I don’t remember, even in the trenches, eating a more uncomfortable meal. Humanity is a complex affair, and it is next door to impossible to explain the sudden changes of mood that overwhelm us at every step. Difficult, too, to realise how we determine in our own hearts the things that matter most, differentiate between the significant and the unimportant. Until I saw that expression on Eleanor’s face I had been profoundly troubled by the thought of Hilary perhaps hurt or distraught among those endless black ridges, for I was once lost myself in complete darkness, and I know how the loss of sight, which is what such a position amounts to, intensifies the smallest and most familiar sound into a terror and sets the most normal brain flashing with incredible fears. And if, in addition to being lost, Hilary was really in trouble so serious she dared not confide in Dennis, who, by reason of his age and experience and a certain warm kindliness that was unmistakable, was her most obvious confidante, I thought her deserving of sympathy rather than censure. But no sooner had I seen that expression on Eleanor’s face, than my feelings did a kind of nose-dive. I almost forgot Hilary or, at all events, she disappeared into the depths of my mind where she was barely perceptible. My interest in Eleanor, that had always been considerable, leapt up and overpowered everything else. I wanted to know nothing, understand nothing, but the meaning of that spontaneous frozen fear. All through the meal I watched her covertly for an instant of self-betrayal, but none came. In her smallest gesture she was once again mistress of her emotions. But it was like seeing for a second some rich tapestry flicked aside by accident, to reveal a treasure-trove of which the merest glimpse kindled the onlooker’s ardent curiosity. I waited with an impatience I found it hard to dissemble while we got through the meal somehow, talking a little of Hilary, more of Dennis and Jeremy, and of more general subjects, such as a coming by-election in the neighbourhood and the effect on local rates of the opening of a factory at Ravensend. And all this time, while I bandied words with Meriel Ross or answered Eleanor’s casual questions, I was aware of such a storm of feeling raging behind the quiet controlled mask that the very air seemed stirred by its force. I tried not to watch her movements, or observe the changes of her tone; but it was inevitable. The world might have shrunk to no larger than was necessary to hold the pair of us; I was convinced that she could explain this sudden absence of Hilary’s. She had, indeed, a look as though some dreadful thing had been accomplished, that she had been unable to prevent, but for which she was nevertheless accountable, something that would shatter the fabric of her own happiness and security, a woman facing ruin yet refusing even so to exhibit her misery to the world.
After dinner she told me the story, and allowed me to see how closely I had identified my version of the position with the truth. We were alone, and, waiting for her to speak, the strain of that artificial silence during which she was nerving herself to tell me the rather horrible truth playing on my nerves, I muttered something about Hilary.
“Where on earth she can be…” I began, and Eleanor said, “Ask Ralph.”
Something in her voice, something dull, certain and hopeless, astounded me.
“Ralph?” I repeated foolishly.
“I’m convinced he’s at the bottom of this as he’s at the bottom of the rest of the trouble.”
“The trouble about which you wrote to me?”
“Yes. But I wrote too late. He’s struck. I didn’t think he’d dare.”
“But what hold has he got over Hilary?”
“The same as he has over me. Only I brought my trouble on myself, and Hilary’s suffering for it.”
“I wish you’d explain.”
“Yes. I must start at the beginning. It’s a long time ago. It began during the war, when I wanted Cleghorne so badly. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the effect the war had on people who stayed at home, but there’s a grain of truth among the chaff here and there; and undoubtedly people did change their standards. Or rather, their standards imperceptibly shifted. In a way, I think that was for the good. Because in most cases they shifted away from the eternal question of how this or that would affect themselves and did, however vaguely and even hysterically, begin to think of how it would affect communities, or, at all events, their neighbours. All this,” she added, regaining control over her voice, that had been a little shaken and unsteady, “isn’t meant as an excuse for myself. I don’t think even at the time I thought of it as that.”
I said, increasingly bewildered by these generalisations and unable to link them up in any way with Hilary’s disappearance, “But what was it you did that gave Ralph a hold over you? For I suppose that’s what you’re driving at.”
“It has to do with Cleghorne.”
“Well, but even Ralph, blackguard though he may be, can know nothing fresh about the man, the time. He can’t be threatening to tell people now that the fellow was a skunk and a traitor.”
“He was something more than that.”
“What, then?”
“My lover.”
She spoke the words so quietly, so coolly, almost as if they didn’t matter, that for a moment I scarcely understood their tremendous significance. I just repeated dazedly, “Your lover?”
