The House of Defence. Volume 2

CHAPTER VI

CATHERINE was returning home to Thurso House the next afternoon about four o’clock. She had been lunching out, and a number of people, she was glad to think, were coming to dinner; but she had a good deal to do before that, and she hardly liked to estimate how much to think about. Also, a telegram from Maud, who cabled to her every day, would probably have arrived by the time she got home. That might add considerably to the number of things to be thought about.

Ever since the departure of her husband and sister-in-law to America her hands had been very full, and she had devoted more time than usual to purely social duties. For she knew perfectly well that London had talked a good deal about Thurso’s “illness,” in that particular tone which means that in public and to her it was referred to as an “illness” in the abstract, but that when two or three only were gathered together it was discussed with far more detail and circumstance. To one of her tact, therefore, and knowledge of life it was clear that the more she was seen about, the more she entertained and was entertained, the less disagreeable and loud would all the talk and scandal about him be. With all its faults and general lack of respect, the world immensely respects pluck and the power of facing things, and certainly Catherine had faced things magnificently. The result already was that the world had begun to think that it was rather a “shame” to talk about Thurso even among intimates when Catherine was so plucky. It would very much have liked to know why she had not gone with him, for the reason that she gave – namely, that she abhorred the sea, and Maud delighted in it – was too straightforward and true to be accepted at all generally. Still, on the whole, it was a “shame” to talk. And since the memory of the world resides in its tongue, it follows that it soon forgets when it ceases to talk. It was understood, however, that Thurso’s case was hopeless, though Catherine – brave woman – always said that she hoped the voyage would quite restore him after his nervous breakdown.

Catherine, in herself, believed his case to be hopeless. He had refused to see her on the morning he left, or to say good-bye, but from her window she had seen his face as he got into the carriage which took him and Maud to the station, and it seemed to her that Death had already set his seal upon it, and, as a matter of fact, she had scarcely expected that he would reach America alive. But in spite of the news which might reach her any day, she had, consistently with her declaration that the voyage would probably restore him, acted as if she really thought so, and had been indefatigable in her activities. If he ever was to come back (and as long as he lived that possibility was still there), her part was to minimise the gossip and discussion about him which at the present moment was inevitable.

During that week when he was at sea she had thought about the whole situation more deeply and earnestly than in all probability she had thought of anything before in her very busy but very unemotional life, and with her whole heart she had forgiven him – not by intention only, but in fact, so that she dismissed the matter from her mind – for the suffering and indignities he had brought on her during these last six months. Whether he would ever read her letter or not, she did not know, but some three days after their departure she had written to him, quite shortly, but quite sincerely, telling him never to reproach himself as regards her for what happened in the past, but to dismiss it as absolutely as she had dismissed it, and devote himself to getting well. The letter was not an easy one to write, or rather the attitude of mind which had made it possible to write it had not been attained without effort; for just as she was very slow to take offence, so she was naturally slow to forgive, and the events of the last six months, with their crowning indignity, had bitten very deeply into her. But the effort had been made and the letter written, and she had pledged herself to oblivion and whole-hearted forgiveness. Should he get well, she had given him to understand that the past was blotted out, and that she was willing and eager to join with him in making the best possible out of the future.

But she knew quite well, with that ruthless honesty with which she judged herself, and which was so fine a trait in her character, that she did not expect him to live, and this, she knew, made the letter an easier one to write, and her complete forgiveness less difficult to arrive at, than it would otherwise have been. She thought that it was unlikely that she would ever see him again. But she was absolutely willing, whether he lived or died, to abide by what she had said.

There had been a grim business of telegraphic codes arranged between her and Maud. It was clearly undesirable to telegraph in full such messages as Maud might feel it necessary to send her, and half a dozen cryptic words sent from New York on their arrival had told her that he had broken down once on the voyage, but had subsequently allowed her to throw the rest of the bottle away. His general health, Maud said, was certainly better. Three more telegrams, reporting the events of three more days, had come since then, each recording improvement, and it was news of their fourth day which she was expecting to find now on her return.

