THERE ARE FOUR SEASONS, page 24
The children came running down the terrace steps, and flung themselves breathlessly on the grass at her feet. Elaine was with them and several of the young people from Morton Manor. Most of the girls wore light blouses with dark, trimly belted skirts, their hair done into neat buns beneath their shady straw hats. Elaine looked very smart and pretty in one of the new “motor hats,” tied under her chin by a veil.
They had been rehearsing a play that Lionel was getting up, and they all talked at the same time, laughing, chaffing each other, beginning to tell Vicky about the rehearsal but interrupting each other continually, so that they never got to the end.
“And we met Auntie Celia free-wheeling gaily down the hill with parish magazines dropping from her carrier at every yard. She’d left a trail of them all the way from the Vicarage.”
“Lionel went back to pick them up for her. The poor old dear was a bit flustered. She said it was one of Granny’s bad days.”
“Mummy, darling, may we go and forage in the larder? We want to take our lunch over to Lendale Rocks. It’s the last week of Lionel’s vac. and we want to celebrate wildly every day.”
Vicky forgot everything else—even Philip—in the indignation of the careful housewife.
“But, Paula, it’s nearly one. Cook’s got the lunch on.”
“Surely she can take it off,” said Paula impatiently.
“Of course she can’t.”
“Then she can keep it and heat it up some time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Paula.”
“It’s not ridiculous. Anyway, cold meat’s always useful, and what on earth do a few potatoes and a cabbage matter?”
“It’s so inconsiderate,” said Vicky. “You might make your plans earlier in the day, instead of suddenly springing a picnic lunch on me at this hour, when everything’s in train for lunch indoors.”
They looked at her in silence for a moment, and she sensed their youthful impatience with her “fussiness” and that faint hostility that it always brought with it.
“Darling, we’re not springing a picnic lunch on you,” said Paula in the tone in which one would reason with a fractious child. “You talk as if we were asking you to provide something elaborate. We’re only asking if we can forage for something. We don’t mind bread and cheese and fruit.”
“But the lunch will be completely wasted.”
“No more than if we’d eaten it, my pet,” said Noel with his clear-cut drawl. “All food’s wasted, anyway, when you come to think of it.”
“And, darling,” said Margery coaxingly, “it will be a good thing for us all to be out of the way when Daddy comes home, then if he’s in a bad temper you can get him into a good one before we appear on the scene.”
“That’s all very well, Margery,” said Vicky, “but about this lunch. . . .”
“We might be able to find something at the Vicarage,” suggested Elaine.
“No, don’t bother the Vicarage,” said Vicky. “You can go and see what you can find in the larder, but don’t take anything without asking Cook. She’ll be furious anyway.”
“No, she won’t. We’ll send Lionel in to break the news to her. She adores Lionel. She’s never cross with him.”
“If you really mind terribly, Mummy . . .” said Lionel, looking at her with loving anxiety.
She smiled at him. “No, it’s all right. . . . Only,” she returned to her perennial grievance, “you call me fussy for running the house properly and having things on time, but you wouldn’t really like it if I didn’t, though you think you would. I don’t know how you can expect the maids to put up with it.”
“Oh, darling, don’t start that again,” groaned Paula.
“You’ve said we could, anyway, haven’t you?” said Margery, springing up. “And don’t worry, sweetheart. We promise we’ll make it all right with Cook. Come on.”
“She’ll probably give notice,” said Vicky resignedly.
They went indoors in a laughing excited group.
Vicky looked after them, frowning slightly, but she didn’t feel as ruffled as she would have felt ordinarily. Her thoughts had turned to Philip again. She would be so kind, so patient. He would never regret having come back to her. Why shouldn’t they go abroad together again? In a week Lionel would be back at Guy’s, Noel at Oxford, Margery at school. Paula could go and stay with the Allwoods.
The children came out again and crowded round her chair, showing her their spoils and laughing as they described the interview with Cook.
