‘No cause to hurry,’ said Mrs Veal. ‘Your father. Dead only a little while. I don’t think … would have liked …’
But this time she had definitely chosen the wrong appeal. Patricia said: ‘I’m not concerned with anything my father would have liked.’
Aunt Madge rose slowly, and her pince-nez wobbled a little on the top of the monument. She took away Perry’s plate before he had quite wiped up all the gravy and began to stack the dishes.
‘In that case … nothing further … Nothing Hi can say … One goes one’s own way … regardless. Naturally I …’ She mumbled on for some moments and her voice mixed itself up with the clack-clack of the plates.
‘What’s for after?’ Perry asked, trying to smooth things over. ‘Lemon pud? D’you like lemon pud, boy? Don’t tell me, I believe you hate it. It always reminds me of an African native I knew once. His head had been burned in a bush fire and all his hair was gone –’
Pat got up from her chair and went up to Aunt Madge and kissed her soft loose cheek.
‘No offence, Mother Madge. Nothing against you, you know. Besides …’ After a pause she went on: ‘Besides, it may be weeks and weeks before I’m off your hands in any case. So cheer up.’
The pause had been occasioned by the kiss. As she withdrew her lips Anthony saw a peculiar expression cross the girl’s face and disappear. It was as if she had had a sudden twinge of pain or distaste … or it might even have been one of presentiment.
After dinner, in the privacy of her own bedroom, Pat stared at the reflection of her flushed face. She felt bitterly rebellious and bitterly unhappy. With this morning’s tide Ned had gone, perhaps for weeks, perhaps not to return. Now she was alone, desperately alone.
She did not regret her refusal of last evening; she felt she had done right; but that did not comfort her loneliness now; rather did it accentuate it, for a woman does not think the worse of any man for being in love with her and wishing to marry her, and these last few days Ned had been her only companion, the only one she could trust and to some extent confide in. Anthony, of course, remained, and in a way his friendship was the most reliable of all because his devotion was without any thought of personal profit. She would not forget his work this morning when, but for him, the writing might have been there until midday for everyone to see. But you could not talk to an eleven-year-old boy in quite the same way as you could to an adult.
She wondered, as she had wondered several times during the last week or so, what it was in her character which made her rebel against so many of the things which the average person, the average girl, accepted as a matter of course. Was there some perversity in her nature which prevented her from living a normal life? Above all, in all her actions of the last six months, was she in the wrong? Pat had a reasonable belief in her own judgment, but she could not help but think of the Irishman who said all the regiment was out of step but himself.
In the first place she supposed she should have put affection for and obedience to her father above an abstract love of justice in the case of the wounded Dutchman. Then again filial piety should have prevented her from going against her father’s wishes by marrying Tom. Or, if she had married Tom, she should have accepted such dispositions as he had made fon their married life meekly and without criticism. Other women did. When you accepted a man in marriage you did so for better or worse; you automatically transferred your fidelity from one man to another. Henceforward husband came before father. It was like changing situations. In either case the man was not open to criticism.
Or was this a jaundiced view of the matter? Were they truly right and she wrong? Perhaps the rest of the regiment were not entirely mistaken in their views. Between a man and a woman who loved each other there was often a sort of sex loyalty which went beyond mere personal judgment. There was something rather admirable in the type of patriot who in a crisis said, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ So, in married life or in family relationship, was there not something equally admirable in the woman who …
Yes, she thought; in times of crisis, yes. But there was nothing so admirable in the patriot who said, ‘My country, right at all times.’ The best type of patriot was surely the man who would always stand by his country in a pinch but reserved the right to his own judgment when the pinch was over. Why then could a woman not reserve a similar right?
The point was, of course, to define exactly what was a crisis. She had certainly not seen the incident of the Dutchman as such at the time, but from the immense consequences following it she was prepared to admit her mistake. And the analogy of a crisis did not quite work out in her relations with Tom. A sudden incompatibility had emerged, had hardened, and she had come to see that it was insurmountable. In such circumstances, was the patriot justified in leaving his country?
She unpinned her crisp thick hair and let it fall about her shoulders; then she began to brush it with a measured sweep which she often found soothing. But nothing seemed to have the right effect this afternoon and presently she gave up and sat on the bed.
She supposed that the fate of all rebels was loneliness. In a sense she had felt herself to be a rebel all her life, she had felt always a reluctance to bow heedlessly to the things other people bowed to. Without conceit, she had known there was a difference between herself and most of the people she had met. She moved quicker and thought quicker. Often in conversation she had found herself running on ahead like a child before its grandparents, coming back to pick them up, then running on again. And often she chafed at the delay. But always she had cherished, as a sort of most-prized possession, a sense of personal freedom. That it was a spiritual rather than a material freedom did not seem to matter. It had been there for her to fall back on in the privacy of her own heart.
Not until this year had the material dependence come into conflict with this independence of spirit; but once the struggle was joined it had seemed vitally necessary to her that there should be no compromise.