But as she drove through the streets, where the shops were gay for Christmas purchasers, her mind was busy over an emotional conflict more intimate than even these things. As was inevitable, matters had come to a crisis between her and Rudolf Villars, and two days ago he had declared to her his steadfast and passionate devotion. But he had refused to continue any longer on this present unbearable footing of friendship. Should she now definitely reject him, he would not see her any more, except as was necessary in the casual meetings when the world brought them together. And she had promised to give him his answer this evening.

She had really no idea at this moment what that answer would be. Months ago she had determined that she would not herself break that moral law, though, as a matter of fact, it meant little to her. But since then much had happened: ruin and degradation had come to her husband; he had offered her the greatest insult that, from the point of view of this moral law, a wife can be offered, and, what was a far more vital and determining factor in her choice, she knew now that she loved this man with an intensity that she believed equalled his. Could the moral law which tied her to an opium-drenched wreck have any significance compared to the significance of her love?

Then suddenly, and for the first time, she remembered, in connection with her choice, the letter she had written to Thurso. She had told him that the past was utterly blotted out, and she saw how insincere that letter would become if the blotting out of the past meant for her that she was to console herself in the future. Already she knew that the fact that she did not expect him to live had made the writing of it easier. Between the two her letter did not now seem to be worth much. Yet she had meant that letter: the best part of her meant it. But just now that best part seemed to have dwindled to a mere pin’s head in her consciousness. Love and life and desire were trumpets and decorations to her, and the little grey battered flag of honour was scarcely visible among the miles of bunting, and the little voice scarcely audible in the blare of the welcome that would be hers if she said but one word to her lover.

Her victoria had already stopped at her door, and the footman had turned back the fur rug that covered her knees to let her get out; but she sat for a moment quite still, for the significance of her letter (or its insignificance) had struck her like a blow. Till she saw it in connection with her decision she had not known how nearly she had decided. She had told her husband, and that with sincerity, that the past was wiped out; all that he had said or done which had been unjust or insulting to her she had cancelled, annihilated, as far as it concerned her. Was she, then, going to make a fresh past, so to speak, on her own account, to give him an opportunity to be as generous as she had been? There was a dreadful ironical fitness about it: the conjunction of these things was brutally apt.

Yet she had forgiven him, and that forgiveness was far more real to her than that which was labelled sin. That did not signify anything very particular to her, but to do this thing behind the screen of her forgiveness seemed mean, and meanness was an impossible quality. She had forgiven Thurso on the big scale, and the very bigness of her nature, which enabled her to do that, made her hatred of meanness strong also. And as she got out, she asked herself whether, if the letter which she had written to Thurso was still unposted, she would let it go or tear it up. And she knew that, though she might stand with it in her hand for a little, she would still send it. She meant what she had said in it.

There were some half-dozen of letters for her on the table in the hall, and a telegram lay a little apart. As she picked these up, she spoke to the footman.

“I shall be in to anybody till six,” she said; “but to nobody after that except Count Villars.”

She had half opened the telegram when her eye fell on two little hats and coats hung up on a rack at the end of the hall. She looked at them a moment, feeling that they ought to convey something to her, but she did not know what. Then she remembered that the two eldest boys were home from school to-day for the holidays.

“Lord Raynham and Master Henry have come?” she asked.

“Yes, my lady: they arrived an hour ago.”

Again she paused. Whatever she said or did to-day seemed to be laden with significance, trivial though it appeared.

“Let them know I have come in,” she said. “They will come and have tea with me in the drawing-room in ten minutes.” (What was it children liked with their tea?) “And a boiled egg for them both,” she added.

