Part 13

They had let him speak out, without a single interruption, in dead silence. He had been aware of their faces about him. Joyce had become quite white. She was still standing with her hands on the back of the tall chair, and her eyes were fixed on Bertram with a look of amazement, at first, and then anger. Once or twice she smiled, in a queer way, as though some of his words seemed to her too ridiculous. Alban sat with his head bent, glowering. Kenneth Murless was watching him, with a look of extreme interest, as though at some new phenomenon of human nature. Lord Ottery sat back in his chair with closed eyes, fingering his red beard. The General had become restless, crossed and recrossed his legs, shifted a wine glass, flushed angrily, and then met Bertram’s eyes with a hard, hostile look.

“I regret my offer has been refused with such a distasteful—I may say, disgraceful—expression of opinion, sir.”

That was his answer to Bertram’s argument, and he spoke it harshly, in a court-martial manner.

Joyce moved away from her chair, and stood by the great fireplace. Bertram knew by a glint in her eyes that she was deeply emotional at that moment, but she spoke to the General quietly, with a smile.

“It’s not refused. Bertram permits himself a certain amount of hot air. Why not? But he accepts.”

“Is that so?” asked the General, looking first at Joyce and then at Bertram, with perplexity.

“That’s so, isn’t it, Bertram?”

Bertram’s eyes met Joyce’s. He saw in them a kind of entreaty, and behind that a kind of command.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I hate the idea of it.”

Joyce moved away from the fireplace. She still spoke quietly, but there was a new thrill in her voice.

“I apologise for my husband, General! But if Bertram doesn’t accept, I shan’t think much of his loyalty to me—or to England. Meanwhile, I’d better join Mother, who’s probably fuming at my absence.”

She left the room with her head held high, and a little smile about her lips, but Bertram, who knew the play of light and shadow in her face, saw that she was passionately distressed with him.

There was silence for a moment after her going, until it was broken by Alban Bellairs.

“I think you’re a damned fool, Bertram. Have you gone Bolshie or something?”

“I’ve explained my views,” said Bertram, coldly; “I don’t expect you to understand them.”

Kenneth Murless thought a little tact might help, and spoke in his agreeable voice.

“I see his point of view. It’s extremely interesting as a study in sentiment. I don’t agree, of course, being a hopeless Reactionary, thank goodness, undisturbed by any liberal or revolutionary thought.”

Lord Ottery was about to utter a judicial opinion, but decided that it was hardly worth while after dinner,—and dozed a little with his red beard on his shirt front.

General Bellasis cut short all further discussion, in his hard, matter-of-fact way when dealing with men. He had another manner in the presence of women he liked.

“For your wife’s sake, Pollard, I make the offer again, for ‘yes,’ or ‘no,’ without argument. Which is it?”

Bertram did not answer for a second or so, but in that time he reviewed his life with Joyce, and saw with tragic certainty that this was the crisis. Acceptance meant surrender of his ideals, such as they were, and definite allegiance to opinions and acts which would put him for ever on the side opposed to liberal thought.

He was to decide between Joyce’s “crowd” and the labouring classes of England, or at least between the philosophy of men like Bellasis, summed up in the phrase, “Give ’em Hell!” and that of Christy who believed in human brotherhood. This job, offered by Bellasis, would kill the friendship of men like Christy, Lawless, Bernard Hall. They would put him with the Junker class, and turn their backs on him.

Not that that would matter, if he did the right thing. But this was the wrong thing. It would be a surrender to stupidity. It would be the sale of his intelligence for the sake of position, and peace with Joyce—a sin against the Light. Peace with Joyce? Joyce’s love and favour? It would be worth while to surrender a good deal for that—everything in the world, but a man’s honour to himself.

These people, Bellasis, and Alban, and Kenneth Murless, and all their kind, extremists in reaction, were asking him to betray his sympathy with the men who had been his comrades in the lousy trenches. To go right over to the Bellasis side—one day to give an order to shoot, perhaps—would be to break faith with Bill Huggett and all poor devils like him.

