‘Oh, Mother – she was really unhappy. She was awfully fond of Vernon. As she said, he was all she had in the world.’
‘That’s a phrase women like her are very fond of using. It means nothing at all. And you’re not going to pretend to me that Vernon adored his mother. He merely tolerated her. They had nothing in common. He was a Deyre through and through.’
Nell couldn’t deny that.
She stayed at her mother’s flat in town for three weeks. Mrs Vereker was very kind within her own limits. She was not a sympathetic woman at any time, but she respected Nell’s grief and did not intrude upon it. Upon practical matters her judgment was, as it always had been, excellent. There were various interviews with lawyers and Mrs Vereker was present at all of them.
Abbots Puissants was still let. The tenancy would be up the following year, and the lawyer strongly advised its sale rather than reletting it. Mrs Vereker, to Nell’s surprise, did not seem to concur with this view. She suggested a further let of not too long duration.
‘So much may happen in a few years,’ she said.
Mr Flemming looked hard at her and seemed to catch her meaning. His glance rested just for a moment on Nell, fair and childish-looking in her mourning.
‘As you say,’ he remarked. ‘Much may happen. At any rate nothing need be decided for a year.’
Business matters settled, Nell returned to the hospital at Wiltsbury. She felt that there, and there only, could life be at all possible. Mrs Vereker did not oppose her. She was a sensible woman and she had her own plans.
A month after Vernon’s death, Nell was once more back in the ward. Nobody ever referred to her loss and she was grateful. To carry on as usual was the motto of the moment.
Nell carried on.
2
‘There’s someone asking for you, Nurse Deyre.’
‘For me?’ Nell was surprised.
It must be Sebastian. Only he was likely to come down here and look her up. Did she want to see him or not? She hardly knew.
But to her great surprise her visitor was George Chetwynd. He explained that he was passing through Wiltsbury, and had stopped to see if he could see her. He asked whether she couldn’t come out to lunch with him.
‘I thought you were on afternoon duty,’ he explained.
‘I was changed to the morning shift yesterday. I’ll ask Matron. We’re not very busy.’
Permission was accorded her, and half an hour later she was sitting opposite George Chetwynd at the County Hotel with a plate of roast beef in front of her and a waiter hovering over her with a vast dish of cabbage.
‘The only vegetable the County Hotel knows,’ observed Chetwynd.
He talked interestingly and made no reference to her loss. All he said was that her continuing to work here was the pluckiest thing he had ever heard of.
‘I can’t tell you how I admire all you women. Carrying on, tackling one job after another. No fuss – no heroics – just sticking to it as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I think Englishwomen are fine.’
‘One must do something.’
‘I know. I can understand that feeling. Anything’s better than sitting with your hands in your lap, eh?’
‘That’s it.’
She was grateful. George always understood. He told her that he was off to Serbia in a day or two, organizing relief work there.
‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I’m ashamed of my country for not coming in. But they will. I’m convinced of that. It’s only a matter of time. In the meantime we do what we can to alleviate the horrors of war.’
‘You look very well.’
He looked younger than she remembered him – well set up, bronzed, the grey in his hair a mere distinction rather than a sign of age.
‘I’m feeling well. Nothing like having plenty to do. Relief work’s pretty strenuous.’
‘When are you off?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’ He paused, then said in a different voice. ‘Look here – you didn’t mind my looking you up like this? You don’t feel I’d no business to butt in?’
‘No – no. It was very kind of you. Especially after I – I –’
‘You know I’ve never borne any rancour over that. I admire you for following your heart. You loved him and you didn’t love me. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t be friends, is there?’
He looked so friendly, so very unsentimental, that Nell answered happily that there wasn’t.
He said: ‘That’s fine. And you’ll let me do anything for you that a friend can? Advise you in any bothers that arise, I mean?’
Nell said she’d be only too grateful.
They left it like that. He departed in his car shortly after lunch, wringing her hand and saying he hoped they’d meet again in about six months’ time, and begging her again to consult him if she were in a difficulty any time.
Nell promised that she would.
3
The winter was a bad one for Nell. She caught a cold, neglected to take proper care of herself, and was quite ill for a week or so. She was quite unfit to resume hospital work at the end of it, and Mrs Vereker carried her off to London to her flat. There she regained strength slowly.
Endless bothers seemed to arise. Abbots Puissants appeared to need an entire new roof. New water pipes had to be installed. The fencing was in a bad state.
Nell appreciated for the first time the awful drain property can be. The rent was eaten up many times over with the necessary repairs, and Mrs Vereker had to come to the rescue to tide Nell over a difficult corner and not let her get too much into debt. They were living as penuriously as possible. Vanished were the days of outward show and credit. Mrs Vereker managed to make both ends meet by a very narrow margin, and would hardly have done that but for what she won at the bridge table. She was a first-class player and added materially to her income by play. She was out most of the day at a bridge club that still survived.