She went slowly up the staircase which last June had been a country lane of wild-flowers at her ball, and looking back to that night she wondered whether, if among her guests then had come the prescience of what the next six months were to hold for her, she would not have chosen to die then and there, so deeply had the iron entered. But the past was dead: she must not forget that; and even to think of the bitterness of it was to allow it to writhe and struggle again. But there were things in the past – these children, for instance, though she had never found them particularly interesting – whom the death of the past, in the sense that she had promised it to her husband, made more alive. It was the wretchedness and alienation of the whole past, as well as these tragic six months, that she had meant should be dead, and she willed it more surely in caring for all that was truly vital in it, in neglecting no longer those whom she had neglected too much. She did not reproach herself now for the small part that her children had had in her life; but if Thurso lived, the letter she had written to him must be fulfilled here also. She had forgiven him, and she must amend herself so that he should forgive her. Even now she recognised that the children could help in stabbing the estrangement of the past to death. She was their mother, and though for all these years she had overlooked the joy, just as she had forgotten the pains, of maternity, it was potential still. So … would it not be better if she did not even see Villars? He would understand that as clearly as any words could make him. Yet she rejected that, and knew the cause of her rejection – that, though she told herself her mind was made up, she was still debating what she should say to him.

All this passed like a series of pictures rapidly presented to her as she went up the stairs. Then she paused underneath the electric light at the top, and took out the telegram from the envelope. She looked first at the end of it, as was natural, to see from whom it came, expecting to find it was from Maud. But it was signed “Thurso.”

Then she read it.

“I am cured, and I humbly entreat your pardon, though your letter so generously has given it me. Shall I come back, or would you possibly come out here? I will return immediately if you wish. – Thurso.”

She read it once, and read it again, in order to be sure of the sense of this incredible thing. Could it be a hoax? If so, who could have played so grim a joke? But she hardly grasped it. Yet it was clear and in order; the hour at which it was sent off was there, and the hour of English time when it had been received.

“But it is incredible,” she said to herself. “It means a miracle.”

She passed into the drawing-room, looking round consciously and narrowly at the pictures and the furniture, warming her hands at the fire, and feeling the cold of the marble chimney-piece to convince herself of the reality and normalness of her sensations. She opened a letter or two, and they also were quite ordinary and commonplace; there was an invitation to dinner, a few replies to invitations of her own, all signed with familiar names. A footman was bringing in tea: he had drawn two high chairs up to the table, and had put a plate and an egg-cup opposite each. Everything except this telegram indicated that the world was going on in its normal manner. She had ordered a boiled egg, as a treat, for the two boys. There were the egg-cups.

The boys? Whose? Hers and Thurso’s.

Then a sudden wave of cynical amusement, coming in from the ocean of the world in which her life was passed, went over her head for a moment. She felt that she was being unreal, melodramatic, in that she suddenly thought of her children like this, of her husband, of forgiveness, of all the stale old properties and stock solutions of difficulties. It was like some preposterous Adelphi piece, and she was the burglar who was suddenly filled with repentance and remorse because he heard the clock strike twelve, as he remembered to have heard it strike on New Year’s night in young and innocent days. As if burglars thought of their childhood when they were engaged in the plate-closet! Or as if people like herself thought of maternal obligations and marriage vows when at last love had really come into their lives! Of course, they forgot everything except that, instead of suddenly remembering all sorts of other things which they had, spontaneously and habitually, forgotten for so long. If all this had been described in a book she read, or acted in a play, she would have thrown the book aside, or have got up from her seat at the play whispering, “How perfectly ridiculous! How absolutely unlike life! I think we won’t stop for the end, as I am sure there is going to be an impossible reconciliation.”

Yet what would have seemed to her so unreal in fiction or drama was now extraordinarily real when it actually happened to occur. She wondered whether the life she had led all these years was as unreal as fiction of this sort or drama of this sort would have seemed to her.

Thurso was cured, so he said. He besought her forgiveness. The children were coming down to tea with her. She expected Villars. There was enough there to occupy her mind for the few minutes that would elapse before the children came.

Poor old Mumbo-Jumbo, that fetish called Morality or Duty, which had been to her but a doll with a veil over its face, was showing signs of life, giving sudden, spasmodic movements, twitching at the veil. What its face was like she had really no idea, for in so many things she had practically been untempted. But all these years she had been kind, she had been generous, she had had the instinct for helping those who suffered. Perhaps the face would not be so very ugly.