There was one more letter from Jehane. She wrote that Ocky had just returned from London, where he had been on important business. She understood that he had been too hurried to be able to visit Topbury. He was working very hard—too hard for his health. He was overambitious. While she was writing he had come in to tell her that he was off again to London. Then followed domestic chatter: how Glory was taking music-lessons so that she might play to her father when she grew older; and how Eustace had a new tricycle; and how Riska already had an eye for the boys. This was the last letter, very foolish and very brave—then silence and suspense.

The days dragged by. Nights stayed long and the sun rose late. In the mornings the fields, which lay in front of the Terrace, were blanketed in sulphurous mist through which bare trees loomed spectral. Railings and walls and pavements were damp as though fear had caused them to sweat.

All night Nan and Barrington, lying side by side, feigned sleep or slept restlessly. Both were afraid to voice their dread lest, when spoken, it should seem more actual. Once, when a hansom jingled out of the distance and halted outside their house, they started up together listening. The fare alighted and walked a few doors down; again they drew breath.

“Why, Nan, little lady, did I wake you?”

“No, I was awake. I thought—— I thought it was I who had made you rouse.”

“I’ve not slept a wink since I lay down.”

“Neither have I.”

As he clasped her in the dark, he could feel her trembling. He held her tightly to him, laying his face against hers on the pillow. Again they both were listening.

“What makes you so frightened?”

He whispered the question.

“Always thinking, always thinking—— of the future and what may happen.”

She commenced to sob, pressing her forehead against his breast.

He tried to soothe her. “You mustn’t, Pepperminta. You mustn’t really; it hurts. I’ll think for you. I always have. Now close your eyes and get some rest.”

And she closed her eyes and lay very tense. Hours and hours later London began to growl. Presently the door of the servants’ bedroom opened; the stairs creaked; the house was filled with stealthy sounds. At last she drowsed.

When her husband had tiptoed out to his bath, she rose hastily and commenced to dress. She must get down before him. He must be spared if the message was there; she must read it first.

The dining-room was in dusk these November mornings. At the end of the room the fire burnt red and before it Kay and Peter warmed their hands. Not until she had run through the letters did she greet them. Then, for their sakes, she tried to appear cheerful. Barrington, on entering, cast one swift look in her direction and realized that the end was not yet. Absentmindedly they took their places at the table, scarcely thankful for this respite from certainty.

The children soon apprehended that all was not well; their high clear voices were hushed—they spoke in whispers. Peter was fourteen; he had guessed the meaning of blank spaces on the walls from which some of the favorite pictures had vanished. The Dutch landscape by Cuyp was still there above the blue couch, against the background of dark oak-paneling. Across its glass the flickering reflection of the fire danced, lighting up the placid burgher as he walked with his ladies on the bank of the gray canal. Peter noticed how his father’s eyes rested on it—a sure sign that he was troubled.

Almost by stealth Peter would push back his chair and nudge his sister. Miss Effie Jacobite gave her lessons in the mornings; on his way to school he had to leave Kay at her house. Shouldering his satchel, he would lead her out into the misty streets; then at last he would dare to raise his voice in laughter.

At the departure of the children, Barrington would break off from the train of thought he had been following, and was incessantly following: had he done right by Ocky? The door would bang; through the long dark day Nan would sit alone, and speculate and wonder.

What was happening? Had the smash been postponed? Had Ocky wriggled round the corner by borrowing secretly from other people’s friends? Billy searched the faces of his business acquaintances and Nan the faces of their Topbury circle in an effort to make them tell.

Toward afternoon the fog would roll up from the city, dense and yellow. Footsteps on the Terrace would come suddenly out of nowhere; their makers were shadows. Nan, rising uneasily, would go to the window; they might be footsteps of pursuers or of bringers of bad tidings. Even Grace’s policeman filled her with panic when he paused for an instant outside the house. His tread was the tread of Justice, ponderous and unescapable.

With the return of the children her oppression lifted. Later Billy’s key would grate in the latch. She was in the hall to meet him before he had crossed the threshold. “Any news?” The servants must not hear her; she spoke beneath her breath.

