The Elderbrook Brothers

by Gerald Bullet

  ‘In the ordinary way she has the back bedroom, the one Faith used to have in Mother’s time. But we had to shift her for this business.’

  ‘Who?’ Felix asked.

  ‘The girl. Hilda.’

  ‘Hilda?’ He just remembered, after a pause, that on his last visit there had been a girl called Hilda working in the house. ‘Yes, of course. Do you mean that she——?’

  ‘She’s having the baby, yes.’ Matthew met his brother’s glance with an embarrassed, deprecating smile, accompanied by a slight shrug. ‘That doesn’t make it any better, I know. I know what you’re thinking, but … well, it can’t be helped now. Some day I’ll tell you the whole story, and maybe you’ll understand.’

  Felix got out of his chair and took a box of matches from the mantelshelf. ‘You needn’t be too sure I don’t understand already.’ He lit a cigarette.

  ‘H’m.’ Matthew looked dubious. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much to do with women, Felix.’

  ‘Not much, but perhaps enough. And anyway I’m … well, human, you know.’

  Silence fell now between the two brothers. A comfortable silence, for they were at ease together; yet an alert one too, for they were both listening, waiting, conscious of crisis. Presently Matthew went over to the door that gave into the small central hall where the main staircase was. He opened the door, and left it open. And as he faced round and moved hesitatingly back to where Felix was, there came the sound of a door opening upstairs, and then another sound, a miracle, the cry of the newborn.

  A moment later Ann came downstairs, busy and radiant. The sight of Felix gave her only an instant’s pause. She gave him her right hand, and Matthew the other, and stood so, linking them.

  ‘It’s a boy, Matty.’ She was alight with the triumph of this birth. ‘And Hilda’s going to be all right. They’re very pleased with her.’ Still gripping their hands she glanced from Matthew to Felix, and back to Matthew again. ‘You’ve told Felix?’

  Matthew nodded.

  Felix said, smiling on them both: ‘I’ve come at a lucky moment.’

  ‘He’s the spitten image of his father,’ said Ann. ‘Shall you both come up and look?’

  A complex of emotions wrought havoc in Felix. It was manifest to him that Ann was a saint; he was not at all sure in what degree Matthew was a sinner; and he was lacerated with sympathy for both of them, vicariously suffering the conflict between pain and relief, grief and forgiveness, which he imagined they must be feeling, even though they showed no sign of it to his quick perceptiveness. In fact, neither Ann nor Matthew, at this moment, had a thought to spare for the unusualness of their situation. That the event they now rejoiced in implied a relationship between Matthew and the child’s mother was something which during these latter months had all but lost meaning for them.

  § 4

  IT had not, however, lost meaning for Hilda. Ann’s care of her during the latter months of pregnancy had provoked astonished gratitude in the girl, but a gratitude not unmixed with misgiving and with other feelings which she vaguely felt to be ‘wicked’. Her sense of Ann’s having taken possession, both of her and of her unborn child, sometimes frightened as well as supported her. There were moments when bodily discomfort and spiritual forlornness combined to make her resent having to be grateful to her lover’s wife, now that he was her lover no longer, and never would be again. In such moments she fancied she would sooner have suffered reproaches and cold looks than this extraordinary, this ‘unnatural’ kindness, by means of which Ann had acquired a control of the situation against which there was no possibility of appeal or rebellion. Her grievance was one which at first she could not, for very shame, admit even to herself; but when her labour was accomplished, and exhaustion gave place to returning strength, the claim on Matthew which she had never allowed herself to formulate became explicit in her mind.

  For there, too, Ann was so plainly in possession. Since the day of his wife’s homecoming Matthew had never so much as kissed the mother of his child. Hilda believed, and with some reason, though she misconceived his motives, that her presence in the house was as much an embarrassment to him as it apparently was not to Ann. Resenting the distance that now divided him from her, she was ready to resent even his concern for her health. As a mother she had value for him: as a woman, it seemed, she no longer existed. For all he cared she might have been one of the farm animals, she told herself: a brood mare or a pedigree cow whose calf was likely to be a choice specimen of the breed. She did not, though she wanted it, expect the impossible; but guessing nothing of the restraint he put on himself she felt humiliated by his gentle aloofness.

