XXIV
Joyce spent the rest of the morning in her Mother’s room, and Bertram was left to amuse himself alone. It was not very amusing. He was aware of a sense of isolation, not for the first time, in this distinguished household. Lord Ottery, after some minutes of almost intimate conversation, and that episode of holding on to Bertram’s arm, became absent-minded, and then, as though dismissing a footman, gave Bertram to understand that he wished to be left alone in the library, while he pursued his studies on The Black Death.
Bertram strolled round the stables, where most of the stalls were empty, though Ottery still kept a few hacks, and Alban had his hunter, “Lightning.”
He passed a few words with the grooms, and found himself reminiscing on the war. One of them had been with “his lordship,” meaning Alban, Viscount Bellairs, in the Grenadier Guards, and had been hit on the same day of July ’16 in the attack on Morval and Lesbœufs. Afterwards, for the second time, at Fontaine Notre Dame, below Bourlon Wood, in November of ’17. Remembered the great Tank attack in November ’20? Lord, yes! Major Pollard was there with his machine guns? Fancy that! . . . Well, it seemed a long time ago, and like a dream.
“Care to go through it all again?” asked Bertram.
The two men laughed, appreciating some hidden joke, not to be put into words.
Something was said about the strike.
“Them Labour chaps ought to be mowed down by machine guns,” said one of the men. “Dirty tykes!”
He was amazed when Bertram said he thought they had some justice on their side. It struck him “all of a heap.” They were all bloody Bolsheviks, begging his pardon.
Bertram himself was astonished at this point of view of men who had fought in the War and were of the same class as those in the world of “labour” they denounced. As he sauntered away, after a few light remarks, he supposed they were survivals of English feudalism. Their outlook was limited to the horizon of this old house. They belonged to the Family. They were for the maintenance of the Old Order which paid their wages, gave them perquisites, belonged to their tradition of service. The War hadn’t changed their mentality much. Strange!
He strolled round to the lake, and found Alban sitting on the end of the punt, smoking a cigarette and reading the Sporting Times, with his back to the wind. He was in an old heather-green jacket and grey, moss-stained trousers, with a cap at the back of his head, and looked better like that, to Bertram’s yes, than in his town clothes, with white spats and all.
“Good morning!” said Bertram, with more geniality than he quite felt, not having much affection for his brother-in-law.
Alban glanced over the top of the Sporting Times, and allowed himself to show a faint surprise.
“Hullo! Come down with Joyce?”
Assured on this point, he became absorbed again in his pink paper.
Bertram waited a little while for the condescension of another remark. Not obtaining that favour, he strolled away again, cursing inwardly at the incivility of his brother-in-law.
“A damned cad!” he said to himself. “An insufferable snob!”
And yet, as he had to admit to his sense of fairness, there was no reason why Alban should have engaged in chatty conversation. He himself resented fellows who were always “yapping.” Alban wanted to read the Sporting Times. There was heaps of room in the park for Bertram.
“It’s the Irish strain in me,” thought Bertram. “I’m always suspecting uncivil treatment when none is meant. It’s the ‘persecution’ mania. I’ll have to check it.”
Yet, in spite of all these arguments, his moodiness was increased at the luncheon table because of the almost complete ignoring of his presence by Joyce and her family. Not a word was said about the sale of the house—servants being present—and there was some general gossip, mostly by Alban and Lady Ottery, of a social and political kind. The Prime Minister had gone to Chequers Court for Easter, with his usual gang. The War Office had drawn up a complete programme in case the strike led to any rioting. General Bellasis was organising a Home Defence Corps. All ex-officers would be asked to join.
“Doesn’t it seem unnecessary?” asked Bertram.
Alban looked at him coldly, as he might have stared at a junior subaltern of the Guards Mess, after an impertinent remark.
“Extremely necessary,” he answered.
Lord Ottery put in a remark.
“Bellasis is coming down for the week-end, he tells me. We shall hear all about it.”
Bertram glanced at Joyce, and wondered whether she had suggested this visit. He detested Bellasis. Joyce seemed to be aware of his look, for she flushed, ever so slightly, though she did not meet his eyes. She had been crying again, he thought. Most unusual for Joyce. He felt very sorry for her. Sitting there at the old dining-table, under the portrait of Rupert Bellairs, fifth Earl, by Lely, it was impossible to believe that Holme Ottery was up for sale.
