some man! Jen, you’re like all men, but, I’d hoped, only a few women—you can’t imagine a woman wanting to be beautiful for her own sake. Oh, my dear, it’s just because I’m not in love that I must please myself. If I was in love I shouldn’t bother half so much—I’d know I pleased somebody else, which one can do with much less trouble than one can please oneself. I shouldn’t bother about my own exactions any more. The day you see me with untidy hair and an unpowdered skin you’ll know I’m in love with somebody who loves me, and haven’t got to please myself any more.”

“But, Mary ... there’s Charles. Don’t you love Charles?”

“No, I don’t. I know it’s very silly of me not to love the man my husband’s jealous of, but such is the fact. Nobody but Julian would have made a row about Charles—he’s just a pleasant, well-bred, oldish man, who’s simple enough to be restful. He’s more than twenty years older than I am, which I know isn’t everything, but counts for a good deal. I liked going about with him because he’s so remote from all the fatigue and fret and worry of that side of life. It was almost like going about with another woman, except that one had the advantage of a man’s protection and point of view.”

“Does he love you?”

“I don’t think so for a moment. In fact I’m quite sure he doesn’t. He likes taking out a pretty woman, and we’ve enough differences to make us interesting to each other, but there the matter ends. As it happens, I’m much too fond of him to fall in love with him. It’s not a thing I’d ever do with a man I liked as a friend. I know what love is, you see, and not so long ago.”

“Who was that?”

“Julian,” said Mary dryly.

A feeling of panic and hopelessness came over Jenny.

“Oh, God ... then one can never know.”

§ 17

Gervase’s scheme of going into a workshop materialised more quickly than his family, knowing his rather inconsequent nature, had expected. The very day after he had obtained his father’s consent he drove into Ashford and interviewed the manager of Messrs. Gillingham and Golightly, motor engineers in the station road. After some discussion it was arranged that he should be taken into the works as pupil on the payment of a premium of seventy-five pounds to cover three years’ instruction, during which time he was to receive a salary starting at five shillings a week and rising to fifteen.

The sarcasm that greeted his first return on Saturday afternoon with his five shillings in his pocket was equalled only by his own pride. Here at last was money of his own, genuinely earned and worked for—money that was not Alard’s, that was undimmed by earth, having no connection with the land either through agriculture or landlordism. Gervase felt free for at least an hour.

“We can launch out a bit now,” said Sir John at luncheon—“Gervase has come to our rescue and is supporting us in our hour of need. Which shall we pay off first, Peter?—Stonelink or Dinglesden?...”

Peter scowled—he seemed to find his father’s pleasantry more offensive than Gervase, who merely laughed and jingled the coins in his pocket.

The youngest Alard threw himself with zest into his new life. It certainly was a life which required enthusiasm to make it worth living. Every morning at nine he had to be at the works, driving himself in the Ford farm-lorry, which had been given over to his use on its supplanting by a more recent make. He often was not back till seven or eight at night, worn out, but with that same swelling sense of triumph with which he had returned from his first day’s work. He was still living at home, still dependent on his people for food and clothing if not for pocket money, but his feet were set on a road which would take him away from Conster, out of the Alard shadow. Thank God! he was the youngest son, or they wouldn’t have let him go. He enjoyed the hardness of the way—the mortification of those early risings, with the blue, star-pricked sky and the deadly cold—the rattling drive in the Ford through all weathers—the arrival at the works, the dirt, the din, the grease, the breaking of his nails, his filthy overalls, his fellow workmen with their unfamiliar oaths and class-grievances, the pottering over bolts and screws, the foreman’s impatience with his natural carelessness—the exhausted drive home over the darkness of the Kent road ... Gable Hook, Tenterden, Newenden, Northiam, Beckley, going by in a flash of red windows—the arrival at Conster almost too tired to eat—the welcome haven of bed and the all too short sweet sleep.

