Chapter XXXI

Viola submitted to Eastbourne. It wouldn’t make very much difference where Mrs. Egerton took her.

There would be fewer people than she knew in London, but they would be the same kind of people, and they would be invited to the same kind of meals; but if she went out and looked for it she would find the sea.

The feeling of panic she had begun to have in London left her. New clothes and wedding presents stopped pouring in; they had reminded her that she was being led in a procession of flowers and garlands up to a perfectly cold stone, where she would feel a knife at her throat.

Viola knew vaguely what she was doing when she accepted Reggie; what she hadn’t known was whom she was doing it for.

She had thought Reggie was a devout and insignificant lover, who would make life freer and easier; and he was changing every day into a man with rights, who meant to have his own way and intended Viola to be part of it.

He was more in love with her than ever, but he was more important, and she hadn’t thought Reggie would be important. Curiously enough her own importance dwindled with her engagement. She had known girls who became transformed by happy love into beings filled with power and beauty. Their shyness had left them. They knew suddenly how to handle social situations. They seemed to feel the riddle of the universe take them on as interested accomplices. But Viola felt as if her personality was being blotted out; something free and alert in her was conscious of being abruptly checked. She felt as if to give her life to Reggie meant simply to stifle it and to live wholly outside the circle of her own desires.

She hadn’t been sure before what her own desires were, but she was sure now. She was sure they weren’t like Reggie’s.

Mrs. Egerton had cut Viola’s life to fit her, but she had done so with enormous skill and with no pitched battles, and Viola was about to give herself into hands that had already shown themselves to be harder and less skilful than her mother’s.

Viola didn’t want to be Reggie’s, and she didn’t want to make Reggie hate her. She wanted passionately to be her own self, and still to be approved.

But there wasn’t a single person in Viola’s world who wouldn’t disapprove of her for breaking her engagement.

It would be so unaccountable, and in Viola’s world if you couldn’t account for things you were reproached for them. Viola deliberately shut out the image of her mother. She dared not think what meals and after life would be, face to face with Mrs. Egerton, if she deliberately crossed her will.

She felt conscious of her mother’s will at every turn, when they were laughing over the morning paper, or strolling on the green, listening to light comedies, or watching people play lawn tennis; Mrs. Egerton was always at Viola’s disposal for jokes, and memories and plans, and always making Viola feel as if there were no other plans, no other jokes, no other memories.

There wasn’t any way out when Viola thought of her mother.

She told herself sharply that she was very wicked. Why should she want a way out when it would mean upsetting every one she knew and cutting Reggie to the very heart?

She had much better put up with a situation she had made for herself, and where she would be, if she kept quiet and reasonable, the only sufferer.

One morning she went by herself for a walk on Beachy Head. It was too windy for her mother, and she left Cèleste in the town shopping. She would be late for lunch, but she didn’t care. The salt, bright air set something reckless free in her. She climbed up the short-grassed height as if she were taking the hill by storm.

There was a strong wind blowing, and seagulls dipped to and fro in it. The sea below was colourless with white-snatched edges. Viola could not go very close to the cliffs edge, the rushing air bullied and discouraged her; but she loved the taste and feel of it on her lips and against her beaten cheeks. For a little while she saw no one at all—the world was empty of everything, but the free life of the wind.

What was the use of shutting herself down into a life like a padded velvet box? Wasn’t half her desire to spare pain and be unselfish—fear? She wasn’t afraid up here, on the height of the world where there was no room for the small subterfuges of security. Pain for pain if she submitted now and without love—what kind of gift was she giving, and how long would it spare Reggie suffering? Was it really Reggie that she was trying to spare?

Motives are a puzzling hunt at best, with crossed scents and a poor chance of finding. But Viola told herself she could at least look facts in the face. Jim Barton had said she didn’t see things straight. Of course he was wrong, but he had put her on her mettle.

