PART IIIFOURHOUSES
§ 1
George Alard’s death affected his brother Peter out of all proportion to his life. While George was alive, Peter had looked upon him rather impatiently as a nuisance and a humbug—a nuisance because of his attempts to thrust parochial honours on his unwilling brother, a humbug because religion was so altogether remote from Peter’s imagination that he could not credit the sincerity of any man (he was not so sure about women) who believed in it. But now that George was dead he realised that, in spite of his drawbacks, he had been a link in the Alard chain, and that link now was broken. If Peter now died childless, his heir would be Gervase—Gervase with his contempt of the Alard traditions and ungentlemanly attitude towards life. Gervase was capable of selling the whole place. It would be nothing to him if Sir Gervase Alard lived in a villa at Hastings or a flat at West Kensington, or a small-holding at his own park gates, whatever was the fancy of the moment—no, he had forgotten—it was to be a garage—“Sir Gervase Alard. Cars for hire. Taxies. Station Work.”
These considerations made him unexpectedly tender towards his sister-in-law Rose when she moved out of Leasan Parsonage into a small house she had taken in the village. Rose could not bear the thought of being cut off from Alard, of being shut out of its general councils, of being deprived of its comfortable hospitality half as daughter, half as guest. Also she saw the advantages of the great house for her children, the little girls. Her comparative poverty—for George had notleft her much—made it all the more necessary that she should prop herself against Conster. Living there under its wing, she would have a far better position than if she set up her independence in some new place where she would be only a clergyman’s widow left rather badly off.
Peter admired Rose for these tactics. She would cling to Alard, even in the certainty of being perpetually meddled with and snubbed. He lent her his car to take her and her more intimate belongings to the new house, promised her the loan of it whenever she wanted, and gave her a general invitation to Starvecrow, rather to Vera’s disquiet. He had hated Rose while his brother was alive—he had looked upon her as a busybody and an upstart—but now he loved her for her loyalty, self-interested though it was, and was sorry that she had for ever lost her chance of becoming Lady Alard.
He made one or two efforts to impress Gervase with a sense of his responsibility as heir-apparent, but was signally unsuccessful.
“My dear old chap,” said his irreverent brother—“you’ll probably have six children, all boys, so it’s cruel to raise my hopes, which are bound to be dashed before long.”
Peter looked gloomy. Gervase had hit him on a tender, anxious spot. He had now been married more than a year, and there was no sign of his hopes being fulfilled. He told himself he was an impatient fool—Jewish women were proverbially mothers of strong sons. But the very urgency of his longing made him mistrust its fulfilment—Vera was civilised out of race—she ran too much to brains. She had, to his smothered consternation, produced a small volume of poems and essays, which she had had typed and sent expectantly to a publisher. Peter was not used to women doing this sort of thing, and it alarmed him. If they did it, he could not conceive how they could also do the more ordinary and useful things that were expected of them.
His father laughed at him.
“Peter—you’re a yokel. Your conception of women is on a level with Elias’s and Lambard’s.”
“No, it isn’t, Sir—that’s just what’s the matter. I can’t feel cocksure about things most men feel cocksure about. That’s why I wish you’d realise that there’s every chance of Gervase coming into the property——”
“My dear Peter, you are the heir.”
“Yes, Sir. But if I don’t leave a son to come after me....”
“Well, I refuse to bother about what may happen forty years after I’m dead. If you live to my age—and there’s no reason you shouldn’t, as you’re a healthy man—it’ll be time to think about an heir. Gervase may be dead before that.”
“He’s almost young enough to be my son.”
“But what in God’s name do you want me to do with him? Am I to start already preparing him for his duties as Sir Gervase Alard?”
“You might keep a tighter hand on him, Sir.”
“Damn it all! Are you going to teach me how to bring up my own son?”
“No, Sir. But what I feel is that you’re not bringing him up as you brought up George and me and poor Hugh—you’re letting him go his own way. You don’t bother about him because you don’t think he’s a chance of coming into the property. And two of the three of us have got out of his way since he was sixteen.... He’s precious near it now. And yet you let him have his head over that engineering business, and now you’ve given way about his religion.”
“The engineering business was settled long ago, and has saved us a lot of money—more than paid for that fool Mary’s fling. What we’ve spent on the roundabouts we’ve saved on the swings all right. As for the religion—he’ll grow out of that all the quicker for my leaving him alone. I got poor George to talk to him, but that didn’t do any good, so I’ve decided to let him sicken himself, which he’s bound to do sooner or later the way he goes at it.”
“The fact is, Sir—you’ve never looked upon Gervase as the heir, and you can’t do so now, though he virtually is the heir.”
“Indeed he isn’t. The heir is master Peter John Alard, whose christening mug I’m going to buy next Christmas”—andSir John made one or two other remarks in his coarse Victorian fashion.
Peter knew he was a fool to be thinking about his heir. His father, though an old man, was still hale—his gout only served to show what a fighter he was; and he himself was a man in the prime of life, healthy and sound. Was it that the war had undermined his sense of security?—He caught uneasy glimpses of another reason, hidden deeper ... a vague sense that it would be awful to have sacrificed so much for Alard and Starvecrow, and find his sacrifice in vain—to have given up Stella Mount (who would certainly not have given him a book instead of a baby) only that his brother Gervase might some day degrade Alard, sell Starvecrow and (worst of all) marry Stella.
For in his heart Peter too expected Gervase to marry Stella. He knew there was a most unsuitable difference in their ages, but it weighed little against his expectation. He expected Gervase to marry Stella for the same reason that he expected to die without leaving an heir—because he feared it. Besides, his family talked continually of the possibility, and here again showed that obtuseness in the matter of Gervase that he deplored. They had no objection to his marrying Stella Mount, because he was the younger son, and it wasn’t imperative for him to marry money, as it had been for Peter. Another reason for Peter’s expectation was perhaps that he could not understand a man being very much in Stella’s society and not wanting to marry her. She was pretty, gentle, capable, comfortable, and oh! so sweet to love—she would make an excellent wife, even to a man many years younger than herself; she would be a mother to him as well as to his children.
