We must go back—right back to my childhood at Hinkleton Parsonage—I must try to make you see those days because the seeds which were sown then have grown into trees and are now bearing fruit. The seeds were sown, and the trees grew up, there was blossom, and then fruit—bitter fruit some of it.
I was born in the Parsonage at Hinkleton, a big old-fashioned rambling parsonage, with a huge garden—untended for the most part since father’s stipend would not stretch itself to cover the wages of a competent gardener. It was a paradise for children, a paradise of old trees with low branches inviting the most timid climber to the perils of ascent; of wild flowers growing like weeds through feathery grasses; of moss-covered paths winding among dense shrubberies where one could play at brigands or big game hunting without fear of interruption. I was the eldest child, and, four years after, came Kitty. Mother nearly died when Kitty was born, she was warned that there must be no more babies, so the little son that Mother wanted so desperately could never be hers. She withdrew into herself after that—so father told me during those last four years that he and I spent alone together—she withdrew into herself, and, although she was a good wife and a kind mother, there was no life in her, no zest for enjoyment.
I remember the night when Kitty was born. My father had told me that God was going to send me a companion for my play—a little brother, or a little sister, whichever He thought best. I was pleased and excited at the idea and immeasurably disappointed at my first sight of the “companion.” Was this the best that God could do? I asked father. “She’ll grow, my dear, she’ll grow,” father replied smiling at me kindly. “In a year or two she’ll be quite human. Have patience, Charlotte.”
She was christened Clementina after Mother, but we all called her Kitty. She was so like a kitten, soft and warm, with pleasing ways and tiny velvety hands that could scratch if she did not get what she wanted. Quite soon, just as father had predicted, she became human and lovable—if not a companion, at least an amusing and enchanting toy.
A child’s world widens like rings made by a stone dropped into a pool. First the house became familiar to me, and then the garden. The church came next, its tall gray walls and slender columns springing upward to support its arching roof were a source of never-ending wonder to my mind. The music awoke in my body a strange excitement, especially when the organ played alone, and the vibration of harmony filled the church with invisible angels. I thought it a pity that the church garden was full of stones; it was not nearly such a pretty garden as ours. Did God like stones in His garden better than flowers, I wondered? The village was the next place to swim into my ken. I trotted round after Mother when she did her shopping or took soup to the sick and consolation to the sorrowing. I liked the village; it was a friendly place, full of smiling faces and pleasant words. Later still I added Hinkleton Manor to my world. It lay about a mile off across the park—an old gray house with polished floors and shining furniture which smelt agreeably of beeswax and turpentine. The Wisdons had dwelt at Hinkleton Manor for generations; they were Lords of the Manor in the old-fashioned way. The villagers regarded them with awe and affection, the County with respect.
I can’t remember the first time I saw Garth Wisdon. However far back I peer into the past Garth is always there. He was a small, thin boy, nearly three years older than myself. He was quiet and gentle—much more so than I was. Mother said he was too quiet, healthy boys ought to be rough and noisy, but I don’t think she would have been so fond of Garth if he had been wild and rough like an ordinary boy. Her own boy—the little son of her dreams—was a quiet, ghostly presence in her life. It is difficult to tell whether it was Garth’s nature to be quiet, or whether the circumstances of his life made him so. Hinkleton Manor was a quiet house—spacious and leisurely. The only sounds that broke its stillness were the ticking of clocks, and the murmur of voices in the kitchen premises where the well-trained servants went about their business. Garth’s mother died when he was born. He and his father lived together. He was, quite naturally, the apple of his father’s eye, and the heir to the Manor and to all the traditions of the Wisdons. Over the carved oak fireplace in the hall, in old English lettering, was the coat-of-arms of the Wisdon family—“Valorous Men, Virtuous Women”—and above were the Lion and the Lily of the Wisdon crest, emblems of courage and purity. Pictures of Wisdon ancestors hung in the hall, and in the dining room, and on the walls of the wide staircase, Wisdons who had fought in England’s battles or striven for her welfare in times of peace. The line was old and honored; it had always stood for truth and justice, for upright dealing, and for devotion to England’s best interests. Garth did not talk much about the traditions of his family, but his pride in them was a living force.