No one in her world would agree with her, and this man with his opposite standards and his hard bitten look of reality—would he agree with her?

Perhaps he would say no; the only thing that mattered was sticking to a given word—like monks were supposed to; but even that would be a comfort. If Viola felt she had to marry Reggie, it wouldn’t be as dull or as petty as to marry him because she was afraid to say, and stick to it, ‘I don’t like you enough.’

But in order to get his opinion Viola would have to see this curious person first.

It was odd how elated and expectant seagulls and high winds make you feel on the top of a cliff. For a little while it seemed to Viola as if everything in life was perfectly plain and gay. Then she went back to the hotel; she was very late for lunch. Mrs. Egerton had waited for Viola. She made no complaint, but when she said, ‘Of course, I waited for you, dearest,’ the feeling of elation went out of Viola’s heart.

When she told her mother that she wanted to go up to town for the week-end, Mrs. Egerton made no direct objection. She wondered if the flicker of restlessness in her daughter did not indicate that the child was more in love than she knew.

‘One doesn’t,’ she observed aloud, ‘usually go to London for week-ends, and you won’t, of course, be able to see any dressmakers. What are Reggie’s plans?’

Viola felt that her mother’s eyes were on her and that if she said Reggie wasn’t even to be told, she wouldn’t be allowed to go.

‘I’m writing to Reggie,’ she said with a vivid blush, which helped to allay Mrs. Egerton’s suspicions.

‘He could come down here quite easily,’ Mrs. Egerton said reflectively. ‘In fact, he has written to suggest it.’

‘It wouldn’t be the same to me,’ Viola said quickly. ‘As a matter of fact I want to go to church in London.’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘how very odd, you so seldom do! And aren’t the rivers of Abana and Pharpar, or whatever the churches here call themselves, quite as good as our poor little Jordan round the corner at home?’

‘It’s just a fancy,’ Viola murmured lamely; ‘I wanted to go to a particular church; but it doesn’t matter really.’ She felt the wind die out of her sails; if her mother persisted she knew she wouldn’t go. She couldn’t say which church—she’d rather marry Reggie than drag in Jim Barton’s name. But Mrs. Egerton didn’t persist, she smiled and said,—

‘Well, dear, of course if it’s a particular church——’

Viola saw in a relieved and horrified instant that she had actually deceived Mrs. Egerton; her mother thought she was going to choose a church for the wedding. She gasped, recovered herself, and accepted the delusion.

Everything was arranged for her to go up easily with Cèleste. Reggie would meet her with the motor. She couldn’t get out of it now, and it seemed to Viola as the train slid smoothly off and Cèleste wrapped a rug round her knees, as if she would never be able to get out of anything.

She was being more watched, more catered for and met and handled than she had ever been in her life.

If she didn’t make this one outrageous dash she would never have another chance, and she would have to be outrageous in order to make it.

She met Reggie with a smile which she felt was false. He had been told to be tactful, and he was tactful; but of course he wanted to know what she had come up for.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s just a religious fad, and you aren’t included till tea-time.’

A religious fad sounded all right to Reggie. He knew his mother was inclined to go off suddenly into churches, and came out of them very much as usual.

But Viola hated herself for saying it, she hated the sparkling contentment in Reggie’s eyes. She wanted to make him at least uncomfortable looking. She felt as if her discomfort must break through and warn him; but it requires perception to register even the intense suffering of another human being. Reggie was not perceptive. Nothing came through to him but the fact that she was there, and the prettiest girl on the platform.

Mr. Egerton patted Viola on the back and offered her a glass of port, as if she were an invalid. Nobody asked her any more questions. She slipped out of the house next morning at an unearthly hour in a waterproof. It was raining heavily, the London trees were light green with black stems. The streets were shining and empty. London was finishing its Sunday breakfast. The tubes might have been magic arrangements evolved for Viola’s private benefit.

It was far too early for any service that wasn’t a celebration, and most of them were over.

