The Young Clementina

by D. E. Stevenson

  “I shan’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s the last thing I want to talk about.”

  There was a queer, strained look in his face as he said the words; I had seen it in the faces of other men. It made the horror and agony of war more real to me than any amount of talk. Garth talked to me about the flowers in Flanders, and the look in his face told me that he had been living in hell.

  Garth went into the study after that, to see father, and I left them alone, for I knew that they could talk more openly in my absence. I busied myself about the house until I heard the door open and Garth came out. I saw that he was grieved over father’s condition, terribly grieved. Garth realized—far more clearly than I who was with father constantly—how changed he was, how broken and aged. There were tears in Garth’s eyes when he said good-bye.

  “I think he will be better when it is over,” I said, trying to comfort him.

  “If it is ever over,” Garth said. “I feel as if the war had been going on forever, and will never stop. If it ever does stop, Char, and I’m alive, I shall come back to you.”

  “Come back safely, my dear,” I told him.

  When the war ended Mr. Wisdon came down to Hinkleton and opened the Manor. He hoped that Garth would be demobilized soon after the Armistice, and he bought a couple of hunters for the winter. But the time dragged on and no news came. It took a long time before Garth’s demobilization papers went through. He was on the staff, and there was more work to do than ever.

  That winter of 1918 was a difficult time—the awful nightmare of killing was over, but everybody was very weary, and food was scarce. Influenza ravaged the village, carrying off the strong and weak with nice impartiality.

  The only bright spot for me in that long winter was the coming of a curious old man to Hinkleton. He stayed at the Hinkleton Arms for weeks while he studied father’s church and made drawings of the nave. Hinkleton Church is very old and beautiful. I should have told you more about it for it played a big part in my life—especially during the war years when I was so lonely and unhappy. I don’t think I could have survived those years if it had not been for the church. When everything seemed dark and dreadful I would go there and sit for hours, letting the peace which passeth all understanding sink into my soul. Sometimes it failed, but usually it was successful and I came out into the sunshine or the rain, feeling that God was somewhere, and that things must come right.

  The church is of gray stone, beautifully simple and bare, and the windows are of that clear, transparent glass which transmutes the sunbeams to shafts of jeweled light. I can never see a ruby without thinking of the windows of Hinkleton Church and of one window in particular—the subject is Ruth, gleaning in the fields, her dress is the color of the purest ruby in the world.

  The strange man who appeared in Hinkleton that winter of 1918 knew all about churches, and stained glass windows—he was writing a book upon the subject. He taught me many things about the church and revealed beauties which I had not appreciated. He found a leper window in the south wall, and obtained permission to open it up and glaze it with plain glass. He raved about the leper window for hours to anybody who would listen. I was quite willing to listen to Mr. Senture, for I was weary of my own company. It mattered little to me whether he talked about the window, or the stained glass or the beauty of the arching roof. Sometimes he would tire of these subjects and talk about his invalid wife (she was the passion of his life, he wrote to her every day). He talked about what he would be able to do for her when his book was published, and the money came rolling in. I grew very much interested in Mr. Senture’s book, it pleased me that our own lovely old church was to be made the subject of a book, that there would be pictures of it for all the world to see. The book was eventually published—Mr. Senture sent me a copy of it—and I have often wondered whether he made any money for his invalid wife. I loved the book, of course, but it would not appeal to a wide public, I am afraid.

  We went over to Canterbury one day—Mr. Senture and I—he wanted to make some notes about the cathedral and to see an old friend who was a keen archaeologist, and he offered to take me with him. I think he thought I had rather a dull life and was sorry for me; he was a kind old man. I enjoyed the day. It took us hours to get to Canterbury and hours to get home, for the trains did not fit in well, but even the long, tiresome journey was a pleasure to me. I had been for so long a prisoner in Hinkleton that I felt like a child on a Sunday school excursion. We had lunch at a tea shop, explored the cathedral and came home. It may not sound very thrilling to you, Clare, to spend a day with an old gentleman—most of it in the train—but I was delighted with my outing. We did not get home till long after midnight and that seemed the most amusing thing of all—I was very young.

  Kitty came to us at Christmas for a few days. She was going to spend most of the holidays in London with the Eltons—it would be more amusing than Hinkleton, she thought. She brought an invitation to me to go up and spend a weekend with the Eltons while she was there. They were going to have a dance and they thought I might like to come. It was kind of them to ask me, but I never felt at home with the Eltons and their friends—I was too old for them, too old at twenty-three. They were a bright, merry family, too bright to be natural, I thought. Their conversation was too “modern,” their jokes too personal. I decided to stay at home with father, and I think Kitty was relieved at my decision. I was no credit to Kitty in the Eltons’ society.

  My friendship with Mr. Senture amused Kitty. She could not understand how I liked to sit for hours in the cold church, taking rubbings of the brasses for him while he talked and made little sketches of the columns and windows for his book. I suppose it was rather a strange taste for a girl of my age, but life at Hinkleton was so dull and uneventful that anything out of the ordinary was an excitement to me.