Those January days in their zeal and discipline were like the first days of faith—life ceased to be an objectless round, a slavery to circumstances. Generally when he was at home he was acutely sensitive to the fret of Conster, to the ceaseless fermentation of those lives, so much in conflict and yet so combined—he had always found his holidays depressing and been glad to go back to school. Now, though he still lived in the house, he did not belong to it—its ambitions and its strife did not concern him, though he was too observant and sensitive not to be affected by what was going on.

He saw enough to realise that the two main points of tension were Mary and Peter. Mary was still at Conster, though he understood that Julian had written asking her to come home—February was near, and she stayed on, though she spoke of going back. As for Peter, he had become sulky and self-absorbed. He would not go for walks on Sundays, or shooting on Saturday afternoons—he had all the painful, struggling manner of a plain man with a secret—a straightforward man in the knots of a decision. Gervase was sorry for him, but a little angry too. Over his more monotonous jobs at the works, in his rare wakeful moments, but most of all in his long familiar-contemptible drives to and from Ashford, he still thought of Stella. His feeling for her remained much the same as it had been at Christmas—a loving absorption, a warm worship. He could not bear that she should suffer—she was so very much alive that he felt her suffering must be sharper than other people’s. He could guess by his own feelings a little of what she suffered in her love for Peter—and once he got further than a guess.

During those weeks he had never met her anywhere, either at Conster or outside it; but one Saturday at noon, as he was coming away from the shop, he met her surprisingly on foot in the station road. He pulled up and spoke to her, and she told him she was on her way to the station in hopes of an early train. The Singer had broken down with magneto trouble and she had been obliged to leave it for repair—meantime her father wanted her back early, as there was always a lot of dispensary work to do on a Saturday afternoon.

“Well, if you don’t mind a ride in a dying Ford....”

He hardly dared listen to her answer, he tried to read it as it came into her eyes while he spoke.

“Of course I don’t mind. I should love it—and it’s really most frightfully good of you.”

So she climbed up beside him, and soon her round bright eyes were looking at him from between her fur cap and huge fur collar, as they had looked that first morning at Starvecrow.... He felt the love rising in his throat ... tender and silly ... he could not speak; and he soon found that she would rather he didn’t. Not only was the Ford’s death-rattle rather loud but she seemed to find the same encouragement to thought as he in that long monotonous jolt through the Weald of Kent. He did not have to lift himself far out of the stream of his thoughts when he looked at her or spoke, but hers were evidently very far away. With a strange mixture of melancholy and satisfaction, he realised that he must count for little in her life—practically nothing at all. Even if she were not Peter’s claim she could never be his—not only on account of her age, six years older than he, but because the fact that she loved Peter showed that it was unlikely she could ever love Gervase, Peter’s contrast.... In his heart was a sweet ache of sorrow, the thrill which comes with the first love-pain.

But as they ran down into Sussex, across the floods that sheeted the Rother levels, and saw the first outposts of Alard-Monking and Horns Cross Farms with the ragged line of Moat Wood—his heart suddenly grew cold. In one of his sidelong glances at Stella he saw a tear hanging on the dark stamen of an eyelash ... he looked again as soon as he dared, and saw another on her cheek. Was it the cold?...

“Stella, are you cold?” he asked, fearing her answer.

“No, thank you, Gervase.”

He dared not ask “Why are you crying?” Also there was no need—he knew. The sweetness had gone out of his sorrow, he no longer felt that luxurious creep of pain—instead his heart was heavy, and dragged at his breast. It was faint with anger.

When they came to the Throws where the road to Vinehall turns out of the road to Leasan, he asked her if she wouldn’t come up to Conster for tea—“and I’ll drive you home afterwards.” But again she said in her gentle voice “No thank you, Gervase.” He wished she wouldn’t say it like that.

§ 18

What did Peter mean?

That was the question Stella had asked herself at intervals during the past month, that she had been asking herself all the way from Ashford to Vinehall, and was still asking when Gervase set her down on the doorstep of Hollingrove and drove away. What did Peter mean?