Morcar became the Haringtons’ close friend.
The trademark problem formed a slight thread of connection, which Morcar day by day thickened into a steel rope. Eventually, by slightly misspelling the word thistledown and adding to it a daisy agreeably intertwined with a seeding thistle, he succeeded in registering the mark. A copy of the appropriate trademark journal was sent to Mr. Shaw, who did not oppose the registration, and as far as Morcar could ascertain at the time by a fairly extensive enquiry, did not afterwards use the soft as thistledown labels; indeed as far as could then be discovered it seemed he ceased to make his imitations of Morcar’s cloth at all.
Each stage of this course of events was made by Morcar an excuse for entertaining the Haringtons, who replied by similar entertainments. With Morcar as host the trio dined together, went together to the play—where in the late 1920’s in every form night after night the destruction of the old moral code was depicted or advocated—preparatory, it was understood, to the construction of a new one. Harington disapproved altogether of all these new ideas, calling them “filthy” yet unable to stay away from the interest of the spectacle. Morcar, impatient of shibboleths, accepted these new destructions as true to the facts of experience, and sympathised with Christina, who he saw yearned idealistically for a freer, finer life which they might possibly provide. With Morcar as host they danced at night clubs. In her modish long frock—long dresses were just returning to fashion, Morcar had not seen one before Christina’s—Christina was a graceful though absent-minded dancer. Morcar trembled slightly when he encircled her with his arm. He had known in his life no greater pleasure than to hold her thus—her elegance of soft sweeping folds, of moulded curves, of matching jewels, all his own; her clear ivory cheek, her sweet pure profile, the dark arch of her eyebrows, her wonderful sea-blue eyes, so near to him. She was tall, but since her height was proportionate to her sex, Morcar was taller; her dark head just topped his shoulder. The waves of dark hair sprang up so thickly from the narrow central parting as almost to conceal it; Morcar looked down on the intricate convolutions of those crisp waves with tender admiration. One hand, not small but white and slender with a curve of wrist which Morcar found exquisite, lay on his arm; the other, silk-smooth, flower-cool, rested in his. She turned her head and gave him her lovely generous smile; her rich lips parted, and in her low quick tone she made some observation on the scene—trifling enough yet somehow always agreeing in sentiment with Morcar’s. A whole group of objects associated with her began to spell romance for him: dark red roses, stars in a night sky, a certain shade of blue, a fluted wine-glass, the sapphire in her ring. The Haringtons on their side introduced Morcar to ballet, to opera, to picture exhibitions, to French films. Morcar’s hospitality was lavish, luxurious. It irritated him that Harington should continually throw out, when offering his invitations, such phrases as: “It can’t be the Savoy, you know … I’m not a millowner … we men of law who depend solely on our own brains for our subsistence . . the new poor …” But he did not hesitate to buy Christina’s company by pandering to her husband’s taste for luxury.
The next stage in the intimacy came when Morcar was invited to their home, a small but well-proportioned house in a quiet old Kensington square. It had a graceful iron balcony, festooned with wisteria; the house-door, the old-fashioned shutters, were painted a glossy deep bright blue. Within, all the walls were parchment-coloured; the floors of polished wood were sparsely but finely covered with Indian rugs, which it seemed had belonged to Christina’s father. The furniture consisted of choice “pieces”—it was a word Morcar had never heard before but soon picked up though without venturing to speak it—bought one by one at auctions, country farmhouses, secondhand dealers’. Christina’s drawing-room upstairs was a place of beauty and repose, with its light walls, its delicate Indian rugs in which blue predominated, its fine old furniture mixed with a few comfortable chintz-covered armchairs, the small cherished Sickert over the mantelpiece, the group of old family silhouettes displayed on a screen, the great jars and bowls of flowers, the low white bookcases, the solitary photograph, a fine strange seascape of Harington’s production, the agreeable ornaments, some of soft blue gilt-patterned glass. There were a good many objects of Indian art of one kind or another scattered about the Haringtons’ house: Kashmire shawls, small brass statuettes of fine workmanship, silk panels, lacquered boards, garlanded lamps, diagrams of Rangoli picture patterns (which fascinated Morcar particularly).
