Chapter V: The Fools’ Progress (2)

Too tired to think, she smoked several cigarettes and fell into a sort of chilly doze. Her childish mind, straying unhappily through the void like a lost bird, circled inevitably toward the thought of Lyndon. It was an ark, a shelter of comfort and solace. She could sit dreaming of her lost home by the hour, supporting herself by recollections of its enduring beauty. It gave her escape from sordid discomfort and fretful anxiety. In this bleak London winter she thought of warm sun, and the lawn and cedar tree, and the smell of cut grass. But often, when she had found the Mediterranean too hot and glaring, she had remembered the cold, wet winds of early spring, and daffodils, and rooks blown among the elms by the home farm.

At last Gerald shut up his book, and came across and knelt beside her, spreading cold hands toward the sinking fire.

“I’m afraid there’s no more coal,” she said. “Are you cold? I’m glad you had it lighted.”

“Oh, I’m quite warm. I thought you’d be cold when you came in. It’s a bitter night.”

“You aren’t warm,” she told him, chafing his fingers gently. “You are cold and tired. Would some Oxo warm you up?”

“Well, it would be rather nice.”

She hunted in the tray of her box and produced a small spirit lamp, a cup, a saucepan, and a tin of Oxo cubes. She rather enjoyed making Oxo, for it was a new accomplishment. Life in small Corsican inns without a maid had taught her several strange things, and it was still a novelty to minister to the needs of another person.

Gerald regarded his mistress with a faintly puzzled amusement as she busied herself boiling the water. She was not unaware of this, and the beginnings of resentment stirred in her tired spirit. Keenly sympathetic though he might be in life’s more urgent stresses, he was a little obtuse in small things. He could not realize how excessive was the degree of adaptability demanded by her existence with him. According to his ideas they had lived in no small luxury. He had always taken her to far more comfortable inns than he would have selected for himself, so anxious was he to make things easy for her.

“I saw Dolly and James,” she said.

“Oh, did you? What were they like?”

“As nice as ever. They were at the party. So was Hubert.”

“Oh! You saw him?”

“Yes. He was—just flustered.”

“But you didn’t see your mother?”

“No. That was what I was wanting to talk to you about. It struck me on the way home that it was just as well I didn’t see her, for I’ve never really settled what to say to her. I’ve always rather counted on her taking the initiative. But, supposing she doesn’t, what line am I to take?”

“Well, Agatha, say exactly what you like. I mean your relations with your mother are entirely your affair. I’ll back you up in whatever you say, of course. That water’s boiling!”

She began to stir the Oxo.

“Well, then, I’ll ask her if she has any idea what John is going to do, and why he doesn’t seem to be taking any steps to divorce me. And if she doesn’t know, I’ll try to get her to see Lady Clewer and find out. I may say that we’re going to be married the moment I’m free, mayn’t I?”

“Of course.”

“I want to get her to see how much better it would be to end the anomalous position we are in now; at the cost of an open scandal if need be.”

“Yes.”

The pair paused, while Gerald sipped the Oxo, sitting at her feet. At last he said:

“Agatha, my dear, would you care to go to America? To New York?”

“I! Why? Are you thinking of going there?”

“Yes. I’ve been offered work there. I found the letter waiting for me in Harley Street when I went round there this afternoon. My friend Green, who used to work with me, is running a new sort of clinic and wants me to help him.”

He plunged into a long and highly technical description of the kind of clinic it was. At last she said wonderingly:

“Then it would be the kind of work you like?”

“Oh, yes. Quite interesting, I think. Of course, the salary is very small, but it would be enough, with what I’ve got, to keep us in tolerable comfort, I imagine. But I’d only accept it if you cared to go too.”

“Is it a permanent thing? Does it mean spending the rest of our lives there?”

“Well, yes. It pretty well amounts to that. It will mean several years there anyhow. I thought it mightn’t be a bad thing, if you approved, that is to say. We could get right away.”

“But your practice here?”

He gave her a swift, surprised look, and said nothing for a few seconds. Then he replied indifferently:

“It isn’t the sort of thing I really hanker after. I get too many of the idle rich, and their ailments are so much alike that it becomes monotonous. The proletariat offer a much more varied field.”

“But my mother—everyone—said that you were getting on so brilliantly well here.”

“I had a sort of vogue with your mother’s friends. That is because just after the war nervous breakdowns became a fashionable complaint. Soon they’ll take to something else, and where should I be?”

“I was reading in the paper about the slump in Harley Street and how all the specialists are doing so badly.”

“Bound to happen with the wealth of the country changing hands so rapidly. The people who used to be ill can’t afford it now. And the New Rich haven’t learnt to be ill yet. They still regard ill-health as a misfortune, probably, and not as an absorbing way of spending money. It will right itself in time.”

“Then you would really like to go to America?”

“I should quite. It depends entirely upon your decision.”

She felt at the moment that New York was the last place in the world she would wish to live in. But she replied:

“I don’t mind particularly where I live. Really I don’t. I’ll go quite happily anywhere that you have to go.”

“Right! I’m glad you’re so decided. I thought you might rather hate the idea.”

“Did you indeed? You were right!” was Agatha’s inward comment.