Calvary had been filled once and had emptied again, but Viola knew where Jim lived, and she wrote on a card at the door, ‘It would be very kind of you to see me for half an hour.—Viola Egerton.’ But she did not realise how very kind it would be, because she had no idea what half an hour out of an over-filled Sunday means to a well-known preacher.

A lady in a flowing cassock fingered Viola’s card thoughtfully in a very small black entry. Viola had a pang of fear when her eyes fell on Mrs. Hodgkins. Could Jim be married? If he was, she felt that his opinion would cease to have any value for her particular case.

‘It is hardly the moment,’ began Mrs. Hodgkins in her clear, decisive monotone, and then a door on the left abruptly opened—‘If that’s Mrs. Bisset drunk again,’ remarked a cheerful voice, ‘show her in; I told her to come straight here.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not drunk,’ said Viola a little stiffly.

A chair was pushed back hurriedly and Jim’s head appeared round the door.

‘You!’ he said. He forgot to introduce Mrs. Hodgkins. She stiffened visibly and said, ‘I’m very busy just now, Mr. Barton,’ and prepared to vanish.

‘You’d better come in if you want to,’ Jim said to Viola. ‘I’ve got half an hour. Do be an angel,’ he added to the retreating lady in the cassock, ‘and if Mrs. Bisset does come give her a cup of black coffee and let her lie down for a bit. This is a kind of church house,’ he explained to Viola. ‘It’s not mine really, but they’re very kind about letting me see my friends. I’m afraid I’ve got rather a late breakfast on, there was a row after church this morning and I had to stay out. You’ve had yours?’

Viola suppressed a shudder at the breakfast table. There was a good deal of bacon on a cracked dish, and though it was not exactly dirty, nothing upon the table matched or shone. She wasn’t sure that Jim had shaved, and his hair looked untidier than ever.

‘You won’t mind if I go on eating while we talk, will you?’ he asked. ‘You see, church begins at eleven, and I’ve got to speak. I saw you several Sundays ago at church, and I wondered if I should ever see you again.’

Viola sat down on a black horsehair arm-chair. If she leaned back her feet didn’t touch the floor, and if she leaned forward she nearly slipped off it.

It was not a chair that made confidences easy. Jim looked at her over his coffee cup, with something in his eyes which was alive and laughing. It was not what Viola had expected from a spiritual adviser, but it gave her a companionable feeling.

‘I’m not your parishioner,’ Viola began, ‘and I’ve no real right to bother you, but your sermon made me think, so you are a little responsible for my coming down on you like this.’

‘I hope I am,’ said Jim. ‘I like being responsible.’

Viola went straight to her point.

‘You said, do you remember? that if people weren’t honest about what they loved they couldn’t really be kind? Because kindness stopped growing if you fed it with lies?’

‘Did I say that?’ Jim asked. ‘Well! It sounds all right doesn’t it? Like most things do before you begin to apply them; and then generally one has to start a little formula of one’s own.’

‘I think I’m in some kind of a lie now,’ Viola said, with her heart beginning to beat hurriedly. ‘I didn’t mean to be when I started. It didn’t look like a lie then. It was just saying “Yes,” when some one I liked very much asked me to marry him, and now—and now I see it wasn’t enough.’

Jim had gone on with his breakfast, but at this point he pushed his plate away, and resting his elbows on the table, looked across at Viola with knitted brows.

‘It’s a nuisance saying “Yes” easily,’ he agreed. ‘It rather lets people in.’

‘It has let me in,’ said Viola defensively. Jim did not say anything to this, almost as if letting oneself in didn’t matter.

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Viola went on nervously. ‘You see, my people like him so much and there’s nothing against him really—no kind of excuse——’

Jim nodded. ‘It’s you there’s something against,’ he agreed. ‘You’ll have to face that.’

‘If I break my engagement, of course,’ said Viola a little sharply. ‘But I’m not sure that I ought to break my word—even if I want to.’

