It was the end of April before Garth was at last demobilized and returned to Hinkleton. I saw at once that he was changed; changed in himself and changed to me. It was not only that he was older and more assured, grown from the immature boy into the man, used to command, used to make decisions and assume responsibilities. (That would have been a natural change, the logical outcome of his experiences.) Garth was changed fundamentally. He looked at life with different eyes, he was bitter, cynical, disillusioned. He was much more talkative than he had been in the old days, much more amusing; but his jokes had a cutting edge, they were unkind, and intentionally so—Garth was too clever, too sensitive to the reactions of others to be cruel by mistake.
The boy that I had known so well was a gentle-natured creature, considerate to others and somewhat self-effacing. This man who had come back in his place was ruthless, almost brutal at times. I told myself that the war had changed Garth’s nature. The dreadful sights, the agony of suspense, the long years of strain had warped him temporarily. He would get over it, I told myself, and the old Garth would return. I was very patient with Garth, very long-suffering, for I had learned much in those four years—nearly five now—since the beginning of the war. I was no longer a child; I was a woman, used to self-discipline. I tried to be very gentle with Garth, I tried to remember all he had been through but it was no use. Again and again he hurt me, as he knew so well how, again and again he repelled my friendship and trampled on my feelings. I grew afraid of him, for I still loved him, and those we love can hurt us so desperately.
Father invited him to dinner one evening soon after he came home. Father had always been fond of Garth, and he did not see, as I saw, how much Garth had changed. Garth was more gentle to father than he was to other people, more considerate, less cynical. He had always been devoted to father. I decided that evening to wear my yellow frock—the one I had worn at the dance—it had lain in my drawer for five years, wrapped in tissue paper. I took it out that evening when Garth was coming and looked at it—there were tears in my throat—I had been so happy, wearing that frock. It was all gone now, that happiness, the war had killed it. Garth had loved me in that frock. Could it bring back the past? I thought perhaps it might. I thought perhaps the years would fall away and vanish as though they had not been.
Garth arrived before I was ready, I heard him talking to father in the drawing room, and I went in to greet him. He turned toward me as I came in and for a moment his face brightened, the cynical expression faded and he was the old Garth.
And then he bowed in a mocking manner. “You never told me it was a party.”
“Just you, Garth,” I told him, with my heart fluttering in my breast like a trapped bird.
“I am honored indeed,” he mocked. “You put me to shame with your grandeur. Why was I not told it was a full dress occasion so that I could have taken my dress suit out of moth-cake and had it pressed?”
Father looked up at me. “A pretty dress,” he said in his frail, threadlike voice. “A pretty dress, Charlotte.”
“You think so, sir,” Garth said, looking at me gravely. “I might have thought it pretty at one time perhaps; it is odd how one’s tastes change.”
I could say nothing to him, and he could thrust the knife into my heart and twist it with savage joy. I could only stand there and bear it as best I might.
Kitty ran into the room like a spring breeze. She had chosen to wear a simple white frock—a little girl frock with a high neck and long sleeves—she swept me a curtsy and cried gaily.
“La la—how grand we are tonight!”
They gave me no peace all the evening. It was good-natured chaff on the surface, but beneath it, in Garth’s case, there was a strange bitterness that I could not understand. Kitty did not know the significance of the yellow frock, she did not know that every word went through my heart, but Garth knew. Garth was being deliberately cruel, he was torturing me. How I wished that I had not been prompted to wear that dress—I longed to run upstairs to my room and tear it off, but I couldn’t do that, I had to brave it out, I had to sit and smile and pretend that I didn’t mind. I pretended I had put on the yellow frock for a joke. It was a funny old-fashioned rag, I said; the fashions were more sensible now. I had put it on to let them see what frights we looked in the days before the war.
I realized that night that all was over between me and Garth—it could never come right now. Garth had gone from me forever. But I had not bargained that he would turn from me to Kitty—when I heard of their engagement something died in my heart. I loved Kitty, and I loved Garth—yes, in spite of all that had happened, I still loved him—and now they were both lost to me—both lost.
