Chapter XXXVII

Ten years had dealt lightly with Warren Manor. Everything was mellower and a little more fixed.

There were more flowers in the garden and more moss on the red roof of the house, the gleaming paddock between the orchard trees was like a polished jewel.

A bloom as of things perpetually cultivated and cared for rested upon the place.

Mrs. Bligh had changed very little; there was no gray in her thick chestnut hair, her figure was as slim as a girl’s, but her face was fuller and her mouth a little more set. Time had left her her grace, but it had blurred the distinctness of her delicate features.

Mr. Bligh looked undeniably older. His optimism had received not so much a shock as a series of undefinable arrests. His mouth drooped pathetically at the corners. He had expected too much from life and from himself, and he had not got what he had expected. He had simply gone on being very comfortable for twenty years, when comfort was not what he cared for most.

The world’s radicalism had pushed beyond the cheery optimism of his early faith. There was something fiercer and cruder about it now; it was more liable to take short and violent cuts across the comfortable world.

Mr. Bligh was less sure of the wisdom of youth. His children had not disappointed him, indeed he had every reason to be proud of them. They were well, good-looking, and socially popular. But they didn’t seem like his children, they seemed like rather unsympathetic young strangers who knew a great many things about Mr. Bligh which he would rather they hadn’t known, whereas he knew, nothing at all about them.

Their mother understood them without agreeing with half they said, or ever using their expressive slang. They talked to her as if she were one of themselves, not as if they were waiting to go on until she had left the room. She was as good a wife as ever, but her silences disconcerted her husband more.

Mr. Bligh used to find himself talking a good deal to the gardener.

Denis had gone into the Navy and hardly ever came back. When he did he went through the house like a gust of wind. His visits were a record of wants.

Mr. Bligh tried to provide Denis with what he wanted, but he soon saw that Denis wanted his father to provide, and not accompany, the objects of his desires. Denis wanted friends of his own age and a great deal of very hard exercise.

He thought his father a queer old sport. Unfortunately, Mr. Bligh could not feel old at all, though he sometimes felt very queer.

He saw more of his daughters, but he knew even less about them. Dora was her mother over again, fastidious, calm and reliable.

Even her engagement, which took everybody, but herself by surprise, did not excite her. She was to be married very soon and Mr. Bligh would never know what she felt about it. It was an even greater shock when his wife told him that dear Mabel had a distinct vocation and was to go into an Anglican Sisterhood in a year’s time.

Mabel had more of her father’s expressiveness than the other children, and she was so unselfish and considerate that sometimes Mr. Bligh thought she loved him.

He tried to explain to Mabel how old-fashioned monasteries and convents were. He said they were effete survivals, like fossils from the earlier ages. But something stuck in his throat when she said to him a little wistfully, ‘But it isn’t old-fashioned to love God, daddy, is it?’ The other two children always called him Father.

‘But must you go into a convent to love God?’ he asked helplessly. Even before she answered him he saw that she must.

She answered as gently and diffidently as she always did, but beneath her gentleness her decision was unshakable.

‘I feel,’ she said, ‘as if I couldn’t do it as easily anywhere else. I want to give myself up to it for ever, and not to be interrupted.’

Mr. Bligh said no more; he saw himself as an interruption. For the sake of his wife and children he had given up his ideals, and now his wife and children regarded him as an interruption to their own. This knowledge was at the bottom of his heart where he very seldom looked at it.

He had his pupils and his garden, and he cared more about his food than he used to, but the corners of his mouth turned down.

It was a great relief to Viola to be at Warren Manor. She was surprised to find that nobody blamed her about Reggie. Nobody at Warren Manor ever blamed people for not making loveless marriages, or thought the worse of any one for a mistake, provided that it was not a sin. Mr. Bligh and Mrs. Bligh had always thought Mrs. Egerton worldly, and rather liked to see worldliness (wholly unassisted by Godliness) fail.

Dora was staying with the Flittons, and Mabel was always sorry for everybody who felt uncomfortable about anything. They treated Viola as if she were recovering from rather a tiresome illness, and ought to have the best of everything.

No one ever mentioned Reggie or alluded to Jim Barton.

There was no reason why they should refer to Jim; he was buried long ago beneath the weight of Mrs. Bligh’s displeasure. But Viola found herself listening for the sound of his name.

This was the very garden where he must have watched, as she did, the riotous late spring passing in swift processions.

This was the lawn, smooth and placid, with its atmosphere of regulated care, where Jim must have learnt his first sharp lessons of civility. She longed to hear, with a wave of pity and tenderness in her heart, the history of his first mistakes. The gulf must have been so wide, and all his young raw strength and ignorance so impotent to cross it.

