The rest of mankind, to her child mind, was entirely taken up with the duty and honour and delight of providing a pleasant life to those born in the higher sphere—mowing the lawns, grooming the horses, clipping the hedges, polishing the floors, waiting at table, bowing silently when rebuked however unjustly, utterly dependent upon Lady Joyce Bellairs and her exalted family. She’d had no notion, as a child, that outside the parkland of Holme Ottery the world had moved on. The portraits of her ancestors in their silks and laces seemed to prove that her world, and theirs, had always been the same, and always would be, sheltered, protected, served, admired.
Then the war had come, breaking through the quietude of Holme Ottery, but not, for a while, smashing the old illusions. Joyce’s father had still played the great game of ruling the county as Lord Lieutenant. Alban had played the diplomatic game in the Foreign Office. Joyce’s friends had been officers, saluted by all men as they passed, holding authority even more firmly than of old.
It was only after the war that Joyce had been frightened.
She saw that Holme Ottery and all that it meant was threatened, that stupendous taxation was killing the old way of life for people like herself, destroying their sense of security, their power, their pleasaunces. And she had become aware of other perils; the bogey of Bolshevism, social “unrest,” a new insolence of men back from the war, no longer quick to pull their forelocks when the lady passed, but talking bitterly about their “rights,” their claim to work, and a living wage.
Joyce Bellairs was afraid of brutal forces threatening all that she had loved as a child, all that she had believed as a child. Her behaviour to Bertram was on account of that. It was a fear-complex. She loved him, but the very strength of her love made her brutal to him when he seemed to ally himself with the powers that made her afraid.
“It sounds all right,” said Bertram, listening a little impatiently, “but it’s all wrong! Joyce doesn’t understand fear. She has more than the courage of men.”
“Physical courage, yes. Not mental courage.”
“Besides,” said Bertram, “that doesn’t solve my problem. How am I going to live a single life, apart from Joyce, who is still my wife? How am I going to persuade her to withdraw that word ‘traitor’?”
“Give her time, and don’t worry,” was Janet’s answer to his conundrum. “A little separation will do you both good. Heavens alive! The constant companionship of marriage would be a strain on two archangels. I couldn’t bear it.”
“You’ve borne my company patiently for three evenings a week,” said Bertram.