The fourth and last part of this history is written solely for my own satisfaction. I feel that the thing is incomplete. Problems are set and left unsolved. There are half a dozen loose tags and ends to be drawn together and finished off. I can now elucidate the problems and collect the scattered threads, and that is what I have set out to do.
The first three parts of my story have lain for two years in the bottom drawer of the bureau waiting until I could find the time and the opportunity and the inclination to write the fourth part. The fourth part is not written for you, Clare, but only for myself—there is no need for me to write to you anymore.
I shall start this part from the moment when I left off writing the third part, from the very moment when I had finished writing and collected the loose sheets of paper to put away in the drawer. It was nearly time for tea, and I went upstairs to tidy my hair and wash my hands. I was still busy with my hair when the front doorbell rang, and, a few moments later, Barling came to say that Mrs. Felstead had called and was waiting in the library.
As I went downstairs I wondered what Mrs. Felstead would be like. We had so nearly met on several occasions. She had called on me, and I had called on her. I had been asked to Oldgarden and had been unable to go; it had almost seemed as if we were fated not to meet. It was natural that I should want to meet Mrs. Felstead; Clementina spoke of her with affection—she had been very kind to Clementina, she seemed to understand the child. I knew that only a very understanding sort of woman could possibly understand Clementina, therefore Mrs. Felstead must be an understanding sort of woman. I felt quite excited—would I find somebody congenial waiting for me in the library, a potential friend…
***
I found Clare. She was standing at the window gazing out at the darkening garden, and she turned toward me when she heard me come in. I saw at once that it was Clare. She was older than I had remembered her, and her face was thinner and sadder—she had been through a lot of trouble in the last year.
I stood there, gazing at her stupidly; I could not make up my mind whether she were a real woman of flesh and blood or a figment of my imagination.
“Oh, Miss Dean!” she began, and then she laughed and added, “Why, we have met before—do you remember?”
“Of course, I remember you,” I said slowly—she was real then. My imaginary Clare never called me Miss Dean, never asked me if I remembered her—
My first instinct was fear; fear lest I should be disappointed. Clare had been with me so long, and meant so much to me—would this woman take from me the Clare of my dreams?
“I have often thought about you,” she was saying, in that curiously deep voice which I remembered so well. “I have often cursed myself for being such a fool as not to ask your name. Perhaps you think it rather silly.”
“I wanted to ask yours,” I told her.
“Good,” she said, laughing at me with her eyes. “You felt it too—that we should understand each other I mean—then we needn’t begin at the beginning. We are old friends.”
“Old friends,” I agreed.
I knew I was being stupid and gauche. I was leaving the whole thing to her, I was not even meeting her halfway. But I could not help it; I was dazed with the unexpectedness of our meeting—I was bewildered because my dream had become flesh. If I had started to say anything then I would have gone on and said too much. The woman would think me mad if I said one quarter of what I felt. I knew that. I must say nothing until my brain recovered and could choose my words calmly—I must not expose my dream.
I busied myself over the tea-things, inquiring about milk and sugar—my hand trembled foolishly. It seemed so extraordinary to be having tea with Clare, and the next moment it seemed quite natural. How often had we had tea together? Never. A thousand times. The two answers were both right and both wrong—my head whirled.
Clare was talking about Clementina now.
“I have always been interested in that child,” she was saying. “I don’t know much about these complexes that people discuss nowadays, but if ever anybody had a complex Clem had. She was—she was frustrated by life, if you know what I mean. Always on guard before the portals of her soul—or nearly always. One caught a glimpse of the real Clem now and then, and the real Clem was worthwhile—always. What a difference there is in the child!”
“A difference?” I could do nothing but stupidly echo her words.
“Since you came,” Clare said, biting into a buttered crumpet with obvious enjoyment. “Clem is much more human now. She lets herself enjoy things…her guard is down…she does not hold herself apart. I see a great difference in the child.”
“I’m glad.”
“Yes, it was worth doing. I was very fond of Clem, even when she was so difficult, and I liked having her at Oldgarden. She and Violet are as different as can be. Clem so quiet and thoughtful and Violet as harum-scarum as they make ’em—at least she was, poor lamb. She hasn’t much opportunity to be harum-scarum now—but she will be again—we shall have her tearing about again—someday.”