She looked long into Mrs. Bligh’s kind, smiling eyes—these must have saved him. When Mrs. Bligh spoke of her husband’s pupils, Viola could hardly hide her eagerness to catch the familiar name. But the anecdotes about the pupils Mrs. Bligh told her had no names.

One soft and sunny morning Viola asked if she might help Mrs. Bligh pick sweet peas. The sweet peas stood up in long trellised rows on either side of a tiled garden path. They were so high they hid the two women from each other. Pale yellow and mauve, scarlet and the blue of summer skies, flesh pink and deepest violet, the sweet peas made a wall of dancing, tip-tilted colour.

It was like being surprised by an army of butterflies. The garden beyond them was drowsy with the humming of bees among the lavender bushes.

A blackbird gave a long occasional chuckle, fresh as spring water, and loud with hidden glee.

They picked in silence for a few minutes, and then Viola said,—

‘Mrs. Bligh, do you think I was wrong to break my engagement to Reggie?’

Mrs. Bligh snipped unerringly while she reflected.

‘My dear, I know so little about it,’ she said gently. ‘But I should advise _no_ woman to marry unless she is sure of her own heart.’

‘You don’t think love comes with marriage?’ Viola asked.

Mrs. Bligh shook a mauve sweet pea out of her sleeve. She felt a faint sense of irritation, as if she were being asked more than she wanted. Nature itself was richer than she liked this morning—the sun was hotter, the scents of the flowers less vague and fine.

‘I believe,’ she said cautiously, ‘that there are women who really can adapt themselves to comfortable homes by accepting a husband as part of it. But, personally, I cannot understand it. I understand my own dear Mabel very much better.’

‘Oh,’ said Viola, ‘I can’t understand Mabel at all—especially not just now. All the world seemed so full of—of what is young. I want to have what is young belong to me.’

Mrs. Bligh made no direct answer. Then she said,—

‘Why should you not love—and when you love you will be sure of what you want? You are very young yourself, my dear. I am sure you were right to wait until you were more certain of yourself.’

‘Yes,’ said Viola with relief, ‘I think I’m sure—I think I am sure now.’

Mrs. Bligh moved through the screen of sweet peas and looked at her in astonishment. Mrs. Egerton had told her nothing yet about Jim Barton. She meant the visit to be a long one, and it occurred to her that an unconscious revelation inspired by Viola’s enthusiasm would be even better than one she had privately instigated. Later on she would find out what had happened, and if nothing had happened it could easily be made to. But it would happen with more authority if Viola knew Mrs. Bligh very well first.

‘My dear, I didn’t know,’ Mrs. Bligh said softly. ‘Of course if you care for some one else—why then—more than ever you were right to free yourself.’

Viola held her head up proudly, and met her companion’s kind, uncurious eyes.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there is some one else—but, oh, Mrs. Bligh, it isn’t at all easy—I don’t even know if it’s right!’

Mrs. Bligh put down her basket and put her hand on Viola’s arm. ‘Let us sit down under the oak tree and talk quietly,’ she said tenderly.

This was a confidence in which there could lurk no danger. Viola’s eyes turned to hers, were young and hurt, but wholly innocent.

There would be nothing uncomfortable in listening to what Viola had to say; and there was a secret pleasure to Mrs. Bligh in finding that the children of other mothers sought her confidence as well as her own.

Viola sat down in front of her on the grass.

‘Why I wonder if it’s wrong is because he’s different,’ she explained. ‘He’s not married or anything dreadful like that. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t marry him—and he’s, oh! wonderfully good—good like you and dear Mabel—he really _cares_ for God—as if He lived next door and you _could_!’

Mrs. Bligh laughed gently.

‘He lives nearer than next door,’ she said, ‘and you can! Never mind. I like your good man—I wish there were more of them.’

‘And you do think goodness matters more than anything else?’ Viola urged. She seemed to be anxious to establish this point, and Mrs. Bligh saw no danger in it.

All her life goodness had mattered to her more than anything else; at least what she had believed was goodness.

‘But mother would simply hate it,’ Viola went on in a low voice, ‘and father and Harry—they’d think it hideous and indecent. I don’t believe they’d ever speak to me again.’

‘Just because he’s poor?’ asked Mrs. Bligh incredulously. ‘Oh, Viola!’

‘It’s worse than that,’ said Viola bending over a daisy. ‘He’s not the same as we are. He lives among the poor. Of course he’s educated and all that, you know—but still he does _live_ there.’

