‘How’s young Tom getting on?’ Matthew asked.
Roger had three children, two boys and a girl. The elder boy was thirteen and doing well at the County School. In a few years he would be his father’s right-hand man on the farm. Small wonder, then, that Roger could always contrive to be cheerful, could move on from middle age unaware to a dark shadow lying ahead. Roger had been whitewashing his cowsheds and getting the harness cleaned. Roger had got all his swedes stacked under cover, and though he grumbled and grimaced, saying they were poor trash and what could you expect after a bone-dry autumn, there was a certain comic gusto even in his grumbling. The beans, said Roger, were looking good and sturdy; and so, what’s more, were Stephen his ten-year-old and Nesta his baby daughter.
‘She’ll be a sparkler, old boy, when she grows up,’ said Roger, turning the knife in Matthew’s wound. ‘And Steve too. You ought to see him riding his pony.’
When the women came back from the kitchen they had had their coffee, and their conversation too. Edie Haslam, touching Roger on the shoulder, announced that they must be going. Matthew was aware of having behaved badly, of having in effect broken up the party, but he was too tired to feel remorse on that account. When the visitors were gone he caught Ann’s eye regarding him with timid speculation. Because of his huge secret he was shy of her, anxious to avoid the intimacy of a shared silence; and Ann, for a parallel reason, was shy of him. The sound of the pony’s trot had scarcely died away before he began talking of bed. It was ridiculously early, but he could do with a long night, he said, knowing that no night could be long enough to ease him of his burden.
‘You don’t look well, Matt. Is anything the matter?’
‘Bit of backache. Nothing much.’ Merely to avoid hurting her feelings, to soften the indifference of his manner, he added: ‘You might have a look at it, Ann. It feels sort of bruised.’
She followed him upstairs and with a maternal eye watched him undress.
‘Come here, where I can see,’ she said. And when she saw she exclaimed in astonishment: ‘What have you been doing, Matt? It’s all red and patchy, like a scalding. Or like …’ She hesitated. ‘Like weals, as if you’d been flogged.’
Turning, he smiled half-wryly at her shocked expression. ‘Well, I haven’t been, my dear. Though maybe I deserve it.’
She gave him one startled glance, afraid to ask what he meant, thinking she knew too well. One glance only, and she turned away.
‘Bed’s the place for you, Matt.’ She spoke with brisk kindness, as to a child. ‘I shall send for Dr Meganzer tomorrow.’
§ 18
During the long sick-leave that preceded his final release from military duties Felix’s first visit had been to Minsterbourne, to renew old ties and discuss his future with Father Hemner, whom he still regarded as his spiritual director. But in five minutes of conversation with him he had realized, with a queer sense of shock and emancipation, that though admiration was unimpaired and personal liking undiminished he would never again stand to Hemner in the relation of disciple to master. He saw, moreover, that Hemner himself was quietly resolved not to let him do so. The two men met now as friends and brothers in the faith, a faith which Felix was perhaps less willing to define than Hemner was, but which nevertheless served to sustain and confirm him in his chosen course. Indecision, at least, was now resolved. He came to Hemner, not as the youth in khaki who had said goodbye to him three years before, but as a man matured, changed, bitterly enriched, by an experience to which Hemner was a stranger.
From Minsterbourne to Stanton was no great distance. Faith and her family received him with royal honours, as befitted a wounded hero; and so, a thought too soon for Faith’s jealous taste, did Mrs Meldreth. Sitting contentedly with her and Kate, in the house he remembered so well, he felt so much at home that it seemed absurd that having found them again he should ever leave them. Florrie was married and living in the far north. Ellen Winter—‘You remember her, Felix?’ said Mrs Meldreth. ‘Of course you do: you were such friends!’—was working with the Quakers in famine-stricken Europe. He received both items of news with equal interest and equal calm. The passing years had levied no toll on Mrs Meldreth’s benign charm, which, on the contrary, had positively expanded with her ample figure. And Kate’s promise of beauty was so much more than fulfilled that Felix, reverting to the shyness of his twenties, felt almost afraid of her, till put at his ease by her own ease and directness. That feeling attacked him again, mixed with an ingredient he did not recognize, when visitors arrived for tea and shattered the cosiness of the reunion. Conspicuous among the guests was a Mr Turnbull. Kate, with what Felix thought unnecessary frequency, called him Johnny; they were evidently well acquainted; and Mrs Meldreth, glancing from one to the other with her usual benevolence, allowed a small sleek smile to nestle in the corners of her mouth.
Felix was the first to take his leave when tea was over. He fancied, without quite knowing why, that it would be unwise to stay longer.
Some weeks later, in a totally unexpected letter, Kate herself gave him for his amusement the substance of a conversation she had had with her mother. In his answer he announced his decision to work in the East End.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice, Kate dear, if Felix could come to Stanton Wold as vicar?’
‘Very nice,’ Kate agreed, ‘but hardly practicable, since we have a vicar already.’