And she said, “Yes. Does it seem incredible to you? Did you know the man? He had a charm—Percy had it, James has it—I recognise it in every man of the same type. A certain power—I can’t explain. It wasn’t just physical. But he awakened the life in me that couldn’t be satisfied by the ordinary people I met. You’re horrified, of course. You’re thinking of Percy. But, Tony, you aren’t a child. I don’t know how well you really knew my husband, but for years I hadn’t existed for him except as a kind of assistant, a secretary, someone to whom he could turn at any hour of the day and night for interest, for sympathy, for help. I think you did know what a lot I could do for him in his speeches. He wasn’t an eloquent man. I loved the work; I liked the sense of power it gave me, drafting sentences that were going to move rows and rows of stolid, practical men. I’ve always loved playing with words. I got wrapped up in the thought that this was a way of helping, an unique way. I hadn’t got a son, I had only myself. The work I did at the hospital could have been done equally well by anyone else. But here was something no one could do in precisely the same way. And it was work that mattered. Or so I was conceited enough to think. Then came the need to get Cleghorne to help us. It was a difficult job. Percy put a good deal of the work on to me. I began for the work’s sake; I went on partly for his, partly for my own, and partly for something I can’t very well explain; it was as if something in my own life was flowering. You see, though my mind was occupied with my work, we’re more than just mind. It matters, but it doesn’t absorb all our energies, and at that time I used to have a terrible sense of running to seed, of wasting something that was too rich to be carelessly flung aside. Of course, it was Percy’s right, privilege, call it what you like. But he didn’t want it. I wasn’t piqued. I’d learned to accept the position. And, as I say, at first I was too much absorbed in what I was doing to think of the matter in a personal way at all. But presently—I suppose it was being so constantly in touch with Cleghorne—I began to realise that I was living one-sidedly. Human nature is terribly adaptable, and I believe it grows in the direction we choose to train it. There was a time when the very thought of a lover would have shocked me beyond speech. Now it began to seem perilous, but in a way exquisite. And later still, when it became a tussle to get what we wanted, it was like part of a plan. It didn’t seem horrible to me; it seemed inevitable. Cleghorne was a fascinating man; he was cosmopolitan; he had met everyone; he was polished, cynical, intelligent, imperturbable. Our interests were similar; we could talk and we could sympathise. I felt as if a part of me that had been dead for years took new life when I came into intimate contact with him. I didn’t feel that I was cheating Percy; I was like two women, a public and a private life, and my private life was my own. To this day I’m not sure whether Cleghorne was simply acting magnificently all the time. I don’t think he was. I think it did mean something to him, but it’s a proof of my belief that we are two people more often than any of us suppose. It’s rather a terrifying thought. He, too, had a private and a public life. No one could touch the first; but it hadn’t, in his mind, any relation to the second, the public life. We’re complex, Tony. We can’t split ourselves up into sections. It sounds unreal to you. But it was like the heart of my existence, beating quietly unseen. The kind of thing you take for granted, but it controls the life of the body. That’s how it was with me. I’d been walking very calmly and circumspectly and securely between blank walls, and suddenly there was a break, there was colour and warmth and light. And I took them. I paid, of course. I think I paid pretty heavily. When the truth came out about Cleghorne, Percy was crushed; he couldn’t understand it. He swore he would discover exactly when and how the leakage had started. I don’t know how he discovered about us, but he did. And then the whole thing seemed clear enough. Cleghorne and I were lovers; we were in partnership. I was his tool, and we were in this thing together. Nothing I could say could convince him that he was crazy to suggest such a thing; he had a deep mind, but a narrow one. A woman who could betray her husband would make small work of betraying her country. He really believed that, and I couldn’t shake him. He hadn’t a thought or a gleam of compassion to spare for me; he didn’t even see my position, how much worse it was than his. He never had a great deal of imagination. But his brother was butchered in that ambush…” Her voice stopped. Hitherto it had not faltered; now I saw that she was momentarily beyond speech. She sat as erect as ever, those fine hands folded quietly on her knee, a woman lost to hope. “You see my position?” she continued a little later. “If Ralph is allowed to circulate that story—he’s got hold of the letters I wrote to Cleghorne—everyone will revile Percy even worse than they do now. There were a good many people then who believed him terribly injured. Now they would say that he was ready to let his wife enter into liaison for whatever Cleghorne was giving him.”
“How did Ralph find out?” I asked foolishly.
“I don’t know, unless he knew Cleghorne, then or later. He won’t tell me, but I think it’s very probable. Ralph has never been sound. But you see the strength of his position?”
“He’s been blackmailing you?”
“Up to the hilt. I’ve parted with everything but my good name, such as it is. And that he shall not have. It isn’t mine any longer. It’s James’s.” Her voice had altered again, strengthened, becoming not defiant but dominant. There was something heroic about her as she contemplated the devastation her own passion and Ralph’s treachery had wrought, and refused to be defeated by it.
“You must see how it is with me. It isn’t myself any longer. I haven’t a personality anyone can harm. It’s all James’s now. And Ralph shall not destroy him. As it would, of course. You heard what he said about Hilary. He would condemn me utterly for marrying him and saying nothing.”
“Couldn’t you have trusted him?” I asked.
“Perhaps. But do you think I wanted him to know something that would have hurt him every time he thought of it? You think perhaps it was cowardice on my part that kept me silent. Don’t believe it. It’s hurt me more to say nothing, to keep up a pretence that any accident might break down, than to have acknowledged the truth. But it wouldn’t have been for his greater happiness. It isn’t that I don’t trust or believe in him, but I don’t see why he should carry such a burden. After all, I know what the weight of it’s like; I’ve been carrying it for years, and there are times when it bows you to the earth, for all your resolution and courage. But now,” she added, her voice losing some of its eloquence and returning to more normal levels, “it’s Hilary.”