Mrs. Bligh looked over the girl’s head into her herbaceous border. Columbines and delphiniums, pansies and forget-me-not—the heavy, sweet heads of pinks, a cascade of spirea and a background of pale pink peonies, rested all her senses. These were her life’s greatest pleasures, and her soul held their spiritual counterparts. After a long pause she said gently,—

‘Dearest child, I do not think the outer life matters. Ideals are never easy, but they are worth—even one of them—even half carried out—the whole material universe.

‘It is a great vocation to give God to those who have nothing else. If you love this man and what his life stands for, I should not think you wrong to oppose your parents. The conscience must act for itself.’

Viola looked at her adoringly; this seemed a person she could trust.

‘I think I _do_ love him enough,’ she said consideringly, ‘but I don’t honestly care about the life. I could only do it—if I do do it—because he wouldn’t be happy any other way.

‘I don’t share his ideals, and I don’t like poor people very much. But on the other hand I like him just as he is, and he wouldn’t be just as he is without them.’

Mrs. Bligh murmured an assent. She believed theoretically in the headship of a husband over his wife, that is to say, she believed in the headship of an ideal husband over an ideal wife. It would be a hard school for the child before her, brought up in luxury and spiritual irresponsibility; but Mrs. Bligh, who had been brought up in very much the same way, would not have shrunk from marrying a poor and hard-worked clergyman herself. He might have ended by being a Bishop, but she would have started with him poor. She stroked Viola’s head, which was still turned away from her, with sympathy.

‘But,’ said Viola in a sudden rush, turning her head to face Mrs. Bligh directly, ‘he’s not what people call a gentleman.’

Mrs. Bligh withdrew her hand. Her sympathy abruptly ceased. Poor curates must be gentlemen.

‘And he’s worse than that,’ Viola went on rapidly. ‘He’s much more of a Socialist than Mr. Bligh, and he’s something or other of the Dockers’ Union, and the dockers are daddy’s dockers, and they’re striking; so, you see, it’s really awful!’

It was so awful that Mrs. Bligh completely ceased to see it; in her experience when things were awful beyond a certain point they didn’t happen.

‘But are you sure, darling,’ she said gently, ‘that you are in love with this queer person? What has he done to make you so?’

‘He hasn’t done anything,’ said Viola defensively. ‘He’s quite plain, really. He ran away when I wanted to make friends with him.

‘Oh, Mrs. Bligh, I want you to tell me about him. You know him better than I do—it will help me so much what you say.’

‘I know him?’ exclaimed Mrs. Bligh. ‘My dear Viola—I know nobody——’ she checked herself from saying ‘Nobody out of my own class’—‘Nobody at all astonishing,’ she finished tranquilly. ‘Perhaps he is some one you have heard my husband mention?’

‘No you _both_ know him,’ said Viola obstinately. ‘His name’s Jim Barton.’

Mrs. Bligh closed up suddenly like a sea anemone roughly handled. Every line of her delicate face hardened. She sat very still, and though it was a warm, fine day, she felt cold.

‘Jim Barton,’ she said at last. ‘Yes, I do know whom you mean. I’m very sorry—I had no idea you had ever met him.’

‘He dined with us,’ said Viola in a flat, expressionless voice, ‘and I’ve heard two or three of his addresses.’

‘But he isn’t in the Church,’ said Mrs. Bligh. There was no hiding the disapproval of her voice now. ‘He calls himself a Christian, I believe, but he doesn’t even pretend to be a churchman.’

‘He doesn’t pretend anything,’ said Viola firmly. ‘Why do you speak as if you didn’t like him?’ She twisted the arm on which she leaned, so that she sat looking straight into her companion’s eyes.

Mrs. Bligh drew her lips together into a strange, unbecoming line. She didn’t like Jim Barton because he made her feel as if she were in the wrong. Her conscience flinched at the sound of his name. She told herself sharply that she was not in the wrong—she had reasoned the whole thing out point by point so that there was no room left for remorse—only instinct crept in between her reasonings and shook her. Less than a year after Jim Barton had left them she had learned the truth. Emily had written and told her. Emily had lost her child, and Jim had found her a place. Wivvle had done nothing. Emily told Mrs. Bligh the whole story and referred her to the lawyer for proof.

‘I won’t tell any one else,’ Emily wrote, ‘because I should lose my money from Mr. Wivvle, and I wouldn’t have told you but I thought Jim Barton minded your misjudging him. He was such a one for those early services.’

Mrs. Bligh had read the letter very carefully. She had prayed over it and kept it near her for a week, then she had destroyed it. She did not believe a word that Emily said.