‘What was your word?’ Jim asked unexpectedly. ‘I mean—did you say “Yes, I’ll marry you”? or “Yes, I love you”? Because, you see, if you said “Yes, I love you,” you’ve broken that already.’

Viola dropped her eyes to the carpet. It was an odd shabby carpet, and it could never have been handsome when it was new.

‘I don’t know that I said anything,’ she observed a little stiffly.

‘But even if you were entirely dumb,’ objected Jim, ‘I suppose you _meant_ something? If we could get at what you _meant_——?’

‘Oh,’ said Viola impatiently, ‘as if it matters what I meant then! Can’t you see what I mean _now_?’

‘No,’ said Jim decisively, ‘I can’t say that I do. You don’t seem to me to know what you mean yourself. You say it’s wrong to break your word, quite as if it’s being wrong (if it is wrong) would stop you? But why should it stop you? It was obviously wrong to give it, before you knew what you felt—but that didn’t stop your giving it—did it?’

‘But I didn’t know then,’ said Viola with crimson cheeks, and tears of annoyance in her eyes, ‘It’s not as easy as you think. He wanted me to—most awfully—they all did——!’

‘They do now, don’t they?’ interrupted Jim.

‘Oh, of course they do,’ said Viola, ‘or there wouldn’t be this bother. But how can I when I don’t love him?’

‘Ah,’ said Jim, ‘now you’ve hit it! That’s what you’ve got to face, isn’t it? Do you really know now that you don’t love him—better than you knew when you thought you did?’

‘Yes,’ said Viola after a moment’s pause. ‘I know perfectly well now. I don’t love him.’

‘That’s something,’ Jim agreed. ‘You can make a start from that, can’t you? What is your main difficulty—that it’s wrong to marry a man you don’t love, or that it’s too uncomfortable to say so?’

Viola’s figure stiffened suddenly.

‘Is that the way to talk to people when they’re in trouble?’

‘I don’t know that it is,’ said Jim. ‘But as far as I can see, it’s the man who’s in love with you who’s in trouble, or going to be shortly, not you.’

Viola rose to her feet. ‘I am in the most dreadful trouble,’ she said with quivering lips, ‘or I shouldn’t have come to you. But I see I’ve made a mistake.’

Jim groaned.

‘Sit down again, won’t you?’ he pleaded. ‘I thought I’d got to be honest. I can be much nicer than that!’

Viola moved with unchanged dignity towards the door, but before she reached it she looked back at Jim. He was on his feet now, and his eyes rested on her with supplication behind the gleam in them. She hesitated, and without any warning her indignation melted into sudden laughter.

Jim smiled in a relieved way.

‘Now we can talk properly,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you thought I was before, some kind of Johnnie who settled things by rule of thumb, didn’t you? You took the nerve out of me. I’m only a man you don’t generally agree with. Of course I’d love to help you—any man would.’

Viola sat down again but she was conscious that she wasn’t as free to speak to him about her feelings as she had felt while he was being rude.

‘The truth is,’ she said doubtfully, ‘I don’t know if I’m being a coward or not. I’m terrified of hurting people and of being scolded. If I could break my engagement without doing any more harm than keeping it, I’d break it, but I am afraid that breaking it means a fearful lot of harm. And yet if I keep it——’ she turned her face away from Jim. ‘Well, then, what harm should I do, to any one except myself, I mean?’

‘Do you really seriously mean me to answer that?’ Jim asked her. His voice was not laughing any more, it had become curiously gentle and kind. Viola did not turn her head but she murmured, ‘Yes.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but wouldn’t that be too rough on a man? You say he likes you; what’ll he feel when he finds you don’t like him? You know you can hide all kinds of little things quite easily, and even some big ones—but you can’t hide that! You wouldn’t want to tie a man up to you—would you—when you haven’t anything to give him but the rope?’