‘Poor Mr Mullion. He’s getting past it, Kate. He’s so forgetful. Why, the other day …’
Before her mother could get launched on a sea of narration Kate said: ‘Yes, but there he is, still alive and kicking.’
‘Not kicking, my dear. I only wish he were. And only just alive, if you ask me. Besides, why shouldn’t Felix be his curate? Yes, that’s the plan! And then, when poor Mr Mullion is taken from us, Felix could step into the living.’
‘Is the living in your gift then? I didn’t know.’
‘Nonsense, Kate. It only wants arranging. I shall speak to Mr Williams about it, and he’ll drop a word in the right quarter. We’ll put our heads together——’
‘What? You and Daniel? Oh, Mother!’
‘—and hatch a little plot,’ said Mrs Meldreth, rosy with mischief.
§ 19
MATTHEW’S illness put him out of action for ten weeks. For ten weeks Ann nursed him devotedly and held her tongue. From a medical point of view it was a great success, this illness: it was the worst of its kind that Meganzer in a long experience had seen, and it did, however reluctantly, follow a predicted course. During the first week the doctor came every day. His admiration of the mess that confronted him was boundless: it was a beautiful case. On the night of the Haslams’ visit Matthew slept scarcely at all. By morning the redness on his body had become darker and more brilliant, and the ache, now continuous, had a more ferocious quality. By midday the flesh was swelling into enormous blisters, and the area of disorder had perceptibly spread: it was a broad band of inflammation running halfway round the body. Having applied a coat of brown varnish to it, and wrapped it in wadding, Meganzer said he would come again tomorrow. He left behind him some sedative tablets, but there was no sleep for Matthew that night and when morning came he was near the end of his endurance. Yet the night’s torment had been punctuated by moments of a grim acceptance that was almost satisfaction. It was as if he discerned, dimly, a sort of logic in the sequence of events. Being not, like Job, a man eminently righteous, he was in a mood to embrace this punishment, to submit himself willingly to the scourge and catharsis of physical pain; moreover, it saved him from too vividly remembering the things he most wanted to forget. But he was glad in the morning to see Meganzer, whose smallness and quickness and mocking melancholy seemed to belong to another world. Meganzer was the god in disguise intervening in human affairs. He was the little man who stops you on your way through the wood and gives you three wishes. Matthew had only one wish, and Meganzer gave him that. The prick of the needle was a promise, and the assurance of deep sleep was bliss.
At nights Ann was in the room with him, and in daylight she was never far away. The strength he had lost seemed to have flowed into her. She was busy and quiet and cheerful. Though her secret remained unspoken, and a burden to her, she discovered to him a humour and gaiety such as he had hardly seen in her before during all their years together. It was the reassuring gaiety of a mother with her sick child, but of a mother who was herself still a child at heart. She brought him his meals and managed to give to every one of them the air of a picnic. Often she had hers with him, and the simple unspoken intimacy of those shared meals was a true sign of their marriage. In his convalescence she contrived that Patchett should come and see him occasionally, to entertain him with tales of the lambing season, which was now far advanced, and to talk of the threshing, and the new calves, and the bad temper of a recently purchased drilling machine. ‘He do get the very devil in him sometimes, master,’ said Patchett proudly.
All this long while she had kept silence about what, next to Matthew himself, was nearest to her heart. She could not keep silence for ever: there were things that had to be said. They were not quite the things she would have said had she spoken months earlier. Time had been granted her, time in which to consider and to learn. These weeks in which Matthew had been entirely dependent on her goodness had taught her something both of herself and of him: it was not a new knowledge, but an old knowledge made manifest. Yet though there was a difference between what she would have said and what she had now to say, it was a difference rather in spirit than in substance. She could now say with full confidence what ten weeks earlier she would have said tentatively and with trembling.
They sat in their accustomed chairs, on either side of the hearth.
‘You’re better now, aren’t you, Matt?’
He grinned. ‘Yes, thank you, nurse.’
‘I mean, really better?’
‘Right as rain.’
‘You’ve been back working a week now,’ said Ann.
‘About time too, it was. What are you getting at?’
‘Look, Matty. There’s something we’ve got to talk about. I didn’t want to worry you while you were ill. I couldn’t. But you’ll have to know some time.’
He stared. ‘I shall have to know what?’
‘It’s about Hilda,’ she said gently.
‘Hilda?’ His surprise was unfeigned.
‘Yes, Hilda,’ Ann said. ‘I think she’s going to have a baby.’
‘You think …? Why?’
Seeing and hating his confusion she said quickly: ‘Please don’t fence, Matt. I couldn’t bear it. Just tell me yes or no. Is the baby yours?’
He looked at her, and looked away. ‘I suppose so.’
He held his eyes away from her now, afraid to see her stricken by the false truth, or the half-truth, which he had gone through fire and torment to prevent her being told. A melancholy, bitter smile sat in the corners of his mouth. All that effort wasted! And yet … a child would be born. His child. If only it had been Ann’s as well!