  Matthew did indeed wish Hilda gone, because now that the worst of his dangers seemed to be over he could no longer disguise from himself that in spite of the terror that had followed their coming together, in spite of the ugly work in which they had taken part, or perhaps with an added sharpness because of that very thing, he still at moments desired her. A man tormented by irreconcilable desires must in the end come to terms with them, or let their conflict destroy him. He must choose among them or be torn to pieces. Matthew wanted above all things never to hurt his wife again; he wanted also to secure unchallenged possession of his son. To make Hilda the object of a third wish would have been (he told himself) idle, monstrous, absurd; and if his thoughts could, even now, burst into flame at memory of her embraces—well, that was a nuisance he must put up with, so long as she remained in his house.

  How to get rid of Hilda was a problem which neither Matthew nor Ann had squarely faced. What the village might be saying about them they were careful not to inquire. They had outfaced the threat of scandal so far and were ready to defy public opinion still further by harbouring and in due course adopting Hilda’s child. But what of Hilda herself? She could not stay with them indefinitely, even had they wished it. That would have set tongues wagging with too lively a malice, for there were limits to what they could endure. But equally they could not send her away without making themselves responsible for her reception elsewhere. Where was she to go? Who would employ her? And what sort of inducement would persuade her to part with her child? These questions were much in the minds of Ann and Matthew, who did not doubt, however, that sooner or later a way would be found. They waited, weakly hoping that time itself would somehow unravel the knot.

  Meanwhile, inevitably, Hilda decided to take a hand in her own disposal.

  § 5

  FELIX’S life at Stanton was strangely like, and strangely unlike, what it had been ten years before. He lived with the Williamses, sleeping in his old bedroom, and at breakfast-time seeing the same faces, except that Tom Williams was elsewhere, having found his true life-vocation in the Army, and in Tom’s place, and that of his own former self, were two young assistant masters who were new to him. Faith had mellowed; Dan had become a pink old gentleman, with snow-white curls fringing his baldness; Mifanwy and Claribel were secretive, talkative, giggling, agreeable schoolgirls; and the collie dog about the place looked and smelt precisely like its predecessor. The terraced lawns of the garden were as sleek as ever, the trees as benign, the visiting birds as confident of their welcome. Here at Stanton House was something that even the war seemed not to have changed, and because its associations were less poignant than those of Upmarden Felix was here less conscious of the flight of years. In himself, too, there was a new vitality that belied his pensive leanness; the agitation of his young twenties had come under a mature control; he had put on moral weight, had acquired some assurance of manner by which to disguise his incurable diffidence, and in his professional dealings with men and women he realized the importance of steering between the pitfalls of sententiousness on the one hand and breezy tonic-talk on the other. He refrained from trying to inject sentimental ardour into the church services. His parishioners found him friendly and helpful, but, said some, a little too reserved. Mr Mullion, his paymaster, took almost no notice of him; for Mr Mullion was sunk deep in the enjoyment of a peevish old age.

/>   In spite of all changes in himself and others Felix felt he had really come home at last, and Mrs Meldreth and Kate’s being still close at hand reinforced the feeling. Gradually, against his better judgment, he fell back into his old habit of treating their house as a second home. A strong resolution would have been required to keep him away from it, and, capable though he was of so ruling himself, for he had had plenty of practice, his sense of danger was too indefinite to make the effort seem worth while. He had lost all conscious fear of Kate’s beauty, now that Johnny Turnbull had formally pegged out his claim to her and had it duly acknowledged. This betrothal of Kate’s was the only thing about her which Felix found it difficult to square with her general character. In his mind he shied away from the subject, telling himself that it was no concern of his, and forcing himself to suppose, if only for civility’s sake, that Johnny must be less shallow than he seemed. He knew, none better, how deceptive mere appearances could be. A casual observer, seeing her for the first time, might well be misled into supposing that good looks, good nature, and a sanguine temper made up the full sum of Kate’s own qualities, and be unaware of the gleaming mystery behind and beyond these charms. So, too, it might be with Johnny Turnbull: who could tell? Who could tell except Kate herself, with whom the thing was obviously undiscussable?