They were married very quietly in Hinkleton Church. We need not linger here. I shall not tell you about the wedding, Clare, I can’t. It was a blur of pain. I moved through the days of preparation like a ghost. You can imagine the wedding as you please—the presents, the flowers, the music, the eager crowd of tenants and villagers waiting to see the bride. Father married them and they went away. It was the last service that father took; the last time he was in his beloved church. He became very ill after Kitty had gone and only stayed with me a few days. I am sure he was glad to go. The world had changed so much; he was uncomfortable in it, lost and unhappy like a ghost from a previous era. His brain had failed, he was muddled sometimes and that worried him. Yes, I am sure he was glad to go.
There was very little money left when father had gone and his affairs were settled. Garth got me the post of assistant librarian at Wentworth’s. Garth knew Mr. Wentworth; the dusty old library was a favorite haunt of his. Mr. Wentworth took me on Garth’s recommendation, I went there for a month, on trial, and I have been there for twelve years. Mr. Wentworth was old when I went and he seems no older now; there are times in life when age seems to forget you, it busies itself with others, drawing lines upon their faces and painting silver in their hair. Age has forgotten Mr. Wentworth; he is still the same dried-up slip of a man, with kind blue eyes, magnified strangely by his strong spectacles. He can still run up the wooden steps as nimbly as a boy when he wants a book off the top shelf, he can still add up rows of figures in the big heavy ledgers with the rapidity and precision of an adding machine.
The first day I went to the library he showed me round with grave pride, showed me the different shelves where books about different parts of the world were kept. China to the right of the window and Australia to the left, and books about India above the old-fashioned fireplace. The whole room was shelved from the floor to the ceiling and it seemed to me that I should never learn where to find the book I wanted.
From the first Mr. Wentworth was kind and easy to please, allowing me a free hand in many of the small details of my work.
“You may dust them if you wish,” he said, smiling a little in answer to my inquiry. “Personally I find it easier to dust the books as I require them.”
It was easier, and more satisfactory too. I soon gave up the unequal struggle of keeping the shelves dusted. It was an old, old house, you see, and dust came from every crevice in the walls. It rose from between the uneven boards, as you walked across the room, and hung suspended in the still air, waiting for the strong beams of sunshine to turn its floating particles to gold.
I found my little flat and settled down. Garth and Kitty dropped out of my life. It was better so. Better for me to try to find content in my new life than to hanker after the old. I tried very hard to be content, tried to fix my mind upon the present and forget the past. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed. The nights were the worst. I could not sleep, and my mind, free from the preoccupations of my work, tortured me with visions of what might have been. I tossed and turned upon my bed, I thought of Garth and our beautiful friendship—now in ruins—I tried to find some clue to the change in him. If I could have found an explanation of the change I could have borne it so much easier, but I could find none. I still loved Garth, and this distressed me because I felt it was wrong—to love a man who had shown me so unmistakably that he did not want my love, to love a man who was the husband of another woman, my own sister, there was something horrible in that. I tried so hard to change my heart, I called in my pride, I turned my mind away from Garth. Night after night my pillow was wet with tears.
The first gleam of comfort came to me in a poem. I had tossed for hours upon my bed and could bear it no longer. I rose and turned on the light and opened a book of poems which I had brought with me from the Parsonage—it was one of father’s books, he had always been fond of poetry. I read one or two poems without taking in the sense of what I read, and then suddenly my eye was caught and my attention held. It was quite a small poem called “Separation,” by Walter Savage Landor.
“There is a mountain and a wood between us
Where the lone shepherd and late bird have seen us
Morning and noon and eventide repass.
Between us, now, the mountain and the wood
Seem standing darker than last year they stood,
And say we must not cross—alas! alas!”
I read it again and again until the words were clear in my brain and I had no more need of the book. Then I put out the light and got back into bed. It was strange how comforted I felt. This man knew—he knew about me and Garth—he knew what it was like to be separated from the one person on earth by a dark, mysterious wood and a high, stony mountain. I was not alone in my experience—not alone anymore. The mere fact that another had walked where I was walking made the path easier for my feet. The mere fact of finding a simile for the mystery which separated me from my love made it easier to bear.