This did not mean that Peter was dissatisfied with Vera. His passion for her had not cooled at the end of a year. She was still lovely and desirable. But he now realised definitely that she did not speak his language or think his thoughts—thebook of poems was a proof of it, if he had required other proof than her attitude towards Starvecrow. Vera was all right about the family—she respected Alard—but she was remarkably out of tune with the farm. She could not understand the year-in-year-out delight it was to him. She had even suggested that they should take a house in London for the winter—and miss the ploughing of the clays, the spring sowings, and the early lambing! “The country’s so dreary in winter,” she had said.
This had frightened Peter—he found it difficult to adjust himself to such an outlook ... it was like the first morning when he had found she meant always to have breakfast in bed.... Stella would never have suggested that he should miss the principal feasts of the farmer’s year.... But Stella had not Vera’s beauty or power or brilliance—nor had she (to speak crudely) Vera’s money, and if he had married her Starvecrow would probably now have been in the auction market.
Besides, though loyal to Starvecrow, Stella had always been flippant and profane on the subject of the family, and in this respect Vera was all that Peter could wish. She was evidently proud of her connection with Alard—she kept as close under its wing as Rose, and for more disinterested reasons. She had her race’s natural admiration for an ancient family and a noble estate, she felt honoured by her alliance and her privileges—she would make a splendid Lady Alard of Conster Manor, though a little unsatisfactory as Mrs. Peter Alard of Starvecrow Farm.
As part of her lien with Alard, Vera had become close friends with Jenny. It was she who told Peter that Jenny had broken off her engagement to Jim Parish.
“I didn’t know she was engaged to him.”
“Oh, Peter, they’ve been engaged more than three years.”
“Well, I never knew anything about it.”
“You must have—you all did, though you chose to ignore it.”
“I always thought it was just an understanding.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Indeed it isn’t!”—At that rate he had been engaged to Stella and had behaved like a swine.
“Well, whatever it was, she’s through with it now.”
“What did she turn him down for?”
“Oh, simply that there was no chance of their marrying, and they were getting thoroughly tired of each other.”
“A nice look-out if they’d married.”
“That would have been different. They might not have got tired of each other then. It’s these long engagements, that drag on and on without hope of an ending. I must say I’m sorry for poor Jenny. She’s been kept hanging about for three years, and she’s had frightfully little sympathy from anyone—except perhaps Mary. They were all too much afraid that if they encouraged her she’d dash off and get married on a thousand a year or some such pittance.”
“I’ve always understood Parish paid three hundred a year towards the interest on the Cock Marling mortgages—that would leave him with only seven hundred,” said Peter gravely.
“Impossible, of course. They’d have been paupers. But do you know that till I came down here I’d no idea how fashionable mortgages are among the best county families?”
Peter did not meet Jenny till some days later. She had been to see Vera, and came out of the house just as Peter was talking to young Godfrey, the farmer of Fourhouses. This farm did not belong to the Alards—it stood on the southern fringe of their land in Icklesham parish. At one time Sir William Alard had wanted to buy it, but the owners held tight, and his grandchildren lived to be thankful for the extra hundred acres’ weight that had been spared them. Now, the situation was reversed, and the Godfreys were wanting to buy the thirty acres of Alard land immediately adjoining Fourhouses.
Sir John was willing to sell, and the only difficulty was theusual one of the mortgage. Godfrey, however, still wished to buy, for he believed that the land would double its value if adequate money was spent on it, and this he was prepared to do, for his farm had prospered under the government guarantees. For generations the Godfreys had been a hard-working and thrifty set, and the war—though it had taken Ben Godfrey himself out to Mesopotamia—had made Fourhouses flourish as it had never done since the repeal of the Corn Laws.
The problem became entirely one of price, and Peter had done his best to persuade his father not to stand out too stiffly over this. The family badly needed hard cash—the expenses of Mary’s suit had been heavy, and as their money was tied up in land it was always difficult to put their hand on a large sum. Here was a chance which might never happen again—for no one was likely to want the Snailham land under its present disabilities, except Godfrey, whose farm it encroached on. If they did not sell it now, it might become necessary (and this was Peter’s great fear) to sell the free lands of Starvecrow. Therefore if the Snailham land brought in the ready money they wanted, they must try to forget that it was going for little more than half what Sir William had given for it seventy years ago.
“Well, I’ll talk it over with Sir John,” he said to Godfrey, who was on horseback in the drive. It was then he saw Jenny coming towards them out of the house.
“Wait a minute,” he said to her—“I want to speak to you.”
He was uncertain whether or not he ought to introduce the young farmer to his sister. Godfrey did not call himself a gentleman farmer—indeed he was inclined to despise the title—but he came of good old yeoman stock, and his name went back nearly as far as Alard into the records of Winchelsea.
“Jenny, this is Mr. Godfrey of Fourhouses—my sister, Miss Jenny Alard.”
Godfrey took off his soft hat. He had the typical face of the Sussex and Kent borders, broad, short-nosed, blue-eyed; but there was added to it a certain brownness and sharpness,which might have come from a dash of gipsy blood. A Godfrey had married a girl of the Boswells in far-back smuggling days.
He and Peter discussed the Snailham snapes a little longer—then he rode off, and Peter turned to Jenny.
“I didn’t know you’d come over,” he said, “and I wanted to talk to you a bit—it’s an age since I’ve seen you.”
He was feeling a little guilty about his attitude towards her and Jim Parish—he had, like all the rest of the family, tried to ignore the business, and he now realised how bitter it must have been to Jenny to stand alone.