Why on earth should it be New York? Almost any other place would have been better. She had always disliked the idea of it, a great, noisy, new city, perpetually in a hurry. If it had to be the States, why couldn’t it have been Virginia, or California, or somewhere in the South? She was all for warmth at the moment.

Gerald was saying:

“Then I’ll find out the particulars of the thing and close with Green if it’s all satisfactory. The only drawback is that he wants me rather soon; almost at once, in fact. I’m afraid I shall have to be off in six weeks at the outside. That would give me time to dispose of my affairs here. You could, of course, come over later, if you didn’t want to leave England so soon. Or you could wait here until the divorce proceedings were through, and then come out. In that case we could be married as soon as you arrived, but it would mean a longish separation.”

“Does Dr. Green know of your . . . position? I mean would it make any difference to his offer that we shall probably be in the divorce courts?”

He shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m almost sure it wouldn’t. But I must find all that out. In fact, I expect I’ll have to explain the circumstances to him.”

“I think I could be ready to leave England in about six weeks. It’s really quite a long time. I’d rather not stay here and be divorced all by myself.”

“Just as you like. Only I must go then if I’m going at all. He wants my help in getting the thing started. Otherwise, of course, I wouldn’t contemplate leaving you.”

“No. We’ll consider it to-morrow when I have seen my mother. We shall know better what to do then. I can’t think why John hasn’t divorced me. I made sure he would be very prompt about it. And he should have no difficulties at all; his case is perfectly clear.”

“Well, you must talk to your mother about it.”

Silence again overtook them, this time prolonged and mournful. The hour was late and the fire quite out, but neither made a move to leave the cold hearth. Their brief, bleak colloquy had given them too much to think about, and they crouched over the ashes, pondering. Gerald was asking himself, with that wearing, secret uneasiness which now so frequently assailed him, whether she would be happy in this new life. He was beginning to feel that this beloved, yet incongruously magnificent creature, whom he had so unexpectedly acquired, was a charge—an obligation. Beholding her at Lyndon, he had raged against the opulence of her setting; but a mere removal had not satisfied him. He now felt that he must himself provide some sort of background for her; she was more inseparable from backgrounds than he had thought. He had already half forgotten that tide of indignant pity which had driven him to snatch her from Braxhall. Though obstinately counting himself a happy man, he would sometimes pause and gasp in amazement at what he had done.

Still he loved her intensely, and sustained himself with an impassioned belief in her fortitude. Not many women would take the prospect of exile in an alien, uncongenial country as she had taken it. But he did not tell her this, which was a pity, for she wanted to hear it. She was discovering that he took her virtues for granted and she was not sure whether she liked it. But he would have thought it rather insulting to tell her how noble she was, so he said nothing.

“That’s not an alarum clock going off upstairs?” she cried. “It must be late! I can’t bear to think of people getting up already; I need to recruit a lot of energy before I can even think of a new day.”

It was indeed late in the following morning when she finally dragged herself from her bed and set out on her anxious pilgrimage to South Kensington. Upon the road she rehearsed all that she must say, and it seemed to her that she was quite ready for the encounter. She would point out that she intended to go to America with Gerald, and that, in this case, divorce would be the simplest remedy. She must display no regret, no penitence, and no exaltation. Emotion of any sort would put her at a disadvantage. Calm common sense was the only platform on which to meet her mother.

As she stood on the doorstep she felt that she was very calm and sensible indeed. But she no sooner caught sight of her parent, waiting at the head of the stairs, than a part of her defences began to slip from her. She had been a fool to think herself ready, when her mother would, in every one of life’s emergencies, be always so infinitely more prepared.

“Well, Agatha—what kind of a crossing? I was afraid it would be rough. So sorry to have missed you last night.”

Meadowes faded away down the hall as Mrs. Cocks kissed her daughter. They went into the drawing room and sat down on a sofa by the fire. The hearth was dominated by a large wooden frame on which was stretched squared canvas, half worked into a thick woolly rug. Mrs. Cocks displayed it jubilantly.

“It’s perfectly fascinating,” she said. “You do it with this little needle, threading it through and through—so! Of course, the designs you get in the shop are hideous but you can do your own. I was in the British Museum the other day, looking at their carpets, and I’ve got several new ideas. I’ve made two already. One I gave to Lady Peel. The other was the first I made; it isn’t very interesting. I put it in that peculiarly draughty place on the landing by the bathroom. It’s just the right size. You must come up and see it after lunch.”

Agatha admired the rug and wondered if her mother was being unexpectedly subtle or more superficial than usual. She had looked for censure on the very doorstep. Was all this talk of rugs merely meant to disconcert her—to put her to the necessity of opening the difficult question herself? Or was her mother really indifferent and incurious? She sat for some time listening to inconsequent gossip, until she could bear it no more.

“Mother,” she began, “I rather wanted to discuss some of my private affairs with you.”

Her mother’s reply enlightened her not a little, revealing, as it did, a carefully rehearsed attitude.

“Of course, that is as you please. But unless your plans are of a kind that I can countenance and approve of, the less you tell me the better. As my daughter I don’t want to lose you, so I’d really rather not hear anything that might make things difficult between us. Remember, Agatha, at present I know nothing of what you have been doing lately, except that you have been abroad for a time.”