There were very few houses of the better type within reasonable driving distance of Hinkleton, and those few were childless. Garth and I became inseparable companions. We played together in the Parsonage garden and in the woods surrounding the Manor; we sailed down the River Hinkle (which meandered lazily through the Manor grounds) in a little tub of a boat which had belonged to Garth’s father when he was a boy. Marvelous adventures we had—some real and some imaginary. The woods were filled with the creatures of our play—lions and tigers, Red Indians and crocodiles, King Arthur’s Knights and Robin Hood’s Merry Men, brigands and pirates all had their turn. The woods of Hinkleton provided suitable backgrounds for every play that caught our fancy; we knew every path; we had discovered the best trees to climb. The whole place was a happy hunting ground for Garth and me.
Scarcely a day passed when we did not meet. The path linking the Parsonage and the Manor was well worn. It started from a small wooden gate in the hedge beyond the lawn and wound through fields and a wood of mixed trees, it climbed a wooded hill, where the local gray rock peeped out through the soil and descended into the grounds of the Manor on the other side. On the top of the hill there was a pile of rocks—big gray igneous boulders they were—and this was our favorite meeting place. How often I have sat there on the topmost boulder looking out over the treetops at the glorious spread of fields and woods and pasture land that lay below waiting for Garth to come! How often have I hurried up the hill to find Garth sitting in the same spot, waiting for me!
I suppose the hill must have had some local name—if so I never knew it—we called it “Prospect Hill” from the hill so named in Swiss Family Robinson, a book we both adored. We read and reread this amazing work until we almost knew it by heart and the characters became our friends.
Prospect Hill and the Swiss Family Robinson, how the names bring back the past! I can see Garth now—a small, thin figure in a Norfolk suit, with thick, black hair—sitting in a niche of rock on Prospect Hill bent double over our worn and dog-eared copy of the Swiss Family Robinson. He would sit like that for hours, reading solidly, while I—less sedentary by nature—climbed about the rocks or dabbled happily in the little spring which oozed out beneath a boulder. I did not mind his absorption, for he was always conscious of my presence however deeply buried he might be; sometimes he would lift his head and call out “Char, Char, where are you? Listen to this,” and would read out, in his shrill, boyish voice, some passage in the great work which especially appealed to him or which he thought might “do for a game.” The only time that Garth and I fell out was when Tommy Hatchett came to spend a month at the Parsonage. He was the son of an old college friend of father’s and his parents were abroad, so father offered to have him and give him a little coaching in the holidays. Tommy was a complete contrast to Garth—a round-faced, snub-nosed schoolboy, very frank and jolly and full of mischief. He was the same age as Garth, but bigger and stronger. Tommy was quite ready to be friendly and to join in all our games, but Garth resented his advent. It was a clear case of two being company and three none. I was too young to realize that Garth was jealous of Tommy; I could not understand why Garth went off by himself and refused to join in the games. All I could see was that Garth had been a splendid playmate, and now he was not.
We had it out one morning when Tommy had been caught by father and incarcerated in the study to do some Latin prose.
“Why won’t you play properly now?” I asked Garth, with the uncompromising directness of eight years old.
“You’ve got Tommy,” Garth said. “You don’t want me now.”
“I want you too,” I replied. “It’s not nearly so much fun without you.”
Garth’s face lightened. “Come on then, Char,” he said. “We’ll go and hide from Tommy—just you and me.”
“But, Garth, I can’t,” I cried. “I promised to wait for Tommy—he won’t be long—and then we can all go up to Prospect Hill and play at shooting bears in the Rocky Mountains.”
Garth swung round at me with blazing eyes. “All right, all right,” he said savagely, “you can go and play bears with Tommy, but you needn’t think I’m coming. You can play with him all day and all night, I don’t care.”
“Oh, Garth, let’s all go together.”
“No,” he shouted. “No, you can play with me or Tommy—choose which of us you want.” He shook my arm. “Choose,” he cried, “choose which you want.”