“Vera told me that you’d broken off your engagement,” he added as they walked down the drive.
“So it was an engagement, was it?” said Jenny rather pertly.
“Well, you yourself know best what it was.”
“I should have called it an engagement, but as neither his family nor mine would acknowledge it, perhaps it wasn’t.”
“There was no chance of your getting married for years, so it seemed better not to make it public. I can’t tell you I’m sorry you’ve broken it off.”
“I should hardly say it’s broken off—rather that it’s rotted away.”
Her voice sounded unusually hard, and Peter felt a little ashamed of himself.
“I’m frightfully sorry, Jenny”—taking her arm—“I’m afraid we’ve all been rather unsympathetic, but——”
“Gervase hasn’t. It was he who advised me to end things.”
“The deuce it was!”
“Yes—he saw it as I did—simply ridiculous.”
“So it was, my dear—since you couldn’t get married till the Lord knows when.”
“That wasn’t what made it ridiculous. The ridiculous part was that we could have got married perfectly well if only I hadn’t been Jenny Alard of Conster Manor and he Jim Parish of Cock Marling Place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s got over seven hundred a year. Most youngcouples would look upon that as riches, but it’s poverty to us—partly because he has to pay away half of it in interest on mortgages, and partly because we’ve got such an absurd standard of living that we couldn’t exist on anything less than two or three thousand.”
“Well, I hope you’d never be such a fool as to marry on seven hundred.”
“That’s just it—I’m refusing to marry on seven hundred. But I’ll tell you, Peter—I’d do it like a shot for a man who didn’t look upon it as a form of suicide. If ever I meet a man who thinks it enough for him, I promise you it’ll be enough for me.”
“That’s all very well, Jenny. But Parish must think of Cock Marling.”
“He is thinking of it. It’s Cock Marling that’s separated us just as Conster separated you and Stella.”
Peter was annoyed.
“You’ve no right to say that. What makes you think I wanted to marry Stella? It’s not fair to Vera to suggest such a thing.”
“I’m sorry, Peter. I oughtn’t to have said it. But I did once think.... But anyhow, I’m glad you didn’t.”
“So am I.”
“And I’m glad I’m not going to marry Jim.”
“Then you needn’t be angry with Cock Marling.”
“Yes, I am—because I know I could have been happy with Jim if there’d been no Cock Marling. It’s all very well for you to talk, Peter—but I think.... Oh, these big country houses make me sick. It’s all the same—everywhere I go I see the same thing—we’re all cut to a pattern. There’s always the beautifully kept grounds and the huge mortgaged estate that’s tumbling to pieces for want of money to spend on it. Then, when you go in, there are hothouse flowers everywhere, and beautiful glass and silver—and bad cooking. And we’re waited on badly because we’re too old-fashioned and dignified to employ women, so we have the cheapest butler we can get, helped by a footman taken from the plough. Upstairs the bedroomswant painting and papering, but we always have two cars—though we can’t afford motor traction for our land. We’re falling to pieces, but we hide the cracks with pots of flowers. Why can’t we sell our places and live in comfort? We Alards would be quite well-to-do if we lived in a moderate sized house with two or three women servants and either a small car or none at all. We could afford to be happy then.”
“Jenny, you’re talking nonsense. You’re like most women and can’t see the wood for the trees. If we gave up the cars tomorrow and sacked Appleby and Pollock and Wills, and sold the silver and the pictures, it wouldn’t do us the slightest good in the world. We’d still have the estate, we’d still have to pay in taxes more than the land brings in to us. You can’t sell land nowadays, even if it isn’t mortgaged. Besides—damn it all!—why should we sell it? It’s been ours for centuries, we’ve been here for centuries, and I for one am proud of it.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m ashamed. I tell you, Peter, our day is over, and we’d better retire, while we can retire gracefully—before we’re sold up.”
“Nonsense. If we hang on, the value of the land will rise, we’ll be able to pay off the mortgages—and perhaps some day this brutal government will see the wickedness of its taxation and——”
“Why should it? It wants the money—and we’ve no right to be here. We’ve outlived our day. Instead of developing the land—we’re ruining it, letting it go to pieces. We can’t afford to keep our tenants’ farms in order. It’s time we ceased to own half the country, and the land went back to the people it used to belong to.”
“I see you’ve been talking to Gervase.”
“Well, he and I think alike on this subject.”
“I’m quite sure you do.”
“And we’ve made up our minds not to let the family spoil our lives. It’s taken Jim from me—but that was his fault. It’s not going to smash me a second time. If I want to marry a poor man, I shall do so—even if he’s really poor—not only just what we call poor.”
“Well, you and Gervase are a precious couple, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
The next moment he softened towards her, because he remembered that she was unhappy and spoke out of the bitterness of her heart. But though he was sorry for her, he had a secret admiration for Jim Parish, who had refused to desert the Squires.
He was intensely worried that his sister and brother could take up such an attitude towards the family. They were young socialists, anarchists, bolsheviks, and he heartily disapproved of them. He brooded over Jenny’s words more than was strictly reasonable. She wasn’t going to let the family spoil her life, she said—she wasn’t going to sacrifice herself to the family—she wasn’t going to let the family come between her and the man she loved as he had let it come between him and Stella. She’d no right to say that—it wasn’t true. He couldn’t really have loved Stella or he wouldn’t have sacrificed her to Alard and Starvecrow. Yes, he would, though—yes, he had. He had loved her—he wouldn’t say he hadn’t, he wouldn’t deny the past. He had loved her, but he had deliberately let her go because to have kept her would have meant disloyalty to his family. So what Jenny had said was true.