“Nothing. Nothing yet.”

The children no longer called to one another as they went about their play. They tiptoed and looked up anxiously when addressed. No urging was necessary to send them to bed—bed was escape to a less ominous world.

Muffled, muffled! Everything was cloaked and muffled.

As Peter put two and two together, pain grew into his eyes; even when others seemed to have forgotten, the expression in his eyes was judging.

Only Romance was unaffected by the sense of foreboding. The servants felt it and discussed it in the kitchen, wondering whether the master was losing money. But Romance, with cat-like self-satisfaction, went on bearing kittens and so did her daughter, Sir Walter Scott, who came by her name through an accident regarding her sex.

A month had gone by.

“Should I write to Jehane?” she asked her husband.

“I wouldn’t. If you do, we shall have Ocky back on our hands. Perhaps he may pull things together now that he knows that he stands by himself. If he does, it’ll make a man of him. Anyhow, if she finds out and needs our help, she’ll send for us.”

But the silence proved too much for Nan. One morning, on the spur of the impulse, she packed a bag, left a note for her husband and set off for Sandport. On the journey through sodden country and mud-splashed towns, she fought for courage, straining out into eternity to pluck the hem of God’s mantle which, when her faith had touched, was continually withdrawn beyond reach of her hand.

She had rung the bell and stood waiting on the steps of Madeira Lodge. No one answered. She thought she heard the pit-a-pat of feet on the other side of the door. She rang again and took a pace back to glance up at the front of the house. As she did so, she saw a curtain move before a window—move almost imperceptibly. A minute later the door was flung open by Jehane; Nan saw the children grouped behind her in the passage.

“Well?”

The tone of her voice was flat and unfriendly.

“I thought I’d come and see you, Janey. Only made up my mind this morning.”

“Did you? What made you do that?”

Nan flushed and her voice faltered. She had not expected this hardness and defiance. She had come full of pity. “I came because I was nervous. You hadn’t written for more than a month. I hope—— I hope,——”

“Come inside,” said Jehane. “I can’t talk to you out there. You can stop your hoping.”

Once inside, the appearance of the house told its story. It looked bare. From the sideboard the silver—mostly presents of Jehane’s first marriage—had vanished. The walls were stripped of all ornaments which had a negotiable value. In the drawing-room there was an empty space where there had once been a piano. Only the carefully curtained windows kept up the pretence of trim prosperity. Jehane led Nan from room to room without a word and the children, shuffling behind, followed.

“Now you’ve seen for yourself,” she said, “and a nice fool you must think me after my letters. I’ve lied for him and sold my jewelry for him. I’ve done without servants. I’ve crept out at night like a thief to the pawnbrokers, when there wasn’t any money and there were debts to be settled. And the last thing I heard before he left was that he’d stolen the thousand pounds I lent him. And this—— this is what I get.”

“Before he left?”

“A month ago, after my last letter to you. You needn’t pretend to be surprised, because you’re not. You suspected. That’s what brought you.”

Nan felt faint with the shock of the realization. She tottered and stretched out her hands to save herself. Glory ran forward and put her arm round her. “Dear Auntie.” Nan drew Glory’s head against her shoulder, sobbing. “Oh my dear, my poor little girl!”

Jehane looked on unmoved, merely saying in her hard flat voice, “If there’s any crying or fainting to be done, seems to me I’m the person to do it. But I’m past all that.”

Nan quieted herself. “It so shocked me. I—I didn’t mean to make a fuss. But won’t you tell me how it all happened?”

“Nothing to tell. It’s just Ocky with his lies and promises.”

“Oh, don’t say that before the children about their father.”

“I’ll say what I like; they’re my children. They’ve seen everything.”

Nan looked round and saw sympathy only in the eyes of Glory. Moggs, balancing herself by her mother’s skirts, piped up and spoke for the rest, “Farver’s a naughty man.” Even her mother was startled by the candor of this endorsement; turning sharply, she caused Moggs to tumble on the floor with a bump. Moggs began to yell.

Grateful for a diversion in any form, Nan knelt and comforted the little girl. Jehane watched her indifferently, as though all capacity for kindness had left her.