I chose Garth, of course, he was my other self and I could not do without him, but my morning was ruined by the vision of a lonely Tommy wandering round the Parsonage garden looking for somebody to play with, and, more likely than not, being seized by Martha and deputed to pick the raspberries for jam.
The little incident impressed me very deeply because of Garth’s unprecedented behavior. Garth was always so quiet and thoughtful, so gentle and considerate, and today he had been wild and rough, he had frightened me and hurt my arm.
Tommy went away quite soon after that, and Garth and I settled down into our old ways, and played contentedly at the old games. We had both forgotten Tommy in a week. I never saw him again, never thought of him until I saw his name among the killed in a casualty list in the war; and then, quite suddenly, his face appeared before my eyes, his frank, cheery, snub-nosed face, and the memory of his short visit to Hinkleton Parsonage came back to me as clearly as if it had happened last year.
I would not have mentioned his name, Clare, for he played such a tiny part in my life, but I felt I must tell you about the only quarrel that Garth and I ever had—as children—and Tommy was its cause. Except for that one month, there were no clouds between Garth and me. No, not even one the size of a man’s hand.
Garth was in and out of the Parsonage every day, and sometimes we were bidden to tea at the Manor. Tea in the nursery with hot-buttered toast and iced cakes, with Nanny presiding over the big brown teapot, calm and serene in her blue linen dress and starched apron. She had taken Garth from his dying mother’s arms and she is with him still.
As we grew older we were promoted to tea in the library with Garth’s father; it was very grand and grown up, but not nearly so comfortable. Mr. Wisdon was old—a tall old man with thick, wavy, white hair—he had been a man of fashion in his day and he had the fine, courtly manners of an older generation. Even toward us he was ceremonious and polite, cold, austere, slightly withdrawn. I never saw Mr. Wisdon laugh, and rarely smile. It was said in the village that he had not laughed since his wife’s death.
His manner was chilling and somewhat alarming. It was an ordeal to walk out of the room through a door held open for you by Mr. Wisdon. One would have needed silk petticoats and a sweeping train to accomplish the feat with equanimity, and I, a schoolgirl, with a blue serge skirt which always seemed to sag at the back, and black cashmere stockings which always seemed to have lumpy darns up the leg, could never accomplish the feat without feeling incredibly foolish. I was so conscious of the sagging skirt and the darns, not to speak of my long, gawky legs and red hands. Kitty was different, of course, she smiled at Mr. Wisdon, and went out with a hop, skip and a jump—but then Kitty’s skirt never sagged.
A string of governesses and tutors came and went at the Manor during Garth’s childhood. We children took it as a matter of course that they should come and go—father taught us, of course, but Garth was different. Looking back I wonder why none of them managed to stay, they can’t all have been fools—fools or knaves was Mr. Wisdon’s verdict upon them. They came and went—tall and short, fat and thin, hearty and lugubrious—we got quite a lot of fun out of them one way and another. The housekeepers changed too, and the servants, only Nanny stayed on through the changing years. The last time I was at Hinkleton Manor (I went down for a night about six years ago for old Mr. Wisdon’s funeral) she was just the same. The same comfortable kindly creature, her plump bosom covered by the square white bib of her spotless apron, her black hair, innocent of a thread of gray, scraped back into a little knob at the back of her head. I flung myself into her arms and hugged her, for she brought back the past so vividly. It seemed to me that all had changed, only Nanny remained the same; she hugged me back, and said, with that astonishing lack of tact which had always characterized her, “Oh, Miss Char, my poor lamb, how old you look!”
***
Father was worried about Garth’s education. He used to say that it took a man six months to learn his pupil and that then, and only then, could he get the best work from him. (It is an old-fashioned idea, but, like all father’s ideas, there is something in it.) Father would shake his head sadly when he heard of another change of tutor at the Manor, shake his head and frown and purse his lips. He was very fond of Garth, and he thought that Garth’s future was being jeopardized by the lack of continuity in discipline and study. I see now, looking back, that father tried to keep his hand on Garth’s pulse. He would ask him into his study and talk to him, drawing him out and imparting useful advice as he knew so well how to do.
