Our next local excitement was the whist drive. It was being got up by the Women’s Institute.
It was being held where such affairs had always been held, in the Long Barn of Polnorth House. The Long Barn, I gather, was something rather special. Enthusiastic antiquarians came to gloat over it, measure it, photograph it, and write about it. It was considered in St Loo as a kind of public possession. The inhabitants were proud of it.
There was a great hum of activity during the next two days. Organizing members of the Women’s Institute drifted in and out.
I remained mercifully segregated from the main stream, but Teresa occasionally introduced what I can only describe as particularly choice specimens for my amusement and entertainment.
Since Teresa knew that I liked Milly Burt, Milly was admitted fairly frequently to my sitting room and we engaged together in various miscellaneous tasks such as writing out tickets, sticking or gumming decorations.
It was while we were engaged on these operations that I heard Milly’s life story. As Gabriel had so brutally told me, I could only justify my existence by becoming a kind of ever-ready receiving set. I might be good for nothing else, but I was still good for that.
Milly Burt talked to me without self-consciousness – a kind of burbling self-revelation, like a gentle little stream.
She talked a great deal about Major Gabriel. Her hero worship where he was concerned had increased rather than diminished.
‘What I think so wonderful about him, Captain Norreys, is that he’s so kind. I mean when he’s so busy and so rushed and has so many important things to do, yet he always remembers things and has such a nice teasing way of talking. I’ve never met anyone quite like him.’
‘You’re probably right there,’ I said.
‘With his wonderful war record and everything, he isn’t a bit proud or stuck-up – he’s just as nice to me as to somebody important. He’s nice to everybody – and he remembers about people and if their sons have been killed or if they’re out in Burma or somewhere dreadful, and he always knows the right thing to say and how to make people laugh and cheer up. I don’t know how he manages it all.’
‘He must have been reading Kipling’s If,’ I said coldly.
‘Yes. I’m sure he fills the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run if anybody does.’
‘Probably a hundred and twenty seconds’ worth,’ I suggested. ‘Sixty seconds wouldn’t be enough for Gabriel.’
‘I wish I knew more about politics,’ said Milly wistfully. ‘I have read up all the pamphlets, but I’m not really good at canvassing or persuading people to vote. You see, I don’t know the answers to the things they say.’
‘Oh well,’ I said consolingly, ‘all that sort of thing is just a knack. Anyway, to my mind canvassing is quite unethical.’
She looked at me uncomprehendingly.
I explained:
‘You shouldn’t ever try to make people vote against their convictions,’ I said.
‘Oh, I see – yes, I see what you mean. But we do think that the Conservatives are the only people who can finish off the war and make the peace the right way, don’t we?’
‘Mrs Burt,’ I said, ‘what a really splendid little Tory you are. Is that what you say when you go canvassing?’
She blushed.
‘No, I don’t really know enough to talk about the political side. But I can say what a splendid man Major Gabriel is, and how sincere, and how it’s people like him who are really going to matter.’
Well, I thought to myself, that would be right down Gabriel’s street … I looked into her flushed serious face. Her brown eyes were shining. I had an uncomfortable moment wondering whether perhaps a little more than hero worship was involved.
As though responding to my unexpressed thought, Milly’s face clouded over.
‘Jim thinks I’m an awful fool,’ she said deprecatingly.
‘Does he? Why?’
‘He says I’m such a fool I can’t understand anything about politics – and anyway, the whole thing’s a racket. And he says what the – I mean he says I can’t possibly be any use, and if I go round talking to people it’s as good as a vote for the other side from everyone I talk to. Captain Norreys, do you think that’s true?’
‘No,’ I said firmly.
She brightened up.
‘I know I’m stupid in some ways. But it’s only when I’m rattled, and Jim always can rattle me. He likes upsetting me. He likes –’ She stopped. Her lips were quivering.
Then suddenly she scattered the white slips of paper she was working on and began to cry – deep heart rending sobs.
‘My dear Mrs Burt –’ I said helplessly.