“She was wild at first, then Noel kissed her and began to polka round the kitchen with her, and we got a band with saucepans and trays and Elaine’s pocket-comb in tissue paper, and she was laughing so much in the end that she could hardly speak. She’s given us a steak and kidney pie and some custard cakes and bread and cheese and apples. Isn’t she a sport? Don’t worry about it, darling. She’s quite forgiven us.”
(Yes, thought Vicky, she’s forgiven you, but she’ll sulk with me for weeks.)
They went off gaily, carrying the picnic baskets, turning to wave and blow kisses to Vicky before they vanished from sight.
Paula lingered to pick a rose for her waistbelt, but, seeing Andrew coming towards her with a “Now, you leave them roses alone, Miss Paula” look on his face, tossed her head haughtily and went after the others. They all resented Andrew’s way of treating them as if they were still small children and the garden his private property. They, on their side (except when they wanted his help in anything), would be cold and distant to him, trying to put him in his place by an exaggeration of youthful dignity that had no effect on him whatever.
The sound of their voices died away and Vicky leaned back in her chair again. The peace of the garden enclosed her, shut her in with the warm comforting thought of Philip.
After lunch she went to her bedroom and put on a dress of lilac-coloured muslin with a black velvet belt that Philip had once carelessly admired, and coiled her hair low in the nape of her neck as he liked to see it.
He arrived as soon as she had reached the drawing-room. She heard the sound of wheels on the gravel, and almost as soon as they stopped he burst into the room. His arrival was always dynamic, but he seemed driven now less by his own restlessness than by some ruthless force outside. She noticed again that the old suggestion of glorious freedom had gone from him. With his flaming hair and restlessness he used to remind her of a comet. Now he was like a dull smouldering fire.
She went forward to him, her hands outstretched.
“Philip . . .” she began.
He interrupted her, speaking quickly as if he had rehearsed the words and were repeating a lesson.
“I can’t stay, Vicky. I’ve only come for a moment. . . . Vicky, I want you to divorce me. . . . Will you?”
The room swam before her eyes. She put her hand on a chair-back to steady herself.
“It’s—Mrs. Hindely?” she said.
“Yes. . . .”
He averted his eyes from her face, not in pity or compunction, but just as he had always turned away from anything he found unpleasant or distressing.
“Philip . . .”
She wanted to plead with him, to tell him how she loved him, to show him the vision she had just had of an old age sweetened by their comradeship, but the words would not come.
“Will you?” he persisted.
She found words at last, halting, incoherent.
“But, Philip . . . if only . . . the children . . .”
He made a gesture of impatience.
“Will you, Vicky? I can’t stand here all day arguing with you. Will you divorce me? It won’t make any difference as far as you’re concerned whether you do or not. I mean——”
“You mean—you won’t—come back to me in any case?” she supplied.
“Yes. Oh, what’s the use of talking about it? I want your answer.”
She was aware of his restless anger rising against her.
“Will you divorce me?”
Again she tried to plead with him, but her throat was too dry. She could hardly see his face—angry, unhappy— through the mist that enveloped her.
“Yes, if you want me to,” she said at last.
He was off almost at once, running down the steps, plunging into the waiting cab, disappearing round the bend of the drive.
Philip Lynnaker stepped onto the pavement from Mrs. Hindely’s house in Bruton Street and stood looking about him dazedly. Then he began to walk away from the house, swaying slightly as he walked, colliding with any passer-by who did not get out of his way in time. They glanced at him with idle interest, thinking that he was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk, though he heard nothing, saw nothing around him. All he saw was Lilian’s scornful face, all he heard was her voice, as cruel as the sting of a lash.
“I don’t care whether she divorces you or not. I’ve finished with you. Can’t you understand that? Have I to put it in so many words? Haven’t I shown you plainly enough . . . ?”
“But I thought it was because—You said you’d marry me if I could get her to divorce me. You promised.”
