Chapter IV: The Braxhall Frescoes (2)

Marian ignored this thrust and continued:

“I’m so especially glad for Lois because there is no doubt that she and Hubert do have their little differences.”

“No doubt at all,” said Mrs. Cocks promptly.

“Though, of course, they mean absolutely nothing. An ideally devoted couple! Still you know that sort of thing, trivial things in themselves, of course . . . in time are apt to become serious. And children smooth them out so. They take a young couple out of themselves. I was very sorry that Lois didn’t begin much sooner. I think it’s the greatest pity . . . however . . .”

“When do you expect . . .?” interrupted Mrs. Cocks.

“Next March.”

“I’m very glad; especially when you are all so pleased.”

“I have, I suppose, a great deal to be thankful for. Though of course I have troubles. . . . Still it would be terrible to feel that either of my daughters was unhappily married. I can imagine nothing more frightful for any mother. Where is Agatha, did you say?”

“Gone for a walk, I believe.”

“She does not look well. I was quite shocked when I saw her; really, I hardly like to say it, but she is losing her looks rather, poor girl.”

“Oh, she needs a change. London gets stuffy. Scotland will set her up.”

“Yes, yes! It will be a good thing to get her right away up to Scotland. Ellen, I’m most distressed that Mr. Blair is coming here. Believe me, I knew nothing about the invitation until it was too late. I would certainly have stopped it if I could. But Tom, ignorant of the particular reasons against it, invited him without telling us.”

“I don’t think you need worry about that. I don’t think I know of any particular reasons against it,” replied Mrs. Cocks stiffly.

“Don’t you really?” asked Marian. “Personally—of course I’m given to plain speaking—personally I think it’s the greatest pity Agatha should see much of him while she is in this unsettled state.”

“I don’t think you need trouble about Agatha. It is quite natural that she should be very much attached to Gerald, though I know I have never succeeded in explaining this to you. They are cousins and were brought up together. Practically brother and sister.”

“But there was never anything more? No engagement of any kind?”

“There was certainly no serious engagement. There was the usual kind of boy and girl flirtation, perhaps. But you must know, with daughters of your own, how ephemeral such things are.”

“I’m glad to say that I’ve had nothing of the kind to deal with in the case of my own daughters.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Cocks. “Oh, well, perhaps not. No!”

Her smile infuriated Marian, who added: “But then, they both have great natural discretion.”

“So has Agatha,” returned Mrs. Cocks hotly. “But with any one so attractive there are bound to be these little episodes. One gets to take them for granted. After all, Marian, even if he is still rather obviously _épris_, he isn’t the only one, is he?”

“Perhaps not. But still I think it’s a pity he should be coming here just when poor John——”

She checked herself, but Mrs. Cocks took her up:

“Poor John! I don’t understand this ‘poor John’ attitude which you have all adopted. You seem determined to make a martyr of him: to suggest that Agatha doesn’t treat him properly.”

“Agatha makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t care a rap for him.”

“Has she said so to you?”

“No! Of course not. But her manner to him . . .”

“She has never been demonstrative in public. I should be sorry if she was.”

“But it isn’t only in public.”

“How do you know? Don’t you think that you are drawing upon your imagination?”

“No, I’m not. She has been quite changed toward him ever since he was demobilized. She can hardly be called a wife at all.”

And Marian supplied details which, if true, left little doubt as to the gravity of the young couple’s estrangement.

“How do you know all this?” demanded Mrs. Cocks. “You only can know from one source. John has obviously been complaining to you. If he does that, instead of managing his matrimonial affairs for himself, I can quite understand Agatha’s feelings.”

Marian began to be aware of her own rashness, for her statements had no positive foundation. They were based upon assumption only—inferences drawn from a few bitter remarks made by John when he was arranging with her for the disposition of his affairs. She began to think that she ought to go and see Cynthia about the table decorations for Thursday.

“Then Agatha has said nothing to you?” she parried feebly, as she got to her feet.

“Agatha is too loyal,” said Mrs. Cocks grimly. “She would never complain of her husband.”

Marian, having eased her bosom of some of her furniture, departed. She left a sadly discomposed mother. Mrs. Cocks was aghast, furious, and convinced that instant action was imperative. All her vague anxiety had been turned into indignation: she felt that John was unpardonable. Previously she had been inclined to pity him, though not very much. So great was her estimation of Agatha’s attractions that she could not really think of him but as an uncommonly lucky man—nearly as lucky as her own husband had been. Still it must have been a little trying to return from the Front to a lady in so irritable a temper. But this whining to his stepmother put him out of court. No high-handedness on Agatha’s part could justify it. He must be made to feel that wives are not kept thus.

Resolved to lose no time she set off at once in search of him and had the good fortune to locate him alone in the billiard room. Closing the door firmly behind her and seating herself with decision, she opened fire:

“Now, John! What’s all this trouble between you and Agatha?”

“Why should you think that there is trouble between us?” inquired John.

He stood stolidly before her, so still and unblinking that she began to wish he would fidget.

His question disconcerted her. She could not say: “Because your stepmother said so,” without betraying Marian’s confidence. She was too loyal to her own sex to acquaint any man upon earth with the indiscretion of another woman. She replied:

“Well, it’s obvious.”