This realisation did not soothe, though he never doubted the rightness of what he had done. He wondered how much he had hurt Stella by putting her aside ... poor little Stella—she had loved him truly, and she had loved Starvecrow. He had robbed her of both.... He remembered the last scene between them, their goodbye—in the office at Starvecrow, in the days of its pitch-pine and bamboo, before he had put in the Queen Anne bureau and the oak chests. He wondered what she would think of it now. She would have fitted into Starvecrow better than Vera ... bah! he’d always realised that, but it was just as well to remind himself that if he had married her, there would have been no Starvecrow for her to fit into.He hadn’t sacrificed her merely to Alard but also to Starvecrow—and she had understood that part of the sacrifice. He remembered her saying, “I understand your selfish reason much better than your unselfish one.”
Well, there was no good brooding over her now. If he had loved her once, he now loved her no longer ... and if she had loved him once, she now loved him no longer. She was consoling herself with Gervase. She might be Lady Alard yet, and save Starvecrow out of the wreck that her husband would make of the estate. Peter felt sick.
The next day he met her at tea at Conster Manor, whither he had been asked with Vera to meet George’s successor, the new Vicar of Leasan. She was sitting on the opposite side of the room beside the Vicar’s wife—a faded little woman, in scrappy finery, very different from her predecessor who was eating her up from her place by Lady Alard. Peter had met Stella fairly often in public, but had not studied her closely till today. Today for some reason he wanted to know a great deal about her—whether she was still attractive, whether she was happy, whether she was in love with Gervase, though this last was rather difficult to discover, as Gervase was not there. On the first two points he soon satisfied himself. She was certainly attractive—she did not look any older than when he had fallen in love with her during the last year of the war. Her round, warmly coloured face and her bright eyes held the double secret of youth and happiness—yes, he saw that she was happy. She carried her happiness about with her. After all, now he came to think of it, she did not lead a particularly happy life—dispensing for her father and driving his car, it was dull to say the least. He could not help respecting her for her happiness, just as he respected her for her bright neat clothes contrasting so favourably with the floppy fussiness of bits and ends that adorned the Vicar’s wife.
He could not get near her and he could not hear what she was saying. The floor was held by Mr. Williams, the new Vicar. The Parsonage couple were indeed the direct contrast of their predecessors—it was the husband who dominated, thewife who struggled. Mr. Williams had been a chaplain to the forces, and considered Christianity the finest sport going. A breezy, hefty shepherd, he would feed his flock on football and billiards, as George had fed them on blankets and Parochial Church Councils. It was inconceivable that anyone in Leasan should miss the way to heaven.
“I believe in being a man among men,” he blew over Sir John, who was beginning to hate him, though he had chosen him out of twenty-one applicants—“that’s what you learnt in France—no fuss, no frills, just playing the game.”
“You’d better have a few words with my youngest son,” said Sir John, resolving to give him a hard nut to crack—“he’s turned what used to be called a Puseyite in my young days, but is now called a Catholic, I believe.”
“A Zanzibarbarian—what? Oh, he’ll grow out of that. Boys often get it when they’re young.”
“And stay young all their lives if they keep it,” said Stella—“I’m glad Gervase will be always young.”
The Vicar gave her a look of breezy disapproval. Peter was vexed too—not because Stella had butted into the conversation and thrown her opinion across the room, but because she had gone out of her way to interfere on behalf of Gervase. It was really rather obvious ... one couldn’t help noticing ... and in bad taste, too, considering Peter was there.
“Here he is,” said Sir John, as the Ford back-fired a volley in the drive—“you can start on him now.”
But Gervase was hungry and wanted his tea. He sat down beside his mother and Rose, so that he could have a plate squarely set on the table instead of balancing precarious slices of cake in his saucer. Peter watched him in a manner which he hoped was guarded. There was no sign of any special intelligence between him and Stella—Gervase had included her in his general salutation, which he had specialised only in the case of the Vicar and his wife. At first this reassured Peter, but after a while he realised that it was not altogether a reassuring sign—Gervase should have greeted Stella more as a stranger, shaken hands with her as he had shaken hands withthe strangers, instead of including her in the family wave and grin. They must be on very good terms—familiar terms....
Stella rose to go.
“Have you got the car?” asked Gervase.
“No—Father’s gone over to Dallington in her.”
“Let me drive you back—I’ve got Henry Ford outside.”
“But have you finished your tea? You’ve only eaten half the cake.”
“I’ll eat the other half when I come back—it won’t take me more than a few minutes to run you home.”
“Thanks very much, then,” said Stella.
She had never been one to refuse a kindness, or say “No, thanks,” when she meant “Yes, please.” None the less Peter was angry. He was angry with her for accepting Gervase’s offer and driving off in his disreputable lorry, and he was angry with her for that very same happiness which he had admired her for earlier in the afternoon. It was extremely creditable of her to be happy when she had nothing to make her so, when her happiness sprang only from the soil of her contented heart; but if she was happy because of Gervase....
“He’s an elegant fellow, that young son of mine,” said Sir John, as the lorry drove off amidst retchings and smoke—“No doubt the day will come when I shall see him drink out of his saucer.”
The woman Peter loved now left Conster more elegantly than the woman he had loved once. The Sunbeam floated over the lane between Conster and Starvecrow, and pulled up noiselessly outside the house almost directly it had started. Peter was beginning to feel a little tired of the Sunbeam—he had hankerings after a lively little two-seater. An eight-cylindered landaulette driven by a man in livery was all very well for Vera to pay calls in, or if they wanted to go up to town. But he wanted something to take him round to farms on business, and occasionally ship a bag of meal or a load of spiles. Hecouldn’t afford both, and if they had the two-seater Vera could still go out in it to pay her calls—or up to London, for that matter. But she refused to part with the Sunbeam—it was her father and mother’s wedding present, and they would be terribly hurt if she gave it up. Two-seaters were always uncomfortable. And why did Peter want to go rattling round to farms?—Couldn’t he send one of his men?—Vera never would take him seriously as a farmer.