He saw Huggett now as a Type, the Cockney soldier back to civil life, back to his slums, trying to keep his “kids,” uncertain of work from one week to another, begging “bobs” from passers-by when there was no work. It was to bring such men to heel that the Bellasis band were organising their forces, recruiting University boys, and unemployed officers—the way to conflict! What had old Christy said? “Loyalty to lies is disloyalty to truth.”

So in that second or two, these thoughts rushed into Bertram’s head, and he made his decision.

“No, General. Thanks very much.”

General Bellasis rose from his chair, and flung the end of his cigar into the fire.

“Let’s join the ladies,” he said sternly, as though dismissing a battalion on parade.

Lord Ottery awakened from his dose.

“Yes, a game of bridge, eh?”

Kenneth Murless opened the door, and waited until the General and Ottery had left the room, and then Alban looking black-tempered. For a moment Kenneth lingered, glancing at Bertram, who was standing by the chimney-piece, staring into the redness of the log-fire.

“Speaking as an Egoist,” he remarked in a genial way, “I’m distressed by your violation of self-interest, Bertram, but uplifted by your idealistic faith.”

“Much obliged for your favourable opinion!” said Bertram, kicking a burning log.

Murless smiled, and followed the others to the drawing-room.

Alone in the great dining-room of Holme Ottery—up for sale—Bertram used his old catch-word.

“It’s all very difficult!”

His face was lit by the warm glow of the fire as he stirred the embers with his boot, and there was a look of pain in his eyes when he raised his head and glanced at the portrait of Joyce Bellairs whom Steele had loved. He spoke her name, but it was of his wife he was thinking.

“My poor Joyce!” he said.

XXVIII

When Bertram went to the drawing-room, he found a foursome at bridge in progress—Lord and Lady Ottery, Joyce, General Bellasis. Kenneth was making himself agreeable to Miss Heathcote and presently suggested a game of “pills,” so that they left the room together.

Nothing doing for Bertram, who felt that he was frozen out. Joyce deliberately avoided his glance, or, at least, never looked his way, though he tried to entice her eyes by wandering around, shifting a little porcelain figure on the mantelpiece, and rattling a few coppers in one of his pockets.

He wanted her to look at him. He had a foolish idea that he might send her a message with his eyes, asking for her understanding, and for her comradeship. But she seemed to be absorbed in her game, and was gay in altercation with her partner, General Bellasis. Bertram’s endeavour to establish communication with her was answered only by Lady Ottery.

“Don’t fidget, Bertram! My partner is sufficiently trying.”

Her partner was her husband, Ottery, who resented this slight upon his ability at bridge by a mild protest of “That’s unfair, my dear!”

The situation was ludicrous as far as Bertram was concerned. He knew that for him this was a night of crisis. He had made the great refusal, for what he believed to be conscience’ sake. He wanted passionately to talk it over with his wife. Some long emotional strain had reached its breaking point to-night in his relation to Joyce. His heart must speak to hers now, urgently. This polite, distant, unnatural way between them must be broken by plain talking, by the rough reality of human nature. He couldn’t wait any longer for that. They must have it out, once for all, and now. . . . But meanwhile Joyce played bridge with Bellasis, and without looking at him.

He would make her look.

While Bellasis was writing down the last results of play, Bertram went to their table and bent over Joyce with his hand on her shoulder. She gave a little shrug, which he knew meant to say, “Take your hand away,” but he kept it there, heavily, and spoke to her.

“I want to speak to you, Joyce, presently. After your game.”

“Hasn’t there been enough talk?” she asked, impatiently.

“No,” he said, “there’s got to be more. I’ve something important to say.”

Lady Ottery tapped his hand with a card case.

“My dear Bertram. Please don’t interrupt. Can’t you find something to read?”

“Sorry!” said Bertram, “but I wanted to have the favour of a few words with Joyce presently.”

“The night’s young,” said Ottery, impatiently. “Don’t spoil the game, sir.”

“Your answer, Joyce?” said Bertram.

She looked at him now, straight in the eyes, with a challenge of will.

“After the game, and when I’m ready. Not before.”

“Right!”

He went out of the room, and out of the house, and for more than an hour wandered about the park.

