CHAPTER XVIII.SHEopened the wide door into a hall which blazed with a yellow carpet and led the way into a room which was lighted with a shaded reading-lamp. The room instantly appealed to Pamela with a sense of dear familiarity. It was filled with furniture and china from the Buttery.“Sit down. It is Mrs. Nick Hone’s chair. She used to stand her washing-tub on it; Tim says it is worth five pounds.”A little fire burned in the grate although it was a summer night. On the bare table of brown oak was a tray set with tea things.“I always like a cup of tea when I come home from a party; it makes me sleep. I’ll get another cup. You remember Mrs. Silas Daborn’s corner cupboard?” She opened it and brought out the china.Pamela looked about her hungrily, silently, at the familiar dumb things which seemed alive that night: warm, vital things that knew her. The hideous china figures on the shelves grinned affably—at a former neighbor.“You must drink this hot.”Pamela began to cry again as the cup was held to her mouth.“Ssh. No. Drink the tea. Tell me everything and have a big cry afterward.”She drank obediently, draining the cup. Then she said in a heartfelt, passionate way, as if she were an ardent convert to a new belief:“There is nothing like another woman when one is miserable.”“Nothing. Men are excellent—when we are happy. At other times they bully us—with the best intentions—putting all our emotions down to hysteria.”“Men are never excellent at any time. They have brought me misery. You pay for one moment of delight with a day of anguish.”“This tray,” said Barbara Clutton, evidently thinking it politic to turn the conversation, “was Mrs. Bert Hone’s. You were with me when I bought it. Do you remember how deaf she was, and how the old man swore—most picturesque swears! Do you remember what I said that day about your brother Edred? How is he?”Pamela started up at the name.“I must tell you everything,” she cried energetically. “It isn’t fair to sit here, to stay in your house without telling you everything.”She told it all without another moment of hesitation: told every little thing. She didn’t care how her story would be received. She relentlessly dissected all her emotions—however unworthy. She detailed all her experiences—however unsavory. It was a relief to be absolutely frank at last, to have no concealment whatever from at least one person. It was a very long story; she touched it up almost lovingly. The night wore away. She drainedherself of all the bitterness, all the delight and shame and misery of three years.The fire died out. Hushed sounds in the streets beyond the smugly drawn curtains, a cold, dull light breaking through a chink and marking the wall, were suggestive. Barbara Clutton, who had listened without one word of comment, started to her feet and dragged back the curtains.It was broad daylight in the streets outside. She put her arm around Pamela’s shoulders, with a gesture much more eloquently tender and sympathetic than a torrent of words would have been, and drew her to the window.“Did you ever see such an exquisite flush of pink?” she said, pointing to the sky. “I’ll open the window. There! Such air on one’s cheeks, in one’s thick eyes. We ought to go for a walk while the world is empty.”“I wonder what it is like at this moment at Folly Corner, in my garden,” Pamela said abstractedly.“Ah! Folly Corner. What a garden, what a dim old house, packed with ghosts, guilt, dead dreams, and delights! What a collection of furniture; I’d like Tim to see it. And you put all that behind you for a tinsel thing. My poor Pamela! But then you are a woman. Let us talk over your plans. You’ve got to finish your life—that is a piece of work we are not allowed to throw aside. Let us make plans.”“I haven’t any—only desires,” Pamela returned in a shamefaced way.“Desires! Are you thinking of Jethro? Thedawn, the quiet has brought it all back—Folly Corner.”“That is past—impossible. I was thinking of Edred. I had better go back. You see, he didn’t mean to shame me. He didn’t know that she was alive all the time. He is a victim of circumstances. He needs pity. I’ll go back. I’ll say nothing about it. That will be the best. You don’t know how fond I am of him! It is terrible; it frightens me sometimes. Nothing kills it—not even last night; not even the bruises on my body. I’ll go back. You must forget to-night. I’m not a fit person for you—or any nice woman—to know.”A tinge of cold disgust came into Mrs. Clutton’s dark eyes.“I won’t wrong you by believing that you’re serious,” she said at last, with some distaste—with a great deal more seriousness than she usually allowed herself. “Go back! It would be immoral, horrible. You can’t do it. You can’t possibly mean what you say. We won’t mention him again. You must stay here; things will arrange themselves—they always do.”“But Mr. Clutton?”“Tim. He has gone abroad as war correspondent. It is as well. We quarrel if we are together too long, or we grow apathetic, which is worse. I’d rather have isolated episodes of rapture than a matter-of-fact, unbroken affection. I could never endure the kind of husband who calls you ‘my dear,’ who draws you a check without grumbling, who politely wishes you good-morning when you meetat the breakfast table and asks anxiously if you are sure his shirts are aired.