Christina’s father, it seemed, had been something rather high up in the Indian administration—governor of some province, perhaps; Morcar was uncertain, and Christina did not enlighten him. This seemed in some curious way to entitle Harington (not Christina) to a knowledge of India, and he often expressed strong views which might be summed up in his frequent exclamation: “Those damned natives don’t know when they’re well off.” Nothing made Morcar recall his Liberal ancestry so clearly as to listen to Harington’s tirades about India, which Harington was apt to conclude: “I’m sure your father, Christina, would have thought the same.” Morcar was convinced of few things more emphatically than that Christina’s father, a noted administrator whom, as he understood, Christina much resembled and greatly loved, would have thought nothing of the kind; and he was confirmed in this by Christina’s silence on these occasions. She was not prepared to sacrifice her father or her children to agreement with her husband, Morcar noticed; everything else with a too generous, too lavish, too eagerly yielding hand, she threw away for his sake. “Never mind,” she said in her tone of loyal, loving consolation to all her husband’s innumerable complaints: “Never mind. We’ll do——” something of a remedial nature, which would sacrifice her own leisure and pleasure to his incessant requirements.
Christina’s father had been widowed early, and she had spent her childhood in a country vicarage in Kent, the home of her father’s oldest friend, who was Edward Harington’s father. Morcar drove down with the Haringtons to Bersing one weekend, and found Canon Harington a small silver-haired widower, dignified, simple, an Oriental scholar. The vicarage was large and well tended; in the centre of its smooth green lawn, lined by rosy Canterbury bells and pink sweet williams, stood a cedar tree so old its lower branches were supported by stakes and chains. The sweet green country, so warm and mild, its fruitful fields sheltered by tall windbreaks, astonished Morcar, accustomed to the harsher West Riding mould, as much as the hat-touching politeness of the villagers. (For himself, he greatly preferred the straightforward bluntness of, say, Nathan—Nathan was his Daisy foreman—but it was interesting to see these southern manners.) An old castle stood in Bersing parish; with the people who owned the castle, descendants of those who built it in Norman times, the Haringtons had a distant but clear relationship. It was at Bersing that Morcar discovered, from a chance remark of the Canon’s, that the poverty, the narrowed circumstances, which Harington continually deplored, included a united unearned income, from bequests of Christina’s father and Edward’s mother, which approached four figures. Doubtless such a sum did not go far when one lived in London, had a son designed for the navy—the navy was traditional in the Harington family; Edward’s eldest brother had perished at sea in the War—and a daughter to follow her mother at Roedean; but looking at it from the point of a man who had to “make” every penny he had, Morcar thought Harington quite well placed and lucky. Harington on the other hand seemed to imagine that when one had a mill money rolled in upon one without further effort—“your workmen go on making cloth all the time you’re away, Morcar,” he said, when urging Morcar once to extend his stay in London.
Every time Morcar saw Harington and Christina he witnessed some violent outbreak of temper from the barrister, similar to that against the unlucky waiter at their first meeting, or some blighting comment which mildewed the company’s enjoyment. There was the morning when the marmalade on the breakfast-table was not of the thick peel-crowded variety known as “Oxford”; there was the Saturday noon when he brought Morcar home unexpectedly and found nothing for lunch except a couple of meagre chops. There were the awful weeks after a judge at some provincial assize rebuked him for insufficient preparation of a case; there was the time when the laundry had over-stiffened his dress-shirt button-holes. There were continual clashes with theatre attendants, taxi-drivers, porters, waiters, ticket-inspectors. Morcar thought he began to see a motive, a pattern, so to say a theme-song, in Harington’s rages. On the surface, they were caused by some material discomfort, but beneath that lay the deeper cause, a hurt to Harington’s pride. This pride was a pride of class. The Oxford marmalade represented to him his University, his social standing, his way of life, his claim; he quarrelled with all who by a lack of service, a frustration of his desires, seemed to deny this claim. This was confirmed for Morcar on the evening when, dining in Notens Square, he first met the Harington children and saw them beneath the lash. The family had been away to the sea for their summer holiday; Morcar, who remembered every detail he heard about Christina, knew the dates of this holiday very accurately and contrived to be in town a week or so after their return. He rang up Harington to offer entertainment, but received instead a jovial invitation to come to Notens Square that night and dine off a brace of pheasants which one of the Castle relatives had sent from their September shoot.
“The children are at home,” concluded the barrister. “I believe Christina would like you to see them. Don’t be late.”