It was a warm night on the last day of April, with a three-quarter moon, so that the branches of the trees were silvered and the lawns flooded with a milky radiance. The old house with its tall chimneys flung black shadows across the terrace paths, and the broken Venus gleamed white above the flight of steps to the rose gardens. The night air was still fragrant with the scent of flowers and damp grass, and warm earth. In the long avenue down which Bertram paced, a nightingale was singing to its mate, with little trills of passion.

Bertram remembered the last time he had heard a nightingale singing like that. It was in Notre Dame de Lorette, after a battle at Lens. The red flash of gunfire made a regular pulsation of light through the shell-gashed trees and the roar of bombardment shook the very earth. But the little bird in the tree went on singing to its mate. Queer! Even with men, love and the mating business of passion went on and would not surrender its claim though half the world was in ruins and civilisation was menaced by many dangers, and the individual had no sense of security.

That was the best philosophy, the only way of life. It was ridiculous to worry over much about the future. Old Christy was always worrying, and trying to put the world right. Better, perhaps, to carry on, like peasants and plain folk, for self-preservation, for the essential needs and appetites of self-existence—and let the world take care of itself. Holme Ottery was in ruins, like half the world. This old house, so stately in its hushed gardens and wooded parkland, so beautiful in this moonlight, as at noonday, had reached its last phase of life, at least as the roof-tree of the family which had built its beauty. Did it matter very much? Not if the life of the family went on to new development, following the thread of fate through changing ways—not if Joyce still loved her mate.

Bertram felt the stir of passion in his blood, as several times this day. Joyce challenged him. She disapproved of his ideas, and was angry because he had decided something against her wish. She put her will-power against his, tried to coerce him to her way of thinking, spoke with satire, irritably, harshly. That was all nonsense! Life was bigger than that. Love was bigger. He would make Joyce his mate again, not by argument, and intellectual duels, but by passion, by the emotion that stirred in him on this night of April, as it stirred the little creeping things of the warm earth there, and was astir in the hedges and ditches, and bushes and woods, of this Holme Ottery and all other places, and had been stirring since life began, because this was life.

When after an hour Bertram went back towards the house by way of the rose-gardens, and the long pergola, through which the moonlight crept, he heard Joyce’s voice. She was speaking quietly, and he saw her figure in a black cloak sitting at the top of the steps on the parapet. She was in the full white light of the moon, though not sharply outlined, because of its filmy glamour. Below her, sitting on the top step, with his knees tucked up and his hands clasped round them, was a man’s figure, his shirt-front gleaming very white. It was Kenneth Murless’s long and elegant form, as Bertram could see by his very attitude. Their voices sounded clearly across the garden, though they weren’t speaking loudly.

“It’ll break my heart to leave Holme Ottery,” said Joyce.

“Sad! Horribly sad!” answered Kenneth. “It’s a tragic world altogether for our little lot. We belong to the past. You and I, Joyce, are prehistoric survivals. Awful thought, that!”

“We needn’t surrender without a fight,” said Joyce.

Kenneth Murless laughed with his soft musical note.

“God is on the side of the big battalions, my dear! The mob is moving out. We haven’t a chance.”

“To Hell with the mob!” said Joyce.

Kenneth laughed again, pleasantly.

“Your husband would hate to hear you say that!”

Joyce didn’t answer for a moment, and then spoke harshly.

“Bertram’s a traitor to our side of things!”

“Hush!” said Kenneth.

It was when Bertram walked out of the pergola and came up the terrace steps and stood quite close to them.

“Joyce,” he said quietly, “you and I must have a talk, if Kenneth will permit.”

Kenneth stood up, and smiled rather nervously at Bertram.

“I’m off to bed, old man. Good night, both.” He walked quickly back to the house, leaving Bertram to Joyce.

“I’m for bed too,” said Joyce. “It’s too late for talk. And you heard what I said, I presume?”

“That word ‘traitor’?”

“Yes.”

She drew her cloak closer about her shoulders, and moved towards the house, but Bertram took her by the wrist.

“We’ve got to have it out, Joyce. Shall it be here, in the garden, or indoors?”

She tried to release her wrist—the same wrist which he had hurt over a telephone—but he held her fast.

“Indoors,” she said.

“All right.”