“We are happy, prosperous. Tim makes money, although brains, as a rule, are a positive hindrance to worldly success. We know lots of clever people. To them I am only Tim’s wife: I used to hope that he would be only my husband. We rush through society; he the kite, I the tail. I used to think I was clever—I’m merely voluble. I can’t even succeed in being positively stupid: in a brilliant age like this it’s a distinction to be unmistakably stupid. Nancy has been up to stay with me. I took her about. She made a tremendous sensation—with her complexion, her red locks, her gift of silence. People said she had an air, was uncommonly clever. She is going to be married to Mr. Minns, the Liddleshorn curate. And some people say that Mr. Jayne is to be married too—they talk of Maria Furlonger. Isabel Crisp has married that prig Egbert Turle. He has bought old Dr. Smith’s practice at Liddleshorn. Mrs. Turle—she came up with Nancy—says that old Gainah is wonderfully active, more active than ever. Why! You are nearly asleep. We’ll go upstairs. There is a room ready. Annie Jayne was to have spent the night here on Monday. She has at last decided to have false teeth—greatly against her will: her mother had only six stumps in her head when she died. But the baby—there’s another since your time—had an attack of rose rash, whatever that may be. It sounds pretty.”She led the way upstairs softly. The house was most luxurious, and the tail of her gown, as sheswept it over the thick carpets, was like a molten stream of silver.Pamela fell asleep in a mahogany bed draped with some wonderful fabric full of color and of bold design. When she woke the sun was fierce in the room. Her limbs felt stiff and her head muddled. She started up on her elbow, looking wildly round for her own possessions—the big toilet table, the winged, ugly wardrobe with the long glass. Her tea-gown, all frilled and limp and pale on a chair by the bed, was eloquent. It brought back the nightmare: the person in brown; Sutton, with his atrocious proposal and disclosure; the long walk, the meeting with her hostess. She looked over the side of the bed. Her slippers were kicked off, soles upward. There was a round hole in one, the other had broken away at the side. Her black silk stockings, lying near, had holes, too. She fell back despairingly on the square pillow, its frill tickling her cheeks. Where was the use of waking?The door opened, and Barbara Clutton stole in. When she saw that her guest was awake she sat down on the edge of the bed. Then, as Pamela, like a child, lifted her face, she jumped up and kissed her gravely between the widely set, melancholy eyes.“I was always fond of you,” she said, going back to the foot of the bed. “I always suspected you of drama. I’ve a plan. You must stay here—it will be a charity to me. When Tim comes home—we’ll see! I shan’t want you then.” She made a little frank grimace. “When Tim comes home I want no one—until the first rapture of reunion wears off.We are like a couple of very juvenile lovers—but we don’t keep up the strain for long. He won’t return for a couple of months at the very least. We can have a splendid time, you and I together. There is only one thing I must insist on—one thing.” The disgustful expression of the night before momentarily hardened her laughing face. “You must vow, by something solemn—what binding instrument can we get for you to kiss or swear by? There is really nothing but a back glass—which is frivolous—and a poker, which is threatening. Give me your bare word. Promise not to attempt to see that man; not to degrade me by going back, by writing. You mustn’t even speak of him. It’s all terrible tragedy to you; to me it is merely a disgraceful, unavoidable episode. The woman in brown transforms the situation. I’m more sorry for her than for you; we can’t help our respectable prejudices. He is never to be mentioned. We’ll put away, if you please, the very tea-gown which he has touched. I’ve brought you a coat and skirt—a pale blue skirt which ought to suit you beautifully. Is it all settled?”“All!” Pamela returned with promptitude. “I vow. I am only too grateful to be saved—from myself.”In that quick way—natural to Barbara Clutton—they decided it. Pamela fell obediently into the life at Beaufort Street. It was almost conventual. Day after day she rose from her bed, looked at the mourning band of river and despaired. She was cut off from London; it was part of the compact thatshe was not to go beyond the Chelsea end of Sloane Street. She shopped in King’s Road. Sometimes she walked out to Fulham, or penetrated farther still, to a lonely green, belted with red and yellow houses. The omnibuses pulled up there. She used to stare at them wistfully, and think of Wormwood Scrubbs and the old, dead days of anguish.Furtively she bought newspapers and read them with a hungry eye. She read everything which might hold a trail of Edred. She bought City papers, made her head ache by puzzling over market quotations. She read accounts of frauds, read all the criminal news. She read the lists of bankrupts, read death notices, advertisements. She never saw his name. It seemed suddenly sponged from all the places which had formerly placarded it.She beat against the bars of that house by the river. She wasn’t happy; neither she nor Barbara was happy after the first glow of novelty wore off. They weren’t of the mold to be completely satisfied with the companionship of their own sex.Summer died; leaves, whirled by October gales, swept the Embankment. Pamela was lonely, bored. She had fancied that the society of clever people—people with the public certificate of cleverness—would be invigorating. But the distinguished people who came to Beaufort Street were stupid; they seemed to go out of their way to be commonplace.