The Lovely Ship

by Storm Jameson

  “Do you love her so much?”

  “I love her,” Hugh said, and left it at that.

  They seemed then to be launched upon an interminable discussion, in which Mary asked the most frightful questions, and was determined to strip herself and Hugh of every decent pretence that might have been wrapped round the affair. She hurt herself so dreadfully, running blindly against walls and swords, that in very pity for her, Hugh would have gone away. He did not know what to say to comfort this shaken desolate Mary, who cried to him for comfort and repudiated it and him in the same breath. He was shaken himself, and wretched. He had never meant his new love to touch Mary or hurt her. He was almost ready to throw Miss Jardine away, to do anything that would save his wife from the agony of self-abasement and grief she was enduring under his very eyes. Almost—not quite. Fanny Jardine’s surrender was too present with him. It was too warm and living and passionate an experience. He wanted her. He wanted her, he thought, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. Mary’s tears came between him and his new love and hurt something in him of which he had forgotten the very existence. Absurdly he ached to comfort her. She had been a dear and generous lover. He felt a quick throb of some feeling that was almost resentment against Fanny Jardine. He wanted to take Mary in his arms and say: “There, there, my little love, it’s all right. Don’t mind. Everything’s all right.” But he stood in front of her and stared at the sullen bitter woman, whose face, distorted with weeping, was like a gross caricature of that young girl he had loved, and married, and irremediably hurt and failed.

  “Hugh,” his wife said, “didn’t you feel that you owed me some loyalty? I don’t mean that you did. I’d hate”—her voice faltered—“to keep you against your will. But didn’t you feel that?”

  “I might have felt it,” Hugh said slowly, “if you had ever been wholly mine.”

  “Oh Hugh, I was. I was.”

  “At least half of you belonged to Garton’s,” Hugh said.

  Mary said something incoherent and apparently rather stupid about another lesson and went away, groping a little with her hands like a blind woman. . . .

  Nothing in Mary Hervey’s life had prepared her to learn this lesson, and every obstinate quality in her fought against accepting it. She thrust it away from her, would not believe it had happened to her, but in the end, and because she always did learn her lessons in the end, she began trying to see what could be got out of it. The Garton in her kept on insisting that something could be solved. What?

  She thought of Miss Jardine almost impersonally. But jealousy can exist as an impersonal emotion, and the image, recurring again and again, an irrational torment that came and went and came again in moments of fatigue, forcing itself on her out of unimagined depths of shame and self-loathing, of Hugh in the girl’s arms, being caressed, caressing her, drove her through days of torturing madness and nights of frightful crazy grief.

  She did not show it. After the first open rout she pulled her forces together again. Though Hugh saw her every day, he did not tell her what he going to do, and she supposed from the fact that “the Jardine woman” never now came to the house, that she had been told to keep away. Mary became very tired, and she bore her little body about with an air of resentment, as if she were always asking it: “What have I done that you should turn on me like this?” She tried to despise Hugh. She ought to have known that no good could come of a hasty London marriage into a family she knew nothing about. This was what she had been brought to by her precipitant folly. To this dreadful humiliation of knowing herself put away for an inferior woman. Mary knew that Miss Jardine was inferior. “Only a mean woman,” she thought fiercely, “would have done such a thing to me. I’ve been kind to her.” But she believed that Hugh was irresistible, and she could not despise him. Hugh was not a fool. She acknowledged it. He was young, incredibly young and dreamy, but, incongruous and shocking as it seemed to his wife, the Jardine affair had roused and hardened him. Mary revolted at the means. But she had to admit to herself that she was confronted by a new Hugh. Not a quick-tongued soft-hearted boy, but a stubborn intractable man to whom she no longer meant everything. Pride urged her to drive this man out of her life. “Away, take this woman you prefer to me, and go out of my sight.” Pride sustained her through each day of silent refusal to question Hugh or to admit the questions she could read in his eyes. And pride again, urged to it by her native prudence, led her to make cautious inquiries about her position if Hugh left her with Miss Jardine.

  She found that with incredible difficulty and at an expense that horrified her she could divorce him. At any other time the publicity involved would have revolted her father’s daughter, but now she was as determined as ever Mark Henry Garton might have been to assert herself, at no matter what loss of personal dignity. She was beyond troubling about dignity. She was actually making the calmly monstrous assumption that nothing she chose to do would be improper. Let Danesacre make what comment it liked—there would, she knew, be comment enough on her equivocal position as a woman with a divorced husband—she was still the owner of Garton’s Yard and Garton’s Line, not to speak of blast furnaces and an engine works on the Tees.