This evening, thanks to the Sunbeam, they reached home too early to dress for dinner. Peter asked Vera to come for a stroll with him in the orchard, but she preferred the garden at the back of the house. The garden at Starvecrow used to be a plot of ragged grass, surrounding a bed of geraniums from the middle of which unexpectedly rose a pear-tree. Today it was two green slips of lawn divided by a paved pathway shaded by a pergola. The April dusk was still warm, still pricked with the notes of birds, but one or two windows in the house were lighted, orange squares of warmth and welcome beyond the tracery of the pergola.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” murmured Peter, taking Vera’s arm under her cloak—“Oh, my dear, you surely wouldn’t be in London now.”
“No,” said Vera—“not when it’s fine.”
“What did you think of Williams?”
“Oh, he seemed all right—I didn’t talk to him much. But his wife’s a bore.”
“I felt sorry for poor Rose, having to welcome her.”
“You needn’t worry—she didn’t do much of that.”
“She had to sit there and be polite, anyhow.”
“I didn’t notice it. But I tell you what really interested me—and that was watching Stella Mount and Gervase.”
“Oh!”
“They were most amusing.”
“I never noticed anything.”
“No, my dear old man, of course you didn’t, because you never do. But it’s perfectly plain that it’s a case between them. I’ve thought so for a long time.”
“He may be in love with her, but I’m sure she isn’t in love with him.”
“Well, she seemed to me the more obviously in love of the two. She had all the happy, confident manner of a woman in love.”
“She couldn’t be in love with him—he’s a mere boy.”
“Very attractive to women, especially to one past her early youth. Stella must be getting on for thirty now, and I expect she doesn’t want to be stranded.”
For some reason Peter could not bear to hear her talked of in this way.
“I know she’s not in love with him,” he said doggedly.
“How can you know?”
“By the way she looks and behaves and all that—I know how Stella looks when she’s in love.”
“Of course you do. But since she couldn’t get you perhaps she’d like to have Gervase.”
Peter felt angry.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. Stella isn’t that sort at all—and she didn’t love me any more than I loved her.”
“Really!”
“You all talk—I’ve heard Doris and Rose at it as well as you—you all talk as if Stella had been running after me and I wouldn’t have her. But that isn’t the truth—I loved her, and I’d have had her like a shot if it had been possible, but it wasn’t.”
He felt a stiffening of Vera’s arm under his, though she did not take it away. He realised that he had said too much. But he couldn’t help it. There in the garden of Starvecrow, which Stella had loved as well as he, he could not deny their common memories ... pretend that he had not loved her ... he had a ridiculous feeling that it would have been disloyal to Starvecrow as well as to Stella.
“You needn’t get so angry,” Vera was saying—“I had always been given to understand that the affair wasn’t serious—a war-time flirtation which peace showed up as impossible. There were a great many like that.”
“Well, this wasn’t one of them. I loved Stella as much as she loved me.”
“Then why didn’t you marry her?”
“I couldn’t possibly have done so—and anyhow,” shamefacedly, “I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Then I still say you didn’t really love her. If you had, you’d have married her even though the family disapproved and she hadn’t a penny. She’d have done it for you—so if you wouldn’t do it for her, it shows that you didn’t love her as much as she loved you.”
“I did”—almost shouted Peter.
Vera took her arm away.
“Really, Peter, you’re in a very strange mood tonight. I think I’ll go indoors.”
“I’m only trying to make you understand that though I don’t love Stella now, I loved her once.”
“On the contrary—you’re making me understand that though you didn’t love her once, you love her now.”
“How can you say that!”
“Because you’re giving yourself away all round. You’re jealous of your brother, and you’re angry with me because I don’t speak of Stella in a way you quite approve of. Don’t worry, my dear boy. We’ve been married over a year, and I can hardly expect your fancy never to stray. But I’d rather you weren’t quite such a boor over it.”
She walked quickly into the house.
Peter felt as if he had been struck. He told himself that Vera was unjust and hard and cynical. How dare she say he was jealous of Gervase? How dare she say he had never really loved Stella?—that was her own infernal jealousy, he supposed. How dare she say he loved Stella now?—that again was her infernal jealousy. He took one or two miserable turns up and down the path, then went in to dress for dinner.
A wood fire was burning sweetly in his dressing-room, and his clothes had been laid out by the parlourmaid, who was as good a valet as only a good parlourmaid can be. Under these combined influences Peter learned how material comforts canoccasionally soothe a spiritual smart, dressing there in warmth and ease, he began to slip out of those distressing feelings which had raged under the pergola. After all, Vera had made him supremely happy for a year. It was ungrateful to be angry with her now, just because she had taken it into her head to be a little jealous. That was really a compliment to him. Besides, now he came to think of it, he had not spoken or behaved as he ought. What a fool he had been to kick up such a dust just because Vera had doubted the reality of his dead love for Stella. No wonder she had drawn conclusions ... and instead of trying to soothe and reassure her, he had only got angry.
He made up his mind to apologise at once, and paused at her door on his way downstairs. But he heard the voice of the maid inside, and decided to wait till they were alone in the drawing-room before dinner. She was nearly always down a few minutes before eight.
However, tonight, perversely, she did not appear. The clock struck eight, and to Peter’s surprise, Weller, the parlourmaid, came into the room.
“Dinner is served, sir.”
“But your mistress isn’t down yet.”
“She has ordered her dinner to be sent up to her room, Sir.”
Peter was not to be let off so easily as in the simplicity of his heart he had imagined. He had transgressed the laws of matrimony as Vera understood them, by refusing to say that he had never really loved Stella. He ought properly to have said that he had never really loved anyone until he met his wife, but that, Peter told himself, was nonsense in a man of his age. He told it to himself all the more vehemently because he had an uneasy feeling that a year ago he would have said what Vera wanted, that he himself would have believed she was the only woman he had really loved.