“I suppose it is,” he said slowly. “But Agatha has said nothing to you herself?”

“Nothing. I think she would think it disloyal.”

She hoped this indirect shaft would go home. But John was reflecting deeply with bent brows. At last he said:

“Well, I haven’t an idea what the trouble is. Agatha is the only person who does know, I should think.”

His eyes were feverish and weary, and it struck her that he was a very bad colour. He certainly looked ill, but an aggrieved note in his voice hardened her heart against him. She saw quite clearly now that his calm assumption of possession must be shaken. He must be made to see that he stood in danger of losing Agatha altogether; and if the idea was unpleasant to him, it was no more than he deserved. Anger blinded her to the perils of the course she had chosen. She had really persuaded herself that a little jealousy would be very good for him—would wake him up to the fact that he had a wife worth fighting for.

“Well, of course,” she began, “though she’s said nothing to me, I have formed my own opinions, and I think I’d better tell you what they are. I feel that a great deal is at stake for you and Agatha just now; the whole happiness of your after lives perhaps. No! Don’t interrupt me, but listen! You must put up with a little plain speaking, my dear boy. I think you and Agatha have got to the critical phase when—how shall I put it?—the—the honeymoon stage of married life is over. The only strange thing is that it should have lasted so long. Very few couples, I should imagine, preserve their first ardour for eight years. But you’ve been exceptionally lucky.”

“I don’t quite see what you are driving at. I haven’t changed. I love her as much as ever I did.”

“Quite so! And you think that is a sufficiently good reason why she shouldn’t change either. That is so like a man! I believe you all regard a woman’s passion as something like electric light, to be switched on and off as you want it. Don’t you think that you’ve been taking her a little too much for granted? Because nothing, let me tell you, is more fatal where a woman of her temperament is concerned. I know, because she is very like me. You must never let her feel that you don’t regard her as a prize and a privilege. For goodness’ sake, sit down! It bothers me to see you standing like that.”

He fetched a chair and carefully sat down opposite her. She continued deliberately:

“I expect you know that you won her from another man.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, hasn’t she told you? Funny girl! It’s quite true. There was a schoolroom attachment which gave me a good deal of uneasiness at one time. Of course, she forgot it all very comfortably when she met you. But I mention it now because I think you should realize, with a girl like Agatha, that these old flames are always just a little dangerous. Especially in a matrimonial cross-roads like that which you are facing now. Unless you can manage to keep your hold on her . . .”

“I like this! You talk as if marriage has no obligations, Mrs. Cocks. I’ve been a perfectly good husband to Agatha, and I’ll thank her . . .”

“Technically, John, she’ll always be a perfectly good wife to you: you know that quite well. I’m not discussing her principles. But the heart, you see, cannot be bound. No person on earth can undertake to stay in love. If you want her to do that you must rely upon yourself and not upon the obligations of the marriage service. I’m saying all this because, as he is unfortunately coming here . . .”

“He! Who?”

John’s face was gray.

“Gerald Blair. That’s the man I’m talking about.”

“Blair! Blair! What has he to do with all this?”

“Nothing. Except that, as I say, you won her from him once. He is, I think, beginning to interest her slightly again. And I want to point out to you that it is probably your fault. You haven’t been taking sufficient pains to interest her yourself. When you marry a woman like Agatha you must live up to her. My dear boy, don’t go that colour! There’s nothing serious in this affair. D’you think I’d have spoken of it if there was? To you, of all people? No! I only regard it as a symptom that she feels you have been taking her too much for granted.”

“How long has this been going on?” he said, staring at her sombrely.

“Oh, my good John! Nothing has been ‘going on.’”

“Blair!” he said again. “Blair!”

Mrs. Cocks began to wonder if this were not altogether too much of a good thing.

“You say they were engaged?”

“Wanted to be engaged. It all blew over completely. Only lately . . .”

“No,” he said, “not lately. Longer ago than lately. . . . I’m beginning to see it now. . . . Yes, of course. . . .”

“There I’m sure you are wrong. It’s only since the war.”

“No. It was before the war. There was that time he came down to Lyndon. I remember.”

“You are making too much of it,” began Mrs. Cocks anxiously. “There could have been nothing then, I’m certain.”

“She had a photograph. . . .”

“What photograph?”

“Of herself and Blair. In a tin locket. Taken at a fair or something, she said.”

“Oh, that fair! I remember! But she was hardly out of her cradle then. Only sixteen or thereabouts. I packed her off to school.”

“She kept the photograph.”

“Sentimental creature!”

“She isn’t sentimental. I’d think nothing of it if she was.”

Mrs. Cocks pulled herself together.

“All this is nonsense, John. There could have been nothing that time before the war. She was on perfectly good terms with you, wasn’t she?”

“She seemed to be.”

“If I’d thought you were going to take it this way I would never have spoken. I thought you had more sense of proportion.”

“I’ve been blind! . . . Blair! And that’s why, oh God damn it all, that’s why she’s always sneering at me for being too rich!”

“Too rich?” echoed Mrs. Cocks blankly.

“Yes, too rich. She’s got very socialist lately, don’t you notice?”

“Well, she has said some very strange things. But I thought it was this house which had got on her nerves. I never could see that she objected specially to spending money on herself.”