And so far there had been no compromise. But she felt that she now had arrayed against her all the forces of precedent and public opinion. The struggle would be long and hard, and she was not enjoying it. She wanted only to be happy and free and to live on terms of friendship with everyone. Essentially there was no one less quarrelsome than she was if life was only prepared to concede her a measure of liberty and self-respect.
She got up impatiently, picked up a towel and went to the bathroom, where she bathed her hands and face in cold water. Back in her room, she put on a different frock and put up her hair. In opening one of the drawers to take out a brooch she saw the letter which she had found on her dressing-table a week ago.
She picked it up and unfolded it, stared at it a moment with a queer sense of guilt as if by even regarding it she were being disloyal to herself.
Dear Pat [it ran]:
I have made a number of attempts to begin this letter and each time have torn it up to start afresh, faced with an extraordinary sense of difficulty in trying to express my true feelings about Saturday night.
First, let me make it clear that I’m more sorry than I can say if the disturbance I started in any way hastened your father’s death. He did not like me because I was a lawyer and because I wanted to take you away from him. But I could sympathise with him most sincerely in the second particular, and I only felt deep sorrow on hearing he was dead.
But it is not so much of that as of what came afterwards that I want to write – of what passed between us.
Regret – the word springs to one’s mind and conveys nothing. Nor would it be true to use that word alone. Oh, yes, regret enters into it. I should regret it for ever if hope for a reconciliation between us had been further squandered by what happened. But if reconciliation was already past, then there was nothing to lose, and some pagan pleasure makes a mockery of all the polite emotions. Shakespeare wrote of taking a woman ‘in her heart’s extremest hate, with curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes …’ I know what that means now.
But unfortunately I still love y
ou, and love, I found, is not satisfied with the fruits of conquest – rich though they may be. So even conquest was not for me.
For excuse, if excuses are wanted, remember that you lied to me. There: is that a pretty plea? You had been with another man, giving him your companionship, and I had not seen you for weeks. Then when we were, alone for a few minutes you lied to me about your ankle and would have been safely away but for the self-locking door.
Perhaps we should not have married. Love doesn’t always go with affinity – sometimes not even with liking, for you certainly seem to dislike me with a will.
As I told you, I’m resigning my partnership in Harvey &
Harris. I feel I want a change, and feel I must get away from
this district now. If we have to be separated then I want the
separation to be a wider one.
I should like you to know that if ever you are in need of
help and feel you can accept mine, I shall be more than happy
to do anything I can.
Believe me, Ever your Tom
For some time after reading the letter Pat stood before the dressing-table playing with a string of pearls which had been her mother’s. She had dropped the letter back into the drawer, but now she picked it up again and stared at the envelope, turning it over as if in speculation.
With a sharp, painful impulse, she grasped the letter and ripped it across and across. With the need to destroy it still on her she struggled with the pieces, but her fingers were not strong enough to tear it again.
As sharply as she had begun she dropped the bits back into the drawer and turned to the window, staring blindly out. Tears formed in her eyes and she blinked them away. They formed again and this time overflowed upon her thick eyelashes and presently began to drip upon her cheeks. It was the first time she had cried since her father died.
Chapter Nineteen
Patricia’s attempts to find work for herself did not meet with conspicuous success. She had never realised before what small opportunity there was for an intelligent, energetic girl to earn her own living, to become self-supporting in a decent respectable business-like way. One had to be a nursery governess or a sempstress or a milliner, working endless hours for a starvation wage. It was as if the world had entered into a conspiracy to prevent the independent young woman from breaking away from the herd, so that she found herself hemmed about and compelled to conform. For the first time Patricia found herself becoming a rebel against the whole structure of a society which condoned this state of affairs.
Towards the end of the third week she was surprised to receive a letter from an old school friend in Truro.
Dear Pat [it ran]:
I don’t know if Maud Richards is mistaken, but she told me yesterday you were looking for something to do. Perhaps you’ll forgive me for being nosy, but do you know that a Miss Gawthorpe, who runs a private school here, is looking for an assistant? I don’t know what the qualifications must be; Miss Gawthorpe was telling Mummie the other day that it was not degrees she was particular about – probably she doesn’t want to pay for them – but chiefly she needed ‘a young lady of good appearance’ who could help her manage the younger children and take them in a few elementary subjects.
In case this appeals to you her address is Green Lane, Truro.
I don’t suppose you could get back to Falmouth at night, but
it would be nice having you living near here.
Affectionately, SYLVIA KENT
In haste Patricia wrote to the address supplied, using her maiden name and glossing over such facts in her life as seemed likely not to appeal to a lady of Miss Gawthorpe’s calling. Three weeks ago she would have scorned the idea of sailing under compromise colours, but disappointment rubs off the sharp edges of integrity, and she had seen too often the change which came over a prospective employer’s face when she explained the fact that she was married but separated from her husband.
Three days later a reply came asking her to call, and she left for Truro by an early train.