Morcar rang the bell punctually and was rewarded by finding Christina alone in the drawing-room with her two fair children. The boy in Etons, the girl in softly coloured printed silk, short-sleeved, very full and childish in its folds, rose on his entrance; they gave him the effect of gathering about their mother and gazing at him from large hostile eyes. Edwin’s were blue, though not of Christina’s rich tint; Jennifer’s were grey, but warm and fine, not pale like her father’s. The girl was serious and handsome; the boy, a pleasant lad enough, seemed more commonplace. Their manners were excellent, courteous but unaffected and easy, as he had expected from Christina’s children. Jenny poured the sherry very seriously and carefully; Edwin seriously and carefully handed it. Harington came in, late but affable; he drew Jenny towards him, and while joking about the peer’s peerless pheasants, fondled her. Morcar watched him.
“Perhaps you don’t care for children, Morcar?” exclaimed Harington abruptly, evidently struck by his sombre expression.
“I don’t know any,” said Morcar.
Harington’s perceptions were keen enough when not blinded by anger; he dropped the subject and they went down to dine.
It was his custom on informal occasions to carve at a side table. He did so tonight, or rather began to do so, for on the first impact of carving-knife and bird he exclaimed angrily:
“Christina! This bird is ruined! It’s not cooked! It’s red raw!”
“Try the other, dear,” said Christina hastily.
“The other’s just the same. Ruined! Raw! Come and look at them! Come and see for yourself. Come and look, I say!”
The unhappy Christina was obliged to rise and inspect the birds, even, at her husband’s command, to prod them. Harington by now was quite out of his command; his face was crimson, words poured from his lips in a scathing torrent. Christina, still holding in one hand her table-napkin, stood before him like a scolded schoolgirl. The fact that the scene was comic as well as tragic in its implications made Morcar all the more furious; it occurred to him to look at the children who, he felt sure, must be Christina’s chief concern. The boy sat with hanging head, flushed, his lower lip quivering; the girl seemed cut in stone, pale and erect, gazing ahead with a look of contempt as though chiselled on her face.
“Perhaps you omitted to inform the cook of the dinner-hour?” said Harington sarcastically.
“Perhaps Cook doesn’t know how to cook pheasants, Daddy,” piped up Edwin suddenly in defence of his mother, in his shrill young tones.
“Be silent, sir!” roared Harington.
The make-believe fury in his voice was now coloured by a real rage, and Morcar suddenly understood that his vexation over this mishap with the pheasants arose because it seemed to indicate that his cook was not of the kind used to dealing with game—not the kind of cook his castle cousins had. His cook was not commensurate with his class; he had lost prestige, face.
“Never mind,” said Christina in her lovely soothing tone: “I’ll send them out to be recooked.”
“And what shall we do meanwhile? Sit and twiddle our thumbs?”
“If you could possibly develop those sea-prints you spoke of, I could have a look at them before I go north,” suggested Morcar easily.
“Develop in a dinner-jacket,” criticised Harington scornfully. “Suitable, very.”
The matter was settled so, however. Harington took his son to the dark-room in the basement; Christina, Morcar and Jenny went up to the drawing-room. Christina paused, one foot on the lowest stair.
“Go downstairs, children dear, and ask Cook to give you both a thick slice of bread and butter, to carry you on,” she said.
“I’m not hungry, Mummy,” said Jenny coldly.
Edwin seemed to wish to emulate this refusal, but his flesh was too strong for his spirit and he was soon munching, to judge from his father’s petulant comments on the dark-room threshold, which echoed up through the house.
“I’m so sorry for this confusion and delay,” apologised Christine when they reached the drawing-room. She looked flushed and weary. “You must be very hungry, Mr. Morcar.”
“Perhaps he’d like a slice of bread and butter too,” suggested Jenny in a tone not unlike her father’s at his most sardonic.
Morcar laughed. He was genuinely amused and laughed whole-heartedly. It saddened him, however, to see how the two faces watching him brightened at the sound.
“Put on one of the new records, Jenny,” said Christina.
The three sat in happy silence for nearly an hour, listening to sweet music. Morcar heard little of it, but was content to sit and gaze at Christina’s face.
When at last it was reported that the birds were done, Harington could not leave the dark-room, and they spent another hungry fifteen minutes. At last they were all reassembled round the board; the table-napkins, re-folded, had lost some of their pristine freshness and Harington scowled at them, but all else was fresh and newly-set, so he passed them by. Christina joked bravely about the unusual gap between soup and game, the children smiled dutifully and Harington, who was clearly ashamed of the delay he had caused by his photographic process though not at all of his bad temper, played up well. He stuck in the fork; it was a moment of suspense.