It was a dull unhappy life for Nell. Worried over money, not strong enough to undertake fresh work, nothing to do but sit and brood. Poverty combined with love in a cottage was one thing. Poverty without love to soften it was another. Sometimes Nell wondered how she was ever going to get through a life that stretched drear and bleak ahead of her. She couldn’t bear things. She simply couldn’t.
Then Mr Flemming urged her to make a decision concerning Abbots Puissants. The tenancy would be up in a month or two. Something must be done. He could not hold out any hopes of letting it for a higher rent. Nobody wanted to rent big places without central heating or modern conveniences. He strongly advised her to sell.
He knew the feeling her husband had had about the place. But since she herself was never likely to be able to afford to live in it …
Nell admitted the wisdom of what he said, but still pleaded for time to decide. She was reluctant to sell it, but she could not help feeling that the worry of Abbots Puissants once off her mind she would be relieved from her heaviest burden. Then one day Mr Flemming rang up to say that he had had a very good offer for Abbots Puissants. He mentioned a sum far in excess of her – or indeed his – expectations. He very strongly advised her to close with it without delay.
Nell hesitated a minute – then said ‘Yes.’
4
It was extraordinary how much happier she felt at once. Free of that terrible incubus! It wasn’t as though Vernon had lived. Houses and estates were simply white elephants when you hadn’t the necessary money to keep them up properly.
She was undisturbed even by a letter from Joe in Paris.
‘How can you sell Abbots Puissants when you know what Vernon felt about it? I should have thought it would be the last thing you could have done.’
She thought: ‘Joe doesn’t understand.’
She wrote back:
‘What was I to do? I don’t know where to turn for money. There’s been the roof and the drains and the water – it’s endless. I can’t go on running into debt. Everything’s so tiring I wish I were dead …�
��
Three days later she got a letter from George Chetwynd, asking if he might come and see her. He had, he said, something to confess.
Mrs Vereker was out. She received him alone. He broke it rather apprehensively to her. It was he who had purchased Abbots Puissants.
Just at first she recoiled from the idea. Not George! Not George at Abbots Puissants! Then with admirable common sense he argued the point.
Surely it was better that it should pass into his hands instead of those of a stranger? He hoped that sometimes she and her mother would come and stay there.
‘I’d like you to feel that your husband’s home is open to you at any time. I want to change things there as little as possible. You shall advise me. Surely you prefer my having it, to its passing into the hands of some vulgarian who will fill it with gilt and spurious old masters?’
In the end she wondered why she had felt any objection. Better George than anyone. And he was so kind and understanding about everything. She was tired and worried. She broke down suddenly, cried on his shoulder whilst he put an arm round her and told her that everything was all right, that it was only because she’d been ill.
Nobody could have been kinder or more brotherly.
When she told her mother Mrs Vereker said:
‘I knew George was looking out for a place. It’s lucky he’s chosen Abbots Puissants. He’s probably haggled less about the price simply because he was once in love with you.’
The remote way she said ‘once in love with you’ made Nell feel comfortable. She had imagined that her mother might have ‘ideas’ still about George Chetwynd.
5
That summer they went down and stayed at Abbots Puissants. They were the only guests. Nell had not been there since she was a child. A deep regret came upon her that she could not have lived there with Vernon. The house was truly beautiful, and so were the stately gardens and the ruined Abbey.
George was in the middle of doing up the house and he consulted her taste at every turn. Nell began to feel quite a proprietary interest. She was almost happy again, enjoying the ease and luxury and the freedom from anxiety.
True, once she received the money from Abbots Puissants and had invested it she would have a nice little income, but she dreaded the onus of deciding where to live and what to do. She was not really happy with her mother, and all her own friends seemed to have drifted out of touch. She hardly knew where to go or what to do with her life.
Abbots Puissants gave her just the peace and rest she needed. She felt sheltered there and safe. She dreaded the return to town.
It was the last evening. George had pressed them to remain longer, but Mrs Vereker had declared that they really couldn’t trespass any longer on his hospitality.
Nell and George walked together on the long flagged walk. It was a still, balmy evening.
‘It has been lovely here,’ said Nell, with a little sigh. ‘I hate going back.’
‘I hate your going back too.’ He paused and then said very quietly: ‘I suppose there’s no chance for me, is there, Nell?’
‘I don’t know what you mean?’
But she did know – she knew at once.
‘I bought this house because I hoped some day you’d live here. I wanted you to have the home that was rightly yours. Are you going to spend your whole life nursing a memory, Nell? Do you think he – Vernon – would wish it? I never think of the dead like that – as grudging happiness to the living. I think he would want you to be looked after and taken care of now that he isn’t here to do it.’
She said in a low voice: ‘I can’t … I can’t …’
‘You mean you can’t forget him? I know that. But I’d be very good to you, Nell. You’d be wrapped round with love and care. I think I could make you happy – happier at any rate than you’ll be facing life by yourself. I do honestly and truly believe that Vernon would wish it …’
Would he? She wondered. She thought George was right. People might call it disloyalty, but it wasn’t. That life of hers with Vernon was something by itself – nothing could touch it ever …
But oh! to be looked after, cared for, petted and understood. She always had been fond of George.