  The winter passed—all things pass if you can only be patient enough, even the longest winter—and in the spring Kitty came home from school, finished. It seemed right that Kitty should come in spring, for she was spring personified, she was laughter and flowers and the singing of birds. She made my twenty-three years look like senility.

  Father brightened a little when Kitty came home, he chaffed her quite in the old manner, chaffed her about her new, pretty clothes and her grown-up hair. He made her sing to him in the evenings and she was always glad to sing. She had a pretty voice and had been well-trained by good masters. I was glad to see father so happy for now it would not be so hard to leave him. I was sure that when Garth came home he would want me to leave father and go to the Manor as his wife. Everything seemed to be waiting for Garth, there was a kind of breathless suspense in the soft spring air and the flowers seemed to bloom brighter—it was all because Garth was coming home soon now, coming back to me as he had promised—I had kept my part of the unspoken pact, I was waiting for him.

  Chapter Six

  “It Is Odd How One’s Tastes Change”

  It was the end of April before Garth was at last demobilized and returned to Hinkleton. I saw at once that he was changed; changed in himself and changed to me. It was not only that he was older and more assured, grown from the immature boy into the man, used to command, used to make decisions and assume responsibilities. (That would have been a natural change, the logical outcome of his experiences.) Garth was changed fundamentally. He looked at life with different eyes, he was bitter, cynical, disillusioned. He was much more talkative than he had been in the old days, much more amusing; but his jokes had a cutting edge, they were unkind, and intentionally so—Garth was too clever, too sensitive to the reactions of others to be cruel by mistake.

  The boy that I had known so well was a gentle-natured creature, considerate to others and somewhat self-effacing. This man who had come back in his place was ruthless, almost brutal at times. I told myself that the war had changed Garth’s nature. The dreadful sights, the agony of suspense, the long years of strain had warped him temporarily. He would get o
ver it, I told myself, and the old Garth would return. I was very patient with Garth, very long-suffering, for I had learned much in those four years—nearly five now—since the beginning of the war. I was no longer a child; I was a woman, used to self-discipline. I tried to be very gentle with Garth, I tried to remember all he had been through but it was no use. Again and again he hurt me, as he knew so well how, again and again he repelled my friendship and trampled on my feelings. I grew afraid of him, for I still loved him, and those we love can hurt us so desperately.

  Father invited him to dinner one evening soon after he came home. Father had always been fond of Garth, and he did not see, as I saw, how much Garth had changed. Garth was more gentle to father than he was to other people, more considerate, less cynical. He had always been devoted to father. I decided that evening to wear my yellow frock—the one I had worn at the dance—it had lain in my drawer for five years, wrapped in tissue paper. I took it out that evening when Garth was coming and looked at it—there were tears in my throat—I had been so happy, wearing that frock. It was all gone now, that happiness, the war had killed it. Garth had loved me in that frock. Could it bring back the past? I thought perhaps it might. I thought perhaps the years would fall away and vanish as though they had not been.

  Garth arrived before I was ready, I heard him talking to father in the drawing room, and I went in to greet him. He turned toward me as I came in and for a moment his face brightened, the cynical expression faded and he was the old Garth.

  And then he bowed in a mocking manner. “You never told me it was a party.”

  “Just you, Garth,” I told him, with my heart fluttering in my breast like a trapped bird.

  “I am honored indeed,” he mocked. “You put me to shame with your grandeur. Why was I not told it was a full dress occasion so that I could have taken my dress suit out of moth-cake and had it pressed?”

  Father looked up at me. “A pretty dress,” he said in his frail, threadlike voice. “A pretty dress, Charlotte.”

  “You think so, sir,” Garth said, looking at me gravely. “I might have thought it pretty at one time perhaps; it is odd how one’s tastes change.”

  I could say nothing to him, and he could thrust the knife into my heart and twist it with savage joy. I could only stand there and bear it as best I might.

  Kitty ran into the room like a spring breeze. She had chosen to wear a simple white frock—a little girl frock with a high neck and long sleeves—she swept me a curtsy and cried gaily.

  “La la—how grand we are tonight!”

  They gave me no peace all the evening. It was good-natured chaff on the surface, but beneath it, in Garth’s case, there was a strange bitterness that I could not understand. Kitty did not know the significance of the yellow frock, she did not know that every word went through my heart, but Garth knew. Garth was being deliberately cruel, he was torturing me. How I wished that I had not been prompted to wear that dress—I longed to run upstairs to my room and tear it off, but I couldn’t do that, I had to brave it out, I had to sit and smile and pretend that I didn’t mind. I pretended I had put on the yellow frock for a joke. It was a funny old-fashioned rag, I said; the fashions were more sensible now. I had put it on to let them see what frights we looked in the days before the war.

  I realized that night that all was over between me and Garth—it could never come right now. Garth had gone from me forever. But I had not bargained that he would turn from me to Kitty—when I heard of their engagement something died in my heart. I loved Kitty, and I loved Garth—yes, in spite of all that had happened, I still loved him—and now they were both lost to me—both lost.