The next morning he went into her room as usual whileshe was having her breakfast, and they said the usual things to each other as if nothing had happened. But Peter felt awkward and ill at ease—he wanted, childishly, to “make it up,” but did not know how to get through the invisible wall she had built round herself. Also he knew that she would accept nothing less than a recantation of all that he had said yesterday—he would have to tell her that he had never loved Stella, that all that part of his life had been dreaming and self-deception. And he would not say it. With a queer obstinacy, whose roots he would not examine, he refused to deny his past, even to make the present happier and the future more secure.
“What are you doing today?” asked Vera coolly, as she stirred her coffee.
“I’m going over to an auction at Canterbury—they’re selling off some old government stuff.”
As a matter of fact, he had not meant to go, but now he felt that he must do something to get himself out of the house for the day.
“Then you won’t be in for lunch?”
“No—not much before dinner, I expect.”
“Shall you go in the car?”
“Only as far as Ashford—I’ll take the train from there.”
It was all deadly. Going out of her room, going out of the house, he was conscious of a deep sense of depression and futility. Vera was displeased with him because he would not be disloyal to the past.... After all, he supposed it was pretty natural and most women were like that ... but Vera was different in the way she showed her displeasure—if only she’d say things!—become angry and coaxing like other women—like Stella when he had displeased her. He remembered her once when she had been angry—how differently she had behaved—with such frankness, such warmth, such wheedling.... Vera had just turned to ice, and expressed herself in negations and reserves. He hated that—it was all wrong, somehow.
He fretted and brooded the whole way to Ashford. It wasnot till he was nearly there that he remembered he had an appointment with Godfrey at Starvecrow that afternoon. Vera was making him not only a bad husband but a bad farmer.
Godfrey did not forget his appointment. He arrived punctually at three o’clock, and not finding Peter at home, waited with the patience of his kind. A further symptom of Peter’s demoralization was his forgetting to tell anyone at Starvecrow when he would be back, so Godfrey, who was really anxious to have his matter settled and could scarcely believe that anything so important to himself should seem trivial in the stress of another’s life, felt sure that Mr. Alard would soon come in, and having hitched his reins and assured himself that Madge would stand for ever, went into the office and waited.
Here Jenny Alard found him at about half-past three, just wondering whether it would be good manners for him to smoke. She had come up to see Vera, but finding she had gone out in the car, looked in at the office door in hopes of finding Peter. Godfrey was sitting rather stiffly in the gate-backed chair, turning his box of gaspers over and over in his large brown hands. Jenny came into the room and greeted him at once. She and her family always took pains to be cordial to their social inferiors. If the man in the office had been an acquaintance of her own rank, she would probably have bowed to him, made some excuse and gone out to look for her brother—but such behaviour would never do for anyone who might imagine it contained a slight.
“Good afternoon. Are you waiting for my brother? Do you know when he’ll be in?”
He rose to greet her, and as they shook hands she realised what a shadow his inferiority was. He stood before her six feet high, erect, sun-burned—his thick hair and bright eyes proclaiming his health, his good clothes proclaiming his prosperity,a certain alert and simple air of confidence speaking of a life free from conflict and burden.
“Mr. Alard made an appointment for three. But they tell me he’s gone to Canterbury.”
“It’s a shame to keep you waiting. You’re busy, I expect.”
“Not so terrible—and it’s the first time he’s done it. I reckon something’s gone wrong with the car.”
“He hasn’t got the car—Mrs. Alard is out in it. Perhaps he’s missed his train.”
“If he’s done that he won’t be here for some time, and I can’t afford to wait much longer. I’ve a man coming to Fourhouses about some pigs after tea.”
“I expect there’s a time-table somewhere—let’s look.”
She rummaged among the papers at the top of the desk—auction catalogues, advertisements for cattle foods and farm implements—and at last drew out a local time-table. Their heads bent over it together, and she became conscious of a scent as of straw and clean stables coming from his clothes. She groped among the pages not knowing her way, and then noticed that his hands were restless as if his greater custom were impatient of her ignorance.
“No—it’s page sixty-four—I remember ... two pages back ... no, not there—you’ve missed it.”
His hands hovered as if they longed to turn over the leaves, but evidently he forbade them—and she guessed that he shrank from the chance of touching hers. She looked at his hands—they were well-shaped, except for the fingers which work had spoiled, they were brown, strong, lean—she liked them exceedingly. They were clean, but not as Peter’s or Jim’s or her father’s hands were clean; they suggested effort rather than custom—that he washed when he was dirty in order to be clean rather than when he was clean in order to prevent his ever being dirty.... What a queer way her thoughts were running, and all because of his hands—— Well, she would like to touch them ... it was funny how he held back even from such a natural contactas this—typical of his class, in which there was always consciousness between the sexes ... no careless, casual contacts, no hail-fellow and hearty comradeship, but always man and woman, some phase of courtship ... romance....
“I can’t find it.”
She thrust the book into his hands, and their fingers touched· He begged her pardon—then found the page. She did not notice what he said—her pulses were hammering. She was excited not so much by him as by herself. Why had her whole being lit up so suddenly?—What had set it alight? Was it just this simple deferential consciousness of sex between them, so much more natural than the comradeship which was the good form of her class? Sex-consciousness was after all more natural than sex-unconsciousness, the bridling of the flirt more natural than the indifference of the “woman who has no nonsense about her.” She felt a deep blush spreading over her face—she became entirely conscious before him, uneasy under his alert, dignified gaze.
He was picking up his hat—he was saying something about the two-forty-five being in long ago and his having no time to wait till the four-forty.
“I’ll call in tomorrow—I’ll leave word with Elias that I’ll call in at twelve tomorrow.”