Miss Gawthorpe was large and formidable but not shrewish. She was clearly the sort of person who formed her judgments rapidly and she seemed at once to take a liking to Pat. The salary, although poor, included meals and sleeping accommodation at the house, and Pat saw that she would just be able to manage. In any case she was so delighted at the offer that no thought of quibbling entered her head. She arrived home bursting with the news that on Saturday next by the four o’clock train she was leaving Falmouth to take up her new duties.
Nobody looked very happy at the news. Widow Veal, as she was now generally called, had had a trying day with Mr Cowdray. So many details of the estate still needed settling, and Aunt Louisa, true to her promise, was doing her best to put all possible obstacles in the way of their being settled. She had some papers connected with the land Joe had owned, land inherited from his father, and these she could not be persuaded to part with until legal action to recover them was actually put in motion. Lengthy letters were still passing almost daily between Aunt Louisa’s Mr Crabbe and Aunt Madge’s Mr Cowdray.
But despite all efforts to the contrary, the time steadily approached when everything should legally become Aunt Madge’s, and Louisa Veal persisted in her efforts in the light of faith rather than reason. About a week after the reading of the Will another Will had been produced by a solicitor at Helston, dated five years earlier and leaving the bulk of the property to Joe’s first wife, ‘in trust’ for his daughter Patricia; and this had encouraged Aunt Louisa in the belief that there must be a later Will as well as an earlier one. No man, she felt, who had so vented his spite at a sudden quarrel could so criminally neglect the decencies as to fail to register the reconciliation in a like manner.
Her latest idea was that she or her representatives should be allowed to search the house for such a document, and this Aunt Madge statuesquely refused to concede. It was against all right, she was heard to mutter. The idea offended her to the core. She would sooner die, she implied, than let that woman come into her house again, picking over her personal belongings like a carrion crow. Mr Cowdray, growing sick of the endless altercation, suggested that he might be able to make some capital out of the concession if she were to permit it as a gesture. He might even wring some promise from Mr Crabbe that, if such permission were granted, he would persuade his client to drop the quarrel.
But so far Aunt Madge would not move an inch. The position was at a deadlock. When Aunt Madge was at a deadlock she looked it. For the last two days life had congealed in her and words emerged from that little pursed mouth reluctantly, like slow drops of wax from a melting figure.
So her reception of Patricia’s news was a preoccupied and a grudging one. She seemed to feel first that she was too busy to be bothered with Pat’s affairs and later, when the news had sunk in, to feel a grievance against the girl for adding one more trouble to the sum of her burdens.
Aunt Madge was getting fat. She had put on weight noticeably in the weeks since her husband died. One day when she sat down to supper Perry had jocularly remarked: ‘Slap me, Madge, but if you go on at this rate you’ll be a big woman when you grow up!’ But he did not repeat the joke. Sometimes lately one might have thought that the irreverent Perry went slightly in awe of his sister-in-law. He broke out from time to time, but on the whole, especially where the decencies of mournings were concerned, he increasingly took his cue from her. Since the long bout of drinking at the time of Joe’s death Anthony had not seen him drunk once, nor had anyone’s sleep been disturbed by hearing The Black Hunter sung in a wavering voice as its owner stumbled to bed in the small hours.
As for Anthony, Patricia’s appointment struck him almost with the force of a second bereavement. As the term was getting on and no more mention had been made of his going to school he had begun to hope that his affairs would be entirely overlooked until after Christmas. From the time of Ned’s departure he had had a good deal of Pat’s company and in it had found a real compen
sation for his disappointment in not joining his father. But if Pat went – with Pat gone – his life would be so dreary as to be scarcely supportable. Even school might be preferable to the emptiness of the days which lay ahead. When the time came for her to leave, as it did all too soon, he stood with his uncle on the station platform and tried his hardest to put something of his dejection into words, but found to his own annoyance that he could only stumble and mutter before her and hope that his face expressed what his tongue could not.
Patricia had her own private intentions. She did not feel that Madge or Perry had any real affection for the boy, and if his father still failed to send for him and if she was happy in her new situation, she thought there was a possibility of persuading her stepmother to consent to his being sent to the school at which she taught. Accommodation might be found in the house for him and he might even be able partly to work his passage by doing odd jobs.
But all that lay in the very doubtful future. Any of a dozen obstacles might emerge to prevent it, and she had no intention of raising hopes on such a flimsy foundation.
‘You’ll hardly notice I’m gone,’ she assured him. ‘I shall be back at the weekends and it’s only a short time to Christmas when I shall have three weeks’ holiday. So there’s no need at all for you to look despondent.’
‘No,’ said Anthony. ‘It’ll be quiet, though.’
‘Well, make it noisy, then. Uncle Perry will go on walks with you, won’t you, Perry?’
‘Ugh,’ said Perry. ‘I’m past my walking days. Though at his age I could do fifteen or twenty miles without turning a hair. I well remember in the Uganda –’
‘It’s time I got in. You’ll write to me, both of you, won’t you? I really don’t know why you both need look so glum. I’m the one who ought to look glum, leaving home and … Oh, well, this is the time when … I shall be glad when this is over!’