One summer holidays he provided Garth and me with shiny black copy-books and advised us to keep a record of our days. “It is a valuable exercise,” he said with his kind smile, “and you will find it useful as you grow older.” Garth looked at his book with some surprise. “But you can buy diaries, sir,” he said. “All ready with dates and a space for every day.” “I know you can,” replied father, “but a bought diary is anathema to the true diariest—take Pepys as your model, his diary was not divided into equal parts—a bought diary starts with the erroneous assumption that all days are alike, or at least equal in length. We all know the assumption to be false. For Monday I may require three pages, for Wednesday three lines. If my diary is divided into equal parts I have the same space for both days. On Monday I am tempted to be telegraphic, or even to miss out some essential portion of my theme, on Wednesday I am tempted to be verbose.”
Garth and I began our diaries together—everybody knows the lure of a virgin copy-book—Garth lapsed a little when he was at Eton, but in the holidays his diary ran to pages daily. I often wondered, when I lacked material for mine, what he found to say (in speech I was the more facile) but I never knew, for our diaries were strictly private. It was the Unwritten Law that we should not “crib” each other’s diaries, and we never broke it. We left our diaries lying about in the schoolroom or the summer-house secure in the conviction that they were sacred from alien eyes. It was only later, when Kitty was promoted to the ranks of the literate that we learned to secrete our diaries—Kitty did not observe the sanctity of the Unwritten Law. The habit, begun in childhood, continued with me throughout the years. If I had nothing else to write about I still had books, and I often found that a few lines of criticism, written months ago and forgotten, saved me from a second reading of the same dull tome. There is a pile of copy-books in the drawers of the battered old bureau which I had rescued from the schoolroom at the Parsonage. I scarcely ever look at them but I know that they are there and the knowledge is, somehow, comforting. They mirror my life from a contemporary standpoint, they are a material evidence of the troubles that I have borne, of the storms that have failed to wreck me, of the calms that have failed to discourage me.
I missed Garth dreadfully when he went to Eton. Kitty could not share in the make-believe games which had so delighted Garth and me. Her imagination could not people the woods with redskins and outlaws. She liked playing with dolls; she liked playing at houses, or shops. I used to play at her games because she could not play at mine, but I found them dull and monotonous after the wild freedom of the woods. The mornings were occupied with lessons. Father taught me himself and he made everything interesting. He was a born teacher, with ideas upon education greatly in advance of his time. I enjoyed my hours with him, they passed quickly—he led my mind from one point to another, so that I learned almost without knowing it. In the afternoon I took the path over the hill to the Manor stables to exercise Garth’s pony and his dog. It was a routine life, busy and useful. The days passed quickly.
The holidays were too short for all the things that Garth wanted to do. Old haunts to be revisited, old pleasures to resume.
I lost Garth for a little while during his schooldays at Eton; he slipped away from me in spirit. That was bound to happen, of course, and I should have known it if I had not been so ignorant of the world. He was unhappy at Eton I think—although he never said so—the lack of privacy irked him (he had always had as much privacy as he liked). He was homesick for Hinkleton and the freedom of the woods. When he went on to Oxford he was happier and more settled. He became once more the companion of my childhood’s days. At Oxford his time was at his own disposal, he could be solitary if he wanted. He could shut his door upon the world and take leisure for thoughts and dreams. And, because he was not always in a crowd, he was able to make friends with people who appealed to him, and to pick and choose a few congenial spirits. Garth was more normal during those years at Oxford than he ever was before—or since. I see that now, when I look back. At the time, of course, I saw nothing beyond the day. I sorrowed when Garth went from me and rejoiced when he returned.
It was while he was at Oxford that he grew so amazingly. As a child he was small for his age, and then he suddenly shot up into a very tall, thin young man. Later he filled out and became broad-shouldered and deep-chested, but he always retained the narrow hips and long lean legs of the born runner. I have only to shut my eyes to see Garth as he was in those far-off days. His long spare frame, his dark hair that fitted his small well-shaped head like a cap. His blue eyes, dreamy or eager as occasion demanded, were rather deeply sunk in his sun-tanned face. He had a short straight nose, and his mouth was large and mobile, the mouth of an actor, full of expression. His feet and his hands were long and thin, he had long sensitive fingers.