I can’t explain why it should have been so; I only know that it was so. I could think of Garth and myself separated by the dark wood and the high mountain and accept it as inevitable. I was still sad—even miserable at times—but the awful agony of longing and searching was stilled. I ceased to rebel. I accepted my fate.
Day succeeded day. My work filled my life. I did not return to Hinkleton for nearly a year, and I would not have gone then if Kitty had not made such a point of it. She asked me to be god-mother to her child, and to go down to Hinkleton for the christening. I did not want to go, and yet I did. London was so hot and stuffy and I knew how beautiful Hinkleton could be in July. A weekend at Hinkleton sounded to me like a weekend in heaven. It would be painful to see Garth and Kitty together, I knew that, but I thought I could bear it, and I told myself that it would look queer to refuse, and I did not want them to think that I grudged them their happiness.
It was a strange visit. I thought Kitty changed, she was very silent when Garth was present, she almost seemed—was it my imagination—frightened of Garth. When we were alone together she was fretful and complaining, she complained of the servants, she complained of the nurse, Garth was inconsiderate and the garden needed rain. I put it down to her physical condition, she was still weak and apt to be tearful on the slightest provocation, I thought she would be happier when her strength returned—how could she fail to be happy when she had so much? Garth, on the other hand, was much more talkative than usual; he had developed an entirely new manner, a dry, sarcastic tone that jarred upon my nerves. That first night at dinner he was very gay—I thought his gaiety hollow, but I may have been mistaken. It is difficult to judge the merriment of others when one carries a sad heart in one’s breast, and my heart was very sad that night. I had not realized how painful it would be to return to Hinkleton after a year’s absence; everything hurt me, even the sunshine as it fell in golden rays upon the broad green lawns. Hinkleton Manor was so beautiful, more beautiful than ever, more spacious and leisurely than I remembered it. The whole place was like a glimpse of paradise after my mean flat in London and the baking streets.
Surely these people, living in such glorious surroundings, must be happy; it was my imagination that they were not. It was I who had changed, not they. The pain of seeing my beloved Hinkleton after all these months had warped my outlook and made my judgment faulty. What could be wrong with Garth and Kitty? They had everything that they desired, and, now, a little daughter to crown their love.
Garth and Kitty had decided that their son should be christened “Charles Dean” after his two grandfathers but, as neither he nor Kitty had expected—nor wanted—a daughter, no girls’ names had been discussed.
“Rose Marie” was Kitty’s choice.
“Nonsense!” said Garth. “You had better call the infant ‘Plain Jane.’ She’s plain enough in all conscience.”
“Oh Garth!” murmured Kitty. “Nanny says she’s a beautiful little baby.”
“What about Clementina?” asked Mr. Wisdon in quiet tones. “It was your mother’s name, Kitty, and you were christened Clementina—if I remember rightly—so this little creature would be the third member of your family to bear the name. If you want to please me you can give her the name of her other grandmother as well and call her Clementina Mary.”
“Yes, of course, Father,” agreed Garth. (I was glad to see that he looked a little ashamed of himself.)
The christening took place on Sunday afternoon. The old church was full of light; it streamed through the colored windows in jeweled shafts. Dear old church, how I loved it! God’s peace seemed to dwell here, and nowhere else in all the world. My heart turned over in my breast as I took the light bundle in my arms and made the old promises for Clementina. She was so tiny and helpless, and I knew that the promises on my part were empty and false. I could have no part nor lot in the upbringing of Garth’s child. She stared up at me with big gray eyes, serious wondering eyes—could such a frail creature ever grow up and become a woman?
The day passed. I saw no more of Garth until suppertime. We sat round the table eating, and talking like strangers talk—Mr. Wisdon, Garth, Kitty, and myself. I felt again that a shadow lay upon the house; I saw the shadow in Garth’s eyes as he looked at Kitty across the table. I saw it in Kitty’s face as she glanced nervously at Garth. Mr. Wisdon looked from one to the other and was silent, crumbling his bread. Garth’s laugh rang false, he laughed too often and too loudly. What trouble could it be? What shadow lay upon them all? It must be my imagination, the shadow must be in my own heart, it was my heart that saw ghosts in its own darkness.