She answered very softly … ‘Yes …’
6
The person who was angry about it was Myra. She wrote long abusive letters to Nell. ‘You can forget so soon. Vernon has only one home – in my heart. You never loved him.’
Uncle Sydney twirled his thumbs and said: ‘That young woman knows which side her bread is buttered’; and wrote her a stereotyped letter of congratulation.
An unexpected ally was Joe who was paying a flying visit to London and came round to see Nell at her mother’s flat.
‘I’m very glad,’ she said, kissing her. ‘And I’m sure Vernon would be. You’re not the kind that can face life on your own. You never were. Don’t you mind what Aunt Myra says. I’ll talk to her. Life’s a rotten business for women – I think you’ll be happy with George. Vernon would want you to be happy, I know.’
Joe’s support heartened Nell more than anything. Joe had always been the nearest person to Vernon. On the night before her wedding, she knelt by her bed and looked up to where Vernon’s sword hung over the head of it.
She pressed her hands over her closed eyes.
‘You do understand, beloved? You do? It’s you I love and always shall … Oh, Vernon, if only I could know that you understood.’
She tried to send her very soul out questing in search of him. He must – he must – know and understand …
Chapter Four
1
In the town of A_____ in Holland – not far from the German frontier – is an inconspicuous inn. Here on a certain evening in 1917 a dark young man with a haggard face pushed open the door and in very halting Dutch asked for a lodging for the night. He breathed hard and his eyes were restless. Anna Schlieder, the fat proprietress of the inn, looked at him attentively up and down in her usual deliberate way before she replied. Then she told him that he could have a room. Her daughter Freda took him up to it. When she came back, her mother said laconically: ‘English – escaped prisoner.’
Freda nodded but said nothing. Her china-blue eyes were soft and sentimental. She had reasons of her own for taking an interest in the English. Presently she again mounted the stairs and knocked on the door. She went in on top of the knock which, as a matter of fact, the young man had not heard. He was so sunk in a stupor of exhaustion that external sounds and happenings had hardly any meaning for him. For days and weeks he had been on the qui vive, escaping dangers by a hairsbreadth, never daring to be caught napping either physically or mentally. Now he was suffering the reaction. He lay where he had fallen, half sprawling across the bed. Freda stood and watched him. At last she said:
‘I bring you hot water.’
‘Oh!’ he started up. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.’
She said slowly and carefully in his own language:
‘You are English – yes?’
‘Yes. Yes, that is –’
He stopped suddenly in doubt. One must be careful. The danger was over – he was out of Germany. He felt slightly lightheaded. A diet of raw potatoes, dug up from the fields, was not stimulating to the brain. But he still felt he must be careful. It was so difficult – he felt queer – felt that he wanted to talk and talk, pour out everything now that at last that fearful long strain was over.
The Dutch girl was nodding her head at him gravely, wisely.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You come from over there –’
Her hand pointed in the direction of the frontier.
He looked at her, still irresolute.
‘You have escaped – yes. We had before one like you.’
A wave of reassurance passed over him. She was all right, this girl. His legs suddenly felt weak under him. He dropped down on the bed again.
‘You are hungry? Yes. I see. I go and bring you something.’
Was he hungry? He suppos
ed he was. How long was it since he had eaten? One day, two days? He couldn’t remember. The end had been like a nightmare – just keeping blindly on. He had a map and a compass. He knew the place where he wanted to cross the frontier, the spot that seemed to him to offer the best chance. A thousand to one chances against him being able to pass the frontier – but he had passed it. They had shot at him and missed. Or was that all a dream? He had swum down the river – that was it – No, that was all wrong, too. Well, he wouldn’t think about it – he had escaped, that was the great thing.
He leaned forward supporting his aching head in his hands.
Very soon, Freda returned carrying a tray with food on it and a great tankard of beer. He ate and drank whilst she stood watching him. The effect was magical. His head cleared. He had been lightheaded, he realized that now. He smiled up at Freda.
‘That’s splendid,’ he said. ‘Thanks awfully.’
Encouraged by his smile, she sat down on a chair.
‘You know London?’
‘Yes, I know it.’ He smiled a little. She had asked that so quaintly.
Freda did not smile. She was in deadly earnest.
‘You know a soldier there? A what is it? Corporal Green?’
He shook his head, a little touched.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said gently. ‘Do you know his regiment?’
‘It was a London regiment – the London Fusiliers.’
She had no further information than that. He said kindly: ‘When I get back to London, I’ll try to find out. If you like to give me a letter.’
She looked at him doubtfully, yet with a certain air of trusting appeal. In the end the doubt was vanquished.
‘I will write – yes,’ she said.
She rose to leave the room and said abruptly: ‘We have an English paper here – two English papers here. My cousin brought them from the hotel. You would like to see them, yes?’
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