“I’m so sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing,” she faltered.
“Oh, it’s no matter. I’m not busy today. Mr. Alard must have missed his train.”
She found herself going out of the room before him. His smart gig stood outside the door—the mare whinnied at the sight of him. Jenny thought how good it must be to drive horse-flesh instead of machinery.
“You haven’t taken to a motor-car yet, I see.”
“I don’t think I ever shall. It ud feel unfriendly.”
“Yes, I expect it would after this”—and she patted the mare’s sleek neck.
“A horse knows you, you see—and where you go wrong often he’ll go right—but a car, a machine, that’s got no sensenor kindness in it, and when you do the wrong thing there’s nothing that’ll save you.”
Jenny nodded. He warmed to his subject.
“Besides, you get fond of an animal in a way you can’t of a machine. This Madge, here. I’ve raised her from a filly, and when I take her out of the shafts she’ll follow me round the yard for a bit of sugar—and you heard her call to me just now when I came out? That’s her way. You may pay three thousand pounds for a Rolls Royce car but it won’t never say good evening.”
He laughed at his own joke, showing his big splendid teeth, and giving Jenny an impression of sweetness and happiness that melted into her other impressions like honey.
“Did she recognise you when you came back from the war?—You were in Mesopotamia weren’t you?”
“Yes—three years. I can’t say as she properly recognised me, but now I’ve been back a twelve-month I think she fits me into things that happened to her before I left, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I understand.”
He had been talking to her with his foot on the step, ready to get into his gig. Then suddenly he seemed to remember that she did not live at Starvecrow, that she too had a journey before her and no trap to take her home.
“Can I give you a lift, Miss Alard?—I’m passing Conster.”
“Yes—thank you very much,” said Jenny.
That evening, sitting at dinner with her family, she felt vaguely ashamed of herself—she had let herself go too far. As she watched her mother’s diamond rings flashing over her plate, as she listened to her father cynically demolishing the Washington conference, as she contemplated Doris eating asparagus in the gross and clumsy manner achieved only by the well-bred, the afternoon’s adventure took discreditable colours in her mind. What had made her feel like that towardsGodfrey? Surely it was the same emotion which draws a man towards a pretty housemaid. The young farmer was good-looking and well-built—he had attracted her physically—and her body had mocked at the barriers set up by her mind, by education, birth, breeding and tradition.
She wondered guiltily what Jim would think of her if he knew. He would probably see a fresh reason for congratulating himself on the rupture of those loose yet hampering ties which had bound them for so long. She had never felt like that towards Jim, though she had accepted the physical element in their relation—thought, indeed, sometimes, that it was unduly preponderating, holding them together when ideas and ambitions would have drawn them apart. Was it possible after all that Godfrey’s attraction had not been merely physical—that there had been an allure in his simple, unaccustomed outlook on life as well as in his splendid frame?
Gervase came in late to dinner, and being tired did not talk much. After the meal was over, and Jenny was playing bridge with her parents and Doris, he sat in the window, turning over the pages of a book and looking out between the curtains at the pale Spring stars. When Lady Alard’s losses made her decide she was too tired to play any more and the game was broken up, Jenny went over and sat beside him. It had struck her that perhaps his life at the works, his association with working men, might enable him to shed some light on her problem. Not that she meant to confide in him, but there seemed to be in Gervase now a growing sanity of judgment; she had a new, odd respect for the experiences of the little brother’s mind.
“Gervase,” she said—“I suppose you could never make friends with anyone at the shop?”
“No—I’m afraid I couldn’t. At least not with anyone there now. But we get on all right together.”
“I suppose it’s the difference in education.”
“Partly—but chiefly the difference in our way of looking at things.”
“Surely that’s due to education.”
“Yes, if by education you mean breeding—the whole life. It’s not that we want different things, but we want them in a different way.”
“Do all men want the same things?”
He smiled.
“Yes—we all want money, women, and God.”
Jenny felt a little shocked.
“Some want one most, and some want another most,” continued Gervase—“and we’re most different in our ways of wanting money and most alike in our ways of wanting God.”
“How do you want money in different ways?”
“It’s not only the fact that what’s wealth to them is often poverty to us—it’s chiefly that they get their pleasure out of the necessities of life and we out of the luxuries. It’s never given you any actual pleasure, I suppose, to think that you’ve got a good house to live in and plenty to eat—but to those chaps it’s a real happiness and I’m not talking of those who’ve ever had to go without.”
Jenny was silent a moment. She hesitated over her next question.
“And what’s the difference in your ideas about women?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Their talk about women makes me sick—I feel in that matter we’ve got the pull over them. When men of our own set get on the subject, it’s different altogether, even at its worst. But I sometimes think that this is because their ideal of women is really so high that they don’t look upon a certain class of them as women at all.”
“You think their ideal of women in general is high?”
“Yes, that’s why their women are either good or bad. They won’t stand the intervening stages the way we do. They expect a great deal of the women they make their wives.”
“I suppose that a friendship between a woman of our class and a man of theirs would be much more difficult than a friendship between two men of different classes.”
“It would be quite impossible. They don’t understand friendship between men and women for one thing. I’m not sure that they haven’t got too much sense.”
Jenny rose and moved away. She found the conversation vaguely disturbing. Though, after all, she cried impatiently to herself, why should she? They hadn’t been discussing Godfrey—only the men where Gervase worked, who belonged altogether to a different class. But Godfrey, yeoman farmer of Fourhouses, solid, comfortable, respectable, able to buy land from impoverished Alard ... why should she think of him as in a class beneath her? Her parents would think so certainly, but that was because their ideas had grown old and stiff with Alard’s age ... mentally Alard was suffering from arterial sclerosis ... oh, for some new blood!