“I still don’t understand about Hilary.”
“Ralph tells me very little, but he’s in a tight corner again and wants help. He’s had everything I’ve got, and still he isn’t satisfied. He suggested to me some time ago that I should approach Hilary. Percy left her practically all he had, not a great deal, but about ten thousand pounds in stock of various kinds, most of it sound. If I could have prevented his telling her—she, of course, was a child and knew nothing…”
I said, aghast and ashamed on her account, “But you could. You could. You could have gone to your husband. You oughtn’t ever to have let Hilary know that story.” I remembered her as I had last seen her, a tall, laughing, fair-haired girl of seventeen, grey-eyed, undisciplined perhaps, but with something rather fine and charming about her. She wouldn’t, at all events, have let anyone else in on her private trouble.
“Do you think I’d weigh Hilary for an instant against James?” Eleanor asked me fiercely. “I can’t divide my heart up into neat compartments as some people seem able to do.” I didn’t agree with her; it seemed to me that she was deliberately sacrificing Hilary, a young girl in no way a match for her poise, her brilliance, her social abilities; but I was silenced. There was something so compelling about her that I couldn’t argue. I knew why men found her irresistible; and whether you deplored her particular point of view or no, you had to admit her burning sincerity.
“And so,” I said lamely, after a pause, “your notion is that Hilary gave Dennis the slip in order to meet Ralph?”
“To give him money, perhaps. I’ve bought back a lot of the letters and proofs. But there were so many. And James won’t have him in the house.”
“And she’s with him now, wherever he is?”
“I—don’t—know. Very likely they’re right, and she’s lost her way on the moors coming back.”
All through the evening I had been horrified at the thought of her, perhaps hurt, alone in the darkness and the fog; now that seemed to me a reprieve from the thought that she was with that cruel and treacherous creature, Ralph Feltham. Heaven only knew to what lengths he would go if he had her in his power. I asked abruptly, “Has he ever said anything about wanting to marry Hilary?”
“He did threaten something of the kind once, but it was only a grim sort of joke. He knows it wouldn’t be allowed.”
“Suppose that’s his ultimatum? That if he doesn’t have Hilary the world can have the truth?”
Eleanor stood up; she was very queenly and moved with the loveliest grace I have ever seen in any woman. “I refuse to suspect anything so horrible. But Hilary wouldn’t have him.”
“There’s no knowing what Hilary wouldn’t do to save her father’s name. I know she was only a child when he died, but you know he was her hero and idol, and she’s grown up believing him to be a martyr. And you know the strength of feeling of which she’s capable. You may be able to reassure yourself that she’d do nothing so wild and wrong as marry Ralph for the sake of a sentiment—shall we say?—but I shouldn’t be surprised to find she’d be capable of anything to prevent people resurrecting and in their view proving a hideous scandal.” Then I changed my tone, becoming unsympathetic and enraged. “Eleanor, for God’s sake, stop this crazy policy of yours. If anyone can scotch this plot it’s your husband. You’ve no earthly right to make young Hilary stand the racket. The very thought of her being in that brute’s power would make any reasonable man sick. Jeremy would go half out of his mind, if he knew. Tell him, never mind if he’s hurt. Someone’s got to meet the bill, and he’s more fit for it than she.”
Eleanor demurred. I was being more and more impressed by the wisdom of her husband’s contention that you couldn’t rely on even the most honourable woman you knew to play with a straight bat, according to masculine standards. Here was Eleanor, who had faced trouble enough in her own time and never uttered a complaint, coolly prepared to see this girl of one-and-twenty harried and distraught rather than let the burden fall on James Nunn’s shoulders. If I hadn’t known from experience the high quality of her courage, I should have written her down one of the most deplorable cowards I had been unfortunate enough to encounter. I pressed my arguments home with a keener and keener blade.
“Look back over your own life,” I urged her. “Oh, I don’t deny it hasn’t been all roses. Life isn’t. But it’s been a pretty rich affair take it by and large. And there’s a law that we shall reap as we sow. But it’s monstrous to let this girl’s life be blighted at the beginning by forcing her to take your harvest.”
I was secretly apprehensive of her reaction to such an accusation; but rather to my surprise she showed signs of horror. I honestly don’t think it had hitherto occurred to her that she was taking a cruel advantage of Hilary’s defencelessness.
“If she comes back all right,” she promised, “I’ll go straight to James. You’re right, Tony. I should have done that long ago.”
“Why do you say all right? What do you think can have happened to her? That Ralph would do anything—desperate? But he couldn’t.”
“You don’t remember him very well if you think that. Talk of the devil anywhere, and within five minutes everyone’s speaking of Ralph.”
Hearing that, I blamed her more than ever. Woman-like, she could only see one thing or one person at a time, and here it was James Nunn and his reaction to the truth.