Agatha recognized this line of argument, for she had heard it before. Mrs. Cocks had always been a little inconsistent in her ethical conventions. The line she drew, where the social irregularities of her friends were concerned, had strange curves in it. Agatha often thought that she strained at gnats and swallowed camels. She would exclude one from her house, in rigid disapprobation, and welcome another, equally culpable, with warm cordiality. “Of course I know nothing of all that,” was her plea on these occasions, “and I don’t see that it’s my business to know.” A policy of invincible ignorance. She was now evidently prepared to maintain, in the face of an outraged world, that she knew nothing of her daughter’s misdoings.

Both women were silent for a few minutes and then Mrs. Cocks said carelessly:

“I’ve had a fire lighted in your room, as you will be wanting to unpack this afternoon, I expect. When are your things coming round? You haven’t got a maid with you, I suppose? You’d better let my woman do it for you.”

“But you weren’t expecting me to stay here, Mother?”

“Why not? I thought you might like to be here for a week or two.”

“I don’t think I can leave Gerald, thank you. We are staying at the Talisman Hotel, you know.”

Mrs. Cocks flushed with irritation. It was really very tiresome of Agatha to ignore her plea for reticence.

“I don’t know that I particularly want to hear about that,” she said with cold distaste. “But since you insist upon talking in this way, may I ask how long you intend to continue thus?”

“Until we can get married. I want John to divorce me. I can’t think why he doesn’t. Mother! I know you think it all very wrong, but . . .”

“You can hardly expect me to approve,” broke in Mrs. Cocks, impulsively forgetting her rôle of cool incuriosity. “You’ve dragged my pride in the dust. I can’t possibly hold my own with Marian Clewer now, and you’ve no idea how odious she’s been. I’m quite defenceless. When she brags of her daughters, what am I to say of mine?”

“I’m very sorry, Mother.”

“I can’t understand it,” continued Mrs. Cocks bitterly. “I cannot understand it. I couldn’t have believed you capable of such folly. To risk your position and reputation like this! Because, even nowadays, you would be considered _déclassée_ by most nice people, if it became generally talked about. Fortunately, hardly any one does know, outside the family. I think a lot of people guess that you are not on very good terms with John, but nothing worse than that. If you will come to me now, you are likely to get out of it all a great deal better than you deserve.”

“But, Mother, I want John to divorce me, and then people must——”

“John is not going to divorce you. And very rightly. He cares for the scandal if you don’t, and he isn’t going to have his name dragged into publicity like this. And allow me to tell you that you will live to thank Heaven that he had such good sense and moderation.”

“But unless he divorces me, I can’t marry Gerald.”

“I cannot see why you should be so anxious to rush into a second marriage when you did so badly over your first.”

“But he has to go to America in six weeks and I want to marry him and go too.”

“America! In six weeks? My dear child, the quickest divorce that ever was heard of would hardly enable you to remarry in time for that. But what on earth do you want to go to America for?”

“I don’t want to go there particularly. But Gerald has to go, and I naturally want to go with him. He’s got work there.”

“Oh, well, of course, if you insist upon living with him, emigration will be his only chance of supporting himself—and you. You’ve probably ruined his career here. Yes! Since he has had the misfortune to love you, my child, he’d better try the States.”

“Do you really think that?” murmured Agatha, turning pale.

“Of course I do. It’s obvious to any one. His practice here will fall to pieces as soon as ever this scandal comes out. Bound to! His best type of patients are exactly the sort of people who would have nothing further to do with him. People that one knows. But, tell me, is this work in America well paid?”

“Not very, I believe.”

“And have you considered how you will like straitened circumstances in—in—wherever it is?”

“New York.”

“New York? Oh, it’s quite impossible! My dear Agatha, you’ve never been there. I have, so I know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t stand a week of it. It’s the most entertaining place—for the very rich. But only for the very rich. Unbearable otherwise. You surely can’t contemplate such a thing? You don’t know what you are doing.”

“Well . . . you see . . . I love him.”

“Love him! But eight years ago you loved John.”

“I was mistaken. I didn’t.”

“How do you know that this is not a mistake?”

“I always loved Gerald. But I didn’t always know it.”

“Then you did very wrong to marry John, that’s all I can say.”

“I know.”

“I can’t understand it. But then I never could understand these things. I can’t understand how you, of all people, could be so ill-bred.”

“Do you think it is ill-bred?”

“Yes, I do. It’s very vulgar. But it’s the same everywhere nowadays. In all the books one reads, on the stage, all over the place. All these violent passions! It’s the war, I suppose. But that sort of thing has always rather disgusted me. I daresay I’m out of date, but it revolts me.”

Agatha reflected mournfully upon her recent sentimental journey. It seemed, at that particular moment, to have been all customs houses and rough crossings. She could not remember any violent passions anywhere.

“I don’t think you are quite fair,” she said defensively. “I don’t think Gerald and I are very passionate people, whatever else we might be accused of.”

“But if you haven’t even the very inadequate excuse of passion, why in Heaven’s name have you misconducted yourselves in so frightful a manner? Do explain yourself, Agatha! You told me just now, with some fervour, that you love him.”

“So I do! So I do!”

“Very well, then. What, exactly, do you mean by that?”