“Conversational brilliance is out of fashion,” Barbara said flippantly.Pamela was tired of Barbara Clutton, tired of her volubility, her pettishness, her whims. She wasvery grateful to her, she liked her very much, of course—she was sick to death of her.How would it end? She studied the newspapers, for other than sentimental reasons: she looked for a situation. That would be the end—a situation. They would never take her back at the boarding-house in Bloomsbury; Edred’s history, and her connection with him, was too notorious. But there were other boarding-houses. She would go back to the old life—that would be the end. She would help carve, talk smoothly on safe, commonplace subjects at the dinner-table.She knew the life. She remembered; and it turned her sick. A woman in subservience was only half a woman. But that was to be the end. She was to finish as she had begun. Perhaps, by years of saving, she might be able to start a boarding-house of her own. Perhaps Jethro would help her to do so, if Maria would permit him.The boarding-house! She remembered the narrow hall, where the dinner always hung on the close air; remembered the shabby manservant, the guests. They had mostly been women, those boarders: old maids who called each other “dear,” “darling,” “sweet one,” and gathered by twos into corners of the big, shabby drawing-room to tear each other to shreds. They were fussy old women, susceptible to draught, and given to wearing ragged fur tippets in the house when an east wind was blowing. She knew—and shuddered. But it was the only thing left.Her thoughts flew to Folly Corner, and then toEdred. She would remind herself reproachfully that she had not once thought of him that day. She wanted to forget him; she tried to forget, and yet she reproached herself because she was beginning to succeed. She must forget—it wasn’t respectable to remember. Barbara Clutton was always impressing that on her.“I like,” she said one day, in explanation of her gospel, “to be a very respectable woman; an icily virtuous one—but yet to give the impression of being dangerous.”Pamela had left off laughing at her oddities—she had left off laughing at anything. She was cultivating the prim, half-formed manner of a spinster well over thirty. She grew fussy over trifles, became morbidly afraid of taking cold, studied her health, her diet. She gratuitously spied over the servants, seeing an embryo burglar in every tradesman’s boy, running her fingers along ledges for dust, measuring the contents of the dishes with suspicious eyes.“I want to be of some use,” she said, in extenuation. “I’ve had great experience in housekeeping.”“Housekeeping!” Her hostess shrugged. “A calling artfully created by hopelessly lazy women as a blind. My dear girl, no busy woman keeps house; it’s a terrible confession of idleness. Suppose Cookdoesgive away the dripping—why should I waste nervous energy in attempting to stop her? The dripping isn’t worth it. If they refuse to burn small cinders in the kitchen range—what matters? Figure out for yourself—I can’t—the cost of a tonof coal, and see how much Tim loses in the year. He pays—and it can’t be more than a box of cigars.”Pamela said nothing. She retired to her room and her newspapers. She looked up from the lines of advertisements, and out at the gliding river. She thought of Folly Corner, of Jethro, in all his picturesque environment. And then she dragged herself back to thoughts of Edred; it was becoming an effort to remember him. She thought she would set aside half-an-hour every day for remembrance—as if he were some tenderly-loved dead person. She became afraid of herself. She was hopelessly fickle, of light behaviour. She was incapable of any lasting regard. She loved him. She loved him. But the words had become parrot-like—they no longer tore her heart to say them. She was forgetting him—the very thing she had once struggled in vain to do. She was becoming indifferent: the attitude she had once prayed and struggled for. And yet she wasn’t happy.Tim precipitated things. He send his wife a telegram, saying that he was on his way home. Would she care to join him in Paris for a week?“It needn’t make any difference to you, dear,” the excited little woman said, as her cab stood at the open door, and her wraps were carried down the path by a lilac-gowned maid, whose streaming cap-ends whirled about on the rude November wind.She kissed Pamela remorsefully, conscious that she had been malicious now and then.“It’s difficult for two women to live together without fighting, isn’t it?” she said ingenuously.“I wonder how they manage in a nunnery! A novel from the inside of a nunnery would cause a sensation. I’ll commend it to Tim. He’s quite clever enough to pass as a nun—but it wouldn’t satisfy my unquenchable sense of propriety. I’ve been very horrid to you now and then; but when Tim comes—we shall only stay in Paris ten days at the outside—he will keep us in order. Of course, his coming won’t make any difference,” she added, with obviously forced hospitality.