“Ah!” he said. “Christina, Cook may be congratulated.”
Three sighs of relief came from the listening family, and in spite of himself Morcar could hardly avoid breathing a fourth. As he looked about, smiling, after doing so, he met Jenny’s eye fixed on him intently. They stared at each other with great solemnity for a long moment, then Morcar, greatly daring, winked at her. Jenny’s thick fair eyebrows rose in astonishment; she seemed stunned, appeared to ponder; then suddenly her face changed as Christina’s sometimes did, into a sunny, joyous smile.
After this incident—as it seemed to Morcar strangely enough—the Haringtons took him more closely to their family bosom. Perhaps it was a relief, an amelioration of their private nightmare, to feel that Morcar had seen them at their worst and still liked them—he was at pains to proffer an invitation very shortly after. Perhaps Harington was grateful for someone to patronise. Morcar guessed sardonically—for he sometimes heard echoes in the children’s speech—that Harington spoke of him to other friends as my wool man, my satanic millowner, my rich Yorkshire tyke—he smells of money; not out of the top drawer, of course, but a good fellow all the same. Morcar submitted to this; he submitted too to let Harington pick his brains and achieve a reputation for industrial knowledge on the pickings. If it came to that, Morcar admitted honestly, the picking was not all on one side. The two men had a certain common interest in their æsthetic faculties, on Morcar’s part undeveloped except as regards textiles. Morcar genuinely admired the barrister’s photography, and took an initiated interest in his lighting and composition effects. Morcar learned from the Haringtons’ pictures, their rugs, their chintz, their prints, from Harington’s still-lifes and Christina’s careless elegance, even from the children’s party charades. Soon the three adults were on first-name terms; Morcar gladly endured Harington’s version of his name, which his suave drawl turned into something resembling Herry, in exchange for the privilege of uttering the magic syllables Christina.
For the children, what deep thoughts went on in their young minds he could not know, but they soon called him Uncle Harry and treated him as a very present help in trouble, a staunch friend who could be relied on to take their side.
That Christina should feel him always at her hand to help her, a comforting, sustaining presence, was Morcar’s aim. “This will be better perhaps,” he said mildly, adjusting the position of a lamp or the angle of a chair. “We can easily telephone,” said Morcar when some difficulty arose and Harington’s anger threatened: “We can run over and fetch it—we can have it sent by rail—I can drop round and change the tickets in the morning.” Harington’s surface manners to his wife were of course those of a gentleman; he never omitted to rise when she rose, to open doors, to carry coats, to give her precedence; he taught his son to do the same under threat of fearful penalties and reviled (at considerable length) the low-bred behaviour of all who did otherwise. But he was apt to emerge from the small room downstairs used as his study and shout: “Christina!” and when she hurried to him to discover that he wanted a sheet of notepaper from the bureau or an invitation which was staring him in the face over his mantelpiece. Morcar intervened whenever he could to spare Christina the tasks which her husband’s egoism thus dumped on her, against which her nature was too generous to rebel. She grew, he hoped and believed, to rely on him when he was present, turning quickly towards him in any difficulty, without ever asking for his help or admitting that she needed it. This situation, where Morcar was half in her confidence, half out, was unlikely to last, and Morcar did not intend that it should; it would come to all or nothing in the way of confidence between them, and he meant it should be all.
One of the familiar scenes of Harington’s exacting temper gave him the chance he wished. It was winter and during the children’s term-time; the Haringtons were entertaining guests for cocktails; Morcar, arriving early for the party by request, found the maid wearing an embarrassed air. He stood waiting while she hung his coat in the closet, taking as it seemed an unconscionable time about this simple act; then the sound of voices from upstairs told him what was wrong. He went up swiftly, and found that some error over the drinks had excited Harington’s rage. He was scolding furiously; Christina, trying to soothe, succeeded only in adding fuel to the flames. Even as Morcar entered, the doorbell rang below. A look of deepened misery flashed across Christina’s lovely face. Morcar had a moment’s view of what it must mean to a woman to have guests arriving in her home while her husband raged. The social exposure imminent in such a situation must be hell to her.
“Hullo, Edward, good-evening, Christina,” said Morcar briskly, affecting to notice nothing strained in their manner. “I’m first, but only just, I gather; two legal luminaries are on my heels.”