“Oh, don’t you know what I mean?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Well”—began Agatha laboriously, feeling how hopeless was her task, “he’s the only person in the world that I’ve ever wanted to—to make happy—to give to—to make sacrifices——”

“I see!” said Mrs. Cocks drily. “And what sacrifices have you made for him so far? Apart, I mean, from the loss of principle, position, and reputation, which was, after all, mutual.”

Agatha considered, with a shock of dismay. The past months, reviewed in the light of her mother’s derisive irony, did not seem to be very full of sacrifices, as far as she was concerned. She had in no way requited his unremitting vigilance for her happiness. So far, he had been the victim of their escapade. “No,” she said candidly. “I’ve not done much for him as yet. But I’m going to.”

“No you won’t. You never will. Don’t deceive yourself, Agatha. You aren’t that type of woman, though you may occasionally wish you were. You are the sort of woman who takes, who accepts sacrifice; the prize and privilege of successful men, not the helpmate of their failures. You were expensive to produce and you are even more expensive to—to keep. Don’t wince like that! It’s a very useful type, and stimulates nine tenths of the culture and civilization in the world. But you are frightfully mistaken if you think you can change your nature. You have never, in all your life, put up with anything you disliked or done anything you didn’t want to. You can’t begin now.”

“I’m not so very old.”

“Too old to change your character. And anyhow it’s unfair to experiment on poor Gerald. If you think you can go with him to America and be a good wife to him in poverty and discomfort, you’ll make the mistake of your life. You haven’t the strength of character. You’ll bring misery and disillusion on him. Have you thought of the consequences, supposing you couldn’t stand it?”

“Other women——”

“Other women are trained in harder schools. Just consider for a moment the sort of middle age you are storing up for yourselves.”

Agatha had a moment’s horrible vision of herself growing old, an inefficient, fretful figure, clouding his life with her querulous demands and eclipsed beauty. Had she that generous love which survives the hard middle years? Hastily banishing the nightmare, she said with decision:

“There will be hard times, of course. But we shall get along as other people do.”

“Don’t make the mistake of supposing that you have a noble character because you would like to have one. It’s rank folly.”

“But I’ve burnt my boats. I’m his, now. I must go where he goes. People may not know it yet, but that doesn’t alter the essential fact. It’s true that I’m taking great risks. But I must. I can’t leave him, Mother, whatever you say.”

“You must leave him for a little time, at any rate. I’d hoped to persuade you of that without being forced to tell you something which I really have no business to speak of, since I promised not to. But you compel me.”

“Oh, no, don’t, if you oughtn’t!” cried Agatha, shrinking back.

“I’m afraid I must, for nothing else will make you see reason. Besides, it’s something which you have every right to know, and which you ought to have been told long ago. In fact I spoke pretty plainly to Marian about it. I said that she had absolutely no right to keep it from us. It—it explains why John is not getting a divorce. I went to see Marian soon after you left Braxhall, to talk things over, you understand, and find out what John meant to do. And after a good many preliminaries I began to gather how ill he really is.”

“Ill! Is he ill?”

“Very ill, dear. He has been for some months past. He was when you were at Braxhall. I got it out of Marian that he’d seen a specialist just before that time. It was that old heart trouble, you know.”

“But I knew he’d seen a specialist. He saw Sir Newman Crawley. But he was quite reassuring.”

“I’m afraid he wasn’t. You were most unjustifiably kept in the dark. His verdict was very grave.”

“Grave! . . . What did he say?”

“This is bound to be rather a shock to you, dear. He—he practically told John that he was—dying. He gave very little hope of his recovery.”

“Mother! Oh, Mother! No!”

“He said that it would probably be quick,” said Mrs. Cocks, looking into the fire. “A few months, he said.”

“But he said all this before we went to Braxhall? Before we went?”

“Yes. Of course he should have told you.”

“Before we went.”

“I consider that you should have been told at once. I suppose he wanted to spare you, poor boy, as nothing could be done. Still, I might have been told. But he only confided in Marian, who of course told Lois, and Hubert, and Cynthia, and Sir Thomas, and Dolly, and James for all I know, but elected to keep it secret from the people most concerned. But had you absolutely no idea of it?”

“What?”

“Don’t gape like that! I don’t believe you’ve heard a word I’ve been saying.”

“I’m sorry. But what have I done! Oh, what have I done! I might have known.”

“Of course, if you’d known, this . . . regrettable precipitancy . . .”

“Oh, hardly that! We’d been in love for ten years.”

“And did quite well without each other. It’s a pity you couldn’t keep it up a little longer.”

“Oh, Mother, don’t! Don’t be so cruel. Anyhow, it’s not that I’m thinking of. But I’ve been so unkind to him. Oh, perhaps it’s not true!”

“I’m afraid it is, dear.”

Mrs. Cocks put a few stitches into her rug. Agatha was walking distractedly about the room, delving into the past.

“Poor John! Oh, I ought to have known! But why? Why didn’t he tell me? I don’t blame him, though. I know quite well why he didn’t. I was abominable to him and let him see I didn’t love him. Oh, but of course I wouldn’t have left him if I’d known. At least, not like that. But then, what would I have been worth even if I had stayed, if it was only for that? I don’t wonder he didn’t tell me. He would have, if I’d treated him better.”

“I don’t know that it makes so very much difference to John,” said Mrs. Cocks dispassionately. “The injury which you’ve inflicted upon him would be the same whether he were well or ill. I don’t expect he feels it any more bitterly on that score.”