He held open the door of the little turret for her, and as two could not pass together, released her wrist as she went in. She slipped away from him then, and ran lightly up the stone stairs which led to the gallery round the great staircase, and her bedroom. She had the door of her room almost slammed in his face before he reached her, and held the door-handle.

“Not quick enough!”

“No.”

They stood facing each other rather breathlessly inside her room. Joyce laughed a little, but in a baffled, angry way, like a thwarted child.

“It’s the first time I’ve been in this room,” said Bertram. He looked at the smallness of it, and the neatness. It had been Joyce’s room since she had left her nursery in the house. Some of her girlhood’s treasures and toys were there; a doll’s-house in the corner, a pair of skates hanging over a cupboard, a horse-shoe, tied up with ribbon, over the mantelpiece, photographs of herself and Alban on Shetland ponies, a pair of foils crossed on one of the walls, and a fox’s brush—her first—over the narrow wooden bed.

“I hope you won’t stay here long,” said Joyce.

She slipped off her cloak and sat in an old wicker chair by the stone-piece where a small fire had almost burnt out. She still had the look of a rebellious child—a King’s page, with curled, cropped hair.

“Joyce,” said Bertram, “have you forgotten that I’m your husband, and you’re my wife?”

“Is that what you’ve been waiting to ask me all the evening?”

She teased him with her mockery.

“By God, it is!” he said quickly. “And I want an answer.”

She answered him in the worst way.

“I wish I could forget a most unfortunate fact!”

Perhaps she didn’t mean to be quite brutal with him. It’s likely that she was just trying his temper, and yielding to her own. But it hit him hard, and he reeled under the blow, not only in a mental way, but physically.

“You mean that?” he asked, staring at her.

“Isn’t it true? For you as well as for me? Surely you see the misfortune of our marriage? You don’t like my ideas, my character, my whole outlook on life. That’s unfortunate for you. I detest yours. That’s unfortunate for me. We belong to different sides. That’s unfortunate for both of us.”

Bertram marvelled at the cold way in which she could speak these things. Had she forgotten, utterly, how she had loved him once, and all his devotion to her? Did it mean nothing to her that she had been the mother of his dead child? Was she so heartless that she could see herself divided from him by that sheer gulf of which she spoke, and not agonise at its tragedy, nor weep, but talk so calmly, so coldly of its happening? No, he didn’t believe that. Heart and soul refused to believe.

“My dear!” he said. “My dear! Don’t let’s say bitter and frightful things because we’re out of temper. I know it’s so easy. It’s a question of nerves, little irritations, small rotten differences that mean—just nothing. They don’t matter more than passing shadows. What does matter is our love, above and beyond all that. I want to tell you that my love for you is unaltered, and unalterable, although you have been pretty rough on me lately, and not given love, or anything like a fair deal. . . . But I want to wipe out the remembrance of that. I want you and me to get together again, as comrades and mates. Nothing else would matter then. Our different points of view? Oh, Lord! how trivial! Joyce, take me back to your bed and your heart, and your beauty, and let’s make a game of life again!”

He leaned over her, put his arms around her, tried to draw her close to him, as she sat there in the wicker chair by the little fire that had almost burnt out.

She drew her chair back on the polished boards, and sprang up, beyond his reach.

“What’s all this stuff you’re talking?” she said, angrily, two spots of scarlet on her face. “You say you love me. Why do you always jeer at my friends and my ideas? Sulk in my drawing-room? Behave like a boor to my crowd? Ally yourself with Pacifists and pro-Germans and revolutionaries? You say you love me, and talk sentiment. Less sentiment, please, and more honesty. That offer to-night! It was a test of loyalty. To England in a big way—certainly to me, as far as I mean anything in your life. Yet you refused it. You failed to pass the test. Why, from the lowest point of view, you ought to want to keep your end up, and pay your own way, like an honest man! You remember the word I spoke to Kenneth? I use it again now, to your face. You’re a traitor to the things I stand for, to all I am. Until you do something to put yourself right again, I won’t live with you. It’s dishonouring.”

“By God!” said Bertram.

He was white to the lips now, with anguish and rage. This girl used her tongue like a lash. She cut his heart open, flayed his soul. And yet, as she stood there, facing him, he loved her with an extreme passion, and her beauty was a torture to him.