“Nor I. But I couldn’t remember where I’d heard these views before. I’ve got it now.”

“Yes, he has strange ideas. And she has always been influenced by them to a certain extent. After he went to the Balkans, that time when they had been seeing a good deal of each other . . .”

“What time?”

“Oh, that time in the war, after he had had pneumonia. You remember, surely?”

“I don’t. I was at the Front, unfortunately.”

In the ensuing pause Mrs. Cocks began to grow desperate.

“Well,” said John, “when he went to the Balkans, what did she do?”

“Oh, nothing. Only worked in a canteen: but I felt he put her up to it. It’s no use looking like that, John. I merely wanted to show you the sort of thing that is liable to happen if you let Agatha get out of hand. If you insist upon taking it _au grand sérieux_ you’ll simply have trouble. And, above all, try to remember that nothing is more likely to exasperate her than the idea that she is being discussed and criticized. Family criticism is a deadly thing.”

“I agree with you.”

“Make love to her, as you used to do, and she’ll forget all about him. In a year’s time you will laugh at all this.”

John did laugh, a little unpleasantly, and she began to feel that nothing she could say further would improve matters.

“That was tea, that gong,” she observed. “Are you coming?”

“No. I think I’ll go fishing.”

“John, you realize that if I thought there was the slightest danger of her caring seriously for Gerald I would never have spoken to you?”

“Yes, I see that. I quite believe you think there’s nothing in it. But it’s opened my eyes to some things that have puzzled me. You can’t live with a woman, and be fond of her, and not know when she’s got something on her mind. It’s my belief that she’s loved that fellow all along. Except for a very short time when I swept her off her feet.”

“I’m sure you are mistaken. And even if it were true, John, it’s no use putting it into words like that. It’s a great pity. She’s married to you and must make the best of it.”

“She is and she must.”

He held the door open for her, and she gave up the attempt to reason with him. She was uneasy and almost sorry she had spoken. She had wished to bait him a little; to brace him up by suggesting that he had a rival. She had not supposed that he could be capable of any desperate jealousy; his self-confidence was too genuine for that. But she thought that a small attack upon his complacency would be good for him. He must be made to realize his own extreme good fortune in being “most damned in a fair woman.” For Mrs. Cocks held the views of a lady who is beautiful, gently nurtured, bred to claim homage as her due, heiress of all the achievements of civilization and profoundly ignorant of its basic brutalities.

A few phrases, caught as she crossed the ante-room, restored her belief in herself. Through the open door came the emphatic voice of Lois:

“. . . and if it’s only half as pronounced as it was in London, two years ago, it’s enough to kill poor John outright.”

Lois and Cynthia fell suddenly silent at her entrance, and as she sipped her tea she felt that she had, on the whole, done very wisely. It was true that John had taken her words far more seriously than she had intended, but if the whole family were discussing the affair like this it was obvious that he must hear of it sooner or later, and she was glad that she had got in her say first. Braxhall, as she saw it, contained a good deal of inflammable material. She had little doubt of her daughter’s ultimate discretion and had genuinely persuaded herself that the affair was, for Agatha, a mild sentimental adventure. But she was deeply alarmed at the possibilities of family gossip in such a house.

Reviewing her three young people, as she grasped them, she thought that they should not be hard to manage. Here was John, aggrieved and resentful, his petulance continually inflamed by the ardent sympathy of his stepmother. Agatha was obviously more than a little bored and ready to grasp at an occasion for emotional entertainment. Gerald, she supposed, was like nothing so much as a fluttering moth, drifting helplessly back to his cradle, despite the counsels of prudence. Altogether the situation, spiced by the malice and inaccuracy of the other ladies, had the makings of a very fine explosion. There would certainly be wigs on the green if a woman of tact and determination had not, by heaven’s grace, been upon the spot.

She was right, as far as she went, but she had the misfortune to gauge the emotions of her protagonists at far too low a point of intensity, misled by the understatements of modern speech. Disturbances which she beheld as embryonic had already reached the most sinister proportions; her trio were rushing together, doomed to inevitable impact. She knew nothing of the misgivings, the sense of inward betrayal, with which Gerald Blair had accepted Sir Thomas’s invitation. She could not guess his resolution, faithfully kept since his return from the Balkans, to see his cousin no more; or how that resolve had been overthrown by a chance report that Lady Clewer was looking miserably ill and unhappy, an idea which gave him such anguish that he was constrained at last to end it by coming to see for himself.

Likewise she underrated the effect of her bracing counsels upon her son-in-law who was, at that moment, lashing the trout stream in a mood which rang all the changes upon despair and fury. Of the three, indeed, Agatha was the least discomposed and the least deserving of compassion. She was still able to disguise to herself the nature of her own feelings. For her the mere prospect of seeing her cousin again, after a long separation, had so much of pleasure in it that she was able to postpone the thought of ultimate issues. She knew that he had avoided her since his return to England; she believed that she knew why. She had applauded his wisdom and grieved over its cruelty. Now that he had inexplicably changed his mind she was able to stifle apprehension in her gladness that he had done so. She walked about the woods until she was tired and then returned to Braxhall. Finding that the hour was still early, she lay down with a book upon a sofa near the window. There, half hidden in a haze of cigarette smoke, she was found by her husband on his return to the house.