“I’m not thinking of that so much as the hateful way I baited him before I left him.”

“And I’m not really thinking of John at all. And it’s rather sentimental in you, Agatha, to do so at this late hour. If you were going to consider his feelings you should have done so sooner. No! I’m thinking of the perfectly unnecessary way in which you have compromised yourself.”

“I don’t see what else could have happened really,” said Agatha dejectedly, as she sat down again. “Once it was a declared thing between me and Gerald, I suppose I must have gone to him. Only it would never have come to such a point, that time at Braxhall, if I’d known about John. How horrible it all is! However, it’s done now and can’t be undone. I must try to think what is best to do next.”

“Quite so. And you have to remember that your reputation is still undamaged. The family will remain silent for John’s sake.”

“But that can’t last for long.”

“I hope you’ll see the sense, now, of coming to me here, at least until . . .”

“But, my dear Mother, what’s the use of that? If I go to New York in six weeks’ time with Gerald, what’s the use?”

“I think you must wait here quietly until you can join him to be married.”

“Oh, no! We couldn’t be separated like that.”

“I think you owe it to John. I really do.” Mrs. Cocks was playing her last card and her face bore traces of anxiety. “So far you haven’t brought public disgrace on him. And that is what he minds; you know quite well it is. If you leave Gerald now and live here with me for a month or two you will save your husband’s name from dishonour. I think you’ve no right to refuse that to a dying man.”

“I must see what Gerald thinks,” said Agatha uncertainly. “He will know what is right. He has a finer conscience than I have.”

“Has he, indeed?” said Mrs. Cocks.

“I can see your point of view. I’ll put it to him.”

“I’m sure he’ll think as I do. Let him go out to New York, and you can follow him when you are free. After a decent interval. Surely it would be better, from all points of view? We might both go out; it would look more respectable. And then you could marry him out there. I know it sounds callous to talk about the future in this cold-blooded way, but one must look ahead.”

“It—it would be bound to be fairly soon, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, quite. I gather there is, practically speaking, no doubt about that.”

Mrs. Cocks longed to add: “You needn’t be afraid your husband will not die,” but she checked herself in time and continued relentlessly:

“For one thing, if it’s all decently and respectably done, and you don’t compromise yourselves by rushing off together before you can be properly married, it will be so much easier for you to return to England eventually. Supposing Gerald changed his mind about his work and wanted to come back and take up his London practice? You would infinitely prefer that in your heart of hearts, wouldn’t you? You don’t surely want to spend the rest of your life in New York?”

Agatha shivered.

“Why invite a scandal when you can avoid it? I should have thought your affection for Gerald would have made you consider his position and career a little more.”

“You see,” exclaimed Agatha, “I rather think it is on my account that he has accepted this work in New York. I think he thought, poor dear, that it would be easier for me. And if that is so, I don’t think I ought to let him go without me.”

“Well, at least, come here until you go. Don’t go on blatantly living with him as long as you are in London. I really think you should have more consideration for all our feelings than to do that. Besides, the Talisman is such a respectable place! It’s where all the head-mistresses go when they come up to attend conferences. I shouldn’t wonder if you got turned out when the management discover who you are. And they are bound to do that before long. How shall you like that?”

“Oh, it is difficult! I’ll go off now and consult him,” conceded Agatha.

“Stay to lunch first. There is plenty of time.”

Mrs. Cocks was unwilling to let Agatha go until she had forced her to a decision.

“But I said I’d be back for lunch. He will wait for me.”

“Ring him up and tell him you are staying here.”

“I could do that.”

Agatha went to the telephone. As she waited for Gerald, she said reflectively:

“It wouldn’t be a long separation. Only six weeks.”

“What, child?” Mrs. Cocks looked up from her rug. “Oh! Oh, no! Not long. The most married people are sometimes parted for as long as that.”

Agatha addressed herself to the telephone:

“Oh, Gerald, is that you? I’m speaking from South Kensington. I’m stopping to lunch, so don’t wait for me. . . . Oh, not badly. . . . I’ll tell you when I get back. . . . I don’t quite know. . . . If I’m not back by tea-time, ring me up, will you? Good-bye, then.”

She hung up the receiver, and found that her mother was looking her over with approving eyes.

“You’re in very good looks, my dear. You’ve quite got back your colour. I don’t know when I’ve seen you look better. Corsica has evidently built you up. Come down to lunch.”

The two women strolled downstairs. Agatha stifled a small pang of compunction at the thought of poor Gerald lunching in the hotel all by himself. As a matter of fact he had taken the opportunity to escape from the menu cards and the sweet peas and maidenhair fern and all the flummery which so exasperated him at an hotel meal. He had sought an eating-house near Guy’s, a haunt of his bachelor days, where he was almost sure of picking up a friend to share his chops and beer.

4

Hubert, borne as far as Cowper in his passion for the eighteenth century, had re-read the “Winter Morning’s Walk.” He became enchanted with it and insisted upon reading extracts to Lois in spite of her visible absorption in a volume of Marcel Proust. The next day was bitterly cold, and he was very anxious that they should set forth upon a Winter Morning’s Walk of their own, but she would not be persuaded. In the afternoon, therefore, feeling every inch a country gentleman, he set off by himself. He strode through several farmyards and looked severely at some pigs. He thrashed with his stick at such poor weeds as the season had spared. His hope was that if he crossed a sufficient number of fields, and climbed a few score stiles, he might, permeated by the beauties of the wintry landscape, achieve that mood of philosophic reverie which gives distinction to the poets of Cowper’s age. If fields and hedges failed to produce the right effect he might try a country churchyard.