Harington’s face changed at once; an ambitious man, he was exceedingly susceptible to the good opinion of his professional colleagues. He put on a host’s countenance and greeted his guests with suave affability, and the party, a large one flowing into every room, passed off well. Towards its close, Morcar found an opportunity to ask whether he and Christina would come out and dine, in view of the disruption which parties inevitably caused in domestic arrangements. Harington accepted, provided Morcar could wait awhile; he thought of taking a cottage in Cornwall for the coming summer from one of his colleagues then present, with whom he wished to begin preliminary negotiations. When all the guests save this one had gone, Harington withdrew with him into the study, and Morcar went upstairs to Christina.
She was alone in the room, standing by the fire, her arms outstretched to the mantelpiece, her dark head bowed. In that pose, her long filmy black draperies flowing about her, she looked weighted down with griefs too heavy for her strength, and Morcar’s heart swelled with pity.
“Christina.”
“Oh—Harry. You startled me,” said Christina, at once changing her pose. She turned to him, spoke in a cheerful tone and smiled, but Morcar saw that tears stood in her blue eyes. “Have another drink? A cigarette?”
“You needn’t put on your party face for me,” said Morcar.
Christina raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware of doing so,” she said haughtily. Her lips quivered, however.
“Don’t try to hide from me, Christina,” said Morcar. “I understand—I understand everything. You’re very unhappy. If only I could do something to help you, my dear. But at least you needn’t trouble to hide from me. You can trust me.”
Christina stood silent, her eyes averted. She stooped and snatched a cigarette, tapping it nervously against her hand. Morcar held a match for her.
“Is it so obvious to you?” said Christina suddenly. “My unhappiness, I mean? It’s a nightmare to me to feel that people in the street look at me and say: ‘That woman’s unhappy in her marriage.’ I feel ashamed. You won’t understand that. It’s a woman’s feeling.”
“On the contrary I understand it perfectly,” said Morcar grimly. “For years I’ve felt that way myself.”
“You?” said Christina, astonished. Her beautiful face changed on an instant, softening from lines of wretchedness to her customary lovely look of sympathy, compassion. “Are you unhappily married, Harry?” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She looked round, sank to a chintz-covered settee, threw away her cigarette. “Tell me,” she said.
Then Morcar, seating himself beside her, looking away, leaning forward, clasping his hands between his knees, told her about his wife. His words poured out, incoherent, jerky, commonplace, but revealing. As he spoke, it struck him that he had never told anyone, anyone at all, anyone in the world, of the true reason for his separation from Winnie. After a silence of almost ten years, it was an infinite release to speak of it, and yet an agony; he suffered in the telling, his muscles twitched, his body was drenched with sweat. “I’ve never seen her from that day to this. ‘He’s not your son,’ she said, ‘he’s not your child. Don’t you understand, he’s not your child.’ I’ve never known whose child he was,” said Morcar, turning to Christina. “I couldn’t bring a divorce suit—or, at least, I felt I couldn’t,” he amended: “Because of her brother, Charlie. My friend. My lifelong friend. I’ve never known whose child he was. At first I used to look in every man’s face to see if there was a likeness. I still do sometimes. I’ve never known. Not even guessed. Charlie was killed in the war. We were on patrol together. I’ve never seen her from that day to this.”
The sorry story was ended, and he fell silent. Christina did not speak.
“So you see,” said Morcar after a while, making an effort to sound normal, looking down casually at his hands: “About feeling ashamed of being unhappy—wanting to conceal it—I understand.”
“Poor children!” exclaimed Christina.
Morcar was astonished. At first he could not fathom her meaning, turned to her questioningly. Her blue eyes, veiled in tears, the whole curve of her body, her woman’s nature, seemed to offer him such a soft and loving sympathy that he could hardly restrain himself from kneeling before her and burying his face in her hands.
“Poor children,” repeated Christina softly.
This time Morcar understood. “Yes, I expect that’s just what we were,” he said, soberly considering. “Children. We knew nothing of life. Winnie had lived in such a narrow restricted kind of way, you know. I see that now. Uneducated. Ignorant. She left school at fourteen. I was ignorant too, in spite of my war service. Just a raw lad.”
“You didn’t think of forgiving her, Harry?”
“Somehow it never entered my head. Besides,” continued Morcar—with difficulty, for this was the last, the deepest, the unforgivable wound: “She didn’t want me to forgive her, you know.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Christina. She dropped the words out slowly and softly.
“You at least have your children,” said Morcar, not without bitterness. “They should console you.”