‘But if he wants it,’ said Viola in a small, uncertain voice, ‘he must know now, I don’t care very much; I suppose he hopes——’

‘Is there anything in what he hopes?’ Jim asked. Viola shook her head decisively.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I like him less than I did, and I don’t like his life. Reggie is too settled.’

She was not looking at Jim, so that she did not see him start at the name she had mentioned. He pulled himself together sharply; whatever happened to his own heart, he had only to think of hers.

‘I should tell him the truth,’ he said quietly. ‘Just what you’ve told me. Don’t you think so?’

‘Oh!’ cried Viola with a pang of terror, ‘how could I—— He wouldn’t believe it!’

‘But you can make him believe it,’ said Jim relentlessly.

‘And if he still wants me, what am I to do?’ asked Viola.

‘You’ll have to do,’ said Jim, ‘what you’ve got the grit for. That’s what life always comes back to. You know well enough what you ought to do. A man who marries an unloving woman does so because he’s mad for her, and can’t see sense. Both are bound to suffer, and she deserves to, if she lets him marry her. You’re not mad, you see, so it’s up to you to get him out of it.’

‘Ah,’ said Viola, ‘but you don’t know what it’s like——’ A mingled pain and anger seized her. How could this man with his fighting eyes know how she hated struggle—how much worse it seemed to her, to pit her fluctuating will against Reggie’s sharp desire, than to suffer any mere collapse of personal integrity.

Her reason was silenced in her, and she fell back on tears.

The church bell started ringing. Mrs. Bisset found the front door and had to be diplomatically piloted through the small entry calling loudly for Jim Barton. A dreadful sense of the multiplicity of other people’s affairs surged through Viola.

She had come to a place where people couldn’t have their crises in peace.

Jim looked at her bowed head and at the door. He was so nervous that he nearly pulled off the tablecloth.

He could think of nothing to say that could quench her tears.

‘Look here,’ he began unsteadily, ‘you mustn’t cry, you really mustn’t.’

But Viola cried on.

Jim left the table and stood over her. She wore a ridiculous small toque made out of primroses. He put his hand on it, but she didn’t move. He knelt down beside her, but she was still absorbed in the struggle before her. Jim would have given all he possessed to take her battle on himself.

If he had been God he couldn’t have given free will to Viola; it seemed too dire a penalty for such a gentle soul to pay for liberty.

‘Oh, damn,’ he said suddenly, ‘I shall have to go to church and leave you.’

She flashed a perplexed, reproachful glance at him from under the primroses. She couldn’t remember ever having been left before by any man who wanted to go to church. He got up awkwardly from his knees. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered without looking at her, ‘I can’t help you.’ Then he went away.

All sorts of noises began and stopped. The front door closed sharply after Jim with a decisiveness that shook the badly-built house; then it shut more quietly under more cautious hands. The church bell’s iron tongue jerked its last broken phrase into an astonishing silence. Nobody came to clear the breakfast things away or to show Viola to the door.

There didn’t seem to be anybody who cleared things away.

Jim hadn’t said good-bye to her. He had felt that if he made any such effort he wouldn’t have been able to force himself out of her presence.

Love was shaking him to pieces; it would not leave him judicial and intact.

It threatened to break through into her presence. He felt it shining in his eyes and menacing his voice with its enormous tenderness. He dragged his overwhelming emotion relentlessly away with him, but he felt as if everything in the room must cry aloud to her his absurd, abysmal secret. He couldn’t remember what he had said to her, even to blame himself, because his mind was full of all the things he hadn’t said.

Viola stopped crying after he had gone. The sun had come out and filled the little trivial room with warmth and kindliness. It wasn’t, she thought to herself, a bad little room after all.

She saw a slip of paper lying by Jim’s place on the table, and a curious impulse seized her. With a quick look around the room as if she was afraid that some of the very ugly furniture was watching her, she drew out a pencil and wrote on it, ‘You have helped me.’