How like Joyce was to that fellow! He hadn’t noticed it before. Although Charles II’s favourite had a plump pink face, softened by long ringlets, he had the same kind of eyes and nose as Joyce’s, with the same glint of steel in the eyes. She sat next to her Mother, crumbling her bread and looking thoroughly “vexed.” He had seen her in such moods of late, at his own breakfast table, when she came down to breakfast.
Lady Ottery had given Bertram a wintery smile, and permitted him to kiss her cheek. He felt as though he had kissed one of the marble pillars in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“A sharp frost last night,” she said, and as this statement didn’t call for much of an answer, she seemed to forget his presence, and engaged Alban in an argument on the subject of Mrs. Asquith’s Memoirs, newly published, of which she disapproved strongly.
“An outrage!” was her opinion, and she also believed they would be used as propaganda by radicals who desired to destroy society, and delighted in all such revelations of corruption in high places.
“It seems to me an extremely witty, harmless, and entertaining book, Mother,” said Alban. “My only regret is that it contains such little scandal. Think of all the things she might have written!”
“If we must have scandals, let us keep them to ourselves, my dear,” said Lady Ottery, firmly. “In my young days we hushed up anything that might prejudice our position in the public mind.”
“Most dishonest!” said Alban lightly.
“What do you think, Ottery?” asked Bertram’s mother-in-law.
“Entirely as you do, my dear,” said Lord Ottery, somewhat vaguely, having been thinking, perhaps, of The Black Death.
Bertram expressed an opinion upon Mrs. Asquith’s portraits of “The Souls.” He thought it would be quoted centuries hence as a picture of English life in the ’eighties. His opinion did not seem to impress his wife’s family or Joyce. There was no reply to his remark, and Alban switched off the conversation to the character of his new terrier—a cunning little devil with a hell of a lot of pluck.
“Doing anything special this afternoon, Joyce?” asked Bertram, towards the end of this meal which had been a silent one for him.
“I’m talking business with Alban,” said Joyce, in a most determined voice, as though announcing an ultimatum to Alban himself.
He took it as such, and groaned a little.
“Certainly, old girl, much as I hate such palavers.”
Talking business with Alban. Not for Bertram to intervene. He had no right to “barge in” upon such discussions, though Joyce happened to be his wife. Well, he might do a slope down into the village, and buy an afternoon paper, or perhaps tramp over the Common, and watch the village boys starting the season’s cricket. Holme Ottery was not very sociable to-day to an outsider like himself.
That was what he did, and he recovered his sense of humour a little as he watched the game of cricket between the youngsters of Ottery. He even laughed aloud at the argumentative interruptions of the game, with wild and angry shouts of “How’s that?” “That ain’t fair!” . . . “Who’s umpire?” . . . “Umpire be blowed!” Youth didn’t change, in spite of social upheavals, the passing of the Old Order, houses to let, falling Empires, ruin in Europe, threatened strikes, any damn thing. Boyhood survived, with its laughter, its quarrels, its passionate excitement, its game of life. Survived, in spite of war’s massacre! Many of those kids must have lost fathers and brothers. The shadow of the War had been over their childhood. They’d seen women weeping at the news of death. But it had not spoilt the spirit of youth. They’d forgotten the shadow. Bertram wondered if any of them would live to see another Great War, would live to die, as fathers and brothers had died, in the same old battlefields, blown to bits, sliced by flying steel, gassed, plugged with machine-gun bullets. Not if he could do anything to save them. Not if his book had any luck.
How wonderful was the fruit blossom this year! The little orchards round the Common were snowed under with white and pink petals. The April wind was laden with scent of apple-blossom, cherry-blossom, pear-blossom, and drenched with the stronger perfume of lilac, splendid in the cottage gardens. It stole into his senses like an opiate. Why worry? This beauty of England endured through the centuries, through civil strife, foreign wars, all kind of trouble, soon forgotten. Spring had come again, with its English loveliness, calling to his heart, putting its spell upon the senses. Romance and love should go hand in hand in little old villages like this. So they had gone hand in hand, a year ago, when he and Joyce had wandered through Ottery village, not caring because the village folk smiled to see their love, glad of their friendly, smiling glances. A year ago! They didn’t go hand in hand just now. Something had come between them, some coldness. Perhaps with the coming back of spring again, their love would come back. He would woo Joyce again, as a humble lover, as a passionate but patient lover. This very night he would sue for her kisses, as once she had kissed him with sweet lips. He would entice her down to the little wood beyond the lake where one night they’d stood listening to a nightingale, with their arms about each other, like children, like Adam and Eve, like any man and any woman in the spring-time of life, with pulses thrilling to the tune of love, freshly heard.
Sentiment! Romantic stuff! Well, why not?