What the hell can a man do who lies helpless in an invalid chair! I couldn’t pat her shoulder. She wasn’t near enough. I couldn’t push a handkerchief into her hand. I couldn’t mutter an excuse and sidle out of the room. I couldn’t even say, ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’
No, I had to fulfil my function, the function which, as Gabriel had been kind (or cruel) enough to tell me, was the only one left to me. So I said, helplessly, ‘My dear Mrs Burt –’ and waited.
‘I’m so unhappy – so terribly unhappy – I see now – I should never have married Jim.’
I said feebly, ‘Oh, come now, it’s not so bad as that, I’m sure.’
‘He was so gay and so dashing – and he made such nice jokes. He used to come round to see the horses if anything went wrong. Dad kept a riding school, you know. Jim looks wonderful on a horse.’
‘Yes – yes.’
‘And he didn’t drink so much then – at least perhaps he did, but I didn’t realize it. Though I suppose I ought to have realized it, because people came and talked about it to me. Said he lifted his elbow too much. But you see, Captain Norreys, I didn’t believe it. One doesn’t, does one?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I thought he would give all that up when we were married. I’m sure he didn’t drink at all while we were engaged. I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘A man is capable of anything when he’s courting.’
‘And they said he was cruel, too. But that I didn’t believe. Because he was so sweet to me. Although I did see him once with a horse – he’d lost his temper with it – he was punishing it –’ She gave a little quick shiver and half closed her eyes. ‘I felt – I felt quite differently – just for a moment or two. “I’m not going to marry you if that’s the sort of man you are,” I said to myself. It was funny, you know – I felt suddenly as though he was a stranger – not my Jim at all. It would have been funny if I had broken it off, wouldn’t it?’
Funny was not what she really meant, but we agreed that it would have been funny – and also very fortunate.
Milly continued, ‘But it all passed over – Jim explained, and I realized that every man does lose his temper now and then. It didn’t seem important. You see, I thought that I’d make him so happy that he’d never want to drink or lose his temper. That’s really why I wanted to marry him so much – to make him happy.’
‘To make anyone happy is not the real purpose of marriage,’ I said.
She stared at me.
‘But surely, if you love anyone, the first thing you think about is to make them happy?’
‘It is one of the more insidious forms of self-indulgence,’ I said. ‘And fairly widespread. It has probably caused more unhappiness than anything else in matrimonial statistics.’
She still stared. I quoted to her those lines of Emily Brontë’s sad wisdom:
‘I’ve known a hundred ways of love
And each one made the loved one rue.’
She protested, ‘I think that’s horrid!’
‘To love anyone,’ I said, ‘is always to lay upon that person an almost intolerable burden.’
‘You do say funny things, Captain Norreys.’
Milly seemed almost disposed to giggle.
‘Pay no attention to me,’ I said. ‘My views are not orthodox, only the result of sad experience.’
‘Oh, have you been unhappy, too? Do you –’
I shied from the awakening sympathy in her eyes. I steered the conversation back to Jim Burt. It was unfortunate for Milly, I thought, that she had been the gentle easily browbeaten type – the worst type for marriage with a man like Burt. From what I heard of him, I guessed that he was the type of man who likes spirit in both horse-flesh and women. An Irish termagant might have held him and aroused his unwilling respect. What was fatal for him was to have power over an animal or a human being. His sadistic disposition was fed by his wife’s flinching fear of him, and her tears and sighs. The pity of it was that Milly Burt (or so at least I thought) would have made a happy and successful wife to most men. She would have listened to them, flattered them, and made a fuss over them. She would have increased their self-esteem and good humour.
She would, I thought suddenly, have made John Gabriel a good wife. She might not have advanced his ambitions (but was he really ambitious? I doubted it) but she would have assuaged in him that bitterness and self-distrust that now and then showed through the almost insufferable cocksureness of his manner.
James Burt, it seemed, combined jealousy with neglect, as is by no means uncommon. Railing at his wife for her poor-spiritedness and stupidity, he yet resented violently any signs of friendship shown her by another man.
