Chatterton Square (British Library Women Writers)

by E. H. Young

  He had entered her room without waiting for an answer to his knock. Three of his long strides took him to the head of her bed, yet he gave the impression of having come a long distance at great speed and he began to speak at once.

  “That damn little—” but Rosamund put up a hand.

  “I agree, but don’t say it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Horrid word.”

  “Horrid girl.”

  “Poor thing,” Rosamund said. “Don’t bother about her.”

  “But it’s doing me good to be in a tearing rage. I’ve wanted to talk to you and I couldn’t, but temper’s like drink. It loosens the tongue.”

  “I prefer a temper.”

  His own seemed to subside. “And it’s only fair to tell you,” he said.

  Rosamund nearly shut her eyes to shut out the disclosure he was going to make, but that would not help him and she looked at him without, she hoped, betraying her anxiety. “I don’t particularly want to be treated fairly,” she said. “In fact, I don’t know how there can be fairness or unfairness between you and me.”

  “But you ought to know first. I may be getting married.”

  “May be? What a—what a contingent sort of remark,” she said.

  “Yes, so you needn’t tell anyone.”

  “No.” The drawn look she had sometimes seen on his face had given way to the expression he might have worn in contemplating a dangerous surgical operation, resigned to the prospect, almost bored by the thought of it, and she said, “Oh Felix, must you?”

  “Not the kind of must you’re thinking of.”

  “I couldn’t help thinking of it, could I?”

  “I suppose not. Things are not very well arranged. We ought not to become physically adult while we’re still mentally callow and then get punished for it. Oh, I know I’m mentally callow still but a little less so than I was.”

  “And I won’t have you punished!” Rosamund exclaimed.

  “Ah, I didn’t say I was going to be,” he replied quickly. He looked at her gravely but, though perhaps he did not know it, there was a sardonic twist at the corners of his mouth and this statement, she guessed, was the foundation-stone on which he must try to build his loyalty.

  “Can’t you tell me any more?” she asked. “Who is this girl?”

  “I feel pretty sure Miss Spanner has given you a certain amount of information,” he replied, “and I don’t know whether to hate her for it or to love her for giving me that holiday and, in a way, I could hate her for the holiday too.”

  “You mean,” Rosamund said, “that it made a difference.”

  To her distress, he dropped his face into his hands. “Of course, of course,” he muttered against them. “And what a name to have given me!” he exclaimed childishly. “I’ve always hated it.”

  “It was rather stupid,” she admitted, “but it was meant as a kind of thanksgiving. And I’m still thankful,” she said emphatically.

  He lifted his head. “She would have hated those hills,” he said, “and I knew, as soon as I saw them, that I never wanted to see her again.”

  “Then don’t,” Rosamund said.

  “So easy, isn’t it? But you can’t treat people like that.”

  “Yes you can.”

  “But it wouldn’t be—well, honourable, would it?” he asked, and he seemed to her to be pitifully young.

  “How can I answer that? You haven’t told me enough, but I think it’s possible to be honourably dishonourable.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Felix said. “And I didn’t bother much about it while I was there. When you’re climbing you can’t think of anything but what you’re doing. And bathing in those streams washes everything else off. And yet before I went away, as soon as I knew I’d passed my final and needn’t come on to you for anything, I’d been badgering her like a madman to marry me. Like a madman,” he repeated. “And even when I got her letter I could forget it nearly all the time. There’s a sort of healing magic there.”

  “I remember the letter.”

  “But Sandra redirected it.”

  “I thought you’d rather.”

  “So I did. I hoped you wouldn’t see it.”

  “And in the letter?” Rosamund ventured.

  “I got the promise I’d been asking for.”

  “And where does the contingency come in?”

  “War,” Felix said, and there was a pause before Rosamund murmured, “But I wonder why.”

  “A sort of Victoria Cross, for valour!” Felix said. “And then,” he said in a rush, “you wonder that I shut Paul up when he’s pleased at the prospect. Yes, a cross! That’s rather good! Oh, I’m a cad to be talking like this! You’ll forget it, won’t you?”

  “If I have to.”

  “It’s all my own doing,” he said but, as though she were to blame, he asked angrily, “And what sort of state of mind d’you think I’m in? I’m very nearly praying that we’ll knuckle under.”

  “I expect we shall,” Rosamund said, and she was very nearly praying for it too. She wondered why that girl had changed her mind. Influenced by what Agnes had told her and by what Felix was feeling now, it was impossible not to be suspicious of base motives. To be romantically the bride of a soldier, to be the pensioned widow of one, might be a brighter prospect than marrying a man with a very small income and his way to make. Or had absence, that untrustworthy guide, misled her? Yet why should absence succeed where the presence of this attractive creature had failed? He was just like Fergus, she thought, with a little heartache, impulsive but capable of a deadly cold and where he did not love completely she could imagine what that mortal chill would be.