  Mrs Meldreth needed no encouragement to talk of the match, so suitable in every way, she said with plump satisfaction. But her discourse threw no light on Felix’s problem. Johnny was no longer very young, and that was in his favour. He was a man of forty and a man of means and he was distantly related to the peerage; what could be nicer? He rode to hounds, he did a little gentlemanly farming, he was a fine cheerful upstanding fellow in his riding-boots, and he was just the husband for dear Kate. Mrs Meldreth, with frank relish, looked forward to being a grandmother. She deplored the dilatoriness (if no worse) of Florrie and Ned, and made sure that the Turnbulls would do better. In her idea any marriage was better than no marriage, and any marriage that produced children was good. Indeed she could not at heart disapprove of any fruitful union, even an irregular one, though in deference to the conventional code she would shake her head over it and say, dimpling: ‘Dear me! How naughty of them!’ For a woman was only half a woman until she became a mother; and sex, whatever men might think about it, poor things, was only a means—and, as it happened, the only means—to that infinitely desirable end. Dame Nature, with her mania for multiplication, had never a stauncher ally than the eminently respectable Mrs Meldreth.

  In earlier years Felix would have been surprised to find himself exchanging this kind of talk with Mrs Meldreth, but nowadays he saw nothing odd in it. He was far more than ten years older than in what he blithely thought of as his Ellen period, though only ten years had passed. Firmly settled in his life of single strictness, he could scarcely recognize himself in the callow young man he remembered. And, while he was older, Mrs Meldreth was somehow much the same age as she had always been in his eyes. They could now talk on equal terms. He took pleasure in teasing her, and she in being teased. He enjoyed her company as he enjoyed Kate’s, and with a more perfect equanimity, since she was serenely maternal and mature and Kate a dazzling young woman chosen by destiny to be the mother of innumerable little Turnbulls, all with red faces and bright yellow riding-boots.

  ‘I see the idea,’ Felix said. ‘Get children, honestly if you can. That’s your motto, Mrs Meldreth.’

  ‘What if it is?’ She laughed. ‘Don’t you agree? It wasn’t my fault I only had two, let me tell you. And girls at that.’

  ‘Meaning that girls don’t count, eh?’

  ‘Well, they’re not the same as boys, you must admit.’

  ‘Freely,’ said Felix. ‘Your whole theory is based on the fact.’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean, Felix.’ She sat back against her cushions, giggling joyously. ‘I must tell Kate that.’ And, Kate happening to enter the room at that very moment, she began retailing the conversation to her.

  ‘Oh, come!’ Felix protested. The beginnings of embarrassment took hold of him.

  ‘Really, Felix,’ said Kate, when the recital was over, ‘for a clergyman you do say the most improper things! Such a comfort!’

  In the pleasure of seeing her amused his composure was instantly restored. She had blue eyes like her mother, and a warm dark voice. And even in the eyes, so candid and serene, there was a darkness, the glowing darkness of an inviolable secret. Felix could not but admit to himself that the future Mrs Turnbull had charm. So nice to know that she was suitably disposed of.

  § 6

  THE annals of English village life offer no support to the theory that ‘free love’, or the enjoyment of nuptial delights without marriage, was invented by Bloomsbury intellectuals in the nineteen-twenties and imposed by them on a war-weary generation. That new fashion in morals was by Mercestershire standards a very old fashion; and Mercestershire folk, they would have you know, are in all respects as good as their neighbours north and south of them. They are as respectable and on occasion as censorious; they do not at all hold with loose living; but the notion, if it were put to them, that when lovely or unlovely woman stoops to folly she is thereby debarred from honest marriage would be repugnant to their common sense.

