“Thank you, Obadiah,” said David.
Ten minutes later he was in the oak-wood, the clock under his arm and the Bastard padding at his heels. It was full morning now and a watery sun shone fitfully through the ravaged branches of the oak-trees, laying bars of light across the turf. The sky was pale blue streaked with mother-o’-pearl. The wind, that had been a terrible monster for so long, was now only a thing that sang in the tree tops and tossed the clouds like birds across the sky. It was a very wonderful morning, fresh and clear and bathed in silvery light. A cascade of song poured from the throat of the missel thrush in the wild garden and the blackbird in the ilex tree was carolling softly. The white wings of the gulls were beating everywhere.
Suddenly David noticed that the oak-wood was full of living creatures. Brown bright eyes peeped at him from behind the tree trunks and white scuts gleamed as furry bodies popped up and down in the grass. The rabbits in the marsh had fled before the storm and taken refuge at Damerosehay. The wood was alive with them and they were so tame with fright that they did not run away at David’s approach.
He swung round and gripped the Bastard’s collar, for he would not have them chased or frightened. What with one thing and another he was surely a little light-headed, for he heard himself talking out loud to them. “Sensible little beggars. I’m glad you’ve come to Damerosehay for refuge. That’s what it’s for. It’s a sanctuary. That’s how I shall always keep it.”
They continued to pop up and down, their eyes very bright and their ears very pointed, their scuts gleaming as the bars of sunlight fell upon them.
At the front porch David was met by Nadine, Pooh-Bah and the children. “Take the dogs in and shut them up,” he said to Ben. “The wood’s full of rabbits and I won’t have them chased. Get along, all five of you.”
He spoke more authoritatively than he had ever been known to do at Damerosehay, and the children hurried the dogs indoors.
“Wherever have you been, David?” cried Nadine. “You’re dripping wet.”
“Fetching Obadiah in out of the marsh,” said David. “Nadine, there’s something I want to tell you. I can’t marry you.”
Nadine looked up at him, her dark eyes enormous and tragic in her white face. “No, David,” she said, “you can’t. That was something I had to tell you too.”
They looked at each other, breathing quickly as though they were tired out. Then she went abruptly in and left him. Explanations would come later. They were both of them stunned by the blow they had dealt each other and neither of them had the strength for them now. David stood staring out across the seas to the beautiful silvery flood beyond. That hidden dull pain, that had been with him all the morning, had at the sight of Nadine become something that not only hurt inwardly but enveloped him outwardly too. It dragged at his body as well as his mind, pulling him down into misery and at the same time building misery up around him like a wall. The world about him, the bright world of Damerosehay that he loved so much, seemed in some queer way to recede, leaving him alone with his pain. He could have cried out with dismay. Through all the weeks that were to come he was to find out that the sheer loneliness of pain is almost the worst of its terrors.
CHAPTER
11
— 1 —
LUCILLA once more sat in the drawing-room waiting for the home-coming of her grandson David. He had gone away on the day after Obadiah’s rescue and had been away for six weeks. It had seemed to Lucilla like six years, so great had been her anxiety for him. Her parting injunction of, “For heaven’s sake, David, write,” had been obeyed to the extent of postcards every few days from such places as Bergen, Bruges, Rouen and the Scilly Isles, containing such illuminating remarks as, “Very wet today. Good crossing. Comfortable hotel. Rotten crossing. Fine day at last. Love to children. Hope you are well. Nice dogs here but not equal to the Bastard. Love, David.”
Beyond that, nothing. The speed with which he seemed to get from Bergen to Bruges had told her how restless he was, the brevity of his remarks how much there was that he could not say. Knowing him she had been able to guess a little at the blackness of his misery but she had not known how he was getting through it. This was his first big trouble and she had hardly known how to bear it; when she had been young she had borne her own troubles, now that she was old she bore her children’s and her grandchildren’s and found them far worse to put up with than her own had been.
The thing that had most comforted and upheld her had been her growing affection for her daughter-in-law Nadine, who had sailed a fortnight ago for India and George. It is wonderful how one’s affection for people grows when they do what you want them to do, and she realized now how unfair she had always been to Nadine. Every evening of that month they had spent together they had sat by the fire and talked and she had come to understand the difficulties of Nadine’s motherless youth, the bitter disillusionment of her marriage to George and its hardening effect upon her, the depth of her love for David and the greatness of her courage in putting it from her. Beyond that she had discovered that Hilary was quite right and that Nadine was very fond of her.
“I’ve always admired you so much, Grandmother,” Nadine had said on their last evening together, as the twilight gathered in the garden and the light of the log fire flickered up over the dark wood of the chimneypiece. “I’ve always thought it was wonderful that you could be so gentle and loving and yet keep your dignity and authority as the head of the family. I don’t believe that one of your middle-aged sons would dare to disobey you. The grandchildren all adore you yet they’re a little in awe of you too. You keep the whole family together yet I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you raise your voice, and you have a soft face like a tea rose.” She had paused, and then gone on again. “I wish I could be like you, Grandmother. But I can’t. I can only dominate if I am hard.”