“I shall get a situation,” Pamela said, in the inert way which had become habitual. “Good-by”—they kissed again. “I’ll look after the maids. You’ll never be able to keep that between-girl. She’s hopeless.”The other shrugged and ran out in the wind to the cab. It drove off, the maid came in, the door shut, an unusual silence settled over the house. Pamela went into the dining-room and sat by the window, not even a newspaper in her hand. She felt more lonely, more unwanted than she had ever felt at any moment in her varied life. Barbara had been in such a frenzy to get to her husband that she hadn’t given her a thought—hadn’t even asked her, as a matter of form, to see her off at the railway station.She lunched alone and meagerly. After lunch she sat by the dining-room window until tea came in. The maid set the tray down with a bang and moved across to the door flouncing her black skirts.Pamela set her mouth grimly. She knew the ways of servants; they had decided, in the absenceof their mistress, to give her a rough time. But she was equal to any servant. She amused herself by scheming out an elaborate house-cleaning—and then abandoned it wearily because the house wasn’t hers. She went to bed almost directly she had eaten her dinner. She was awake all night, lying flat and long in the bed, her eyes open, her thoughts forced to consideration of Edred. What was he doing? She didn’t feel much curiosity. His tenderness didn’t make her heart throb. His brutalities no longer made it blaze and ache.It had really come—indifference: a body, a soul of stone. She turned on the pillow and cried from sheer loneliness.It rained next morning. Rain—a high fog! The most miserable morning imaginable. She had her breakfast in the little room at the back of the house, with a French window leading to the long, suburban garden. She didn’t know why she turned the hasp of that window and stepped out under the gloomy sky, into the dreary rain.It was a very uninteresting garden; a ghastly, heart-breaking travesty of a garden. The limp creeper on the blackened wall smutted her hand when she touched it. The narrow borders were bare and smut-laden. From the top of the wall a lean, gray cat looked at her with a sinister mournfulness in its yellow eyes. The fog was in her eyes and down her throat, the rain fell coldly on her bare head. Peals of coarse, hearty laughter rang up from the kitchen, where the maids were rompingwith the man who came every morning to fill the scuttles and clean the boots. The gray cat stole along the wall.She turned back to the window, not knowing why she came into the garden, not knowing what to do with this sad day. There was a rockery near the French window—the usual rockery, rich in clinkers. But some blue thing stared up into the brown air boldly. She uttered a sudden glad cry and stooped, letting her skirt brush the wet gravel. It was a delicate blue periwinkle. There was a patch of blue periwinkle at Folly Corner, just by the granary. Periwinkle! What nonsense was it that Gainah told her about periwinkle? Ah, yes! If a man and his wife eat the leaves they will ever be faithful each to the other. The blue flower with its trail of glistening leaves was in her hand. She bit one leaf, laughing—yet more a sob than a laugh—as she did it. She would never be Jethro’s wife—nor any man’s. She was a tainted thing.She stared at the flower, a long, thoughtful stare. Then she laughed again and clapped her hands—the heavy, blinding tears in her eyes. The world was to her one wide delicate flower of cold blue. She went through the window, laid the trail on the table, looked at it questioningly. Once she said to it, “Shall I? Dare I?” Then, with a clumsy movement, she dragged herself up, hurried to the door, went up the stairs two at a time.The maids were making her bed. She said abruptly:“I am going away—a visit. I may be back to-night—I cannot say. You’ll see to everything just as if Mrs. Clutton and I were at home.”They left her alone. She put on her things and went out of the house. She didn’t leave a note for Barbara; she didn’t take any luggage; she didn’t look at the house with any feeling—no lingering glance of farewell. Her strip of needlework was hanging out of the basket. She didn’t trouble to put it in. She might be back to-night. It was extremely likely that she would be back. Of course she would. She was a fool, an impudent, optimistic fool to go at all. She would be back. She nearly rang the bell to order dinner at the usual time. She kept assuring herself that night would find her again in London—shuddering at every assurance. She knew very well that this journey was her last throw. She knew very well that this journey was to decide everything. Jethro might be married. He might be, if not already married, committed to some nice, pure, faithful girl. Was she the sort of woman to be introduced to a girl of that tepid, blameless description? The contempt for mere unimpassioned, untempted virtue curled her lip.He might be contemptuous, hard. He might be brutal; he could be bitterly, uncompromisingly brutal when he chose. He had the reputation of being a hard man—all the Jaynes had.She could imagine him saying very coolly some damning, insulting thing. She could see his ruddy patrician face as he said it, could see the relentless glint in his cold blue eyes. Eyes a couple of shadespaler than the periwinkle; she crushed it in her hand.She took her ticket; was fortunate enough to catch a quick train—there were very few in the day to such an out-of-the-way place. She was quite alone in the carriage. She watched the landscape eagerly; watched the foul fog rise as they left London; watched the slow development of a dazzling autumn day.