He acknowledged the truth of some things she said. He had jeered at her friends, often enough. He had sulked in her drawing-room. He had behaved like a boor to her crowd. All that was true. But the rest of it was not true, and it was cruel. She called him traitor—he who loved England as he loved Joyce, hungrily, so that the smell of its earth, as the fragrance of her hair, excited his senses, touched him with spiritual emotion. It was damnable that she should use such words. “Dishonouring!” she said. She wouldn’t live with him because it was dishonouring!

He strode a pace towards her, and caught hold of her right arm.

“In the old days a man would have flogged his wife for such words. I’ve a damned good mind to box your ears.”

“Have a try!” said Joyce, breathing hard.

He didn’t box her ears, but let her arm go and dropped his hands to his side, and stood there with his head bowed, staring at the floor. There was silence between them for at least a minute, which seemed like an hour. Joyce for the first time was weeping, with her face turned away from him.

Presently he spoke again.

“It rather looks as though I’d made a mistake. I thought you still loved me, in spite of drifting away a bit. It seems any love you once had is like that little fire of yours—not much ever, and now burnt out. Why, God alone knows, not I! But it’s a pity. Perhaps it’s my fault partly. I may come to see that one day. Now, to-night, I think you’ve been hellish to me. I’ll clear out to-morrow. . . . If you want me ever, I’ll come.”

He stood at the doorway, looking back at her. She stood by the side of the little bed where she had slept as a child, with her face turned away and her body shaken by sobs. He hated to part from her like that, and this was the parting.

He spoke her name once more.

“Joyce!”

She didn’t answer him, and he left her room and shut the door. Next morning he left Holme Ottery before breakfast, and went back to town, but not to the little house in Holland Street.

He went to his mother’s house in Sloane Street, and asked for his old room.

XXIX

Mrs. Pollard was astonished and distressed when her son told her that he wanted to use his old room for a few weeks. She guessed, in spite of his carefully vague explanations, that something had gone wrong between him and Joyce.

His “explanation” left much to be explained. He suggested that Joyce was immensely upset by the proposed sale of Holme Ottery, and might stay down there a while to see the last of the old home. But that was no reason why he shouldn’t stay with her, or go back to the little house in Holland Street. He countered that by saying he hated loneliness, and as he had to keep close to town for his literary work, preferred to take up his old bachelor quarters. Besides, it would be good to see so much of his mother again.

“Aren’t you pleased, little mother?”

He had the humiliation of asking her to lend him some money, but to her it was a pleasure, and she wrote him a cheque for more than he could use in a twelve-month, and said, “With my love and blessing, dear!”

She knew he was concealing some secret from her. His face, which she could read like an open book—so much like her own!—told her that he was suffering a hidden wound, which hurt him horribly. He couldn’t hide much from a mother who lay awake at night listening to his footsteps pacing up and down in his room overhead—would he never go to sleep?—and who heard him groan now and then, like a tortured soul.

“I’m afraid you had a bad night, dear,” she would say in the morning, and wouldn’t believe him when he said, “Oh, no. I slept all right after thinking out a few things.”

She accepted all his explanations for her husband’s benefit. Michael, to whom she announced the news of his son’s home-coming, did not see any mystery underlying it, but only inconvenience to the servants who had been reduced in number since the break-up of the family. He had a respectful admiration for Joyce Bellairs as the daughter of the Earl of Ottery, and sympathised—he said—with her sentiment about the old house. Doubtless she would wish to stay there before it was bought by some American millionaire or some war-profiteer. Most natural and commendable. As for Bertram, he hoped the boy would spare him political altercations—they seemed to disagree on most subjects—and any reference to more painful episodes which he had entirely removed from his mind. By that, as Mrs. Pollard knew, he referred to his eldest daughter’s German marriage, and Susan’s Irish adventure.

Bertram “spared” him everything with regard to these forbidden subjects. He met his father only at breakfast, and exchanged a few commonplace remarks over the eggs and bacon. Their first greeting had been characteristic of the somewhat strained relations existing between them.

“Hulloa, father! Here’s the Prodigal back. Don’t bother about the fatted calf.”

“Good morning, Bertram. Putting in a bachelor week? I shan’t see much of you as I’m desperately busy.”