He had observed that the fellows usually begin by cataloguing the scenery, and he obediently scrutinized the view, moving the eye, as the poet directs, “from joy to joy.” But, gaze as he would, he remained cold. Emphatically that, for a bleak, black wind swept from the steely sky and whistled over the stubble, nearly flaying him. His nose turned blue and his eyes began to water; it was the kind of day when no clothes seem thick enough.

“It needs a frost, I suppose,” he reflected, “and snow, and icicles hanging from the old barn roof, and what not. Something more like a Christmas card.”

He thought sadly of Madeira, where they had intended to spend the winter, and, as a fresh gale came down the hill, he wondered if Madeira would really be warm enough. The shortening afternoon gave him a good excuse for turning homeward.

Having reached his garden, however, he perceived Lois at the window of the living room, and immediately underwent a recrudescence of the country gentleman. She beckoned to him but he ignored her and began a solemn tour of the estate, minutely examining each much-pruned rose bush in the bed under the window. He hoped that he did not look too cold and miserable. Lois opened the long window and called to him to come in, but he hardly heard her in the frenzy of excitement with which he stooped over an extremely small bush. Then he straightened himself.

“Lois!” he called. “Just come and look here!”

“What at?” she called back, shivering in the window. “Do come in out of the cold. I’ve had a letter.”

“I do believe . . .” he said, in deep concern, “. . . I’m very much afraid it’s the blight!”

“The what?”

“The blight! . . . Er—rose blight.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Of course there is.”

She came out and joined him.

“I don’t see anything wrong,” she said.

“I don’t like that funny reddish colour at the end of that twig,” he commented anxiously.

“Aren’t they always like that at this time of year? And, anyhow, you can’t do anything about it, even if it is. You don’t know what to do.”

Hubert looked pained at such an accusation. He said, with becoming gravity:

“I’ll have to consult with Saunders.”

“Now, do come in. I’ve something I want to talk to you about.”

He followed her into the genial warmth of the living room and just managed to suppress a sigh of ecstasy as the window closed behind them.

“I had a nice bracing walk,” he told her. “Pity you wouldn’t come. Those pigs at the old farm are very fine. I had a look at them.”

But she was so intent upon a communication which she wished to make that she had no time to be a country gentleman’s wife. She did not even notice that he was aggrieved about it.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing,” she said, “and you will have to speak to James. He pays too little consideration, really, to poor Mother’s feelings, and it’s disgusting after all she’s done for him.”

“How often have I told you,” said Hubert furiously, his grievance taking shape, “how often have I told you that I will not speak to James about things? Why should I? He’s more trouble than he’s worth. If anything is to be done with him, one of you women had better talk to his precious Dolly. That’s the only way to deal with him.”

“Dolly is as bad as he is. She’s worse. They are both disgusting, but he has some excuse. He’s always been eccentric, and anyhow, men have different standards. But Dolly shouldn’t countenance it. At least, one expects people of her class to value respectability. One would think she would be more particular.”

“What have they been doing now? I thought Dolly was too respectable, if anything. That was your mother’s view when last we discussed her.”

“Mother writes that she really can’t go there any longer. She can’t countenance the way they receive Agatha. She says that Agatha is up at Hampstead so often that one can never be really quite sure of not meeting her.”

“But, Lois—I told you that at the Martins’ party the other week we all——”

“That’s different. That’s in public. Of course, in a private family affair like this, one has to behave civilly in front of people. Dolly and James did quite right: I was glad to hear that they had that much _savoir-faire_. But it’s quite a different thing asking her to their house.”

“It’s rather funny, when you think how very lately it was Agatha we all blamed for receiving them. But really, my dear, I think it’s entirely their business who they ask to their house.”

“Have their family no claims? When you think of what we have all done for them! Where would they be if it wasn’t for us? You’d think James would have more feeling of loyalty to his brother. You’d think a respectable creature like Dolly would draw the line somewhere.”

“I daresay she does.”

“I tell you she doesn’t. If, knowing the facts, she can go on asking Agatha to her house, it shows that she doesn’t.”

“I don’t see that follows,” argued Hubert. “It merely shows that she wouldn’t draw the line where you do. Her conventions are not the same as yours.”

The word conventions drew her fire, as he knew it would. She plunged after it, off the main track of her indignation.

“Conventions? Who is talking of conventions? I don’t consider myself a very conventional person. . . .”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. As people go I should say I was very tolerably broadminded. Anyhow, I’m much less conventional than you are.”

“Very possibly,” agreed Hubert in an irritating voice.

“So you can’t talk.”

Hubert said nothing, but picked up the evening paper and settled himself in a comfortable chair by the fire. Lois, finding herself in a cul-de-sac, made one of those unexpectedly swift returns to the main issue which so often surprised him:

“Anyhow this question of James and Dolly has nothing to do with convention.”

“I should have thought it had.”

“It’s—it’s simply a matter of decent feeling.”