John, during the interval by the river, had become an angry man. In the first shocked perception of the truth he had been too much stunned for emotion. He had stated the facts with a sorrowful calm, seeing them too clearly to be resentful. But this spasm of insight was shortlived. An accurate realization of any truth is generally followed by a mood of bitter rebellion against it, and in such a mood he sought his wife. She roused herself to greet him with that conscientious friendliness of tone, that manufactured interest in his affairs, which so deeply exasperated him.

“Well, what have you been doing?”

“Fishing.”

“Did you catch anything?”

“No.”

“How tiresome for you,” she murmured, and waited a moment.

As he did not seem to be inclined to talk she returned to her book. At the end of a couple of minutes, aware that he had not moved, she glanced up at him again. He was looking at her with some earnestness. She asked:

“Did you want anything?”

“No.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“No.”

“Sure it isn’t the Scotch express?”

She referred to a difference of opinion which had occupied them earlier in the day, concerning the time and route of their journey North. She felt that she had been obstinate and was sorry for it. Half consciously she gave him that swift, upward smile with which she had been wont to reduce him. It reached him now, in his trouble, like a mirage, a hint of unsubstantial bliss. He was consumed by his need of her, by the impossible hope that she would love him again and help him to escape from all this grief and fury, the uneasy, insecure present, and the implacable menace of the future. He fell on his knees at her side and would have taken her in his arms, but she recoiled.

“I only wanted to make up,” he pleaded almost humbly.

“I know. You have only one way of making up our disagreements and I find it monotonous.”

The heavy fog of rancour, which had momentarily lifted, clouded his mind again. He turned from her and stood looking out of the window. It was as though he had met the full shock of his own doom for the first time—had received his first inkling of life’s impermanence. A man of sufficient courage and small imagination, he had taken the doctors’ verdict with equanimity. The thought of death was very disagreeable to him, but it had no appalling significance. He had seen it often enough, and had faced it continually, as a matter of course, for four years. He did not wish to leave a world which he found very pleasant, but he was protected by that providential egoism which shields most normal people. He had no real conception of the universe going on without him. His agony at the thought of relinquishing his wife had been tempered by his inability to imagine her continued existence after his own dissolution.

But now the merciful veil was torn from his understanding and he was learning the vanity of all property. A sense of possession had informed his entire attitude toward his surroundings; his love for Agatha was permeated by it. And this sense was outraged by the realities forced upon him. He grasped his limitations, knew that he would lie forgotten, senseless clay, while she, the living woman now before him, would pass into the possession of another man. It was one thing to know that she might marry again; it was another to imagine her married to Blair. His spirit could not submit to such a possibility, and yet he knew that he was helpless.

A car was climbing the long hill, and the sound of its approach floated distinctly through the open window. Agatha heard it and was transformed, glowing warmly, for she knew that it brought her cousin. It was an instant’s self-betrayal, but it revealed her to John, who had turned sharply and marked the fleeting radiance. He left her immediately, unable to trust himself in speech.

She dressed for dinner hastily and went down to the marble corridor leading to the hall. Gerald was there and she watched him for a moment unperceived, as she stood at the turn of the stairs. He looked very uneasy, as though he had arrived by mistake into this sanctuary of the sleek, the idle and the luxurious. His bearing was that of a stranger in a strange land, and he was having a look at Cynthia’s portrait with a public gallery expression on his face.

She decided that she would take him with her to see Dolly and James. He would like their household. It would be nice to take someone there who found it as admirable as she did. In another second she would call to him, and see him start, and turn and smile at her.

“Did you arrive in your evening clothes?” she said.

He did not start as much as she had expected, having braced himself for this encounter so tremendously that nothing could quite take him by surprise. But he was a little pallid as he came toward her.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t. But I changed in record time. I thought it was later than it is.”

They sat down together on a carved settle and plunged into the instant, eager conversation of their youth. She tried to describe to him the frescoes in the hall. The effort overset them both, and their mirth, floating upward, greeted the other inmates of Braxhall as they descended the stairs in procession.

3

She took him over to Bramfield the next day. Dolly heard the car turn into the lane and was at the gate to welcome them. She was not much changed since the days of her Clewer servitude. Her figure was broader, perhaps, but her hair still shone with its old flame and her freckled face was comelier than ever. Henry and little Agatha clung to her skirts, while in her arms she held Jimmy, her youngest.

“Well, Agatha,” she cried, as she kissed her sister-in-law, “you are a stranger! I thought you were never coming to see us again. But you’ve been busy, I expect. Sonny! Kiss your Auntie, you bad boy! It’s funny how he hates it: thinks he’s too old. How do you do, Mr. Blair? I’m very pleased to see you. You will be staying at Braxhall, I suppose?”

“I was wondering if you’d remember me,” said Gerald, as he shook hands.

“I should think I did,” Dolly assured him. “You came to that lecture Mr. Ervine didn’t give, in the Lyndon Reading Room. I remember. Shake hands with Mr. Blair, children.”

She took them up the garden path, pausing to allow them to admire the lilies and hollyhocks in the small beds.

“Yes,” she agreed, “they are a sight. We got second prize at Bramfield show last year, in the cottage garden competition. I always said we might of got first, if James hadn’t spent so much time on the vegetable marrows. He was quite gone on them, and couldn’t attend to nothing else.”