“I’m glad,” I said again.
“Yes, it’s wonderful,” she said. “Sir Maxton Grant has almost promised—the few months that I had her away in the South of France improved her enormously.”
“You have had a terribly anxious time.”
“It has been—almost unbearable,” she said in a difficult voice. “But somehow one just—bears it. They told us at first that she would never walk again.”
I could say nothing, my heart was too full; I put my hand out and she took it.
“You understand,” she said in a surprised voice. “So few people understand, but I can feel that you do.”
“I do,” I said.
“It is strange how few people understand,” she said. “People say it was good of me to give up everything to be with Violet—good of me! That annoys me, makes me furious. Silly to be furious, of course, because the poor things can’t help not understanding, can they? I would have given up anything, everything to have been able to ease Violet’s pain. I would have given my own body to bear it for her gladly, eagerly. There is nothing wonderful or self-sacrificing about that; it would have been easier for me. When you see the child you love suffering…” She was silent for a moment and then she added in a lighter tone, “So there was nothing ‘good’ in my giving up hunting to be with Violet because she wanted me near her all the time, because she felt a little easier when I was there and the pain was harder to bear when I was away. It was just pure selfishness…I don’t know why on earth I am talking like this. I don’t, as a rule.”
“Because you know I want to hear.”
“I believe you really do.”
“I do,” I said earnestly. “I’m stupid at saying things, but you have been so often in my thoughts all these years. I don’t want the usual tea-table talk from you. It would be almost—almost an insult.”
“The first time we met we talked of real things,” she agreed thoughtfully.
“I know. We said so much…I seemed to know you…seemed to know exactly what you were like. It is difficult for you to understand because you have people to love and to care for, but I had nobody.”
I stopped suddenly, afraid that I had said too much. I had known that if I started to talk to her I would say too much.
Clare was stirring her tea, she did not look up. “I knew you were lonely,” she said in a low voice. “Your face haunted me. Not unpleasantly, but I could see you when I shut my eyes. I thought there’s a woman who could see my jokes, and I’ve let her go!”
I laughed at that, she was so funny in her annoyance, and it relieved the tension.
“That was not a joke,” she said in mock disapproval. “So you have no business to laugh. It is very sad when people don’t see your jokes—and lots of people can’t, for the life of them, see mine. My jokes are either very subtle or very poor—I can’t think which it can be.” She handed me her cup for more tea and continued, “You were very kind to Bob when I was away. It was good of you. He’s a lonely person without his family.”
“We loved having him,” I said. “It was kind of him to come.”
She laughed. “Tea-table talk—we can’t escape it.”
“Not on my side,” I told her quickly.
“I was only teasing you, Miss Dean,” she replied smiling. “No, I simply can’t call you ‘Miss Dean.’”
“Charlotte would be much nicer.”
“Charlotte—a lovely, old-fashioned name! I’m Paula. Is this too rapid for you?”
“We have known each other a long time,” I told her. I tried to call her Paula, but I couldn’t. It took me a little while to get used to her as Paula, she had always been Clare to me. Long afterward she told me that I had called her Clare that first day—it must have slipped out when I was not looking—and that she had wondered why I called her Clare. She had thought, perhaps, that it was the name of a friend, and that I had called her Clare by mistake; she told me that she had always liked the name.
“How does Clementina like school?” she asked. “Not much, I’m afraid. She’s too much of an individualist. I think you were right to send her.”
“I hope so. I felt it was right. Clementina hated the idea.”
“It will do her good to mix with other girls. (Isn’t it funny how different children are? Violet would love to go to school.) Don’t worry about her not liking it at first. Things we dislike are often very good for us—horrid that it should be so.”
“Horrid,” I agreed. “But fortunately Clementina does not seem to hate it as much as she thought she would. Her letters are fairly happy. It is I who am to be pitied.”
“You feel at a loose end? But you will be busy when the diary comes. Bob told me about Mr. Wisdon’s diary—that you are going to write the book.”
We talked about the book until Barling came and cleared away the tea-things, and then, somehow or other, the conversation veered back to the girls.