“Yes, oh yes!” cried Christina with her lovely smile. “Yes, indeed!” She added in a whisper, turning away her head as though it was not for him to hear: “But it’s their happiness I’m afraid for.”
“Count on me for help—for friendship,” said Morcar earnestly. He dared not say: “For love,” but added: “For anything you like and need.”
“I will,” said Christina. She smiled, rose, and as he stood up, offered him her hand. “It’s a promise,” she said. “If you will promise me to believe that you have a home with us.”
“I promise,” said Morcar.
After that day confidence was complete between them; they felt themselves in a sense companions in misfortune. Gradually they told each other all their histories. Morcar spoke of his parents, his cloths, Mr. Shaw, Daisy Mills, Winnie, Charlie; Christina spoke of her able and brilliant father, very dearly loved, of her happy childhood in Bersing, her schooldays happy in learning, of her father’s death in India, and Edward’s elder brother. It was clear to Morcar that Christina had loved this brother (drowned at Jutland) though perhaps she was too young then to know it. Edward arriving back on leave from France with all the prestige of heroism and danger just after her father’s death, urging her to abandon her scholarship to Somer-ville and marry him, marry him, had called out all her generous responsiveness, and given direction, as she had thought then with schoolgirl earnestness, to a life lost in a maze of grief. On her side, Christina indicated to Morcar her conviction that he had never loved Winnie as a lover should, but only as a brother. Morcar smiled a trifle grimly when she laid this idea before him; he knew its truth so well, so very well, now, for his love for Christina had taught it to him.
During the following summer the Haringtons rented for some months the Cornish cottage of which mention had first been made at their cocktail party. Morcar shared this expense with them, and came to the remote little village by the sea for a couple of weeks in August and as many weekends as he could conveniently spare. The result of this life in common was to rouse in him a mingled pity and desire for Christina which he found intolerable. On the one hand the holiday offered, as holidays are apt to do, innumerable opportunities for irritation to Harington. The Harington car broke down—in Morcar’s opinion Harington was a wretched driver; he expected miracles from his machine and wrenched angrily at the wheel when they were not accomplished. The express bringing Edwin part-way on his cross-country journey was late, and minor inconveniences resulted. The cottage—really a house—which Morcar thought charming, stood on the flank of a steep hill, so that to return to it was always tiring. The domestic labour was variable in quantity and quality, and Christina’s housekeeping, always a little sketchy (at least by the solid north-country standards to which Morcar was accustomed), suffered in consequence. The bathing pool, a natural hollow in the rocks, was too small for Harington to display his diving talents. The weather was too calm for the sailing in which he and his son delighted, and the sky too vacantly blue to make good background for his photographs. Jennifer did not win the children’s tennis tournament in the seaside resort along the coast, as her father had expected, observing calmly, when reproached, that her victorious opponent had won because she played better. The weather was a blaze of sunshine, the high cliffs sheltered the village from any land breeze; Harington’s fair skin suffered from acute sunburn and his temper was equally irritated. As usual when Christina was bowed beneath her tyrant’s verbal lash, Morcar’s pity, his wish to rescue, to defend, burned within him.
On the other hand, the romantic little harbour, haunt of artists, was of a singular and most bewitching beauty, a beauty which strangely matched Christina’s own. The towering hills sweeping down in grace and strength to the white-sanded coves, the black rocks, the blue sea, the misty aureole which encircled the pier lantern, rosy in the twilight—all these seemed designed to stress by repetition Christina’s dark curls, her blue eyes, her milk-white skin and rich carmine mouth. Morcar and Christina were together all day, sometimes in company, sometimes alone; he helped her over rocks, down fern-grown paths, into rocking boats, through the white surf of breaking blue waves; they leaned over the bridge together, walked through gorse among the blue butterflies. The sun blazed down; Christina went hatless in thin light frocks. They talked continually; he touched her hand a hundred times a day. Cornwall seemed a very long way from Annotsfield; the Cornish fisher-folk with their lilting speech seemed to make this an earlier, more primitive, remote and romantic world. Jumping Jennifer down from a high jagged boulder as they clambered down towards a cave, she fell into his arms and Morcar kissed her, the child hugging him in return warmly. When it came to Christina’s turn down the boulder he kissed her lightly too.
“Harry!” laughed Christina rebukingly, in the tone she used to the children when they made a forgiveable gaffe which however must not occur again. “Dear me!” She ran away across the beach and kneeling, became very busy about their picnic tea.