  Stiff with dignity, she sat alone in her room, raging against Danesacre and Miss Jardine. It always ended in the same fashion, with tears and a girl rocking herself to and fro on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped over the little beating of her heart.

  But if her treacherous pride could not save her, youth and the tenacious spirit in her were already at work. And when the thought came into her mind that Hugh could be defeated if she were to submit herself completely to him, if she went to him and said (in effect): “I am your slave, trample on me if you like, but give up this woman,” she had the wit to reject it. She was not too proud to bow her haughty young neck under Hugh’s feet. She was learning to respect the new Hugh for qualities her young husband had never shown. But she was too decent. What a way to get a man back! Better let him go than that. With trembling lips she faced the prospect squarely. If she could not force and might not coax him to give up his way what was she to do? Resign him? Could she resign what she had already lost? “Oh I loved him, I loved him so,” she cried. She almost perceived that love was not all that went to the making of a decent marriage. There was something more, that she had missed.

  And here it suddenly occurred to her that Hugh would get tired of Miss Jardine. The girl was stupid. Mary realised this with a little shock of certainty. Hugh would weary of her, and then, because he could never abandon her after dragging her through the disgrace of divorce, he would have to stick to her. He would look for consolation elsewhere. He would find it, and grow weary and look again. She saw Hugh drifting through all the casual intimacies, the shabby back-room adulteries of an anchorless man. He would creep furtively with his love of the moment to some rendezvous for such smirched meetings, a little bored with it, a little revolted, afterwards hating it, and inevitably going again, and hating it again. Her Hugh, that boy whose kisses in the dusk of a Kensington orchard had opened to her a world of beauty, of amazing tendernesses, of confident adventure and excitement, and the quiet happiness of friendly intimate experiences shared. It was unbearable. It must not be like that.

  She was in the office when this thought came to her, and with a sudden vigour, whirled out of the room and ran to Hugh’s study. Miss Jardine was there, standing by the window, facing Hugh with a perturbed and flustered urgency. Evidently Mary had interrupted a conversation of some importance. She swept it aside. She swept Miss Jardine aside with an imperious gesture.

  “Go away,” she said impatiently, and when the girl did not move—“Oh, do go.”

  The secretary hesitated. She looked to Hugh for guidance and getting none, went reluctantly away, shutting the door behind her with a resentful click.

  “Hugh,” Mary said breathlessly. “Hugh, what did you mean to do at the end of your month with that woman?”

  Hugh gave her a queer look.

 
“Come back.”

  “Here? Come back here and live with me again?”

  “Sounds fairly revolting, doesn’t it?” Hugh said bitterly. “But you see, there are the children. There’s even Richard. And there’s you. Damn it all, Mary, I haven’t stopped loving you just because I’ve fallen in love with Fanny Jardine. I don’t expect you to believe that, but it’s quite true. I never meant this to come near you or hurt you at all. It’s a totally different sort of thing. And I loathe scenes.” He was white-lipped and Mary suddenly perceived that underneath his reserve he was strung inordinately tight, as if the strain were becoming more than he could stand.

  “Could you give her up for me?” Mary demanded.

  “No,” said Hugh, and after a pause, again: “No.”

  He contemplated Mary, gone a little white under this thrust, and said:

  “You see, she’s utterly and absolutely mine. As you’ve never been, Mary. Don’t, my dear.”

  Mary rallied. She thought: “I won’t worry you more than I can help, you poor boy.” She spoke hurriedly but managed to give an effect of choosing her words with some care.

  “Hugh. Why shouldn’t you do just that?”

  “Do what?” Hugh asked wearily.

  “Go away with”—Mary faltered and recovered herself sternly—“this girl. Very quietly, without any fuss, or anyone knowing. Have your month, two months, as long as you like. Then come back again.”

  Hugh was looking at her with something like horror, as men do look at their women when those immature creatures have said one of the Impossible Things, things that are not said. But she was so set upon her purpose that she was entirely self-forgetful. There was something in the erectness of her slim body as she stood facing him in the dusk that stirred him to a sudden warmth of grief.