SHEopened the wide door into a hall which blazed with a yellow carpet and led the way into a room which was lighted with a shaded reading-lamp. The room instantly appealed to Pamela with a sense of dear familiarity. It was filled with furniture and china from the Buttery.
“Sit down. It is Mrs. Nick Hone’s chair. She used to stand her washing-tub on it; Tim says it is worth five pounds.”
A little fire burned in the grate although it was a summer night. On the bare table of brown oak was a tray set with tea things.
“I always like a cup of tea when I come home from a party; it makes me sleep. I’ll get another cup. You remember Mrs. Silas Daborn’s corner cupboard?” She opened it and brought out the china.
Pamela looked about her hungrily, silently, at the familiar dumb things which seemed alive that night: warm, vital things that knew her. The hideous china figures on the shelves grinned affably—at a former neighbor.
“You must drink this hot.”
Pamela began to cry again as the cup was held to her mouth.
“Ssh. No. Drink the tea. Tell me everything and have a big cry afterward.”
She drank obediently, draining the cup. Then she said in a heartfelt, passionate way, as if she were an ardent convert to a new belief:
“There is nothing like another woman when one is miserable.”
“Nothing. Men are excellent—when we are happy. At other times they bully us—with the best intentions—putting all our emotions down to hysteria.”
“Men are never excellent at any time. They have brought me misery. You pay for one moment of delight with a day of anguish.”
“This tray,” said Barbara Clutton, evidently thinking it politic to turn the conversation, “was Mrs. Bert Hone’s. You were with me when I bought it. Do you remember how deaf she was, and how the old man swore—most picturesque swears! Do you remember what I said that day about your brother Edred? How is he?”
Pamela started up at the name.
“I must tell you everything,” she cried energetically. “It isn’t fair to sit here, to stay in your house without telling you everything.”
She told it all without another moment of hesitation: told every little thing. She didn’t care how her story would be received. She relentlessly dissected all her emotions—however unworthy. She detailed all her experiences—however unsavory. It was a relief to be absolutely frank at last, to have no concealment whatever from at least one person. It was a very long story; she touched it up almost lovingly. The night wore away. She drainedherself of all the bitterness, all the delight and shame and misery of three years.
The fire died out. Hushed sounds in the streets beyond the smugly drawn curtains, a cold, dull light breaking through a chink and marking the wall, were suggestive. Barbara Clutton, who had listened without one word of comment, started to her feet and dragged back the curtains.
It was broad daylight in the streets outside. She put her arm around Pamela’s shoulders, with a gesture much more eloquently tender and sympathetic than a torrent of words would have been, and drew her to the window.
“Did you ever see such an exquisite flush of pink?” she said, pointing to the sky. “I’ll open the window. There! Such air on one’s cheeks, in one’s thick eyes. We ought to go for a walk while the world is empty.”
“I wonder what it is like at this moment at Folly Corner, in my garden,” Pamela said abstractedly.
“Ah! Folly Corner. What a garden, what a dim old house, packed with ghosts, guilt, dead dreams, and delights! What a collection of furniture; I’d like Tim to see it. And you put all that behind you for a tinsel thing. My poor Pamela! But then you are a woman. Let us talk over your plans. You’ve got to finish your life—that is a piece of work we are not allowed to throw aside. Let us make plans.”
“I haven’t any—only desires,” Pamela returned in a shamefaced way.
“Desires! Are you thinking of Jethro? Thedawn, the quiet has brought it all back—Folly Corner.”
“That is past—impossible. I was thinking of Edred. I had better go back. You see, he didn’t mean to shame me. He didn’t know that she was alive all the time. He is a victim of circumstances. He needs pity. I’ll go back. I’ll say nothing about it. That will be the best. You don’t know how fond I am of him! It is terrible; it frightens me sometimes. Nothing kills it—not even last night; not even the bruises on my body. I’ll go back. You must forget to-night. I’m not a fit person for you—or any nice woman—to know.”
A tinge of cold disgust came into Mrs. Clutton’s dark eyes.
“I won’t wrong you by believing that you’re serious,” she said at last, with some distaste—with a great deal more seriousness than she usually allowed herself. “Go back! It would be immoral, horrible. You can’t do it. You can’t possibly mean what you say. We won’t mention him again. You must stay here; things will arrange themselves—they always do.”
“But Mr. Clutton?”
“Tim. He has gone abroad as war correspondent. It is as well. We quarrel if we are together too long, or we grow apathetic, which is worse. I’d rather have isolated episodes of rapture than a matter-of-fact, unbroken affection. I could never endure the kind of husband who calls you ‘my dear,’ who draws you a check without grumbling, who politely wishes you good-morning when you meetat the breakfast table and asks anxiously if you are sure his shirts are aired.