‘Ann,’ he said helplessly, ‘what can I say! Does it … does it matter so much?’
‘If it matters to you, Matt, it matters to me. It’s really,’ she said easily, ‘for you to say, isn’t it?’
The apparent lightness of her tone astonished him. ‘What do you mean? It’s all past and done with, so far as I’m concerned. You must know that.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I think I knew that.’
‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘It was simply——’
‘Not quite nothing,’ she quickly broke in. ‘You’re not that sort. But you don’t need to explain. It was inevitable, in a way. I see that now. You see, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. I’ve known for months.’
‘But how? Did she …?’ He could not at this moment speak Hilda’s name. It would make her more real. It would set her between them.
‘I knew, or I guessed. I hated myself for thinking it. But I needn’t have done, need I? Because it was true.’ Her smile, gentle and rueful, made him wince. ‘I think it was the way you behaved together when I came back. I felt you were both being … careful. And then I found she was in trouble. And so you see …’ Her story trailed away.
‘What can I say?’ he said again. ‘What can I do? Is there anything I can do?’
‘You can tell me the truth, Matty. Oh, not about what’s happened: I know that.’
‘About what then?’
‘About what’s to happen now. About us: you and me.’
‘But … don’t you see? How can I make you see? It makes no difference to us. It never did. You and I … well, we’re us, aren’t we?’ He couldn’t find words to fit his simple, profound conviction.
‘Do you want us to stay together?’
‘You know I do.’
‘Maybe so. But it’s good to have it said for once. I had to be sure.’ There was silence between them. Then she said, hesitating at a difficulty: ‘But Hilda. She’ll have to go, won’t she?’
‘Obviously,’ said Matthew.
‘Yes, but not yet. You’ve forgotten something, Matthew. There’s the baby. And the baby’s mother too. She’s a good girl, whatever people may say. I’ve got a plan about that.’
‘A plan?’
‘I got it out of the Bible,’ Ann explained. ‘I shall take care of her till the baby’s weaned. It’s your baby, and maybe she’ll let us keep it. You want a son, Matthew. What a wonderful chance!’
Matthew could only say: ‘I wish it were your child, Ann.’
‘It is, it will be,’ she cried, in an ecstasy of faith. ‘Hilda will give him to me, and I shall give him to you. I think it must have been meant to happen like this. It all fits in. It makes everything right for us.’
It was in her mind that this was God’s plan for the perfecting of their marriage and the solace of her barrenness; but such things, out of church, she could not say aloud. Nor did she care to pursue the Biblical parallel too far. A shadow came into her eyes as she recalled the words of the old story, which she now knew by heart: words telling how the handmaid of Sarah conceived, and ‘when she saw she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes’.
‘I hope it won’t come to that,’ she said softly, forgetting her audience.
‘Come to what?’ Matthew asked.
‘Oh nothing,’ said Ann. ‘Just silliness.’
Book Five a World Made Safe
§ 1
The war to end war having been fought and won, and the world made safe for democracy, the next item on the programme was that the men who had fought and the people at home who had suffered or waxed fat should join in loving concord to gather the fruits of their heroic endeavours. The comradeship of the battlefield, overriding class distinction, was to be carried into the peace, establish social justice, and make the life of the nation one grand sweet song. So the politicians told us, and for the moment they meant it; but they had reckoned, poor fellows, without the politicians. For it was soon evide
nt that the anthem of the new era would have to compete with other noises, with the tramp of British armies in Russia engaged (so said the malcontents of the Left) in a financiers’ war, with the confusions and bitter resentments of the demobilization, with the ‘coupon’ election, with the ugly scramble for jobs, and with wholesale murder and counter-murder in Ireland. On Armistice Day, and on its first few anniversaries, the national orchestra did indeed play over the opening bars of the accompaniment; but the singing was sporadic; the choir, it seemed, was not quite ready. Prices were soaring, commodities scarce. There was much talk of the new poor; and the new rich, who had been busily feathering their nests for four years, were now as busily lamenting the shortage of feathers. Controls were relaxed where (some said) they should have been enforced, and enforced (said others) where they should have been relaxed. Newspapers nagged and statesmen orated. An uneasy compromise between regimentation and go-as-you-please made the worst of both policies, the critics asserted. Harassed housewives were still paying through the nose for such luxuries as butter and eggs. The bereaved were still bereaved: the flower of a generation had perished. There were, however, changes. The white-feather girls were older now, if not wiser: conscription had appeased their holy rage, but their men were for the most part dead or damaged, and there were not enough others to go round. Many returned warriors, who had been sustained throughout their long ordeal by a vision of England and home, were finding civilian life flat, stale, and unprofitable; particularly those of them who had been reduced, by their country’s gratitude, to peddling shoe-laces in the streets or selling sewing-machines on commission. But the war was won; the League of Nations, with its Covenant, was in being; and —on a broad view—all was right with the world.
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