‘You wouldn’t believe it, Captain Norreys, but he even said horrible things about Major Gabriel. Just because Major Gabriel asked me to have morning coffee at the Ginger Cat last week. He was so nice – Major Gabriel, I mean, not Jim – and we sat on there a long time, although I’m sure he couldn’t really spare the time – and talking so nicely, asking me about Dad and the horses and about how things used to be at St Loo then. He couldn’t have been nicer! And then – and then – to have Jim say the things he did – and get in one of his rages – he twisted my arm – I got away and locked myself in my room. I’m terrified of Jim sometimes … Oh, Captain Norreys – I’m so dreadfully unhappy. I do wish I was dead.’
‘No, you don’t, Mrs Burt, not really.’
‘Oh, but I do. What’s going to happen to me? There’s nothing to look forward to. It’ll just go on getting worse and worse … Jim’s losing a lot of his practice because of drinking. And that makes him madder than ever. And I’m frightened of him. I really am frightened …’
I soothed her as best I could. I did not think things were quite as bad as she made out. But she was certainly a very unhappy woman.
I told Teresa that Mrs Burt led a very miserable life, but Teresa did not seem much interested.
‘Don’t you want to hear about it?’ I asked reproachfully.
Teresa said, ‘Not particularly. Unhappy wives so resemble each other that their stories get rather monotonous.’
‘Really, Teresa!’ I said. ‘You are quite inhuman.’
‘I admit,’ said Teresa, ‘that sympathy has never been my strong point.’
‘I have an uneasy feeling,’ I said, ‘that the wretched little thing is in love with Gabriel.’
‘Almost certainly, I should say,’ said Teresa drily.
‘And you’re still not sorry for her?’
‘Well – not for that reason. I should think that to fall in love with Gabriel would be a most enjoyable experience.’
‘Really, Teresa! You’re not in love with him yourself, are you?’
No, Teresa said, she wasn’t. Fortunately, she added.
I pounced on that and told her she was illogical. She had just said that to fall in love with John Gabriel would be enjoyable.
‘Not to me,’ said Teresa. ‘Because I resent – and have always resented – feeling emotion.’
‘Yes,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I believe that’s true. But why? I can’t understand that.’
‘And I can’t explain.’
‘Try,’ I urged.
‘Dear Hugh, how you like to probe! I suppose because I have no instinct for living. To feel that my will and my brain can be entirely swamped and overridden by emotion is insufferable to me. I can control my actions and to a large extent my thoughts – not to be able to control my emotions is galling to my pride – it humiliates me.’
‘You don’t think there is really any danger of anything between John Gabriel and Mrs Burt, do you?’ I asked.
‘There has been some talk. Carslake is worried about it. Mrs Carslake says there is a lot of gossip going about.’
‘That woman! She would.’
‘She would, as you say. But she represents public opinion. The opinion of the malicious gossipy strata of St Loo. And I understand Burt’s tongue has wagged rather freely when he’s had a couple – which is very often. Of course, he’s known to be a jealous husband and a lot of what he says is discounted, but it all causes talk.’
‘Gabriel will have to be careful,’ I said.
‘Being careful isn’t quite his line of country, is it?’ said Teresa.
‘You don’t think he really cares for the woman?’
Teresa considered before she replied, ‘I think he’s very sorry for her. He’s a man easily moved to pity.’
‘You don’t think he’d get her to leave her husband? That would be a disaster.’
‘Would it?’
‘My dear Teresa, it would bust up the whole show.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, that would be fatal, wouldn’t it?’
Teresa said in an odd voice, ‘For John Gabriel? Or for the Conservative Party?’
‘I was really thinking of Gabriel,’ I said. ‘But for the party too, of course.’
‘Of course, I’m not really politically-minded,’ said Teresa. ‘I don’t care in the least if one more Labour member gets elected to Westminster – though it would be too awful if the Carslakes heard me say so. What I am wondering is, if it would be a disaster for John Gabriel or not? Suppose it resulted in his being a happier man?’
‘But he’s frightfully keen on winning the election,’ I exclaimed.
Teresa said that success and happiness were two entirely different things.
‘I don’t really believe,’ she said, ‘that they ever go together.’