Morcar with the touch of her lips on his knew that he could not leave Cornwall without making her his own.
For the next few days she seemed to avoid him, which maddened him yet gave him a subtle pleasure; she knew of his love, he argued, her avoidance was a recognition of its power. If her eyes met his, his burning heavy glance left her surely in no doubt of his feeling. Embarrassment, consciousness, grew between them, as Morcar meant it should; Christina looked down at his approach, she spoke to him unevenly; for his part he haunted her path so that she found him at every turning, silent and sombre.
On the last night before Morcar’s departure an entertainment was given in the village by visitors. The two children were eager to go to this, for entertainments were rare in the quiet little place; they had been promised the treat and tickets had been bought. Christina however at the last moment excused herself. It had been a trying day; Edwin, entrusted with the printing of some recent negatives, had allowed them to become too dark; Jenny, commanded by her father to eschew the society of some children whom he thought not quite the thing, had been seen playing with them in a nearby cove, and when scolded had replied calmly that they were nice children and she liked them. A highly uncomfortable scene had followed this, for Jenny, usually calm and happy in disposition, was when roused as fierce and stubborn as her father. Harington, as always when you stood up to him, reflected Morcar, was defeated and retired abashed; later he became positively genial and actually helped to set the table for the evening meal, the day being one when no domestic help was available. But Christina did not recover so easily; she looked white and tired and said with more determination than usual that she meant to stay at home. Morcar suspected that she was at the end of her endurance and meant to give herself the relief of tears.
Accordingly he accompanied the party to the entertainment, meaning to excuse himself presently on the ground of his long journey on the morrow. Such being his plan, he did not attend much to what was happening on the platform, but schooled himself to sit through a few items. Almost at once, however, he found himself listening to a song:
Through the long days and years,
What will my loved one be,
Parted from me?
Through the long days and years.
Always as then she was,
Loveliest, brightest, best,
Blessing and blest.
Always as then she was.
Never on earth again
Shall I before her stand,
Touch lip or hand.
Never on earth again.
But while my darling lives,
Peaceful I journey on,
Not quite alone.
Not while my darling lives,
While my darling lives.
The words kindled his passion; he could no longer endure inaction. He rose and made his excuses. As the concert promised to be long and probably mediocre, Harington thought his departure natural enough, and Morcar returned alone to the house.
He entered very quietly, and treading lightly in his crêpesoled seaside shoes, found Christina in the kitchen and stood in the doorway watching her without her knowledge. She was arranging great sprays of blue anchusa in a honey-coloured vase. She hummed a little to herself; Morcar found it touching to see her thus calmly happy, ministering to the joy of others, alone. A movement betrayed him. Christina turned. A warm colour flooded her lovely face. She turned quickly to the flowers again.
“What are you doing here, Harry?” she said in her courteous social tone. “Where are the rest?”
“They’re at the hall—I came to see you,” said Morcar. He added: “My darling,” and drew her strongly into his arms.
For a moment she lay there passive, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his breast. It seemed as if she rested against his strength, at peace and happy, and Morcar rejoiced, for he knew himself loved. He kissed her tenderly, caressing with his hand her slender white throat.
“No, no!” murmured Christina. She raised her head and strove to draw away. “Harry, we can’t do this.”
“Yes, we can.”
“But the children!”
“They won’t know.”
“Have you no scruples?” murmured Christina. “No feeling that it is wrong?”
“None!” said Morcar strongly.
“We shouldn’t,” murmured Christina, weeping. “Harry, we shouldn’t.”
Morcar kissed her with passion. “My darling, I love you,” he said.
“And I love you, Harry,” whispered Christina.
Morcar put back her rich curls and murmured his plea into her ear.
“No, no!” said Christina, starting. “No, Harry!”
“Yes, Chrissie, yes,” said Morcar.
Later, when she lay in his arms, he told her about the blue frock.
“I knew you were mine when you wore it; I loved you then, my lovely girl,” he said.
Christina traced the line of his thick fair eyebrows with one finger. “Then I loved you first, Harry,” she said. “I loved you before I wore your blue frock.”
“When?”
“When I first saw you.”
“Thank you, my darling,” said Morcar. “Thank you.”
He spoke with ardour; for Christina had thus healed him of the wounds dealt him by Winnie, who had never, it seemed, given him love. He did not then perceive that he was revenging himself on Winnie by compelling Christina to the course for which he had repudiated his wife.