“They are so good for each other, those two,” she said. “They seem to bring out the best in each other—you know how some people do that?”
I nodded.
“You will let Clem come over often in the holidays, won’t you? It is not all selfishness for Violet; she is as good for Clem as Clem is for her. I’m sure of that.”
“As often as you like. I want Clementina to have a real friend of her own age—I want it as much as you do.”
Paula Felstead hesitated for a few moments and then she said, “I was sorry when—when Mrs. Wisdon stopped Clem coming to Oldgarden—it was really my fault, in a way. Do you mind if we talk about the whole thing quite frankly? I didn’t mean to, yet; but then I didn’t know what old friends we were.”
“No, of course, I don’t mind. I would rather,” I told her quickly.
“I knew Mrs. Wisdon fairly well,” she said slowly, choosing her words. “She was not the sort of person you could ever know very well, but I saw quite a lot of her. The children were great friends, and were constantly together—either here or at Oldgarden. Then a certain amount of talk started in the neighborhood and it came to my ears—I mean talk about Mrs. Wisdon. This all happened long before there was anything—anything definite…I’m telling this very badly, I’m afraid.”
“It’s all right, I understand.”
“Well, I was worried. It was horrid talk and I was sure everything was all right. I was rather sorry for her being left alone so much when her husband was away. Anybody would get talked about under the circumstances—I made up my mind to speak to Mrs. Wisdon. (It was foolish of me, of course, but I like people to be straight with me and I resolved to be straight with her.) I came over and saw her and warned her about it. I told her that people were talking about her and Mr. Hamilton—there was nothing in it, of course, I said, but there it was, and she knew how people talked. I thought, myself, quite honestly, that there was nothing in it; I thought it was just carelessness on her part. She is a pleasure-loving woman. She didn’t hunt—what else was there for her to do but entertain her friends?”
“Kitty was angry?”
“Very angry indeed. She told me to mind my own business. The County could say what it liked. It could go to the devil for all she cared—she raved on and I came away. I was sorry I had offended her, of course, but the thing I minded most was the children’s friendship being spoiled. I swallowed a certain amount of pride and wrote to her quite pleasantly, saying that I was sorry, and asking her to allow the children to continue to meet. She never answered.”
“Kitty was—was like that,” I said difficultly. “She never considered other people’s feelings. Only her own, always.”
“You talk as if she were dead!”
“She is dead,” I said.
I told her about Kitty’s death, and she listened silently, and sympathetically.
“You must have felt very sad about all that happened,” she said. “There must have been so many happy things shared by you both, long ago, when you were children together. That is such a sad thing—to lose the child you played with when you were a child.”
“I had lost that child before.”
“That is sadder still. Death is not the saddest way to lose somebody you love.”
Before she left I took her into the conservatory to see the camellias. They were very fine—perfect waxen blooms, growing back to back among their dark green shiny foliage.
“How beautiful!” she said. “They remind me of a Victorian beauty dressed for a ball.”
“There is something old-fashioned about camellias,” I agreed.
I cut some for her and she smiled as I gave them to her. Somehow I knew that she was thinking of our first meeting, and the country flowers.
“These are much more beautiful,” she said.
“I like country flowers best,” I replied.
“So you really do remember?”
“Every word. I’ve often wondered about the woman who lived in a basement.”
“She doesn’t live in a basement now,” Paula Felstead said. “We put her into our lodge at Oldgarden with her three children—she’s a widow. It was rather pathetic to see her joy at returning to the country. She could talk of nothing but the greenness of everything—she almost went mad.”
I could understand that very easily. It was the living green of the country that had amazed me when I returned.
“She must have been grateful,” I suggested.
“Far too grateful,” Paula said, smiling a little. “I couldn’t go near the lodge for months—gratitude is such an uncomfortable thing—don’t you think so, Charlotte? It takes God to receive gratitude graciously.”
After she had gone I thought about her, and all she had said. I realized that a new pleasure had come into my life, the pleasure of having a real friend. I had always longed for a woman friend of my own age, and now I had one. A real one at last. We saw each other often after that first day, and had many talks, and, gradually she superseded the shadowy Clare who had been with me so long. The two merged into one, and I could never really separate them in my mind.