“We are happy, prosperous. Tim makes money, although brains, as a rule, are a positive hindrance to worldly success. We know lots of clever people. To them I am only Tim’s wife: I used to hope that he would be only my husband. We rush through society; he the kite, I the tail. I used to think I was clever—I’m merely voluble. I can’t even succeed in being positively stupid: in a brilliant age like this it’s a distinction to be unmistakably stupid. Nancy has been up to stay with me. I took her about. She made a tremendous sensation—with her complexion, her red locks, her gift of silence. People said she had an air, was uncommonly clever. She is going to be married to Mr. Minns, the Liddleshorn curate. And some people say that Mr. Jayne is to be married too—they talk of Maria Furlonger. Isabel Crisp has married that prig Egbert Turle. He has bought old Dr. Smith’s practice at Liddleshorn. Mrs. Turle—she came up with Nancy—says that old Gainah is wonderfully active, more active than ever. Why! You are nearly asleep. We’ll go upstairs. There is a room ready. Annie Jayne was to have spent the night here on Monday. She has at last decided to have false teeth—greatly against her will: her mother had only six stumps in her head when she died. But the baby—there’s another since your time—had an attack of rose rash, whatever that may be. It sounds pretty.”
She led the way upstairs softly. The house was most luxurious, and the tail of her gown, as sheswept it over the thick carpets, was like a molten stream of silver.
Pamela fell asleep in a mahogany bed draped with some wonderful fabric full of color and of bold design. When she woke the sun was fierce in the room. Her limbs felt stiff and her head muddled. She started up on her elbow, looking wildly round for her own possessions—the big toilet table, the winged, ugly wardrobe with the long glass. Her tea-gown, all frilled and limp and pale on a chair by the bed, was eloquent. It brought back the nightmare: the person in brown; Sutton, with his atrocious proposal and disclosure; the long walk, the meeting with her hostess. She looked over the side of the bed. Her slippers were kicked off, soles upward. There was a round hole in one, the other had broken away at the side. Her black silk stockings, lying near, had holes, too. She fell back despairingly on the square pillow, its frill tickling her cheeks. Where was the use of waking?
The door opened, and Barbara Clutton stole in. When she saw that her guest was awake she sat down on the edge of the bed. Then, as Pamela, like a child, lifted her face, she jumped up and kissed her gravely between the widely set, melancholy eyes.
“I was always fond of you,” she said, going back to the foot of the bed. “I always suspected you of drama. I’ve a plan. You must stay here—it will be a charity to me. When Tim comes home—we’ll see! I shan’t want you then.” She made a little frank grimace. “When Tim comes home I want no one—until the first rapture of reunion wears off.We are like a couple of very juvenile lovers—but we don’t keep up the strain for long. He won’t return for a couple of months at the very least. We can have a splendid time, you and I together. There is only one thing I must insist on—one thing.” The disgustful expression of the night before momentarily hardened her laughing face. “You must vow, by something solemn—what binding instrument can we get for you to kiss or swear by? There is really nothing but a back glass—which is frivolous—and a poker, which is threatening. Give me your bare word. Promise not to attempt to see that man; not to degrade me by going back, by writing. You mustn’t even speak of him. It’s all terrible tragedy to you; to me it is merely a disgraceful, unavoidable episode. The woman in brown transforms the situation. I’m more sorry for her than for you; we can’t help our respectable prejudices. He is never to be mentioned. We’ll put away, if you please, the very tea-gown which he has touched. I’ve brought you a coat and skirt—a pale blue skirt which ought to suit you beautifully. Is it all settled?”
“All!” Pamela returned with promptitude. “I vow. I am only too grateful to be saved—from myself.”
In that quick way—natural to Barbara Clutton—they decided it. Pamela fell obediently into the life at Beaufort Street. It was almost conventual. Day after day she rose from her bed, looked at the mourning band of river and despaired. She was cut off from London; it was part of the compact thatshe was not to go beyond the Chelsea end of Sloane Street. She shopped in King’s Road. Sometimes she walked out to Fulham, or penetrated farther still, to a lonely green, belted with red and yellow houses. The omnibuses pulled up there. She used to stare at them wistfully, and think of Wormwood Scrubbs and the old, dead days of anguish.
Furtively she bought newspapers and read them with a hungry eye. She read everything which might hold a trail of Edred. She bought City papers, made her head ache by puzzling over market quotations. She read accounts of frauds, read all the criminal news. She read the lists of bankrupts, read death notices, advertisements. She never saw his name. It seemed suddenly sponged from all the places which had formerly placarded it.
She beat against the bars of that house by the river. She wasn’t happy; neither she nor Barbara was happy after the first glow of novelty wore off. They weren’t of the mold to be completely satisfied with the companionship of their own sex.