  “Come back here, Mary? To you?”

  “Is that so dreadful a prospect?” Mary’s smile was a rather pitiful affair. “I didn’t mean it quite like that, Hugh darling. I meant, come back and live in the house. It’s big enough for both of us. I won’t interfere with you. Or ask questions. We can be friends,” she said, her spirit torn with unimaginable memories. “It’s not impossible. Think, Hugh. How is it different from what you meant to do when you thought I wouldn’t know?”

  In her excitement she came close to him and held him with both hands, pleading with him to help her to save the boy Hugh from that dreadful fate which she alone saw. And if the thought crossed the depths of her mind that this was one way of keeping a hold on him, it in no way lessened the resolute pressure of her desires. These were all for Hugh, full of fierce pity and a fierce inarticulate hunger to have him at least within sight and hearing for some of the time. And in the end, shaken by her soft urgency, by the very loveliness of her face as she lifted it to his, with its sweet air of surprise still shining through her woe, he gave in. He promised every thing she asked. Only then, with a half frightened glance at him and beyond him, she ran away, ran away and left him wondering what in life is more bitter than achieved desire. . . .

  It was not until the day of his going that Mary seemed to realise that this was the end. Then all her courage left her and she hung about in his room, watching him pack. She fetched him things to lay in the open box, trotting here and there like an obedient little girl, jeering at his incompetent packing. Only when all was over, and the box stood between them, strapped and locked, she broke down.

  “Hugh,” she said, “Hugh, you’re not going? Don’t go. Don’t, don’t go.”

  For the first time it seemed to strike Hugh that he was hurting himself as well as Mary, hurting them both, dreadfully and irrevocably. Mary clung to him and they kissed and he tore himself away and held her off at arm’s length.

  “Don’t you see it’s no use,” he cried. “Mary, don’t you see it’s just no use. You didn’t love me. Yes, you did. You did. Brute that I am. You did love me, but only half of you. You kept me out. You pushed me away. . . . You can look after yourself . . . you’ve always made that quite plain. . . . She can’t. . . . I don’t know why I’m saying all these things to you. They’re none of them true. You’ve been the dearest sweetest wife. . . . I’ve hurt you. I’ve made you ashamed.”

  “No, no. I’ve been happy. Hugh, Hugh darling, stay with me.”

  Hugh was shaking with fatigue and the strain of the last week. He shook his head and then rested it on Mary’s shoulder. She stroked his smooth hair and listened to him with a familiar constriction of her chest. It threatened to choke her, but she had to keep herself quiet, very quiet, for Hugh.

  “I can’t. Mary dear, I can’t. There isn’t any going back. There’d be all this between us. You think, now, that it would be all right. It wouldn’t. How many times a day would you look at me and see—this? I couldn’t bear it. . . and neither could you. We couldn’t make anything of it. Could we?”

  “You want to go to her, don’t you?” Mary said softly, still stroking the dark head near her own. Hugh straightened himself wearily.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Mary, I don’t know. At this moment, I’d like to lie down and be smothered in my sleep. What a state of mind for an elopement.”

  Mary achieved a little joke.

  “Wives don’t usually see their husbands off on these occasions. . . . All right, Hugh, I won’t worry you any more. Good-bye and bless you.”

  Still Hugh did not go. Mary could not guess what he was thinking. Of Fanny Jardine, probably, waiting for him somewhere. Of the mess he and Mary had made of their marriage. Of the impossibility of bridging the gulf that in a few weeks had opened between them. Her mind played her an old trick, and she had the odd fancy that she had married the boy of the long-ago morning at Roxborough. It had all ended in this dreadful failure and now Gerry was leaving her. But it was Hugh who was going and leaving her alone and with him was going all warmth, all the sweetness of shared joys, all that made life other than an empty weariness. She remembered odd things about him . . . the way he could make himself seem small and defenceless when he was tired and wanted to lie in her arms and be comforted . . . a trick he had of smiling at her through his eyelashes . . . small, absurd things, a note in his voice, a gesture when he turned to her . . . Hugh waking in the morning, with untidy hair and very bright eyes. . . . He was leaving her and taking her youth with him. A terror of loneliness, a sense of infinite loss seized Mary and she stumbled towards him, with tears pouring down her face, to cry in his arms.