What else can I tell you about that Oxford Garth? (I want you to see him clearly, Clare. It is so important that you should see Garth clearly in his early days, before he was embittered and disillusioned by the world.) He did not care for games—perhaps that was one of the reasons why his time at Eton was unhappy—he ran well, and swam, but the passion of his life was, and still is, riding. Garth rode magnificently, he was absolutely fearless, and yet he was not reckless, nor inconsiderate of his horse as fearless riders often are. When he was on a horse, he and his horse were one in body and spirit. He could rouse a shirker, or quiet a nervous animal with a touch of his hand.
***
My thoughts go back to the last peaceful summer at Hinkleton—how happy we were. Childhood was over, for I was seventeen and Garth twenty, but the storms of life had not yet broken upon us. Garth came down from Oxford for the long vacation. He arranged to read Latin with father, for Latin was a weak subject of Garth’s and it was holding him back. None of the many tutors had succeeded in making Latin come alive for Garth, and Eton and Oxford had failed to remedy the lack of grounding. The days were full of bright sunlight and father loved the sun, so Latin was read in the garden under the big old tree which cast its long shadows over the tennis lawn. I could see them sitting there if I glanced out of the windows in the intervals between bed-making and dusting which were my daily lot. Garth’s dark head was bent studiously over the book from which he read. Father listened and commented and watched the birds. Sometimes father was called away in the middle of the lesson—his time was never his own—and then I went down to talk to Garth and the beds were left to look after themselves. We talked a great deal that summer. Talking took the place of games. Garth told me about his life at Oxford, about the long quiet afternoons on the river, and about the old beautiful buildings which had housed learning for so many generations. He told me, too, of his ambitions—to travel in unvisited places and to write books which should add to the knowledge of the world we live in. He would be Lord of the Manor when his father died and would find enough to do looking after the property, and traveling. The passion for traveling had always been with him, it had found expression in our childhood games of make-believe, but now these were left behind and Garth was looking forward to the reality. I envied him his secure manhood and the future which seemed so bright. To voyage to distant countries and strange lands, to meet in the flesh the people and animals of our imaginings seemed to me the apotheosis of desire.
“What a pity you are a girl, Char!” Garth exclaimed when we had been discussing the matter for hours. “If only you had been a boy we could have gone off together and explored the world.” How fervently I echoed his wish!
We were friends, old tried friends. We understood each other in that far-off summer of 1913.
Kitty was rather left out of it when Garth came home. I see that now, though I did not see it at the time. She was a child then—just thirteen, and she liked attention and petting. Garth and I found her something of a nuisance, she had no qualms about forcing her company upon us, and her company was a check upon our talk. We escaped from Kitty whenever we could.
Kitty loved Hinkleton Manor, not for the beauty of it and the old historical associations with the Wisdon family, but for the comfort and luxury of its well-appointed rooms and trained servants. Even then, young as she was, Kitty loved luxury as a cat loves warmth.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a house like this?” she whispered to me one day when we had been bidden to tea at the Manor, and were waiting in the drawing room for our hosts to appear. “When I’m grown up I shall marry a rich man and have a house exactly like Hinkleton Manor.”
I laughed at the childish ambition.
“You can laugh if you like, Char,” Kitty said, “but you’ll see I shall. I would be absolutely happy if I had a house like this for my very own.”
“You will have to find a husband first,” I said lightly.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully.
“And the richest men are not always the nicest husbands.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” she said, “not if I had a house like this. Wouldn’t it be lovely not to have to make your own bed, and to have a fire in your bedroom every night, and lovely things to eat every day? I shall ask you to stay with me, Char.”
“That will be very kind of you,” I told her. “But perhaps I may have a husband of my own by then—and a house too.”
She looked at me curiously, and said no more. I wonder, now, what she was thinking. In some ways Kitty was older than I was, in other ways she was incredibly babyish for her years. It was a strange mixture and rather intriguing—you never knew which side of her nature was going to appear. I wonder, now, whether she was thinking that someday I might marry Garth and be mistress of Hinkleton Manor.