  Heads were shaken, and malicious smiles exchanged, when the first rumours of Hilda’s bad luck got about; but for six on seven years she had been known to the village as a pleasant decent girl, who minded her own business but had a friendly word for everyone, and only a very few, and those few of her own sex, affected to believe that by her lapse from virtue the Hilda they had liked and accepted as one of themselves had suddenly become a monster of depravity. True, her case was worse than Sally So-and-so’s, for Sally had succeeded in dragging her man to the altar three weeks after her confinement; and far worse than that of the cowman’s daughter down Durnford whose baby, by a miracle of contrivance, had been actually born in wedlock. It was worse than these not only circumstantially but because it was so much more surprising. Those other girls had asked for trouble and no one lifted an eyelid when they got it. But Hilda had been, if anything, a little too standoffish with the fellows, it was said; she kept obstinately mum, moreover, about who was the father of her child, treating as something too silly for anger the sly reiterated hint that it was Mr Elderbrook; and taking one thing with another it all went to show that the quiet ones were the worst. Hilda called her baby Caleb, an outlandish name which told nobody anything; and, apart from Hilda herself, only Matthew and Ann and the local registrar, a man of high professional rectitude who positively enjoyed frustrating the curious, knew that Caleb, though his legal surname must necessarily be that of his mother, was registered as Caleb Elderbrook.

  Caleb in his first months of life was a healthy and happy specimen of his kind. The neighbours soon got used to the sight of Hilda and her pram in the Upmarden lanes on fine afternoons, and scarcely one of them but stopped to look and admire. Before he was many weeks old they had almost forgotten that she had not come by him honestly, and if they did remember they did not care, being perhaps instinctively at one with Mrs Meldreth in this matter.

  But there was one who did not forget, and could not help caring a little. Will Dorsett, the carrier, had struck up a kindly nodding acquaintance with Hilda years before, on her first appearance in the district. He had always liked the look of her and enjoyed passing the time of day with her. During years of plying between railway station and village, and with frequent occasion to call at the Elderbrooks’ back door, it was something he had learnt to look forward to, this friendly exchange of small news and views. He had in effect watched her grow from a raw seventeen to buxom young-wo manhood. In his fancy he knew her very well, and found it not easy to think ill of her, no matter what she had done, or how she had let herself be taken advantage of. Virtue in woman was a jewel indeed, but fifteen years of marriage with a fretful coldblooded wife, who was now mercifully gone to her reward, had disposed him to the heresy that warmth of nature
was itself something of a virtue, and that it was better for a woman to be too kind than too cunning. In fine he had conceived a powerful fancy for Hilda and was eccentric enough not to be entirely put off by her present equivocal situation. He was too shrewd to believe all he heard, and too stubborn to be deflected from a chosen course by what others might say or think of it. He was also, for a man of his years, unusually diffident, especially in his dealings with women. He supposed himself to be no great catch for a girl, a simple fellow and rather the worse for wear, and the very thing that kept other honest men at a distance encouraged him to try his luck. Someone, he didn’t ask who, had found Hilda persuadable. Regrettable though that was, and a shame to see a nice girl getting into trouble, it gave grounds for believing that she might be willing to marry him if he asked her in the right way, with no suggestion that he was doing it out of charity. For he had taken her measure long ago: with all her careless good nature and common sense she had always had an air of independence, of asking favours from no one, and calamity had not reduced her spirit. That was Hilda all over, he told himself, and because it was like her he admired it and was ready to take her part against the world. The one palpable difficulty was how, without asking straight questions, to discover whether or not she was still occupied with her unknown lover, whom so many declared to be Mr Elderbrook himself.

  But even that difficulty resolved itself when the time came.

  ‘I don’t believe all I hear,’ said Will, apropos of nothing in particular, but with a significance Hilda did not miss.

  She glanced at him appreciatively, with the friendliness he knew so well, and with the addition of a shyness that was less usual in her. What he did not believe, what his experience with the late Mrs Dorsett made it impossible to believe, was the silly rumour that Matthew Elderbrook, with his wife’s knowledge and consent, was living as the husband of both women, an oriental fantasy which found fitful, playful expression in the nudges and slow smiles of taproom cronies, growing bawdy and confidential on a diet of small ale.