  “I’m not trying to keep you. Only just this . . . I love you. I’ve had you. I’m grateful for that. Don’t ever think I’m not. I want you to promise me one thing. If ever you want me again . . . if she isn’t kind to you . . . if you want me, you’ll come and tell me, won’t you? Don’t think anything of me but this. That I’ll be glad for you to come back. Promise. Promise, Hugh.”

  He promised.

  Mary drew herself out of his arms, and stood dabbing at her tears.

  “It seems to me,” Hugh said unsteadily, “that I love you more now than I ever did in my life.”

  Mary was too exhausted to answer this by anything more coherent than a feeble crow. . . . There was a knock at the door, and the housemaid announced that the cab was waiting, and should the man fetch the master’s box?

  The box was dragged out, while Mary stood impassively by the window. Even now, perhaps, it was not too late, if she made another appeal. But she could not appeal any more. Things had gone too far. They were being driven on by the pressure of their own decisions. Hugh was probably right. It wouldn’t work . . . she would be galled by the memory of Miss Jardine . . . Hugh would regret, feel cheated, tied down. . . . The cabman was hoisting the box up beside him, to the accompaniment of shrill objurgations from the servant. Everything was ready. It was all over. Hugh and she kissed for the last time, holding each other closely, and then he hurried away. Mary heard him go. The front door banged. The wheels of the cab crunched on the gravel of the drive.

  “Hugh,” Mary said softly.

  With eno
rmous force the thought struck her that Hugh had never meant to marry Miss Jardine unless his wife forced him to it by divorcing him. Surely a man who loved a woman wanted to marry her? This was an extraordinarily complicated affair. What on earth was Hugh after? Romance? Mary gave a little shriek of laughter, thinking of Fanny Jardine’s ugly nose. . . . The room was full of Miss Jardine’s nose . . . Mary clapped her hand to her mouth, frightened by the sound of her laughter. . . .

  She got through the night somehow, and in the morning there was still her work to be done. And that day passed. And another night. And the next day.

  Chapter Four

  1

  As if time had stood still for Mary Hervey while she watched her husband tearing their life across with a wilful gesture, it leapt into activity as soon as he had gone, and sprang, spinning and whirling, into the upward curve of a great arc across the world. It would not have been surprising if she had lost her head, so did life and time hurry on her. The sixties were just not in when young Mary Roxby came to Danesacre, and just not out when Mary Hervey’s husband left her for le pays bleu with romance in the shapely person of Fanny Jardine in his arms.

  After that, while she was still in hours of sleeplessness or fatigue fighting the recurring agony of her loss, time took hold of her and catapulted her into the tremendous seventies. The year Hugh went was the year when the Suez Canal, swinging open, delivered the trade of the East over to her steamships. Another three years, and the people who had jeered at steam were falling silent. The beautiful sisters and successors of the Mary Gray were still proud upon the seas, but more and more frequently they met in their splendid passage funnelled boats past which they swept in all their disdainful glory of sail, mocking the clumsy interloper. The interloper wallowed after them, and the dun shadow of a smoke-stack fell across their radiant wake.

  One fine Spring morning in the early seventies Mary was in the Yard, standing close to the ship on the stocks. The hammers of the men at work on her sounded clear and bright, like bells ringing in the sunshine. Up the valley the trees were covered with a fine feathery green; in the light air their branches swayed up and down, sharp and distinct under an intense blue sky. White clouds, soft and thick, tumbling from the zenith, dazzled Mary’s eyes. She looked away from them and was dazzled again by the multitudinous waves in the harbour, ruffled up by a fresh breeze. A man on a boat broke into singing; his voice floated away and was lost in the middle air. Mary took a step nearer the ship. Her glance ran lovingly over the lines of her hull. Sweet lines she showed, sound and graceful, very different from the hull line of Mark Henry’s first steamer. She would take the water almost like a clipper. A delicate glow of satisfaction spread through Mary’s body. On such a morning it was delicious to be alive, to see the ship that had been first an idea in her head, then a design on the architect’s drawing sheets and a model that would later be carried up to her house, shaping, springing into life above the keel laid down four months ago. Nothing thrilled her as the upward curve of a ship from keel to bows thrilled her, nor gave her the same exquisite sense of Tightness and contentment. Her imagination—she was a slow-thinking and conscientious young woman for the most part—was released in ships, it went fluttering down to the sea in full-rigged ships and plodded to East and West in the wake of her steamers.