Emily was immoral and immoral women told lies. She had no need of any further witnesses. Jim himself was the proof. Had he not admitted it to her in that dreadful interview he forced upon her over the Christmas roses? She had never liked Christmas roses since, they had been sullied by Jim’s presence. If he was not a sinner why had he demanded so brutally and passionately her uncovenanted mercy? If there had been any other truth would he not have told her? Of course he would have told her—he would have told her because he loved her—well—not loved her in any bad, real sense, but in the proper sublimated way in which Mrs. Bligh liked to be loved. He had wronged this feeling for her, he had wronged his spiritual birth, he wouldn’t have looked at her with those agonised eyes if he hadn’t; and she would, of course, if he had been innocent, have understood and saved him.

Still, she hadn’t told her husband about Emily’s letter, nor gone to see the lawyer. She was morally certain that Emily’s new story was not true, but she didn’t like to be reminded of it.

Her face grew very stern under Viola’s searching eyes.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘I could only, if I spoke to you about Mr. Barton at all, tell you a very painful story, a story I do not even feel sure I know the rights of; but in any case I am convinced that Mr. Barton is not a person you should marry. I would much rather you asked me no more questions.’

But Viola was twenty years younger than Mrs. Bligh. She belonged to a generation whose sensitiveness is less than its curiosity. She was not ashamed to ask questions when the answers were vital to her happiness.

‘I simply must ask you,’ she said, ‘how could I decide anything unless I know myself what there is against him?’

‘But you know already enough things against him, do you not?’ asked Mrs. Bligh.

Viola gave her an astonished look. ‘I mean _real_ things,’ she said; ‘those things I told you are not real things.’

Mrs. Bligh’s delicate eyebrows drew together, but she spoke a shade more gently.

‘Is it really necessary,’ she asked, ‘to discuss these things, if Mr. Barton has not shown any signs of returning your fancy?’

Viola felt an angry wave of colour cover her face. Something stabbed at her heart—it gave her a curious sense of shock, as if Mrs. Bligh wasn’t after all an angel, but just an older woman meaning to be unkind to her.

‘But,’ she stammered, ‘I thought you knew—of course he said—he said when he was going away—he cared for me.’

It hurt her like a physical violence to say these words. She bowed her head in her hands after uttering them. Mrs. Bligh said nothing for a long time.

‘It is very distasteful to me,’ she began at last, ‘to discuss such a subject, nor is it a suitable one for a young girl even to know.’

‘If I was old enough to marry Reggie,’ said Viola doggedly, ‘I’m old enough to know why I shouldn’t marry Jim.’

Mrs. Bligh drew a deep breath. She felt a curious distaste from putting into words what she believed to be true.

‘While Mr. Barton was here,’ she said, ‘ten years ago, under my roof, he got an innocent girl into trouble. We had to send her to a sisterhood, and Mr. Barton, we were compelled to dismiss from our house.’

Mrs. Bligh had a perfect right to make this statement, she was not bound to believe Emily’s word, and it was obviously her duty to save her cousin’s child from disaster. She had also relieved a curious feeling in her own heart, a feeling which, if she had not been so religious a woman, might have been called spite.

But something stopped her from putting out her hand to touch and comfort Viola.

Viola got up slowly and walked aimlessly away towards the orchard. Her head was bent, and the hand that hung by her side was clenched as if she was still holding on to something which she should have let go. Mrs. Bligh followed her for a moment with an uneasy glance.

Neither Dora nor Mabel would have left her like that. They would have cried with their heads in her lap, and they would have let her gently eradicate Jim.

But then she would have been very gentle, and she had not been altogether gentle to this girl who had given her her confidence.

Mrs. Bligh saw Jim’s eyes again looking into hers, so watchfully, so generously, with such a passionate desire to serve her, ‘the desire of the moth for the star,’ the pathetic, useless, blundering moth for the remote and wholly uninvolved star.

She felt again her disgust for his fall, the cold repulsion of her safe virtue for his endangered passion.

She had not blamed herself because her safety had made his passion dangerous to him. She did not know enough to realise that she had shaken his control; but she felt again the cold wave of her anger when she realised that in spite of his feeling for her he was capable of any feeling for Emily. His courage in facing her afterwards had enraged her, and his agony had set the seal upon her anger. He had reproached her with his pain, and though she had judged him tranquilly and finally in spite of it, she had never been able to wipe out that astonished feeling of his reproach. What had he to reproach her for? What had he now? She had done her duty. We know that duty is a very painful process, but perhaps to people who go through it as often and as circumspectly as Mrs. Bligh, it ceases to be painful.

Mrs. Bligh had examined most of her feelings very thoroughly before she responded to the music of the luncheon gong, but she hadn’t examined the first feeling of satisfaction in her heart, which came from her knowing that after her intervention the girl in the orchard probably wouldn’t marry Jim.