“Same thing,” Hubert was heard to mumble.

“It’s not. It isn’t at all the same thing.”

“I think it is.”

“I say it isn’t.”

“What attitude,” demanded Hubert, after a pause, “should decent feeling have prompted Dolly to adopt toward her sinning sister?”

“Don’t be flippant, Hubert! I feel very strongly about this.”

“I observe that you do. But I’m not joking, Lois. I want to know. How should Dolly behave to Agatha?”

“She should make it quite clear—as soon as she has the opportunity to do it privately, I mean—she should make it obvious that she disapproves of her.”

“But, I just put it to you, supposing she doesn’t disapprove?”

“Well, then, she should.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Hubert! How can you ask? And she pretends to be religious!”

“But her kindness to Agatha may be on religious grounds, you know. Eating with publicans and sinners, even with scribes and pharisees, has been sanctioned by an unimpeachable precedent.”

“Yes, perhaps. But it isn’t only religion. It’s the flagrant disregard of all social . . .”

Since convention was the only word which suggested itself to her, Lois left this sentence unfinished and went on to the third item in her charge.

“They ought to remember what they owe to the family.”

“But what do they owe?”

“What does any one owe? If I had treated you as Agatha treated John, would you like to see your relations welcoming me with open arms?”

Hubert was struck by this.

“No, I can’t say I should,” he said thoughtfully. “A little hurt, I should be.”

“And for Dolly and James especially, when you think of everything that has been done for them. Mother, and John, and you, and the Bragges. If you think how we’ve all helped in James’s career! You don’t remember, because you didn’t know us then, but I do, how Mother worried herself getting him good lessons and sending him to Paris and all. It’s really rather wonderful when you think she isn’t his real mother. And she had to stand no end of criticism from his own relations for not sending him away to school; that old Major Talbot and Mrs. Gordon Clewer—all quite odious about it, and insinuating all sorts of things. They none of them could see that she was keeping him at home because she thought he would develop better there, and that a boy of his temperament couldn’t be treated like the average. And then think how John let him go on living at Lyndon, just letting him paint and go his own way without a word of criticism! Not many young artists have such obliging brothers. And then his marriage! I don’t see how he could possibly have married if the family hadn’t been so nice about it. He never considered, I suppose, when he was allowed to marry with so little trouble, what a blow it was to all of us. We all had to make sacrifices. And then think of the trouble you took to get him work! And Cynthia and Tom and the way he treated them. And the whole business of the Hampstead move. Mother was up there every day for a week, seeing about it. And you taking such trouble to introduce him to people; turning out on cold nights to take him to evening parties which bored you frightfully. Oh, I know it’s a privilege to have him in the family, but it’s a great burden too! And he’s not a scrap grateful!”

Hubert meditated on this catalogue in some awe and said:

“He certainly has a good deal to thank us all for. But do I understand that your mother actually met Agatha at Hampstead?”

“Yes. She went up to see Dolly about a servant or something. And James calmly took her into the sitting room, where she found Agatha helping Dolly to make herself a blouse, if you please! You’d have thought they’d have the sense, under the circumstances, to show Mother into another room. It was most awkward.”

“And what happened?”

“I’ll read you what mother writes.”

Lois picked up a letter and read:

“‘Though I was very much taken aback, I was not, on the whole, sorry to have an opportunity of expressing my feelings. I was a little afraid lest my manner at Mrs. Townshend’s might have been misunderstood. . . .’

“You see,” explained Lois, “they had met before. Mrs. Cocks, since she got Agatha to go back to her, has taken her about a good deal. She wants to whitewash her as much as possible, I suppose. And Mother met them at an ‘At Home’ and had to be civil, or people would have thought it odd.”

She resumed her reading:

“‘I said nothing. I just said: “Oh, Dorothy, if you’ll excuse
me, I’ll come another time. Or perhaps, if Lady Clewer is not
going to be here for long, I could wait in the studio until she
is gone.” Just like that, taking no direct notice of her at all.
James, as you may imagine, failed to grasp my meaning, and said:
“Why do you call her Lady Clewer?” But I think his wife
understood. I went and sat in the studio. Would you believe me,
I was there for twenty minutes before Dorothy came in. Even then
she did not apologize. I said very little; I told her that I
could not visit at Hampstead while such disagreeable things are
likely to happen. She tried to excuse herself, of course, by
saying that they had not expected me. But, as I said, that only
makes it worse. It’s admitting that they do these things behind
my back.’”

“She just ignored her,” said Hubert thoughtfully. “If it had been you, Lois, what would you have done? Would you have done the same?”

“I think so. If I had had the presence of mind. But I’d have got flustered; Mother is always so sure of herself.”

“But I don’t understand. I don’t quite get your point of view. I’ve known you receive people who, to put it baldly, were no better than Agatha, and who had fewer claims on your affection. And, after all, the scandal has never been public, and she’s living quietly with her mother now.”

“Yes, but it’s the family side of it.”

“You mean that you are ready to accord a toleration outside the family which you withhold inside it?”

“Of course, I might have known that you would take Agatha’s part,” cried Lois angrily. “All men do, it seems.”

“Oh, good heavens!” groaned Hubert. “Why can’t you keep to the point, Lois? These digressions make all our discussions so lengthy.”