“And they didn’t count?”

“Not as flowers, they didn’t. They are vegetables, you see, Mr. Blair. We had one was the biggest in three parishes. I told James about a young fellow I knew that grew a prize marrow and carved a verse of a hymn on the rind. ‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ it said. And when the marrow grew, it grew. James would have it that he must put something on ours. So he drew out a picture: Jonah sitting under a gourd, like in the Bible. But as the marrow got bigger it went sort of crooked, and spoilt it. He was vexed about it.”

“How is he?” asked Agatha.

“Very well, thank you. Though his leg pains him now and again. He’s apt to get rheumatism into it. He’s working now, so I won’t call him, if you don’t mind. But he’ll be in for tea, and he’ll be ever so glad you’ve come. If I’d known, Agatha, I’d have made drop scones. And I’d have put Sissy into that frock you sent her. I do think it’s lovely. I don’t know wherever you got that nice embroidery. I never saw anything like it before.”

“I got it at the Russian shop in the Brompton Road.”

“Oh, Russia! I expect they do lovely work there. But tell me, do you think it’s all true what it says in the papers about these Russians?”

“It can’t be all true,” began Gerald at once.

“That’s what I say. It sounds awful! James read me a bit out of _John Bull_ last Sunday that said there wasn’t a house left standing, not a man, woman nor child left living, where the Red Armies had been. And then we read some more in the _Daily Herald_, only this time it was about the White Army. And James said: ‘Well, but isn’t that the other side?’ And I told him you can’t believe everything you see in the papers.”

“It’s very difficult,” agreed Agatha thoughtfully. “It’s broadminded of you, Dolly, to take _John Bull_ and the _Daily Herald_. We only take the _Times_.”

“Well, we don’t get time to read the paper every day. But we do a bit on Sunday. Come into the parlour, won’t you? I do believe you’ve not been here, Agatha, since we bought the gramophone.”

“No, I haven’t. Dolly, how exciting! What did you do that for?”

“James got it for my birthday. That is it.”

“But it’s a beauty! These cabinet ones are so much the nicest.”

“It’s second-hand,” said Dolly. “We couldn’t have got such a good one new. But James got this off a friend that was short of money and wanted to get rid of it. It’s as good as new.”

Agatha felt vaguely surprised at the idea of James having a friend. But, when she thought it over, she could see no reason why he shouldn’t.

“Those cheap ones,” continued Dolly, “well, they wouldn’t do at all. We didn’t like all that sort of scraping they made; you can’t seem to hear the music. But this is just what we wanted. I’d play it to you now, only James isn’t here. I expect he’ll turn it on after tea.”

“Oh, I do hope he will. What records have you got?”

“Not many yet. We haven’t had it so very long. We’ve got a lot out of the ‘Messiah.’ That’s my favourite piece. I sung in it once in our chapel choir at home. It’s grand! But I expect you’ve heard it often. Then we’ve got a thing, I think it’s call ‘Chaconne,’ that James likes. He heard it in Paris. And we have some comics for the children. And I got ‘Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes,’ when I was over in Oxford once. I think it’s a very pretty song, but James regularly has his knife into it and broke it by accident. At least, he said it was. Sissy, lovey, just look into the kitchen and see if the kettle’s boiling!”

Dolly spread an elaborately embroidered linen cloth, with a crochet border, over the plush table cover and fetched out the Spode tea-things which she had inherited from her grandmother. Sissy and Sonny were invested with bibs and mouthed their grace with some promptings.

“You’ll have eggs with your teas,” pursued the hostess, “after this long drive? James always gets eggs when he’s been working all afternoon. Oh, yes, you must! How many would you like? Mr. Blair could do with two, surely?”

She was very much put out at their refusal, but relented when they described to her the meal which they would have to eat on returning to Braxhall.

“Not really?” she exclaimed. “Then I don’t wonder you won’t eat much tea. And I expect you ate enough lunch to feed a poor family for a week, didn’t you? But—d’you mean to say they eat all that?”

“Eating’s nothing,” said Gerald. “You should see what they drink!”

“Oh, it is wasteful! I do think it’s shocking! Now, at Lyndon sometimes I used to be surprised at all the food that got eat up in the dining room. But that wasn’t nothing to this; and it was before the war too. But these new gentlemen, like Sir Thomas, they don’t seem to mind what they do. I don’t like all that waste. I wonder now how much butcher’s meat goes into the housekeeper’s room?”

Agatha was unable to enlighten her on this point and a moment later she laughed at herself for the question.

“It was a silly thing to ask, for I don’t believe, Agatha, that you know that much about your own house.”

Gerald was intrigued by the manner of the two women toward each other. It was not quite what he had expected. He had gathered that the family thought Agatha too friendly with Dolly. But he had never been able to imagine them on terms of perfect familiarity. He had always pictured Agatha as the more assured of the two, smoothing, in her tactful way, the small difficulties of intercourse. He saw now, however, that Dolly dominated the alliance. He perceived in her manner, moreover, a hint of mocking tenderness, a very guarded gesture of compassion. It was possible to believe that she pitied Agatha for some reason, with purely imaginary ills. He wondered if Agatha had confided to her simple bosom some of the hidden disquiet of which he was now so poignantly aware. He hoped that this was so. She could not have a better confidante. Since he himself could not inquire into the trouble, since it would be dangerous for him to try, he was glad that she had Dolly. But he would have thought that the spectacle of so much conjugal serenity, such maternal complacence, must be torture to a woman like Agatha, tardily reaping the bitter fruits of her mistaken marriage. Her fortitude in enduring it indicated a generosity of temper which rejoiced his loving heart.