When peace was restored, Nan said, “You’re coming home with me, all of you.”

“We’re not.”

“Why not?”

“My husband may return. If he doesn’t, I must stay here and keep up appearances till he gets safely out of the country. Heaven knows what he’s done!—— And it’s likely that I’d come to Topbury to be laughed at! You may want me, but what about Billy? You’ve both known this for a month, and you couldn’t even send me a line. Come to Topbury! No, thank you!”

There was so much to be explained and explanations were so tangled. Nan saw nothing for it but to make a clean breast. When she told Jehane of the years of borrowing that had been going on behind her back, she was justifiably angry.

“So you knew all the time! And for three years it was practically you and Billy who were running this house! And you kept me in ignorance! I must say, you’ve a queer way of showing friendship!”

“We did it because—because we were afraid, if you knew, you wouldn’t love him. And then matters would have been worse.”

“Love him! I’ve not loved him since we married. He started playing the fool directly after the wedding before the train moved out of the station. I knew then that I’d have to be ashamed of him always. I knew what I’d done for myself. He killed my love within an hour of making me his wife—— But how you must have amused yourselves, knowing what you did, when you received my letters about his getting on in the world—his progress! My God! how you must have laughed, the two of you! Every time he gave me a present it was your money.”

All this before the children!

She threw herself down on a couch and gave way to hysterics, wrenched with sobs, screaming with unhappy merriment, clutching at her breast and throwing back her head. The children began to cry, hiding in corners of the room, terrified. Only Glory kept her nerve and, following Nan’s directions, fetched water to bathe her mother’s face and hands.

When the insane laughter had spent itself, Jehane lay still with eyes closed, panting. Shame took the place of harshness. Nan asked whether there were any stimulants in the house; when a half-emptied bottle was brought from the cupboard, Jehane gesticulated it away with disgust. “I couldn’t touch it. It’s Ocky’s.” It was all that was left of his “medicine.”

Nan persuaded Glory to take the children out of the room. She seated herself by the couch in silence, stroking Jehane’s forehead.

Presently the bitter woman’s eyes opened. They regarded her companion steadily, with an expression of sad wonder. “You’re still beautiful. I’m old already.”

Nan began to protest in little birdlike whispers; she was so nervous lest she should give offence. She was interrupted. “Even your voice is young. People who don’t want to love you have to—— And I always longed to be loved.” She raised herself on her elbow, brushing back the false hair. “You’ve had the goodness of life; I’ve had the falseness. Things aren’t fair.”

151

“No, they’re not fair,” Nan assented. “God’s been hard on you, poor old girl.”

“God! Oh, yes!” Jehane spoke the words gropingly, as though recollecting. “Ah, yes! God! He and I haven’t been talking to one another lately. The cares of this world—— the cares of this world—— What is that passage I’m trying to remember?”

“It’s about the sower who sows the good seed, but the cares of this world rise up and choke it unless it falls on fruitful land. It’s something like that.”

Jehane looked at Nan vaguely, only half-comprehending. “Fruitful land! That’s the difficulty. I was never fruitful land—— Tell me, why did you marry Billy?”

“Why? I never thought about it.”

“Think about it now. Why was it?”

“I suppose because I loved him and wanted to help him.”

Jehane’s elbow slipped from under her. She lay back, staring at the ceiling, looking gaunt and faded, as though she had passed through a long illness. “To help him! When I loved I wanted to be helped. God’s not been hard on me, little Nan; I’ve been hard on myself. I’m a hard woman. I’ve got what I deserved. And Ocky—— He was a fool. He had no mind—never read anything. He was clumsy and liked vulgar people best. But, perhaps, he’s my doing. Perhaps!”

Seeing that she had grown passive, Nan stole out to give the children their supper and to put them to bed. That night, the first time since Cassingland, she and Jehane slept together. The light had been put out for some time and Nan was growing drowsy, when Jehane spoke.

“Madeira Lodge! It’s funny. A house built on sand! A house built on—— That’s what we came here to do for other people; we’ve done it for ourselves. O God, spare my little children, my——”

Nan took her in her arms and soothed her.