  “You must get out of this,” she said, and saw at once that the imperative mood was not the one to use with him for he answered sharply, “That’s impossible. We have to reap what we sow.”

  “Not necessarily. You can plough up the ground before the crop arrives.”

  “And what would the ground feel about it?”

  Her clenched hands, lying on the sheet, tightened a little. This was to keep back a smile or a word that would betray her sad amusement. Even in his misery and his desire to escape he could not forgo the belief that he was deeply loved and though she had it in her mind to tell him he would leave the ground prepared for someone else who might already be negotiating for the use of it, she was silent for a time and then decided that she must speak, that leaving something unsaid was as likely to be wrong as saying it. “Felix,” she said, “go and tell her the truth. I’m sure that’s the right thing to do.”

  It was now he who felt amusement and he did not try to hide it. “You mean that’s the way to get me out of a mess and so you can persuade yourself it’s right. And a pretty fool I should make of myself,” he muttered, and she knew he was remembering all the protestations he had made and did not know how to withdraw, and she thought with him that things were not very well arranged. The eager generosity of youth could become a usurer demanding more and more interest on what had been freely given; critical faculties began to take command over physical desire and she had no doubt that Felix had already heard the genteel accents to which the satisfaction of his eyes had deadened him and if he could subdue his pride and see his obligations beyond the present moment, he would be lucky in having been so speedily disillusioned.

  “Believe me,” she said, “it’s better to be a fool for half an hour than an unhappy man for the rest of your life.”

  “And that,” he said, “may not be for very long. I wonder you haven’t suggested interceding for me.”

  “You don’t wonder anything of the kind,” she retorted. “You knew there was no danger of that.”

  “No,” he said more gently, “but I oughtn’t to have come crying to you like this,” and as he stood over her, before he bent down to kiss her, she saw from his set face that an atte
mpt at a smile might crumble into actual weeping, so it was she who had to do the smiling and, after he had gone, a little weeping.

  Chapter XLV

  

  What she wanted was somebody to talk to, but not Fergus. He would have said the boy was a fool and must pay for his folly. The somebody she wanted was Piers Lindsay. He would listen and simply by listening he would comfort her but, half superstitiously, she had put a ban on private interviews and she thought grimly a lot of good that self-denial had done for Felix! Moreover, she had given him her word to tell no one. There was nothing she could do, either for him or herself. She had to wait, trying not to find a way of believing that the sacrifice of one country and the honour of her own was a reasonable price for her son’s liberty. And he could get it with a few words, she thought angrily, and spare her this hateful complication to her suspense, a lifetime, long or short, of misery for himself and she had no patience with his false idea of chivalry, largely mixed as it was with unconscious conceit. She feared there was a wakeful night before her, but the consciousness of her helplessness brought sleep quite suddenly and deeply and when she woke she was not aware of having dreamed. Often she dreamed of her father and waked in dreadful trouble because she had quarrelled with him or he had scolded her, a cruel way of meeting him of whom she always thought with tenderness and who had always dealt tenderly with her. She never dreamed of Piers, seldom of her children or of Fergus but to-night she thought she must have been with him in her sleep. She had so strong a sensation of his nearness that she left her bed and went to the window, then stepped out and leaned over the balcony. There was no one below or anywhere in the Square. The night was very still; the lamplight shone with its peculiar effect, in deserted streets, of secret anticipation; no steamer hooted and no lion roared; she could hear no footsteps, but the feeling of his nearness stayed with her when she returned to her room and put on the light and saw that it was nearly three o’clock, and she smoothed her hair before she opened her door and listened from the landing to the silence within the house. All she could hear was the ticking of the clock in the hall. Hardly noticeable in the daytime, it now sounded very loud, inexorably marking the passage of time, the approach of the unknown. A little more quickly than usual her heart was doing the same thing, all the hearts in the house were doing it; though she could not hear them, they were all beating towards the future. For five of these hearts she was responsible and she went quickly back to her room and shut the door as though she could keep out all she feared for them and for herself. And there was much of that. Though she had smoothed her hair instinctively when she thought Fergus might be near, she had been afraid to find him in the house. He would be the stranger who had parted from her in anger, the man who had asked for his release and so, as it were, sanctioned her love for another and then, outrageously, ignored her. No, she did not want him back, she did not want to see him, yet she would never be quite rid of him and little as she was given to belief in telepathic messages reaching anyone like herself, she was almost persuaded that this waking to a sense of his nearness must have been such a message and it was a long time before she could sleep again. Her own problem dwindled when she contemplated that of Felix; she tried to see his as insignificant compared with the mass of misery that might fall on the world, and if he were awake now, turning from side to side as she was doing, she had no doubt that he, too, was trying to think more of his country than of himself, to prefer its honour to his own escape, though that was already easy enough. He had only to give a little push to a door not quite fast. It had been shut on him with reluctance and on conditions and it was these against which his pride ought to revolt, but she could do nothing, nothing. She was helpless in this, as in the greater matter, though, perhaps, far back, she had her share of blame for both.