  They were married very quietly in Hinkleton Church. We need not linger here. I shall not tell you about the wedding, Clare, I can’t. It was a blur of pain. I moved through the days of preparation like a ghost. You can imagine the wedding as you please—the presents, the flowers, the music, the eager crowd of tenants and villagers waiting to see the bride. Father married them and they went away. It was the last service that father took; the last time he was in his beloved church. He became very ill after Kitty had gone and only stayed with me a few days. I am sure he was glad to go. The world had changed so much; he was uncomfortable in it, lost and unhappy like a ghost from a previous era. His brain had failed, he was muddled sometimes and that worried him. Yes, I am sure he was glad to go.

  There was very little money left when father had gone and his affairs were settled. Garth got me the post of assistant librarian at Wentworth’s. Garth knew Mr. Wentworth; the dusty old library was a favorite haunt of his. Mr. Wentworth took me on Garth’s recommendation, I went there for a month, on trial, and I have been there for twelve years. Mr. Wentworth was old when I went and he seems no older now; there are times in life when age seems to forget you, it busies itself with others, drawing lines upon their faces and painting silver in their hair. Age has forgotten Mr. Wentworth; he is still the same dried-up slip of a man, with kind blue eyes, magnified strangely by his strong spectacles. He can still run up the wooden steps as nimbly as a boy when he wants a book off the top shelf, he can still add up rows of figures in the big heavy ledgers with the rapidity and precision of an adding machine.

  The first day I went to the library he showed me round with grave pride, showed me the different shelves where books about different parts of the world were kept. China to the right of the window and Australia to the left, and books about India above the old-fashioned fireplace. The whole room was shelved from the floor to the ceiling and it seemed to me that I should never learn where to find the book I wanted.

  From the first Mr. Wentworth was kind and easy to please, allowing me a free hand in many of the small details of my work.

  “You may dust them if you wish,” he said, smiling a little in answer to my inquiry. “Personally I find it easier to dust the books as I require them.”

  It was easier, and more satisfactory too. I soon gave up the unequal struggle of keeping the shelves dusted. It was an old, old house, you see, and dust came from every crevice in the walls. It rose from between the uneven boards, as you walked across the room, and hung suspended in the still air, waiting for the strong beams of sunshine to turn its floating particles to gold.

  I found my little flat and settled down. Garth and Kitty dropped out of my life. It was better so. Better for me to try to find content in my new life than to hanker after the old. I tried very hard to be content, tried to fix my mind upon the present and forget the past. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed. The nights were the worst. I could not sleep, and my mind, free from the preoccupations of my work, tortured me with visions of what might have been. I tossed and turned upon my bed, I thought of Garth and our beautiful friendship—now in ruins—I tried to find some clue to the change in him. If I could have found an explanation of the change I could have borne it so much easier, but I could find none. I still loved Garth, and this distressed me because I felt it was wrong—to love a man who had shown me so unmistakably that he did not want my love, to love a man who was the husband of another woman, my own sister, there was something horrible in that. I tried so hard to change my heart, I called in my pride, I turned my mind away from Garth. Night after night my pillow was wet with tears.

  The first gleam of comfort came to me in a poem. I had tossed for hours upon my bed and could bear it no longer. I rose and turned on the light and opened a book of poems which I had brought with me from the Parsonage—it was one of father’s books, he had always been fond of poetry. I read one or two poems without taking in the sense of what I read, and then suddenly my eye was caught and my attention held. It was quite a small poem called “Separation,” by Walter Savage Landor.

  “There is a mountain and a wood between us

  Where the lone shepherd and late bird have seen us

  Morning and noon and eventide repass.

  Between us, now, the mountain and the wood

>   Seem standing darker than last year they stood,

  And say we must not cross—alas! alas!”

  I read it again and again until the words were clear in my brain and I had no more need of the book. Then I put out the light and got back into bed. It was strange how comforted I felt. This man knew—he knew about me and Garth—he knew what it was like to be separated from the one person on earth by a dark, mysterious wood and a high, stony mountain. I was not alone in my experience—not alone anymore. The mere fact that another had walked where I was walking made the path easier for my feet. The mere fact of finding a simile for the mystery which separated me from my love made it easier to bear.

  I can’t explain why it should have been so; I only know that it was so. I could think of Garth and myself separated by the dark wood and the high mountain and accept it as inevitable. I was still sad—even miserable at times—but the awful agony of longing and searching was stilled. I ceased to rebel. I accepted my fate.

  Day succeeded day. My work filled my life. I did not return to Hinkleton for nearly a year, and I would not have gone then if Kitty had not made such a point of it. She asked me to be god-mother to her child, and to go down to Hinkleton for the christening. I did not want to go, and yet I did. London was so hot and stuffy and I knew how beautiful Hinkleton could be in July. A weekend at Hinkleton sounded to me like a weekend in heaven. It would be painful to see Garth and Kitty together, I knew that, but I thought I could bear it, and I told myself that it would look queer to refuse, and I did not want them to think that I grudged them their happiness.