My own heart—how it ached over Garth! How it ached over the change in him, over the lines upon his face, the cynicism of his tongue! It was dreadful to me to see the boy I loved in the man he had become, dreadful. When I looked at him I saw the same dark sweep of hair from brow to nape, the same fine features, the same mobile mouth, but a different spirit now occupied the body I had loved—a bitter spirit, a disillusioned spirit that believed good of nobody, that seized upon innocent words and twisted them out of shape and threw them in your face.
I came back to town early on the Monday morning to be in time for my work; I came back from the beautiful spacious rooms and found my flat poky and dark and inconvenient; I came back from the trained servants and well-cooked meals and struggled with Mrs. Cope and was revolted by her hopeless efforts in the culinary line; I came back from broad lawns and shady trees to glaring streets and chimney pots. It took me weeks to regain the small modicum of resignation with my lot which I had previously achieved. I resolved not to go to Hinkleton again if I could help it—what use was it? I only made myself miserable. Hinkleton Manor was not for me.
It was five years before I went to Hinkleton again, and again it was an invitation which I could not refuse. I went down for old Mr. Wisdon’s funeral. He had been failing for some time, but, at the last, his death was sudden. On this occasion I only stayed one night and had little chance of speaking to Kitty or Garth. They were busy with their sad tasks, and the house was full of people coming and going all the time. My god-daughter was brought down to the drawing room to see me—or rather for me to see her. She was five years old, a strange, silent child with old-fashioned manners and large, sad eyes. Her hair was pale brown and very straight and soft, it hung down on either side of her face like a curtain. We could find nothing to say to each other (for I had no experience of children) and very soon Kitty sent her back to the nursery.
I still felt a shadow on the house, but it was natural—wasn’t it—that the house should be shadowed when the body of its master lay upstairs. Sadness is a shadow; it was the shadow of sadness that lay upon Hinkleton Manor. Soon it would pass—for Mr. Wisdon was old, and it is natural for the old to die—and Garth and Kitty would be happy again. This is what I told myself and what I wanted to believe. I wanted them to be happy.
I did not go to Hinkleton again, but I saw Kitty occasionally in town. Sometimes she made use of me to find her a maid. I liked that. It was pleasant to feel that I was of some use in the world. We met once or twice and had tea together. She told me what my god-daughter had been saying and complained that Garth spoiled her. She told me her servant troubles; they seemed to bulk largely in her life. Garth began to travel, as he had always intended, and wrote a book about his adventures. When I spoke to Kitty about the book she tossed her head: “He’s always writing,” she said, “or else hunting, or else he’s away from home traveling in some God-forsaken country. I don’t see what use it is being married at all,” and then she would change the subject and talk about the latest play. These were the things Kitty talked about when I met her—and I listened. She never wanted to know about my life—and why should she? My life was so monotonous that I would have found it difficult to discuss it with her if she had ever shown any desire to know what I did with myself. There was nothing to interest Kitty in my life. We were miles apart when we met and there was no bridge to throw across the gully. Kitty was a gay, vivacious creature, her golden hair was bright and wavy, her complexion was smooth and creamy, she was dressed, always, in the height of the fashion. I felt the difference between us acutely, I could never be like Kitty even if I had the money to spend upon myself that she had. We were different in every way. No wonder that Garth had chosen Kitty to be the mistress of Hinkleton Manor; she was a credit to it as I could never have been.
“Oh dear!” Kitty would say, picking up her bag and preparing to depart. “How I wish I lived in town!”
“How I wish I lived in the country!” I would reply.
“You wouldn’t if you were in my shoes,” she would cry, tossing her pretty head. “Not if you had to live with Garth.”
Garth’s first book was published in 1929. It was the account of a big game expedition in Central Africa. It had found its way to Wentworth’s and I had read it there, and enjoyed it. The old Garth and the new Garth were both in the book, curiously distinct I thought. The imagination of the old Garth was there, and that wonderful power of seeing vividly and recording the vision in a few unusual words. The cynicism of the new Garth was there, that strange contrary twist, that ruthlessness, that tearing of beautiful things in pieces. I found the book moving, disquieting, but I saw that there was life in it; I saw that it was a book which would be read when contemporary books had long passed into oblivion.
So the years passed. I became a hermit in the city and found content.