  She found rest at last by sending her mind across the river, over the tops of the trees on the other side, over fields dun-coloured with stubble, to the little house sheltering Piers and George, and she pictured Piers showing the sad side of his face, the other pressed against the pillow, while George lay on his back, the ends of his moustache as sharp as the bayonet he had once used and would be ready to use again and, though she received no message from that quarter, she knew the substance of it would be exactly what she wanted. That was nearly as good as getting it and with the thought that emotionally and mentally she was as sure of Piers as of her own eventual death, she went to sleep at last and woke to the ringing of church bells for early Sunday service, a pleasant sound to her because she could lie in bed, pitying all the people who pattered through the streets in obedience to that summons and leaving her family to forage for their breakfasts when they chose. Her own breakfast, she knew, would soon be brought to her by Sandra who would then prepare another tray for Chloe.

  “Only this Sunday and next and then I shan’t do it for Chloe any more,” Sandra said.

  “One job less. You ought to be thankful,” said Rosamund.

  Sandra did not find it necessary to reply. Instead, she said, “And Miss Spanner’s going on as usual because the boys are wandering about in dressing-gowns. She might do it herself if she had a nicer one, but she says it’s slovenly.”

  “So it is, but it’s nice, once a week.”

  “And now she’s started about wastefulness.”

  “Tell her to mind her own business.”

  “And how cross you’d be if I did! It’s all these separate teapots that worry her. She says if we all had breakfast together we’d save about a quarter of a pound of tea and the day will come when we’ll need it. D’you think that’s true?”

  “I think it’s very likely. In the meantime I’m going to use all I want and in the meantime, too, Sandra, don’t look like that. We must make things as happy as we can for Chloe.”

  “I don’t think we need bother much about that,” Sandra said. “I think her happiness is inside herself.”

  “And that’s where it should be. Still, we may as well do what we can.”

  “James is all right,” Sandra said. “He has his own kind of happiness inside himself too, but Felix isn’t like that.”

  “No, it’s you red heads who are the worriers,” Rosamund said, but she did not point the difference between these two. Felix’s worries, naturally, at the moment, were for his own affairs; Sandra’s would always be for those of other people. “If only you would realize,” she said aloud, “that you can’t do much for other people in their troubles, but quite a lot in their happiness. You won’t believe that, though, until you’re as old as I am and you’ll wear yourself to a thread and you won’t be pretty.”

  Sandra laughed. “That won’t matter much.”

  “It will matter a great deal, to you and everybody else. Besides you’ll create the very atmosphere you don’t want.”

  “I know,” Sandra said. “I’ll try not to, but I did think Felix looked rather extra glum this morning.”

  “Perhaps he had a bad night,” Rosamund said a little dryly.

  “Why?” Sandra asked anxiously. “He’s much too young for that, isn’t he?”

  “Much,” Rosamund agreed, and when Sandra had gone she would not allow herself to sigh. She must abide by the doctrine she had been preaching. She could not help Felix in his difficulty but she could increase Chloe’s happiness by finishing the preparations for the wedding gaily and, in doing this, she found herself, at times, more generally hopeful. She would have been sorry to agree about anything with Mr. Blackett, but the pause in discussions did seem as though there were hesitation on the other side, and while she had no faith in her country’s leaders who had never yet fairly faced a situation, centuries of tradition were behind them and might stiffen their weak backs, force them to outface a bully whose word was known to be worthless and who was so foul with evil it seemed as though he must perish of his own rottenness. And to expect anything good of that corruption was, after all, to expect sweetness from carrion. To approach it was t
o risk infection and as, during the next few days, she read the newspapers and heard people talking in the streets and shops, she began to fear that the traditions of her country were out of fashion, that some other infection already pervaded it, not a positively evil, certainly not a cruel one, but an aggravated form of the inertia which was responsible for so much. She knew there must be many people who felt as she did, but there were not nearly enough of them. In her own house she found them. She learnt that though she had not properly combated the prevalent idea that an enemy must be right and had been too silent about the past, too much afraid of sentimentality to voice her great pride in her country and her love for it, her children’s inborn ideas of decency and justice went beyond their own private affairs. They were nervously on the alert and, though they said little about it, she knew these young men of hers were thinking less of their own skins, even Felix was thinking less of his future than of those standards by which they had lived, which they accepted as their inheritance and now feared might be repudiated. She did not know how to be thankful enough for that. There was comfort, too, in buying a lettuce from Piers Lindsay, another occupant of a world she understood, and having a few words with him across the vegetables, and there was always Agnes who, reserved during the daytime for Chloe’s sake, had her say at night and listened, grimly amused, to Rosamund having hers with the eloquence of an easy-going person really roused, an accumulated indignation and a physical as well as mental loathing for the gang with whom we parleyed.