The voice of James could be heard halloing through the house for his tea. His wife called to him:

“It’s here! We’ve got company.” To the guests she explained: “We generally get it in the kitchen when we are alone.”

The master of the house joined them. He was paler and a good deal fatter than of old, and he walked with a decided limp. His large face creased into joyful smiles when he saw his sister-in-law, and he greeted her affectionately.

“You remember Mr. Blair, James?” prompted Dolly.

“Of course I do. You are Agatha’s friend, aren’t you? It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, though. Where have you come from?”

“I’m staying at Braxhall,” said Gerald.

James looked very much surprised.

“What for?” he demanded.

“He has come down for the fresco lunch,” explained Agatha. “And I want to know why you aren’t all coming. You certainly should, you know.”

A peculiar expression eclipsed the candid sweetness of James’s smile. For a second he looked positively venomous. Then he became merely sulky.

“I’m never going near that place again,” he averred.

“But I thought the frescoes looked very nice,” persisted Agatha.

He regarded her closely and in some astonishment.

“Have you seen them?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve only had one little peep. I haven’t looked at them properly yet.”

“No?” said James.

Then he turned to Gerald and demanded:

“You seen ’em?”

“Not yet.”

James assented, as though he had been quite sure of the answer. Dolly, meanwhile, had been looking uneasy and now introduced a change of subject:

“They’ve been looking at the gramophone, but we haven’t played it yet. Henry! Don’t get putting your fingers in the jam! Now, if you do it again you’ll get a good smack.”

James’s face cleared instantly.

“Oh, have you? Wouldn’t you like to hear it? Shall I play it to you now?”

He put on a record of Mme. Clara Butt singing “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” to which they all listened reverently while they ate their bread and radishes. Upon the faces of Dolly and James was written a complete, uncritical joy in their new possession. It was obvious that they loved an excuse for playing their gramophone.

“It’s almost as good as real, isn’t it?” said Dolly.

Even Gerald, who hated gramophones, had to admit that this was the least offensive that he had ever heard.

“Now we’ll have the ‘Chaconne,’” breathed James.

He had stopped smiling and a slight quiver ran all through his large body. The others fell silent and in the hush of the small room Agatha felt an instant’s pang of unreasoned fear of him. He fetched the record and put it into place with the soft, mysterious gestures of a priest at the altar.

Dolly and Agatha listened with the religious expression of women who are making a genuine effort of intelligence. Dolly plaited her cotton skirt into creased folds between a work-stained thumb and finger. Agatha sat very still. Everything in the little parlour was like a dream, unsubstantial as the thick yellow splashes of sunlight which dappled the geraniums in the window and fell in sleepy pools on the carpet. In the middle of its warm illusion the motionless solidity of James seemed to melt, his brooding impassivity to shiver and break, until the vibrant air was alive with his thoughts. As for Gerald, he was a thin flame burning somewhere in the shadows of the room.

When the concert was over James was instructed to take Mr. Blair out to the bench by the porch for a smoke. Dolly and Agatha retired upstairs to the privacy of the conjugal bedroom, where Jimmy got his tea and Agatha powdered her nose. The two women lingered some time, discussing the technical side of the child’s arrival.

“I was laid up longer than the other two times,” said Dolly. “I wasn’t back to work not inside three weeks. I don’t know what Auntie wouldn’t have said to me. She’s always on to me for turning into a lady. Mrs. Hickman, the woman that came in to do for me, was a low sort of person. The dirt! You’d be surprised; just in that little time! ‘Well,’ I said, when I came down, ‘the first thing I do is to have a good clean round.’ I was glad James was away at Braxhall most of the time doing those frescoes. It would have been very uncomfortable for him, not getting his meals nice like he’s used to.”

“Have you seen the frescoes, Dolly?”

“No, I haven’t! Not yet! And between you and I, Agatha, I’m worried about them. He’s so funny. To begin with he was quite all right, just like he always is over his things, you know. Quite taken up with them. But then Sir Thomas kept writing and going on at him, saying they wanted stained-glass windows, and this and the other, and I don’t know what all, until he got quite disgusted. And I got afraid, really I did! For you know he’s dreadful when he does lose his temper, which isn’t often, thank goodness!”

“I rather gathered that the Bragges had been a little trying.”

“That’s right. And it isn’t only this. That Cynthia you know, well I suppose I shouldn’t talk back at her as she’s James’s sister, but first and last she’s been very nasty to us. Very nasty she’s been, just in little ways. But she was never kind to James: he hasn’t told me the half, I’m sure, but he remembers it all. He remembers too much, as I often tell him. Because most of it happened when they was only children, and I don’t like holding things up against people. It’s not Christian. Quiet now, Jimmy, you greedy boy! You’ve had quite enough for one while.”

“Let me have him for a bit.”