Summer died; leaves, whirled by October gales, swept the Embankment. Pamela was lonely, bored. She had fancied that the society of clever people—people with the public certificate of cleverness—would be invigorating. But the distinguished people who came to Beaufort Street were stupid; they seemed to go out of their way to be commonplace.
“Conversational brilliance is out of fashion,” Barbara said flippantly.
Pamela was tired of Barbara Clutton, tired of her volubility, her pettishness, her whims. She wasvery grateful to her, she liked her very much, of course—she was sick to death of her.
How would it end? She studied the newspapers, for other than sentimental reasons: she looked for a situation. That would be the end—a situation. They would never take her back at the boarding-house in Bloomsbury; Edred’s history, and her connection with him, was too notorious. But there were other boarding-houses. She would go back to the old life—that would be the end. She would help carve, talk smoothly on safe, commonplace subjects at the dinner-table.
She knew the life. She remembered; and it turned her sick. A woman in subservience was only half a woman. But that was to be the end. She was to finish as she had begun. Perhaps, by years of saving, she might be able to start a boarding-house of her own. Perhaps Jethro would help her to do so, if Maria would permit him.
The boarding-house! She remembered the narrow hall, where the dinner always hung on the close air; remembered the shabby manservant, the guests. They had mostly been women, those boarders: old maids who called each other “dear,” “darling,” “sweet one,” and gathered by twos into corners of the big, shabby drawing-room to tear each other to shreds. They were fussy old women, susceptible to draught, and given to wearing ragged fur tippets in the house when an east wind was blowing. She knew—and shuddered. But it was the only thing left.
Her thoughts flew to Folly Corner, and then toEdred. She would remind herself reproachfully that she had not once thought of him that day. She wanted to forget him; she tried to forget, and yet she reproached herself because she was beginning to succeed. She must forget—it wasn’t respectable to remember. Barbara Clutton was always impressing that on her.
“I like,” she said one day, in explanation of her gospel, “to be a very respectable woman; an icily virtuous one—but yet to give the impression of being dangerous.”
Pamela had left off laughing at her oddities—she had left off laughing at anything. She was cultivating the prim, half-formed manner of a spinster well over thirty. She grew fussy over trifles, became morbidly afraid of taking cold, studied her health, her diet. She gratuitously spied over the servants, seeing an embryo burglar in every tradesman’s boy, running her fingers along ledges for dust, measuring the contents of the dishes with suspicious eyes.
“I want to be of some use,” she said, in extenuation. “I’ve had great experience in housekeeping.”
“Housekeeping!” Her hostess shrugged. “A calling artfully created by hopelessly lazy women as a blind. My dear girl, no busy woman keeps house; it’s a terrible confession of idleness. Suppose Cookdoesgive away the dripping—why should I waste nervous energy in attempting to stop her? The dripping isn’t worth it. If they refuse to burn small cinders in the kitchen range—what matters? Figure out for yourself—I can’t—the cost of a tonof coal, and see how much Tim loses in the year. He pays—and it can’t be more than a box of cigars.”
Pamela said nothing. She retired to her room and her newspapers. She looked up from the lines of advertisements, and out at the gliding river. She thought of Folly Corner, of Jethro, in all his picturesque environment. And then she dragged herself back to thoughts of Edred; it was becoming an effort to remember him. She thought she would set aside half-an-hour every day for remembrance—as if he were some tenderly-loved dead person. She became afraid of herself. She was hopelessly fickle, of light behaviour. She was incapable of any lasting regard. She loved him. She loved him. But the words had become parrot-like—they no longer tore her heart to say them. She was forgetting him—the very thing she had once struggled in vain to do. She was becoming indifferent: the attitude she had once prayed and struggled for. And yet she wasn’t happy.
Tim precipitated things. He send his wife a telegram, saying that he was on his way home. Would she care to join him in Paris for a week?
“It needn’t make any difference to you, dear,” the excited little woman said, as her cab stood at the open door, and her wraps were carried down the path by a lilac-gowned maid, whose streaming cap-ends whirled about on the rude November wind.
She kissed Pamela remorsefully, conscious that she had been malicious now and then.
“It’s difficult for two women to live together without fighting, isn’t it?” she said ingenuously.“I wonder how they manage in a nunnery! A novel from the inside of a nunnery would cause a sensation. I’ll commend it to Tim. He’s quite clever enough to pass as a nun—but it wouldn’t satisfy my unquenchable sense of propriety. I’ve been very horrid to you now and then; but when Tim comes—we shall only stay in Paris ten days at the outside—he will keep us in order. Of course, his coming won’t make any difference,” she added, with obviously forced hospitality.
“I shall get a situation,” Pamela said, in the inert way which had become habitual. “Good-by”—they kissed again. “I’ll look after the maids. You’ll never be able to keep that between-girl. She’s hopeless.”