“How long was that ago? Well, if I ever said it, I’ve changed my mind. I’m sick of you. Sick of you, I tell you. I never want to see you again. . . . I’ve stood your moods and jealousy and meanness till I can stand them no more. It’s the end. I don’t even hate you, you crazy fool. And now get out.”
He had pleaded and raged, wept and grovelled. He had knelt on the ground at her feet, and she had looked down at him and laughed.
“You fool!” she said again. “Are you blind or deaf? Do you want me to ring and have you thrown out? I am going to be married, but not to you. Can you understand that? Go back to your bread-and-butter miss, you dolt! She’s all you’re good for. And the next time you set foot in this house you’ll be thrown out by the servants.”
He had gone at last, and she had hurled after him the name of the man she was going to marry.
“D’you think I’d look at you now, you miserable fool? D’you think we haven’t laughed at you together often enough?”
He had crept away like a whipped cur, groping blindly with his hands, half sobbing beneath his breath.
He didn’t know where he was going till he found himself in the train on the way to Six Elms. He dimly remembered hearing the sound of his own voice asking for the ticket as if it were the voice of someone else. He was an automaton doing he didn’t know what, he didn’t know why. . . . He wondered dully if that was the way madness came.
His stunned senses began to awake slowly to life, and, at the memory of her scorn and laughter, shame and despair rushed over him in wave upon hot wave.
At Six Elms station he got out of the train and began to walk quickly in the direction of the Hall. He didn’t know why he was going there, or what he was going to do when he got there, but he half ran through the village in his haste, as if the whip of her scorn still goaded him on.
In at the gate, up the long drive. . . . At the front door he stopped. No, he couldn’t go in. He drew back and began to walk dazedly, unsteadily, along the terrace, down the steps, across the lawn to the lake. There he stood in the moonlight, looking down at the still water. . . . He couldn’t live without her. His lust for her was like the craving of a sick man for his drug. He’d tried to break himself of it time after time, but he hadn’t been able to. It was no use even trying any more. Already he was in torment—every nerve in his body aching for her.
He glanced towards the house, dark and silent in the shadow of the trees, its unlighted windows shining faintly in the moonlight. Vicky was there alone, thinking of him, waiting for him. Vicky with her gentleness, her serenity, her shy fastidiousness. The thought stirred only revulsion in him. Lilian had spoilt him for Vicky, for any decent woman. . . . And he couldn’t live without her, her sweet rottenness, her glamour of corruption.
All at once he knew what he was going to do, what some part of him, of which he had been unconscious, had decided to do the moment he realised that Lilian’s dismissal was final. He went into the boat-house, took a piece of paper from his pocket, wrote some words with a suddenly steady hand, propped it up on the shelf among the tools and tins of paint, and walked to the end of the little mooring-stage.
There was only a small rippling sound as he slid into the water.
Andrew never knew what made him awake that night and sit up in bed, listening to the sound of footsteps in the village street, what made him get up and hold back the holland blind to look out.
It was the master, walking swiftly, purposefully, and yet in some queer way as if he were being driven. The moonlight fell full upon the white set face, the blank blazing eyes, the tortured twisted lines of the mouth.
Andrew stood still for some moments, his heart racing, then with swift noiseless movements began to put on his clothes. There was going to be trouble at the house and he must be there to protect Miss Vicky. . ..
Ellen lay asleep in the big double bed. She stirred and flung an arm over the empty pillow, then sank back into sleep again. Through the open door he could hear Bill’s deep breathing from the little room beyond. He took his boots in his hand and crept silently down the wooden staircase. . . .
Up the village street, in at the big gates, up the moon-flooded drive. Then he stood looking at the house that lay silent and sleeping before him. There was no light in Miss Vicky’s bedroom, nor in the master’s dressing-room. He didn’t quite know what he had expected—lights, shouts, violence, perhaps Miss Vicky’s voice crying for help, for there had been murder in the face he had looked down on from behind the holland blind.