Lucilla had pondered. Now that Nadine had mentioned it she had been objectively interested in this question of her own power. “I don’t think it’s a question of domination, dear,” she had said. “I think it’s a question of allegiance willingly given to someone whose judgment is trusted. I think my children and my grandchildren do trust me. I don’t know why, but they do.”
“I do too,” had said Nadine. “It is because of my trust in you that I am going back to George. You say, you have proved, that what I am setting myself to do can be done. If it wasn’t for you I shouldn’t be doing this. . . . Yet I’m scared, for it really is rather frightening to be so unhappy. I don’t know how I’ll get through.”
“Life is rather an unhappy affair, dear,” said Lucilla. “And it’s just as well to face the fact. It’s essentially sad, woven of grey stuff; yet embroidered with such bright flowers.”
“So few and far between,” sighed Nadine. “And such long tracts of greyness stretching ahead.”
“Don’t look ahead, dear,” said Lucilla. “Just live one day at a time. However unhappy you are you can still act your part for one more day. And as for trust, well, I think that’s what wins it. People like to know that whatever happens they can rely on you to play your part.”
Nadine, facing the future, had sighed. “But I’m glad that we’re coming back to Damerosehay,” she had said. “There’s something about Damerosehay that inspires one.”
For that was what had been arranged. Nadine was to go out to George, marry him all over again, stay with him for two months in India and then come back with him when the regiment returned to England. Then they would all be at Damerosehay together, Nadine, George and the children, until they found their own home.
The ecstasy of her family over her return to a sense of her duties had almost astonished Nadine. Her rather tentative but most expensive cable to George, asking if she should come back to him and try again, had provoked an almost lyrical reply, even more expensive and mentioning the dates of sailings and undying affection all in the same breath and with no stops at all. The children, when told t
hat Daddie was coming home, had been beside themselves with joy. Tommy had made the house a Hades for noise for days on end and Ben had put on two pounds in weight in a week; Caroline had said nothing but she had smiled such a lot that she had scarcely been able to suck her thumb at all.
And so, tight-lipped and strained, Nadine had sailed for India surrounded by an aura of family approval and affection that had seemed to give her no comfort whatsoever. But one day, Lucilla hoped, when her enveloping trouble had worn thin enough for the outside world to get through to her again, she would rejoice in its warmth.
Ellen, followed by Tucker the cat, came in with Lucilla’s tea. Bib, the kitten, had been given to Obadiah as the solace of his declining years. The dogs, of course, had gone with the children to meet David at the corner by the cornfield.
Ellen, as well as Ben, had most surprisingly put on weight just lately. It was the result of her secret satisfaction at the turn that family affairs had taken. The entire credit, of course, she took to herself. And indeed, thought Lucilla, looking up at the faithful horse-like features, perhaps she was right. That midnight interview had not been without its effect on Nadine. Ellen from first to last had been the family salvation.
“Dear Ellen,” she said.
“Drink your tea, Milady, while it’s hot,” Ellen commanded, “and don’t go feeding Tucker, now. She had her drop of milk in the kitchen before she come in.” Then she stood with her bony hands folded on her apron to see that Lucilla did what she was told.
“Sit down, Ellen, for goodness sake,” said Lucilla a little irritably.
Ellen snorted slightly and sat down on a hard uncomfortable chair against the wall.
It was Nadine who had told Lucilla of Ellen’s alarming visit on the night of the storm; Ellen herself had never mentioned it. She knew that Lucilla knew, and Lucilla knew that Ellen knew that she knew, but they did not say a word about it to each other. This was their code. Lucilla knew that Ellen thought it her duty to become possessed of all the family secrets in order that she might deal with them as she considered they should be dealt with, and that she considered any means which she had to adopt to gain her end perfectly legitimate. Ellen, on the other hand, knew that Lucilla did not approve of eavesdropping, unauthorized letter-reading and the like. They could not see eye to eye about these things and so they just were silent.
“Mrs. George must be well on her journey now,” said Lucilla, pouring herself a cup of tea. “She’ll soon be with the Major.”
“Ah,” said Ellen darkly. “And about time too.”
How odd it was, thought Lucilla, that out of the whole of their large family only three of them knew, or ever would know, of that love of David and Nadine for each other; herself, Hilary and Ellen. . . . For George, she and Nadine had decided, was for the sake of his own peace of mind never to be told. . . . And Damerosehay; somehow she was sure that Damerosehay knew and had mysteriously helped them all to the decision that had been made.
Her eyes went to the clock that Obadiah had given David. It stood now in a corner of the drawing-room, its hands standing forever at one o’clock, the hour of a new beginning, and inside it was Christopher Martyn’s book of drawings and the old parson’s diaries. David had given them to her with a hurried explanation before he went away. Since then, with Obadiah’s help, she had found out the whole story of Christopher, Aramante and Jeremy. She had revelled in it, loving her home the more because of it, and had been surprisingly undepressed by the tragedy of it. The drawings in the book had upset her far less than they had upset Ben and David, and when Obadiah, encouraged by her calmness in face of their horror, had suddenly decided to tell her that Jeremy was buried beneath the ilex tree, she had been rather pleased than otherwise. . . . She was seventy-eight. The horrors portrayed in Christopher’s book she had faced long ago. The nearness of Jeremy’s skeleton no more depressed her than the nearness of her own, which on her rheumatic days she was heartily looking forward to getting rid of as he, lucky old fellow, had got rid of his. As for the tragedy of Christopher Martyn, at her age she knew that the miseries of life pass away so quickly while the freedom from them lasts forever. “He was overtaken, and endured that necessity which cannot be avoided. For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. . . . A melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts. The whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered in their labour.”