The other shrugged and ran out in the wind to the cab. It drove off, the maid came in, the door shut, an unusual silence settled over the house. Pamela went into the dining-room and sat by the window, not even a newspaper in her hand. She felt more lonely, more unwanted than she had ever felt at any moment in her varied life. Barbara had been in such a frenzy to get to her husband that she hadn’t given her a thought—hadn’t even asked her, as a matter of form, to see her off at the railway station.
She lunched alone and meagerly. After lunch she sat by the dining-room window until tea came in. The maid set the tray down with a bang and moved across to the door flouncing her black skirts.
Pamela set her mouth grimly. She knew the ways of servants; they had decided, in the absenceof their mistress, to give her a rough time. But she was equal to any servant. She amused herself by scheming out an elaborate house-cleaning—and then abandoned it wearily because the house wasn’t hers. She went to bed almost directly she had eaten her dinner. She was awake all night, lying flat and long in the bed, her eyes open, her thoughts forced to consideration of Edred. What was he doing? She didn’t feel much curiosity. His tenderness didn’t make her heart throb. His brutalities no longer made it blaze and ache.
It had really come—indifference: a body, a soul of stone. She turned on the pillow and cried from sheer loneliness.
It rained next morning. Rain—a high fog! The most miserable morning imaginable. She had her breakfast in the little room at the back of the house, with a French window leading to the long, suburban garden. She didn’t know why she turned the hasp of that window and stepped out under the gloomy sky, into the dreary rain.
It was a very uninteresting garden; a ghastly, heart-breaking travesty of a garden. The limp creeper on the blackened wall smutted her hand when she touched it. The narrow borders were bare and smut-laden. From the top of the wall a lean, gray cat looked at her with a sinister mournfulness in its yellow eyes. The fog was in her eyes and down her throat, the rain fell coldly on her bare head. Peals of coarse, hearty laughter rang up from the kitchen, where the maids were rompingwith the man who came every morning to fill the scuttles and clean the boots. The gray cat stole along the wall.
She turned back to the window, not knowing why she came into the garden, not knowing what to do with this sad day. There was a rockery near the French window—the usual rockery, rich in clinkers. But some blue thing stared up into the brown air boldly. She uttered a sudden glad cry and stooped, letting her skirt brush the wet gravel. It was a delicate blue periwinkle. There was a patch of blue periwinkle at Folly Corner, just by the granary. Periwinkle! What nonsense was it that Gainah told her about periwinkle? Ah, yes! If a man and his wife eat the leaves they will ever be faithful each to the other. The blue flower with its trail of glistening leaves was in her hand. She bit one leaf, laughing—yet more a sob than a laugh—as she did it. She would never be Jethro’s wife—nor any man’s. She was a tainted thing.
She stared at the flower, a long, thoughtful stare. Then she laughed again and clapped her hands—the heavy, blinding tears in her eyes. The world was to her one wide delicate flower of cold blue. She went through the window, laid the trail on the table, looked at it questioningly. Once she said to it, “Shall I? Dare I?” Then, with a clumsy movement, she dragged herself up, hurried to the door, went up the stairs two at a time.
The maids were making her bed. She said abruptly:
“I am going away—a visit. I may be back to-night—I cannot say. You’ll see to everything just as if Mrs. Clutton and I were at home.”
They left her alone. She put on her things and went out of the house. She didn’t leave a note for Barbara; she didn’t take any luggage; she didn’t look at the house with any feeling—no lingering glance of farewell. Her strip of needlework was hanging out of the basket. She didn’t trouble to put it in. She might be back to-night. It was extremely likely that she would be back. Of course she would. She was a fool, an impudent, optimistic fool to go at all. She would be back. She nearly rang the bell to order dinner at the usual time. She kept assuring herself that night would find her again in London—shuddering at every assurance. She knew very well that this journey was her last throw. She knew very well that this journey was to decide everything. Jethro might be married. He might be, if not already married, committed to some nice, pure, faithful girl. Was she the sort of woman to be introduced to a girl of that tepid, blameless description? The contempt for mere unimpassioned, untempted virtue curled her lip.
He might be contemptuous, hard. He might be brutal; he could be bitterly, uncompromisingly brutal when he chose. He had the reputation of being a hard man—all the Jaynes had.
She could imagine him saying very coolly some damning, insulting thing. She could see his ruddy patrician face as he said it, could see the relentless glint in his cold blue eyes. Eyes a couple of shadespaler than the periwinkle; she crushed it in her hand.
She took her ticket; was fortunate enough to catch a quick train—there were very few in the day to such an out-of-the-way place. She was quite alone in the carriage. She watched the landscape eagerly; watched the foul fog rise as they left London; watched the slow development of a dazzling autumn day.