Then some instinct took him round to the lake and into the boat-house. There he saw the square of white paper that Philip had left on the shelf. He opened it and, taking it to the door, read it by the light of the moon:
“I’m sorry, Vicky, but life’s so damnable I can’t go on. Lilian’s thrown me over and there’s nothing left to live for.”
He crumpled it up and slipped it into the pocket of his corduroy breeches. Then he stood and gazed down at the smooth surface of the water, his pale freckled face grave and frowning. No one used the lake now, and it was long enough since the weeds had been cleared out. And the master, he remembered, couldn’t swim, would never be bothered to learn.
He stood as motionless as a statue, while the minutes passed by. . . . Suddenly, as if coming to a decision, he went back into the boat-house, untied the boat, and began laboriously to turn it over till it floated upside down. Then, with the help of the oars, he pushed it out into the lake, thrusting the oars after it. That done, he stood again considering. . . . Near the boat-house was a small summer-house where Philip used to keep some painting kit. He went to it, and, taking a sketching block from a pile of things on the rustic table, returned to the lake and threw it after the boat.
He looked again at the house. All was dark and silent. The upturned boat rocked softly on the moonlit surface of the lake.
Slowly, with his plodding clumsy gait, he made his way back to the cottage. In the kitchen he knelt by the smouldering fire, took the note from his pocket, and thrust it between the bars, waiting till it had burnt down to a fluff of grey ash. He did not know that he was breaking a law of the land, nor would he have cared if he had known.
Then he took off his boots, went upstairs, undressed, and slipped into bed beside the still sleeping Ellen.
Chapter Twenty-One
IT was late March. In the woods the willows were splashes of gold and the birch saplings held a ruddy glow. Overhead, the delicate tracery of the bare branches stood out against a blue rain-washed sky. In the fields farm horses, brown and patient as the earth they tilled, moved slowly to and fro drawing the harrow. Vicky loved this time of early spring before the leaves came out, when the world lay silver and russet in the pale sunshine.
She had been for a walk through the woods, as she did almost every afternoon, and was now hurrying home to be ready to receive the children.
She had had her forty-fifth birthday last week, but none of the children had been able to come over, so they had arranged to come to-day instead, except Lionel, who could not leave his practice. Celia had asked her to Ivy Lodge for tea on her birthday and had provided a nursery birthday tea for the two of them, with crackers and fairy lights and a tiny “birthday tree” hung with small and quite useless gifts. Vicky had felt touched and slightly foolish. . . .
Celia still lived in a world of perpetual childhood, with its accompaniment of anniversaries and treats and surprises. She bustled about happily at little childish tasks from morning to night—her gardening, her needle-work, her parish duties. Somehow, even when she undertook any really difficult piece of organisation her attitude made it seem childish and unimportant.
It had been one of Mrs. Carothers’ bad days. She had not recognised Vicky and had addressed Celia as Miss Standish, asking her several times how Celia was getting on with her lessons. People said that Mrs. Carothers ought to be “put away,” but the very suggestion made Celia indignant. She loved to fuss over the old lady, humouring her delusions with tact and patience, and yet even in this she suggested a little girl playing with a large unwieldy doll. It was as if something in Celia that had been emerging into a sweet grave maturity with her first and only love affair had been driven back in terror, and ever since had shrunk from reality, using every possible subterfuge of childishness to avoid it. Sometimes, under the boisterous carefree manner, Vicky caught a glimpse of a fear and bewilderment of which Celia herself was unaware, and would think sadly, “I couldn’t have helped it. It wasn’t my fault. . . .” She knew that even at the time Celia had not borne her the shadow of a grudge.
She took off her outdoor things, changed her dress, and went down to the drawing-room.
The house seemed very big and empty now that none of the children lived there. She was always saying that she must look out for a smaller one, but her whole being was so firmly rooted in the old house and garden that she kept putting off a definite decision.
Apart from every other consideration, however, she knew that she could not afford to stay at the Hall. Philip had lavished money and gifts on Mrs. Hindely so recklessly that his affairs were in hopeless confusion when he died.