Agatha took the child while Dolly buttoned up her frock and put a few pins into her hair. The room was very small and almost filled by the double bed and the baby’s cradle squeezed against the wall. James’s Sunday clothes, newly brushed, hung over the foot rail of the bed, and Dolly now folded them neatly and put them away in the bottom drawer of a little wardrobe. Agatha tried to imagine herself and John submitting to the enforced propinquities of such a marriage chamber and felt dismayed at the idea. It showed her how slender was the bond between them. Their union would have been quite unendurable if they had been forced to live as Dolly and James lived, as the majority of the human race have to live, without the means for privacy.

Her mood of the moment was such that she was inclined to view her own advantages over Dolly in the light of a calamity. She envied a simplicity of existence which, at another time, might have struck her as wanting in refinement. Seeing all things from her cousin’s standpoint, and exaggerating, if possible, his distrust of those civilized amenities which depend upon a large income, she found the Bramfield household an admirable institution. She saw in the undecorated austerity before her a symbol of that marriage which endures against accident, against shock and change, because illusion has no part in its foundation. Such a companionship she had once desired for herself: she believed that it would mitigate the unbearable solitude of her spirit. But she and John could never compass it. She had forfeited such hopes for ever and ever when she became his wife.

“Do you know that a million married people are now living apart?” she asked Dolly suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“A million married people are at this moment living apart in England alone. And, dear knows how many more don’t want to.”

“Well, I never!” Dolly was shocked. “Is that really true? Isn’t it awful? The papers is full of these divorces nowadays.”

“What’s the cause of it all, do you think? Why are there so many more unhappy marriages than there used to be?”

“I don’t think there are any more than there used to be, I don’t. Only people won’t put up with things, not like they used to. It’s the same all round. Look at the way people used to have to work before there was any Unions. Twelve hours a day, even for little children! It was awful! Auntie used to tell me about when her mother was a young woman, away up in Leeds; and you couldn’t believe that such things could have happened. People must have taken things a sight more quietly than they do now.”

“Then you think there were always unhappy marriages, but people didn’t rebel against them.”

“Yes, I think so. My mother! When I think of what she had to bear! No woman wouldn’t stand it nowadays.”

“But isn’t it a good thing, don’t you think? Why should people endure misery if they can escape from it? When a person rebels, it’s progress really.”

“Well, I don’t know, Agatha. I see what you mean and I’m sure you are right in a way. Only I get thinking sometimes. . . . It seems a pity. . . . Sort of like this. The way we go on now, people act silly and then find out new ways so as not to suffer for it. They don’t study not to be silly. That isn’t going to make the world any better, not in the long run.”

“But is anything likely to make the world better in the long run?”

“Godly living will,” said Dolly firmly, “and nothing will do instead of that, not if it’s ever so.”

“Oh, Dolly! But what is godly living?”

“I should have thought you’d know that as well as I do. It’s obeying what our conscience tells us.”

“But if you’ve made a mistake so that you can’t—you can’t—if you have got yourself all into the wrong atmosphere. . . . What I mean is, you can’t be godly or anything else genuine if you are absolutely out of harmony with your life. Listen! Suppose a woman was married to a man who wasn’t unkind or unfaithful or anything, but she just found she didn’t love him, and felt that her life with him was absolutely at variance with her conscience—and—and there was another man—whom she ought to have married, who had the same ideals, with whom she could lead a better life? Which do you think she ought to do, stay with her husband, or go to this other man?”

“I wouldn’t like to say,” said Dolly, looking embarrassed. “How d’you mean, lead a better life?”

“Well, if the other man had—say, a religion that she believed in and that her husband couldn’t ever, ever understand. After all, it says in the Bible ‘leave all and follow Me.’ I don’t want to be blasphemous, but couldn’t it be a sort of—call?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. I never heard of any one getting a call that way, though I’ve heard plenty of people telling about their religious experiences.”

“But it might be.”

“Well, I suppose it might. Only it seems a funny idea. I think anybody’d have a hard job to persuade themselves that it was right. Why, supposing she had little children to care for?”

“Oh—I mean a woman without children.”

“Did you? But then there’d be her husband. What would he do? He’d have to get another woman to look after him most likely. And she wouldn’t be his wife, not unless he had enough money to divorce the first one. And then they’d be living in sin.”

“I—meant—fairly well off people, who could afford divorce.”

“Oh, I see,” cried Dolly, enlightened. “You mean a lady, not any sort of woman?”

“Y—yes. I suppose I do naturally think of a lady when I think of an imaginary case.”

“Well, you see, I naturally don’t.”

“Is there so much difference?” said Agatha wonderingly. “But if it was any woman, Dolly? Would you condemn her if she left her husband and went to a man she loved better?”

“I couldn’t say unless I knew her. I would if I thought she was light. But it isn’t only that kind that do such things.”

Through the window the smell of lilies was blown in from the garden and the voices of Gerald and James murmured on in intermittent conversation. The noise of the car in the lane reminded Agatha that she must get home early. She began to tie her veils.

On the way home she said to Gerald:

“Dolly thinks that our much-vaunted civilization is too much occupied with palliatives. She’s very strong upon the folly of substitutes for godly living, as she calls it. She thinks we concern ourselves too much with averting the consequences of our own acts instead of eradicating folly and vice themselves.”