She lifted the teapot to pour herself out another cup of tea.
“You’ve had two,” said Ellen.
“So I have, Ellen,” she said, and set the teapot meekly down.
Ellen took the tray away and she was alone again, watching for the first glimpse of the car through the iron gate in the wall. It was late autumn now, verging upon winter. The gales had spent themselves and the earth lay very still beneath a cold blue sky. The oak-trees were russet in the wood and the wild garden was all over-grown with the feathery splendour of traveller’s joy. To Margaret’s delight the frost had spared the chrysanthemums and they made a riot of colour in the garden; deep red, tawny, gold and white; the pungent aromatic smell of them mixed with the scent of burning leaves and the salt smell of the sea.
A silver-grey shape slipped past the iron gate in the wall and Lucilla found that her heart was beating suffocatingly. Would he be changed? Would he, perhaps, not love her anymore because of what she had done to his life? There was the usual riot in the hall, the usual outburst of shouts and barks and scufflings, and then David was in the room. “Get back, you little demons!” he said, pushing the door against the tumult outside. “Wait!” Then he shut it and came across to her where she stood waiting for him.
He was very changed; older, sterner, and quite unsmiling. Her heart missed a beat and for the first time in her life she dropped her eyes before him. Then she felt him take her face in his hands and lift it. “Are you all right, Grandmother?” he asked, and his voice was gay and just as it used to be.
“Quite all right, David,” she answered. “Are you all right?”
“Quite all right,” he answered, and looking up she knew that in spite of the change in him he spoke the truth.
— 2 —
But it was not until an hour later, as they sat talking to each other in the drawing-room, that she knew how much he was all right. He was very unhappy still, he did not deny that, and doubly so in knowing that Nadine suffered too, but he believed that they had made the right decision. His conviction grew with each day. And there was also growing in him, he told Lucilla, the conviction that because of that decision he was feeling his way towards an entirely new outlook upon things.
“All bereavement, whether fate inflicts it on you or whether the relinquishment is your own, changes you,” said Lucilla. “Don’t people say that nature abhors a vacuum? Something lost in the present means something new flowing in from the future; often a new or stronger faith. In your loss and gain you are bound to change and to look at things a little differently.”
“This life seems now both much more valuable and yet far less worthy of having a fuss made about it than it used to be,” said David. “That sounds a complete contradiction, but perhaps you know what I mean.”
“It is not now to you the whole tree of life, but the seed,” said Lucilla. “Seeds are enormously valuable, the germ of all that is to come is in them, but one can’t get as excited about them as one does about the full-grown tree.”
“I’m not quite that far yet,” said David. “Though that’s the logical conclusion that the road I’ve been travelling lately leads me to. Not much sense in sacrifice if this life is all there is. But I like the simile of a tree, Grandmother. A tree usually has a bird in it.”
Then he told her about the gulls at Bergen, wheeling and crying above the flower market beside the fjord, and the dogs in Belgium and the sea birds on the Scilly Isles. Wherever he went, he said, some
thing had reminded him of Damerosehay and he had longed for the moment when he would feel he could go back to it again. As they talked the sky turned from blue to gold and shadows crept out over the garden. The blackbird in the ilex tree started his evening song and from the wild garden came the voices of the children calling to each other in a last game before bed.
Then suddenly they came tearing helter-skelter through the gate behind the guelder-rose bush, across the lawn and in through the garden door into the drawing-room. Ben dashed in first and went straight to David, that shadow that had once been between them entirely forgotten.
“We saw a blue bird in the garden!” he shouted. “We saw a blue bird!”
“We did!” yelled Tommy belligerently, though no one had contradicted him. “Not a kingfisher but bright blue like forget-me-nots.”
And Caroline, sucking her thumb, nodded vigorously.
David, the children at his heels, went out to investigate, but there was nothing to be seen in the wild garden except the darting leaf-like bodies of the tits and the thrush singing in Methuselah; and presently Ellen came out to haul the children off to bed. “A blue bird!” she scoffed. “Moonshine!”
“It was not!” said the children indignantly.
“I believe you,” David assured them, and they went off comforted.
He lingered in the wild garden. It was incredibly beautiful with that silvery mist of traveller’s joy everywhere about him, the purple shadows gathering under the trees and a few golden leaves drifting down silently out of the golden sky. He began to feel almost happy. It was so long since he had felt happy that the strangeness of the sensation was quite startling. “Traveller’s joy.” That was what he was feeling; the joy of the traveller who returns to his own place. That was what Aramante had felt when she came back to her own spot of earth and her soul flew back to her breast like a homing bird.