“That’s exactly like you! When I bring up an argument you can’t answer, you always call it a digression. You know quite well that you can’t be unbiassed about Agatha. You can’t deny it.”

“I don’t deny it. But I deny that it has anything to do with the point. I want to extract from you some explanation of your most unreasonable definition——”

“Very well, then, if you admit that you are biassed where she is concerned, it seems to me that your whole position is unsound.”

“—your most unreasonable definition of toleration as——”

“Hubert! I wish you’d listen to me and not try to interrupt so constantly. It’s very bad manners, and we’d get on so much better if you ever listened.”

“On the contrary, you interrupted me. But we’ll let that pass. I’ll listen in silence until you’ve quite finished, if you will try to abstain from hurling unanswerable but perfectly irrelevant truths at me and asking me to deny them. It gives you a specious air of victory, but it doesn’t in the least disprove my point, you know.”

“I’m glad you admit that they are truths. Since you admit that, where Agatha is concerned, you are not qualified to hold an opinion——”

“I’ve admitted no such thing!”

“Hubert! You are perfectly impossible! If you won’t let me speak, I won’t try.”

And Lois bent to poke the fire with hands that shook with wrath.

“Since you must drag personalities into this discussion,” went on Hubert, more gently, “I’d like to say this. It doesn’t seem to me that you can be very friendly with a person, fond of them and accepting kindness from them, and then suddenly chuck them. Agatha has been very kind to us both, Lois, and we have been fond of her. It seems to me to give her a claim on us. And I expect Dolly feels that way too. She owes a lot to Agatha. You don’t mean to tell me that you can, at a moment’s notice, forget the friendship of years? It’s so unlike your usual generosity of temper.”

She said nothing, but kept her face averted. He was suddenly aware that she was on the point of tears, and he instantly grew remorseful. The quarrel became insignificant, and he asked himself angrily why she should not be unreasonable if she wished. He cursed himself for having lost his temper and was glad when tea appeared, since it would give him an opportunity of ministering to her.

“Wouldn’t you like to have it on the sofa?” he suggested. “Let me pour out.”

She refused coldly and they began the meal in an uncomfortable silence. She was wondering whether any man ever ends any argument with his wife without suggesting a cup of tea or a lie down. She wondered this because it simply did not occur to her that husbands have more forcible weapons at their command. The occasion of James and the window, the only occasion in her life when she had not been treated like a lady, had faded from her mind. It did not lead her to speculate why it was that Hubert never boxed her ears when she annoyed him.

He was seeking a topic which might mollify her. At last he inquired if her mother’s letter had any news of John.

“Gone down to shoot at Lyndon,” said Lois shortly.

“Has he got friends with him?”

“I believe so.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it was very good for him, should you?”

“No.”

“But I suppose it’s a change for him.”

“I suppose so.”

“Damned uphill work!” he protested inwardly.

Her humours, however, were seldom long-lived. She was not a sulky woman. When, after tea, he came to light her cigarette for her, she unbent and retained him with a caress.

“I hate quarrelling,” she murmured.

“So do I.”

“What do we do it for, then?”

“I shouldn’t think we are worse than any one else.”

“We quarrel about such silly things. James!”

“Not James particularly. It might have been the new tennis courts or a railway time-table. It was merely a little ebullition of the sex discord.”

“No, it’s generally James. At Lyndon it was the same; he was at the bottom of every family row I can ever remember. He’s so different from us! Like a cuckoo in a sparrow’s nest.”

“I was thinking the other day . . . you know, I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if he set a fashion. A cult of domesticity. I expect all talented young men in the next generation will marry housemaids and wheel their children out in perambulators on Sunday afternoons, and talk in words of one syllable. It’s always the accidental, the chance result of education and surroundings, which makes an impression on the second-rate mind. They’ll copy his work, of course, but that’s nothing to the way they’ll copy his personal eccentricities.”

“Hampstead and Chelsea will look very odd when they are full of people modelled upon James. Dull too!”

The telephone bell rang and Lois went to answer it:

“Hello! Hello! Yes, it’s me! Lois speaking! Oh, yes, I’ll tell him.”

She turned to Hubert.

“It’s Mother. She wants to speak to you.”

Hubert took the receiver from her.

“Yes! . . . Yes? Oh! Oh, yes, what is it? . . . Oh! . . . Oh, I’m very sorry! Where did you say? Oh, yes, I’ll tell her. Yes, I’ll be careful.”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to her. “She wants me to break to you that John died at Lyndon this afternoon,” he said in an aggrieved voice. “I can’t see why she couldn’t tell you herself. Shall I offer to go up? She was speaking from Eaton Square. They’d ’phoned from Lyndon.”

“Yes, you’d better.”

He turned to the telephone again.

“Oh, I’ve told Lois, Lady Clewer. Yes, she’s quite all right. I don’t think you need worry about her. Shall I come up? I can come at once. Are you alone? . . . Oh! . . . Well, ring us up if there is anything that we can do, or if you want me for anything. . . . Oh! . . . Yes, I will if you like. But I really think there is no need to worry.”

He put up the receiver and rejoined his wife by the fire.

“The Bragges are with her,” he said. “And she says I must on no account leave you. I’m to ring her up last thing to-night and reassure her about you. She seems dreadfully afraid that you’ll be very much upset.”