“Dolly’s views,” said he, “are so sound that they are apt to be a little obvious. What desperate remedy was she referring to in particular?”

“It was divorce,” said Agatha, after a moment’s pause. “We were discussing unhappy marriages and whether there were more now than formerly.”

Gerald looked straight in front of him and said in a detached, discursive tone:

“Nobody but the parties themselves can say what constitutes a happy or an unhappy marriage. Evils which to one section of society, or one generation, seem quite unbearable are beside the point to another. I remember seeing that so strongly once when I was reading some letters written by an old boy in the seventeenth century (I rather think it was Halifax) to his daughter. He was obviously devoted to her; and his advice about bearing ill-treatment from a husband comes as something of a shock. I don’t think it referred to any special husband: I mean I don’t think she was even grown up at the time. It was just on general principle. He counsels the child as to the best way to endure brutality, drunkenness, and flagrant infidelity as if they were inevitable, as they probably were in those days. But he was a sane man, and very fond of the girl, and one gets the impression that he quite expected her to be happy and prosperous, as I’ve no doubt she was.”

“It’s very odd,” said Agatha. “I suppose it all depends upon what one expects to get. In a way marriages of convenience must be much more likely to be happy than marriages for love, because they are based on less extravagant expectations. Either way, it’s a toss up.”

“It’s ultimately based, I fancy, upon the question of common ideals; unity of outlook. Whether the pair concerned have the same conception of their environment, the same purpose in life. The usual considerations determining a love match don’t necessarily ensure that, any more than would the business propositions behind a marriage of convenience. Look at our present host and hostess! They are, to me, as good an example of a happy marriage in one way as Dolly and James are in another. I can imagine either making another partner miserable. But together they are complete, and Braxhall is a wonderful expression of their joint outlook.”

Agatha was silent, her mind busy with unspoken applications. She was dismayed by the unconcealed bitterness of his tone toward Braxhall for she felt that Lyndon fell under the same condemnation. The Bragges merely proclaimed blatantly an ideal of life which, in her own household, was discreetly and beautifully intimated. So, in the light of their earlier encounters, did she interpret all his scornful remarks. But she did him an injustice. He was long past criticizing anything that was hers.

He changed the subject, feeling, with an obscure sense of self-preservation, that matrimony, happy or otherwise, was no safe topic for himself and Agatha. He said that he was intrigued by James and the frescoes.

“I don’t understand him. There must be something behind it which nobody can have understood. He spoke in such an odd way when I was sitting in the garden with him. I shall go and have a look at the things as soon as I get back.”

“What did he say?”

“He seemed almost apologetic about them. And yet defiant. He said that he considered they were as good work as ever he’d done, and that Sir Thomas could always whitewash the wall if he didn’t like it, but that he, James, wouldn’t alter them for anybody.”

“Of course, they are all rather—bacchanalian, but I don’t think the Bragges seem to mind.”

The car swung into the long road leading up to Braxhall valley. Beside them the stream wound through the fields, and “Bragge’s Barracks” frowned upon them from the heights. Agatha realized with a pang that her afternoon of happiness and freedom was nearly over; she was returning to a prison, and would soon be plunged afresh into that abyss of irritation, suspicion, veiled criticism, secret conclaves, tactful hints, and plain speaking. The clarity of mood, the singleness of mind, which she could only achieve in Gerald’s company must inevitably be shattered. She had looked forward to taking him to Bramfield; she knew that he would like Dolly and James, and she revelled in the sense of companionship, of comprehension, which had been theirs since childhood. In her exaltation she could believe that they were both entire strangers to Braxhall, travellers from another world, gayer, simpler and more vital.

Anxious to prolong her reprieve, she suggested that they should walk up through the gardens.

“We can cross by the footbridge,” she said, “and send the car up by the road. There is plenty of time. It’s not six yet.”

He acquiesced and they stopped the car. A steep stile took them into a square field peppered with mushrooms. Gerald, the glare of the collector in his eye, immediately began to pick these, swearing mildly at deceptive puff-balls. She watched him, still possessed by the conviction, common to all lovers, that she had discovered the secret of the universe. Her amusement was tender and beguiling.

“You are one of those people who can’t pass a mushroom. I know! My mother is like that. She will walk ten miles carrying one.”

“Still,” he protested, “even one is nice in a stew.”

“They will be excellent in our hash to-night, I’ve no doubt. What will you do with them? Which chef will you give them to?”

“It’s sheer waste to leave them.”

They crossed the little footbridge into the garden. Gerald held his hat full of mushrooms in both hands, very carefully, like a chalice. The silence and the sun absorbed and enfolded them; the extreme degree of isolation in which they walked was intensified by the fact that they were visible from every window on the south side of Braxhall. They ascended toward that observant, many-eyed façade as adventurers approach a hostile stronghold.

Slower and slower grew their pace as they mounted from terrace to terrace; longer each pause as they turned to look down the valley. Nothing stirred in the picture below them; not a cow or a sheep moved in the unbroken green of the fields, and the heavy foliage on the opposite hillside was as massive, in the strong sunlight, as a tapestried picture.

“How warm and tame these woods look!” said Agatha suddenly. “You would never think that at night they are full of lost souls.”

“Oh, those owls! Did you hear them?”

“They went on all night. They were worst about half-past two.”

“I know.”