Peter was vexed with himself for having forgotten Godfrey’s appointment—not that he thought his forgetfulness would jeopardise the business between Conster and Fourhouses, but such a lapse pointed degradingly to causes beneath it. He had been careless and forgetful as a farmer because he was unhappy as a husband. His private life was hurting him and its convulsions had put his business life out of order.
On his return from Canterbury there was a reconciliation between him and Vera. His long day of futile loneliness had broken his spirit—he could endure their estrangement no longer, and in order to make peace was willing to stoop to treacheries which in the morning he had held beneath his honour. He had made Stella a burnt offering to peace. No—he said to Vera—he had never really loved her—she had just been “one of the others” before he met his wife.... He took her glowing memory and put it in the prison house where he had shut up the loves of a month and a week and a day ... he saw her in that frail company, looking at him from between the bars, telling him that she did not belong there. But he spoke to her roughly in his heart—“Yes you do—you’reone of the thieves who stole a bit of the love I was keeping for Vera—just that.”
Vera, after the first frigidities, graciously accepted his contrition. As he was willing to acknowledge that he had never really loved Stella, she was willing to drop the other half of the argument and allow that he was not belatedly in love with her now. Once more there was love and harmony at Starvecrow—warmth in the low rooms, where the firelight leaped on creamy walls and the rustle of Vera’s silk seemed to live like an echo, a voluptuous ghost. The cold, thin Spring seemed shut outside the house—the interior of Starvecrow, its ceilings, doors, walls and furniture meant more to Peter now than its barns and stacks and cobbled yard, even than its free woods and fields.
The cold, thin Spring warmed and thickened in the woods. The floods receded from the Tillingham marshes, and the river ran through a golden street of buttercups to the sea. The winter sowings put a bloom of vivid green into the wheat fields, the blossom of apple, cherry, pear and plum drifted from the boughs of the orchard to the grass, leaving the first green hardness of the fruits among the leaves; and as the outer world grew warm and living, once more the heart of the house grew cold. Peter and Vera were not estranged, but the warm dusk of their rapture had given place to the usual daylight, in which Peter saw the ugly things his peace contained.
He was not blinded by the wonder that had happened, by the knowledge that probably, almost certainly, Vera was to have a child—that there would be an heir to Conster and Alard, and lovely Starvecrow would not go to strangers. He felt intensely relieved that his fears would not be realised, that he was not inevitably building for Gervase to throw down—but there was less glamour about the event than he had anticipated, it could not set his heart at rest, nor make Vera shine with all the old light of the honeymoon.
He had always thought and heard that expecting a child brings husband and wife even closer together than the firstdays of love—he was vexed that the charm did not work. Was it because of his feeling that if the child were a girl it might just as well not be born? That was certainly the wrong thing to feel, for much as he longed for an heir, he should not forget that a girl would be his child, the child of the woman he loved. Then one day he had a dreadful realisation—the conviction that if he were waiting for Stella’s child it would all have been different, that he would have thought of the child as much as now he thought of the heir. Of course he would still have wanted an heir, but he would not have had the feeling that if it did not give him a boy his wife’s childbearing was in vain.... In vain—in vain.... He would not have known that word which now he found in his mind so often—“Marriage in vain if there is no child ... childbearing in vain if there is no heir.” He saw his marriage as a mere tool of Alard’s use, a prop to that sinking edifice of the Squires.... He felt as miserable as in the first days of the cold, thin Spring.
He now no longer denied that in one sense he had made a mistake in marrying Vera. He still found her brilliant and beautiful, a charming if sometimes a too sophisticated companion. But she was not the wife of his heart and imagination. Her personality stood queerly detached from the rest of his life—apart from his ideas of home and family. He felt coldly angry with her for the ways in which she refused or failed to fulfil his yearnings, and he could never, he felt, quite forgive her for having demanded Stella as a sacrifice. His denial of his love for Stella, which he had made in the interests of peace, now pierced his memory like a thorn—partly he reproached himself, and partly he reproached Vera. And there was a reproach for Stella too.
But he still told himself that he was glad he had married Vera. After all, he had got what he wanted. All he no longer had was the illusion that had fed him for a year aftermarriage, the illusion that in taking Vera he had done the best thing for himself as a man as well as an Alard. He could no longer tell himself that Vera was a better wife and a sweeter woman than he would have found Stella—that even without family considerations he had still made the happiest choice. That dream had played its part, and now might well die, and yet leave him with the thought that he had chosen well.
He need not look upon his marriage as mercenary because it was practical rather than romantic, nor himself as a fool because he had been heated and dizzied into taking a step he could never have taken in cold blood. He had always planned to marry money for the sake of Alard and Starvecrow, and he could never have done so without the illusion of love. Nature had merely helped him carry out what he had unnaturally planned.... And Starvecrow was safe, established—and under his careful stewardship the huge, staggering Conster estate would one day recover steadiness. The interest on the mortgages was always punctually paid, and he had hopes of being able in a year or two to pay off some of the mortgages themselves. By the time he became Sir Peter Alard he might be in a fair way of clearing the property.... So why regret the romance he had never chosen?
He told himself he would regret nothing if he was sure that Stella would not marry Gervase—that having very properly shut romance out of his own house, he should not have to see it come next door. In his clearer moments he realised that this attitude was unreasonable, or that, if reasonable, it pointed to an unhealthy state of affairs, but he could never quite bully or persuade himself out of it. He had to confess that it would be intolerable to have to welcome as a sister the woman he had denied himself as a wife. Anything, even total estrangement, would be better than that—better than having to watch her making his brother’s home the free and happy place she might have made his own, throwing her sweetness and her courage into the risks of his brother’s life, bearing his brother’s children, made after all the mother ofAlards ... perhaps the mother of Alard’s heir. This last thought tormented him most. He saw a preposterous genealogical table: