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Title: Rose Deeprose
Author: Kaye-Smith, Sheila (1887-1956)
Date of first publication: 1936
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1936 (First U.S. Edition)
Date first posted: 5 August 2008
Date last updated: 5 August 2008
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #154

This ebook was produced by: Andrew Templeton




                                  ROSE
                                DEEPROSE

                                  _By_

                            Sheila Kaye-Smith




                       Harper & Brothers Publishers
                          New York _and_ London
                                  1936





CONTENTS


_Part I_
DAUGHTER

_Part II_
WIFE

_Part III_
MOTHER



_Part I_
DAUGHTER



                              _Chapter One_



Her mother said:

"I didn't want to tell you about these things until I was quite sure you
were old enough to understand them. If you hadn't understood your poor
father you might have felt bitter towards him, and that would have upset
me very much. Promise me that you won't think hardly of him because of
what I've told you."

"I promise," said Rose.

On either side of Boorman's Teashop there was a mirror fixed to the
wall, so that whether she looked to the left or to the right she could
see a receding row of pictures of herself and her mother at tea. She
could see their coloured tablecloth, brown teapot, and plate of cakes
indefinitely repeated. She could see herself in her dark-red jersey and
tam-o'-shanter, and her mother in her Sunday black velvet coat, with her
best hat trimmed with cornflowers set incongruously above her
weatherbeaten face. There they sat having tea together in a sequence
that apparently went round the world. It was both pleasing and
disturbing to find that Boorman's mirrors had made something universal
of her birthday treat.

On her birthday her mother always took her out to tea at Boorman's shop.
At one time her father used to come with them, but about five years ago
he had said he was too busy and couldn't spare the time; and even then
Rose had felt that it was nicer to be without him.

She loved going out with her mother, and for weeks before her birthday
would look forward to this trip into Ashford, which was almost the only
treat either of them had in the year. They would go first of all to the
White Hart and stable the horse and trap there; then they would go to
the Picture Palace in Castle Street for a couple of hours, and come out
to find the February darkness on the town, with the lights of Boorman's
shop beckoning them across the road to scones and cakes and tea.

"Have another cream bun," said her mother.

"No, thank you. I've finished."

"Oh, come on, dear, or I'll think I've spoiled your appetite. You know
you like them."

Rose took the bun, though she really did not want it. It was true that
she liked cream buns and had sometimes eaten more of them than was good
for her; but today she felt too old and important to be greedy or even
hungry. Not only was it her sixteenth birthday, but her mother had made
a specially adult occasion of it by treating her as a grown-up woman and
taking her into her confidence.

"Have something more, too, won't you, Mother?"

"Nothing more to eat, thanks. But I think I'll have another cup of tea.
Tea's a great stand-by, as you'll find when you grow older; though I
hope you won't be like me and drink too much of it. I really oughtn't to
drink so much tea. I dare say I'm as bad in my own way as your poor
father is in his; but the effects aren't the same, so I don't get blamed
for it. Promise me, Rose, that you won't ever blame him because of what
I've told you."

"I have promised. Besides, I've always guessed . . . I mean that last
time you said he was ill I felt quite sure he really was drunk."

"Don't say 'drunk,' dear; it's an ugly word and I don't like to hear it
from you. And it's not true, either; your father's never actually drunk.
He always knows where he is and what he's doing, though his speech is
sometimes queer. And his stomach's weak and can't hold much liquor;
that's why he's so often ill. He really is ill, though of course it's
the drink that makes him so--as this tea will make me if I drink any
more of it."

"Mother, you're not to talk as if you were like father, because you know
you're not."

"We none of us know how the Lord sees us."

"Well, I shall be very disappointed in the Lord if he sees you looking
at all like father."

"Hush, Rose! You're not to talk like that. It isn't reverent--and it
isn't kind. I want you to promise me always to be kind to your father."

"Kind . . ."

"Yes, kind's the word. There's a thing about men and women you ought to
know, because so many people will try to teach you different. To my mind
there's no doubt that a woman has more sense than a man. He's got more
feeling, but she's got more sense, so she must be kind to him and not
hurt his feelings. It's often because they're hurt that men behave so
badly--I know it's true of your father. So I want you to promise for
your own sake and mine, as well as his, never to be hard on him because
of what I've told you."

"I won't be--I promise. But, Mother, honestly I can't pretend I feel the
same for him as I do for you. It's different."

"I don't expect you to feel the same--it wouldn't be natural,
considering the way he behaves sometimes. All I want of you is to be
kind. I sometimes fear you're inclined to be a little hard. Hard by
name, hard by nature; I always think Rose is a hard name."

"Mother, how can you say so? It's a flower."

"I know, but it's the way it goes in my mind. You were named after your
grandmother and she was hard on us all. Your Aunt Susie once slept out
all night because she didn't dare come into the house after arriving by
the late train, and I'm sure your poor Aunt Minnie wouldn't have bolted
with that fellow to Canada if Ma hadn't been so fierce with her about
him. It's in our family to be hard. Heaven knows I'm sometimes hard
enough myself. But I have to be, or we'd find ourselves in the
poorhouse. I've done cruel things to your father more than once, lust to
keep him up to the mark."

"Well, I can help you now. It won't be all on your shoulders."

"I'm afraid you're still too young to do much with him. But it'll be a
help to talk to you about things . . . and, Rose, there may come a time
when I'm not here and your poor father has only you to depend on."

"Mother, don't say that. I can't bear it. I--I should die if you died."

"Nonsense, dear. In the natural course of things you'll have to live
without both your parents. But I hope by that time you'll have got a
good husband. And now we won't talk any more about these things; they're
upsetting you and spoiling your treat. Tell me, didn't you think that
was an extremely clever picture of those birds?--and was that Charles
Chaplin the same as we saw in 'Tilly's Punctured Romance'?" . . .

One of Boorman's waitresses came forward and flicked out a row of
lights. At once the pictures in the mirrors changed; all but the closest
grew dim and the more distant ones vanished altogether. Rose, leaning
against the wall, leaned against her own shoulder in the glass. Sitting
so close to herself she suddenly noticed how like her face was growing
to her mother's. In spite of the difference made by her curls and
tam-o'-shanter it was easy to see that they were mother and daughter.
They both had the same blue eyes and high, warm colouring, and features
that were rather too roughly hewn to please. She knew that her mother
was not pretty, but she was glad to be growing like her. There they sat,
no longer in an infinite succession, but just a few couples of them
before a gathering darkness--they turned to shadows only a few pictures
away. Rose shivered.

"Mother, she's putting out the lights. I think she wants us to go home."

Mrs. Deeprose took out her purse, the shabby, bulging black purse that
had been with them on these expeditions for as long as Rose could
remember. First she counted the cakes so that she could check the
waitress's calculation, then she tinkled the little bell that summoned
her.

Though they always came to Boorman's for these treats, they were not
well known there, for they seldom came between Rose's birthdays. They
never joined those groups of farmers and their wives who had tea there
on market day; tea in a shop was too expensive to be anything but a
treat. The waitresses, too, changed frequently and they had never seen
this one before. But Mrs. Deeprose was careful to leave twopence under
the plate and to say good evening to her as they went out.

"Good evening, Mum. Good evening, Miss."

The door swung behind them. They were in the street where the pavements
shone with rain and the reflections of shop windows.

"It nearly always rains on your birthday," said Mrs. Deeprose as she put
up her umbrella--"it's the time of year, of course. You can't expect it
to be fine in February."

"I don't mind the rain; somehow it's part of the treat. We've come out
into it so many times, from Boorman's or the cinema, that I've almost
grown to like it--it looks homely."

"Well, so long as you're pleased . . ."

They laughed comfortably together as, arm in arm under Mrs. Deeprose's
umbrella, they crossed the road to the inn. Here they were quite well
known, for Mr. Deeprose always put up at the White Hart on market days.
Bob Swaffer, the landlady's son, at once ran round to the stable to
fetch the horse and trap, and while they were waiting Mrs. Swaffer
invited them to come and sit in her not-yet-open saloon. She was a jolly
woman, with a shock of white hair above a face too young for it, and she
liked Rose and her mother because she was sorry for them, knowing, as
none but a landlady could, that their man was poor, weak, boozing stuff.
Mrs. Deeprose returned her liking, for she knew that she owed her many
sober returns, though not a word on the subject ever passed between
them. Sitting there in her tight-fitting black satin dress, into which
it looked as if her opulent figure must have been poured as into a
mould, Mrs. Swaffer discoursed with her visitors on the weather and the
chances of the spring, her Kentish accent narrowed to the mincings of a
social occasion.

"And Ay suppose Ay'm to wish this young lady many happy returns?"

"Yes, this is Rose's sixteenth birthday."

"How tame flays, to be sure. It seems only yesterday she was a leetle
tiny gurl. You'll be leaving school quate soon, I suppose, dear?"

"Yes, Mrs. Swaffer, at the end of this term. Dad wants me home this
summer to help on the farm."

"Oh, you're going to be a land girl, are you? Ay'd made sure, with the
schooling you've had, you'd want to be a typist or a secretary."

"Rose would much rather work out-of-doors," said her mother, "and we
need her, too. Wages are so high that Mr. Deeprose can't afford more
than two men on the farm, and that isn't enough."

"Wages are quate awful, aren't they? It's the same here; we have to pay
our barman double what we used before the war. If it wasn't for our boys
Ay'm sure I don't know what we'd do."

"There's Bob with the trap now," said Mrs. Deeprose. "We'd better be off
at once, for it's the best part of an hour to Shadoxhurst. Button up
your coat collar, dear, before you go out."


The lights of the trap swam on the wet, shiny road and old Soldier's
hoofs slid a little as he started away. But he soon gathered himself
together and went off, trotting nicely. The rain was no more than a soft
sprinkle on their faces, for the darkness was unshaken by any wind. They
drove down Market Street and then took the marsh road out of the town.
The last street lamps went by, and the hedges came, with the lightless,
silent fields all round them.

At Dogkennel they left the main road and entered a little country lane,
the windings of which they knew as well as their old horse. Rose leaned
against her mother, watching her drive. There was just enough light from
a hidden moon for her to be able to see her strong hands in their worn
leather gloves upon the reins and the dark shape of the horse's head
bobbing against the paleness of the lane in front of them.

"Mother," she said, "I'll be sorry if father buys a car."

"He means to, dear. He can't afford it, but then he can't bear to see
your Uncle George with anything he hasn't got, and I heard only this
morning that they'd got theirs at Bladbean."

"Have they really bought it? Has it come?"

"Yes, it's come. An Austin, I think they call it, but we're sure to see
it soon. Your uncle's bound to drive over to show it to your father, and
then he's bound to order one for himself, though I really don't know how
we're to pay for it."

"I'd much rather have a horse to drive."

"Oh, we shan't give up Soldier and the trap, at least not yet awhile.
I'm not going to start driving a car at my age. I'll leave that to your
father. It'll be a help, of course; we'll be able to get into Ashford in
ten minutes instead of an hour. But I was brought up among horses and I
never saw a car till after I was married, and then it was lying turned
over in a ditch with a man underneath, so I haven't really taken kindly
to them."

"We'll go on with the trap, Mother--just for you and me, whatever father
does. Now wasn't that the Four-mile House we passed? And you haven't
told me any stories yet."

"How long am I to go an telling you stories, you funny girl?"

"For as long as we go on having my birthday treat, which I hope will be
forever or at least till I'm married."

"You'll be tired of them before then."

"Oh no, I shan't. Come on, Mother. We haven't had you and the goose and
Aunt Susie for a very long time."

She settled herself against her mother's shoulder, just as used when she
was a very little girl and her mother had enlivened the long drive home
with stories of her own girlhood in the far away land of Norfolk. She
came of a family of East Anglian farmers and her memory was rich with
tales, both of herself and of her brothers and sisters. Rose by this
time knew most of them by heart, and could have set her mother right if
she had ever made a mistake. This family of bygone boys and girls was
one of the intimacies they shared; her father knew only Susan, Joe,
Stan, Minnie, and May, all grown up and inclined to be critical. Rose,
of course, knew them, too, as aunts and uncles, but scarcely ever
associated them in her mind with the children who had played in the
farmyard near Fakenham. Those children were particular, secret friends
of her mother and herself, linked adventurously with dark drives on a
winter's night, the trotting of a horse's hoofs, and hedges gliding by
under a rainy moon.


Harlakenden House stood about a mile from the village of Shadoxhurst,
staring down a long narrow lane, which ran up to it and then split east
and west to Wagstaff and Colliam Green. It was a Victorian house, built
on the site of a much older one, and with its flat, grey, stuccoed
front, looked hideously out of place against a background of tumble-down
eighteenth-century steading. A part of the old house still
survived--from the yard you could see it propping its muddle of thatch,
tiles, and weather-boarding against the stark new front, like an old man
leaning against a wall.

Harlakenden was not the family place of the Deeproses. That was at
Bladbean, some ten miles away beyond Pluckley, where George Deeprose
lived and where Walter and Hugh Deeprose had been born. Walter had moved
into Harlakenden on his marriage, and Hugh had set himself up at
Sugarloaf, outside Woodchurch. There were also sister Deeproses, either
married or single, at Frittenden, Smarden, and Bethersden. Indeed, the
family, in its wider ramifications, was spread thickly over the weald of
Kent. It had been rich and important in the times succeeding the Flemish
immigration, planting many a cherry-garden and establishing many a
cloth-hall. By the eighteenth century it was on the fringe of the
Squires; but the nineteenth had sunk it back into the farms, and now you
could even meet Deeproses who cut wood or burnt charcoal or sold in
shops or worked for labourer's hire.

Walter Deeprose called himself a gentleman farmer. The title was out of
date, belonging to a generation when farming was considered at variance
with gentility. But he clung to it because he wished to emphasize his
yeoman origin, and also perhaps because he realized that some offset was
needed to his local reputation. He was a middle-sized, handsome man,
looking younger than his years and much younger than his wife, though
actually they were only two or three years apart. He bore only a few of
the marks of an immoderate drinker, for two fires had mixed the colour
of his face the brown fire of the sun burning the red fire of his
intemperances into a certain seemliness. If you saw him out-of-doors you
noticed that his eyes were a little glassy, but under the lamp swinging
high from the dining-room ceiling at Harlakenden they were just the blue
eyes of a Kentishman.

Rose, as she came in from the dark night and her darker thoughts of him,
felt almost shocked at his presentableness. Of course it was largely her
mother's doing, her mother's labour and firmness; but this did not seem
to be the man they had talked of in Boorman's shop, whose aberrations
had brought them together in such a beautiful confidence. There he sat
under the lamp, reading his newspaper, his feet towards the small, smoky
fire that burned in the spoon-shaped Victorian grate, his dog curled up
beside him, while a large black cat with a snowy front sat dozing
upright on the table.

"Hullo, Rose! back at last?"

"Are we late?"

"It seems late to me. Was Waghorne there to take the trap?"

"Oh yes, he was there."

"Where's your mother?"

"She's giving Elsie the things we bought."

"What did you buy?"

"Oh, mostly odds and ends; but mother got some sausages for supper."

"Did she remember my socks?"

"Yes, she did; she's brought you two pairs on approval."

The dialogue could scarcely have been flatter, but at the back of Rose's
mind a hidden voice kept saying triumphantly, "I know something about
you that you don't know I know." It was strange that this should make
her feel friendly towards him. An hour ago she had not thought that she
could ever feel affection or kindness for him any more; but now she knew
that in Boorman's shop her mother had made him into another of their
secrets--he was like the children at Fakenham, their own private
revelation; his backslidings were a part of their bond. Quite as much to
her own surprise as his, she stooped and kissed the top of his head,
just where the hair was beginning to show a little thin in the downward
beam of the lamp.

"Hullo! . . . What's that for? Haven't I given you a birthday present?"

But his daughter was no longer in the room.

She had gone into the kitchen, where Mrs. Deeprose was helping a small
child dressed as a servant to prepare supper. Elsie Iggulsden, whose
apron trailed over her shoe-laces, while her skirts just touched her
knees, was the latest in a succession of neophytes who received their
domestic initiation at Harlakenden. Mrs. Deeprose "took girls straight
from school," which meant that the Elsies, Dollies, and Ivies of
Shadoxhurst were paid seven-and-sixpence a week for being taught to
clean and cook and wait at table. No sooner had they reached, as it
were, the sophomore stage of learning, with an expected rise of half a
crown, than they passed on inevitably to higher spheres, and Mrs.
Deeprose started again with another supply of raw material. For this she
was sometimes called mean by her neighbours, who little knew how much
she would have appreciated a girl who could make a bed or heat up a pie
or carry in a tea-tray without supervision and encouraging noises. But
ten shillings a week was more than she could possibly afford, so the
procession went on, winding through Harlakenden to Stede Quarter,
Wagstaff, Gablehook, and other more prosperous farms, and ending, some
of it, among the Turkey carpets and Georgian silver of Shadoxhurst Manor
itself.

Tonight, Mrs. Deeprose, still wearing her hat and coat, was teaching
Elsie how to prepare the frying-pan for the sausages; that is to say,
she was doing the work herself while Elsie looked on.

"Here, Mother, let me do that while you take your things off."

"I think I'd better do it, dear. Now, Elsie, watch me and listen to what
I'm saying. . . . I needn't go upstairs, you know; I can just hang up my
hat and coat behind the door."

"I'll take them for you and put them away. They may get spoilt if you
leave them here."

She took the hat and coat with a pang of tenderness. It hurt her to see
them so shabby and so old-fashioned. The material of the coat was good,
but the shape was hopeless--the shape of 1910, when she could just
remember her mother buying it. The hat was three years younger, and had
been twice retrimmed with wreaths bought for elevenpence three farthings
at the draper's in Ashford. Elsie Iggulsden's hat seemed to mock it from
the door, where it hung smartly above her new winter coat. Rose's heart
no longer felt soft towards her father; on the contrary, it was like a
stone against him, hard and heavy in her breast, as she ran upstairs
full of angry schemes for making Harlakenden, by her own hard work and
initiative, such a thriving place that her mother would be able to buy
herself a new hat as often as she wanted it--which, before she came down
again, she realized would be never.


The cat's name at Harlakenden was Peter, and during supper he sat on the
floor at Mrs. Deeprose's feet, watching her while she ate, but seldom
asking for food. If ever he asked it would be from her husband, whom
otherwise he ignored. Mr. Deeprose often did much to win Peter's regard,
but could never establish himself as anything better than an occasional
provider of titbits. Peter knew at once when he was in liquor and
avoided him with odious particularity. On the other hand, Softy, the
dog, loved him better than anyone, and did not care if he were drunk or
sober. Dogs were like that, thought Mr. Deeprose--loyal and devoted; but
cats never cared for anyone but themselves.

Rose liked Peter better than Softy because she always thought of Softy
as being on her father's side, while Peter was on her mother's. Rose, of
course, was always on her mother's, so poor Mr. Deeprose often had no
one but Softy to sympathize with him. Tonight he was in no need of
sympathy, being well pleased with himself for having sold eighteen sheep
at two pounds each at Tenterden market "while you were enjoying
yourselves and spending my money at Ashford."

"It isn't your money, Wally. You know you told me I could have anything
I made out of the chicken to spend on Rose."

"To spend on her clothes, not on taking her to picture palaces."

"But it's her sixteenth birthday, dear."

"Ah, well, so it is; and I suppose I mustn't grumble at her missing
school or at my being left alone all day and having to go to market on
my bike because you and she have got the trap. By the way, George and
Townley were both at Tenterden in their new Austin. It had taken them
less than half an hour to come over."

"I was telling Rose about the car and she doesn't like the idea of it
any more than I do."

"Doesn't like the idea of getting into town and back in half the time
that it would take her to get halfway there? . . . Go on, Hattie! You've
bred her up to be as big a fool as yourself."

"Well, it may be all right for those who can afford it."

"Meaning that we can't?--Well, my dear, I'll tell you this much: you'll
be riding in a car every bit as fine as George's by this time next
year."

"I hope I'll be doing no such thing. They must cost hundreds of pounds."

Deeprose laughed.

"They must and they do. But you can pay for them in shillings--so many
shillings every month."

"And how many shillings have we to spare every month? And think of the
petrol, too. And none of us here knows anything about cars. We'll always
have to be sending to the garage. No, Wally, I shall enjoy seeing
George's whenever he brings it round, but we mustn't think of one for
ourselves till things are much better."

"I can do what I like with my own money."

"Yes," said Rose, "and you like to spend it all on a car we can't afford
instead of a few pounds of it on new clothes for mother that she needs
dreadfully and hasn't had for years."

Both her parents stared at her. Her face was crimson and her voice had
been loud with nervousness. She did not often burst out like this and
she did not herself quite know why she had done it, except that suddenly
in her heart had formed a thought quite different from her words: "If
you drive mother in a car when you're not sober you may have an accident
and kill her." She remembered times when he had driven the trap rather
queerly and her mother had had to take the reins. But her mother would
not be able to drive a car; she had said so herself. . . . She was
speaking now.

"Rose, you ought to be ashamed to talk like that. And I don't care if I
never see a new thing again. All I want is any money we have to be spent
on the farm."

"Well, if I buy a car it's money spent on the farm. I'll be able to get
to market twice as often, and I can have a trailer for the farm stuff. I
tell you it'll be fine for us, and the car will have paid for itself in
a couple of years. But I don't suppose Rose cares about the farm. She
wants her mother to be fashionably dressed; she's ashamed of you as you
are. No doubt you weren't as smart as the other ladies at the cinema."

"Mother! Mother! it's not true. That isn't why I said it. You know I
didn't mean that."

She burst into tears and ran out of the room, knowing that if she stayed
she would have to tell them what she had really thought.


She was able to tell her mother later, when Mrs. Deeprose came into her
bedroom to say good night.

"You mustn't think of such things, dear; it's wrong. And you're not to
talk like that to your father, or I'll be sorry I told you what I did."

"Don't be sorry, Mother; it hadn't anything to do with what you told me.
I'd have minded, anyhow."

"But you wouldn't have spoken so violently and rudely. That wasn't like
you, dear; and I feel that I've put you against him."

"You haven't, honestly. In fact, I like him better now because he's one
of our secrets."

"Secrets! You're only a child, after all. I should have remembered that
sixteen is younger in these days than when I was a girl. And I don't
want you just 'to like' your father. I want you to love him; and you
can't do that unless you understand him. That's why I told you . . . I
thought it would help you understand."

"I do understand."

Mrs. Deeprose shook her head.

"No, dear, I really think you're too young to understand just what I
wanted you to know. But I hope you'll grow to it some day. You'll find
out, perhaps, then that men often do a lot of queer things that they
can't help, because life is so difficult for them. Life is more
difficult for men than it is for women."

"Oh!" this was a new, inverted aspect of the familiar man-and-woman
picture.

"But isn't that the opposite of what most people believe? I mean, most
people think it's the other way round."

"I know, and perhaps I'm mistaken, after all. But I like to talk to you
about these things, now you're growing up."

"I like it, too, and I hope you'll go on doing it."

Rose was happy; she seemed to be retrieving some of that adult status
she had acquired at tea and lost at supper.

"I shall, dear, if you're sensible, and I think you will be. Now say
good night and get into bed at once. It's nearly ten."

She kissed her and went out to her own room across the landing.

There were two big bedrooms in the Victorian front of Harlakenden; one
belonging to Rose and the other to her parents. They were both high,
gaunt rooms, and piercingly cold; the great sash windows went down
almost to the floor, and had only flimsy curtains to cover them. But
cold as she was, Rose did not get into bed at once. She went to the
window first, and knelt down before it to look out.

The rain had stopped and the moon shone untroubled over the flat
countryside. The farm stood on that broad table-land which lies between
the weald and the North Downs, a land so flat that even from the upper
windows of the house it was impossible to see very far. Plurenden Wood
put a smudge of darkness on the luminous meeting of earth and sky under
the moon; only the lane that went south from Harlakenden could be seen
running through the shadows in a split of light. It might have been a
path to the Pleiades, which hung their smoky lamp just above its ending
in the woods.

Rose loved to stare at that lane in moonlight, to watch it lose itself
in darkness, while stars that varied with the night wrote their signs on
the sky above. A dim delicious ecstasy stole through her--the sweetness
of a sorrow which had no part in the cares and anxieties of the day.
Tears formed themselves and fell--tears of longing for something which
she felt to be hidden in the mystery and stillness and darkness of
night.

What was this new part of her being which lately had become so urgent
and restless in her? There were other aspects of it less agreeable than
this--fears that shook her, hungry pains, an undertone of desires she
did not know the name of. Was it a part of growing up? She would not
even ask her mother; for those fears and longings seemed to carry with
themselves a compulsion of silence. There was something dark and strange
about them, as if she should be ashamed of them and was not. She could
not imagine her mother ever having felt their rapturous distress; and
yet there were moments when what she most dreaded was to hear her mother
say, "That's nothing; everyone feels like that."



                              _Chapter Two_

Rose went to school in Ashford, travelling there every day by bus. It
was a complicated and tiring journey, involving a ten minutes' walk from
Harlakenden to the bus stop in the village and then, three miles farther
on, a change and a wait at Dogkennel. Her feelings were therefore
pleasurable, though not unmixed, when, the next afternoon, one of the
teachers put her head round the classroom door and said:

"Some one's come for Rose Deeprose in a motor-car."

"Coo!" cried a girl. "I wish it was me. Who is it, Rose?"

"My uncle, I expect."

She looked out of the window and saw her cousin Townley at the wheel of
an open car. He signalled to her to come down.

"May I go, Miss Murdoch?"

"Yes, you can go. It's not quite four yet, but you'd better not keep him
waiting."

Rose scrambled her books into her satchel and hurried downstairs to
where her coat and hat hung on a row of pegs in the entrance hall. It
was a poor, humble little school and had given Rose neither much
learning nor the wish to acquire more; but its ribbon round her blue
felt hat was as the ribbon of some exclusive order in Walter Deeprose's
buttonhole. His pocket and his pride forbade, respectively, the grammar
school and the council school; so Rose must attend Mrs. Murdoch's
private establishment, where she mixed with the daughters of a few
professional men, in conditions that recalled the nineteenth century
both in hygiene and in education.

"Hullo, Rose!" her cousin greeted her as she came out of the gate. He
was five or six years older than she was, a grown-up man, and till now
had not taken much notice of her. "Uncle Walter thought you'd like a run
in our new car, so I just popped over to fetch you home--took me ten
minutes."

Rose acknowledged the skill of her father's manoeuvre. He wanted her to
side with him against her mother about the car, and he realized the
persuasiveness of a ten minutes' run home from school. The only
stupidity--and it was a big one--lay in the fact that he ought to have
known that nothing would ever make her side with him against her mother.

She climbed into the front seat, and watched Townley with many
explanations put the car in gear and start it off. For a time the
conversation was purely technical, then as they left the streets behind
them and hummed into the lanes he suddenly turned towards her and told
her she was looking quite grown-up.

"Am I? I'm glad."

"How old are you--seventeen?"

"No, sixteen. But I'm leaving school at the end of this term."

"Isn't that rather early?"

"It's quite late enough. I'm sick to death of school--it gets you
nowhere. Besides, even if I wanted to stay, which I don't, Father
wouldn't be able to manage it. He wants me to help him on the farm."

"On the farm! What on earth will you do on the farm?"

He looked disapproving, and Rose felt her antagonism rise. Townley
probably thought she ought to be looking forward to a future of
housework; and as if to confirm her ill opinion he immediately added, "I
thought you'd be helping your mother in the house."

"Thanks, but we can get a maid for seven and six a week, while a boy
costs twice that and more. I shall be able to do the whole of a boy's
work."

"What! all the digging and dunging?"

"Why not?"

Her blue eyes challenged him fiercely, and for the first time he found
her interesting.

"I should never have thought your father would mean you to do that sort
of work, after having you educated at a private school."

"He wanted me to have a good education. Not that I've had one; I don't
seem to get on at all. But I shall have to earn my living, and I don't
care about going into an office. I like outdoor work, and I've done
quite a lot of it in the holidays. I'm a good milker, for one thing, and
I can manage horses."

"All that's a man's work."

"Well, I'm going to do a man's work."

"You won't be strong enough."

"I will. I'm immensely strong. I've lots of bone, and it's all to the
good that I haven't much flesh."

He laughed--she was so childishly confident and so proud of what most
girls would have been ashamed of. He did not himself admire her small,
spare figure; but as she talked he could not help noticing the beauty of
her bright eyes and warm colouring. Her hair, too, was pretty, bunching
in short curls under her hat and softening such of the hard lines of her
face as animation and colour had not already softened. Seen so, she
looked almost pretty.

"Well, I shall be interested to see how you get on."

She said nothing, for something doubtful and patronizing in his voice
made her feel angry again. He both hoped and believed that she would
fail, that a few months would see her back in the house or else marrying
into some other man's kitchen. . . . She devoured the thought
contemptuously, and was so busy chewing it that for some time she did
not notice where they were going. Then, looking up to see if they were
nearly home, she noticed that he had failed to take the Shadoxhurst road
at Dogkennel, and was driving in the direction of Redbrook Street.

"I say--look out. We're going the wrong way."

"I didn't want to take you home just yet. I want you really to see what
this car can do, so I thought we'd make for the Maidstone Road."

"Oh, but Mother will be wondering where we are! She'll be anxious if
we're late home."

"We'll be home long before your usual time. We'll get on to the
Maidstone Road at London Beach, spin along as far as Headcorn, and then
turn home by way of Bethersden. This car will go seventy on a good road,
so it won't take much more than twenty minutes."

"But----"

"Will you be frightened to go so fast?"

She guessed that if she said she would be frightened, he would be
pleased and at once give way to her and take her home. But it was not
only truthfulness that made her say:

"No, of course I shan't be frightened. But I don't want to upset Mother.
She's nervous about cars."

"She won't be upset. She knows I'm taking you for a run round, and isn't
expecting you till teatime. Why, here we are at London Beach already.
Now you watch."

She had never before been so conscious of him as a man, nor of herself
as a woman, though sixteen. It was not consciousness in any sexual
sense, but rather in an abstract way of domination. It disturbed and
annoyed her, and after a while it bored her. He seemed to her to be
showing off--showing off his car and his own skill as a driver. And yet
there was nothing personal about it; any other girl would have done just
as well, any girl or woman, though not any man. And he did not require
her to express her confidence and admiration; he took them for granted.
He was indeed a man, but not a man like her father, who was inclined to
be on the defensive towards his females. Here was a maleness she had
never met before, mainly, she supposed, because he had not hitherto
taken much notice of her. It was a pity he was her cousin, for their
relationship was bound soon to force them together again. She wished she
had a girl cousin. She could have been friends with a girl, but she
could never be friends with Townley.

Apart from his company and her fear that they might be late home, she
enjoyed the new experience of tearing along the Maidstone Road in a
high-powered car, feeling the air that was motionless on the fields as a
wind against her face, while at Dashnanden the dipping sun glowed like a
crimson beacon ahead of them, swallowing the road's end. This might be
the road to the sun, and their car hurrying along it to chase him round
the world.

But before they were any nearer to him than Bethersden he sank into the
fags of the horizon, leaving the sky with fiery rims. The fields were
lost in a lake of purplish dusk, which lapped the crimson edge of earth
beneath the few first stars. Rose watched the familiar sights of
hedgerows, trees, and haystacks become mysterious and beast-like in
their shapes, while the oast-houses lost their russet homeliness and
were changed into dark towers set in the battlements of barns. She
watched with a delight she resisted but could not deny the pale, dead
lane become coloured and alive before the headlights of Townley's car. A
procession of light moved before them along the hedges, calling up
golden gates and trunks and sprays, while moths fell suddenly through
the glow like sparks. Far off she could see a great fan of light
spreading in the sky, and she knew it was another car approaching them.
The two cars passed each other in a dazzle so great that afterwards the
road seemed to lie in a swoon of darkness.

"It'll be long after teatime when we get back."

"Only a minute or two."

Rose said nothing. She was anxious about her mother, knowing that she
would be anxious about her. She would be listening for the sound of a
car in the lane, fretting because she did not hear it, or perhaps
hearing it and then seeing a strange car pass by. When at last they came
to Harlakenden she scarcely waited to greet her uncle and aunt, so eager
was she to reassure her mother and get reassurance from her.

"You didn't worry about me, did you?"

"Oh no, dear. I knew you were in good hands."

"How did you like the car?" asked her Uncle George.

"I thought it went splendidly."

"Like to have one for your own?" asked her father.

"No," she said, abruptly, for fear she should say more.

They talked about the car nearly all teatime--how well it ran, how
little petrol it consumed, how comfortable it was and how useful. Uncle
George did most of the talking. He was like Townley, only more garrulous
and good-natured; he enjoyed showing off to his unsuccessful brother,
and was as anxious as that brother's own wife and daughter that he
should not emulate him. Yet everything he said, both Rose and her mother
knew, was confirming Walter Deeprose in his intention to have a car
every bit as good as George's.

Mrs. Deeprose tried more than once to change the conversation, but she
was unsuccessful till near the end of the meal, when she asked her
sister-in-law if they had heard anything lately from the Hollinsheds.
This was a move she ought to have made earlier, because if anything
could divert the George Deeproses from the topic of their car it was the
topic of their summer visitors. The car was new, whereas members of the
Hollinshed family had been coming to Bladbean every summer since Joseph
Deeprose's day in 1877. But no amount of familiarity could make them
stale; in fact, the closer they approximated to tradition the more
glorious they became in the eyes of Bladbean.

It was now fifty-two years since the Honourable James and Mrs.
Hollinshed had brought their young children into Kent for a farmhouse
holiday. They had gone to a place recommended by the Manor, a yeoman's
place, where they had found solid comfort and respectability, where, in
fact, they had been so well served that they had started the family
habit of a visit to Bladbean every year. Both James Hollinshed and his
eldest son had since become Lord Haverford, and the present summer
occupiers of the front sitting-room and two best bedrooms were in the
third generation of descent from the first visitors. Such people must
inevitably be something more than mere lodgers or paying guests, and
their relationship with their hosts had by this time come to resemble
that of grateful and affectionate masters with old family servants.
Presents were exchanged at Christmas, and the Hollinsheds always wrote
to report to their dear, faithful Deeproses such family events as
engagements, marriages, births, and deaths. Both George Deeprose and his
wife regarded their visit as the most important event of the year; it
made more of a stir in their lives than the lambing of their ewes or the
picking of their thirty acres of hops. Walter Deeprose affected to
despise his brother, for what, in truth, he envied him.

"I can't understand how you can go on with these people."

"We do go on and we're going on, and Townley will go on after us."

"And what does Townley say to that?"

"What Dad says. I'll go on as long as they will."

"Well . . . of course it was a very good thing for us once, but
personally I don't like the idea, and I'm glad to be out of it. I said
to Hattie when I married her that I shouldn't dream of asking her to
take summer visitors. We don't belong to the class that takes them, as a
rule."

"But the Hollinsheds aren't ordinary summer visitors," said Martha
Deeprose. She was a big, fair, heavy woman, who did not usually talk
much but found a certain eloquence in the defence of her pride--"it's
more like friends coming to stay."

"Well, so long as you've time for these things. . . . We're too busy
here."

"But I should have thought summer visitors would be a help to you,
Wally," said George, spitefully. "Four guineas a week each--that 'ud
come in even handier to you than it does to me."

"Thank you, but some money's earned too dear. I like my place to myself,
and my wife has something better to do than slave for visitors."

"But Rose will soon be leaving school," said Martha. "She could help her
parents by taking on all that. Of course we have Sarah, and I quite
agree that your Elsie couldn't manage what Sarah does, but Rose could
and I'm sure she'll want to be useful."

"Rose will be useful," said Walter, "but not in scouring for strangers.
Besides, I don't want to give up my best rooms and pig it in the old
part of the house. I had enough of that at Bladbean."

The conversation, though safer than on the subject of cars, was becoming
very much less amicable. Mrs. Deeprose saw her sister-in-law glance
round contemptuously, no doubt comparing Harlakenden's best room
unfavourably with Bladbean's worst, while George continued to press his
point that Walter could well do with some extra pounds a week, and Rose
could not turn her education to better account than in helping him earn
them. It was a relief when the clock on the mantelpiece loudly struck
six and the visitors realized that even in their new car they could not
be home by the half-hour unless they started at once.

"Ah, well," said George, "all good things come to an end. We must be
off. I've a meeting of my lodge tonight, besides a lot of things to see
to at home. Good-bye, Hattie, and thanks for a splendid tea. Good-bye,
Walter, and think of what I've said. Good-bye, Rose. I'm glad you like
the car."

He bustled out into the passage, followed by his wife and son. Soon the
Austin's headlights were raking the little white lane and pushing back
for almost half a mile the point where it vanished into the woods.
George took the wheel himself, for he wanted his brother to see him
drive away. Townley sat beside him, and Martha reclined luxuriously at
the back, under the new sheepskin rug. The George Deeproses were well
satisfied with their expedition, having not only successfully displayed
their car, but worked themselves into that comforting state of
disapproval in which their visits to Harlakenden nearly always ended.
Walter would never do any good, and Hattie encouraged him, and Rose was
spoiled.


The torch of the receding car had disappeared beyond Plurenden, and Rose
turned back into the house. She could still feel three kisses on her
cheek--her aunt's gentle and rather moist, her uncle's rough with the
scrape of his moustache, her cousin's hard and warm. Townley did not
usually kiss her; he had not done so for some time, and she could not
think why he should have tonight; it could not have been because they
had agreed so well. She joined her mother in the kitchen, for it was
Elsie's evening out and they had all the extra washing up to do.

"Mother," she said, "I hope you really weren't worried about me when I
was out with Townley. I tried to make him turn back sooner, but he
wouldn't."

"No, my dear. I'd only just begun to look at the clock when you came in.
I knew he meant to take you for a run, so I was expecting you home
rather later than usual. And you mustn't always be thinking of me like
this. I want you to enjoy yourself."

"I did enjoy myself--at least in a way I did. It was lovely rushing
through the country as night fell. But, Mother"--she hesitated--"are all
men like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like Townley."

"In what way like Townley? I don't understand, dear."

"I mean, are all men--oh, how shall I put it? . . . I mean is it always
difficult to be friends with a man? Are they always so different from
us?"

"Oh, they vary, of course; but no man's the same as a woman when it
comes to being friends. It wouldn't be natural if he was."

"Then always--afterwards--when one's married--is the man never in the
least like a friend?"

Mrs. Deeprose hesitated, and poured out a saucer of milk for Peter, who
sat contemplatively at her feet.

"Well, I wouldn't say that--not exactly; a man can be very friendly
sometimes. But I must say that for the most part he isn't."

"Then I don't want to get married. I'd hate to live always with a man
who was like Townley was this afternoon."

"Now, Rose, you mustn't say things like that; it's wrong. And Townley
was very kind to you this afternoon; it was all his own idea to take you
for that lovely drive."

"But he was so superior about it and wanting to show off; and
selfish--not letting me go home when I asked."

"Rose! I really am ashamed of you! How ungrateful you are! I can't think
what's put you against poor Townley that you should pick him to pieces
like this."

"I wish he was a girl."

"Land sakes! Why?"

"Because I could be friends with a girl--a girl wouldn't be selfish and
superior. It would be lovely if I had a girl cousin."

"There are plenty of girls at your school you could be friends with."

"I don't care about any of them, they're so silly."

Mrs. Deeprose put down a cup that she was wiping and faced her daughter.

"Now, Rose, you're just showing me the truth of what I told you
yesterday--hard by name, hard by nature. You judge people harshly and
see all their faults, even those they haven't got. It isn't fair to look
close into people like that; we're none of us so pretty when it comes to
close quarters in a strong light. It's natural for a man to be
'superior,' as you call it, and to show off; he makes life easier for
himself that way, just as women do by keeping quiet. I'm sure it would
be very nice if you had a girl cousin, but you haven't, so there's no
use or sense in wanting one. And as for poor Townley, I can see no
reason in the world why you shouldn't be friends with him. I'm sure he's
a very nice boy, and I can't see why you've taken such a dislike to
him."

"I haven't taken a dislike to him."

She found herself suddenly on the defensive.

"Well, I'm very glad to hear it. It sounded like it, that's all. Now,
dear, will you kindly carry that tray for me to the dresser and arrange
the things nicely on the shelves, as I'm always telling Elsie."



                             _Chapter Three_

Neither Rose nor her mother had any real hope that Walter Deeprose would
not buy a car; after George's visit to Harlakenden it seemed inevitable.
But they were not prepared for him to act so quickly as he did; the very
next day he was at Billings' garage in Ashford, and came back in the
evening to tell them that he had seen a very good car at a very low
price--one that had done four thousand miles but could scarecly be
called second-hand. He had had something to drink in the town and his
voice was loud and thick and overbearing. He seemed to expect their
opposition and trampled on it before it came.

"If I went by you, Hattie, I'd never have a new thing here. We'd just
rot and moulder and fall down, with George grinning away at Bladbean.
. . . I could see how he and that cow Martha were looking at each other
the whole time yesterday, triumphing over us with their damn Austin and
their damn Hollinsheds. You don't care how people triumph over me--how
my own brothers despise me--always triumphing over me . . . triumph,
triumph, triumph, triumph. . . . I'm going to bed."

He walked out of the room, grazing the doorpost, and they heard him
kicking the stairs as he went up.

There was just a hope that the next day when he felt sick and sorry he
would also repent of the car. But the car was evidently a part of his
normal desires and beyond alcoholic reactions. A week later it was
housed somewhat unworthily in the stable at Harlakenden--a large, heavy
tourer, of pre-war make for all that it had gone so few thousand miles.
It was upholstered in green leather and the fittings were of brass,
which Mrs. Deeprose said would either have to be cleaned daily or look
disreputable. To buy it he had entered into bondage to his bank; but he
insisted that it would soon have paid for itself by bringing all his
markets nearer. He was naively, childishly pleased with it and he did
not seem to realise that George with his brand-new Austin could still
look down on him.

He had had some driving experience before the war, and after a few runs
in the company of one of Billings' men, he felt perfectly easy. Of
course he insisted that Rose and her mother should go out with him, so
that he could show off his skill and the excellence of his car. The car
seemed to be an extension of himself; to criticize it was to hurt him
personally, to praise it was to puff him up with pride. His maleness was
more like Townley's than Rose had thought when she first compared
them--probably because up till now she had generally seen him with more
to conceal than display--but she did not find that it provoked her so
much. The thing he boasted of was a poor thing, clumsy and
old-fashioned, so that she could almost pity him for his pride, whereas
Townley had bragged of no more smartness or efficiency than his beastly
car could show.

She was relieved to find him drive so well, but she still dreaded to
think of what he might do if he drove after too much drink. Her mother,
she knew, could prevent him starting out in an unfit state, and most of
his drinking was done in the house; but there were bound to be occasions
when he set forth sober and fell in with his enemy on the way. Then she
dared not think of his return. She would not mind so much if he were
alone, but if he had her mother with him . . . She had somehow given
indestructible life to that picture of a motor accident "driver under
the influence of drink--car in ditch--wife killed"--which her nervous,
adolescent mind had formed directly she heard of his intention to buy a
car. She brooded over it in secret, knowing that her mother would tell
her it was wrong to think of such things; and meanwhile she did all she
could to prevent Mrs. Deeprose going out with him, which was not
difficult, as she disliked motoring.

To keep her mother safely at home she offered herself as a companion if
he appeared to need one. Strangely enough, she had no fear for herself;
it was all for her mother. In his company she saw more of the
neighbouring towns and villages than she had seen in her life, and found
an unexpected pleasure in this enlargement. They went to market not only
at Ashford, Maidstone, and Tenterden, but at Tunbridge Wells and at
Canterbury. He drove over to Wadd Farm near Frittenden to look at some
beasts they were offering; he attended auctions at Wagstaff, Mayshaves,
and Catherine Wheel.

In fact, the money spent on the car had led to more money spent on the
farm. He could not travel to all these places without buying something
at them, and Lord knew that Harlakenden needed the stuff. . . . What
chiefly disturbed his wife was that they could not afford these
additions and improvements, no matter how much they needed them, and
that apart from such expenses the heavy old car swilled petrol like a
hog.


Harlakenden was a mixed farm. It lagged behind the times even in those
early days of specialization, with its big untidy farmyard, where cows
wandered, pigs rooted, and hens scratched, and its hundred acres of
pasture, meadow, arable, hop, and woodland. Rose, when she left school
in April to help her father, found herself no specialist. She was not to
be a dairy girl whose horizon is bounded by cream-pans, or a poultry
girl whose day begins and ends with chickens. She milked Harlakenden's
seven cows and took care of the calves, she hitched and unhitched the
team and walked at their heavy, plodding gait along the lanes with loads
of underwood. She fed the pigs, though the man cleaned out their sties;
and though she had nothing to do with the corn, she insisted on being
allowed to go into the hop-garden and learn the mysteries of hop-tying,
when the women came up from Shadoxhurst and Colliam Green to perform
that skilled and solemn rite in the lengthening days of June.

Her father's two men, Kemp and Waghorne, accepted her as part of the
necessary evil of life. They would have much preferred a boy under them,
a boy whom they could order about and kick if their feelings demanded
it; but no one could expect the boss to pay a boy twelve shillings a
week when he had a girl of his own to work for nothing. Being the boss's
girl, she was allowed to pick and choose and do work they would do
better themselves, and of course she would not take orders from them,
any more than they would take them from her; but you couldn't say she
wasn't sometimes useful or that she didn't understand more than you'd
expect in a female.

By the time October came Rose was as brown as a cornstalk and almost as
thin. The sun had drunk her up and she was dry. For nearly six months
she had risen with him and worked under him till his going down left her
exhausted. She had never complained, for she was determined that her
hard work should save Harlakenden; but when the work necessarily eased
off and the days became short and cold, with a blanket of mist all night
on the flat lands, she was taken with a chill and had to go to bed for
several days. She had aches and a high temperature, and a buzzing pain
in her ears. Her mother was troubled, guessing that she had worked too
hard and worn herself out; but Rose insisted that it was just anybody's
chill, and that she would be quite well enough to go to Bladbean for her
aunt's birthday the following week.

Martha Deeprose's birthday was her one accent on a life otherwise
effaced. All the year she sat in the background, behind her two men, but
on that day when you would expect a woman of her age to hide herself
closer, she came forward and made her bow and accepted yours. The
Deeproses had fallen in with the tradition of Martha's birthday, and
always in the evening there was a family gathering at Bladbean, when
Walter and Hugh and Alice and Edith and Hannah and Emily drove nearly a
hundred miles between them to offer their presents and drink her health
in port and whisky and a variety of homemade wines.

Rose did not relish these occasions, which were scarcely adapted to her
youth--a youth which was, moreover, still too green to feel any kindness
for poor Martha's solitary burst of importance. But this year she was
really distressed when the doctor forbade her to drive out in the night
air. The Walter Deeproses did not normally call in a doctor for their
ailments, but it was so unusual for Rose to be ill that her mother had
taken alarm and asked Dr. Cooke to come over from Woodchurch. He
diagnosed common influenza, with a threat of mastoid trouble. Rose must
take the greatest care of herself, and of course a party was out of the
question, both in her own interests and in those of her hosts. She must
content herself with sending her best wishes and a kettle-holder she had
grudgingly worked in her spare time.

Normally this would have been no deprivation, but she had, in the course
of her fever and her lonely lying in bed, worked her normal anxiety
about her father and the car into something like a foreboding. There was
always a lot to drink at Bladbean, and she could remember occasions when
he had been "taken bad," as they had called it then, and her mother had
driven them home. But this year her mother would be unable to come to
the rescue. She had counted on doing that herself should the need arise;
for though she had never actually driven the car, being under the legal
age, she had watched her father carefully enough to know quite a lot
about it. She could have got them all safely home. But now she would not
be there; her mother would be entirely at his mercy. Mrs. Deeprose was
surprised at the depth of her disappointment and at her reluctance to be
left behind.

"It'll be all right, dear. Mrs. Waghorne will come in and sit in the
kitchen till we come back."

"Couldn't father go alone?"

"I don't see how he could. Aunt Martha would be upset."

"But if she knows I'm ill."

Mrs. Deeprose hesitated.

"It isn't only that. I don't like the idea of his going alone. Your
uncles and aunts mean well, but they're often rather careless . . . I
mean they don't keep the watch I shall."

Rose started up in bed and seized her mother's hand.

"You mean he'll take too much; that's why I don't want you to go with
him. You won't be able to drive the car home, so he'll land you in the
ditch. Oh, please, Mother, don't go."

"Now, Rose, be sensible. If I don't go with him he may take too
much--with your uncles always pressing him, and Aunt Martha never liking
to see anything left. But if I go, I'll look after him. I'll see he
doesn't have more than is right. I know exactly what to do."

"But, Mother, don't you remember the year before last? He had too much,
even though you were there."

"That was only because that deadly stuff of your aunt's had been kept
too long--her potato brandy, you know. We all of us felt a bit queer. I
told her straight she should throw it away, and she did, and last time
he was quite all right."

"You'll come home early?"

"As early as we can get away, you may be sure. Don't you worry, my pet,
for there's nothing to be afraid of. I don't particularly want to go
myself, and if you were really ill I shouldn't; but you'll be quite all
right here with Mrs. Waghorne coming in, and it's my duty to go with
your father."

Rose said no more, but her feverish mind worked restlessly.

Early on the morning of her aunt's birthday, with the stars still
hanging in a dirty sky, Rose slipped out of bed, pulled on breeches and
woollen stockings, a sweater and a water-proof coat, just as if she were
going to work on the farm. She stuffed cottonwool in her ears, for she
did not want to take cold, and she knew that what she meant to do would
be bad for herself even if good for her mother. She had been out once or
twice in the warm midday, but now there was a skin of ice on the slush
in the yard, and the breath of the house was cold.

She crept through the darkness of scullery and kitchen, past the dead
fires, and opening the door that was never locked, found herself in the
yard. She was safe now; no one could see or hear her, for her parents
slept away at the front. Only the old part of the house was watching her
with the eyes of its uncurtained windows; the first appearances of dawn
shone reflected in them like candlelight.

She ran across the yard, holding her breath against the icy air, and the
next moment was blowing it out in a cloud under the beams of the stable.
There was enough light for her to see her breath like smoke and the dull
gleam of the brass on her father's car. She took down a lantern from the
wall, lit it and began to work hurriedly. She knew exactly what she
meant to do, for she knew more about the car than her father did. She
had always been determined to know about it for her mother's sake, and
had often studied its works and asked questions about them on its fairly
frequent visits to Billings' garage. Now it did not take her more than a
few minutes to remove the make-and-break from the magneto. Then she
covered the whole thing up again and, slipping the loose part into her
pocket, hurried back to her room. In ten minutes she was peacefully
asleep, knowing that her father would not be able to drive her mother
out that night.

On waking, she still did not feel her plan would miscarry. Her father
would not be taking out the car before the time came to start for
Bladbean. There was no market today either at Ashford or at Tenterden,
and he was far too busy, owing to her absence from the farm, to run out
on any excursion that was not absolutely necessary. No, he would not
discover the damage till it was too late to have it repaired, and he
would either have to stay at home or take her mother in the horse and
trap. She did not much care which, for the bogey of the car was laid.

Of course her mother would be angry when she knew what she had done, and
Rose would probably tell her when all the fuss was over. Tomorrow
morning, if she felt well enough, she would restore the make-and-break,
and the car would start like a bird . . . she could not suppress a
giggle at the thought of her father's discomfiture and surprise.

The day passed uneventfully. She came down to dinner and then went back
to bed for her tea. Her mother came in, dressed in her pathetic best,
and bade her good-bye with many reassurances as to her own safety and
Mrs. Waghorne's presence in the kitchen. Then she went downstairs, and
Rose read for some minutes by candlelight, her ears more active than her
eyes, as she listened for sounds either outside or in the house.

If all had been well she would have heard the car come round from the
yard to the front door, but now instead of that there was silence.
Doubtless at the back there was commotion enough. She could not help
feeling a little sorry for her father. After some time a door slammed
and she heard his voice call, "Hattie!" She wondered what he would
do--drive out in the horse and trap or stay at home. She was inclined to
expect the latter, as she thought that it would hurt his pride less.

More time passed and her mother came back into her room.

"I don't know when we shall start, dear. There's something wrong with
the car."

"Oh--what is it?"

"It won't start."

"It's been difficult about that before."

"I know, but this time it seems really serious. It won't even splutter."

"Then shan't you be going?"

"Oh, we shall have to go. Aunt Martha would be dreadfully hurt if we
didn't come, and after all we always went in the horse and trap other
years."

"Yes, of course."

"It's a pity, because now we shall be late. But there's nothing else to
be done. It would take too long to send for some one from Billings',
though your father's wild because we haven't got a telephone. Mark my
words, that's what we'll be having next."

"I dare say Bilings' man couldn't do anything--at least not in time for
you to go to Bladbean. It's an awful old car, Mother."

"Yes, dear, I'm afraid it is, and I don't believe your father thinks so
well of it now as when he first bought it. If he did he'd be too proud
to go over to Bladbean and tell them it's broken down."

"Hattie!"

A sore, angry voice shouted from downstairs. She went out on the
landing.

"Yes, Wally?"

"It's no good. The damn thing won't move, though Kemp and I have pushed
it halfway down the drive. I'm going to put Soldier in the trap."

"That's right, dear. That'll be best."

"Well, be downstairs and waiting and ready, for we'll have to go like
dammit to get to Bladbean in time for supper. Don't stay up there
gassing with Rose."

"I'll come down at once. . . . Good-bye, my pet; and I shan't look in to
see you before I go to bed, because I expect you're sure to be asleep.
You'll hear all about the party tomorrow."

Her mother kissed her, leaving a faint smell of brown soap like a ghost
of herself upon the pillow.


After she had heard them drive away Rose wondered for the first time if
she had not overdone things a little. Probably her mother as well as her
father would much rather have gone in the car, and she had put them both
to great inconvenience for the sake of a danger that existed only in her
imagination. It is true that she herself would now have a comfortable
evening, instead of a restless and anxious one; but it seemed rather
selfish to have given them so much trouble just for that. This aspect of
the situation occurred to her for the first time and she felt a little
ashamed.

However, it was too late to do anything about it, though she decided
uneasily not to tell even her mother what she had devised, but to put
back the make-and-break without a word, at her first opportunity. If she
was sensible she would do it now . . . but she felt drowsy and tired,
and there was also the thought of Mrs. Waghorne in the kitchen. No, she
would rather wake up early and sneak down tomorrow as she had done
today.

At nine o'clock Mrs. Waghorne brought her up some bread and milk, and at
half-past Rose settled herself for the night. It seemed hours later that
she woke up rather suddenly, and she had a vague feeling that morning
had come. But the next minute she realised that the light in the room
was not daylight, but a candle someone was holding in the doorway.

"Mother, is that you?"

"No, it's me. I came up to ask you what I'm to do."

Rose felt cross with Mrs. Waghorne--cross and a little confused. Then
suddenly fear came stabbing through her crossness and her confusion. She
sat up in bed, broad awake.

"What time is it?"

"Past one o'clock, and Waghorne----"

"Isn't anybody back?"

"No, and they said they'd be back by half-past eleven at latest, and
Waghorne he can't never go to sleep without me, not proper like, so I'm
wondering----"

"But they've gone in the trap; that's bound to make them later."

She found herself speaking harshly and angrily, as if she was
contradicting somebody.

"It was when they were starting in the trap she said half-past eleven.
Before that it was half-past ten."

Rose felt her skin break into a sweat, and she was suddenly cold.
Something must have happened. No ordinary circumstance could have
delayed her parents so long. On previous occasions they had always left
Bladbean between ten and half-past, and tonight they should have started
earlier on account of Mrs. Waghorne. Something must have happened to
them. Yet what could have happened? They had not gone in the car.

"I don't know what to do. Will you be scared if I leave you in the
house? You see, Waghorne----"

"Oh never mind about me. You'd better get home at once."

"And you won't be scared?"

"I'm not staying here. I'm going to look for them."

She had her feet on the floor and the next minute she was putting on her
clothes. She had forgotten about her illness; all she thought of was the
impossibility of waiting here. It was not that she was afraid to be
alone in the house--she was past that, if it had ever affected her; it
was the mere passivity of waiting that she could not endure. She must do
something--set some action moving against the dead weight of fear that
loaded her down.

She had expected opposition from Mrs. Waghorne, some attempt to make her
stay at home; but all the woman thought of was going home herself. She
seemed to have expected some objection to that, as she had promised Mrs.
Deeprose to stay till she came in; but having been relieved of her
position on the burning deck, she gave no thought to what might happen
after she had left it. She accepted without contradiction her charge's
decision to get up and go out; she did not even ask her how she proposed
to search for her parents over ten miles of lonely country in the middle
of the night. All she said was:

"Do you want me to lock the front door?"

"No, it doesn't matter."

"I'll go, then, or Waghorne will terrify me."

"All right. Thank you for staying so long."

Mrs. Waghorne was gone, and Rose was nearly dressed. She put on the same
warm clothes as in the morning, but she was in too much of a hurry to
remember the wool in her ears. She remembered, however, to take the
make-and-break from the drawer where she had hidden it. The car was the
quickest way of ending her anxiety, and she rejoiced to think of it
waiting in the stable. She would repair it and drive it over to
Bladbean. If by any chance she could not get it to start she would have
to go on her bicycle . . . Oh, if only they had a telephone!--she was
all with her father now in wanting one. But then Bladbean would have to
have one, too; if Bladbean had had a telephone she could have gone to
the shop at Shadoxhurst and rung them up from there. But now she must
drive ten miles through the darkness before she could have the comfort
even of knowing the worst. . . . Oh, Please, God, help me start the car.

It started after a few struggles, and she was off, holding the wheel for
the first time, but without even a feeling of strangeness, so utterly
caught up were all her emotions in the fear that ruled her. She turned
into the westward lane, pressing down the stiff accelerator as far as it
would go. The car checked and coughed, then began to gather speed; she
had driven a mile under the moon before she realized she had not turned
on her lights.

She was familiar with the road; she did not have to think where she was
going--only of driving the car, which she found easy enough, except when
she had to change gear. Her thoughts were free to range through her
anxieties, but in time she found that, soothed by motion and action, her
mind was yielding to a certain hopefulness.

After all, there were a number of things besides an accident that might
have detained her mother. Her father might have succeeded in spite of
her care in taking too much to drink--he might be too ill to go home.
That was far more likely than that there had been an accident to the
horse and trap which her mother had driven for years. Besides, horses
and traps didn't have accidents--it was only cars. _She_ was the one who
was in danger, driving a bad old car for the first time, in the dark.
Yet she felt no fear for herself. She was unreasonable--she was
downright silly. They would all say that when she arrived at Bladbean.
And how angry they would be! She was supposed to be having influenza,
and here she was driving herself about at night in an open car. The
doctor had said she was too ill to go to Bladbean in the ordinary,
comfortable way. What would he say to this?

She began to feel ashamed, to think that once again she had acted in too
much of a hurry. She had half a mind to turn back. She had come as far
as Egerton, two miles from Bladbean, and if there had been by any chance
an accident to the trap she surely would have passed some sign of it.
No, almost for certain her mother was safe at Bladbean, looking after
her father. She had quite possibly sent a message to Rose and Mrs.
Waghorne by her uncle Hugh or her aunt Hannah and they had either
forgotten to deliver it or been too selfish to go a few miles out of
their way. . . . Or an accident might have happened to them--it was
queer how she never thought of accidents to anyone but her mother. She
really had better turn back, and then when they came home in the morning
she would be safe in bed as if nothing had happened. And the car, too
. . . for the first time she thought of the car. How would she explain
its apparently miraculous recovery? What would everyone say when she
arrived at Bladbean in a car that eight hours earlier her father had
been unable to start?

It was this thought that finally decided her to turn home. She was now
convinced that her mother was safe and well, so where was the use of
getting herself into trouble? Everyone would be angry with her, even her
mother; and Townley would despise her--she saw his black eyes staring at
her in contempt. She had better hurry home and get into bed and keep
warm, to stave off the most likely consequences of her folly. The only
question now was where to turn the car. To an inexperienced driver like
herself this offered a real difficulty.

She soon came to Spelmonden crossroads and decided to turn there. The
way was narrow and it was impossible to go round the signpost, so she
ran a few yards down one of the wents and reversed, as she had so often
seen her father do. Up till now the experiences of the night had
encouraged her to believe that she could drive almost as well as he did;
but now she found that she had still something to learn. In reverse the
car did not seem to respond in the same way to her steering--she was
turning right when she had meant to turn left. Also, she could not see
where she was going--the lane seemed all darkness behind her. Suddenly,
for the first time, she felt nervous; her foot fumbled for the brake and
trod on the accelerator. The next moment she found herself in the ditch.

The car did not turn over; it just lolled against the hedge--two wheels
in the ditch and two on the grass verge. Ruefully she switched off the
engine and climbed out. Now she would have to walk to Bladbean, since
she could neither walk all the way home nor stay where she was. There
was nothing for it but to tramp the remaining mile and a half and ask
her uncle to send a team of horses to pull the car out in the morning.

Her troubles did not seem to have begun till now. If it had been unwise
for her to drive out at night when she was ill, it was sheer folly for
her to be walking like this through the damp and cold. If her father
would have been angry with her for arriving in the car he would be ten
times angrier to hear that the car had been left in a ditch. He would
never forgive her, nor did she think she would forgive herself. All this
was her own fault, due to her lack of coolness and patience. What a fool
she had been!

And yet . . . her first fears, driven away for a time, came rushing
back. Had she been such a fool, after all? Something must have happened
to her father and mother, or they would never have left her like this.
Her mother would have come home even if she had had to leave her father
at Bladbean; there was nothing to prevent her doing so, as they had
taken the horse and trap. She would certainly have come unless something
had happened to her. Something must have happened. . . . The tears came
stinging into Rose's eyes as she hurried, half walking, half running,
along the lane.

She was glad she hadn't been able to turn home; but it was a pity that
she had tried to do so. If she had not she would now be at Bladbean,
with her doubts resolved one way or the other. Oh, why was she always
doing things in a hurry and then regretting them afterwards? Now it
would take her at least half an hour to reach her uncle's place. She was
hurrying as fast as she could, but every few minutes she had to stop to
recover her breath. Her head ached and her heart was hammering
painfully; she felt her illness much more now that she was walking than
when she had been driving the car. The lane seemed unfamiliar, too. She
had never walked in it before, and the angles of vision were different.
The hedges towered above her head instead of allowing her to look over
them; and familiar landmarks had disappeared. She looked out for them,
but could not find them. Surely she should have passed by now those two
cottages at Snathurst. Perhaps she had taken the wrong turning at the
throws. . . . She hesitated, wondering if she should go back and read
the direction on the signpost, but decided to go on a bit farther. Then
in a few minutes she saw the cottages, secure and asleep. Of course she
must remember that the signs she looked for would now seem farther
apart; both space and time had changed for her on foot.

At last she came to the group of cottages known as Monday Boys, which
was the nearest hamlet to Bladbean. She had now very little farther to
go and in a few minutes she could see the oast-houses standing black
against the moon-pale sky and then the house itself, ghostly and
strange, a castle of shadows and silver. The night had become unreal;
she seemed to float in it, herself almost a ghost. Her feet scarcely
felt the beach and clay of the farm drive. Perhaps it was all a dream
and she would wake up to find herself in bed at Harlakenden, with her
mother safely asleep in the next room. . . .

A dog began to bark at her approach, and the world around her took on
more substantial qualities. She was quite close to the house and could
see every detail of its weather-tiled front, which was broken up with
windows--some old, some new, some small, some large, and one great
bulging bow set crookedly beside the porch. Generations of Deeproses had
had their will of Bladbean, and the front presented a curiously broken
and patched appearance, though adorned with all the wealth of new paint
and Venetian blinds. At one moment she thought she saw a light in one of
the windows, and her heart jumped back to the hope of her father's
illness, but the next she saw it was only the reflection of the moon.

Feeling suddenly utterly tired, she knocked at the door, and after a
short interval of silence knocked again. This time there was movement, a
creaking beam; then a blind went up and a face was pressed against the
window. She knocked a third time with all her strength, and shook the
door; then the window went up and her uncle's head came out.

"What's all this? Who's there?"

"It's me--Rose."

"Rose!"

He seemed completely startled.

"I've come to find out about Father and Mother."

"What on earth do you mean? Aren't they at Harlakenden?"

There were the words that, of all others, she had most dreaded to hear.
She leaned against the door, her limbs trembling and her heart beating
to suffocation. The next moment he said:

"Wait there. I'm coming down."

Wait! Did he think she was going to run away? Oh, Mother, Mother! where
are you? What am I to do?

The door opened and she nearly fell in. Both her uncle and aunt stood
before her, grotesque in their nightclothes.

"Rose, what on earth's the matter?" "What ever's happened?" "What made
you come over?" "How did you get here?"

Their voices jangled together and she scarcely heard what they said.

"Where's Mother? Why hasn't she come back?"

"Your father and mother left hours ago," said her uncle, "soon after
half-past nine, wasn't it, Martha?"

"Yes, they wanted to be back early on your account. Rose, I thought you
were in bed with the 'flu."

"So I was. But when they didn't come back I had to go and look for them.
Oh, what can have happened? If there was an accident, why didn't I see
anything? I was looking out for them the whole way."

"Your father and mother," said her uncle, pompously, "went home by
Charing. Your aunt Edith wanted to catch the Maidstone bus, so they gave
her a lift as far as the crossroads."

"That's it," said Aunt Martha--"that's why you missed them. Depend upon
it they're at home now."

"Don't be foolish, Martha," said her husband. "They left here five hours
ago, and going round by Charing wouldn't add twenty minutes to the
journey."

"Then do you think anything's happened?"

"Yes, I do. But I don't suppose it's serious--a breakdown of some sort
or the horse gone lame."

"Couldn't we get out your car and go after them?" begged Rose.

"I'll run you over to Harlakenden tomorrow morning, but I don't see that
anything's to be done before then--except put you to bed with a hot
drink. You must have been mad to come out like this. You came on your
bicycle, I suppose."

"No, I came in Dad's car, but it went into the ditch. Oh, please, Uncle,
don't fuss about me, but let's go and look for them."

"I didn't know you could drive a car," said Martha Deeprose.

"Evidently she can't," said her husband. "I never heard of such a thing.
What on earth will your father say? Now, Rose, don't be silly. You must
go straight to bed with a hot drink and we'll drive you over to
Harlakenden in the morning."

Rose had begun to sob frantically. She felt herself in a nightmare of
helplessness. These people were fools and she could do nothing with
them.

"Oh, Uncle, we mustn't wait. Indeed we mustn't. They may be lying hurt
somewhere. Or, if it's only a breakdown they may have got home by now
and found me gone, and Mother will be in a dreadful state about me."

"You should have thought of that before you came over here, you silly
child. . . . Now, Martha, you'd better take her upstairs. I can make
myself comfortable on the sofa."

"No, no, please! I couldn't lie down--I couldn't sleep; and I'm quite
well--really I am. But I must look for them. If you won't come with me
I'll go alone."

"I'll go with Rose."

A voice came calmly and authoritatively from the staircase, and the next
moment Townley Deeprose walked into the circle of candlelight by the
hall door. He looked wonderfully collected and wide-awake, and his
smart, striped pyjamas and camel-hair dressing-gown were in almost
insulting contrast with his parents' bundled shapelessness of shawl and
greatcoat. But Rose only subconsciously noticed his appearance; it was
his words that made her heart go out to him in gratitude and trust.

"I can easily run her round by Charing in the car. You can't expect the
poor kid to go to bed thinking her parents are lying somewhere in a
ditch. I don't suppose for a minute they are; still, it'll be easy
enough to make sure."

"But, Townley, she's had influenza."

"She's come all the way over here and it won't make any odds if she goes
back. She can wrap up warm and I can close the car."

"But she ought to have a hot drink."

"There's time for her to have one before we start. I've got to go and
put my clothes on."

He bounded away up the stairs and Aunt Martha went off grumbling to the
kitchen.

"If you're well enough to do all this, Rose, you were well enough to
come to my party."

A quarter of an hour had passed like a month and she was sitting beside
Townley in the car, watching the red light move ahead of them between
the hedges. She felt very differently from the last time she had sat
like this; then she had been all impatience and antagonism, now she was
all gratitude and relief. His maleness then had taken the form of
display, and she had turned from it in disgust; now it was taking the
form of effective action and she clung to it trustfully and thankfully.

He had saved her from the fate she had been threatened with at Bladbean,
of waiting dreadfully for the dawn and the slow, grudging movement of
her uncle's will. Here she was, doing all that was possible to help her
mother and end the horrors of her own uncertainty. In an hour or two she
was bound to know something, to have done something, and her heart moved
almost affectionately towards the man who had made this possible by his
resource and strength.

"We'll take the Sandway road to Charing throws," he said. "They were
going to catch the bus at Charing, and they'd never have gone by Platts
Heath; it's a bad road and nearly a mile longer."

"If they--if the trap had broken down we'd be bound to see it by the
roadside somewhere."

"We certainly should. They wouldn't have found anyone to tow it away at
this time of night. No, they'd have taken the horse out and left it
there, and probably gone off to look for a phone."

"But we're not on the phone at Harlakenden."

"They'd have rung up some one who is and asked them to send round. It
would probably have taken them the deuce of a long time. That's why
you'd heard nothing before you left home."

He had settled the matter so firmly and soundly that she felt it had
happened exactly as he said and that there was nothing to worry about
except how quickly they could reach Harlakenden. Her anxiety was
shifting its ground. She was beginning to feel as she had felt on her
first drive with him, disturbed no longer by her own fears, but by those
she imagined her mother to feel.

"We must hurry back--in case anyone lets Mother know I'm not there."

"It won't take us twenty minutes from here."

They came to Charing cross-roads without seeing anything unusual.

"They must have broken down farther on," he said. "After all, there's a
lot of houses round about, and they'd have got in touch with you earlier
if anything had happened near here. But once you've passed Charing there
isn't a place you can telephone from till you come to Pluckley. Who do
you think they'd ring up at Shadoxhurst?"

"Mrs. White's the nearest, but I believe she's away. They might get
Judge at the shop, but I don't know who he'd send in the middle of the
night."

"That's just it. It wouldn't have been easy for them to let you know. So
you really needn't worry, even if we don't find a message when we get to
Harlakenden."

"But we're bound to see the trap or something if they've had an upset."

"Some one may have let them put it in their stable."

They drove on in silence for another ten minutes. The wonderful white
moon had set, and there was only the light of the car to search the
wayside. The clock on the dashboard pointed to half-past three.

"There's no other way they can have gone . . ."

He was beginning to feel uncertain, for they were past Pluckley Thorn
and still had seen nothing. Rose looked at him anxiously, alarmed by the
question in his voice.

"But of course," he continued, "they may have broken down quite near a
farm, in which case they'd probably have put the horse and trap in the
stable. If we don't see anything we'll know that's what's happened."

"Then do you think it's possible that we mayn't know . . . that we'll
have to wait till tomorrow to----"

Her voice broke as her agony returned.

"Now, I didn't mean to make you unhappy . . ."

His keen, handsome face bent towards hers, and immediately his
expression changed as he saw her tears.

"Don't be unhappy, Rose," he said in a voice that had melted
surprisingly into tenderness. "I'm sure it's all right. Don't cry, kid.
I'll do anything you like to help you--beat up every house along the
road if we don't find them before we get back. Don't cry."

But her tears fell as bitterly and helplessly as they had fallen at
Bladbean. He saw her groping for her handkerchief, and handed her his
big coloured silk one. She felt vaguely ashamed of she knew not what.

"There, dry your eyes, and cheer up, kiddie. I tell you it'll all come
right."

His voice still had that husky, tender note, and if they had not been in
the car she could almost have wished to creep into his arms for comfort.
This thought seemed to add to her shame--she felt conscious and
embarrassed and kept her face hidden in the handkerchief. Then suddenly
she looked up as she felt him check the car.

They had come to a place known as Witsunden, not far from Maltman's
Hill. There was a farm two fields away and one or two cottages. The road
here followed some ancient track between high banks and sloped steeply
to a little stream. It twisted before the bridge, as such lanes
generally do, and seemed to run straight into an undergrowth of chestnut
and sallow, which at this moment was raked by the bright headlights of
the car. Below the bridge, wedged across the stream were a couple of
shafts, with a loose wheel half in the water beside them.



                             _Chapter Four_

"Stay where you are," Townley shouted.

In one movement, it seemed, he had stopped the car and jumped out of it.
Rose sat still; she would have done so without his command, for she felt
transfixed, as if a sharp knife had been run through her, holding her to
the seat.

In the glare of the headlights she watched him moving through the trees,
examining the wreckage of shafts and wheels. He was not long about it.

"It's all right!" he cried as he ran back to her--"Nobody's there. I
expect they jumped free before the crash."

Rose thought of her mother in the swaddlings of her Sunday clothes.

"They couldn't have."

"They must either have done that or not been hurt and managed to climb
out afterwards; or else they'd be lying there in the wreckage, and the
horse would be there, too."

"Someone may have passed. . . ."

"Well, we'll knock up this cottage and find out at once. Like to come
with me?"--as he saw her piteous face.

"Yes."

He helped her unwrap herself and climb out of the car. He was very kind
when he found that she was trembling.

"Cheer up, little woman. I'm sure that nothing dreadful's happened.
There's very little traffic on this lane, and if they'd been hurt it
isn't likely anyone would have come along and found them so late at
night. No, depend on it, they got out themselves, and if they did
they're sure to have gone to this cottage. You wait and see."

He knocked loudly on the door, and the ceremony of rousing heavy
sleepers in the middle of the night was repeated.

"Hello!"

"Hello!"

"Anyone there?"

"Who is it?"

"We've come to ask about an accident there's been here."

"Oh . . . wait a minute and I'll let you in."

So the cottage knew . . . Rose held her breath while the stairs creaked,
and at last a candle shone through the glass pane of the door. Townley
squeezed her arm. "It's all right. I told you so."

The door opened and a man who was evidently a farm-worker let them into
the dead kitchen. Townley began at once to question him.

"Can you tell us what's happened? We've seen the trap down by the
bridge, and it belongs to this young lady's parents who've been missing
since ten o'clock tonight."

"That'll be them, then."

"Are they hurt?"--Rose had found her tongue.

"Aye, I reckon they were hurt. They took 'em off to hospital."

She was sitting on a high wooden chair, and she slumped as if she would
fall off it. Townley ran to her and held her up.

"It's all right, kid. Don't give way. Which hospital did they go to?" he
asked the man.

"I dunno."

"You don't know!"

"No, the people in the car took 'em. It was their lights wot scared the
hoss, I reckon, and he bolted off down the bank into the shaw. My missus
and I were abed, but we heard the crash and the hollering and we came
out and helped put 'em in the car."

"And you don't know where they've taken them?"

"They said to hospital."

"There's a hospital at Ashford and a hospital at Maidstone," wailed
Rose--"Oh, where are they? Where are they?"

Townley patted her arm reassuringly.

"Never you fear; we'll find them. We'll go to Maidstone first--it won't
take us more than twenty minutes with the car all out. Then, if by any
chance they're not there, we'll ring up Ashford. Come along, my dear."

She followed him obediently. As they were going out the man said----

"They put the horse in the stable up at the farm. Would you like to see
un?"

"No."

"He were a bit cut about the hocks, that's all. I reckon you'll let 'em
know what you want done wid un."

"Yes--tomorrow. Jump in, Rose."

But there was a question she had to ask.

"When you helped put them in the car . . . did you notice? . . . was the
lady very badly hurt?"

"She didn't say nothing."

"Was she unconscious?"

"I dunno. She looked awkward."

"Come on, kid," said Townley, gently. "You'll soon be hearing what the
doctor says about her. Off we go!"

He turned the car in the narrow lane with a sureness and swiftness that
made Rose feel ashamed of her performance at Spelmonden. In five minutes
they were out of the by-ways and booming along the main road at seventy
miles an hour.


The fate that ever since midnight had sent Rose Deeprose rushing through
the darkness from one uncertainty to another now seemed to have
relented. At Maidstone County Hospital she and Townley were told that
two accident cases had been brought in three hours ago, and almost
immediately they found themselves in the night Sister's office. By this
time Rose had lost the power of speech; she could not ask the question
that was devouring her--she could only sit in a kind of daze through
which floated the conversation of Townley and an enormous white woman
sitting at a desk.

Yes, Deeprose was the name. Some London motorists had brought them in.
They were both unconscious--yes, they were still unconscious--but the
name was inscribed on the man's watch. The house surgeon had seen them
and intended to operate on the woman next morning. Yes, she was afraid
it was serious in both cases; but not hopeless--oh no, not hopeless.

Rose could not have told if the conversation had lasted five minutes or
an hour when Townley stood up.

"Thank you very much, Sister. Now I'll take this young lady home and
bring her back tomorrow."

"I want to see Mother."

It was the first time she had said anything, and both Townley and the
Sister looked at her in surprise as if they had forgotten she could
speak.

"I want to see Mother," she repeated, jerkily.

"Oh, I should wait till tomorrow if I were you," said the Sister, with a
smile that disclosed an alarming row of false teeth.

"No, I want to see her tonight."

"She won't know you, I'm afraid."

"But I want to see her--I must see her."

She had a feeling that it was the last chance she had of seeing her
mother alive.

"Well, if you promise to be very quiet. . . ."

She was led along some dim, shining corridors into a ward which shone
dimly, too. There was a row of beds each side of it, and at the end a
little table where a nurse sat under a shaded light. Everybody seemed
asleep, except the nurse, who stood up when they came in. The Sister
glided over the shining pool of the floor, followed by Rose, who
thumped. Even in that racked moment she was conscious of her thick boots
thumping on the polished floor. At the far end of the ward there was a
bed with screens round it, and she remembered having heard that they put
screens round the bed of some one who was going to die.

"She isn't going to die, is she?" she cried, almost aloud.

"Sssh! . . . Oh, no, we hope not."

"Then what are those screens for?"

"Because she's going to have an operation. She has to be prepared, you
know," and the Sister's smile gleamed brightly through the shadows.

"An operation? Oh, what for? Is it serious?"

The Sister was annoyed to have Townley's questions, to which she had
given perfectly clear and sensible answers, asked all over again by
Rose.

"I've told your cousin it's serious but not hopeless. Now come quickly
and peep at her. I can't let you stay long."

Rose went round the screen and saw her mother lying very flat and still.
The high colour was all gone from her face, making her seem strange and
unlike herself, and there was a bandage round her forehead. One hand lay
out on the coverlet and she was opening and shutting it mechanically.
She looked like some one in a rather harassed sleep.

"Come away, now, please," said the Sister.

But before she went Rose stooped down and whispered: "I'm here, Mother.
I love you. I'm coming back tomorrow." Then she kissed her cheek, and
was surprised and a little comforted to find it warm.


It was not till they had driven some way in the car that she realized
Townley was taking her back to Bladbean.

"Why aren't we going to Harlakenden?"

"Because Bladbean's much nearer, and you'll be looked after there."

"But I--I want to go home."

Her voice faltered and quavered like a child's, touching him
inexpressibly.

"You poor little kid! You've been up all night and you must go to bed at
once and have a good sleep or you won't be fit for anything. I shouldn't
dream of taking you to a place where there's nobody to look after you."

"Elsie Iggulsden comes at half-past seven."

"And a lot of use she'd be! Why, she's younger than you are. No, you're
coming home with me and Mother will look after you till Uncle and Auntie
are out of hospital. Bladbean's at least ten miles nearer Maidstone than
Harlakenden; it'll be more convenient from every point of view for you
to stay there. And we shall all love having you."

"Oh, please . . ." She thought it would be terrible to have Aunt Martha
trying to take her mother's place. She would far rather be alone at
Harlakenden, alone with the familiar furniture and friendly rooms and
the things her father and mother had used. . . . But of course Townley
was right about its being so far away, and she could not very well get
over to Maidstone without his car. She saw the wisdom of what he had
decided, though it struck her even then that he might have asked her
first. "Oh, please . . ." she repeated weakly, but said no more.

"I'll be able to run you over to the hospital every day, and tomorrow
I'll go to Harlakenden and see about things there. Kemp and Waghorne can
quite well carry on by themselves for a time. I suppose your father's
got all his ploughing done?"

"All but the oast-field. It's been so wet . . ."

"And all his roots lifted?"

"Not quite all."

He was making clear her father's deficiencies as a farmer, and she found
a queer, defensive pity swelling in her heart. Up till this moment her
anxiety for her mother had so swamped every other feeling that she had
scarcely thought of her father at all, but now that Townley's questions
belittled him, she saw him for a moment with her mother's eyes--a poor,
helpless, struggling creature at odds with life and his own nature, whom
it was her duty to help and defend.

"We're terribly short-handed at Harlakenden; and this year the weather's
been against us, too."

He said nothing, and she leaned back, still thinking of her father. In
her first anxiety she had taken for granted that he was to blame for
anything that had happened, and the discovery of the accident had so
stunned her that she had been unable to revise that opinion. But now she
saw that quite probably he was not responsible at all--the sudden dazzle
of a car's headlights in a narrow lane would be enough to frighten
Soldier without any mishandling of the reins . . . the person ultimately
responsible was the person who had substituted a sensitive animal for an
insensitive machine.

She herself and she only was the author of the night's tragedy. . . For
a moment she faced the thought in all its implications, and sank beneath
a sense of cruelty, of a latent savagery at the world's heart, that made
her feel she had never suffered before. But the next moment she had
plucked it from her and flung it away--as years ago she had flung away a
bat that had dropped out of the beams of the cart lodge on to her
shoulder. She had plucked it off and dashed it down, and then she had
run shuddering to her mother. . . . Oh, Mother! Mother!

"Don't be unhappy, kid. She'll do nicely--she really will."

His kind voice close to her ear was her only intimation that she had
spoken the words out loud.

In a few minutes they were at Bladbean. The dawn already shone in a pale
mere of light, low down in the sky beyond Dockenden; but the night still
hung in the west and north with a few trembling stars. A cock crew
behind the barn, and another answered him from far away; as Rose climbed
stiffly to the ground there came a still fainter voice from the east, as
if the morning had uttered a cry.

"It doesn't seem worth while going to bed."

"But you're going," said Townley, with a smile.

"I'd really rather not. I can easily lie down on the sofa for a few
hours. I don't want you to wake Aunt Martha . . ." She had a fear that
he might want to repeat her uncle's settlement of her in her aunt's bed.

"No. I'll go and wake Sarah--it's nearly time she was up, anyhow. I'll
tell her to get ready the spare room."

He bounded upstairs and soon from her cold seat in the parlour she could
hear movements above--voices--doors opening and shutting--a room being
prepared for her. What was the use? It was all a waste of time, for she
could not sleep. She felt as if she would never sleep again, and,
anyhow, she could not sleep in daylight. It was nearly daylight now. The
dawn wind swept up rustling to the house and buffeted it with wet
leaves; birds began to mutter in the ivy, and white swords of light came
stabbing between the curtains that draped the window, putting an end to
a night that seemed to have lasted for ever.

Her head fell back against the antimacassar. She was very tired, but
miraculously she was no longer ill. The fever of her mind seemed to have
drained away the fever of her body; and she felt quite well again--quite
well, but quite worn out--as one might eel when one was dying. . . . She
closed her eyes against the light. A lamp flashed on dark hedgerows
. . . she saw the tongue of a lane before her, narrowing into deep
woods, down a little hill towards a shaw. . . . Oh! . . . Her eyes
opened on a globe of lamplight floating in a pool of whitish dusk.
Townley had came to tell her the room was ready.


That picture of the narrowing, dipping lane was with her for many nights
and days whenever she closed her eyes; indeed, for years to come she
could never be sure that she might not see it between sleeping and
waking. She lived uneasily with it for a week at Bladbean, telling
nobody of what she suffered when she was alone, for fear that they might
forbid her loneliness.

At first they had tried to keep her in bed--until they found that she
really was none the worse for her experiences. By some strange alchemy
of body and mind her illness had been consumed in the alembic of her
grief. She had woken that next morning still feeling well, and very much
less tired--ready to drive with Townley to the hospital for another look
at her unconscious mother.

This time the ward had been awake all round them, and there had been a
queer incongruity in the stillness behind the screens. It was
visiting-day and there were people sitting by every bed, most of them
talking and laughing. Rose had sat beside her mother, holding her hand,
and it had seemed to her that the hand responded to her touch, the hot,
dry fingers curling round her own.

"Oh, Nurse, I believe she knows I'm here."

"I don't think she can. She's quite unconscious."

"But her hand's holding mine. Look! now I've let go."

"That's only a reflex. See, she'll hold my hand just the same. But
she'll probably know you in a day or two. The concussion isn't very
severe."

Rose liked the nurse, who was young and friendly, better than she liked
the Sister; but the nurse seemed no more willing than the Sister to give
her any definite information. The operation had been safely performed,
but they hadn't been able to do very much. Later on, perhaps, they might
do more. Her mother was on the danger list, but that didn't mean she was
going to die. Oh, dear no! Her father was on the danger list too, and
Rose, feeling self-reproachful, went in to see him for a few minutes.

He was conscious and rolled his aching head to and fro on the pillow,
asking her plaintive questions: "Have you seen your mother?--how does
she look?--what do they say about her? No one will tell me anything."

No one would tell Rose anything, and she too began to resent that
attitude of cheerful non-committal, from which her questions bounced off
like balls. She once asked if she could speak to the doctor, but was
amiably told he was engaged. Townley probably knew more than she did,
but neither would he tell her much. Her mother had two broken ribs and
some internal injuries, besides concussion; her father had had his leg
broken but there did not seem to be very much damage beyond that, though
it was too early to say for certain. It was thought that Soldier had
trodden on her mother . . .

"Then Mother's the worse of the two," said Rose.

"Oh no, it doesn't follow. You mustn't worry about her, kid. Everything
possible is being done."

She was annoyed with him for his hard, bright words--they showed him to
her as she had seen him eight months ago, driving along the Headcorn
road and refusing to take her home in spite of her entreaties. But she
could not see him for long in so harsh a light. She knew him now as she
had not known him then; she knew that his self-confidence covered a very
real efficiency and was combined with a most comforting kindness.

She could not have endured that week at Bladbean without him. His sharp
effectiveness cut right through the pottering methods of her uncle and
aunt--there was something clear-cut and sensible even about his
evasions. Though he insisted on keeping her wrapped in what he
considered a protective ignorance, he had otherwise done everything to
put her world to rights. He had retrieved her father's car from the
ditch at Spelmonden, he had visited Harlakenden and made all necessary
arrangements for its machinery to work both indoors and out till the
owners returned. He had brought her clothes and necessaries over to
Bladbean. She had nothing to think of or worry about except the chief
thought and torment of her life.

At the end of three days she was told at the hospital that her mother
had recovered consciousness.

"Oh . . ." her power for happiness was stiff from disuse and she
scarcely knew how to yield herself to this announcement. But even while
she hesitated the cancelling words came: "You must be very quiet and not
stay long. She's very ill."

She found a mother who had come alive in two crimson spots and two
burning eyes, and lay under the sheet with a curious flatness, as if her
body had neither substance nor motion. Only her eyes moved as her
daughter appeared round the screen.

"That you, Rose?" Her voice was as flat and still as her body.

"Yes, Mother darling."

"Come and sit where I can see you. It hurts me to move my head."

Rose sat down directly opposite her.

"How are you, duckie? Have you got over that nasty turn you had?"

"I've quite got over it, Mother."

"They tell me it was all some time ago. I hope you weren't very worried
about our not coming back."

"Mother, don't talk about _me_. I'm quite all right. How are _you_
feeling?"

"Well, I suppose I might feel worse, considering all things, but I'm
glad I don't. . . . Rose, you know how it happened, don't you? Soldier
took fright at a car with enormous headlights that came round the
corner. You're not to think it had anything to do with your father, for
he was perfectly all right. He'd nothing to drink the whole evening but
a glass of ale."

"I know, Mother. I know it wasn't his fault."

"I was afraid you'd think it was--that he'd had too much and had driven
carelessly. But nobody could have expected Soldier to go off like that.
. . . But the car came on us so suddenly--and those awful lights! I see
them now when I shut my eyes."

"Mother, don't . . ."

"Don't what?"

"Talk about Soldier and the lights. For it was all my fault. If it
hadn't been for me, you wouldn't have had Soldier out at all--you'd have
gone in the car. But I was so afraid that Father would drive it wildly
and smash you up that I took out the make-and-break, so's he couldn't
start . . ."

The words flew out of her in a spate, rising from a newly-buried layer
of thought that suddenly had burst its tomb. She nearly choked with
them.

Her mother looked bewildered.

"Took out the make-and-break? What's that?"

"A part of the magneto. The car couldn't go without it."

"You mean to tell me that you took out a part of the car so as to spoil
it. Rose, you're to put it back at once."

"I have put it back, Mother--long ago."

"I'm surprised you should have done such a mischievous thing--it isn't
like you."

Rose saw that her mother had failed to grasp the significance of what
she had told her. She saw it only as a naughty trick and was scolding
her for it.

"Your father thinks a lot of his car," she continued, "and you should
help him get the best he can out of it. . . . You see, it helps him when
he wants . . . I mean, I don't quite know . . . I can quite remember
Soldier's bolting off, though I don't remember the crash. . . ."

"Don't try to remember, Mother. Don't try to speak."

She was suddenly afraid to see her mother's mind wandering.

"It's only I want you to promise . . . your father's birthday . . . no,
not that . . . I mean the lights . . . Soldier's birthday. . . ."

Rose stood up and looked agonisedly round the screen. Her mother had
become a stranger.


When she called the next day she was told her mother was asleep and
urged not to see her. Rose came away unwillingly--for Townley would not
wait on the chance of an awakening--but a little comforted by words that
drifted into her mind from some unremembered source and said themselves
over and over again throughout the day--"Lord, if she sleep, she shall
do well."

The next morning she was told she could not be driven over till the
afternoon. Her uncle wanted the car. She watched him drive away with her
aunt, and went into the kitchen garden to gather chrysanthemums to take
to her mother. There was a large, late patch of them behind the
tool-shed, and that day they had sweetened all the air around them, as
the early sunshine lay upon their petals with the unmelted dew.

Rose picked them with a lingering pleasure in them, which seemed in some
strange way to belong to the present rather than to the future--she
could almost feel that her mother was with her now, enjoying them. As
she yielded herself to this imagination her heart was flooded with a
tide of happiness so deep and so pure that all life and hope seemed to
be born anew in it. Her mother's pleasure was not only in the flowers,
but in her, herself, in her Rose Deeprose, who was so inexpressibly dear
to her. The tears welled up in her eyes and then brimmed over to mix
with the dew and the pollen in the fruitful hearts of the flowers.

Townley called her into the house shortly before dinner time--called her
and then disappeared. She saw her aunt standing just inside the parlour
door, still dressed in her outdoor things.

"Come in, dear, and shut the door."

Rose obeyed and then noticed her eyes were pink--Aunt Martha had been
crying.

Her heart leaped suddenly and was still. The whole world was still
except for the ticking of the parlour clock which measured, not time,
but eternity. In an agonised slow-motion she watched her aunt put out
her arms and enfold her.



                             _Chapter Five_

"Your mother wouldn't have known you even if you had been there," said
her uncle.

"How can you tell? She might have--even if she couldn't speak. That's
what they always said--that she didn't know me. But she did--I know she
did. She held my hand. I expect she was wondering where I was--why I
didn't come--but she couldn't ask for me . . . and you kept me away from
her. . . . Oh, Mother! Mother! . . ."

Her voice broke, but not into tears. Her tears were in the
chrysanthemums.

"Your mother wouldn't have wanted you to be there. A dying person. . . .
Well, I don't want to say anything to upset you, but a dying person
isn't a fit sight for a girl of your age. The matron said you had much
better not be there."

"But I'm her daughter. I ought to have been there and I know she wanted
me. She wouldn't have thought I was too young. I'm old enough to know my
father drinks so I'm old enough to see my mother die."

"Hush! Hush!" cried her uncle and her aunt.

"But it's true. She told me herself because she said I was old enough to
know. She never would have thought I was too young to be with her when
she was dying. . . . Oh, she must have wondered why I let her die
alone----"

"She wasn't alone. Your aunt and I were with her till the last."

"That makes no difference. She doesn't belong to you--you aren't hers."

"Her own brothers and sisters knew about the accident. It's not our
fault they didn't come."

"Probably they were like me--they didn't really know anything. They
didn't know she'd die so soon. Oh, if I'd thought that last time I saw
her that I was never to see her again . . ."

"There's the dinner bell," said Aunt Martha--"you'll feel better when
you've had some dinner, Rose."

"Do you expect me to eat?"

She turned away, her handkerchief over her face to hide its burning
dryness.

They stood for a moment looking at her and at each other. Then her uncle
said in a low voice, "Best leave her," and they went out of the room.

She took away the handkerchief from her face and looked out of the
window. It framed a bright, pale blue sky, a lombardy poplar and a patch
of sunflowers. She stared at them as an animal might stare at a
picture--they were flat, without colour or distinction, bearing no
relation to anything she knew. She sat down, still staring at them.

"Rose."

The door creaked as it opened and Townley came in, holding a glass in
his hand.

"Here, drink this; it will do you good."

She smelled whisky and shook her head.

"Come, dear, for my sake."

He sat down beside her on the settee and tried to put the glass into her
hand.

"I don't want it. Please take it away."

"Rose, dear . . ."

He put his arm round her and drew her close to him, his fingers pressed
in at her waist. Her head drooped and she felt his shoulder under her
cheek, the roughness of his sleeve and a consoling warmth and strength.

"Rose, dear--let me comfort you."

But it was his very tenderness that had muffled and deceived her, that
had kept her from her mother's side. He had been in league with her
uncle and aunt to keep things from her--things she ought to have
known--to treat her like a little girl and to rob her mother of her
daughter. . . .

She sprang to her feet.

"No, Townley. Go away. Leave me alone."

He stood up, too, and she saw offence struggling with compassion on his
face.

"Really, kid, you're being very unfair. Everything that we've done has
been done to help you----"

"Well, you haven't helped me. You've made me ten times--ten thousand
times--more miserable than if you'd told me things and let me be with
mother."

"But you don't seem to take in the fact that she was unconscious . . ."

"Unconscious! what's unconscious? Nobody knows. All they know is that
she couldn't move or speak. But she may have been able to think. . . .
Nobody can say for certain that she couldn't."

"The doctors say it."

"I don't see how even they can know--and if she really was past
everything, why were Uncle George and Aunt Martha there?"

"It was only decent that some of her relations should be present--but
not a girl like you."

"Oh, don't let's go on saying that over and over again."

She put her hands over her ears. He looked angry for a moment, but the
next he became gentle.

"Rose"--he took her hands and pulled them down--"listen to me, kid. I
can't bear to see you angry with us all. If we've made a mistake, I'm
sorry. I don't think we have and in time you'll see, yourself, that we
haven't; but whatever we did, we thought only of what was best for
you--we hadn't any other idea in our heads. So won't you let me comfort
you? Sit down and drink this whisky. You must have something--you're all
upset. Sit down and drink it to please me."

He had her down on the settee again, with his arm about her, while with
the other hand he held the glass to her lips. She touched it and
swallowed a mouthful--two mouthfuls--then pushed it away.

"Please go, Townley. It's no good. I want to be alone."

Having gained so much of his point, he was appeased a little and stood
up.

"I'll leave the glass here."

"Very well."

"And when I come back I expect to see it finished."

She said nothing, but her heart was full of hatred of him and his
triumphing, patronizing, comforting kindness.

Harlakenden! Harlakenden! Harlakenden! . . . the reverse side of her
longing to be there was her longing to be away from Bladbean. She must
leave at once; she could not possibly stay, and the only time for her to
go was now. If she waited till her Uncle and aunt and Townley had
finished dinner there would be another scene and they would never let
her out of their sight, but would plague and argue and interfere till
she was nearly mad. If she went now she could slip out of the house
while they were still eating, and they would not discover she was gone
till she was far away. She would go across the fields to Charing, and
take the bus to Shadoxhurst. She would not burden herself with
luggage--all she wanted was to be back in the loved, familiar place,
with the things she knew all round her, the things that had belonged to
her mother, that they had tended and cared for together. Bladbean was a
part of Uncle George and Aunt Martha and their deceit, a part of Townley
and his swagger. She must get out of it and go where there was nothing
but peace and space and memory. . . . She took off her shoes and ran
upstairs.

In two minutes she was down again in her outdoor clothes. She listened
outside the dining-room door and heard the drawl of an uninterrupted
conversation. But she must not linger; they would be out soon. Townley
would be sure to come and see if she had drunk her whisky.

The movement and excitement were doing her good, though she still had
grief to pay, having hitherto spent herself in anger. But at present her
mind was empty of everything except her intent to be gone. Luckily the
dining-room window looked out on the side of the house, so no one saw
her run down the garden path between the sunflowers. At the gate she
turned left and went through the farmyard into the orchard, and from the
orchard passed into the fields. She was safe. Even when they found out
she was gone they would not at first think of looking for her; she had
not taken anything--not even a comb or a toothbrush--so they would think
she had only gone for a walk and would come back.

She could not at the moment decide what she should do later about
letting them know. Her instinct was to hide herself without trace, but
her reason told her that she could not be really hidden at Harlakenden.
Directly they knew she was gone they would think of her there and follow
her. Or they might send the police after her . . . or, worse still,
Townley in his fast, efficient car. No, she would have to tell them
something in self-defence. What should she tell them? They deserved
nothing from her but lies; but she had always hated lies and her mother
had hated them--she would not tell one now. The best thing she could do
would be, perhaps, to telegraph to her mother's people, urging them to
come at once. Her Deeprose relations would, she knew, prefer her Burton
relations to stay at Harlakenden rather than at Bladbean. There had
always been a certain amount of antagonism between Deeprose and Burton,
and if she barricaded herself with Burtons . . .

She would not mind having them with her, because her heart turned
instinctively at this hour towards her mother's people. They were the
children who had played in the Norfolk farmyard, the heroes and heroines
of her mother's tales--little Joe, little Susie, little Stan, and little
May, who had teased and petted and scared and delighted little Hattie.
They had been part of the secret bond between her mother and herself,
and now they were her mother's shadow left upon the world.

She planned these things in the bus, filling her mind with schemes; she
did not dare let her mind run empty till she came to Harlakenden. She
had lost her anger now--the fire behind her eyes had turned to water,
and directly she was alone the tears would fall. They must not fall now,
even though the bus was empty; for sorrow here was a part of the jolting
traffic of the road, vagabond and restless. She must not cry till she
had a home for sorrow. Till then she must think of how she could make
ready two spare rooms in the old part of the house. There were one or
two rooms partly furnished, and if Elsie helped her . . . She wondered
if Elsie would be there, if she was still coming to Harlakenden to light
the fires and open the windows, or if she would have to be fetched from
her mother's. . . . She bent her whole mind upon this problem, setting
her hopes and cares upon it, giving all her thoughts to solve it as if
it had been the riddle of the Universe.


Evidently the Deeproses had resented her departure even more than she
expected, for they made no attempt to follow her to Harlakenden. They
knew she was there, because in the end she decided it would be best to
tell them, and sent out Waghorne with a telegram to Bladbean as well as
Fakenham, but they made no appearance and no reply. The next day brought
Deeproses from Frittenden, Smarden, Bethersden and wheresoever they were
scattered in the 'dens of Kent, but Bladbean still remained offended and
aloof. It was not till the funeral that she saw anything of Uncle George
and Aunt Martha or Townley, and then the behaviour of all three was
cold. No doubt she had treated them unkindly and ungratefully, but it
was a long time before she could feel sorry for it.

Her first evening at Harlakenden was spent alone. Elsie Iggulsden was
not there; indeed, it was some days before she could be retrieved, and
Rose had all the distraction of preparing rooms, making up beds,
rearranging furniture and other forms of uncongenial work. But she did
no work that first evening; she did not expect her guests to arrive till
late the following day, and her own necessity for action of mind and
body had come to an end with her crossing of the familiar threshold--or
rather with her first sight of that stark housefront from the distance
of Plurenden lane.

She had never known before how much she loved the place; indeed, she did
not seem to have loved it until now, when it was not only her home,
familiar from childhood, but her refuge, where she could hide from all
the stupidity, deceit, and aggression that had been with her for the
last few days. The mere contrast between the two houses was a relief.
She was glad to be rid of the sagging beams, the crooked stairs, the
wide, old-fashioned fireplaces, the insistent quaintness of Bladbean, to
find herself in the high, cold rooms with their sash-windows gaping
almost to the floor, to run up and down the steep, stiff tongue of
stairs, and crouch above the fire she had kindled in the spoon-shaped
Victorian grate. The empty ugliness of Harlakenden gave her a wonderful
feeling of space and liberty.

Apart from this first relief there were things to distress her. Elsie
had not thought of putting the house to rights, and on the kitchen table
were two cups and saucers standing beside a teapot which waited for Mrs.
Deeprose to come home from her party at Bladbean and make herself and
her husband a cup of tea before they went to bed. Her work-basket, too,
stood open, with a needle holding the sides of a half-finished darn over
a wooden toadstool marked "A Present From Tunbridge Wells."

As she gazed at these things left over from a lost and broken world Rose
felt her tears falling at last. She sat down at the table and leaned her
head upon it between her outstretched arms. Convulsive sobs heaved her
shoulders, but died away as the tears began to fall more naturally and
freely. Her grief became a part of solitude, and brought with it a
renewed sense of escape. She could cry now without fear of being dragged
on her Aunt Martha's bosom or of feeling Townley's arm come round her,
his fingers kneading at her waist. . . . She was free--and alone except
for a presence that floated against her legs and which she knew was
Peter, her mother's cat. . . . Oh, Peter, Peter, what shall we both do
now? . . .

She must have cried for nearly a quarter of an hour, and the taste of
the tears upon her lips was as the taste of poppy and mandragora, a
syrup that clouded her brain. The violence of thought that had struggled
to subdue the violence of sorrow weakened into a kind of daze; the
acuteness of feeling which she had diverted into small, foolish
channels, lay spread in a still, silent pool. She was like some one
drugged--a thing of torpor and stupefaction.

She lifted her head slowly. It was past twilight now--almost dark. The
shapes in the kitchen were ghostly and the outside world was becoming as
unreal as the world within. Peter came drifting through it, and his purr
rose in the stillness--he was glad to have some one back in the house
which had been his alone for so long. Waghorne had taken home the dog
with him and this was the first time for some days that he had had
company. The kitchen seemed full of his miniature roar. . . . Peter,
dear Peter, I'll cook you a rabbit tomorrow. Yes I will.

Still moving automatically, she made herself a cup of tea and boiled an
egg she found in the larder. She was ludicrously, shamefully hungry and
hunted round the place for food, finding, besides the egg, a tin of
sardines and some stale bread in the bin. She ate them ravenously, then
lit a candle and went upstairs. She must go to sleep before she
woke--before the drugging effect of tears passed off and she could think
and suffer again.

The landing was flooded with moonlight, passing in through the long
central window of the housefront, and she suddenly, as it were, saw
herself standing like a ghost with her hand upon the latch of her
mother's door. She hesitated, then opened the door and walked in. It had
struck her that she would feel less lonely in her mother's room than in
her own. She went in and the climbing moon showed her a black-and-white
sketch of the familiar furniture; her candle made scarcely more than a
yellow ball of light in the middle of the room. She could see her
mother's clothes lying folded on a chair; her worn brush was on the
dressing-table, and on the mantelpiece were the ornaments that
represented Christmas and birthday presents from little Rose, with a
china cat she herself had once bought at a bazaar, harassed and
undecided between the duties of charity and economy. The sight of these
things was not painful like the sight of the waiting cups downstairs,
but somehow comforting and reassuring. Rose had looked at them so often
with her mother, fingered them and dusted them, that they seemed to
bring back her world to normal, to change the woman with the burning
eyes and wandering tongue into her mother, homely in her apron or cosy
in her flannel dressing-gown.

There, too, was the bed, with the two pillows. She suddenly thought of
her father's pillow as well as her mother's . . . she had scarcely
thought of him at all till now.

But now she climbed up on the bed and laid her head upon her mother's
pillow, looking towards her father's. It was like this that her mother
had lain and looked for nearly twenty years. Her eyes and her heart had
been full of this man, and now her eyes were closed and her heart was
still. She had heard her mother say "Rose, there may come a time when
I'm not here," and she had answered: "Mother, don't say that! I should
die if you died." But her mother had died and Rose was not dead. She was
here, lying on her mother's pillow, trying to see her father with her
mother's eyes. . . . In the pillow lurked that faint cleanly smell of
brown soap which was her mother's personal perfume. She pressed her
tear-stained face down into it, pulling the quilt over her shoulder with
a huddling, childish gesture, and fell asleep in her grief as in a
cradle.



                             _Chapter Six_

"Time the great healer . . ." said the vicar of Shadoxhurst, "in time,
my dear, your grief will pass into a very loving memory and you will
find your happiness in growing up into the woman your mother would have
wished you to be."

"Time's the great healer," said her aunt Susan Medlar, the married
Burton sister, "and what you need, dear, is a change of scene as well. I
hope that later on when your father's able to spare you, you'll come and
stay with us at Primrose Hall."

"Time's the healer," said Aunt May Burton, "you're still very young, and
you'll get over it as young people always do."

"Tame's the great healer," said Mrs. Swaffer of the White Hart, "that's
what Ay always say. You'll soon feel better, dearie, and your dear
mother wouldn't want you to be always grieving."

"Time's the healer," said her father, still in his hospital bed; "that's
the only hope for both of us, my poor little Rose."

There seemed a singular unanimity of opinion on this subject; more,
thought Rose, than the occasion warranted. As she recovered from the
shock that had mitigated the full force of grief, and came to an end of
those distracting activities which had accompanied the descent of Aunt
Susan Medlar, Aunt May Burton, and the Burton uncles upon Harlakenden,
losing also that little drama of herself as the centre of a universal
woe, she found nothing in time to diminish, but much to increase, her
sense of loss. A day or two without her mother was not unnatural or
unaccustomed--there had been absences on both sides; but when day after
day went by and week after week, without hope of any return, when new
experiences piled up without a chance of ever being communicated, and
questions arose that could never be answered, then Rose began to find
time no kinder than a series of empty halls down which she went calling
echoes.

Her mother's clothes were given away, some to Mrs. Waghome and some to
Mrs. Kemp. All her little oddments and personal treasures went either to
her brothers and sisters or came into general use. Rose had her gloves
and handkerchiefs and those mantelpiece ornaments that had once been her
own gift. Her father kept her Bible and her wedding ring. Thus time
wiped Mrs. Deeprose out of her house. Elsie Iggulsden was careful never
to speak of her; when she wanted to tell Rose that her mother had
ordered things differently, she said, "This is how it used to be done."
Kemp and Waghorne locked their teeth on her name and torture would not
have dragged it past their lips. Softy, the dog, for a few days ran
about looking for her, but in time made up his mind that she was gone
and looked for her no more. Peter, the cat, never looked for her at all,
and everyone thought, how like a cat! Rose thought so, too, until one
day he suddenly fixed his mysterious eyes upon her and opened his mouth
in a cry that seemed to hold in itself something of her own loneliness
and loss. Then she knew that he had not forgotten her mother any more
than she had; but he did not look for her because, unlike the foolish,
hopeful dog, he knew that it was no use and that the dead do not return.

So time passed, and the only good thing it did for Rose was to make her
forget that it was her own wild act that had indirectly been the cause
of her mother's death. Though it was not really so much time that did
this for her as the utter impossibility of enduring such a thought. She
had fled from it and forced herself to look at the whole incident with
her mother's eyes. Her mother sinking into the drowsiness of death had
seen it only as a piece of childish mischief, and that was how she must
henceforth see it herself. She had done wrong to tamper with her
father's car. . . . "Your father thinks a lot of his car . . . you
should help him to get the best he can out of it." That was what she
must do--help her father to use and enjoy his car and try to make up for
having ever been so naughty as to spoil it.

With this end in view, she spent most of the day before he came out of
hospital in cleaning and polishing the car. She threw bucket after
bucket of water over it, worked with sponge and rag and brush until the
sweat poured into her eyes. She polished all its clumsy brasswork and
gave it a golden, glittering air that made it, but for its preposterous
shape, look new. Her father was delighted when he saw it, and overjoyed,
if not a little surprised, when she told him it went perfectly well.

"But how can it? It wouldn't move that time I tried to start it."

"I don't know. It seems just as usual--Townley's driven it."

"Did you have anyone from Billings to see it?"

"No."

"How did you find out it was all right?"

"Because it just went when we cranked it."

"Well, it's a mystery to me. . . . I suppose there must have been a
block in the petrol-feed, and then somehow later it shifted or a blocked
jet. . . . Perhaps if I'd tried it once again that night it would have
gone."

Rose was silent. Nothing would make her tell her father what had
happened, because, apart from other considerations, it was the last
secret that she had shared with her mother. Her mother was the only
person who knew what she had done, and somehow that knowledge seemed to
link them still, a tiny, secret thread between two worlds.


The months went by. Winter crept past Rose's birthday. She was
seventeen--she was grown up. She coiled her hair, which hitherto she had
worn in two pigtails, and bought in Ashford a rather unfashionable,
elderly-looking hat. She wanted to put aside her childhood with some
decisive gesture, and this was all that she could think of. The hard,
unbecoming lines of the hat made her look curiously like her mother.

Harlakenden continued much as usual, except that when Elsie Iggulsden
had finished her apprenticeship, Rose kept her on at the price of an
extra two shillings a week. She really could not spare the time to train
another girl, and they would lose more than the value of two shillings
if she gave up her work on the farm. So Elsie took quavering charge of
the kitchen, and Rose went back to the farmyard in her breeches, running
in desperately once or twice a day to make sure that dinner would appear
at something near the proper time and that Elsie would not go home
without having washed up.

Her father was not able for much that year. His leg had mended well, but
he could not walk without a stick, and even then he experienced
difficulties which the doctor said were mainly nervous in origin. He was
a bad subject for illness, as, apart from the rotting of past indulgence
he had no idea either of bearing pain or of obeying doctors' orders. Dr.
Cooke had forbidden him any hard drinks whatever and had recommended him
to use his damaged leg as much as possible. Rose spent a lot of time
trying to prevent him having his accustomed beer and whisky and in
persuading him to leave his armchair by the fire for exercise in the
damp and cold. He refused to take any notice of her--even when she put
up her hair and wore the matronly hat. She was not sure if he drank much
apart from his public defiances, but she feared so . . . there were
mornings when he said he felt too ill to get up and would not let her
come into his room.

Sometimes she cried and worked herself into a frenzy over her
helplessness. Once or twice she raged at him and then was suddenly
brought to shame by his pained and bewildered look. Her mother had never
raged, and now Rose was in her place and must use her methods even if
she could not hope for her success. Her mother had told her at that last
birthday treat that she had not taken her into the secret of her
father's weakness so that she could help her keep him in order, but so
that she might understand, sympathize, and forgive. Her mother had never
hoped to restrain him completely, though she had naturally been able to
do more than her daughter. No, restraint was impossible, but if she
thought of her mother she might still achieve tenderness.

After the first few stormy months she concentrated on the welfare of the
farm. Here--out-of-doors--she had practically a free hand. Her father
let matters slide, apart from driving the car to market, which Rose was
still too young to do and which he perversely insisted did not hurt his
leg so much as walking. Important matters were brought to him for
decision, but Rose was in charge of the actual work--if anyone could be
said to be in charge of the slow, undeviable processes of Kemp and
Waghorne. Realizing that some member of the Deeprose family must be
about, and recognizing the master's right to be ill, they accepted her
presence while disapproving of her breeches. But actually you might as
well try to change by argument the succession of summer and winter as
their antediluvian methods in which a pinch of sense lay buried in a
peck of custom.

Rose at her age was all for modern ways in farming, and even read books
upon the subject; but on the rare occasions when she was able, with her
father behind her, to make them carry out her plans, they always managed
somehow to bring them to nothing. If she had a hedge grubbed up to
enlarge Harlakenden's small, stodgy fields, they saw that enough roots
were left to sprout again; if she changed the cattle food the heifers
slipped their calves; if she substituted day-old chicks for sittings,
half of them would die. And their unvarying comment on such mishaps was
a long, inarticulate rumble which began, "Stands to reason . . ."

But she fought them more sturdily than she fought her father. She must
keep the farm going until he was able to take charge again--and even
afterwards. There was at present no reason why she should not succeed;
for post-war prosperity was in full swing and subsidies and high prices
actually sometimes made farming profitable. Harlakenden was at a
disadvantage, owing to the fact that it had always been a little
neglected and a little mismanaged. It was Rose's task to put an end to
all that, and nothing seemed to be in the way but her inexperience and
the limits of her physical strength.

From this point of view it was a pity that relations with Bladbean still
were strained. The George Deeproses had not yet forgotten her behaviour
on the day of her mother's death; to name her was to name ingratitude,
and though they came over from time to time to see poor Wally, their
manner towards his daughter was chilly for months. As for Townley, he
never came at all. She had, she realized, irretrievably offended him.
She had run away from his comfort, his protection, his kindness, and he
would not forgive her.

That autumn Martha Deeprose died suddenly after a short illness and all
Rose's heart went out in compassion towards her bereaved cousin. She
believed him to be suffering what she had suffered for her mother, and
ignoring their estrangement as she felt he must now ignore it, she
poured herself out in a long letter of sympathy, in which she offered
every confidence and every tenderness that she thought could assuage his
grief. In reply she received one of the conventional, printed cards that
the family distributed throughout the neighbourhood. She had not known
till then that he had power to hurt her.


The following spring Elsie Iggulsden gave notice. Rose was surprised and
annoyed.

"Why, Elsie? You're getting on quite well here. Has anything happened
that you don't like?"

"No, Miss, it isn't that. It's that I've had an offer."

"An offer!" Elsie looked so important that Rose thought it must be an
offer of marriage.

"Yes, from the new people at Stede Quarter. They want me to start there
next Monday week."

"Oh, I see. . . . But I didn't know anyone had taken Stede Quarter."

"Yes, Miss, it's been sold to gentry, and they're going to do it up. Mr.
Satchell's got the job and he says they're spending two thousand pounds
on it."

"My Heavens! they must be rich."

"Yes, they are rich. They're paying me a pound a week!"

Rose was shocked.

"So that's why you're leaving me all of a sudden like this. How on earth
did they ever hear of you?"

"I expect Mr. Satchell told them."

"And do you really think you're worth a pound a week?"

"Yes, Miss--and I'm to wear a brown dress afternoons and mother's making
me up three prints."

"Well, I hope you'll be able to manage, that's all. And as for me, I
suppose I shall have to start training some one else, just when we're
getting busy with the lambing."

"There's my sister Dolly left school at Christmas, the one that had her
tonsils out. She'll be ready to take a place in a week or ten days."

"I see."

Rose saw her strait as a family arrangement of the Iggulsdens. If it had
been possible she would have refused to take Dolly, but she did not know
of anyone else ready to come at just that moment, and she could not
possibly be left without a girl at all.

So in due course Dolly Iggulsden arrived, looking very much like Elsie a
year ago, especially as she inherited her sister's uniform of toe-length
apron and knee-length skirt. By nature she was, if anything, slower than
Elsie, and inclined to stay away unexpectedly because she "felt her
throat." That March Rose had four sock-lambs in the kitchen, which she
could not leave to an inexperienced girl. She was forced indoors just
when she most wanted to be out among the spring crops and the engrossing
spring work of Harlakenden; and yet she could not say to her father:
"Look here, you spend most of the day at home. Why don't _you_ teach
Dolly how to clean the rooms and cook the dinner and feed the lambs at
the proper time, while I go out and see to things on the farm?"

She often had to fight a certain bitterness in her thoughts of her
father. She did not trouble to fight it in her thoughts of Elsie
Iggulsden. But chiefly she blamed the new people at Stede Quarter who
had no better use for their money than to tempt servant girls away from
hard-working people. They must be fools, not knowing the way of things,
to offer so much to a sluttish child. Rose thought worse of them for
offering the money than of Elsie for leaving her to get it.


Stede Quarter was between four or five miles away, on the Ashford side
of Shadoxhurst--a flagrantly pretty old house, stamped with the full
signature of Ye Olde. It had belonged for several generations to a
branch of the Austin family, ubiquitous in the 'dens, but had been empty
for the last two years. A house agent had got hold of it and refused to
sell at a possible farming price. He was convinced that if only he
waited long enough he would find somebody to fall in love with it and
regard the payment of four thousand pounds as a lover's privilege.
Luckily this happened just in time to prevent its falling down.

Eric Lambert was an artist and also, paradoxically, a rich man, having
lately inherited forty thousand pounds from his father, a mill-owner in
Cheetham. He had a wife and a daughter, apparently both of the same age.
The neighbourhood was puzzled until it found out that Mrs. Lambert was
his second wife, and Miss Christian Lambert the daughter of his first.

He at once began to repair and improve Stede Quarter. The workmen came
there in April and were not gone till the end of September. The tale of
its wonders was spread throughout the country round Shadoxhurst and came
to Harlakenden with a special richness of detail, being told by Dolly
Iggulsden, sister of the translated Elsie. Rose soon grew tired of
hearing how Mr. Lambert had sent for his building-sand to the shires,
because there were things in it that shone and you saw them shining on
the wall, how he had brought workmen from London to put hot pipes in all
the rooms, how Joe Austin's bedroom had been turned into a bathroom and
the old apple-room as well, how there were sinks in all the bedrooms
instead of wash-stands, and a cupboard in the kitchen that made ice and
hummed like a thresher. The odd thing was that at the end of this
modernisation Stede Quarter looked even older than before.

Though she had once or twice gone out of her way on Ashford market days
to have a look at the place, Rose saw nothing of the people till they
had been in residence for three months or more. She had general
information from Dolly that Mr. Lambert was "clever," Mrs. Lambert was
"nice" and Miss Christian was "pretty," but no opportunity of confirming
or correcting these impressions. Nor was she really interested. Dolly's
communications bored her, and her only curiosity was why such apparently
rich and fastidious people should have Elsie Iggulsden for housemaid.
She came to the conclusion that, being from London, they did not know
any better.

Then on Christmas Day she saw them all at church. Rose was not a regular
church-goer; she went as often as she could, knowing that her mother
would not approve of laxity, but her undertakings usually kept her at
home on Sundays. Nor, she understood, had the Lamberts ever been seen in
church before. But Christmas Day is a grand occasion, for which the
toiler must contrive to clear an hour, and to which the intellectual may
stoop in search of local colour. Rose, sitting beside her father in the
centre aisle, saw Mr. Judge, the people's warden and keeper of the
Shadoxhurst stores, excitedly ushering three tall people into the seat
in front of her.

She guessed immediately who they were, even without the hoarse
murmurings of Mr. Judge. It was not usual for strangers to come to
Shadoxhurst, and they were obviously "gentry" too, though very different
from the only other representatives of that class in the church--the
party from Shadoxhurst Manor. Unlike Sir George Pelham of the Manor, who
wore a morning coat and grey trousers, Mr. Lambert wore a startling suit
of plum-coloured plus-fours. The lady next him, whom she guessed to be
Mrs. Lambert because Dolly had said she was dark, was dressed in red,
with a wide-brimmed hat, and had her hair bobbed and curled. But Rose's
glance passed swiftly over the peculiarities of these two, and rested in
delight and amazement on the third of the party, whose chief strangeness
was her beauty.

Never in her life had Rose seen anyone so beautiful. Indeed, up till
then she had not thought much about beauty in human beings. Her mother
had not been beautiful, nor were any of her aunts, nor, she knew, was
she herself. At school both Mrs. and Miss Murdoch had been plain and
none of the girls more than passably pretty. There were the film stars,
of course, but she never thought of these as being alive at all, nor was
the beauty of Miss Christian Lambert in the least like the beauty of a
film star. What was it like? . . . Rose stared at it through an hour and
a half of religious worship without finding any answer to the question.

Christian Lambert was tall, slight, and graceful. She had fair hair,
brushed back and coiled low. She had surprisingly large brown eyes. Her
face was pale, and sometimes Rose thought she looked delicate, but at
others she noticed warm flushing tints under the skin that seemed to
speak of health. Her beauty did not lie definitely in the lines of her
face and figure or in her colouring, nor was it alone in her attitude
and expression, but in something so elusively within and beyond these
that Rose for at least one moment wondered if it was not in her own eye.
Certainly to look at the girl in front of her pleased not only her eye
but her heart--she longed to know her, to talk to her. She felt she
could be friends with her. She wondered how old she was--probably a year
or two older than herself, though it was difficult to tell, because she
was so well groomed, so polished, so poised, so unlike Rose, whose
quaint air of maturity lay only in her black clothes and a hat much too
old for her.


               "All glory be to God on high,
                  And to the earth be peace:
                Good will henceforth from Heaven to men
                  Begin and never cease."

The last hymn had been sung, and she sadly put her hymn-book and
prayer-book back into their cardboard case. The Christmas Day service
was over, and she had worshipped; but it would not be discreet or kind
to ask her what or whom.


After that she became a little more interested in Dolly's
communications, though she affected an even greater indifference than
that she used to feel. The Lamberts, apparently, did not want to know
any of their neighbours, but had their friends down from London to visit
them. Miss Christian was funny and sometimes would not appear on these
occasions. Elsie evidently did not like Miss Christian so much as the
other two. She said she was difficult to please and didn't get on with
Mrs. Lambert. Rose pointed out rather eagerly that it was usual not to
get on with one's stepmother; to which Dolly rejoined that it wasn't
really like a stepmother because they called each other by their
Christian names, and anyhow the first wife had died a long time ago and
Miss Christian hadn't really had a home, so to speak, till her father
married again; so she'd nothing to blame anybody for.

Rose found that she wanted to take Miss Christian's part and had
difficulty in restraining herself. She could not believe that anyone so
beautiful could be selfish and unfriendly, as Elsie said she was. She
felt sure that she must be misunderstood. Every time she went to
church--and she went more often than she used to--she could feel her
heart thudding wildly, and she would come back all fagged with
disappointment because the three from Stede Quarter were never there.
Even on Easter Sunday they did not come. Rose resigned herself to the
conclusion that they were Godless.

This did not affect her in itself, as her own religion was little more
than an attempt to do what her mother would wish her to do and would
herself have done. But it sadly limited her chances of seeing them
again. They did not go to any of those places where she was accustomed
to meet her neighbours--she had no hope of seeing Christian Lambert at
Ashford market or in the Ashford picture palace, neither was there the
slightest chance that she would ever turn up at the Women's Institute.
Rose's normal life was lived a full five miles away; she was not likely
to have any sudden encounter in the fields or in the bus.

Sometimes she would be filled with an angry resentment of those things
which kept them apart. If she had been in a better position, more
prosperous, more established in Shadoxhurst society, she could have paid
a formal call on Stede Quarter. Elsie Iggulsden said there had been a
lot of callers, and Rose knew that Mrs. Bailey, the vicar's wife, had
hired the George Inn car and driven over one afternoon in her Sunday
best with her card-case. Why couldn't Rose do such a thing? For one mad
moment she wondered if she could go to Stede Quarter with her name
written on her father's card--one of those he gave to dealers at
market--and walk past Elsie Iggulsden into the drawing-room which had
been so often described to her. . . . She hesitated, but decided not to.
She was too ignorant of the details of the procedure and feared a
rebuff.

Perhaps it was silly of her to want so much to know this girl. She knew
nothing favourable of her except that she was beautiful, and her mother
had said again and again: beauty is only skin deep. But she could not
subdue her deep longing to see her again and speak to her. It lived on,
feeding on nothing except her loneliness, which was substantial enough.
She was desperately lonely. Until eighteen months ago she had never
experienced loneliness, because her mother had been her friend. But even
when her mother was alive she had sometimes wished for a girl friend of
her own age--she had felt it a drawback that the girls at school were so
uninteresting and that her only cousin was a man. And now when she had
no companion but her father, with whom she had scarcely a thought in
common, her whole heart and desire went out to this being who with the
golden apple of her beauty in a net of circumstance had captured her
imagination.


Then suddenly fate tossed her casually her heart's desire. It happened
under a dark cloud at Bladbean. Rose had gone over there one evening in
June, driving her father's car with the licensed authority of eighteen.
He himself stayed behind in one of his slow, tippling moods--a mood that
was responsible for her present trouble. He was not drunk enough to feel
ill and stop in bed out of harm's way, but in a querulously fighting
condition that had drawn him into battle with his men. And now to his
daughter's humiliation and dismay both Kemp and Waghorne had given
notice.

This was not merely inconvenient--it was catastrophic. Neither Kemp nor
Waghorne could be regarded as a prize in the agricultural labour-market,
but their departure was a public branding of Harlakenden, and Rose knew
that there would be very great difficulty in filling their places. For a
labouring-man to leave without financial compulsion on either side the
farm where he had worked for nearly twenty years was an event as damning
as it was rare. Rose knew what the neighbourhood would think and they
would think rightly. This tragedy had been blowing up for some time and
was consequent on her inability to control her father as her mother had
done. There was not the slightest chance of either of the men changing
his mind--they were no flighty maidservants, but solid, slow-moving
Kentishmen, who had probably spent months ruminating the action they now
had taken.

Wally Deeprose, justifying his infamy, only laughed and said it was a
good riddance. Kemp and Waghorne were poor, useless chaps, and the farm
would do better without them. Rose, after some desperate, exasperated
thinking, saw nothing for it but to drive over to Bladbean and ask her
uncle's advice. Bladbean was now on its old terms with Harlakenden, of
self-congratulating disapproval. Uncle George had forgiven Rose at last,
and Townley had not only forgiven her but forgotten her--she scarcely
ever saw him now.

"Well, my dear," said her uncle when she had told him everything, "I was
afraid something like that might happen. You'll really have to do
something about your father one day."

"What sort of thing? I've done everything I can possibly think of."

"Of course, my dear; you've done your best. But there are drugs, you
know--things you can put in his tea--cures. They advertise them."

"I shouldn't like to do anything like that."

"Well, you'll have to some day, or he'll wreck the farm. It's a bad time
for you to be losing your men just now. When do they leave you?"

"Waghorne's got a place at Watershuts, and he's leaving in a week. Kemp
hasn't anything fixed up, so I expect he'd stay a bit longer if I asked
him."

"M'yes. What about your shearing?"

"That's fixed. We never do it ourselves, you know. We have the shearers
in, and Father wrote to them a week ago."

"There's a lot of fly this year. Have you had much trouble with that?"

"Yes," said Rose, briefly.

"Well, you'll have to keep an eye on your fleeces till the shearers
come, and it will be difficult for you without Waghorne. He did the
lookering, didn't he?"

"He did, but I shall be able to manage with Kemp or any other man I can
find. I was hoping you might know of someone."

"I'm afraid I don't. There's been a dreadful shortage ever since the
war. Perhaps I might hear of a boy . . ."

"Oh Lord," sighed Rose, thinking of a Dolly in the farmyard as well as
in the kitchen.

"Well, we must be thankful for what we can get. You can always come to
me, you know. There's a lad called Swift at Staggers Aven. . . . I'll
see about him for you."

"Thank you, Uncle. Hullo, Townley!"

She was surprised to see her cousin come into the room, and with her
surprise came an unexpected pang. He looked so jaunty, firm, and set-up,
that she felt she had definitely lost something when he lost interest in
her.

"Hullo, Rose."

"I've come to ask Uncle----"

"I was wondering if you'd mind giving a lift to a friend of Mrs.
Hollinshed's when you go home. She came over by the bus, but seemingly
there isn't one back till after seven, and that's too late for her."

The precious Hollinsheds were now in residence at Bladbean; Rose knew
that her uncle had engaged a cook-housekeeper to come for three months
from Tunbridge Wells rather than lose them when his wife died.

"Certainly; of course. Where is it to?--Shadoxhurst?"

"No, about four miles beyond--a place called Stede Quarter."

"Oh . . ."

Rose felt her heart pump wildly. She could not form the words she wanted
to say.

"You can manage that, can't you?" Townley spoke sharply, imagining her
dissent. "It's only a few miles out of your way."

"I know. I can manage it quite well. I was only wondering . . . it's a
Mrs. Lambert, isn't it?" and she blushed deeply.

"A Miss Lambert. Do you know them?"

"No, but I've heard of them coming there."

She had fought her calmness and won it, though her heart was still
racing. "When does she want to start?"

"Oh, as soon as you're ready."

"I'm ready now."

"All right, then. I'll tell her."

He vanished, and Rose walked slowly after him to the door.

"I'll see Swift tomorrow," said her uncle, "and let you know about him."

"Thank you," she said--"thank you, Uncle, very much. And you, God," she
added in her heart, "thank you ten thousand times."


Christian Lambert was wearing a red dress. Rose saw scarcely more of her
than that.

"It's really very kind of you, Miss Deeprose," said Mrs. Hollinshed, who
had come out to say good-bye to her friend. "We made a stupid mistake
about the bus, and if it wasn't for you this lady would have been
stranded."

"Only too pleased," said Rose, gruffly.

"Will you sit in front, dear?"

"Thanks very much," and the red dress was beside her, settling itself on
the shabby seat. Rose blushed because she had no rug.

"I'm afraid this car's a bit noisy," she said, nervously, after they had
started. "It's a very old one."

"Oh, that's all right. I like old cars--there's always so much more room
in them. In my father's car there's scarcely room for two in the front
seat--one's kicking the gear lever the whole time."

"This car has a right-hand drive--old-fashioned."

"Is it? I really don't know very much about cars. I don't drive, myself.
I suppose I shall have to learn, now we're living down here, or I'll
never be able to go anywhere. If it hadn't been for you I don't know
what I'd have done today."

"I expect Townley would have run you home."

"Townley? Who's that? Oh, young Mr. Deeprose. I shouldn't have liked to
bother him. But you're going my way--at least they said you were. I hope
it's true."

"Yes, it's true."

Rose was surprised to find her companion so talkative. Her air of
stillness in church and Elsie's hints of her unfriendliness had prepared
her for silence; but Christian Lambert chattered away very easily.

"Do you live at Shadoxhurst?"

"No, I live three miles outside, at a place called Harlakenden."

"We live two miles outside, at a place called Stede Quarter. It's a
lovely old house, and my father's spent the earth on having it done up.
But I hate it."

"You hate it!"

"Yes, it's all so precious and arty, and the oldness seems faked, though
Heaven knows it's really old enough. That's the effect my father always
has on things--he overdoes whatever they are to such an extent that it
looks artificial."

Rose was surprised to hear her talk like this.

"I'd always heard Stede Quarter was lovely. And you've got wonderful
things inside, haven't you?--I mean baths and sinks and basins."

"Oh yes, we're full of all that. Gloria would never live anywhere
without her hot and cold."

"Who's Gloria?"

"My stepmother. She's only four years older than I am."

"That must be nice."

"It isn't nice at all. We haven't a thing in common, and yet when father
married her he said I would have to come and live at home. Until two
years ago I lived mostly with my old nurse in Berkshire, right under the
downs. It was lovely; her husband has a farm and I did just whatever I
liked. Father didn't want me in London, but when he came down here he
said I must come, too, or people would think I didn't get on with
Gloria. Which I don't, to be precise; so it seems rather a fool plan to
shut us up together."

Rose was, in spite of herself, a little shocked by this
communicativeness.

"Do you like these parts as much as Berkshire?" she asked, stiffly.

"I miss the downs, otherwise I expect I should like it much the same if
I knew the people. At Heronswell I knew everybody, but here all we have
is father's artist friends down from London. Some of the local people
did call, I believe, but Gloria didn't return their calls. She said she
didn't want to know anybody down here."

So Christian was not unjustified in her dislike of her stepmother. . . .
Rose thought of poor Mrs. Bailey and her hired car and her card-case.

"That was rude--after people had taken the trouble . . ."

"Gloria is rude. Or rather she's so terribly high-hat that she doesn't
known ordinary people have feelings; she thinks they've only got
conventions."

"Some of them are very nice."

"I'm sure they are. You're nice. Do you know, you remind me rather of my
old nurse I was telling you of--the farmer's wife at Heronswell."

Rose did not know whether to be pleased or not.

"You're much younger, of course," continued Christian, "but you've got
that same lovely coloured look. I know that's a silly way of describing
it, but what I mean is that you're alive, you're warm . . . if father's
friends are alive at all they're not warm, they're like fish. Gloria's
like a fish--a very lovely mackerel."

"What things you do say!"

"Well, you know what a mackerel's like--shining like a rainbow and
slippery as the devil."

Rose was not used to this sort of conversation and once more she tried
to change it.

"There's Harlakenden."

"Where? Over there? Oh, I like that."

Their view was of the back of the house, a shapeless red lump against
the square grey box of its front. The barn roofs were a scramble of
colours, from newest red to oldest lichen yellow, while the oasts reared
their jetty cones beside the bracken brown of last year's haystacks.

"Oh, I like it," repeated Christian. "But look here, I'm taking you past
your home. Can't I get a bus somewhere for the rest of the way?"

"There won't be a bus for three-quarters of an hour, and it won't take
me more than ten minutes to run you over to Stede Quarter."

"Well, it's extraordinarily nice of you. But I've already told you that
you're nice."

Rose blushed.

"I like your house, too. It reminds me of Nana's farm. Only hers hadn't
got oast-houses. I'm not sure that the oast-houses don't make the
landscape here."

"There used to be an oast-house at Stede Quarter, but old Mr. Austin had
it pulled down when he grubbed up his hops."

"What a pity! I should like to see inside one."

"Why not come and have a look at ours?"

Rose blushed again at her own daring.

"I'd simply love to. Do ask me some day."

"You'll be welcome any day you choose."

"Thank you. Now let me see . . . tomorrow we have those odious
Hollinsheds coming, and I don't think I can escape. I'm going up to town
on Thursday, and the week-end's no use. But any day the week after . . .
Can I come Tuesday?"

"Tuesday's market day at Ashford. I'm afraid I mightn't be back till
late."

"Do you go to market? How lovely it sounds! You really are a lovely,
exciting person. Let me come on Wednesday, then."

"Wednesday will be all right."

"That's settled. What time shall I come?"

"Would you--could you--I mean would you care to come to tea?"

"I should love it more than anything. There's a bus that gets to
Shadoxhurst at four o'clock--I know that much, because I've been in it.
I'll come by that, and you shall drive me home."

"I'll be pleased to."

Rose felt her answers very lame and tame beside the rattle of
Christian's talk. But she could not think of anything better to say.
From the conversational point of view it was almost a relief when they
stopped at Stede Quarter and the young woman got out.

"Thanks ever so much and good-by till Wednesday. You don't know how I'm
looking forward to seeing a real farmhouse instead of this awful dream
one. 'A dream of a place,' that's what father's London friends call it
as soon as they see it. I bet Harlakenden's wide awake," and her excited
laugh drowned the flatness of Rose's:

"Yes, it is."



                            _Chapter Seven_

Every time Rose thought of Christian Lambert during that week she seemed
to feel two separate sets of feelings advancing from different corners
of her heart. She could not make out whether their meeting had been a
disappointment or a delight. On one side, Christian had not been in the
least what she expected--her grace, if not her beauty, was certainly
only skin-deep; on the other, she was much more accessible than that
first conception of a graceful goddess ever could have been. For six
months Rose had dreamed of a remote being whom paradoxically she longed
to know and love; and it was perhaps as well that her divinity had come
down from the clouds and met her on common earth, even though in doing
so she had lost some of her light. Not that she had been entirely easy
to know, but the uneasiness sprang from a difference in vocabulary and
education rather than from any fundamental strangeness. A great deal
depended on their next meeting--the conflict must be left unresolved
till then; especially as the intervening week was becoming increasingly
full of other difficulties.

Rose had answered her uncle shortly when he asked her about sheep-fly at
Harlakenden. She was, as usual, annoyed by his unfailing nose for the
farm's bad spots. Of course fly was prevalent that year--even Bladbean
was not immune; but equally of course it was worse than anywhere at
Harlakenden. Waghorne, who did the lookering, was neither efficient nor
enlightened. Rose had had more than one argument with him, complicated
by the fact that she did not really "understand" sheep; she had never
had much to do with that side of the farm, and now had nothing to guide
her but her common sense, which however she felt was superior to most of
Waghorne's lore. But indifferent as he was, Waghorne had been better
than nobody; and now he was gone and she had nobody--as represented by
Billy Swift of Staggers Aven. Rose's opinion of him varied between
pleasure in the fact that, being entirely ignorant, he might be brought
to assimilate some of her ideas, and despair at the complete vacuity of
his mind. His mind was an empty bag into which her instructions fell and
were lost. It was not long before she realized that the bag was not only
empty, but bottomless.

Until she realized that, she made valiant efforts to train him, with the
help of _The Farmer and Stockbreeder_, the _Agricultural Times_ and a
manual on sheep-farming, which she studied every evening under the lamp
till her head and eyes ached. This literature had a depressing effect on
her, as it showed her how hopeless, how useless, how inefficient, how
entirely out of date was Harlakenden, in both labour and machinery.
Apparently they had no business to be keeping sheep at all. Her mind
swung giddily between the modernism of agricultural journalism and the
fundamentalism of agricultural practice in South-west Kent.

Her father laughed at her.

"You'll be wanting to go to Oxford and Cambridge and take a degree in
lookering, that's what you'll want to do, with all this study. I've
never read a book on farming in my life."

"It might be better if you had."

"Why should I study what I know already?"

"Perhaps you know wrong, and whatever you know makes no difference to
me, since you won't help me."

Then she felt that she was speaking to him more roughly than her mother
would have liked, and mended what she had said.

"Ways have changed, you know, and people have new ideas. And, anyhow,
even according to the old ideas those sheep should have been shorn a
week ago."

"Well, I've written to Packenden. It's not my fault he hasn't come."

"He'd come and gone by this time last year. Hasn't he written to give
you a date?"

"No, he hasn't. I expect he's extra busy, with all the fly there is
about."

"But sheep have to be shorn every year whether there's fly or not."

"Not the lambs. Sometimes they leave the lambs, but I dare say this year
they're shearing them all."

"Well, we can't wait much longer. It really is dreadful. This morning I
looked at some of the fleeces in the Tory field, and even if the
shearers come tomorrow I don't think we'll get much for them. Besides,
the poor beasts must be in agony. Won't you write again?"

"No, I will not. What's the use? They'll come as soon as ever they
can--it's their living, after all. And if you're worried about the
fleeces, why don't you cut away some of the worst parts and wash the
skin with a little weak lysol?"

"I thought of doing that, but I know so little about sheep that I'm
afraid I might do more harm than good."

"Ask Kemp to help you."

"Kemp must get his hops sprayed before he leaves on Saturday, and even
without any extra work he'll have a job to finish. He's only halfway
through the four-acre."

"Get the boy, then. I'd do it myself if I could use my leg properly; but
it's no good pretending I'm equal to running after sheep. Still, don't
say that I never help you."


Early the next day, which was the day she expected Christian Lambert to
tea, Rose and Billy Swift went together into the Tory field, and Rose
with a clumsy pair of farm shears cut away the worst part of ten fleeces
and washed the maggoty skin she laid bare. It was a difficult,
exhausting job, dreadful to her inexperience, and Billy's chief idea of
being helpful was to bark like a dog the whole time. Kemp had promised
to give her a hand in the afternoon, but he had no more than a general
knowledge of sheep, having left the lookering at Harlakenden entirely to
Waghorne. Kemp had now got a job at a farm called Harnicles at
Frittenden, and this was almost the last that she would have of his
disapproving assistance.

Before that day she had planned to make cakes for Christian Lambert's
tea; but now she saw that except for a fruit cake she had baked the day
before she would have to rely on the desiccated mercies of the village
shop. So after dinner she regretfully dismissed a vision of hot scones
and sponge sandwich and sent Dolly into Shadoxhurst to do her best. She
herself went back to the Tory field and her uncongenial labours there.

It was a fine June day, bright with unclouded sunshine and close with
the scents of hayseed, warm dust, and elder-flower. Rose had no time to
look at the ivory towers of the elder against the sky, though every few
yards they stood out of the hedge. If she had looked at them she would
not have seen them, for her mind was full of pain and hurry. She was
appalled by the state of the sheep, and she was angry, too, because her
father was to blame. . . . He should have written to the shearers
earlier. Her mother would have made him do it; every day she would have
gently said: "Now, Wally, what about writing to Packenden?" and he would
have grumbled six mornings and written the seventh. Why hadn't she
reminded him? She should have done as her mother did--coaxed him gently
day by day. Instead of which she had left him to himself while she
attended to her own business and then turned on him angrily. She was as
much to blame as he. She had no patience; in that way she was sadly
unlike her mother. Why couldn't she be more like her in the ways that
mattered. Of course she was young--too young to be so hard-worked and so
unhappy. Young people were meant to enjoy themselves and have plenty of
friends, with kind wise elders to watch over them. She had no friends
and had to watch over her elders, and she had not had an hour's joy
since her mother died. . . . "Fallada, Fallada, if your mother saw you
now her heart would break."

She was not given to pitying herself, but tears of self-pity gathered in
her eyes. The words had come to her from a book of fairy tales she had
read long ago. Somebody had killed the goose girl's horse, but she had
fastened its head to the wall and it still spoke to her. It said, "If
your mother saw you now her heart would break." She must not think of
her mother or she would cry; already the distances of the Tory field
were hazed over. She angrily rubbed the tears away.

"It's four o'clock," she said. "I must go in. Can you manage this last
lot without me?"

"Aye," said Kemp.

"Bow-wow," barked Swift at a restive ewe.

Rose walked towards the house, still fighting with her tears. She was
ashamed of them, especially as in her secret heart she felt that they
did not come from grief, so much as from fatigue and disappointment. She
was crying because she was tired and because there were no proper cakes
for tea.


Directly she reached home she went upstairs and looked at herself in the
glass. She was dreadful--her face was all flushed and sticky, her
eyelids were swollen, her hair was uncoiling on her neck. Suppose
Christian had arrived early and met her outside the house . . . she
shuddered at the thought. She must make herself look nice because
another girl would notice things, as a man would not. She had never
troubled to make herself look nice on the chance of meeting Townley when
she went to Bladbean, but today she realized a necessity beyond mere
neatness.

She carefully washed her face in soap and water--the same brown soap her
mother had used, so that the ghost of her mother was with her once more
in a faint, clean smell. Then she brushed her hair, though its stiff
curliness would never take a sheen. Finally she put on her best dress,
which was still the dress she had bought for her mother's funeral and
would long continue to be so, because she wore it so seldom that it had
no chance of growing shabby. She was not entirely pleased with this
protraction of herself in black, and added a string of red beads.
Looking in the glass again, she was pleased with the result. The black
dress sobered her too high colouring, the beads gave value to the
darkness of her hair. The general effect was warm and gypsyish.

Then she slid her feet into a pair of old-fashioned beaded shoes that
had belonged to her mother, and went downstairs. Just as she reached the
bottom the bell rang, and she was glad to spare Christian the
ministrations of Dolly by opening the door herself.

"Oh, good," said Christian. "I'm so glad to see you."

"How do you do?" said Rose.

She held out her hand, and Christian took it, though she did not appear
to expect such a greeting.

"I'm in beautiful time, aren't I? I was afraid I might lose my way after
I left the village, but the road's so straight you really can't go
wrong. I like the way it runs up to the house as if it was a private
avenue."

"It forks at the gate."

"Yes, I saw. Oh, what a nice room! Is this the drawing-room?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid it hasn't been done properly. I had to leave it to
Dolly."

"Who's Dolly?--your sister?"

"No, she's the maid. I haven't got a sister." It struck Rose that
Christian must know much less about her than she knew about Christian.
"I live here with my father; my mother died a year and a half ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Then do you look after the house?"

"Yes, mostly; but today I had to leave things a bit, as the sheep have
all got fly so badly."

"You look after the sheep, too?"

"Not as a rule, but at present we're short-handed. Do you mind if I go
and see about the tea?"

She went out of the room, leaving Christian to admire the drawing-room
with its green, striped wallpaper, its green-and-crimson plush
furniture, its intricately carved chimneypiece, and its flowery vase of
pampas grass. She was away some time, as she had to cut the sandwiches
and the bread and butter and see that everything was laid out on the
dining-room table to the best advantage. Her father had mercifully
refused to join them at their tea, preferring to have his alone in the
kitchen. Rose was glad; not because her father was at all unpresentable
today, but because she knew that if he was there she would never get to
know Christian, and she wanted desperately to know her.

When she came back into the drawing-room she found her gazing round her
in delight.

"This house is really like a dose of medicine to anyone who's forced to
live with Ye Olde. I can't tell you how glad I am to stand under a
ceiling I can't possibly touch and to see a fireplace where the fire
must go up the chimney instead of flickering at the bottom of a cavern."

"These rooms want doing up," said Rose.

"But if ever they are they'll look newer and not older. Oh, how I hate
Ye Olde, don't you?"

Rose felt bewildered. She did not quite know what to say.

"Some old places look very pretty. We have an old part here, though it's
not much. I thought your house was so up-to-date. . . . We haven't a
bathroom here."

"Nana hadn't at Heronswell. Her house was really very like yours. It had
an old part, too, but it never looked so frantically, nakedly old as
Stede Quarter."

"Will you come into the dining-room and have tea?"

She wondered if Christian would admire the dining-room as she had
admired the drawing-room. Up till now she herself had scarcely given a
thought to either, beyond driving Dolly round them once a day. She was,
however, full of apologies about the tea.

"I'd meant to make you some cakes, but I simply had to work on those
sheep. This is a cake I baked yesterday; these I'm afraid are only from
the village. But perhaps you won't mind." It struck her that among her
many peculiarities Christian might like grocer's cake.

"I shall love whatever you give me. And afterwards will you show me the
farm and the oast-houses? I want to know all about you and what you do."

Rose could not help being pleased even if she was still perplexed. At
one time, for a single dreadful moment, she had thought that Christian
might perhaps be making fun of Harlakenden--being sarcastic, as it was
called. But now she fully believed that she meant what she said.
Certainly she herself had always loved Harlakenden and infinitely
preferred its high ceilings and straight walls to the sagging quaintness
of Bladbean. But she had always taken for granted that Christian's own
home was nicer than any other; and it was absolutely true, as she had
said, that the rooms here wanted doing up--no one could say otherwise.
Nevertheless, she was pleased and flattered to think that this wonderful
girl had taken a fancy to Harlakenden.

She had also taken a fancy to Rose; that was just as obvious and still
more flattering. With such an attraction on both sides there was no
reason why they should not soon come to know each other very well. If
only Rose could get used to her queerness and learn to answer her in the
same way as she spoke. . . . At present she still found it difficult to
say more than "Thank you" or "Yes, that's right" or "Do you really think
so?" The last was in answer to Christian's most startling assertion so
far--that she was pretty.

"Of course I think so. You've got such pretty colouring, and your hair
curls. I wish mine did."

"I like yours better--it shines."

"Oh, I'm so bored with it. It's such a dreadful, mousy colour, too.
Yours must be nearly black. And your eyebrows and lashes are dark . . .
have you foreign blood in you?"

"Yes; my mother came from Norfolk."

"That's not foreign. How funny you are! I mean French or Spanish."

"Oh no."

"Well, you look as if you had. I think you're most attractive. You look
like your own name, like a rose."

"And--and you look like a lily." She blushed as she spoke.

"I'm glad my name's not Lily. Though I can't say that Christian exactly
expresses me. My father had me called that because the parson was always
worrying him to have me baptized and saying, 'Don't you want to make a
Christian of her,' so he had me called Christian for a joke. I'm
registered as Pamela, but I never found that out till a year or two ago,
and it didn't seem worth changing then."

"I'm glad your name's Christian. I saw you first in church."

"Did you? When?"

"On Christmas Day."

"Oh yes, we went on Christmas Day in hopes there'd be a lot of holly and
carols; instead of which there were geraniums and Hymns Ancient and
Modern. But I didn't see you."

"Father and I were sitting right behind you; and they always send
geraniums from Shadoxhurst Manor."

"Funny I didn't see you--that I never saw you at all till I went to
Bladbean. I shouldn't be sitting here now if we both hadn't happened to
go over to Bladbean the same day. Tell me, do you often go there? Is
your uncle nice?"

"No, I don't go there very often."

"What about that handsome young cousin of yours?"

"Townley . . . I hardly ever see him."

"Don't you like young men? You talk, somehow, as if you didn't."

"Yes, I do--at least that's to say I don't know any except Townley."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Why, you're younger than I am. I'd made sure, somehow, that you were
older. I shall be twenty in August, and I've been engaged twice. I like
men, but now I feel that what I want most is a girl friend."

"Oh, how queer! That's what I feel."

"Well, girl friends are very necessary, even if it's only just to
grumble about men together. . . . I haven't had one before, because I've
never been to school. I went to the Vicarage for lessons when I was at
Heronswell. But then I always had Nana. I never wanted anyone when I had
her. Now things are different; Gloria's no use at all. I expect you've
got heaps of girl friends."

"No, I haven't. I'm like you. I never wanted anyone while my mother was
alive."

"But now things are different,"

Rose nodded.

"Well, then, we're very lucky to have met each other."


It certainly was lucky, and rather extraordinary, not only that they
should have met, but that they should like each other. When Rose first
gazed at Christian in Shadoxhurst church she had never imagined that
such an elegant beauty should ever like her except in a distant way of
condescension. Their first evening together at Harlakenden had almost a
dream-like quality, and that night she fell asleep many degrees nearer
happiness than she had been since her mother died.

She was now growing used to Christian's manner--to her overflow of
confidence, to her queer, unbridled enthusiasms. While she was showing
her the farm she had found herself able to talk almost freely. She
found, too, that she no longer disapproved. Christian was different;
ordinary rules did not apply to her--certainly not the rules of Rose's
upbringing, so staidly remote from her own. Evidently her Nana had not
been like Rose's mother, no matter how much she might look like Rose.
The girl had done just as she liked--no guidance, no admonition, no
homely sayings had controlled her. At Heronswell she had romped like a
colt, enjoyed the best of everything, gone to lessons, gone to church,
just as it suited her. Every now and then she had stayed in town, either
with her father, who had left her to herself, again to do as she
pleased, or with relations who had taken her everywhere. She had seen
life and known love before she was nineteen.

Rose was shocked. These confidences, far from exciting her envy, roused
her pity, and her anger against those who had shown themselves unworthy
of such a precious charge as Christian's youth. She saw her with new and
tender eyes. Here was no goddess for her to worship, but a child for her
to protect and cherish. Rose, turning into a little old woman at
eighteen, had had no idea that a girl of twenty could still be a child;
but now she saw that Christian's ways were still the ways of a child,
that she had all a child's ready, unreasonable likes and dislikes, a
child's affectionate heart and impulsive disposition. It was strange
that with all her experience of life and people she should seem so much
the younger of the two. . . . Rose felt at least ten years older, and in
her heart was something almost maternal.

This was really better than the old adoring style. Her heart was not
normally given to worship, and its adolescent flower lay buried with her
mother who had plucked it. If Christian had continued to require worship
there was bound to have been some conflict with the maternal image, and
a friendship so based would have fallen. But now things were otherwise;
Rose was herself, as it were, her mother, loving this new child, who
craved to be loved, and in spite of all her grace and beauty and wealth
and breeding cried silently to be protected. Rose and Christian had met
dangerously as worshipper and idol; they parted safely that night as
mother and child.

They did not see much of each other during the days that followed. Rose
was once more swallowed up by the cares of the farm, which threatened to
increase. Three days passed and the shearers did not come, and finally,
in her despair, she went after them, tracing them to Crooked Neals, a
farm near Bethersden. Here a shock awaited her, for Packenden assured
her he had never had her father's letter.

"I made sure you didn't want us this year."

"But you must have known our sheep would have to be shorn."

"I thought maybe you'd got hold of some one else or were shearing them
yourselves."

"No, we were depending on you. I haven't even got Waghorne now--he's
left; and Kemp left, too, on Saturday. I've nobody but a boy who doesn't
understand anything yet, and the sheep are rotten with fly. Can't you
manage to fit us in?"

"I don't see how we can--we're booked right up now for a fortnight."

"It'll be too late to do anything in a fortnight. As it is I expect the
fleeces are ruined."

"Maybe Boorman could help you. He and his son have both done shearing in
their time. Do you keep any tools at Harlakenden?"

"No, none."

"Well, he may have some. You'll find him at Close Cottage, Woodchurch.
If he isn't there he'll be at the Bonny Cravat."

Rose found Boorman, but he too was unable to help her. He was just off
fruit-picking to a farm near Tonbridge, and his boy had gone to Dover.
Rose drove home in fury.

Her father was equally furious when he found out what had happened.

"How dare he say he never had my letter? I remember writing it at this
very table and posting it with my own hands."

"It must have got lost in the post. You ought to have known that
something was wrong when he didn't answer."

"He doesn't always answer."

"He always does."

She walked grimly out of the room. An idea had come to her which
hardened her anger to iron.

"Is there where you remember posting it?" she asked when she came back.

She was carrying the jacket of his Sunday suit.

"Eh?"

"Is this where you remember posting it? Did you take this for a
letter-box?" and she took a letter out of the inside pocket.

"Eh!"

He stared stupidly at the envelope. Her eyes were hard with anger, her
mouth was like a bar.

"You posted it with your own hands, all right--in your own pocket."

He looked up quickly. He had thought she was joking till he saw her
mouth and eyes. Then his expression changed.

"Rose, don't speak like that."

Her anger suddenly dissolved at the sight of his hurt and crumpled face.
She burst into tears and ran out of the room.



                            _Chapter Eight_

The next day her father told her he had sold the sheep. She was,
dismayed.

"Who to?"

"Breeds of Gablehook."

"But--but I don't understand. What have you done it for?"

"To get rid of them. They're no use to us if we can't get them shorn.
Breeds and his men can shear them or he can have them slaughtered."

"But we can't lose all our ewes like this. We shan't be able to buy
others at anything near the price you've sold them for."

"How do you know what I've sold them for?"

"I know it can't be much. Nobody would pay the market value of a sound
ewe for anything we've got now."

"He's paying me ten shillings each."

"But that's nothing--absolutely nothing. You're giving them away."

"I tell you I want to get rid of them."

"But why should you? Surely we can find some one to shear them if we go
on trying. We could get a looker on some farm to come to us in his
overtime."

"We'd have to hunt around pretty far before we found anyone who'd do
that. Besides, I tell you they're not worth keeping--they're rotten; I'm
lucky to get ten shillings for them. And another thing I get for them
which is worth ten shillings more to me, and that is peace of mind. Once
they're gone you'll stop plaguing me about them."

"But we'll have to buy others."

"Not yet--not till the fall. Prices will be down by then, and meanwhile
we'll be able to carry on the farm with the help of the boy and casual
labour for the hops and hay."

"Good Lord!" groaned Rose. "Good Lord!"

She was disgusted with her father for what he had done, and equally
disgusted with herself for her helplessness. Her mother, she felt sure,
would have managed differently; her mother had never let him do silly
incompetent things like this. But there was no use or sense in arguing
with him; she would only get angry and say something she would be sorry
for. She must make the best of a bad occasion and comfort herself with
the thought that the sheep would soon be away. She would at least be
spared the sight of their suffering, which during the last few days had
begun to affect her.

They were not away as soon as she had hoped. Matters seemed fated to
drag that year, and for nearly a week the fly-ridden sheep endured their
fleeces. Rose did her best with some of the worst cases, but she had not
time to attend to more than a few. It was dreadful to see them in their
abandoned state. She did not remember feeling sorry for a sheep before,
nor had she ever been much moved by the sufferings of animals. But a new
queer pain rose in her at the sight of those miserable shapes, all
ragged with their desperate rubbing against posts and disfigured by her
bungling ministrations. They huddled in the shade, too foolish and
helpless to do anything for themselves. . . . It was their helplessness
that stirred her, that gave her a queer heavy pain of pity that she
could almost feel physically. As sometimes on violet evenings under the
first stars her body seemed to take from her mind a queer, unexplained
richness of joy, so now her body seemed to share her soul's distress of
pity, as if it carried a weight, the weight of a child.

Then at last one morning Breeds's looker came and collected the sheep in
the Tory field and in the field beyond, which was called Angry. Rose was
milking when he arrived, but she sent the boy to help him, and as her
father was nowhere about, she spoke to him before he drove his ragged
flock away.

"Got 'em all?"

"All except four that are too awkward to drive. We'll send the lorry
round for those."

"What'll you do with them?"

"Most will be all right. We'll have the rest slaughtered."

"Think you've got a bargain?"

The man grinned.


Rose went back thankfully to her cows, determined not to think of sheep
for another three months at least. But she was not to escape so easily.
The very next day Swift reported there was a dead sheep in the Tory
field.

"How do you mean? Aren't they all gone to Gablehook?"

"Naow. He left four that couldn't walk."

"But he sent the lorry for those. I saw it come just as I went to
dinner."

"I reckon he only picked up two; the others must have hid themselves."

"The others? You said there was only one."

"There's a live un there, too--over against the brakes by the shaw. I
saw it when I saw the dead un. It looked tur'ble ordinary."

Rose's cheeks flushed with a sudden anger. So that was what they were
like at Gablehook, a set of careless, heartless louts. Just because they
would have had to take a little trouble to find those two sheep they had
left them in the brakes to die instead of carrying them away to merciful
slaughter.

"I'll go and have a look," she said, and marched away towards the Tory
field.

She found it empty. The ragged summer pasture seemed to spread for twice
its usual width now that no sheep were in it. The afternoon was very
hot, and along the hedges there was a stewing smell of leaves and
nettles. The dead sheep lay close to the entrance of the Angry field,
with a cloud of flies humming over it.

Rose went through into the Angry field. Her indignation had died down
into uneasiness. She was afraid of what she might see and wished now
that she had brought the boy with her. But the Angry field was empty,
too, and she began to hope that the other sheep was dead. If it had
died, it would have fallen down among the brakes or into the ditch, and
she would not see it unless she looked closely. She had just reached the
brakey place by the shaw when she noticed that the way through into the
next field was open. Breeds's men must have left the gate unhitched, and
it was possible that the dying sheep had moved into Harlakenden's last
field of all, known as Owls' Entry.

She looked and saw that that was what had happened. The sheep--one of
last year's ewes, due for its first shearing--stood close to the hedge,
where the shadows of the wood had lain an hour ago. The shade had long
since moved away, but the animal was too weak to follow it. It stood
there in the sun, its head and knees sagging, its mouth a little open.
It reminded Rose of a picture she had seen as a little girl--a picture
called The Scapegoat, representing the doomed goat of Israel driven out
to die in the desert with its people's sins. She had cried and her
mother had taken away the book.

As she looked and remembered she felt her throat tighten. Pity had
come--not this time with dull, heavy pains, but with a sharp stab like a
knife. It hurt her even to think what she could do for this poor
creature. In a measure it was her own fault that it had come to such a
plight. Her inexperience, her failure to manage her father, the fact
that she had not gone with Breeds's man on his second visit, all were
responsible. Now she must do something. . . . Her mind immediately
rejected the idea of putting the animal into a cart and driving it to
Gablehook for Breeds's slaughter-man--he was a butcher-grazier--to put
it out of its misery. Gablehook was ten miles away, and the journey at a
farmhorse's pace would take two hours; probably when she got there the
slaughter-man would have gone home and refused to do anything. . . . No,
there was no one to help her but herself. Not that she proposed to
slaughter the ewe herself, but she must get her father or the boy to do
it. The creature was so weak that it would not be difficult to kill. She
remembered that her father had gone in the car to Ashford; it must be
the boy, then.

She hurried back to the yard and told him what she wanted done. To her
surprise, he flatly refused.

"I couldn't. Naow--'at that I couldn't."

"But we can't leave the poor thing as it is; it ought to be put out of
its misery at once." She did not add, "I thought you'd enjoy doing it."

"It'll be dead before tomorrow morning."

"Maybe, or maybe not. Anyway, I'm not going to let it stay there ten
minutes longer: Come on; you can do it with one blow of the big beadle."

"Naow--I don' fancy it."

"But I tell you you've got to do it."

His red face turned still redder as he backed away from her.

"Naow--'at that I un't. 'Tun't part of my work to kill sheep. You do
it yourself if you want it done."

"All right," said Rose. "I will."

She was so angry that she felt no terror or reluctance. She strode into
the cart lodge and found the big beadle, a mighty weapon, hewn from the
solid trunk of an oak and used for smiting posts into the ground. As she
came out, Swift offered to come with her, but she refused him
indignantly. Since he would not do the job himself he could be no help
at all. His company would only exasperate her.

By the time she had reached the field she had lost a little of her
courage. Suppose she did not kill the sheep with one blow . . . suppose
it was frightened and tried to run away . . . suppose it had moved from
the place where she had left it so that she had to search for it with
her resolution running out of her like sawdust out of a hole in a sack.
. . . She need not have feared the last calamity--the sheep had given up
all thought of life in any terms save those of passive suffering. It had
lost all the fear that might have warned it or the hunger that might
have enticed it, or even the need to move out of the pitiless sun into
the shadows where the grass was cool. It stood where she had left it,
slightly rocking on its bowed knees; it did not even look in her
direction as she came near.

She stood in front of it and changed her fear. Suppose it tried to run
away--she had no one to hold it. . . . But immediately she saw that this
fear too was vain. Whether or not the animal realized her presence or
her intention, it was not going to run away. Then she wished it would.
If it had given her the slightest difficulty to overcome she might have
been able to get back some of that ebbing resolution; but there was
nothing to provoke her to anything but pity--that dreadful pity which
she feared now more than pain. Her victim seemed to invite the blow,
standing there before her with its bowed head . . . "as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb"--no, not shearers--if there had been shearers
there would be no slaughterer now. . . . She was the slaughterer and she
must smite--O Lord help me! . . . with all my heart and strength.

She said the last words aloud as she brought the beadle down on the
ewe's head. It fell with a sort of bleating sigh, and lay quite still.
It was dead--yes, it was quite dead. She need not hit it again to make
sure. And of course it's all in the day's work to kill a sheep--every
farmer should be able to do it if necessary. She was only doing what
every farmer did--what her father had done probably several times.
Animals fell ill and had to be slaughtered, and no one shall say a
woman's too soft-hearted to do the job. I've done the job, in spite of
this dreadful soppiness that's been creeping over me lately--I dare say
I'm not well--a bit overdone with having no one to help me . . . and if
I'm crying now it's only because I'm not myself.

She could feel the tears coursing down her cheeks, faster than she could
wipe them away. In vain she tried to stop them--they just came. She was
trying to take some assurance from the thought that nobody could see her
and that she need not go back to the farm till she had controlled
herself, when she suddenly caught sight of a man running towards her
through the next field. She herself was in the Angry now, dragging the
big beadle which seemed to weigh a ton and could no longer be carried
across her shoulder. At first she thought the man was her father; then,
to her consternation, she saw that it was her cousin Townley.

What on earth should have brought him here at such a moment? He had not
been to Harlakenden for weeks, and it was a cruel fate that had sent him
to find her behaving like this. For a minute she saw herself as she must
appear to him, with her man's sweater, her man's breeches, her man's
weapon of toil and slaughter, and her woman's tears. . . . She tried in
vain to stop crying; something inside her would cry through all the
angry condemnation of her mind and will. Fallada, Fallada, if your
mother saw you now her heart would break. . . . She became suddenly
racked with sobs, and shambled, sobbing, towards him.

"Rose, my poor dear child."

He put his arms round her, and her shame turned to surprise and then
preposterously to gladness. Her gladness was like her tears, against all
the ordering of her will. They both had possession of her, making her
cling to Townley with her hands upon his shoulders, while her sobs shook
them both. All thought had gone from her, she had only feelings--first
of a body comforted and a soul in despair, then of a soul finding
comfort, too, in a strength outside itself, a strength which was gentle
and still, as if she had thrown herself upon the earth to weep.

If she had been capable of thinking she might have wondered why he asked
her no questions and did not seem surprised to find her in such
distress. By the time she was able to think he had explained it all. He
had come over with a message from Bladbean, and had arrived only a
minute or two after she started for Owls' Entry. Hearing from Swift
where she had gone and what she was going for, he had immediately run
after her.

"And I hoped I'd catch you up before you'd time to do the job. It's not
a woman's job killing sheep."

"I had to do it."

"No, you hadn't. Anybody should have done it but you--the boy or your
father when he came home."

"The boy wouldn't do it, and I couldn't wait for father."

"If you'd waited two minutes I'd have been here, and I'd have done it.
It's nasty work killing animals, and now you're all to pieces, you poor
kid."

"I must have killed dozens of fowls in my day."

"But this is different--it's a slaughter-man's job; and I can't make out
why it should have been necessary. The boy told me a wild tale about all
the sheep having gone except two that were too bad to move. What was
it?--fly?"

Rose gave him a reluctant and not very coherent account of the last
week's misadventures. They were walking towards the farm. He had drawn
her arm through his and carried the beadle over his other shoulder. It
seemed strange that they should be walking like this, and her shame
began to creep back; but she could not help also feeling happier. Her
tears and his kindness had released something which for a long time had
been imprisoned in her and lately had hurt her very much. Neither could
she help feeling relieved to find him so close and friendly. His
aloofness of the last year had meant more than she would acknowledge,
even now; it had been the bruise upon her loneliness. But now he was no
longer superior through pride and distance; his power lay once more in
his kindness, which was what he--and she in her hidden self--liked best.

When they reached the yard he sent Swift to Owls' Entry to bury the
sheep, and told him to take the beadle with him in case it was not quite
dead. Rose protested that she had killed it, but he only smiled.


It was nearly two hours later that he went away. He had waited for her
father to come back and she had made him some tea. The reason for his
coming over was nothing less than to tell his uncle of a man called
Barnes who had come into the neighbourhood from Sussex and was looking
for work.

"He's marrying Joe Godman's daughter at Tiffenden, and she wants to
settle near her people, so he's looking out for a job somewhere in these
parts."

"This place is six miles from Tiffenden."

"That'll do near enough. All they want is not to be out of reach for
Sundays. You have a cottage, haven't you?"

"I've two."

He looked at her over the rim of his cup, and in his eyes, which were
all that she could see of him, she read his disapproval of the singular
pronoun.

"When will he be free?" she asked him.

"In a week or two. They aren't married yet."

"Where does he come from? and what sort of man is he? Do you know much
about him?"

"He comes from a place called Peasemarsh, and John Body of Wagstaff, who
told us about him, says he has a good name with stock. Your father will
be back soon, won't he?"

"I really don't know. But you needn't wait for him if you're in a hurry.
I'll tell him all about Barnes."

"But I want his decision. There'll be half a dozen people after the man,
once he's known about."

"Oh, he must come here. There's no question. How much money does he
ask?"

"Forty shillings a week. But your father may not care to have him."

"He probably won't. Father's latest idea was that I should carry on this
farm with no one but Swift, till the fall, when he thinks labour will be
cheaper."

Her eyes narrowed mischievously. A cup of tea had been added to her
comforts now and she felt almost playful. It amused her to watch him
hesitating between his disapproval of her as Harlakenden's sole
responsible worker and his opinion that her father should have his own
way with his own farm.

"When he hears about what happened this afternoon he'll see the
necessity of engaging a responsible man."

"I don't think he will. He'll curse Breeds and stop at that."

She bit her tongue. She had not meant to feed Bladbean's complacency
with her father's shortcomings, but she had been unable to resist
provoking Townley. Later on, when her father came in she saw that she
had done well, for her cousin seemed really alarmed at the prospect of
Barnes being rejected, and his anxiety made him more patient and
persuasive than he might otherwise have been in dealing with an uncle he
had been brought up to despise.

"It's really a piece of luck that we heard of him; we shouldn't have if
Father hadn't met Body at Maidstone, and he immediately thought of you.
Nobody else knows yet, so you're first in the field."

"I don't know that I care about engaging a man now, in the middle of the
summer. If I'd wanted a new man I could have had one before this, but I
think it better for me to carry on with Rose and the boy at present. I
shan't be restocking till the Michaelmas markets."

"But there's the hay to come in and the harvest and the hop-picking . . ."

"I shall take casual labour."

"I'm told there won't be nearly so much of that this year. That was only
just after the war. Now the men are getting back to work . . . and as
for regular farm-workers, they can't be had for gold. That's why I think
you'd be wise to take this fellow Barnes."

"What do you think about it, Rose?"

She looked at her plate demurely, laughing at them both.

"Oh I can manage, Father. But what about you? Your leg's still very
stiff."

"Yes, I've never got back the full use of my leg; that's why Rose has
had rather a bit to do lately. If I had my leg I shouldn't dream of
engaging anybody."

"But you want an experienced fellow to see after things when you're
unable to get about. And after all, you can't expect a girl to be the
same as a man when it comes to farming."

"Rose is as good as Kemp or Waghorne any day."

"Perhaps . . . but a woman isn't built to do quite all that they did. If
you'd seen her this afternoon, poor kid . . ."

"Bah! There was no need for her to have killed that ewe."

"A quick mind and a soft heart--that's the way women are made, and it
doesn't always do for farming."

Rose let him talk because she believed that he would end by persuading
her father, or at least leave her no more to do than she could manage.
She knew that if she had been conducting the argument she would have
based it on her father's inactivity rather than on her own
limitations--you do nothing, you never help me, you leave me to struggle
with that half-witted lout, and now you've got a chance of somebody
decent and you talk as if you had no use for him. . . . Townley's method
was certainly more likely to succeed, but she did not altogether approve
of his using it, especially as he meant every word he said.

When at last he rose to go, having persuaded her father to see Barnes
the following day, she went with him to where his car stood in the lane.
She still felt in that odd, light mood which surprisingly was her
reaction to the miseries of the afternoon.

"Well, your disapproval of women as farmers has helped me a bit today."

"I'm glad it did--but you mustn't think it was disapproval."

"What was it, then?"

She spoke playfully, but saw that he was serious.

"If I disapproved of anybody it wasn't of you. I was so--so dreadfully
sorry for you."

"Oh, thanks."

"Don't be offended. If only you'd seen yourself coming to me across the
field, dragging that beadle and crying . . . I--I simply had to take you
in my arms."

"Well, you did."

He looked at her without speaking, and she saw the colour mounting on
his cheeks, flushing through the brown. His eyelids drooped, showing her
long black lashes that were almost startling in such a virile face. She
suddenly knew her power.

"Good-bye. See you soon."

She held out her hand, standing before him, legs apart, mannish, in the
lane. He did not seem to see anything but her face. He stooped and
kissed it, as he had done many times in the past, but had not done for
years.

She felt the fire run from him to her, and stepped back. They stared at
each other self-consciously.

Then something extraordinary happened. Her nature seemed to change, and
instead of saying anything or moving away she rushed at him and threw
herself back into his arms. This time he held her tightly and his kisses
were long and hard. He kissed her again and again and every kiss she
gave back to him, putting her hands to his face and holding it down to
hers so that their kisses should not stop till she had had enough. At
last a sound made them jump apart; it was only a gate swinging to in the
evening breeze, but the spell was broken. She mumbled something
incoherent and ran away from him into the house, feeling silly and
shaken to pieces.



                            _Chapter Nine_

There had never been a day that Rose was more anxious or less able to
forget. And yet from one point of view she looked back on it with a
certain pleasure, for out of its chaos a new order had been born for
Harlakenden. Her father--as she had expected--engaged Barnes. It was too
good a chance to miss, and the feeling that he was doing it for Rose's
sake removed any offence of Bladbean.

"Of course you're not the sort of girl there used to be about when I was
young. I've known girls that could have slaughtered a whole flock of
sheep . . . but you're different. I had you properly educated, and
you're a lady."

"Thanks for telling me."

"Well, you need telling. And once that fellow's here, you're not to do
so much of the work yourself--just go round and see to things."

"We're still a man short."

"We've got a boy, and I expect to get about more this summer than I did
last. Besides, if Barnes's 'character' isn't just blarney, he's as good
as two men."

He very nearly was, if the two men were Kemp and Waghorne. At the end of
a fortnight he and his wife were settled in one of Harlakenden's
cottages and he had started work on the farm. Rose found him a trifle
slow, but thorough and absolutely dependable. He was knowledgeable, too,
and comparatively without superstition. His chief experience lay with
animals, and in her new susceptibility towards them she was delighted
with his gentle, friendly ways. He had a special gift for imitating the
lowings, bleatings, cluckings, and cooings of his stock, and though she
did not imagine them to be deceived, it was evident that they
appreciated such courtesies. Beasts would walk up to him when he came
into a field, sheep would let him come close and handle them; he
delivered five heifers, rashly mated, with remarkable skill.

Wally Deeprose still grumbled and called him Silly Sussex because he was
slow, but Rose was content. Hitherto, she, too, had been inclined to
look down on Sussex from the Kentish heights. Sussex men were slow and
ignorant, they were obstinate as bullocks, they had foolish names like
Fuggle and Muddle and Pix and Button, and their houses all let in the
rain. But Barnes convinced her that the Kent Ditch did not make so much
difference, after all. She had no longer felt that the farm depended on
how much uncongenial work she could do in the day or how much about
agriculture she could read in the evening. He had set her free to run in
her own ways, and she became once more aware of a life outside
Harlakenden.

This awareness was increased by better relations with Bladbean. These,
she realised, centred on her rather than on her father. Indeed, strictly
speaking, they were between Townley and herself and had nothing to do
with their elders. Wally Deeprose still grumbled at his brother George
and George Deeprose still disapproved of Wally, but Townley was fond of
his cousin Rose and glad to see as much of her as possible. To see her,
he was always coming over to Harlakenden with the ostensible purpose of
discussing the farm's welfare. He assumed that she depended on him and
welcomed his advice, and though in her secret heart she sometimes
resented this attitude, she would do nothing to dispel it.

Because she was anxious for him to come. If a week went by without his
coming she would grow uneasy and restless, seeking some excuse to go
over to Bladbean. That curious, rather shameful scene that had ended the
day of their reconciliation had repeated itself again and again. She was
desperately eager for his kisses, and when they found themselves alone
she would ask for them--not with words, but with her lifted mouth, her
straining throat, her brimming eyes, all tortured till they came in
contact with his hard, searching lips.

He made love to her quite a lot during that summer, and often--when he
was not there--she felt ashamed and uneasy about herself. At first she
had told herself that he was her cousin and that kissing was allowed
between them; but she could not for long delude herself with the idea
that these were cousinly kisses. No, they were lovers' kisses, and
sometimes they frightened her. She knew that her mother would
disapprove; but she had not the strength to send him away, or even to
let him go, if he would have gone. It was true that she depended on him,
though not in the way he thought. As things were now, she could have
managed her farm work without him, but instead she used that farm work
as an excuse for bringing him over or going herself to seek him--keeping
the pretence as secret from her father as the reality it was there to
hide.

Sometimes she wondered if Townley would ever want to marry her. They
were first cousins, it is true, but cousins often married. He was
twenty-four and she was nineteen; they matched well in age and
interests. Yet she knew that the similarity of interests was only a
snare, something he was willing to use for the present, but which he
would discard if ever they were married. He would not approve of her
working out-of-doors at Bladbean--he would expect her to go into the
house and sew and dust and cook and make beds for his precious summer
visitors. And he would want her to dress smartly and look nice--already
he had asked her once why she didn't use face powder. . . . No; though a
part of her longed for him, and sometimes dreamed of him in a way that
brought hot, sudden blushes to her cheeks, she knew that to marry him
wouldn't really make her happy. Besides, how could she leave her father,
whom she had promised her mother to help and care for? Her mother would
not have asked her to stay single for his sake, but neither would she
have expected her to leave him at the first opportunity for some one she
did not really want to live with.

It was a strange situation, and it troubled her. She had never known
before--never imagined--that you could love some one you did not like.
She loved Townley--there could be no doubt of that; she thought of him
constantly when he was away, and when he was with her she had to use
restraint even to wait for him to kiss her. But when they had done
kissing and started talking he was constantly saying things that
offended her. He disapproved, she knew, of her freedom; he despised her
work; he was always trying covertly and sometimes openly to put her in
her place. He was as he had always been, the self-assertive male, kind
and aggressive. He had not changed at all; the change was in herself, in
that his maleness now appealed to her, tempted and enslaved her, or
rather tempted and enslaved one part of her while the other part stood
by, repelled and ashamed.

She loved him; but did not like him--she liked Christian Lambert. If
only those two could have been joined together into one person, that
person would have made her supremely happy. But they were two, not one,
and with them her own personality seemed monstrously divided.


In the course of that summer and its fall Rose and Christian became real
friends. With every meeting the differences which at the beginning had
made Rose uneasy grew less, till in the end they did not seem to exist.
In some ways Christian became more like Rose--more practical, more
sober; in other ways Rose adapted herself to Christian's lighter
temperament; and learned to laugh at things that formerly would only
have annoyed or puzzled her. One girl gave up showing off and the other
stopped being shy; they met naturally like sisters. An observer would
still have seen the gap between them, but they were no longer conscious
of it themselves.

The fact was that they both had desperate need of each other. Rose was
lonely and had always wanted a girl friend, and Christian was unhappy at
home. By this time all the district knew that she did not get on with
her stepmother, but she was unable to think of any better way of life
for herself.

It appeared that she could never go back to Heronswell because of some
scandal that had happened there, and she disliked the idea of living in
London, either alone or with a woman friend. Actually she had no woman
friend but Rose. Her life, crowded as it was in some ways, was in others
curiously empty. She knew scores of people and spread her restless,
eager fancy over each one before she withdrew it and passed on; she was
like shallow water running over stones and seeking a pool.

Rose Deeprose, so different from those smooth, hard, noisy contacts of
her London experience, was the pool into which she poured herself. In
her company she found the stillness that had made her happy in her
nurse's arms, and perhaps in those of her forgotten mother. She loved to
be with her, to share the simplicities of her life at Harlakenden, to
tumble her thoughts and likes and dislikes into Rose's attentive ears,
to experiment with cooking, hay-making, hop-picking, and other
activities remote from the carefully posed life of Stede Quarter. . . .
Rose, for her part, found her stimulating--she awakened her lost
interest in life by giving her once more a heart with which she could
share its experiences. If Rose listened, she also talked; she no longer
lived shut up in silence within herself, the prisoner of her own
thinking. For instance, she told Christian about Townley, even though a
certain conversation had shown her that her friend's approach to love
was quite different from her own. Christian herself had a young man in
the neighborhood. She told Rose that he had taken her in his car for a
trip to Dover.

"Who is he? Have I ever seen him?"

"I expect you have. His name's Kenward--Harry Kenward, and he lives at
Colliam Green."

"But--" Rose was surprised and a little shocked. The Kenwards kept a
garage at Colliam Green. Somehow she had imagined a son of the Manor or
at least a son of the parsonage for Christian.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with him, is there?"

"No, not that I've ever heard . . . but he's not your sort."

"Of course he's not. I've had enough of my sort, as you call it. I can
see as many of them as I want any week-end at Stede Quarter. Do _you_
never go out with men unless they're your sort?"

"I never go out with men, anyhow."

"Proper old Rose! What a darling you are! and you're not my sort,
either, if it comes to that."

"At least I'm educated. My father sent me to a private school."

"And Harry can scarcely write his name. Poor old Harry! Never mind, I'm
not in the least serious about him. It's only that he's nice--much nicer
than lots of men I've known. And he's so respectful!"

"Of course he is."

"No 'of course' in it. You should have seen the creature I used to go
out with at Heronswell--the one there was all the row about. I tell you
I'm looking round for a nice, respectful, handsome, ignorant man; and
when I've found him I'll marry him."

"How can you say such a thing!"

"I mean it. I was thinking only the other day that the only thing for me
to do is to marry. I can't bear living at home. I shall marry a man
who'll take me to live in a nice square Victorian house like this. And
we'll be comfortable and solid, with lots of green velvet furniture. And
he'll be ever so handsome and ever so kind, and come in from his work
every evening and take me on his knee and say: 'What's my little woman
been doing all day?'"

"You know you'd hate it."

"Indeed I shouldn't. I should love being a farmer's wife, and I should
like the farmhouse to be modern and hideous, so that artists would never
be able to come and gloat. I like things solid and warm and
comforting--men as well as houses."

"Then why do you go out with people like Harry?"

"I tell you that's not serious--that's only to pass the time. The man I
marry will be much more solid and respectable--as well as
respectful--and he must be handsome, too. I think I'll marry your cousin
Townley."

Rose blushed to her ears.

"Townley would never live in a modern house. Bladbean's very old--just
as old as Stede Quarter."

"He'd change it for my sake. Hullo, Rose, you're blushing!"

"I'm not."

"Indeed you are. You're in love with Townley; though five minutes ago
you told me you never went with men."

"I don't go with him. He comes here."

"And you sit and make love in the plush parlour. Why didn't I think of
it? I might have guessed he didn't come so often just to see his uncle.
But why didn't you even tell me? Why are you so sly?"

Rose disclaimed being sly, but found it difficult to account--even to
herself--for the fact that she had told Christian nothing about
Townley's love-making. She told her now, led on in spite of herself by
her sparkling interest, her eager questions. Christian saw no danger in
the kisses.

"Of course you must let him kiss you. He'd stop coming if you didn't."

"It isn't just that I let him . . ."

"You mean you do a lot of it yourself. Of course you do. Dear old Rose,
it's really quite funny to see you so surprised to find yourself a human
being."

"But . . ."

"But what?"

"I don't like doing it when I'm not serious. It doesn't seem right, or
fair to him, either."

"My dear girl, what strange things you think of! You don't have to make
an honest man of him, just because of a kiss or two. No man expects
every girl he kisses to be serious, any more than he intends to be
serious himself. Besides, in this case you'd better not be serious. He's
your first cousin."

"First cousins have married before now."

"No doubt they have. But it's not supposed to be a good thing, is it?"

"I dunno . . . some animals ull mate closer than that and do well.

"But you're not sure what kind of animal you are. Well, personally, I
think you're the sort who ought to marry quite a different sort of man
from Townley. Besides, as I told you, I want to marry him myself."

"You don't really want to."

"Yes, I do. He's just what I like--handsome, well-off, and stupid."

"He's not stupid."

"He's as stupid as an ass, or I shouldn't look at him. I don't like
clever men."

"Well, you ought to; and men of your own kind, too. Townley's too rough
for you, though he's not stupid."

"My dear, every man is stupid who looks and dresses like a lord of
creation."

"How do you mean--dresses."

"Oh, his hat over one eye, and his breeches and his leggings and all the
rest of it. I don't believe you've ever noticed his clothes."

"Of course I have. I've known him all my life. And I can tell you he's
not stupid."

"Rose darling, you sound quite angry with some one. Can it be me?"

Rose denied that she was angry, but she knew that she was, and with
Christian, too. She knew that she was angry with Christian, but she did
not know why. Was it because she thought her talk quite wild? Or was it
because she did not want her to marry Townley? Or was it because she did
not want her to marry anyone?


When Christian first began coming so often to Harlakenden, Rose had felt
worried about her father. She had feared that he might upset her friend
or drive her away. Surely even her easy, irresponsible nature must
recoil from some of his habits.

In this judgment she had, however, lost sight of one or two
considerations. Living with him every day, seeing him often at his
worst, bearing on her life the burden of his, she had forgotten that he
was still good-looking, that he could, if he would, be quite presentable
and that he was far too intelligent not to make the best of himself
before a pretty, well-born girl, whose association with his daughter was
bound to be to her advantage and to exalt Harlakenden in the eyes of
Bladbean.

Moreover, that winter very much improved his physical state. Dr. Cooke
had left Woodchurch and was succeeded by a more up-to-date practitioner,
who recommended a course of massage and radio-therapy for certain
adhesions which had prevented his regaining the complete use of his
damaged leg. As a result of weekly visits to Maidstone Hospital he
became a very much more active man, and with his activity his general
health improved--especially as the doctor had succeeded in really
frightening him with the dangers of excessive drinking. As the winter
passed Rose came to see that her picture of a surly, slovenly sot was
only and rarely for her private eye, and that Christian saw something
quite different.

She was glad, for it made life very much easier. She need no longer fear
unarranged contacts between her father and her friend, and it was also
possible to have Christian from time to time to stay at Harlakenden.
This was a great joy to them both. Their hours of companionship were no
longer broken up by the inevitable return to Stede Quarter, and
Christian became a part of the Deeproses' daily life, sharing and
accepting its ways. Rose never quite got over the wonder of her lovely
face under the evening lamp at suppertime, or of going upstairs with her
arm in arm, to run in and out of each other's rooms and talk and laugh,
till out of the darkness of the first small hours Wally Deeprose would
shout: "Now, you girls, stop chattering and let a tired man get off to
sleep."

The family at Stede Quarter made no objection to these visits. No doubt
her father was glad to have her taken off his hands by somebody. Her
return to him had been a failure--she disliked his new wife and his way
of living; both he and Gloria were happier when she was away. His
studio-trained conscience forbade him to criticize her new friends on
the ground that they were not on calling terms with Shadoxhurst Manor.
He had heard that they were a decent sort of people--good yeoman stock
and all that; let her be happy with them, as by such means he could be
happy without her.

When spring came, with longer evenings and a mitigation of the intense
cold which had sometimes made the farm's vault-like spare bedroom seem
almost uninhabitable to the comfortably-reared Christian, her visits
became still more frequent, so that scarcely a week passed without her
spending at least one night with Rose. Apart from the gaiety and
talkativeness her company always brought, life at Harlakenden was
beginning to move altogether to a lighter tune. Now that Barnes was
working for them, that Swift was growing, if not into sense, at least
into experience, and that her father was more often on the farm, Rose
found herself with an unusual amount of free time at her disposal. There
was also more money to spend, since the wages bill was lower than in the
days of Kemp and Waghorne, and war-time prosperity was not yet so dead
that Harlakenden in its recovery could not take some advantage from it.

More than once Rose and Christian went together in the bus to Ashford,
and visited the picture palace that Rose had not entered since her
mother's death. (They did not, however, have tea at Boorman's
afterwards.) In May her father bought a new car, and in the first flush
of his owner pride, drove the girls about the country--to Folkestone and
to Tunbridge Wells, and even on one occasion to London itself. On these
jaunts he was quite a pleasant companion, and Rose was forced to
acknowledge how much he had improved and how little that improvement had
had to do with her. She reproached herself for her unsympathetic
behaviour towards him in his bad days. . . . She had promised her mother
better than she had performed.

Townley still occasionally came to see her, but his visits did not
matter as much as before. Once he had gone home, she ceased to think of
him, though every now and then it flashed across her mind that he was
growing serious. She noticed that he had begun to ask her out, to go
with him to the pictures or over to Bladbean. Also he continued coming
to see her, though she no longer encouraged him with advances and
invitations. She was unsettled in her mind about him, and sometimes
wondered if she should be open with him and tell him he had better keep
away. But she was not certain enough of his attitude to take such a
step; she feared some humiliation, such as he had inflicted on her in
the past.

The chief of these humiliations was recalled that summer by the death of
his father. George Deeprose had been complaining of his health for some
months, and in June went into the Maidstone Hospital for a kidney
operation. He died rather unexpectedly a few days after it.

This time Rose's letter to Townley was not left unanswered. On the
contrary, he answered it in person, coming over to Harlakenden one
afternoon and showing her a new side of himself, a side that was
grieving and lonely and full of unanswered questions. They both
considered love-making would be out of place, and sat stiffly on
opposite sides of the dining-room table, talking to each other across
the green plush tablecloth and a little bowl of nemesias that Rose had
put there in expectation of Christian to supper. Townley asked her if
she believed in the immortality of the soul and wasn't it true that life
was only protoplasm, and talked a great deal of "what science allowed,"
saying over and over again: "It seems ridiculous to think that one could
ever recognize anyone after death." He sat with her for two hours, and
when he left she was not sure if she liked him better or not.

But she did not have any more talk about him to Christian. Somehow she
wanted desperately to keep those two apart even in her words and
thoughts. It was not only that she feared Christian might really be mad
enough to marry him if they came to know each other better--though
Christian was quite unpredictable, and as for Townley, she could not
imagine that any man given the chance of loving her would refuse it; it
was that they belonged to two different sides of her life, pulling her
two different ways. Townley stood for love, strength, and virility,
Christian for companionship, laughing sweetness, and a helplessness that
called for all her cherishing. "To love and to cherish" . . she loved
one and cherished the other, and when she thought of them together she
was torn.


Wally Deeprose's chief interest in his brother's death, once he had
recovered from his first outburst of almost childish grief and found
that George had not left him any money, was whether or not Townley would
go on taking the Hollinsheds as summer visitors.

"Now's the time for him to stop if he wants to get rid of them--he's got
a good excuse. And I can't understand a chap like Townley wanting to
mess on with these people."

Townley, however, had not the slightest intention of giving up what he,
no less than his father and mother, considered Bladbean's first claim to
importance. He did not dream of giving up the Hollinsheds; and though,
of course, he could not attend single-handed to the farm and the
household, he overcame this difficulty by inviting Aunt Hannah Deeprose
to leave the cottage where she lived with her sister Alice outside
Smarden and spend the summer months at Bladbean.

For some reason or other this quite sensible course filled Wally with
the wildest rage.

"The next thing he'll do will be to get married. Mark my words, as soon
as he can decently do it he'll ask some poor girl to marry him just to
keep house for those bloody nobs."

"Father!" said Rose, severely. Her mother had never allowed "language."

"Well, it makes me sick to see a respectable fellow like Townley--as
well born as anyone in the county--slobbering over a set of people just
because they've a few titles among 'em."

"He does it to make money. The rent they pay helps Bladbean a lot."

"Money! Why, he could buy up the whole lot of them any day he chose.
He's rich, is Townley. He's rich, but he's not proud. He'd do anything
to keep in with a title, and in my opinion it's just degrading."

"How can you say that? The Hollinsheds have gone to Bladbean every
summer for fifty years. It's a sort of family connection, and he's proud
of it."

She found herself, as usual, unable to refrain from taking Townley's
part; but she wondered inwardly if her father was not right about some
of it--about his marrying. The "seriousness" of which she had suspected
him for some months now tended to increase. Since his father's death he
came to see her rather oftener than before, and he seemed to choose
times when he would find her at meals or with her father in the house,
as if he wished his visits to be public and ceremonial rather than
merely friendly and affectionate. He endured his uncle's dislike of
him--indeed he took certain pains to dispel it; could it be that he
really had serious intentions and was waiting only "till he could do it
decently" before he asked her to be the poor girl who was to keep house
for the Hollinsheds?

Such an idea fed the animosity that was growing in her heart against
him; but in her wiser moments she knew that it was not a rational one.
No man in his senses, and Townley certainly had all his wits about him,
would look to her for efficient housekeeping with a dash of
subservience. He had known her all her life and had disapproved of her
almost as long for her outdoor, independent ways. If he was courting
her--and she could not be sure that he was--he was courting her for
herself alone and not for any possible use she could be to him in his
present situation. She had no right to be angry with him.

But she was. She was angry with him for just these same decorous visits
and sedate meals. She was angry because he neither made nor accepted
opportunities to be with her alone, and he did not even give her a
cousinly kiss at parting. Sometimes she was on the edge of inviting him
so plainly that he could not refuse her without an explanation or
rebuff. But her mind always recoiled from such a test. She could not and
would not expose herself to humiliation from him. And of course it was
better that they should not make love. So much love-making was not right
between disengaged people--or even, perhaps, engaged people. She was
well rid of it.

But if he was not going to make love to her he should not come to see
her so often. He should not so constantly provoke her with the sight of
the mouth she might not kiss or the eyes that were never closer to hers
than across the table. If he was not courting her, why did he come? If
he was courting her why didn't he speak? What was he waiting for?

"He's waiting till his father's been dead six months."

That was Christian's verdict. Rose could not avoid discussing Townley
with her now; his visits were too much displayed for her to ignore them.

"Why should he wait for that?"

"Because he can't possibly make love to you with a black band round his
arm."

"What nonsense! He mightn't like to do it directly after the funeral,
but I can't see that it matters now."

"My dear, you don't know your cousin Townley. He's the most conventional
man on earth."

"I shouldn't have thought so."

"Of course he is!--and none the worse for that, at least from your point
of view; you know exactly which string to pull."

"I don't. I'm quite at a loss."

"You wait till that black band goes."

"But I can't. . . . Then you think all he wants is to make love to me
again? You don't think he wants to marry me?"

"Yes, I do. I think all this pomp and circumstance means business. He's
'behaving decently.' Can't you see it? I'm sure he'd be terribly
disappointed if he thought it was wasted on you."

"It is wasted, for I don't want to marry him."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Yes, quite sure. Do you want me to get married?"

"I shouldn't mind if you did. I could come and stay with you at Bladbean
just as I do here."

"Not when the Hollinsheds are there."

"You forget that I'm a friend of the Hollinsheds. Townley would welcome
me for that alone."

"I can't think why you want me to marry a man you're always making fun
of."

"I'm not making fun of him. I admire him very much."

Rose was beginning to feel irritated and unhappy.

"You have no reason to, if he's all you say he is. And why do you want
me to marry anyone? We're quite happy as we are--at least I thought we
were. But perhaps you're not."

"Of course I am. Don't talk such nonsense. But I can't see what
difference it would make if you got married."

"It would make a difference if I was married happily."

"That's rather a lot to expect, isn't it?"

Rose suddenly blazed out at her.

"Why do you talk like that? You don't take anything seriously. And you
don't know anything about marriage, so why do you advise me?"

Christian looked bewildered.

"Darling, what's set you off? Don't be angry with me. I'm not really
advising you to marry Townley. I'm only pointing out that it wouldn't
make any difference to us two if you did."

"But why am I to marry at all if my marriage isn't going to be happy
enough to make any difference?"

"Precious, have pity on me and don't floor me suddenly like that with
the riddle of the Universe. Why are you to marry at all? . . . I ask
you!"

"I ask you."

"Don't marry at all, then. Grow up a nice cosy old maid and dandle my
children on your knee; for I'm going to marry even if you're not."

"Who?--not Harry Kenward!"

"No, of course not--just somebody. And don't let's go on with this
conversation, which is beginning to frighten me. If you'll come upstairs
I'll show you how to put on that foundation cream."


Christian had certainly done much to improve Rose's appearance. She had
teased and coaxed her into using face powder, and had almost succeeded
in convincing her that a respectable woman's hat is not inevitably
shaped like a beehive. She had also persuaded her to discard her best
black funeral dress and wear instead a coat and skirt, the buying of
which she had superintended, and to which she had added one of her own
jumpers--a gift Rose was quite unable to refuse, though she felt she
ought to do so.

She wore it for the first time one October day at an auction at Criol
Farm near Woodchurch, where there was a promising offer of hopping sets.
Harlakenden was in need of a new sprayer and several bins, but the day
of the sale was also the day of Northiam Lamb Fair, which Wally Deeprose
did not want to miss; so she had agreed--rather unwillingly--that
Townley should drive her over. He said he wanted a hop-tractor for
Bladbean, and that there was also a quoiler he was interested in, but
she did not altogether believe him.

All the same, she was glad of his company; it was like old times, very
old times, for them to be driving out together in his car. She also
appreciated his judgment when it came to the inspection of the lots, and
his experience at bidding. She herself had had but little experience of
farm auctions--they were usually her father's job--and left to herself
she might have made more than one mistake. Townley persuaded her not to
bid for the sprayer, which was of an early make and in poor condition,
but helped her to a very serviceable collection of bins, poles, and
ties, and about a hundred fuggle plants. None of the machinery, he said,
was any use at the bidding price, but there was some good small tackle
for anyone with the sense to pick it up.

"I'm afraid your time's been wasted, then," she said as they came away.
"You haven't bought a thing."

"I didn't really think I should. I wanted to look at the tractor, but
one doesn't expect much from a place like this."

The afternoon was ending in a squall, with a sheet of rain wavering down
against the farmhouse. Townley opened his big umbrella and held it over
them both.

"Mustn't spoil your new hat--it's a nice one."

Rose blushed, and her hand flew up self-consciously to the neat piece of
felt and ribbon that was a compromise between Christian's ideas and her
own.

"You're looking altogether very nice," he added, and bent his face so
close to hers that she felt his warm breath. She was embarrassed and
strangely stirred. This, too, was like old times. She felt shut away
with Townley, in the tent of the umbrella, behind the curtain of the
rain. Their sheltering solitude moved with them over Criol's soggy
field. She was sorry when it ended in the crowd and scramble of the
car-park.

"You stand here while I get out the car. Keep on this dry spot; don't
move, or you'll find yourself in the mud."

She waited while he extricated the car from the waiting rows and
manoeuvred it out of the gate. The enchantment was gone, now that the
tent sheltered her alone, and she felt annoyed with him for expecting
her to stand meekly where he'd put her while he did what, after all, he
could have done quite well with her sitting beside him. No doubt he
thought she might be in the way, or possibly--judging by the time he
took--he wanted to speak to some of his friends.

At last he drove up, and held open the door for her to get in.

"Sorry I was such a time, but this car's a wicked starter just at
present--batteries want renewing. I hope you didn't get wet."

"Oh no, I don't think so."

"But you're cold--I can see you're cold."

"I am a little."

"What a shame! Why, you poor little girl, you're shivering. I should
have remembered your silk stockings."

"They're not silk."

"But they're just as thin, and you've got mud on them too--wet mud: I
tell you what we'll do. We'll go into the Bonny Cravat and have a cup of
tea, just to warm you."

"I really oughtn't to be late home."

She spoke, knowing that her voice lacked conviction. She really felt
cold, too cold to resist kindness--even Townley's.

"We shan't be late," he reassured her. "This thing has finished much
earlier than I expected. We'll be at Harlakenden before six."

She said no more and they took the turning into Woodchurch village. The
rain was striking the wind-screen in a torrent. Through the torrent
appeared the pale frontage of the Bonny Cravat, like a house underwater.

"Jump out and run in quick," he commanded, and she obeyed. There were a
number of tea-tables in the front room, but it was after five o'clock
and they had the place to themselves. Townley asked the landlady to
light a fire, which seemed to Rose a reckless thing in October.

"We really don't need a fire."

"Oh yes, we do. I can see rain spots on your jacket. Come, turn your
chair round and put your feet on the fender."

His physical care for her was warm like an embrace. She could not help
enjoying the feeling of being looked after. No one had really looked
after her since her mother died. It was she who had had to look after
other people--her father and Christian. Both had needed her care, and
she had spent much thought and time on their comfort; she had dried
their clothes and lighted fires for them. It was nice to find some one
doing these things for her.

If she married Townley he would look after her, as he was doing now--he
would rub her hands to warm them--"Why, your hand's like a frog." . . .
His were warm and dry and strong; she felt her hand being cherished
between them. Then suddenly he dropped it as the landlady brought in the
tea.

It was perhaps unlucky for Townley that she should have come in at just
that moment. Rose, cold and wet and tired, was beginning to think she
might do worse than marry him and have him to take care of her always;
she had forgotten the ten minutes she had waited in the mud and rain at
his command. If he had proposed to her then she might have accepted him.
But actually he did not propose till tea was over and they were smoking
their cigarettes. By that time two cups of tea had restored her to all
her lost courage. She had her mother's reactions to tea, and found her
strength in the strength of the black, sweet cup.

"I brought you here on purpose," he said, "because I want to speak to
you alone. Rose, I want to ask you--do you think you could be my wife?"

She shook her head.

"No, never."

He looked hurt and surprised.

"Why not?"

"For a lot of reasons." She suddenly felt her anger rise, as she noted
that the black band was no longer on his arm. "I've guessed for some
time that this would come--that you were only waiting till you were out
of mourning before asking me to keep house for the Hollinsheds."

"What do you mean?"

She was sorry for the way she had spoken when she saw how much he was
upset. The warm colour had gone from his skin, leaving a curious pallor
mixed with its brownness. The hand that lifted the cigarette to his
mouth shook unnaturally.

"I--I mean I've been wondering if this would happen. You've been so prim
and proper--coming to see me once or twice a week all these months and
never saying anything. Chri-- I thought you were waiting till you were
out of mourning."

"But I'm not out of mourning. Father only died in June."

"You haven't got your black band any more."

"I never had one on this suit. It's my winter suit that I'm wearing for
the first time this year. But there's a band on the arm of my mac."

Rose felt rather silly.

"And anyhow what difference does it make?" he continued. "And how can
you say I want to marry you because I want a housekeeper? I never
thought of such a thing. I couldn't ask you while father was alive
because--well, for one reason I didn't think you'd have me; I thought
you were just flirting and enjoying yourself . . . you seemed so . . .
Then after that time I came over and we had that wonderful talk,
everything was different--I felt we understood each other and that you
really did care for me. I still believe you do--you must. Rose, do
change your mind."

"I can't--I really can't, Townley dear. It wouldn't be fair."

"How do you mean?--not fair."

"Well, I don't love you enough and I shouldn't be the sort of wife you
want."

"You'd come to love me. I know I could make you. And I know best the
sort of wife I want--it's you."

"But you don't really know me--I mean . . . of course you've known me
all my life in a way, but in other ways I'm so different. I'm not really
any good in the house at all."

"Why have you got it fixed in your head that I want a housekeeper? I
don't--at least if I do I can pay for one; I'm not the sort of man who
has to look for everything in his wife. I want to marry you because I
love you, the way you look and the way you speak and everything about
you."

"Townley, you don't."

But she knew that he must really be in love with her, because she saw
how completely he was deceived. She had always thought that he, a
sensible, self-sufficient man, must see her as clearly as she saw him;
but now she knew that he did not see her at all--he was blind. He had
seen her once, but he had forgotten what he saw.

"I do. Why won't you believe me? I love you, and I want you to be with
me always."

"I'm sure that you love me. But I think you--you're deceived in me;
you've forgotten how much you used to disapprove of me."

"In what way?"

"In lots of ways. Because I chose to work on the farm for one thing,
instead of in the house."

"I disapproved of that because I saw you weren't suited to it; you were
working yourself to death and doing all sorts of things that no woman
should have to do. I'll never forget the day I saw you, you poor little
thing, after you'd killed that sheep. . . . I think it was then that I
began to feel I should have to take care of you. And after that--oh,
Rose, have you forgotten?"

His hand shot suddenly across the table and seized hers. In that grasp
every physical memory seemed to live. She pulled her hand away.

"Oh, Townley, you yourself said that was just flirting."

"In a way it was--by itself; but not afterwards when we saw how much our
minds had in common. That's another day I'll never forget--the day when
at last I knew I'd found somebody who understood me."

Rose's mind cast wildly back, finding nothing but a rather bored
listener watching the clock. Oh, certainly he was deceived, in himself
as well as her.

"It's no good, Townley: I couldn't do it. I couldn't see things as you
see them--ever."

"But won't you try? Darling, I'm sure you're making a mistake about us.
Perhaps I've spoken too suddenly; but I thought you were expecting this
to come."

"In a way I was."

"Then why did you . . . why are you . . . I can't believe you've changed
from what you were."

"No, I haven't--but I've never been it; I mean I've never been what you
thought I was--what you've been thinking lately. I'm just the same girl
I was three years ago, when you were angry with me because I ran away
from Bladbean."

"Poor little kid! Dad and Mum were very stupid about you. I don't wonder
you ran away. But everything's different now; we'd have Bladbean to
ourselves. That's one reason why I hung back at first--I didn't like the
idea of offering you a home that couldn't be quite our own."

Rose remembered that Christian had once said he was as stupid as an ass.

"You seem to forget my father," she said. "You wouldn't like to have him
with us at Bladbean, but I don't see how--even if I wanted to marry
you--I don't see how I could leave him."

"He'd be all right. He's absolutely fit and well again, and there's
really no need for you to do so much for him on the farm. And as for the
house, Aunt Hannah could go and live with him--she'd like to. She told
me that she'd much rather keep house for one of us than live with Aunt
Alice."

Rose came back down this bye-path of resistance, and chose another.

"And on the top of it all we're first cousins."

"What difference does that make? Lots of people marry their first
cousins."

"And lots of people say it's a bad thing to do."

"Only if you've got insanity or disease in the family, and we've a
splendid bill of health on both sides. No, darling, your excuses are
getting weaker and weaker. To say a thing like that only shows how
little reason you've got for refusing me."

Rose had a moment of despair. If the interview had taken place at
Harlakenden or she had had her own car outside, she could have brought
it to an end by getting up and walking out. Now such a gesture would be
ridiculous, taking her no farther than the doorstep. What could she do?
Some of her teatime strength was failing. She began to feel tired and
cold again. What could she do?--play for peace and accept him and then
write him a letter directly she got home? No, that would be a miserable
piece of female unfairness to match his male obtuseness; besides, she
dare not find herself in his arms again. Should she play for safety and
tell him she could not make up her mind? . . . That was only another way
of being unfair. She must not leave him with any hope at all. She stood
up.

"I'm going--I can't stay any longer. Will you please take me home."

"But, Rose . . ."

"I must. There's no good us going on like this. We'll only end by
quarrelling, and I don't want to quarrel with you again."

"Again?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. We'll have to go on seeing each other, so we
may as well be friends."

"If you don't at least give me some hope, that you'll marry me I shan't
be able to see you for a very long time--perhaps not ever again."

His dark eyes looked up at her soulfully through their curving lashes;
she strangled a hysterical desire to laugh.

"Dear Rose . . ." he pleaded.

He was coming to her where she stood by the fireplace. If he touched her
she might weaken. Providentially her eye fell on the little Swiss bell
that had been put on the mantelpiece. She rang it just before he said:

"I'm not going to give up hope."

His hand fell on her shoulder, slid heavily down her arm, gripped her
wrist and moved away as the landlady came into the room. The inn people
were anxious to have them gone before the bar was open, and Rose saw
that it was already six o'clock. Leaving him to pay the bill, she went
and stood at the door, cooling her hot, unhappy face in the mist that
steamed up from the wet surface of the road. The rain had turned to mist
and she realised that the drive home would be slow and difficult.

Fortunately the difficulty made up for the slowness. He had to watch the
road too carefully to allow him to talk much or to have any control of
the conversation. It was she who talked, and she talked mostly of
indifferent things, keeping up a flow of small impersonal chatter that
he was too busy to interrupt. It was an effort to talk so unnaturally,
with her mind full of something else, and by the time they reached
Harlakenden she felt quite worn out.

Nevertheless, she asked him to come in. Her father was sure to be home
by now, so she need not fear the revival of a painful subject, and she
was beginning to feel that she had to make up for some unnecessary
unkindness.

"Won't you come in and have a drink before you go on to Bladbean?"

"No thanks. I'd better be getting along as quickly as I can. This fog
may grow worse."

"Perhaps you're right. . . . Thank you for helping me so much at Criol.
And--and forgive me, Townley."

"I've nothing to forgive you--yet. I'm still hoping."

O Lord, not an ass, then, but a mule!



                             _Chapter Ten_

Apart from their effect on her mind, those ten minutes of waiting for
Townley in the wet outside the car-park at Criol Farm made more
impression on Rose's body than her hour of warmth and tea-drinking at
the Bonny Cravat. Two days later she developed a heavy chill, which kept
her in bed for more than a week, and then after the manner of her
chills, resolved itself into acute earache. She lay too racked and
restless to think. Christian came to see her almost every day, and made
good the deficiencies of Dolly Iggulsden's cooking with parcels from a
London store. Townley surprised her with a large, vivid bunch of
chrysanthemums--and touched her a little, too.

She picked up slowly and the doctor recommended a change of air.
Christian wanted her to come to Stede Quarter, but Rose was reluctant to
move to a house where she knew she would be unwelcome and out of place.
Besides, the doctor wanted her to go right away; and she herself had a
craving to be for a time out of sight of that familiar landscape which
had come almost to condition her thoughts. She wanted to think, and she
could not think at Harlakenden. Her mind was like Plurenden lane,
running straight and narrow into the woods till it was lost. Watching
them every day from her bedroom window, she had a fancy that Plurenden
woods were the limits of the world, and that all roads, all thoughts,
all hopes were lost in them.

Her mother's people, particularly the Medlars, had often written to
invite her to stay with them, and now she suddenly thought she would
like to go to the place where her mother had played as a child and to
the family who had been the children she played with. Harlakenden was
settling down into its winter quiet--she could easily leave it for a
while; and as for her father, he could manage quite well without her.
Townley would come over to see him from time to time, and Christian
promised not to give up her visits entirely while Rose was away. Both
her father and the place could manage well enough till Christmas.

So Rose wrote to her aunt Susan Medlar, and received in reply a letter
warmly inviting her to Primrose Hall, for as long as she chose to stay.
Christian drove with her to Ashford station and saw her off.

"Now don't hurry back, darling. I hate being left without you, but you
really must get yourself absolutely strong and well."

"Unless anything goes wrong at home I mean to stay till the first week
in December."

"Nothing will go wrong at home, I promise you. I'll see to that."

"And you'll write to me?"

"Of course I will."

"And let me know how Father gets on without me."

"Yes, and how Townley gets on."

"You needn't bother about Townley."

"I shall bother about him, because I'm very sorry for him, you cruel
Rose Deeprose."

"Oh, don't let's talk about that. I want to forget about all those
things. They seem a part of my illness, somehow."

"I'm sorry, darling. I won't talk about them, and I won't give you any
news of Townley; not even if he marries--on the rebound, as they say.
I'll only give you news of the things you're really interested in--the
cows and the pigs and the turnips and perhaps your father. Good-bye and
come back your old self again."

Rose went away and a curtain fell behind her.

The journey from Kent to Norfolk seemed to remove her not only from
Harlakenden but from the whole of her life there. She was not used to
going away--she had not slept out of her own bed for three years--and
the change ran through her nature, building up a new body and a new
mind. The differences between the country round Fakenham and the country
round Shadoxhurst were to her inexperience the differences between one
world and another. She had passed out of a world of oaks and ash, small
tilted fields, oast-houses, tiled roofs, red walls, and high, warm winds
into a rustling world of elms, of flat fields, thatched roofs, stone
villages, and a frosty brooding fog that seemed to shut it all together
into a white globe. She had passed out of a world of work and anxiety
and conflicts of thought and will, into a world where she sat at peace,
watching things move, herself without motion, luxuriously aware that no
call could come to her from either the kitchen or the field. Sitting by
the fire, she watched those who came in and out with business that
seemed cheerful to her since she had no part in it, or she walked slowly
down lanes fringed, with pearl-strung brambles, past misty shapes of
stacks, while distant sounds came large and hollow through the fog.

She had passed, too, from the world of her mother's married life and
struggle, in which she had taken the shape of the kind, weatherbeaten
woman Rose had known in common with so many others, into the world of
the little girl she had never seen yet felt she knew in a secret shared
by no one else. Her mother had told her about this world when they drove
home together at night from Ashford in the high dog-cart; and now that
she had come into it alone, she did not feel alone in it, but seemed to
share it with her mother still, as she recognised first one corner of it
and then another. There were moments when she felt again that exquisite
nearness she had felt on the morning of her mother's death, at Bladbean
among the chrysanthemums. Now as then her tears seemed gathered in cups
of happiness, her loneliness to be compassed round with a cloud of
witnessing love.

Her mother's folk were very kind to her, and in the tranquillity of her
new surroundings her thoughts arranged themselves more graciously,
without those chips of anger and fear that had spoiled their pattern.
She saw now that she had been wise to refuse to marry Townley. There had
been moments during her illness when she had regretted him, but now she
saw those regrets as merely the print of her sick body on her mind. She
had no reason to regret Townley nor he to regret her. They could do very
well without each other. Their mutual attraction was physical, with a
salting of vital relationship; and even though she had refused him they
were still cousin's and could be happy as cousins. He would get over his
disappointment and marry some one else, and so in time would she--but
not just yet; she was in no hurry to be married.

When she married it would be something more than an affair of male and
female; it would not be just for kisses, nor should her husband be her
master. They would be friends and go through life side by side; she
would not trail behind his striding figure nor wait for him in the rain.
Sometimes on her foggy walks round Fakenham, the fog of her thoughts
would part and show her his face--handsome as Townley's, merry as
Christian's, strong and loving as her mother's. But it was only for a
moment, and she never saw him very clearly.

Her kind aunt refused to let her leave till the middle of December, and
Rose stayed willingly, feeling that all was well at home. Townley did
not write at all, and her father did not write much, but Christian wrote
regularly--at least at first. Towards the end of their separation her
letters became more rare, but during the first half of it she wrote two
or three times a week. She was an easy writer, and gave a lively picture
of small events. She had been faithful to her promise to visit
Harlakenden.

"I've started in as a sort of unofficial niece, and am getting to know
quite a lot about farming. Last Tuesday I had the thrill of driving to
Ashford market with a real, live farmer, and six little pigs in the back
of the car. Your father says I'm a good judge of horses, too; I helped
him choose a fine black mare for the plough. He got her for twenty-seven
pounds, which he says is dear, though it seems cheap to me, compared
with the price of a car. She has the most beautiful long fur on her
ankles and a white stripe on her nose and film-star eyelashes. Come back
soon, my lamb, and see her. No, I didn't mean to write that--you're to
stay away until you're absolutely strong again and don't know you've got
ears, which I gather from your last letter you still do occasionally.
Don't forget to put that stuff in them before you go out, even if they
feel all right."

She did not always write so exuberantly, and as time went on the detail
died out of her letters. Rose's last communication from her, received
the day before she left for home, was scarcely more than a scrawled
line.


I'll meet you at Ashford and I've got a great surprise for you.
                                                Tons of love--CHRISTIAN.


Happy as she had been at Primrose Hall, she felt her heart beat gaily as
the train ran into Ashford Station. She hung out of the window, looking
for her friend, and just as the train stopped saw her standing by the
bookstall, wearing a short brown fur jacket over a green dress, with a
green cap on her yellow hair. As usual, when she was standing still, she
looked like a graceful goddess, but the minute she saw Rose the statue
was gone and in its place a laughing girl, running towards her and
waving an enormous pair of fur gloves.

"Darling! darling! here you are at last," and she hugged her close. "Oh,
isn't it lovely to see you! and how well you look! Come along quick and
get your luggage. I'm simply dying to tell you everything."

Rose followed her out into the station approach, and to her surprise saw
that, instead of the Shadoxhurst cab, her father's car was waiting.

"Hullo! you've got the car! Has Father come, then?"

"No, he's waiting for you at home."

"But who drove you in?"

"Ah!" Christian made a face at her over the porter's back, as he
strapped Rose's box on the luggage carrier. Then she climbed into the
driver's seat "Jump in beside me, darling."

"So you've learned to drive. Who taught you?"

"Your father, of course."

"But you wouldn't learn from me when I offered to teach you."

"Men have a way with them, and your father bought me these lovely
driving-gloves."

Rose was astonished. Never in her life could she recall her father
giving a present to anyone; she thought almost angrily of her mother's
collection of shabby, old-fashioned clothes. It must be Christian who
had a way with her. . . . Then she remembered something.

"Is this the surprise you wrote about?"

"Which?"

"Your having learned to drive the car?"

"It's part of it."

"Only part of it! What's the rest?"

"Wait till we get into the lanes. I can't talk while I'm driving through
all this traffic."

They had come out of the station approach, grazing one of the posts at
the entrance, and were now proceeding rather jerkily along the High
Street. It struck Rose that either her father was not a very good
instructor or Christian was not an apt pupil.

"How long have you been learning?"

"About a fortnight."

"Did you find it easy?"

"Yes--quite. Wally said it was refreshing to find some one who wasn't a
bit nervous."

"Wally!" Rose could not hide her astonishment.

"Oh . . . yes, I call him that, but I hadn't meant to let it out till
I'd told you the rest of the surprise."

Rose felt uneasy, but at once dismissed the suspicion that had come to
her. Not even of a reckless thing like Christian could one believe that.
And yet . . . how otherwise explain her father letting such an inexpert
driver take out his precious car?

"Look out where you're going!" she cried, nervously, as they almost ran
into the back of a lorry.

"Oh, it's all right. I look a much worse driver than I am. Your father
says I've picked it up very quickly. I drove him all the way to
Canterbury yesterday. He would have driven me in this afternoon, but I
wanted to show you . . . and I didn't want him there when I told you the
news."

"I wish you'd tell me at once and not keep me waiting any longer. We're
almost out of the town."

"I will if you promise not to grab me."

"Of course I won't grab you."

"I believe you will when you hear. How would you like to have me for a
stepmother?"

Rose actually had to fight an impulse to grab her.

"What do you mean?"

"That I'm going to marry your father, and that'll make me your
stepmother, won't it?"

This was worse than her suspicion. She had suspected no more than a
flirtation or love-affair. But now . . . What was Christian saying?

"Don't you think it will be lovely?"

Rose struggled to find words.

"You can't," she said, weakly.

"Of course I can. I'm going to. Oh, Rose, we're so tremendously in love!
When you went away I never imagined this would happen, and it probably
never would if you'd been there to stamp on the beginnings and tell me
he's much too old for me and all that. He's only forty-five, and I'm
sick of boys. It's lovely having a real man . . . and I adore going
about with him and doing things with him, and since we've been in love
he's been so young and gay and jolly. You won't know him when you see
him. And won't it be funny and glorious, us being mother and daughter?"

"It'll be damnable. But it can't happen. Christian, you can't do
it--you'd be mad!"

"Why? Do you dislike the idea of having me for a stepmother? I thought
you'd be so pleased."

"It isn't that. It's your marrying him. You don't know him . . ."

"I've known him on and off for eighteen months and really well for six
weeks. I've seen a lot of him since you've been away, and we've talked
. . . oh, how we've talked! I know more about him than lots of girls
know about the men they marry."

Rose's head had suddenly begun to ache. She could not recognize this
picture of her father that Christian had drawn--her father young and gay
and jolly--and talking. . . . Christian must be out of her mind.

"Do you know that he drinks?" she asked, in a small voice.

"I know he used to drink. But he hasn't touched anything--except a glass
of beer occasionally--for a year. And he only drank because he was so
lonely. Your mother didn't understand him----"

"Hush!" cried Rose. "If you go on talking like that I'll hate you--I'll
hate you both."

Christian's manner changed.

"I think you're being rather horrible," she said. "I never imagined
you'd take it like this. I thought you'd be delighted."

"How could I be?"

"Well, some girls--most girls--would be pleased to have their father
marry their best friend."

"Their brother, perhaps, not their father."

"Why not?--if the father's still young and good-looking. It's quite
usual to marry a man twenty years older than oneself. You talk as if the
thing had never been done before. Why do you object?"

"Because I know you can't be happy with him, and I don't think you
really love him."

"Why should you think that? You're going a bit too far. After all, I'm
older than you and I've had a lot more experience."

"Not of my father."

"Yes, of your father. I probably know a side of him you've never even
seen."

Rose felt the tears stinging her eyes. Reason and thought were lost
together in a feeling of outrage that she could not explain or even
completely justify.

"Do people know?" she asked. "Is it public?"

"No. Our idea was to keep it from everyone till I'd told you. We wanted
you to be the first to hear, because we thought you'd be so happy."

"Did my father think I'd be happy?"

"Of course he did. He knows what friends we are, and he wanted me to be
the one to tell you."

Rose could well believe that.

"And what will your father say when he hears?"

"Oh, I don't suppose he'll mind. He'll be only too glad to have me
married and off his hands. He might have preferred somebody with more
money, or a famous artist or writer, but there's nothing in Wally he can
really object to--not even his age, for he's at least that much older
than Gloria."

A new idea came to Rose.

"Christian, if you're marrying to get away from home, I tell you what
I'll do. I'll go away with you--anywhere you like--and we'll have a farm
together. I'll leave Father and Harlakenden--everything--if only you'll
not be so mad . . ."

Her voice broke as she had a vision of herself and Christian walking
together through the fog at Fakenham.

"But I'm not marrying to get away from home. I could do that any day I
liked; I'm twenty-one and I've got my own money. I'm marrying because
I'm really in love with your father, and as I've been in love many times
before I know what I'm talking about."

"I don't think you do," said Rose--"and please mind where you're going."

They had swerved close to the ditch of Plurenden lane. Ahead of them
stood the familiar housefront, gaunt and gray. The straight rod of the
lane vanished under the wheels. Rose felt her sickness grow.

"Promise me you won't be angry with him," said Christian--"that you
won't spoil his happiness as you've spoiled mine."

For the first time Rose thought that Christian might really be in love.


Her father was waiting for her at the door, and as she ran up the steps
she realized that even if Christian had not told her she would have
known something had happened. He was changed. He looked younger and
smarter. When she came to study details she saw that he was wearing a
new tie and a collar of neater, more modern shape than before. Here
doubtless was Christian's work, also to be seen in his neatly clipped
moustache and well brushed hair. Apart from these improvements she
thought he looked rather hang-dog; doubtless he had a shrewder idea than
Christian of how she would take the news.

"Well, my dear, here you are. Had a good journey?"

"Yes, thank you."

Rose thought she intercepted an anxious glance, but she would not look
at either of them. She went into the dining-room, where tea was laid.

Here she saw more evidence of her friend's work. The cakes on the table
obviously came neither from the shop at Shadoxhurst nor the oven at
Harlakenden; they were the very superior product of a Maidstone
confectioner. Evidently Christian meant to improve on the farm's shabby
ways, and of course she had quite a lot of money to do it with--her
mother's money; Rose had never troubled to find out how much it was.
Perhaps her father was marrying her for her money . . . this struck her
for the first time, but the thought had scarcely entered her mind before
she saw him fix on Christian such a doting, loving gaze that she
immediately dismissed it, half ashamed.

Dolly Iggulsden came in with the teapot, and Rose wondered how long--if
at all--her services would be retained. She had a mental picture of
Harlakenden looking entirely different from the seedy, homely,
old-fashioned house of her mother's time, and her mouth straightened
with anger. She automatically sat down at the head of the table and
lifted the teapot before she realized that this might soon be
Christian's place. . . . "Might," for she would not yet give up the idea
that she could stop this impossible thing.

Nothing was said--or nothing material, for she had a half-dreaming idea
that they talked on various subjects--till Dolly had gone out of the
room. Then Christian said:

"Wally, she's not pleased with us."

Her father looked desperately uncomfortable.

"I didn't think she would be--at first; but she'll come round to it."

Rose glared at the teacups she was filling.

"I never shall."

"Oh, Rose, darling, you will--you know you will!" cried Christian. "I'd
be miserable if I thought you didn't want to have me here."

"It isn't that."

"Then what is it?"

"I've told you. But I can't say anything more about it now. I can't say
anything more till I've had time to think. Let's talk of something else.
How's the new mare doing?"

They talked artificially about the new mare.

When tea was over her father said:

"I'll run you home, Christian, if you like. I've got to go to Sugarloaf
to see Hughie and I can drop you on the way."

Coward, thought Rose to herself--he's terrified of being left alone with
me. But she was relieved, all the same.


She was glad to have more time to think, though she soon discovered that
what she thought made little difference to what she felt. She now
thought it possible that they really loved each other, but this did not
reconcile her to the idea of their marriage. It was not a love that
could last . . . and she did not want it to last. Sometimes it seemed
that her opposition had nothing to do with them, but was all on her
mother's account; and sometimes she felt as if the whole sad issue lay
between herself and Christian. It was all very well to chatter about
their being mother and daughter--they would be no such thing; they would
be nothing to each other--nothing any more; and her mother would be
pushed out of the house. Christian would change it, and her mother's
traces would disappear--her furniture, her ornaments, the pots and pans
she had cooked out of, the little servant who was in type, if not in
person, the little servant she had ordered about, all this that Rose had
so carefully preserved in memory of her would disappear and be
superseded by something different, alien, and unnatural. . . . She could
not bear to think of it. If her father married Christian, she would have
to leave Harlakenden--she could not possibly stay there. She would have
to find a job--or marry Townley. . . .

But she had not quite given up hope. Surely this thing which had been
fixed up so wildly and unnaturally in her absence could now be undone by
her influence. Surely Christian was not so irresponsible that she could
not be warned into sense or her father so blind that he could not be
made to see plain reason.

"If I'd thought this could happen I'd never have gone away," she said to
him when suppertime allowed them to dodge each other no longer. "But I
never even imagined it."

"Christian thought you'd be pleased."

"But _you_ didn't."

"Well--er--I knew you were a set sort of girl, and don't like changes."

"And you didn't expect me to mind for any other reason?"

"Well, I dunno. . . . It's an idea that wants getting used to; but when
you do you'll find it's not such a bad idea as you make out."

"It's bad--it's wicked. I can't think how you could have let her get
fond of you; you must have seen it coming."

"You bet I did!"

He was cutting a piece of cheese into minute squares--cutting it again
and again with hands that shook a little, but staring at her boldly all
the time. She made an effort to see him through Christian's eyes. Was he
good-looking? Yes, perhaps he was, in a heavy sort of way, but not the
style she cared for.

"She's less than half your age, and you and she haven't a thing in
common. I--Well, I know Christian, and--and----"

"You think I'm not good enough for her."

"I think you're not suited to her, nor she to you. She won't be able to
manage when things go wrong."

"I suppose you mean when I'm the worse for drink. I suppose you were
bound to say that sometime, though you know it's more than a year since
it happened. You're a hard woman, Rose."

He had sent her thoughts back four years, to Boorman's shop, where she
and her mother were having tea together. What was it her mother had
said?--Hard by name, hard by nature . . . her thoughts became confused
with grief.

"I know there's been times," he went on, "when I've had too much, and
I'm sorry for it; but I've learned better since, and I've felt better.
Things have changed."

"It's a pity they didn't change sooner, when Mother was alive. Then she
might have been happier--" Her voice broke on a sob.

"I know. I don't say I wasn't to blame, and I've told you I'm sorry."

"But you told Christian that Mother didn't understand you."

"I told her no such thing. Why should you think it of me?"

"She said you had--at least she said Mother didn't understand you, and I
knew you must have said it for her to think it."

"I said nothing of the kind. I'd never say anything against your mother.
She was a good woman, and I know she would approve of what I'm doing
now. She always wanted me to be happy. . . . After all, she's been dead
three years--there's no slight to her in my marrying again."

"It isn't your marrying--it's your marrying Christian. I can't
understand why you don't see how wrong it is. She's so different . . .
she's young and gay and thoughtless--she's quite unsuitable. . . ."

Her voice tailed off. He put down his knife and hid his shaking hands
under the table.

"That's why I'm marrying her. Don't you understand? I want somebody
young and gay. I'm only forty-six--just in my prime. . . . Why do you
talk as if I was too old to marry anyone but some dull widow or dried-up
spinster? Don't you know what I want? I want love."

His blue eyes looked at her so fiercely that they frightened her, now
that she could not see his trembling hands.

"Yes," he continued, "I want love and I want happiness. I'm not saying
anything against your mother--I loved her and I was happy with her; but
after she died--what do you think I've had since she died? I've just
been a dull, sick log, dragging my life on here, with you glaring at me
and disapproving of me the whole time."

"Father!"

"Well, what else have you done? You've scarcely ever given me a loving
word. If I haven't done anything wrong you've looked as if you expected
me to, and if I have you've punished me for it with your hard face.
You've never really troubled about me, except to show me that you
thought me a useless burden----"

"Father, you're not to say such a thing. It isn't true."

"Well you made me think it, anyhow, by the way you went on. You scarcely
ever laughed . . . it was always the farm, the farm, and why didn't we
do more about it? and what a pity I couldn't help, and that you had to
do everything. Then I get hold of a decent doctor, who makes a healthy
man of me, and you bring along a lovely girl, all sweetness and
good-looks and fun . . . and she shows me she thinks a lot of me, and
when you're away we go about together, and she's pleased and pleasant,
and talks and laughs, and makes me feel young again and some use in the
world. Then we fall in love and you scold me as if I was doing something
wicked, as if I'd no right even to want to be happy. . . ."

Rose tried to speak, but could not find any words. Had she really been
as dreadful as all that? She was hurt by the injustice of much that he
had said, but she could not deny the truth of all of it. She had never
really loved him, and there had doubtless been moments when she had
failed to hide her lack of love. Somehow she had not expected him to
notice or to care . . . she had no idea he was feeling like that. But if
he had really felt it . . .

"I swear," he continued, "that what I'm doing casts no reflection on
your mother. Christian was just talking wildly when she said that about
her, and I'll make it all clear--she shan't go on thinking it."

"I know--it isn't that. Oh, Father, I'm sorry."

He did not seem to understand her.

"I'm marrying Christian to give myself some happiness before I've lost
the power to feel it. But I'll think of her happiness, too. I love her
and I'll be good to her. You needn't worry about that. I've been sober
now for a year, so I know that's all right. And as for us not being
suited to each other, that's nonsense. She loves country life and she
loves the farm--she's interested in everything . . . that's what I like
about her. And we'll have this place put in order and smartened up; I've
been doing better of late and have a bit to spend on it. Besides, she
has some money of her own, I believe, to buy herself cushions and
curtains and things. You and she can do it all together."

Rose blew her nose and dried her eyes. She must get rid of her grief
before it made a mess of her. But she found that she could check no more
than her tears--the pain in her heart only grew and revealed itself more
clearly as self-reproach. She was now no longer astounded; she
understood her father's marriage--he had made it appear natural, and
though she still feared for Christian she did not fear so much. Her own
resentment, too, at the thought of the house being changed and her
mother's image swept out of it, seemed to her an unreal, almost a
dishonest, thing. There lay her grief's deepest charge; for who had
failed her mother but herself?

"This won't make any unpleasant change for you," her father was saying.
"We both of us want you to stay on with us here. It won't be the bad old
story of the stepmother turning the daughter out of the house. Why, I
believe Christian wants to have you living with her almost as much as
she wants me. You'll be like sisters."

She read the hidden uneasiness in his voice and quickly made up her
mind. She had wondered for a moment if loyalty compelled her to stay on
at Harlakenden when he was married and atone for her past mistakes by
watching over the situation they had created; but now she saw that such
a decision would be unkind as well as unpractical.

"I know"--she tried to smile--"I know you feel like that, and it's good
of you both, especially of you. But I'll probably be getting married
myself."

Her father looked astonished.

"You! Who to?"

"Townley."

"Townley! But I never thought--I'd no idea there was anything between
you."

"There has been for a year, and he proposed to me two months ago. But
I--I wasn't sure. I didn't feel I could leave you and Harlakenden."

She blushed at the half-truth of her words, especially as he seemed
touched by them.

"It was kind of you to feel like that, but quite unnecessary. And now,
of course, it's doubly unnecessary . . . then, in a way this works out
well for you? . . . I never imagined . . . Well, you might do worse than
Townley. He's a good upstanding fellow, and well-off, too. Lord! he's
rich. It's a pity he's your cousin, but I don't think that really makes
any difference if there's good stock on both sides."

She could not help seeing how painfully he was pleased. He had not
looked forward to his three-cornered household, to having her always
there, disapproving--glaring he had said. The least she could do for him
was to clear out. She would go to Townley tomorrow and tell him she had
changed her mind. It would humiliate her, but he would be kind; he was
always kind to her when she was beaten. She felt a sudden, desperate
need of him.

"Well, Rose," her father was saying, "I'm pleased to hear this, though
Christian and I would both have been glad to keep you. I'm pleased--but
I'm surprised, too. I'd no idea you had a love-affair on hand. You
didn't look like it."

"I didn't know for certain. At first I said I wouldn't have him, but now
I know I was never quite sure of myself, and he said he wouldn't give up
hope."

"You haven't changed your mind because of what Christian and I are
doing? That would be a fool thing to do."

"Oh no; it isn't that."

She knew that it was not--entirely. There had always been a little seed
in her waiting to blossom for Townley, a seed that needed perhaps a
watering of tears.

"When do you think you'll get married?"

"I don't know. We can fix any time you like--a little before you do
would be best."

"That would do very well. We thought of marrying early next year."

The sooner the better. Townley's courtship of her had already dragged
long enough. Refusing him that evening at the Bonny Cravat had been just
another of her mistakes. Well, it was a mistake that she was able to
repair. Luckily for her, he was a mulish man and would not give her up.
He was a decent man, too, and would make her a kind husband. And she
loved him yes, she loved him, if by love you did not mean that high,
impossible thing that had sometimes shone on her through the fogs at
Fakenham.

"I'll ask Townley to come over here tomorrow," her father said, "and
then you can have a talk with him--and so can I. I don't suppose he'll
be pleased, either, about Christian and me."

"No, I don't suppose he will."

She had a sudden sense of comfort and solidarity--of that standing
shoulder to shoulder that husbands and wives are for.

"But I'll make him understand, just as I've made you understand. You do
understand, don't you?"

"Yes, Father; but----"

"But what?"

"You will be good to Christian, won't you?"

"Good! of course I will. I'm not the sort of man who's bad to
women--except for drinking, and that's over and done with. Does
Christian know about you and Townley?"

"Yes--she's known for some time."

"But she didn't expect you to get married just yet. She told me how much
she was looking forward to us living all three together."

"She'll be glad enough to live alone with you."

"Well, of course it's only natural. . . . But, Rose, you promised me not
to be influenced by that."

"I'm not influenced. Perhaps if you hadn't been going to marry Christian
I might have waited a bit longer--I shouldn't have known quite yet. But
now I know--I'm quite sure. This has shown me plainly. And I'm glad."

"Then why are you crying? Rose, my dear, don't cry."

Her tears had suddenly come back, without her permission or control.
They were partly the spring of her buried passion for Townley, bursting
up now that denials were gone, washing away the last cold stones of
argument. They were partly self-reproach for her share in this sad
thing, for the hardness and lack of love that had helped bring it about.
Only by a lifetime of love and devotion--to Townley, since no one else
really wanted her--could she atone for it.

"Rose, my dear, don't cry."

His arm came round her, drawing her to his shoulder. He had come to her
side to comfort her--her father whom she had never loved, whom she had
made to feel a nuisance and a burden. He had wanted happiness, he had
told her--he had wanted love; who could blame him for taking them? There
was no one to blame but herself who had starved him.

"Forgive me," she sobbed as he fondled her hair, "forgive me, Mother."



_Part II_
WIFE



                             _Chapter One_



Aunt Hannah Deeprose had, after all, to spend that summer with her
sister Edith in their little box of a cottage outside Smarden. She had
made sure of spending it again at Bladbean, for Townley had told her he
could not possibly manage his summer visitors without her. Then when
Townley had disappointed her and surprised the neighbourhood by
announcing his engagement to his cousin Rose, she had comforted herself
with the thought that Wally Deeprose would want her to come and cheer
his abandoned state at Harlakenden. The announcement of Wally's own
engagement to Miss Christian Lambert of Stede Quarter had seemed a final
act of treachery to herself and outrage to the neighbourhood.

Of the two marriages, the second carried most local excitement. After
all, it was not so surprising that Townley Deeprose should marry--in
fact, everybody had long been expecting him to do it; and that he should
marry his cousin Rose was no more than rather stupid of him. But that
Wally Deeprose, that poor drinking chap, should marry at all, and that
he should marry the most notable foreigner of the district, was a double
wonder that at first could scarcely be believed.

Of course it was well known that Miss Lambert had for two years been the
close friend of his daughter. But a man does not commonly marry his
daughter's friend, and who would have thought she'd look at him? The
reason lay partly, no doubt, in the fact that she was queer--legend had
come with her and gossip had grown round her, and for some time she had
been a notorious incalculable figure in the landscape of Shadoxhurst.
Only a queer girl would marry poor Wally, in spite of all the smartening
and brushing-up he had gone through. Some people said he had stopped
drinking, but that probably only meant he'd given up going to pubs,
preferring a private supply. He'd make her a bad husband for certain,
and what sort of a wife would she make him? . . . It was said that her
own father was delighted to get rid of her. An aural tradition of his
remarks, as reported by Elsie Hurst, once Iggulsden, who still obliged
occasionally at the quarter, confirmed the impression that he thought
himself lucky to have done it with so little scandal or expense.

Certainly he showed no disappointment in her choice--possibly because he
felt none, possibly because he was sensible enough to put as good a face
as he could on the inevitable. Christian was married without reticences
or economies. It was true that she had no bridesmaids--as it was
discovered that she had no girl friends except Rose, who by this time
was herself married and could accept nothing but the rather obscure
place of matron of honour. Rose held her bouquet and watched the lines
of her goddess-shape gleam through the haze of her chiffon veil which
the sunshine had changed into a golden cloud. Never had she looked more
beautiful, more ethereal, more like a being above common earth. "O God,"
prayed Rose Deeprose, "make him be good to her, and may they both be
happy. Help me to help them, and don't let me ever be hard again."

She did not think she had been hard to anyone since her marriage. Her
marriage had been a softening and a melting; she had not expected to
find herself so changed. But Townley had not only melted her--he had
moulded her; she was in a gentler pattern. She felt that her edges were
less clear, that she merged into him and into their common life.
Sometimes she thought it strange that she should still be Rose Deeprose.
It was odd to marry and not to change one's name--odd and unlucky,
people said, or was that only the letter. . . . Change the name and not
the letter, change for worse and not for better. . . . She had not
changed the letter, but then neither had she changed the name. She did
not think she would be unlucky. She was happy and satisfied in her
marriage, and it felt natural to her--much more natural than being
single. Her mind and her body were both at ease. She no longer thought
queer thoughts about lanes losing themselves like thoughts in woods like
nothingness, nor was she restless and anxious, nor had she any
daydreams. Sometimes she missed her daydreams and wished that she could
have them back again.

She missed Harlakenden House too. Bladbean was so different . . . no
matter what was done there, it could never look like Harlakenden. All
that she had brought from the old home besides her new clothes, which
had never belonged to it, was the china cat that had once been her
mother's. It stood on her new mantelpiece, the only relic of her saint,
and a sort of wand of succession, passed on from priestess to priestess,
waking to it from her pillow. In every cold blue dawn she saw it there,
detaching its cosmic inanity from the shadows, just as her mother had
seen it at Harlakenden. She would look at it and think of her mother as
of a woman like herself, a wife waking at her husband's side to the
duties and cares of the day.

They had been married early in February, and had gone for a week to
London before coming back for her father's wedding. Rose had not liked
London, though it had interested and excited her. It had made her feel
nervous and more than ever dependent on her husband. Townley had been
there several times. He took her to restaurants and theatres and bought
her what she thought an almost shocking hat. "You dip it over the right
eye, madam," the saleswoman had advised, but Rose had refused to wear it
any other way than squarely on her head, a little towards the back.


Just as Christian's marriage had been the more sensational, so also it
brought more changes to her surroundings. She was not likely to content
herself with marking them with no more than one china cat. At first she
had declared that nothing would ever make her change the plush parlour,
but by the end of April cretonne covers had disguised the plush, and
cushions heaped themselves on the unyielding contours. In July she
bought a luxurious sofa, all sprung and padded, better than a bed. Early
in September she had put in the telephone and a bathroom and announced
she could not face the winter without an anthracite stove in her bedroom
and in the hall. For her bedroom, too, she bought a huge new bed, with a
box mattress and goosefeather overlay, and curtains bunched into a
wooden crown.

Her husband made no objection at all, partly because he enjoyed her
vagaries, and partly because she paid for them with her own money. Rose,
however, could not stop a protest now and then.

"You're making Harlakenden just like Stede Quarter."

"Indeed I'm not. Stede Quarter is Ye Olde, and Harlakenden's Queen
Victoria; the only resemblance between them is that now they're both
dressed up to their periods. If I'd been copying Father I'd have used
calendered chintz instead of cretonne and filled the house with
four-posters. But there's hardly anything in this house that wouldn't
naturally have been there in 1880."

"What about your new sofa, and the telephone and the bathroom?"

"Oh, they're comfort, my sweet--comfort, convenience and cleanliness;
and I must have warmth, too. But the rest is almost as perfect as a
Victorian dolls' house. Oh, how I wish I could open the front and see
those four rooms in their beauty, with the staircase going up the
middle."

She was full of irresponsible happiness. She enjoyed her new life,
laying light, changing hands on any drawback she could not accept as a
joke. At first she had taken Dolly Iggulsden as a joke, and then when
she found the joke involved too much trouble and discomfort, she had
sent her away and engaged an experienced maid from a London registry
office. The experienced maid did not stay long, not quite approving of
the household, but she was succeeded by another, and another, and
another, and finally by a married couple, who settled into two of the
unoccupied rooms of the old part of the house and endured the
eccentricities of their mistress and situation for the sake of a
generous salary.

Christian's personal income turned out to be a good deal more than
anyone had supposed. She had five hundred a year in trust, and could
afford to keep her own car--to her husband's visible relief. The indoor
man attended to it and also to Harlakenden's few square yards of garden
which Christian had laid out with geraniums, lobelias, and
calceolarias--to be, she said, in keeping with the housefront, which
certainly, as shown off by them, looked grimmer than ever.

Rose seldom drove up to it now without a certain pleasure; directly the
front door opened she would find an atmosphere more suggestive of the
red, blue, and yellow flower-bed than of the grim faade. For the first
time in her experience the house was gay; it was sometimes also
eccentric, disordered, erratic, but it was gay. She did not reproach
herself because it had not been gay in her time; she had learned to know
herself a little better, and she knew that she could never have done
what Christian had--it was not in her nature. But she appreciated the
change for her father's sake, and was thankful to see him looking so
much brighter and younger. Her only anxiety was that either he or she
would one day grow tired of it all. There was bound to come a time when
he would wake up from this dream of youth and change and colour, to find
himself middle-aged, and ask for quiet and stability. While she . . .
when that inevitable time came, she might be unable or unwilling to give
him what he wanted. Rose knew that Christian was selfish.


Sometimes she could not help envying her a little, and sometimes she
felt that she herself should have made more of an impression on
Bladbean, that she should not have accepted it so unquestioningly. There
was no stamp of herself on the house. It was just as it was in Aunt
Martha's time; it had not changed. She had known when she married
Townley that she must not expect to mark the farm, that all the study
and experience of her years at Harlakenden was to be put aside if not
thrown away. She had known her position on the farm and had accepted it
with her husband, for better, for worse; but the house was
different--surely it was rather poor-spirited of her to have made no
mark on the house.

But in this new mood of acceptance that was growing on her she had
learned to accept herself. She was not a domestically-minded woman,
or--like Christian--an artistically-minded woman; she was not the kind
that marks or changes houses. She was lucky in having come into a house
so well established, that needed no change either in its looks or in its
ways. All that sometimes struck her as peculiar--when she thought of
these things--was that Christian, the dependent and the protected of the
two friends, should now be the ruler of her home, even to the point of
revolution; while Rose, who had cherished Christian and "run"
Harlakenden was now submissive even to the furniture of her house.

Sarah Cramp, who had worked for Aunt Martha, had left to be married some
years ago, and the present maid was Ivy Chandler, a girl of eighteen,
trained by Aunt Hannah on last summer's visit. She was, however, a
smart, hard-working little thing, wanting no more than a light
supervision, and at first Rose found that she had quite a lot of free
time at her disposal. She was not used to it and did not know what to do
with it, unless she spent it with Christian either at Harlakenden or at
Bladbean. She had not acquired the habit of reading, she had never
learned to play the piano, she was clumsy with her needle. So during
those first months of marriage, when Townley was out on the farm, she
would often take the car and drive over to see her father and Christian,
usually to fix a day for her friend to visit her in her own home, when
they would sit for hours talking and laughing over the teacups, with a
greater sense of carelessness and freedom even than in old times--when
duties waiting to be done had stared at her from every corner.

Her friendship with Christian had naturally changed since her marriage.
It had become less exacting, less absorbing; it was one of the
relaxations of their lives. There was now no clash in her thoughts
between Christian and Townley; their claims were different, their
contacts were wide apart. Nor was she secretly jealous of Christian's
interest in him, as she had sometimes been in the old days. Indeed,
there was no doubt that everything had changed for the better. She had
not known that marriage was like this. A year ago she could never have
believed that marriage would make her at once so submissive and so
careless, so settled and so free.


Clouds did not come till the summer, and at first they were so light
that she scarcely noticed them. Townley had begun to fuss a bit about
the Hollinsheds--the preparation of their rooms, the renewals of sheets
and towels and napkins. It was no more than she might have expected,
though she had never believed what her father said about Bladbean's
summer visitors, putting down most of his remarks to jealousy. It was
not till just before they arrived that she realised she had not taken
them seriously enough.

Townley surprised her by asking if she had any nice aprons.

"Aprons? What sort? I've those dusting overalls you see me about in."

"Oh, I don't mean those. I mean proper aprons--white, with embroidery."

"No, I haven't got any."

"Well, you'll have to get some before the Hollinsheds arrive. There
isn't much time, so you'd better run in to Maidstone tomorrow."

"But what do I want them for? They're no use for dusting."

"It's for when you go in for orders to Mrs. Hollinshed in the morning."

"Orders about what?"

"The meals, of course, darling. Don't look as if you'd never heard of
such a thing."

"But I never have. Don't they eat the same as we do?"

She might have asked a courtier if the king had his meals in the
kitchen. Townley looked positively aghast.

"Of course they don't. They have what they order for themselves. I'd no
idea you didn't know that."

"Well, I didn't. I'm not used to these things; and it'll make a lot of
extra work."

"Not necessarily--we can arrange our own meals to fit in with theirs.
You go in to the sitting-room every morning at ten o'clock and settle
things with Mrs. Hollinshed. Mother always wore a nice apron then, and
so did Aunt Hannah."

"Oh, very well--I'll get one. But it seems queer to me."

She looked at him in a puzzled way. He was so proud and so upstanding,
so much the master of his house and farm that it was odd to find him on
this point so subservient. Not that she really minded--she did not care
about appearances one way or the other. But it was odd, after all the
airs of superiority that Baldbean had always given itself over
Harlakenden, to find him stooping lower than her father would ever
stoop. Of course, she told herself, it was a matter of custom. Aunt
Martha had been an old-fashioned sort, almost ready to curtsey to her
betters, and no doubt, with her aprons and her orders, she was only
following the still older custom of Deeproses who had received
Hollinsheds before they knew their own dignity.

Rose bought the aprons and found that she had need of them. Not only
were they required at her morning interviews, but she had to wear them
at the lodgers' meal-times as well. Aunt Martha had always done the
cooking and sent in Sarah to wait at table; but Rose was no cook, so she
had to delegate that office to Ivy, who was a fair though not excellent
performer, and carry in the dishes herself; she soon found that she was
expected to hand them, too.

She did not mind, for the Hollinsheds were agreeable and courteous
people whose only fault was that they took a great deal for granted.
They were always pleasant to Rose, and worried her only occasionally by
asking for dishes she had never heard of. Townley had always been
content with the plainest cooking; he had a fine appetite for beef and
mutton, pork and veal, suet roll, brown turnover, and plum duff; but
Mrs. Hollinshed wanted things like braised ham, chicken cream (with
crystallized cherries stuck on it, which seemed to Rose almost a
perversion of nature), honeycomb mould, and egg jelly. Rose bought a
cookery book and did her best; she would have done it cheerfully if only
Townley could have seen the situation with her eyes. If he could have
viewed it either as a nuisance or as a joke, she could have accepted it;
but he did neither. When he found out that Mrs. Hollinshed was testing
the farm's cookery beyond its powers, he became serious and alarmed.
Hadn't Rose better go into Maidstone and have some lessons? Well, of
course he saw that she hadn't time for it now; but afterwards, when the
visitors were gone, she might take a course in preparation for next
season and rub it up again in the spring. Like many men of his type, he
had imagined that cooking came to all women by nature, and was appalled
to find that in his wife's case, and even to a certain extent in Ivy's,
it was a craft to be acquired. Rose would have laughed at his scared and
solemn face if she had not found it too discouraging.

It would have made things easier if she could have told Christian about
them; her friend would have lightened the situation with laughter; she
would have prevented it getting on her nerves. But she knew that she
could not trust Christian not to tell her father, and Wally Deeprose
would be furious. He would regard Townley's treatment of his wife as
insulting to him personally--he might even quarrel with him over it; and
even if it did not come to a quarrel, Rose could not bear to have
Townley criticized. She herself might be annoyed by some of his
behaviour, but everyone else must approve of it in every particular; it
was the form taken by her possessive instinct in a situation where it
had no other outlet.

So on her visits to Harlakenden she spoke only generally of the
Hollinsheds, dwelling on their good points--their pleasant manners, the
money they paid, the humours of their children, their almost patriotic
devotion to Bladbean and its neighbourhood.

"Why, they know much more about these parts than I--than we--do. Mr.
Hollinshed was telling me yesterday that the reason why so many places
end in 'den' is that 'den' used to mean a clearing in the forest where
people kept hogs in the old days."

"A fat lot of use it'll be to him to know that," said Wally Deeprose.

"Well, it's interesting. I've often thought how queer it is that there
should be all these places ending in 'den'--Tenterden and Biddenden and
Bethersden and Frittenden and ever such a lot more--but I never thought
there was any reason for it."

"I don't suppose there is," said her father. "It's just something a lot
of idle chaps have invented, not having anything better to do. I can't
understand how it is Hollinshed can afford to spend nearly three months
at Bladbean every summer. Hasn't he got a job?"

"Yes, he's a barrister, but the courts are closed till October."

"Fine, useful courts they must be. What would happen if I shut down my
farm for three months in the year?"

"You're going to--this winter," said Christian. "You're going to shut
down Harlakenden, and leave Barnes as caretaker, and come with me to the
South of France."

"I'm not! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why, I'd be ruined."

"I'll pay for the whole thing."

"But I'll be ruined if I leave the farm for three months."

"Not in winter--nothing happens on a farm in winter."

"That shows how much you know."

"Well, nothing that Barnes can't manage, anyhow--Barnes and Swift."

"Barnes and Swift! They'd work five days between them all the time I was
away. The place would have gone back to bog by the time I came home."

"Rose managed the farm alone for ages--and in summer, too."

"Only for six weeks, till Barnes came; and she wasn't alone, either. I
was there. Besides, Rose has sense."

"Thank you for saying that," said Rose; "better late than never."

"Barnes has sense, too," said Christian; "you've often told me how good
he is."

"Only working under orders. No, my dear, I've promised to take you away
for a fortnight after next Christmas, but there's no good your
pretending it's going to be three months; it isn't. For one thing, I
couldn't bear to be away from home all that time."

They continued the argument--firmly and amiably on Christian's side, a
little peevishly on Deeprose's. But Rose did not think Christian would
carry her point. There was a residue of Kentish obstinacy in her
father's character that would prevent his being either driven or coaxed
into surrender. His farm, she knew, he could neglect, but like most of
his neighbours he hated leaving home--even his honeymoon had been an
uneasy perch. Christian would not get him away for more than a
fortnight, and Rose was surprised that she herself should wish it to be
longer. This craving for change was something new. She hoped it was not
a bad sign.


Rose herself did not approve of changes; but on her return to Bladbean
she found her disposition a roving one compared with her husband's, and
considered so by him.

"Here you are at last, darling. Where on earth have you been?"

"Only to Harlakenden. You told me you didn't want the car."

"I'd no idea you were going as far as Harlakenden. I thought you were
only going to the shop."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you--I meant to. Have you been wanting me,
dear?"

"No, but Mrs. Hollinshed has. She's been asking if she can have supper
early, as they want to go in to the pictures in Maidstone."

"What time does she want it? I'll get it at once. Isn't Ivy there?"

"Yes, but she can't possibly attend to things alone. And as it happens,
she wasn't there when Mrs. Hollinshed rang--she'd gone out into the yard
or something. I heard the bell ringing and ringing, so in the end I had
to go and answer it myself."

Rose nearly laughed. A disquieting thing about Townley was that he made
her want to laugh so often--not with him but at him.

"How dreadful for you, darling. I'm sorry."

"It was dreadful for Mrs. Hollinshed, having no one to answer her bell
but me. I had to tell her you were out, and I didn't know where you'd
gone or when you'd be in."

"Well, next time I go I'll be sure to tell you. I'm sorry I didn't this
time."

"I think, dear, it would be better if, while the Hollinsheds are here,
you didn't go so often to Harlakenden."

"I go only about once a week."

"That's rather often, isn't it, when you've got visitors?"

"If the visitors stay for three months they can scarcely expect me to
give up seeing my own family while they're here. Both Father and
Christian like my coming over."

"They could come to Bladbean."

"Father wouldn't--at least hardly ever; he can't get away."

"Nor can you get away--not conscientiously."

Rose no longer wanted to laugh. She felt anger swelling in her heart,
darkening the colour on her cheeks. She fought with herself--she must
not be angry with him; it would spoil her marriage--passion can so
easily change from one meaning to the other. Then she remembered her
mother's words, spoken long ago, but proving themselves daily in
experience. Women must treat men with kindness because men are creatures
with more feeling than sense. Townley was now being led away by his
feelings--his silly, childlike deference to people he had been brought
up to think his betters. She had no such blindness in her heart--she saw
clearly; so it was her duty to be kind and patient with his stumblings,
as a sighted person must be kind and patient with a blind one. The anger
left her heart, driven out by a sort of chivalry, a tender compassion
for one more helpless than herself. She picked up his large brown hand,
held it against her face, and kissed it.

"Very well, darling. They can manage quite well without me at
Harlakenden, so I won't go there any more while the Hollinsheds are
here."

Townley looked grateful, and more than a little surprised.



                             _Chapter Two_

That feeling of tender chivalry was the feeling that Rose called most
constantly to her aid during the months that followed. In the autumn she
seemed to need it more than in the summer, even though the Hollinsheds
were gone, and when winter came she needed it still, having recourse to
it sometimes almost mechanically, so that its first sharp prick was
dulled.

She used it to lighten the weight of Townley's kindness and to comfort
that feeling of nakedness which the occasional failure of his kindness
brought. She used it to maintain her self-respect when she saw how
little of a self she was in his eyes. Sometimes she had to persuade it,
sometimes she had to force it, sometimes it overwhelmed her with a
strange maternal power of pity in which she could do and suffer all
things.

She could not say that Townley had disappointed her, for she had always
known that he would sometimes make her feel like this. After all, she
had known him intimately for years--he had no surprises for her. She had
accepted him without any illusions; she had been prepared for the weight
of his possession of her--his arm flung kindly and protectingly across
her shoulders had always made her think of a horse's yoke. All the
qualities she had looked for had been there; not one had failed her. She
had found him kind, loving, physically attractive, decent, loyal,
upright; and if she had also found him dull, domineering, and obtusely
male, she had really no cause to complain of any failure in her
expectations.

No, the failure was in herself. She was disappointed in herself for
being unable to persevere in her acceptance of him. She saw that
acceptance now as in part the urgency of passion, in part--and this was
a new disclosure--her wish to reinstate herself in her own eyes. She had
failed as a daughter, so she would succeed as a wife. She was still
determined to succeed as a wife; there were moments when she clenched
her fists and told herself that she would bear or renounce anything
rather than fail her husband as she had failed her father. But this
determination no longer carried her along; she had to force herself
after it, against her will, tormented by stray desires for companionship
and independence, and discouraged by the thought that--short of her
running away with another man--Townley would never know if she had
failed him or not. Her chivalry towards him was misplaced. Unlike her
father, he was not a sensitive man--he had the horse's hide, though she
wore the horse's yoke.

She often thought that all would be well if only she had a child. A
child would grow up to be her friend. Her mother had said that it was
not usual for husbands and wives to be friends; but she herself had
proved that children could be friends with their parents. Part of the
disappointment of those months was that no child came, though Townley
wanted one as eagerly as she did, herself. When spring came without any
new hope, he suggested that they should both see a doctor; so she
visited Dr. Cooke's up-to-date successor, who told her that as there was
nothing physically wrong with her or with her husband, she might feel,
confident that in time she would have her wish. But Rose grew weary of
waiting.

Her heart was set upon bringing this friend into her life. She needed a
friend now more than ever, for she and Christian were no longer what
they used to be to each other. To a certain extent this drifting apart
was inevitable; two married women have not the time or the opportunity
for friendship that independent spinsters enjoy. But there was also
growing between them a certain discord, a conflict in their view of life
which was neither inevitable or natural.

Rose first became aware of it when she told Christian how very much she
and Townley wanted a child.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" said Christian. "You've been married only
just over a year."

"That's quite long enough. I ought to have started by now."

"I don't see why. I don't mean to have a baby for five years at
least--if I ever do."

"Oh, Christian, how can you say such a thing?"

"I'm not fond of children, and I don't pretend to be."

"But that's nothing to do with it. I don't think that I'm particularly
fond of children--not at all, in fact."

"Then why do you want any?"

Rose was bewildered by this line of argument.

"One doesn't have children because one's fond of them."

"I can't see any other reason."

"Well, one wants to go on . . . I don't know how to explain it . . . one
wants something to come out of one's marriage. I mean one doesn't want
one's marriage to be only being double instead of single."

"It's quite enough for me; in fact, sometimes I wonder if it isn't too
much."

"Well, it isn't enough for me--I always wanted more. It isn't just a
baby I want--it's some one who'll grow up and be a friend to me. It
doesn't matter if I'm fond of children or not. I'd be fond of my own
child because it's a part of myself and because it's going to grow up
into something more than a child."

"Darling Rose, how sweet you are! You're simply panting with
earnestness. Well, cheer up--you needn't talk as if you were forty.
You're only twenty-one, and you've time to have a dozen children."

"But why haven't I had one by now--or at least started one?"

"You should ask a doctor that."

"I have--I asked Dr. Brownsmith and he says there's nothing wrong,
either with me or Townley."

"Then why worry? If you ask me, you don't know when you're well off. I
only wish I could change places with you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you want a baby and don't seem able to have one--at least not
just yet; and I don't want a baby and never seem able to stop one
starting."

"Christian, what _do_ you mean?"

Rose stood up. She was terrified of what Christian might say.

"I mean that I have had at least four good frights since I've been
married, and if it wasn't for my resource and determination I'd now be
knitting little garments."

"Are you telling me that----"

Christian laughed at her horrified face.

"No, darling, I haven't been visiting a mysterious address in the back
streets of Maidstone--only a perfectly respectable chemist's shop. So
don't look so shocked at me."

"But--but--does Father know?"

"Of course not. Why should he? And look here, Rose, if you breathe a
single hint . . ."

Her fair, delicate face suddenly changed and looked quite ugly.

"But, Christian, I expect he wants a child."

"I dare say he does, but he's not the one who has to have it and be sick
and look hideous and perhaps die. . . . He's no imagination at all, or
he wouldn't have given me all this trouble. And if you say a single word
to him----"

"I won't. But I think you're being horrible--quite horrible."

"It's he that's being horrible. If he was at all considerate or
enlightened I shouldn't have to do these things. But he seems to think
it would be actually pleasant to have a brat squawling all night."

Rose could not go on with the conversation. She felt sick, and
struggling in her heart was something savage that hated Christian. If
she stayed a minute longer she might be tempted to smack that changed,
pale, ugly face, which did not look like Christian's at all, but like
some distorted mask of her.

"Where are you going?" asked Christian.

"Home."

"But why? I thought you were staying to tea."

"I can't. I must go home now. I can't bear to stay with you any longer."

"Rose, you're not angry with me--you wouldn't be angry with me for
that."

She came and stood between her and the door, and Rose felt some of her
anger die when she saw how frightened she was. Her ugly mask was a mask
of fright.

"I must go--because I _am_ angry with you; I can't help it. I promise I
won't give you away, but I--I--I feel sick."

She pushed by her out of the room and out of the house to where her car
was waiting. She climbed in and drove away very fast.

When she reached Bladbean her one thought was to find Townley.
Fortunately, he was not out, but taking off his field boots in the
kitchen. He was sitting on a wooden chair in front of the fire, and for
a moment before he became conscious of her she stood there filling her
eyes with him while her heart filled slowly with relief. There he sat,
the man she loved, her husband, who loved her, who saw life as she did
and wanted the child she wanted.

"Hullo, darling"--he was aware of her at last. "I didn't expect you back
so soon."

She went over to him and sat down on his knee, putting her arms round
him and drawing his head to her bosom.

"Oh, Townley," she murmured, "I do love you so. I love you--I love
you--I love you--desperately."


Of course her quarrel with Christian did not last. It was not in her
heart to quarrel with anyone she loved so dearly, and they soon were
friends again. It was one of Christian's endearing qualities that she so
quickly forgave and forgot; a few kisses and her wound was healed.
Rose's mended more slowly, and there was an unpleasant scar. She
sometimes reproached herself for what she thought was a vindictive
nature, but, try as she would, she could not forget Christian's angry,
ugly, frightened little face, nor some of the things she had said. Her
attitude towards marriage and motherhood seemed to Rose not only wrong
but unnatural. There was a chill of repulsion about it. She did all she
could to put it out of her mind, and they never talked any more of such
things.

They had differences, however, on other subjects, though these were
seldom explicit enough to be called quarrels. Rose could not help taking
her father's side in the matter of that winter trip which revived in
Christian's hopes the following autumn. She said as little as possible,
for she felt something of a hypocrite for understanding him so much
better now than when she lived with him, and after a time she began to
see more in the dispute than a mere question of change. Christian was
not a person who wanted to be continuously moving about. She had been
very little away during the two years she spent at Stede Quarter. This
restlessness was, as she had feared, something new. It came from an
uneasiness that would not let her stay quietly anywhere.

"Why do you want to go away? You've got your stoves. You won't be cold
this winter."

"It isn't the cold. It's everything looking so flat and dreary."

"The country isn't any flatter than it was last year."

"Darling, don't be so literal. Or were you attempting a joke?"

Rose blushed guiltily.

"It wasn't a very good one," continued Christian, "and, anyhow, this is
no joking matter. You see, the fact is Wally promised me that this
winter he'd take me abroad for quite a long time. And now I discover
that a long time's a fortnight and abroad is Bournemouth."

"I expect it's all he can afford."

"I told him I'd pay for it."

"The time, I mean. There's really quite a lot to do on a farm in
winter."

"And yet all the time you lived with him here you couldn't get him to do
a thing, even in summer."

"He was ill, then; he isn't now. Besides, he's got more at stake. He
never really cared very much about me, but now he's got to keep the farm
a going concern for your sake."

"For his own, you mean. I believe he's taken it into his head that he
wants to be a landed gentleman."

"Well, that's for you, isn't it? He never wanted it before. But now
you've made the house so nice, he thinks the whole thing ought to be in
good order."

"Yes, and no doubt he thinks it would be nice to have children to
inherit it and carry on after him. The Deeproses of Harlarkenden . . .
that's what he's done it for."

"Perhaps," said Rose, and managed to change the conversation.

She had also to listen to her father's case, which she felt was better
than his way of putting it.

"I can't possibly get away before Christmas, and I have to get back to
lamb those Southdowns in February. That doesn't give me much time in
between."

"You could get as far as Paris."

"I don't care for a place where you have to speak a foreign language."

"Then I don't see that you can go anywhere abroad; and she says you
promised her that."

"I'd have promised her anything," said her father slowly, and sighed.

"Then I really do think you should keep your promise and take her to
France. You could be back in two days if anything went wrong."

"I've told you that I don't want to go anywhere where they speak a
foreign language."

Rose was surprised to find him so obstinate, but she would not press him
further--partly because she sympathized with his wish to stop at home,
and partly because she guessed that the reasons he gave for doing so
were not his real ones. Probably he did not want to tell her what those
were. She felt vaguely unhappy and anxious.

In the end he and Christian went to Torquay, where there were palms and
other foreign resemblances. After three weeks Wally came home, but
Christian stayed on alone for two weeks more. Rose, calling at
Harlakenden, found him looking lost and dejected.

"She's done it," he said, speaking openly for the first time, "to show
her power over me."


That spring a telephone was installed at Bladbean. It was put in
primarily for the Hollinsheds, who had begun to wish for one, but
Townley found it quite useful, and so did Rose. It was a great help to
her housekeeping, and she was pleased to be able to ring up Harlakenden
in any necessity. Christian was delighted, and would have liked to spend
a part of every evening talking to her friend across twelve miles of
country. She was happy and at her ease, curled up in the corner of her
sofa and talking and laughing into the phone as naturally as if it was
Rose's ear. But Rose, never fluent in conversation, found herself almost
paralyzed by the receiver at her ear. She could ask a question or give
domestic orders, but she could not talk in any comfortable sense of the
word. If ever she stayed long at the telephone she always started
thinking of that night, now nearly five years ago, when a line between
Harlakenden and Bladbean would have saved her an anguish she still could
feel . . . she would see herself trying to turn the car by the signpost
at Spelmonden, then plodding through a shapeless and endless country,
towards a house which seemed to be moving, too, away from her, on the
wings of a nightmare. . . . "Good night, Christian. I've got to go now."
And after a time Christian gave it up.

So when Rose heard her voice one evening, calling her name, she knew
that it was not just to talk.

"Yes, I'm here. What is it?"

"Darling, can you come over--at once?"

"To Harlakenden?"

"Yes--at once. I want you."

"What is it? Has anything happened?"

"Yes, but I can't tell you now. Do come."

"I've got Townley's supper to see to. He'll be in quite soon. Won't it
do if I come tomorrow?"

"No, it won't. Oh, do please come, Rose. I'm so frightened."

"What of? Isn't father in?"

"Yes, he's in, and I'm frightened."

Rose felt suddenly chill. She thought she understood, then she put the
thought away from her. Oh, Heaven, not that.

"All right. I'll come at once. I'll get the car--I shan't be long."

Twenty minutes later she was driving up Plurenden lane, towards the grim
housefront that the moon had washed nearly white. A lozenge of gold
appeared as she stopped the car, and Christian came down the path to
meet her, wearing a thin dress without a wrap. She threw herself into
Rose's arms.

"Oh, darling! here you are at last."

"What is it, Christian? You must tell me what's happened. Is--is it
anything to do with father?"

"Yes, it is. Come in here and I'll tell you."

They went into the drawing-room and sat down together on the sofa, under
the lamp. Christian's face was white, and spotted with tears; it was
frightened, but this time fright had not made it ugly, for it was still
soft and appealing. She lifted it to Rose like a child's to her mother.

"Oh, Rose, darling, what shall I do? He's drunk."

Rose was not surprised. It was what she had feared.

"Where is he?"

"Upstairs-in bed."

"Did he put himself to bed?"

"Yes."

"Then he can't be so very bad. Mother used to have to help him."

Christian shuddered.

"Oh, Rose, he was so terrible and strange. He said dreadful, wild things
to me. I daren't be left alone with him."

"He won't hurt you. He never hurts anybody when he's like that--he still
has a sort of command of himself. The reason he looks so dreadful is
that his stomach's weak--that gets upset before his head."

As she spoke she realized that she was using her mother's arguments.

"But it's awful," said Christian. "I've never seen anything like it
before. I've seen people in the studio who'd had a drop too much, but
this is quite different."

"When did it start?"

"He went out this morning absolutely sober, and came back this evening
absolutely drunk."

"Was he driving the car?"

"No; another man drove him back--young Swaffer of the White Hart, who
said he'd been taken ill. But of course he knew what was really the
matter."

"You're quite sure that he isn't ill?"

"Quite. He told me himself that he wasn't--he told me he was drunk. Oh,
Rose, he said such dreadful things."

Rose was silent. She did not know what to say. Christian had laid her
head on her shoulder; the sheaves of her hair were tossed and untidy
against her arm.

"Have you never seen him like this before?" she asked at length. "Is it
absolutely the first time?"

"Absolutely the first. He hardly touches a drop--only a little beer now
and then. But now he's been drinking whisky."

"I'll go up and see him," said Rose.

"Don't be away long."

"No--I shan't be more than five minutes."

She went up to the bedroom that used to be so familiar, but seemed
strange now, with the huge, black shadow of Christian's canopied bed
flung on the wall by the moonlight. Her father lay with the bedclothes
pushed down to his waist. He opened his eyes when she came in and rolled
them glassily.

"Hullo! so you've deigned to come and look at me."

"Father, it's Rose."

"Oh, Rose is it? I'd thought it was my madam--I won't say my wife, since
she doesn't want to be that any more."

"You mustn't be angry with her; she's not used to these things and she's
frightened. You frightened her terribly and she sent for me."

"Now don't start all that on me, Rose, for you know nothing--absolutely
nothing. I bet she hasn't told you what happened last night."

"I don't want to know."

"You know I'm drunk, but you don't know why I'm drunk."

"I don't want to know."

"All right--I shan't tell you. I'll be a perfect gen'leman. But I'll
tell you this, you bitch--you were wrong when you said I was too old for
her. I'm not too old--I'm too young. She's the blasted witch of
Endor--too old to die."

"Shut up," said Rose.

"Shurrup! Oh, this is quite like old times. You stand and cuss me just
as you used to do. At least she's got that in her favour--she won't say
a word to me when I'm like this. Now you clear out, and tell her that if
she wants to come to bed she must come now. I'm going to sleep."

Rose went out of the room. She was trembling. The sight of her father,
and his last words, had tipped back the balance which before she saw him
had begun to fall on his side. Now all her old loathing and disgust were
reborn; a dozen memories of childhood rose up and sickened her. And with
her loathing also came back her lost vision or Christian. Her father's
words had put back the goddess in her shrine, for they had been a
blasphemy, a desecration. Night after night she had seen her mother go
upstairs to a drunkard's bed; but though she had resented the sight, she
had not been outraged by it. Now she shuddered at the bare thought.
Christian should not go to him--not that Christian ever would. Christian
did not smell of brown soap or do her duty.

She found her still in the drawing-room.

"Rose, what's he like?"

"Like what he used to be."

"What did he say to you?"

"Nothing much. Don't worry, darling. He'll be all right tomorrow."

"But I'm not going to be left alone with him. Rose, you must spend the
night here."

"But, darling, Townley will want me home. . . . You'll be all right.
You've got two servants in the house."

"They're no use at all. If I tell them anything they'll go away. I must
have some one I can talk to. Oh, Rose, stay--please stay."

"All right, I will. I'll ring up Townley and tell him father isn't
well."

"He'll know what that means."

"I expect he will. I don't see how we're to help that."

She went to the telephone and spoke to Townley. He was not pleased, but
as things were he could not object to her staying.

"You'll come back tomorrow morning, won't you?"

"Directly after breakfast."

"Don't fail, for I'll be wanting the car."

She promised again, and returned to Christian, who was now in a happier
mood.

"I've told Mrs. Emmett that you're staying the night, and that the
master's feeling poorly and doesn't want any supper. She's getting ready
the spare room for you now, and when everyone's gone to bed I'll come in
there, too. Will you be an angel and fetch my brushes and things out of
my bedroom?"

"Later on--when he's asleep."

"Of course. I didn't mean now."

Rose once more felt the return of an earlier emotion. Christian was not
only her goddess, to be kept from every affront, but her child to be
spoiled and protected. Her childish switch from despair to
light-heartedness, brought about by the settlement of a trivial point of
her tragedy, seemed touchingly pathetic to Rose's older mind. But it was
not a pathos that brought only pity; it also brought relief. She was
definitely relieved to be no longer on her father's side, to be back in
her old half-worshipping, half-cherishing relationship with Christian.
She felt almost cheerful as they sat down together to supper, though at
the bottom of her heart was a residue of foreboding.

In the night that residue came to the surface on some dream. She woke to
find herself sitting up in bed, staring out of a window that, to her
confused senses, seemed monstrously enlarged. For a moment she could not
remember where she was. Her surroundings were unfamiliar, and yet
familiar in a deeper layer of memory. She was alone--but some one was
with her. Then suddenly she was wide awake, remembering the day before
and the trouble it had brought, recognizing her girlhood's bedroom, now
the spare room of Harlakenden and changed in many ways, realizing that
the sleeping figure beside her was Christian. The moon had set, but the
stars filled the uncurtained window, and Christian's face was faintly
lit up by them. Looking down at it, Rose felt a stabbing return of her
doubts. She had never seen her asleep before and now she noticed that in
sleep her face--unlike most faces--looked old. The witch of Endor--too
old to die. . . . She shuddered. Her mind was clearer now than it had
been at any time since her coming to Harlakenden, and she saw that her
father would not have lapsed so badly for nothing. He had been sober for
nearly three years--something must have happened to make him return like
a dog . . . there must be some reason for his fall--probably more
sinister than the fall itself.

Perhaps she should have let him tell her . . . but that was impossible.
His conduct had been an outrage. She would not be on his side--she had
never taken his side in the old days, and she would not take it now. She
would be on Christian's side, as she used to be on her mother's. She had
never blamed her mother for his beastliness. If there had been trouble,
he had provoked it. And how many times would this happen again?

She lay down in torment. From her pillow she could see the darkness of
Plurenden woods and Orion's sword glittering above them, piercing down
like a threat to their quietness. It seemed about to meet the sword of
the lane that pierced them below; in the end these swords would rattle
together and destroy the woods. . . . Christian's marriage was
destroyed. . . . Well, she had told them so. She had known from the
first that they would not suit each other. Two swords would pierce their
marriage, one from above and one from below. But whose fault was it they
had failed to protect their mystery?--the immortal goddess's or the
mortal man's? And was Christian really an immortal goddess or a witch
too old to die? She remembered that earlier conversation with Christian
which had shocked her so much, and lay awake till daylight.



                            _Chapter Three_

During that spring and summer the ties between Rose and Christian were
knit again as closely as in the days of their spinsterhood. Two or three
times a week Christian came over to Bladbean, and on the other days Rose
was generally at Harlakenden. Even when July brought the Hollinsheds,
the situation was only a little changed. Rose stopped at home, but
Christian came more often to visit her. She did not pay much attention
to the Hollinsheds, but spent most of her time with Rose, helping her
with her increased household tasks, and alternately blazing with
indignation or laughing wildly at the sight of her in her apron.

"Darling, I see that I've encouraged you to think yourself above your
station. I've never demanded that you should put on an apron when you
come to see _me_. And that hat I made you buy last week is quite
unsuitable for a woman in your position; you'd better change it for a
plain, brown mushroom and learn to keep your place. O God! how can
Townley be such a fool!"

"It's only that it's always been the custom here."

"And being a man and a Kentishman he sticks to any custom good or bad. I
know another like him. But, Rose, why do you let him have his head?"

"Because these things mean a lot to him, and they make no difference to
me."

"You're very meek--I shouldn't have thought it was like you to give way
like that to a man."

"It makes life easier."

"For him."

"For him and for me. Please, Christian, will you pin my bow. The soup's
nearly, ready."

One day Christian was in a different mood and persuaded Rose to let her
put on the apron and carry in the dishes. They both laughed and the
Hollinsheds laughed, but Townley was furious. It seemed to him a
disrespectful sort of joke, a snook at his Hollinsheds, and it
emphasised the social jumble of the Deeprose family, now that Christian
had come into it. For Townley took no pride in his uncle's marriage with
a friend of the Hollinsheds. Rather it seemed to him a presumption, a
trespass into a private, forbidden world, where the Deeproses had no
rights and where their presence dishonoured themselves as well as those
they intruded on.

Rose was finding him increasingly difficult to accept, for the reason
that her chivalry was now divided. She could still flog up a certain
amount of it for him, but most of it was for Christian, whose claims
were coming more and more into conflict with his. Soon after the
Hollinsheds left she was persuaded to come and stay for a week at
Harlakenden, and on her return to Bladbean Christian joined her there
for a fortnight. Rose saw that Townley did not approve of this revived
intimacy. He regarded it unsuitable in a married woman, as perhaps it
was, and he disliked her having interests outside her home, even though
they involved her with none but her own people. His attitude towards
Christian herself was peculiar. He was frankly afraid of her. He was
jealous of Rose's affection for her, and he resented her having married
his uncle Wally, but the contempt and dislike that would normally have
resulted from such a state of mind were inhibited by the fact that she
belonged to that part of his life in which he was always a little
different from his normal self.

Rose saw something of his struggle and was sorry for him; but she did
not feel she could act differently. Christian had claims on her which,
though legally and morally inferior to his, were more emotionally
compelling. For Christian had need of her and he had not; or rather his
need was of the assertive kind that takes before it asks--not so much a
need as a demand. He took what she now cared as little to give as to
refuse, and wanted nothing else of her except to have her sitting safe
at home. But Christian's need was of another kind the need of appeal and
dependence, the need of a child. Townley made no appeal at all to her
maternal feelings, but Christian plucked her heart.

She had forgotten the antagonism that had briefly risen between them;
the months had melted it into pity. She saw that Christian now was
definitely unhappy at Harlakenden, and the fact that her father was
unhappy, too, did not divert any of her compassion. At least she had
been spared the misery of a threefold conflict; she might sometimes be
torn between the claims of Christian and Townley, but her father had no
claims at all. His return--which had happened as she feared--to the
deplorable ways of his first marriage had thrust her back into all her
old defences. She could not take his part against Christian any more
than she could have taken it against her mother. He was the drunken sot,
bringing ruin and humiliation to his family and sorrow to his wife. The
most she could do was to refrain from bitterness.

At first she had had an uneasy feeling that Christian must be to blame
for his lapse, but as these lapses continued, as she saw Christian
suffering under them, and listened to her heart-broken declarations of
innocence: "Such little quarrels, Rose--such tiny little quarrels--much
smaller, I'm sure, than many you have with Townley"--she had come more
and more to the conclusion that her father's weakness was
constitutional, and that whichever way his marriage had turned he would
have done as he was doing now. After all, he had got drunk repeatedly as
her mother's husband, and what better, truer, more loyal and loving wife
than her mother could have lived? If she blamed Christian, she blamed
her mother, too.

No, it was all a mistake, partly her own, so she must not spare herself.
They were hopelessly unsuited to each other; he was a drunkard and
Christian had not the powers of endurance and forbearance her mother had
had. Sometimes she wondered miserably what would come of it all; but she
would not let herself think. There was always a chance that he might
start on another sober period--she had persuaded him to consult his
doctor again. Meanwhile her company was a help to Christian, so she gave
her all of it she could. Apart from her friend's need of her, she was
glad to escape her own loneliness at Bladbean. Her usefulness to
Christian helped her to solve some of the problems of her own life. It
satisfied her need for responsibility and activity; it helped her forget
the bondage of womanhood to manhood, and most of all that supreme
frustration of her womanhood in childlessness. Christian did not quite
fill that emptiness, but she made it a little less aware and clamorous.


Early the following year she noticed that Christian was looking ill. Her
face seemed to have shrunk--it looked small and pale and drawn. Rose
questioned her anxiously more than once, but she always answered that
she was perfectly well. It was the cold that froze her, she said, in
spite of her two stoves.

February came, colder still, with the cold that hangs between rain and
snow in slowly lengthening days. Pools of water lay in the low corners
of the fields, and were glazed over at night with fragile ice that would
not bear a robin. The ruts were full of water, too, and the ditches ran
with the tinkling overflow of field drains. The low sky squirted rain,
and would sometimes thicken into a darkness from which a few sad flakes
fell and dissolved as they touched the ground. It was the wet, sad cold
of the south, equally remote from the dry brightness of snow and the
binding blackness of an iron frost. Colours lived in it still--rich soft
browns and greens, dim reds, pale blues and yellows. Nearly every dusk a
greenish-yellow bar would hang under the clouds above the vanished sun.

Rose did not mind the cold and the damp. They were a part of her life
every winter; but she was sorry for Christian, who was not used to them.
Even two stoves, she knew, would not make Harlakenden feel warm and dry.
There had been no talk this winter of Wally Deeprose taking her away.
Rose suggested that she should go for a week or two to Stede Quarter,
but Christian rejected the idea almost impatiently.

One afternoon she rang up and said that she was coming over to tea at
Bladbean, and about half an hour later she arrived, driven by Emmett,
her man. She was hugged deep into her fur coat, and a fur cap was pulled
down over her hair. Rose kissed her and was surprised to find that her
little face, which looked so pinched with cold, was burning hot.

She had laid tea in the drawing-room, in front of a good fire. The room
was still cheerful with daylight, and outside the window in a pear tree
a missel thrush was singing. The double cascade of his notes was almost
as sweet and clear as his cousin's, and seemed equally the music of
spring till you remembered that he never sang except before a storm.

"Hark to the storm-cock," said Rose as she sat down.

"Does that mean more wind and rain?"

"I suppose it does."

"Well, I've stopped minding about wind and rain or heat and cold or
anything else in nature. Rose, will anyone interrupt us here?"

"No. I've got the kettle on the hob."

"But Townley?"

"He's gone to Ashford market."

"That's all right, then, for I want to speak to you. I'm going to make
you hate me."

Rose stared at her, full of foreboding. Christian was going to tell her
something dreadful that she had done. She did not want to hear it. She
did not want to be made once more to feel against her.

"Don't tell me," she faltered--"don't tell me anything you'd rather
not."

Christian answered, almost angrily:

"How queer you are, Rose! I must tell you. I'm going to leave your
father."

"Oh!"

"Don't look like that. It's the only thing I can do. I'm going to have a
baby."

Rose struggled desperately with her thoughts, trying to arrange them in
accordance with Christian's words. But it seemed impossible to do so,
for the words themselves were discordant--"I'm going to leave your
father"--"I'm going to have a baby"--clashing together like cymbals.

Luckily there was no need to say anything, for Christian went on:

"I know for certain now, and it's too late to stop it. O my God! If it
had to happen, I wish it had happened earlier, before I felt like this.
But it's all no good--I went to see a doctor in Maidstone; I thought it
better not to go to Dr. Brownsmith. He says I'm four months gone. . . .
I should have known earlier, but I've been feeling like death, so I
thought that was why. . . . I thought the other was impossible. . . .
But I won't talk about that. You're hating me enough as it is--you're
hating me for not being pleased, for not going all maternal and feeling
that my broken life's mended . . . you're hating me----"

"I'm not hating you. Oh, Christian, how could I hate you?"

She ran over to her, and sitting close to her, on the arm of her chair,
took her in her arms.

"I don't hate you--I feel for you--of course I do. I know you're not
like me. But, dearie, why must you leave father?"

"How can I stay with him when I'm so ill and going to be much worse?
It's been bad enough this last year without any of that."

"Does he know about the child?"

"Lord, no! I'd rather die than tell him--and I've only just come to know
for certain myself."

"He'll have to know one day."

"I don't care about that, so long as I don't tell him. Rose, it fills me
with shame and misery, so that I feel almost as if I could kill myself,
just to think that I ever let him come near me since he started drinking
again. But he was sober for a whole six weeks this autumn; I thought
perhaps he'd started on another good spell--but not he! He was blind
drunk for most of Christmas week."

Rose's arms stiffened round Christian. She still recoiled from the word
her mother had never let her use.

"He isn't really drunk," she couldn't help saying. "He knows what's
happening the whole time--he never loses consciousness."

"No, I wish he would. And as for not being drunk--well, you surprise me,
that's all. However, whatever you call it, drunk or sober, to me it's
utterly loathsome, and I refuse to live with it."

"But, darling, I don't see how you're to leave him, now the baby's
coming."

"I've my own money. I can keep myself, thank God!"

"But it's his child--he'll claim it."

"And he can have it as soon as it's born. It's not the child I'm taking
away from him; it's myself."

Rose stooped and kissed the top of Christian's head, but she felt heavy
and sick.

"What'll he do with the child if you're not there?--and what'll it do
without you?"

"Oh, all that's a long way ahead. I'm only telling you that I'm not
plotting to take his child away from him, as you seemed to think. If you
like, I'm being utterly selfish, and I'm leaving him just because I
can't stand any more of him; and I don't know any woman that could."

Rose said nothing; she did not know what to say. In her world women did
not leave their men. Sometimes the men left the women, and the women,
however privately relieved, were outwardly cast into deeps of suffering
and humiliation; but the women did not leave even the men who
ill-treated them and shamed them with others (except, perhaps, for a
month's flight to embarrassed relations). There were bonds that could
never be broken.

She sat with her arm round Christian's shoulders, which seemed very
small and bony under her woollen gown. The storm-cock still sang in the
pear tree by the window, though the yellow light had turned to grey and
the afternoon was gone. In the room there seemed to be nothing but
shadows.

"Christian," said Rose, "I do feel for you--indeed I do; and I know it's
worse for you than for mother, because she was different--a tougher
sort. . . . But you've borne all this for a year. Can't you go on for
just a few months longer?--till the child's born? I'm quite, quite sure
it will be better then."

Christian lifted her head impatiently.

"It won't. Why should it? Besides, what I can't face is just these few
months you talk so lightly of. They're going to be hell."

"If father knew there was a baby coming he might sober up."

"Not he! If he won't do it for me, why should he do it for a miserable
brat he hasn't even seen? No, Rose, there's no good your talking like
this, for you don't understand. I'm going to be ill--I'm going to
suffer; and I can't live in a place where everything will be made ten
times worse even than it's likely to be."

"Did the doctor think there was anything wrong with you?"

"Only that I'm going to have a child I don't want. That's quite bad
enough."

"But, darling, having a child's quite natural, it oughtn't to make you
ill."

"Oh, don't pull that farmyard stuff over me. I'm not a country woman,
and it's _not_ natural for me to have a child, whatever you may say.
I've been feeling absolutely dreadful ever since it started, and I'll
probably die when it comes."

"Of course you won't. If the doctor says there's nothing wrong with you
. . ."

"And don't you know that thousands of women die every year in
childbirth? It's a thing the doctors have never learned how to
prevent--as many die now as died before the days of nursing-homes and
chloroform. And I'm frightened--I tell you, I'm frightened. I'm
frightened to die--I don't want to die. Oh, Rose, I don't want to die."

She threw her arms round her, hiding her face in her shoulder. Rose's
heart was torn with pity. She rocked Christian to and fro, kissing and
comforting her.

"Don't be frightened, my pet. It isn't true. You've been scaring
yourself with a lot of nonsense. It isn't true. Healthy, well-fed women
don't die----"

"But I've taken stuff. They say that's very bad for you if you take it
and then have the baby."

"Don't worry about that, precious. The doctor would have known if it had
done you any harm. Oh, Christian, you mustn't be so upset about all
this, because you're going to be happy--you're really a very lucky
woman, if only you knew it. Oh, my dear, I can't tell you how I envy
you!"

"Darling Rose, you're very sweet." She sat up and wiped her eyes with a
scrap of handkerchief. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Then if you feel like that you must make up your mind to stay at
Harlakenden, or you'll have to do without me."

"Not necessarily."

"What? Do you mean to go to Stede Quarter?"

"Lord, no! But I've got a plan, Rose, a lovely plan for us both. I came
to talk to you about it."

She slipped out of Rose's arms and stood on the hearth rug, facing her.
But they could scarcely see each other now, for the room was dark and
the fire was low.

"I want," continued Christian, "you and me to go away together. You'd
like it, too--you'd be glad to get away. For you're not happy with
Townley, Rose, are you?"

Rose half stood up, then sat down again. She felt shocked. Christian's
words came with just that stab of truth which made them outrageous. She
muttered, mechanically, "You mustn't say that."

"Why not? Don't be such a humbug, Rose. We're neither of us happily
married. I'm the worse off of the two, and as you warned me from the
start you may now crow as loud as you please; but you're not to tell me
you didn't make nearly as big a mistake as I did."

"It wasn't a mistake. I knew what Townley was like. If I made a mistake
it was in myself--I trusted myself more than I should. And I thought I'd
be sure to have a child."

"It's a pity we can't change places--you have my child and give me some
of your meekness."

"I'm not meek."

"Then what makes you let Townley trample on you?"

"He doesn't trample on me. I let him have his way about some things
because, if I didn't, we'd both be miserable. When I married him I knew
what it would be, and what I'd have to do to make the marriage a happy
one."

"And is it a happy one?"

"As happy as many. He's happy, I think, and if I'm not happy always
. . . well, one can't leave a man just because one isn't always happy
with him."

"Dear Rose, don't look so grim. You're sitting there frowning like a
judge at some poor criminal. If the criminal's me, let me tell you that
I'm never happy with your father; and if it's yourself, I'm not
suggesting that you should 'leave' Townley, merely that you should come
away with me for a bit--for a month or two."

"He'd never agree to that."

"Oh yes he would, especially now, when you'll be back in heaps of time
to put on your apron and wait on the Hollinsheds. We could go away
together and then you could come back, leaving me wherever I am. It
would do you nearly as much good as it would me."

"Where had you thought of going?"

"I'd thought vaguely of London--it's about the only place one can go
this time of year. But if you can think of anywhere we'd both like
better . . ."

Rose was silent a moment; she had suddenly thought of a plan. It filled
her with longing and excitement, for she could not hide from herself how
much she would like to go away with Christian. Except for her two visits
to Harlakenden she had not been away from Townley since her marriage. It
would, as Christian had said, do her good to go away. Besides, she could
not possibly let Christian go without her. It would break her heart to
let her, in her present state of mind and body, go off all alone among
strangers.

"Look here," she said. "I've thought of something. We might go to my
aunt's at Fakenham."

"To Norfolk? Won't it be very cold?"

"Yes, it will--out-of-doors. But indoors we'll have roaring fires. I'll
see that you aren't cold. Oh, Christian, you'll love it."

"I believe I shall. But will they love to have me?"

"Oh yes. Aunt Susan said I could come whenever I liked--she wrote again
when I was married. And you're my stepmother, you know."

"Lord! so I am. But will that help much?"

"They'll be glad to have the chance of seeing you."

"But they won't want to have me with them for long."

Rose looked grave again.

"If I go away with you, it's on condition that we both come back
together in a month's time."

"But I told you I was never coming back."

"You must come back. Christian, you mustn't leave father till the baby's
born."

"Have we really got to go into that again? I told you I was leaving him
at once and for ever."

"You mustn't. Because when the baby's born you'll find everything
changed. You won't want to leave him."

"I shall. Why shouldn't I? If you really imagine that the thought of the
coming chee-ild is going to make him sober . . ."

"It's sure to make a difference; and even if it doesn't make any in him
it will in you. In fact, I believe you'll feel better as soon as you get
away. You're run down and need a change."

"I do. But that isn't why I'm going. I'm going because, quite literally,
I can't live with Wally any longer. And since you know what he's like I
can't see why you're trying to make me do it."

"I'm not doing it for his sake--at least only a very little, and then
it's more for mother's sake than his. But I don't want you to burn your
boats, because I believe you'll change your mind when you feel better."

"Oh, I don't mean to announce that I'm leaving him for good. I shall
simply go away and not come back."

"You'll tell him about the baby before you go?"

"I will. And I'll let him have it as soon as it's born."

Rose shivered and poked the dead fire. She suddenly felt cold.

"When it's born you'll be much too fond of it to send it back--alone--to
a place where you're afraid to go yourself. What'll the poor little mite
do without its mother?"

"My dear Rose, I've never seen you sentimental before. What a pity all
this is! Certainly if there's a God he makes some dreadful mistakes."

She sat down again beside Rose, but they held themselves as far apart as
their narrow seat would let them. Then suddenly Christian burst into
tears.

"Don't cry, my pet--don't cry!"

Rose's arms came round her at once. It was too dark for them to see each
other except as shadows, but the sweetness and softness of Christian,
her sorrow and her helplessness, were all round Rose in smell and touch
and taste. She could taste her tears as she kissed her.

"My poor, poor pet, don't cry!"

"I won't if you'll come with me and not make me promise anything. You
shall go back when you like, but you mustn't make me promise to come
with you."

"All right. You shan't promise."

She could not stand out any longer against Christian. She must do what
she wanted and stand by her in this miserable hour. But even as she
comforted her she wondered what she would do when the time came for her
to go away, leaving her alone. She was only putting back the moment of
choice and struggle, when she would have to choose between Christian and
all that seemed right and good and honest in her world.

The next day she felt better. Christian's decision seemed a less final
one; she saw the visit to Fakenham ending pleasantly in their joint
return, and sat down that morning to write to Aunt Susan Medlar.

She still felt pleased at the prospect of a change. She and Christian
would be happy walking together in the Norfolk lanes or sitting together
by the fire at Primrose Hall. They would forget their menfolk and their
worries, and their friendship would lose its strain. They would be as
they had been in the months after they first met. She ought to have
thought of this before; Christian would not have had this breakdown if
she had gone away immediately after Christmas. She was not like the
Deeproses--she needed new places and new interests. Rose herself would
be the better for some variety. She was growing stiff and stale. . . .
Oh yes, certainly it was a good thing that they were going away.

She would say nothing to Townley, however, till their plans were fixed.
He was almost certain to oppose them and it would be easier for her to
deal with his opposition if she had settled all the details. Wally
Deeprose already knew, and according to a brief telephone conversation
with Christian, did not mind at all. Rose had asked, "Have you told him
about the other?--you know," and Christian had answered: "No, I'm not
going to. You must do that."

So it fell to Rose's lot to tell her father about the coming child. She
drove over to Harlakenden one afternoon when Christian had gone out, and
broke the news to him. She did not expect him to be displeased with
anything save the manner of the communication.

"Why didn't she tell me herself?" he asked.

"She didn't like to. She asked me to do it."

"She's queer," he said slowly; "she's queer."

"I suppose she is in some ways. But women often are queer at these
times."

"Yes, they are; even your mother was queer when you were coming. I
remember her crying out against having the chimney swept because she
didn't like the looks of the man who did these things for us then. We
had the kitchen fire smoking like hell till all of a sudden she got over
it."

"You're pleased, aren't you, Father--about the baby?"

"You bet I am. I hope it's a boy. Not that I've anything against a
girl," he added, politely, "but a boy would be a change. And I'd like to
feel I'd some one to take the place after me."

He sat silent for a few minutes, chewing at his pipe. It seemed to Rose
that this second outbreak of drinking had marked him more heavily than
all his earlier years. He looked old, and he was not fifty yet; his eyes
had a boiled look.

He suddenly asked, "Is Christian pleased?"

Rose stammered.

"I--I don't know. I think she will be."

"Um--I don't know. She never wanted a child. I told you she was queer."
After a pause he added:

"You were right, Rose."

"Right about what?"

"About us marrying. I should never have married her."

"Oh, Father, don't tell me about it. I can't bear to hear."

He looked at her almost tenderly.

"There's many a woman 'u'd be pleased to be proved right. But you're not
like that. You're decent. I'm glad Christian's going away with you."

She mumbled something. Her heart was full of what the future might hold,
and after a moment's thought she could not resist probing him.

"Father, even though it hasn't turned out well, you're still fond of
Christian?"

He looked at her without speaking.

"I mean, you you don't want her to--you don't want to leave her . . ."

"I leave her! My God, Rose! what are you saying? I'd sooner die than
leave her--I'd die if I left her--or she left me."

Rose clenched her hands to stop them trembling.

"She's got me," he continued, "though she makes me miserable and I was a
fool to marry her. I'm hers for better for worse, as we said in church.
She's got me, all right. I couldn't let her go even if she wanted me to.
Rose, promise you'll never do anything to make her leave me."

"I, Father! Never--I swear to you. I didn't hold with your marrying her,
but now you're married you must stay together."

"I'm glad to hear you say that. I'd a feeling you were trying to
persuade her to leave me."

"I'd never do such a thing. How can you think it?"

"Well, you're such friends . . . and you know she isn't happy with me."

She laid her hand on his sleeve.

"Father, can't you pick up a bit?"

"You mean run sober. No, I can't. Not as things are."

"Not now you know there's a baby coming?"

"I'll do what I can--but you don't understand, my dear."

"She'd be a different person if you were always sober. You frighten her
when you're not."

"Yes, I suppose I do. But she frightened me first."

"In what way?"

"When I married her I'd been sober for a year. All this started before I
took a drop."

Rose looked at him miserably.

"I won't say any more," he said. "I won't blame her. She's different
from you and me--that's what makes her so wonderful sometimes. No doubt
I'm a rotten chap and 'u'd have gone back to drinking anyhow."

"But now the baby's coming, can't you do better?"

"I don't know that I can. I'll try. But when you were coming, Rose, I
took too much almost every week. Just because I was so anxious about
your mother. . . . You see, when I've taken enough of the stuff I don't
feel."

"That was what Mother said."

"What?"

"That you drink because you're--because you're hurt so easily."

"Your mother had some very sound notions. Poor woman! she'd be sorry for
me if she could see me now."

Rose put out her hand and squeezed his. Then she stood up and said she
must go. She was afraid that she might change sides again.


She had been prepared for Townley's opposition, but she was surprised to
find it so determined.

"I don't see what you want to go away for now."

"Well, I haven't been away since our honeymoon, except to stay at
Harlakenden."

"If you'll wait till Starvenden Wood is cleared I'll take you to London
for a couple of days."

"The point is that Christian wants me to go away with her. She's been
very poorly and looks as if she might have a real breakdown; so I
thought it would be nice if we both went to stay with Aunt Susan."

"For how long?"

"A month." It did not occur to her to deceive him.

"A month! Great Heavens, Rose, do you seriously intend to leave home for
a month?"

"I don't see why I shouldn't, since Aunt Susan's willing to have us as
long as that. One month in three years doesn't seem too much holiday."

He turned away from her abruptly. She was in her bed and he was
undressing beside it. She had chosen the moment as likely to be a
friendly one.

"I don't like it and I don't think it's right. You've got your home and
your duties to attend to. Why should you neglect them for Christian?"

"Because she's ill and ought to go away, and she's not fit to go away
alone. Besides, after all, she has some claim on me. She's my
stepmother."

He looked disturbed, as he always did when she mentioned her
relationship to Christian.

"But I'm your husband," he countered, explosively.

She smothered one of her unfortunate impulses to laugh at him, standing
there important and indignant in his pyjamas. It looks like it, anyway,
she thought; but she said nothing. He began to pace up and down the
room.

"I really am surprised at you, Rose. I never thought you had it in you
to do such a thing--leaving me here alone for a month while you go off
holidaying."

"Ivy will look after you very well--you know she's a better cook than I
am; and I'll get Mrs. Austin to come in and help her, so you'll have all
your comforts."

"But I'll be alone--you seem to forget that I'll have no one to talk to
except servants. A man doesn't want only his comforts--he wants
companionship."

This time Rose really did laugh--rather bitterly.

"Oh, Townley, do come off it! When do you and I have any real
companionship? You're out all day except for meals, when you always read
the newspaper; and in the evenings you go to sleep."

Townley was annoyed at what was, but for certain heightenings, an
accurate description of his day.

"That isn't true--you know it. And what about us now? What are we doing
now? If you go away I shall have to sleep alone for a month. You forget
all that."

"I don't forget it. But I don't call it companionship. Some people would
call it by quite a different name."

She had gone too far, and was sorry. But it was too late to pacify him.
He was shouting at her:

"If it's like that, you'd better go, and get off quick! Then I'll have
some rest from your tongue. You've got a tongue like a knife--I was
warned against it before I married you. A sharp tongue and a hard heart.
You can go to hell for all I care!"

"Townley, please."

"Yes, if by companionship you mean conversation, you can go to hell."

"I don't mean conversation--I was trying to say something quite
different. But never mind that now. I'm sorry if I've upset you."

"Upset me? What a maddening woman you are! You tell me you're going off,
to leave me utterly alone for a month, and then say you're sorry you've
upset me. But it isn't only that--it's the principle that's wrong. A
woman's proper place is the home."

She had been expecting him to say that; they had never had an argument
without it. Again she wanted to laugh, but this time she managed to
control herself.

"Townley dear, don't let's quarrel. We seem to have been doing too much
of that lately."

"Have we? I hadn't noticed it."

No, she supposed he hadn't. The differences that disturbed her would
make no impression on him, and he was not the sort of man to call
shouting at his wife a quarrel. She felt a stab of pain as she thought
of their disunion in union. She could have loved him so much . . . she
did love him so much. . . . Looking up at his glum, handsome face she
bitterly wished their marriage had been different. It was all very well
to tell Christian she had been prepared for it all beforehand. So she
had, in a measure; and yet she had not. She had expected certain things,
but she had not been prepared for her own disappointment when the
expected had happened.

"If you thought more about your home," he said, "and less of your own
ideas and of things outside, there'd be no chance of us quarrelling. But
I suppose you don't really care for domestic life; you'd rather be out
on the farm, where you aren't wanted."

She looked at him without speaking, and her eyes filled with tears.
Before she knew what had happened they were pouring down her cheeks. He
stared at her in amazement.

"Hullo! What on earth are you crying for?"

She burst into pitiful sobs and stretched out her arms to him. In a
moment he had taken her into his, and they strained together, their
anger purged by each other's touch. His lips seemed to cleanse hers of
the bitter words they had spoken. It was not the first quarrel she had
known end this way; but there was a difference tonight, for though anger
and bitterness were gone, grief stayed in her heart, sad housekeeper for
love. She still could feel it there when he had put out the light and
taken her in his arms again. Grief could live where anger and bitterness
must die. Her tears flowed on--they would not stop; they dried on her
face only when she fell asleep.


The next day it was a shock to find that their difference was still
unsettled. She had thought that he had given at least an unwilling
consent to her going away, but he denied that he had done any such
thing. He had merely told her she could go to hell and she had been
wrong in thinking this covered a permission to go to Fakenham.

She was disappointed, but she persevered, for she was determined to go.
After a while he came to see that he could not stop her. After all, he
could not lock her up, and local opinion would not approve of his
refusal to let his wife go on such an innocent excursion. He gave way,
but with the maximum of ungraciousness. During the few days that elapsed
till her departure he sulked continuously. If ever he spoke to her, his
words suggested that she was a fly-away wife, deserting her family for
gaiety and travel. As she listened to him Rose would almost forget that
she was only going to stay with relations in the country. Fakenham
glittered with casino lights, and the kitchen at Primrose Hall chinked
with gamblers' money, while figures in gleaming shirtfronts and
glittering diamonds leaned from the corners with whispers of corruption.

It was all very startling and depressing--she could not help thinking
sorrowfully that, after all, Townley had managed to surprise her. When
the time came for her to go she was unable to say good-bye to him, as he
had gone out to the farm immediately after breakfast, and did not come
back. She waited for as long as she could, then had to start without any
farewells. She wondered if he thought his conduct likely to make her
regret him.

Quite possibly he did, and that being so, it was a pity he couldn't see
her and Christian as the train left Ashford station, throwing themselves
back on the seat of their empty third-class carriage, and shouting:
"Thank God! thank God!"



                            _Chapter Four_

It was truly a relief to be just two women together. After three years
of marriage, life had returned to an earlier, gentler flow. Life had
ceased to be a conflict of loyalties; Rose and Christian were just two
friends setting out on a holiday, and for a time at least it was
possible to forget the men they left behind them.

Christian made an immediately good impression on Primrose Hall. She was
at her best, among the sort of people she liked best, and she spent
herself in being charming. Her spirits had revived from the moment of
her leaving Kent, and though for some time her bodily health did not
equal her spirits, that only served to make Aunt Susan Medlar take
credit for her cure.

Neither the Medlars nor the Burtons who visited them made more than one
first, slack attempt to regard her as the successor of their dead
Hattie. She belonged rather to Rose's generation, they were both in a
measure Hattie's daughters, to be treated as children by their uncles
and aunts.

They spent their time resting, rambling, and talking. The fog that had
hung so continuously over the countryside during Rose's November visit,
had been blown away by spring winds. The lanes were full of hazel
catkins and pearly palm, and all the landscape was a clear green and
brown, as the pastures met the ploughs. Rose felt invigorated by the
sea-born air, by the sharp sandy cold that was so different from the
clayey damp of Harlakenden and Bladbean. She went for long walks by
herself when Christian was unable to come with her; but after they had
been at Fakenham a week Christian felt well enough to join her, and they
became companions of the road, two contrasting figures--Rose small,
dark, and neat, in a brown cloth coat and velvet hat she had bought long
ago for Sundays, and now, to her friend's horror, insisted on wearing
out every day; Christian tall, fair, and swinging, dressed in bold
shaggy tweeds she had bought for this holiday, a yellow cap on her
yellow hair, and a yellow scarf floating out behind her.

She liked the Norfolk country better than Kent--she said it reminded her
of Berkshire. Rose did not see how it could, but she saw in Christian a
tendency to link up everything that made her happy with the place where
she had been happiest. She had declared Rose to be like her Nana, and
for a time she had seen a strong resemblance between Wally Deeprose and
her Nana's husband. Now Primrose Hall reminded her of Heronswell, and
the people there were the people of Heronswell; Fakenham, among the
sandy, heathery wastes, was exactly like the village under the Berkshire
chalk-downs, and the gruff secretive Norfolk farmhands were the very
brothers of those gentle peasants among whom, if rumour spoke truly, she
had made so many unsuitable friends.

She had gone back into a sheltering memory, and was happy there.
Happiness made her charming, and for many days Rose was able to forget
how dark a tide had washed them to this peaceful shore. They never spoke
of their husbands or of the coming child. They might have been two
unmarried girls again.

Then sounds from the world they had left began to reach them and they
became once more Mrs. Walter Deeprose and Mrs. Townley Deeprose.
Christian had a letter from Wally. She glanced at it and tossed it over
to Rose.

"I wish he wouldn't write to me."

Rose read it and felt sorry for him. He was so obviously doing his best.
The letter contained a few badly-written sentences of farm news, not at
all likely to interest Christian, a statement as to his health and an
inquiry as to hers, with the assurance that he was always her very
loving husband, Walter Deeprose. Rose knew that the letter had cost him
a considerable effort, and was annoyed when Christian refused to answer
it.

"I'm much happier when I don't think of him. You answer it, Rose."

So Rose wrote, under the pretence that Christian was resting, and just
persuaded her to scrawl "love from Christian" at the end. After the
letter was posted this struck her as a useless piece of hypocrisy. If
Christian was never going back to her husband, he might as well be
prepared for it, be given some doubts beforehand. But of course the fact
was that Rose still hoped and half believed that she was going back--she
could not accept the idea that they had parted for ever. Certainly she
would do all that she could to make her go back.

It was queer, thought Rose, that though she had been so bitterly opposed
to the marriage and had done her best to prevent it, she would now do
anything on earth to keep it from failing. The urge was quite
instinctive--she did not think that her father made a good husband or
Christian a good wife; but she could not bear the thought of their
separation, the thought that these two who once had freely chosen each
other should thus dishonor their own free will. Besides, the whole
circumstances of her life and upbringing had impressed marriage on her
as an eternal thing; she did not see theirs ending with their
separation, but persisting broken in the hearts of two lonely strangers,
who once had been bedfellows. Moved by her fears and longings, she broke
the habit of silence between herself and God, and prayed for Christian
as she had prayed for her on her wedding day, though in words changed by
the sad course of things--"O God, make her forgive him, and may they
both be happy. Help me to help them, and please make me happy, too."


She was unhappy because Townley did not write to her. She had written to
him immediately on her arrival at Primrose Hall--she had written
affectionately, apologizing for not having said good-bye to him, as if
it had been her fault, telling him her news and asking kindly after his
comfort at home and his work on the farm. She received no answer, and
when, after a few days, she saw that he had taken this way of punishing
her, she felt as much hurt as she had felt when, years ago, he had so
cruelly rebuffed her sympathy at his mother's death.

Now, too, as then, her heart hardened against him. He was not only
unkind, but unjust. She had done nothing wrong in coming away with
Christian, who needed her. He did not really need her. He took very
little notice of her when she was at home. His entire life, except for
certain demands, could be lived very well without her--his work, his
employees, his sales, his commercial expectations, he did not even
discuss them with her, though he knew that she was almost as well
informed on such matters as he was. He chose deliberately to treat her
as a piece of household furniture, which one occasionally uses and likes
to see always in the same place, but with which no one not actually a
lunatic would ever dream of holding a conversation.

A second letter remained unanswered, and her rebellion grew. But in her
heart she knew she was not being just to him, for in her heart she
understood him very well. She had offended his male pride because she
had disobeyed his wishes, and he had been unable to enforce them because
none knew better than he that they were not based on justice or even on
sound custom. He was angry with her for the same reason that she was
angry with him--because he was hurt and humiliated. They were both hurt,
and she should forbear, because she was the stronger of the two.
Besides, she could not in justice urge Christian to forgive her husband
while she refused to forgive her own. She saw that both their husbands
were at a disadvantage, Townley through being stupid, Wally through
being sensitive; they both made a demand on the chivalry of their wives,
and she could not say that the claims of the drunkard were greater than
the claims of the chump.

She felt all this in her heart, but in her mind was a rage of thoughts.
If he had been near her she could have forgotten them, but now, deprived
of the sight and touch that could stir her tenderness, deprived even of
the contact of a letter from him, she often furiously asked herself why
it was that she, a woman so much better fitted than most to be his
companion, should be apparently worth no more to him than his fireside,
his pipe, and his glass of ale. Perhaps it was because he really knew
that he was stupid and wanted to feel that she was more so. Oh, damn it
all! she had known all this. It was too late to get sore about it now.
She should not so easily have forgotten that lover who had looked down
on her from the sun through the fogs of her first visit to Norfolk . . .
but even that lover had had the face of Townley.


They had now been at Primrose Hall three weeks and Rose was unable to
conceal the fact that her husband had not written, either from Christian
or from her uncle and aunt. The latter did not really know him and were
not particularly interested; it was easy enough to turn their curiosity
with compliments and a joke--he knew that she was in good hands, and
when it came to writing letters most men were lazy louts. To Christian
she said as little as possible, but she knew that her plight had been
realized in all its implications when one day Christian remarked almost
casually:

"If he never writes to you he can't be keen on having you back."

"I'm quite sure he expects to see me next Wednesday."

"But he wouldn't mind if you stayed on."

"Indeed he would!"

"Oh, Rose, I don't believe it! He must be absolutely indifferent to
you."

"He really isn't. I know that quite well. He's angry with me, that's
all."

"Then you should teach him a lesson."

"You can't teach lessons to Townley."

"If you stayed on with me for another month or two, he'd take some
notice."

"I dare say he would, but it wouldn't help at all. No, dear, it isn't
any good thinking of things that way. I'm going home next Wednesday, and
so are you."

"I'm not."

"Christian, you must. How can you say you won't? You haven't even the
excuse I have. Father's written to you at least twice a week."

"I've often said that it's a pity you and I can't change places. I seem
to have all the things you want, but I don't appreciate them. If Wally
had written every single day I still shouldn't go back."

"Where will you go, then?"

"I shall stay on here for a bit. Mrs. Medlar asked me only yesterday if
we couldn't stay for another fortnight or three weeks and I said we
could."

"Well, I can't. I don't want to quarrel with Townley."

"My sweet, what a touching remark! So the fact that he ignores you and
treats you like mud doesn't constitute a quarrel? Your married life must
be even more sinister than I supposed."

"Things would be very much worse if I didn't go home when I promised."

"Or they might be better. Rose, he doesn't deserve you to go back. Why
should you leave people who love you and treat you properly for a man
who quite obviously doesn't care a damn. I'm really sick of this
man-and-woman business. It makes even a sensible woman like you act
silly--to say nothing of making a kind woman cruel."

"Who am I being cruel to?"

"Me. Oh, Rose darling, can't you see how wretched you'll make me if you
leave me now? I'm not going home--there's no good trying to persuade me;
but I'll be miserable without you--absolutely miserable."

"But you're so much better than you were."

"Only because you're with me. Your people are nice and kind, but they
couldn't have made me happy without you. Darling, I've no one in the
world but you, and you insist on leaving me for a wretched man who
values you so little that he can't even treat you with common
politeness. Why don't you just say that, as he hasn't written, you
gather he's not particularly anxious to have you back and you'll stay on
another three weeks. It'll do him all the good in the world."

Rose hesitated. Her resentful feelings were uppermost and she did not
think it would be a bad thing to give Townley a jolt.

"If I stay, will you promise to come home at the end of the fortnight."

"Or three weeks. . . . Well, I won't say for certain, but I'll be more
likely to come home then than I would now. You want to stay, don't you,
darling?"

"Yes, I do."

"And I want you to stay, and Mr. and Mrs. Medlar want you to stay, and
Townley doesn't care whether you stay or not, so stay, darling, stay,
and let's be happy together for a bit longer."

She kissed Rose rapturously, and they both sighed--Christian with relief
and pleasure, Rose with uneasiness.


She still felt uncertain if she was doing right. Townley did not deserve
to have her come back, but Christian was wrong in thinking--if she
really thought--that he was indifferent to her. He was only
sulking--that was all--and in his way was probably suffering as much as
she. His sulks would continue until she gave him a chance of burning
them up in a quarrel or an embrace, and he could not do either till she
came home. She did not expect any answer to the letter she wrote
announcing her change of plan.

Nevertheless, she was very angry when none came. He was being
childish--a little, petulant, scowling boy kicking out at his mammy's
shins. He really should be taught better, and though she did not think
that her absence would teach him, she felt that she need no longer
hesitate between his welfare and Christian's. He wanted her, but he did
not really need her. Christian both wanted her and needed her, and,
moreover, while she was with Christian there was at least a hope that
her marriage might be mended and her child born in his father's house.
Townley had not put himself in a position that required the sacrifice of
either her father or her friend.

The next three weeks--both Christian and Aunt Susan Medlar insisted that
they should be three--went by, more happily than the first four. Rose
had definitely hardened herself against Townley and was able to forget
him in the pleasures of Christian's society and life at Primrose Hall.
The only shadow, lengthening with the days, was cast by her fear that at
the end of her respite Christian would still refuse to come home.

They did not discuss the matter; Rose attempted to once or twice,
feeling that something should be done, but Christian always turned her
off. "Don't let's think of these things--let's be happy."

But that she did think of them Rose had proof only a few days before
that fixed for their return. She was feeling rather tired one afternoon
and disinclined for a walk, so she encouraged Christian to let her
cousin Joe Burton drive her over to King's Lynn. She was glad for once
to be alone, and spent a lazy afternoon beside the fire which the spring
sunshine had made almost a luxury. Sitting there, idle and relaxed, she
realized the difference between time spent in this way at Primrose Hall
and at Bladbean. She was doing now what she had done a hundred times
before--sitting waiting for some one to come home. But with what
different expectations! Christian would come in full of talk and
animation--their separation would only have increased their pleasure in
each other's company. If Townley found any pleasure in his return it
would be simply in finding her where he thought she ought to be. A
sudden sick distaste of Bladbean overwhelmed her. She felt unequal to
taking up that burden--her spirit had failed her.

Christian was back for tea, having refused to go home with Joe Burton.
She was in more than her usual state of excitement.

"Oh, Rose! Rose! my lamb! my sweet! I've found such a perfectly lovely,
adorable house. We passed it on our way to King's Lynn, in a village
called Rudham. It's got wistaria all over the front, and a garden with
plum blossom and daffodils, and on the way back I made Joe stop and let
me have a look at it. We couldn't get in, but I looked through all the
lower windows, and the rooms were charming."

"Didn't anybody see you? Wasn't anybody there?"

"Of course not. It's to let furnished."

"Oh! You didn't tell me."

"That's the whole point of it, my lamb. It would be a perfectly divine
and heavenly house for us to go to when we leave here."

"Don't talk nonsense."

"It isn't nonsense. It's simple, beautiful common sense. It's what I
always meant to do when I'd found the right place. We'll take it for
three months and I'll have the baby there."

"You can't."

"Darling, of course I can. The infant's due early in July. We shall get
comfortably settled in before it arrives."

"Christian, don't talk like that. You know that whatever you do I must
leave here on Thursday."

"I don't know anything of the kind. I always meant you to stay on.
You've already once put off going back--you can do it again."

She spoke with a light, heartless ring in her voice which Rose knew
meant that she was absolutely determined to get what she wanted.

"Christian, I can't--I absolutely can't--put Townley off again; this
time he'd never forgive me, because it would mean that I'd be away when
the Hollinsheds arrive."

"Well, what does any of that matter? Personally I shall be very glad if
Townley never does forgive you, because then you'll stop making a martyr
of yourself. You don't really love him, but you'll go back to him and
put his foot on your neck because you think it's your duty. Your only
chance is that he'll refuse to have you, and I'm giving you that
chance."

Rose covered her face with her hands; she wondered if any of what
Christian had said was true.

"Oh, darling," Christian continued, "do let's be sane about these men
we've been such fools to marry. I confess I made a mistake. Won't you
confess that you made one, too? I'll take half the blame for it, because
if I hadn't made mine you wouldn't have made yours--it was my marrying
Wally that made you feel you had to marry Townley."

"But if I'd been really a good daughter to father he wouldn't have
married you--at least I don't think so. So I'm to blame for your
mistake."

"That's it, my sweet. We're so mixed up in each other's mistakes that we
ought to help each other out of them."

"One can't always get out of one's mistakes--one sometimes has to stand
by them."

"Sometimes--not this time. Rose, you and I can really undo our mistakes
if we stand together."

"And what about the men?--the mistakes were theirs too. How are they
going to get out of them?"

"They'll get out fast enough if we do. And when all the dust is over,
they'll be glad. They'll be able to find some one who'll really make
them happy. Wally can marry a kind, capable woman who'll keep him in
order, and Townley can marry a female idiot out of a home."

Rose did not smile.

"You're thinking of divorce . . ."

"Oh, not now--later--any time, just to set them free. You and I won't
need divorce, for we can be perfectly happy living together. If you like
we can have a little farm. Don't you remember asking me if I'd come and
live on a farm with you--that time you were trying to persuade me not to
marry your father?"

"Yes, I remember. But you'll never be happy without a man, Christian."

"Oh yes, I shall. I'm sick of men. They only let you down and then ask
to be pitied for it. Besides, if ever, dim years ahead, I want to marry,
I can marry your cousin Joe."

Rose smiled wryly.

"I refuse to let you marry any more of my relations."

"All right. I won't. I promise to give up Joe for your sake if you'll
give up Townley for mine. And I consider mine's the bigger sacrifice of
the two."

"Don't, Christian."

"Don't what?"

"Don't break my heart. And don't let's talk like this any longer--at
least not now."


That night Rose slept very little, and when it was only just light she
got up, put on her dressing-gown, and sat down at the window to write to
Townley. She had lit a candle and put it on the window-ledge.
Candle-light and sky-light mingled on her paper.


MY DEAR TOWNLEY:

This is the fourth letter I have written you since I came here and I
wonder if you will answer it. I am going to stay with Christian till her
child is born. She will take a little house near here and we shall move
there next week. I shall not be back in time for the Hollinsheds, as I
must stay with her till she is quite well, and she does not expect the
baby till July. You will have to get Aunt Hannah, the same as before you
married me.

But, Townley, I do not think I shall come back at all. You have hurt me
too much and I do not think you really love me. You only think you do
and you will soon get over it. If you really loved me you would not have
been so cruel as not to write to me all this time. I suppose you wanted
to make me anxious about you and think you were ill; but I knew you were
quite well because father told me. You did not write because you were
angry with me, and you were angry because I did a very small thing to
displease you. So you did all you could to hurt me and to make me feel
small and that has made me decide that I had much better stay with
Christian, who really loves me and wants to have me with her. I expect
you know that she is not happy at Harlakenden, and she has reason not to
be. Anyhow, she wants to be away when her baby is born. So I shall stay
with her and afterwards I dare say we shall take a little farm together
somewhere.

Oh, Townley, I am sorry if I hurt you, but you have hurt me so much that
I cannot help it. You have treated me almost as if I was an animal. Your
dog is more of a companion to you than I am, so I had better leave you
with your dog. I am sorry and in many ways it is my own fault, but I
cannot stand your unkindness any more. I love Christian and she is my
friend. I am sorry for father, but perhaps she will go back to him
later.

As for me, if you like I will come back to you after her baby is born,
but I cannot promise, and I don't suppose you will want me.

                                                Good-bye,
                                                  Your sad wife,
                                                               Rose.


Her pen dropped and she leaned her forehead on her hand. She was not an
easy letter-writer, and it had taken a long time and much labour to
write as much as this. The candle now was only a yellow blob against the
dawn.

She read the letter over and felt disappointed with it. It seemed so
bald and awkward, and expressed so little of what was in her heart. Oh,
if only she could make Townley know what she really felt . . . a tear
fell on the page that would tell him something. She dabbed it with her
handkerchief; she did not want to tell him that way.

When she had posted this letter she would have burned her boats. Townley
would never forgive her for not coming back in time for the
Hollinsheds--he would want to be shut of her for ever after this. Well,
she wanted to do something definite; she couldn't endure this swinging
between Townley and Christian. She must choose one or the other, and it
was Townley's fault that she chose Christian. Should she show Christian
the letter or tell her about it? No, she would not do that--not till
something had come of it, either in a letter from Townley or in another
silence. But she would let her go ahead with the agents about the
cottage. Oh, how happy they would be together, just the two of them,
waiting among the daffodils and the plum blossom for Christian's child,
living their lives without the cruelty and foolishness of the male, just
two women alone, happy, lively, and at rest. Male and female created He
them . . . but it was the devil and not the Creator who had coiled up
male and female with all the lies and treacheries and animosities in
which they had struggled and stumbled together ever since.

She stood up, and suddenly felt faint. Her bad night and the writing of
the letter had tired her. She was not so strong as she was--and yet she
had never felt better in her life. It was queer. The faintness passed,
then suddenly came again, more overpoweringly. She staggered towards the
bed--changed her direction for the washstand and was violently sick.

Shivering and hugging her dressing-gown round her, she lay down on the
bed. The faintness had passed and everything was perfectly clear--not
only in the room, but in her mind. Her mind worked--remembered--connected
up certain things. She still shivered, but her shivering had changed,
and suddenly she laughed. If this had really happened--now . . . she
laughed again. She hid her face in the pillow and laughed till she nearly
choked.

That morning at breakfast she announced that she was going in to King's
Lynn by the bus. She wanted to do some shopping, she said, and it was
early-closing day, so she had better start at once. Christian always had
breakfast in bed and did not generally get up till dinner-time, so there
was no question of her accompanying her. All she said was:

"Be sure and look at the cottage as you go through Rudham."

Rose promised that she would.

It was about half an hour into King's Lynn, and the bus stopped long
enough at Walsingham to give her a sight of a very pretty small stone
house, slightly overgrown, but most attractive in spring, when
vegetation is never rank. It would be nice to stay there with Christian,
but she did not look at it very closely or think of it very much. It no
longer meant quite what it had meant yesterday.

In King's Lynn the bus stopped opposite the post-office. Rose got down
and took her letter out of her pocket. Should she post it now or see the
doctor first? If she waited till she had been to him she lost the London
post. But dared she take such a risk? That letter would end everything
between herself and Townley--he would never forgive her for it. And if
the doctor thought that there was even a chance of her having a baby
. . . But she could not believe that he would--her symptoms might simply
be due to the state of her mind--to the long strain of her battle with
Townley. It might all be nothing . . . she dared not hope. Still, if
there was even a chance, she should do nothing to shake the future.
Unless the doctor told her definitely that she was not pregnant her
letter must never be posted. Besides, after all, what difference would
one day make? Townley might wonder why she had not written to tell him
which train she was coming by, but it would do him no harm to wonder or
to wait.

She turned away from the post-office and walked to Canal Street, in
which the doctor who attended Primrose Hall had his consulting-room.
Half an hour later she came out. She looked dazed, but walked briskly
down the street to the public gardens beside the canal, where there was
a number of receptacles for waste-paper. Even in that moment of almost
disorderly rapture Rose kept an orderly mind.



                             _Chapter Five_

Rose did not expect Christian to be so logically illogical as to accept
her going back to Townley for the very same reason that she had left her
own husband. She was prepared for a battle; but she no longer feared it.
She was armed, and no foe--even such a darling foe as Christian--could
stop her way.

What she was not prepared for was the utter collapse of all that enemy's
outworks and defences, for the sight of Christian huddled, sunken and
miserable, on the seat opposite her in the railway carriage. She had
taken for granted that she would leave her behind in Norfolk--in the
cottage at Rudham if not at Primrose Hall--and in her new mood she had
scarcely troubled about it. An inspired selfishness had redeemed her out
of all her conflicts--Christian must go her own way, her father must
patch up his marriage as best he could; nothing mattered but this new
loyalty to the unknown.

It was no doubt, when she came to think of it, this very selfishness
that had won the battle her devotion had waged in vain. When Christian
saw that she was immovable, when her tears and arguments had failed, she
gave it all up and surrendered.

"If you go, I must go, too. I can't be left here without you--even with
your uncle and aunt. They'd disapprove of me . . . even if they weren't
unkind they'd look it and they'd feel it. Oh, Rose, I must have you with
me when it happens, and since you will go back, I must go, too. But why
are you so cruel? Oh, why are you so cruel?"

Rose felt almost angry with her. If I'm so cruel, she thought, why does
she want to have me with her? I'm not cruel. I'm only doing the best for
all of us--two women, two men, and two children: Thank God I found out
before I posted that letter.

So they travelled home together, very different creatures from those two
women who seven weeks ago had thrown themselves back on their seats,
shouting with relief and joy. Christian was crying a little as the train
ran into Ashford station, but she dried her eyes, powdered her face, and
put her hat straight before it stopped. Walter Deeprose met them, all
innocent of the fact that his wife had never meant to return.

"Well, here you are, and I'm dashed glad to see you," he said as he
kissed them both.

It was not till she saw him there that Rose remembered she was still
officially estranged from Townley. She had written him a short,
affectionate letter announcing the time of her return and telling him
she would be glad to see him; but evidently she was still in disgrace,
since he had not come to meet her.

"Townley couldn't get off," said her father; "he had to go to an auction
at Lenham. He said if I took you to Harlakenden he'd send over for you
after tea."

Christian gave her a look as if to say, "That's the sort of man you've
sacrificed me to." But Rose did not care. She was armed against them
both--Townley as well as Christian. Neither of them had power to hurt
her now.


Later in the evening, as she was driven home by Cocks, Townley's
foreman, she felt a strange amusement mixing with her happiness. It was
strange that she should be either happy or amused--she had quarrelled
with her husband and she had half-quarrelled with her friend;
nevertheless these two disgraces actually fed the sense of well-being
that went with her to Bladbean. Her difference with Christian made her
happy for the negative reason that it was glorious to find it had no
power to make her sad; while her difference with Townley would soon be
healed by the balm she brought. Meanwhile it was amusing to be treated
like a naughty child and fetched home by a servant, no doubt to find
herself ungreeted--to be struck by so many small whips without feeling
any smart . . . knowing that, all the time she had the whip hand. She
had not the slightest doubt that Townley's manner would change directly
he heard her news.

Oh, she was glad--she was happy; she was amused without bitterness. Her
long despairs were over; the future shone so brightly that the shadows
of the past were drowned in light. Her heart's desire had been given
her, and given her so strangely that in her smiling, softened mood she
saw divine Providence in it. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
Sitting there in the car, with the grey evening rushing past her face,
it occurred to her how strange it was that all the first happy embraces
of marriage should have been as sterile as the later bored
surrenders--that only when it was bruised with sorrow and washed with
tears had her body fruited. You would think that neither love nor joy
could bear fruit of themselves, that only grief was fertile. . . . He
that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall
doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

On the face of it her return was not more glorious than her setting out;
only the spirit was changed--and the spirit changed everything. She
drove through a country that was familiar to the point of monotony, a
map printed on her mind by a hundred journeys to and fro between
Bladbean and Harlakenden. But this evening it was a new creation, not
only of the spring that had come to it since she saw it last, but also
of her happiness. They drove past the signpost at Spelmonden, and as the
car swished up the hill towards Monday Boys she felt as if a ghost had
been laid.

Bladbean appeared with the evening light on its windows. Lying there on
the hillside, among its orchards and steading, it looked a cheerful
pippin of a place. Its weathered housefront seemed to smile, as a few
sunset streamers reached it from under a cloud. She walked up the little
garden between rows of tulips planted in forget-me-not, and wondered how
she had ever regarded this place as a prison. It seemed to her now both
homely and happy, even though no welcoming servant opened the door or
loving husband walked round the corner of the house. Her child would be
born here. . . . She shut her eyes for a moment and pictured how the
garden would look when it was born. The tulips and the roses and the
dahlias would all have passed, but there might still be some
chrysanthemums. . . . She could almost taste the sweetness of their
petals on her lips; and once more the presence came loving and
close--her mother, who had carried her as now she carried this child.
. . . Oh, Mother, darling Mother, my soul doth magnify the Lord. . . .

"Are you all right, mum?"

It was Cocks, carrying her luggage. He had thought she looked faint.

"Oh, I'm all right. It's only . . . I shut my eyes for a moment."

"I'll see where Ivy's got to."

He went in, calling the girl. Rose followed him; the house seemed quiet
and empty. It was as she had expected--Townley was not there.

He came in an hour later. She was sitting in the parlour, having changed
her dress and brushed her hair, and she saw his face come round the
door, cloudy and embarrassed.

"Oh, Townley dear!"

She sprang up and threw her arms round him. For a surprised moment he
was flesh and blood, the next he was wood.

"Well, you're back at last."

"Yes, here I am."

"And not before it's time."

She laughed. She could not go on like this. If they started again on her
visit to Norfolk they would only say what they had said a hundred times
already, and she would rather say something new.

"I've something lovely to tell you."

She would not waste any time in leading up to the subject; she would
jump the gap that divided them even if she landed sprawling and ungainly
at his feet.

"I know for certain that I'm going to have a baby."

She felt him start under her arms and the wood became flesh.

"For certain? . . ."

"Yes, I saw Aunt Susan's doctor in King's Lynn, and he said he was quite
sure. Oh, Townley, aren't you pleased?"

She hugged him closely, ramming her head into the hollow of his shoulder
and drawing his face down to hers. She could feel him moving restlessly
as his mind floundered before this sudden change of events. He still
thought he ought to be angry, to argue out the sore point of her
departure, and though she had melted and delighted him, he did not quite
know how to change. He was like a beast being made to turn back before
he was quite gone through a gate.

"Oh, Townley, we're going to be happy. Do forget about my having gone
away; for I've come back and I don't suppose I'll ever want to go away
again now this has happened."

"How long have you known?"

"Only three or four days--that is, for certain. I'd wondered a bit
before then, but it seemed impossible."

"Why impossible?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. I've--we've--wanted this so much for so many
years that I'd come to think it could never happen."

"What do you mean? Of course it could happen. Doctor Brownsmith said we
were both all right; and we've been married only three years."

His matter-of-factness was like a douse of cold water. She felt a shock
and then she liked it.

"So, my darling, you're not a bit surprised."

"No. Why should I be?"

"But you're pleased."

He suddenly grinned and the Townley she loved came back. He sat down in
an armchair and took her on his knee.

"You bet I'm pleased, Missus. I've always wanted a son."

"It may be a girl."

"I don't really mind which it is. Besides, it's only the first. When
will it be born?"

"Towards the end of November. So I'll get safely through the
Hollinsheds. They won't notice anything under my apron"--and she began
to laugh, throwing herself back in his arms like a child and laughing in
his face with a wide, merry mouth.

He smiled stiffly, as if he suspected rather than understood the joke.
She became serious at once; she would not, for the world, upset him now.

"Sweetheart, I'm going to be a much better wife, now this has happened.
It was wanting a child that made me so restless before."

"But I can't understand why you'd made up your mind we shouldn't have
one."

"I know, darling; it was silly of me. But I thought it might have
something to do with our being first cousins. . . . Still, never mind.
All's well that ends well."

She sat up in his arms and kissed him, pressing his dark cheek to hers,
full of tenderness for him, and with a deep cherishing sense of
protection rising in her that was better than chivalry, a share of her
love for the unborn.


She did not find that her happiness helped her much with Christian
during the days that followed. Not only had it brought her back into the
enclosure of her marriage and into the new unity of father-mother-child,
but it had also given her a definite antipathy for Christian's morbid
reluctance, which she saw again as something dark and abnormal, an
unnatural enchantment. It had made her uneasy even when she had no
direct experience of how different it ought to be; but now that they
were both expecting the same thing, the difference in their feelings
jarred discordantly. She sometimes felt that there was a deep gulf
between her and her friend, that their natures were sundered at the
bottom, and that all their talking and meeting was a mere strain on the
surface of things, as if two people should lean out and kiss across a
street.

But just because she was conscious of this and hated so much of her time
with Christian, she gave her even more of herself than she had given
before. Her happiness made her generous--and pitiful. She was sorry for
this woman, being carried reluctantly where she should have gone with a
cheerful step. She was sorry, too, for the failure of her plans, even
though she, Rose herself, had brought that failure about. Christian had
left Harlakenden so full of hope and confidence and had come back so
miserably, her hope dashed at the last minute, her confident schemings
frustrated on the verge of success. It was surprising that she did not
hate Rose.

Sometimes Rose wished that she would hate her, that she would not demand
so much of her time and compassion. But though Christian often wept and
reproached her, often talked longingly of the little house at
Walsingham, and evidently thought herself a martyr to her friend's
unnatural views of life, she still clung to her and seemed to find her
chief, if not her only, happiness in her society.

Scarcely a day passed without her driving over to Bladbean if she could
not persuade Rose to come to Harlakenden. They sat and talked and sewed.
Christian had made no preparations for her child's arrival, though it
was only a few weeks off. "I can't take any interest in it now," she
mourned occasionally, and Rose could have said: "What interest did you
ever take that wasn't self-interest?"

She persuaded her to drive over to Maidstone with her and buy the
child's layette. Christian cried as they drove home--the sight of the
pretty, fragile things had touched springs of suffering in her that in
some people are touched by birds and flowers.

"I feel I shall never live to see them used. I shall die--I know I shall
die."

"Nonsense!" said Rose. "It's wicked to talk like that."

She knew that Christian, though thin and fragile, was a perfectly normal
case. Dr. Brownsmith had seen her more than once and said that he had no
fears for her. But she was full of them herself. On one thing she was
determined, and that was to go into a nursing-home. Such a decision was
outside Rose's country experience--the women she knew always had their
babies in their own homes--but she could not and would not oppose it.
Christian was right not to let the birth take place at Harlakenden, for
her husband would almost certainly make himself ill--Rose still
faithfully called it that--for the occasion.

Poor Wally Deeprose! His daughter could not help pitying him, for
Christian had put him right out of her life. She had come back to
him--and he still did not know she had meant to stay away--she lived in
the same house with him and talked to him occasionally; but she treated
him almost as a stranger, could not bear his touch, was bored with his
society. He and she were scarcely ever in a room together except when
Rose made a third.

"She'll be different," he said once, "after the baby's born."

Rose did her best to encourage him. She found that Christian had
communicated to him nothing but her fears; out of carelessness or
cruelty she had made them her only marital exchanges. He had come to
share her opinion that she would die; she was so frail, so exquisite, so
remote from the coarse mechanism of childbirth, that he could not
imagine her surviving it. Rose again said Nonsense.

"She's stronger than Mother was--I'm sure of that."

"Your mother wasn't strong at all in that way. That's why she never had
more than you. She was terribly ill, you know--terribly ill. I'll never
forget the time I went through. . . . Oh, Rose, if your mother hadn't
been so ill I'd never have been tempted to drink too much . . . that was
what started me. If it hadn't been for that I'd be a sober man today."

Rose saw that he believed it.


Christian's boy came a fortnight before he was expected. This was a
heaven-sent arrangement for Rose, as it saved her an important quarrel
with Townley. Christian had frantically insisted on her presence at the
nursing-home, but Townley would never forgive her if she spent as much
as three days away from Bladbean during the Hollinsheds' visit. The
premature arrival spared her exactly that. She was back a full ten days
before the visitors came.

According to the doctor and the nurse, Christian had an easy time, but
she herself thought otherwise. Rose was sorry for her and more inclined
to agree with her than with the doctor and the nurse; yet there were
moments during her ten hours' labour when she almost hated her.
Naturally she was not allowed to be much in the room, but she would
always carry one ineffaceable memory of Christian sitting up in bed, her
hair in braided gleams, her bosom soft and maternal under lace, but on
her face that mask of ugly fear which had already once appalled her
friend.

"Rose, make them do something. I don't care if it kills the child."

Rose had felt sick and helpless then. There seemed nothing that she
could do. She had shudderingly exhausted her vocabulary of
Nonsense--don't talk like that--it's wicked to say such things--and had
gone out of the room. Four hours later, when she came back to see
Christian lying happy and at ease with her baby in her arms, she again
felt sick, remembering how short a time it was since she had been a
witch at the stake.

However, before her return to Bladbean she was comforted by the sight of
her friend looking happier and more truly normal than she had seen her
for months. She had wakened the next morning in the sweet relief of her
delivery, to the knowledge that her boy was a particularly fine child,
to the expectation of visits from admiring friends. Her father and
stepmother were the first to call, bringing flowers and congratulations.
Wally Deeprose came later, looking pleased but ashamed. Rose had rung
him up the evening before to tell him the happy news, and had heard his
voice thick and uncertain, proclaiming that he had deadened his anxiety
in the usual way. He had also, he told her privately, upset the servants
and they were leaving. He asked her if she could come over sometime and
placate them, for Christian would be angry with him when she found out
they had gone. Rose promised to do her best, but did not hope much from
it.

Apart from this trouble and a bad headache he was an extremely happy
man. He was delighted with his boy, and found Christian unusually
gracious. It had not occurred to him to bring her any flowers, but
seeing what the Lamberts had brought, he called at a florist's on his
way home and sent her round a large tight bunch of roses and a fern in a
pot.



                             _Chapter Six_

Christian made a slow recovery. Nothing definite was wrong, but her
heart was not in it. Rose suspected that she did not want to go back to
Harlakenden. About a fortnight after the child was born she confirmed
this suspicion. She said:

"Oh, Rose, why aren't we in that cottage at Rudham?"

"You're much better off here."

"Oh, no I'm not. It's a good enough place, but I've got to leave it. If
we'd been at the cottage I shouldn't have had to think of that. I'd just
have got well and watched Ronnie grow up."

One of her perversities was to insist that the child should be called
Ronald, a name that did not appear in either of the two families or
belong to anyone she knew, and which nobody liked but herself.

"You can do all that just as well at Harlakenden," said Rose; "in fact,
you can do it better, for you'll have his father with you."

"And a fat lot of use he'll be. Don't be silly, Rose. You know as well
as I do that that's the whole point. I can't bring up the child properly
with Wally around."

"My mother brought me up with him . . . and, anyway, a boy needs a
father."

"How conventional you've got! You never used to talk in that smug way.
But you've changed ever since you've known about your own baby--you've
gone all conventional and matrimonial."

"Then you can be thankful that you're not boxed up with me in the
cottage at Rudham."

"You'd have been different then. Oh, can't you see, Rose, that it's
these men that have ruined us? We were all right until we married, and
if we got rid of them we'd be all right again."

Rose opened her mouth to say "What Nonsense!" and then realized that she
had already said that far too often lately. Christian might complain
with some justice that she was repeating herself. Was it true, she
wondered, that she was becoming dull and conventional, that her
happiness had made her commonplace, less interesting to Christian,
and--which was more important--less able to understand her? A kind of
compunction seized her as she saw that Christian was beginning to cry.

"Oh, please don't cry, my pet. I know I'm stupid, but I really do feel
for you. It's only that it's difficult to imagine anything so different
. . . but I'll get brighter, I expect, in a month or two."

"I'm sure I hope you will," grumbled Christian. "Oh, Rose, I'm such an
unhappy girl. I lose everything I ever care for--Nana and Heronswell,
and then Wally, and now I'm losing you."

"You're not losing me. And you haven't lost Wally--I mean it's entirely
your own doing about that. He loves you as much as ever."

"But what difference does that make if I don't love him?--unless it
makes it worse. . . . You simply don't understand. If I stop caring for
a man it's just the same as if he stopped caring for me--I've lost him
anyway. And now I'm losing you."

"Have you stopped caring for me?"

"No, I haven't. But you don't care for me the way you used to."

"I do, Christian; indeed I do."

"You don't. You used to be on my side--now you're on Townley's."

"But you and Townley aren't on different sides. How can you say such a
thing? I haven't got to choose between you. He's my husband and you're
my friend----"

"And our interests are entirely opposite. You realized that once as well
as I do, when you chose me."

"I didn't choose you."

"You chose and changed your mind."

Rose covered her face.

"We can't begin all that again. I very nearly made a dreadful
mistake--another dreadful mistake. I've made a number, I know, and I'm
trying not to make any more. That's why I seem dull. Because I'm trying
to make things safe for all of us."

"And you think I'll be safe at Harlakenden? Oh, Rose . . . if you cared
for me you'd understand me better."

"I do care for you. I love you, Christian. You're my friend and always
will be."

She spoke violently to prove her words both to Christian and to herself,
and to prove them further she took endless trouble about her friend's
return to Harlakenden, when this was finally fixed on. She engaged new
servants, having failed to persuade the old to stay, and she engaged a
nurse--since Christian was determined not to look after Ronnie herself,
nor could anyone imagine her doing it.

The nurse was rather difficult to find, as she must be an experienced
and superior woman, able to take full charge. Rose was finally helped to
one by Mrs. Hollinshed, who had heard of a young but well-trained girl
just about to leave a friend's house. Rose interviewed her (though she
was rather uncertain of what nurses' qualifications ought to be) and
engaged her. Then she drove over to Harlakenden and spent an hour
impressing her father with the absolute necessity of his not driving
either her or the other servants away by his behaviour. He struck her as
infinitely pathetic, because he would make no promises.


So at last Christian went home with her baby, and approved of the new
servants and the nurse. She thanked Rose for all the trouble she had
taken and really seemed to appreciate it. Things looked as if they might
go better for a while.

Rose herself was busy with the Hollinsheds. Their visit was much as
usual, except that the quality of contentment which now coloured her
life at Bladbean extended itself even to them. She found that she really
liked waiting on Mr. and Mrs. Hollinshed and their two little girls. She
liked it partly because it pleased Townley and partly because she found
them interesting in themselves. Her mind was glad to potter in small
concerns; it no longer fretted her out of her daily tasks, urging a
wider fulfilment. It was, for the time, fulfilled.

Her day passed in a quiet domestic routine, in her kitchen and in her
garden. She no longer resented Townley's absences and businesses. She
swept, she dusted, she tried to improve her cookery, she sewed, she
weeded the flower-beds. On their nurse's afternoon out she looked after
the two little girls. She was glad to turn to all this after the strain
of her attendance on Christian, and she found Mrs. Hollinshed's pleasant
well-bred patronage a restful change from Christian's demanding
affection.

She also felt glad of a circumstance which in other years had roused her
resentment. It was a mercy to be cut off from Harlakenden, not to be
free to go there on demand. Christian came over to Bladbean, but that
was different, especially as both her leisure and her privacy were
limited. Christian had scarcely any opportunities to show her her heart,
with the result that their friendship seemed for the moment almost as
pleasant and trivial as the rest of life.

Christian sometimes hinted at distresses. The new servants had left, but
in such a household as Harlakenden it would be difficult to say whether
the master or the mistress was to blame. There had been frequent changes
even before Wally had gone back to his old habits. Rose staved off her
friend's lamentations as much as possible, and talked about the child,
whom Christian sometimes, but rarely, brought over to Bladbean.

Another good sign of those times was Townley's remarkable toleration of
Christian's visits. In other years they had made him uneasy, but now
something had reassured him. Rose was inclined to attribute this change
to the same causes as the change in herself. Just as the coming child
had laid her restlessness, so it had stilled his doubts. He must have
doubted her or rather his possession of her, and for want of a seal had
himself enclosed her; but now his possession was sealed. She was not
only his wife, but his child's mother--she was bound to him twice; he
was so sure of her that he could allow her a little bit of life apart
from him, a friendship outside her home. She did not for a moment
believe that he consciously felt all this, but she recognized the leaven
working in him.

Otherwise his attitude towards her had not changed much; he still left
her alone for most of the day, read the newspaper during his dinner,
slept after supper and kept her in ignorance of his doings on the farm.
But whereas in the past his neglects had not left her free, but rather
had been the most humiliating part of her bondage, she now felt in them
the general atmosphere of release. Those on the whole were good days.

They lasted for a month, at the end of which an entirely new disorder
came to Bladbean. Lord Haverford, head of the Hollinshed family, was
taken ill and all his children were sent for. Mr. and Mrs. Hollinshed
left at once for the family seat in Rutlandshire; the nurse and little
girls stayed on. Their mother knew that they were in good hands--"Now I
rely on you absolutely, Mrs. Deeprose. . . ."

Shortly afterwards Mr. Hollinshed wrote that they were not coming back
that summer. His father's illness was likely to drag on for some weeks,
though sure to end fatally. He and his wife proposed to stay on at
Haverford Towers, but the children he knew would be safe and happy at
Bladbean; he proposed to leave them there till the end of the holidays.
Townley felt the loss of his Hollinsheds, but also the honour of being
appointed even for so short a time the guardian of their children. The
daughters, aged five and seven, both liked him, for he took them out on
the farm, shewing them the young pigs and calves and chickens. Rose
wondered if she should give up wearing her apron, but decided that as
the changes in her figure were now getting noticeable, she had better
keep it on.

Then one day a week later Townley said:

"I've been thinking, my dear, that, as we've got that empty bedroom, we
might ask Christian over to stay with us for a bit."

He did not often surprise her, but now he had done so. She stared at
him.

"Come and stay here . . ."

"Yes, I know she would like it. She told me so."

"She told me, too--only the other day. But I rather damped her down. I
thought you'd disapprove."

"Why should I disapprove? She's your stepmother and a very nice girl.
Besides, it would be doing her a kindness. She's having a terrible time
with your father."

"Oh! . . ." Rose suddenly found herself angry with Christian for telling
Townley about her married unhappiness. "When did she tell you all this?"
she asked.

"Yesterday--when I was driving her home. Poor girl, I was sorry for her.
She was actually crying over it."

"Yes, I've seen her cry."

"I don't suppose anyone really knows the terrible time she's had--is
still having, for that matter. Can't anything be done about your father,
Rose?"

"In what way?"

"To stop him drinking."

"The best way to stop him is not to leave him alone."

She could not understand why she was taking her father's part against
Christian and against Townley. In all that miserable triangle she had
dodged about so often this was the first time she had stood in that
position.

"I'm sorry for her," she continued, "but a great deal of this is her own
fault. She shouldn't have married him in the first place, but, having
done that, she should have stuck to it--to him. He'd been sober a long
time when she married him and I believe she could have kept him straight
if she'd managed him properly."

"Well, I don't. He's been more or less a drunkard ever since he was a
boy. He may have eased off for a time, but it was bound to recur. After
all, your mother couldn't do anything with him."

Rose saw that she had confused the argument.

"That's not the point; the point is that she shouldn't be always leaving
him--it makes him worse. And she's got no real reason to leave him--he's
never violent or even abusive, only very sick, and sorry for himself.
I've put up with him in that state hundreds of times, just as mother
did; I can't see why Christian can't do the same."

"Because Christian's quite different from you, for one thing. She's been
differently brought up, and she's gentle--tenderhearted. You can't
expect everyone to be as hard as you are."

"I'm not hard."

"Yes, you are--as hard as stone. And sharp, too, sometimes."

Rose could feel the tears rising.

"Because I'm sorry for Father?"

"Because you're not sorry for Christian and because you take a
high-handed moral attitude like a schoolma'am about her. I thought you
were fond of her."

"I am--yes, I am."

"Then why are you down on her and objecting to her coming to stay here?
It's just like you women--always down on each other."

Rose knew if she said anything more she would cry; so she turned
silently away. She was surprised to find herself attacking
Christian--surprised and upset. It was something new and unpleasant in
her experience. But then it was something new and unpleasant for
Christian to appeal to Townley behind her back. Why had she done it? Had
she doubted the truth of Rose's statement that he would object to her
staying at Bladbean while the Hollinshed children were there?--if so,
she had doubted it with good reason. But Rose had made it in perfect
good faith; she knew that Townley did not care for visitors at any time
and he would imagine, she was sure, that Christian's presence would
distract his wife from her ordinary duties. She was astonished at such a
change in him.

But she could understand it. When she came to think things over soberly
she realized that he would enjoy being kind to Christian. She herself
did not, perhaps, give him sufficient outlet for his kindness--she was
perfectly, almost aggressively well during those months; no doubt he
would have been more pleased with her if she had been a little ailing.
But Christian, whom up till now he had regarded as a superior,
independent being, had suddenly shown herself in need of that very
kindness his wife had failed to demand. That was why he liked her now;
for he liked being kind to people and people who let him be kind to
them.


She could not really object to Christian's coming, and in due course she
arrived. Rose had asked her to bring the baby, too, but she declared he
would be perfectly all right at Harlakenden with the nurse.

"I can't very well look after him myself--at least, I'm sorry for him if
I do--and there isn't any room for Nurse here. Oh, Rose, isn't it lovely
being together again!"

Rose felt a chill in her heart. She could not quite accept her friend's
company as she had done in the old days; there was always the shadow of
the witch between them--a shadow that lay in the very lightness with
which Christian had left husband and child. No doubt she had her reasons
for leaving her husband; but the child . . . Rose could not understand
how she could leave her child like that in another woman's care.

She intended a long visit, too; for she brought a lot of clothes with
her and from time to time went back to fetch more.

"Wally and I get on quite well when I just run over for tea," she
said--"it's a new kind of married life and much the best."

"I wonder if he thinks so."

"Oh yes. He doesn't mind about me, now the boy's there. He thinks far
more of him than he ever thought of me. You were right, Rose, when you
said things would be better when the baby came. I find that Wally has
transferred most of his affections to him, which is a great relief to
me. He scarcely seemed to mind my going away."

"He'll be pleased to have you back."

"He may never get that chance."

"What do you mean? You're not telling me that you've left him for good?"

"Oh, I'm only talking nonsense. I'll go back, I suppose, some day. Don't
look so worried--I won't stay with you forever. I can go to Father and
Gloria for a bit."

"I'm sure you're welcome here, Christian. It's only I can't help feeling
sorry for Father."

"You didn't always feel sorry for him--not when he was making your
mother unhappy."

"No, I didn't."

"Then why should you be sorry for him when he's making me unhappy?"

"My mother loved him and you don't."

"And does that make it better or worse? I'll say it makes it worse. At
least your mother's marriage stood up round her and she felt safe, but
mine's all fallen to pieces. . . . Oh, Rose, can't you see? Why will you
always talk as if you and your mother and I were all the same? We're
not--I only wish we were. I only wish I had your country way of looking
at things, taking them as they come and making the best of them--I wish
I could say 'I ought' . . . It makes life easier if you believe that
things _have_ to happen, _have_ to be done. But to me it's all a road
that might lead anywhere . . . or rather it's not a road at all--it's a
wild place covered with tracks and I have to choose which I'll go on
with nothing to guide me but what I want--and that generally turns out a
mistake. . . . Oh, I know it's easy to blame me, but you might love me,
too."

"I do love you, Christian--only I wish . . ."

"Wish what?"

"That we didn't feel so differently about some things."

"We're no more different than we used to be. It's only that you're not
so fond of me, so you see it more plainly."

"Why don't you believe that I'm fond of you? I am fond of you. If it's
because I wouldn't stay with you at Rudham . . . you'd never expect me
to do that when I knew about the child?"

"Lord knows what I'd expect," said Christian, lightly, "and, anyhow, I
didn't see that it would do the child much damage to be born away from
its father. But don't let's worry about all that now--it's over. I'm not
going to ask you again to leave Townley."

"No, you'd better not."

Christian looked at her mischievously.

"You quite like him now, don't you?"

"I always did."

"Even when he was walking over you with hobnailed boots? I'll borrow a
phrase of yours and say 'don't talk nonsense!"'

"It isn't nonsense. I always liked him for some things, even though I
didn't for others."

"Very well, then. I'll believe you. And I'll tell you a secret--I like
him, too."

Rose looked at her doubtfully, waiting for the joke to be explained.

"Yes, that's the honest truth. The more I see of him the more I like
him--he really is likable. Yesterday he explained to me in about a
hundred thousand words the differences between heifers, steers, beasts,
and oxen--all without raising a blush. And I love the way he takes those
Hollinshed brats about the farm with the obsequiousness of an old family
servant."

Rose felt herself getting angry. She did not like Christian to laugh at
Townley.

"Besides," continued Christian, "he's such a handsome dog."

"Now you're talking sense."

"Yes, I am. He's most attractive; and that, my girl, lies at the bottom
of all your wifely duty. No doubt in your place I'd have endured his
hobnailed boots for the sake of his black eyes. It's a pity I didn't
marry him--I'd probably have made a better job of it than I have with
Wally."

"He's ten times more difficult than Father."

"So you say--but I'm not sure . . ."

"Please don't let's talk any more about him. It worries me when I don't
know if you're serious . . . And please, please, Christian, don't
believe I don't like having you here. I love it--and I love you."

Christian kissed her. She had talked herself into a happy mood.


August passed quietly in dry sunshine, and early in September the
Hollinshed children went away. There was now a bedroom free for
Christian's nurse, and Rose suggested that the baby should be brought
over for a while. But opposition came from an unexpected quarter. Wally
Deeprose did not want to be left without the child. He suspected--Rose
could see--that his wife did not mean to come back to him, and he was
afraid that she might keep the boy with her.

Rose assured him frankly that there was no fear of that.

"And herself--what about herself? Once you promised me, Rose, that you'd
never persuade her to leave me."

"She's not going to leave you."

"But she's left me. I've a feeling that she'll never come back."

"I promise you that she shall--at least I shan't keep her, and I don't
know where else she's to go, as she doesn't get on with her people and
she won't live alone."

"I thought we were getting on so much better after the baby came. . . .
I was surprised when she went off like that to stay with you. She says
she's going to stay with you till your child's born."

"Oh! . . ." Christian had not told her that.

"But I think that's only an excuse. She can't be any help to you."

"She's helping me with my sewing."

"She could do that here. She ought to come back."

"I know she ought."

"Then why don't you send her?"

"I'll do my best."

She did, but her best was made unavailing by the fact that Townley was
now on Christian's side. He would not have her sent away. Wally Deeprose
had forfeited all claim to her by his misbehaviour--he had made her home
intolerable, and it was only natural that she should take refuge at
Bladbean.

"After all, except for her father, who's practically cast her off, we're
the only relations she's got. You're her stepdaughter as well as her
best friend; of course she wants to be with you--and it's nice for you
to have her with you now. She'd better stay, anyhow, till after the
baby's born."

"I'd certainly rather not have her with me then."

"What do you mean? Surely that's the time you'd like to have another
woman with you?"

"I could get lots of other women who'd be more help to me than
Christian. She doesn't like that sort of thing."

He grinned at her.

"What a cat you are, Rose! By Gad! it's all true what they say about
women's friendships. I'll never believe in them, after this."

Sometimes, when he took Christian's part so zealously, Rose wondered
what he'd do if he knew half the things she said about him. When they
were alone together Christian was always making fun of him. She laughed
at his devotion to the Hollinsheds, at his male self-confidence, at the
long stories and explanations with which he tried to entertain her. She
would imitate him in a way that made Rose giggle in spite of her
annoyance. If she went out with him--and he often took her on market
days to Tenterden or Maidstone or Ashford, so that she could look at the
shops or go to the pictures while he did his business--she would come
home full of the most entertaining stories and preposterous
conversations. . . . No doubt she led him on to expose himself. It was
wicked of her, and Rose did not really approve of it, though she could
not help getting a certain amount of amusement from it. . . . After all,
sometimes the best thing to do with Townley was to laugh at him; one
could not always be thinking of his black eyes. . . . And evidently
Christian was skilful, never allowing him to see what she was doing, or
he would not be so ready to have her stay on and on at Bladbean. Rose
suspected that she treated him to a great deal of feminine helplessness,
and let him see more of her distresses than she showed his wife. She
gave him some one to be kind to and he gave her some one to laugh at--so
perhaps it was a fair exchange.


The next month went by peacefully. Rose would not let herself worry any
more about Christian. She accepted her presence and even found it a
comfort sometimes. Now that the Hollinsheds had gone, she had more free
time on her hands, and it was pleasant to sit together and talk and sew.
She would not let herself think of her father and the child at
Harlakenden. The time had come when her own child must fill all her
thoughts.

Already the chrysanthemums were in flower, early ones among the last
dahlias. She picked golden spikes of them and set them in the rooms,
with golden boughs of beech and chestnut from the woods. Sometimes she
had felt sorry that Bladbean did not have a wider view, that it was
huddled among the woods so that she could not see the fields falling
away to Lashdenden or the hills of Whitelime Green. But now she was glad
to have so much gold near her windows. The chestnut made a wall of gold
round the promise in the house.

Then trouble blew up like a sudden storm from Harlakenden. Wally
Deeprose wrote curtly to his wife announcing that the child's nurse had
given notice. He said no more, leaving it to her heart to decide whether
he had written only to hurt her or hoped his news would bring her back.

Rose believed in the second of these chances, Townley in the first. As
usual he heard more of Christian's case than Rose did; in fact, Rose
heard very little of it except from him.

"Of course it's his fault," he said. "The nurse was uncommonly set up
with the child and would never have done this if he hadn't driven her to
it. But he probably made a scene and scared her, and now she's off. It's
damned hard on poor Christian, as he won't let her have the baby here."

"He expects her to go back to him."

"Is it likely that she will, after what's happened? The man's a fool.
But poor Christian's really in a terrible state worrying about the baby
being left without a nurse. It isn't right that he should be there alone
with Uncle Wally."

"He won't be there alone. She must get another nurse for him if she
won't go back herself."

"You talk as if it was quite easy."

"Well, so it is. I got this last one quite easily."

"But it'll be more difficult now--considering why she's leaving."

"We don't know why she's leaving--he never told us. She may be feeling
poorly, or her family may have sent for her or she may have heard of a
better place."

"He'd have told us like a shot if she was going for any reason like
that. But he says nothing about it at all. You can bet it's something
he's ashamed of."

Rose was inclined to agree with him, and secretly in her heart felt a
good deal of indignation. She too was worried about the child and
realized that something would have to be done for him; but she would say
nothing more to Townley, for she was annoyed with him for being so taken
in by Christian, just as she was annoyed with Christian for making use
of him so unscrupulously. Of the two, Christian annoyed her most,
because she was dishonourable where he was only stupid. She withheld her
confidences from Rose, who no longer gave her her entire sympathy, and
bestowed them on Townley, whose response was more comfortingly
uncritical, and then made treacherous fun of him to Rose. . . . It was
scarcely decent. While blaming her father for this new trouble, Rose saw
Christian for a moment with his eyes.

Nevertheless, though she said nothing about it to either of them, she
decided to investigate matters that afternoon. She had planned to drive
over to Woodchurch to visit Dr. Brownsmith, whom she still consulted in
preference to the local doctor after her removal to Bladbean, and it
would be quite simple to call at Harlakenden and find out exactly what
was happening.

She went to the doctor first, and was pleased to hear that he found
everything satisfactory. . . . "You've nothing to worry about, Mrs.
Deeprose." . . . If only that could be as true as he meant it! If only
her life and human relationships could be as healthy and free from
complications as her body! . . . While she drove towards her old home
her spirits sank. It was a grey day, squirting rain, and the familiar
housefront looked as grey and gloomy as the sky. Christian's pasture of
geraniums and lobelias was still in flower, but raggedly in the ragged
grass; it all looked uncared for, now its mistress was gone and no one
really loved it or got excited about it or saw it as a joke.

She rang the bell and a disgruntled-looking servant told her that the
nurse and baby were out and that Mr. Deeprose was in bed.

Rose knew what that meant, and her anger against her father grew as she
walked upstairs.

Once more she stood in the bedroom which had been so familiar, and was
familiar again every time she entered it, though she forgot
betweenwhiles what it looked like. Her father still kept to it, or
rather had been left in possession by Christian, who, during the few
weeks she lived with him after the child's birth, had occupied Rose's
old room. The window was shut and the air was stale and acid with the
smell of whisky. Rose felt sick.

"Hullo, Father."

"Hullo, Mrs. Townley Deeprose. I guessed you'd come and curse me
sometime."

"I haven't come to curse you; I've come to talk things over. But there
doesn't seem any use doing that now."

"She didn't suggest coming herself."

"No."

"She's worse than our old she-cat."

Rose said nothing.

"D'you remember our old Minnie? How when she was out on the roofs we
thought we'd never get her in, till we had the notion to hold her kit
out of the window, so's its squeals 'u'd bring her. . . . Many's the
time I've had that kit on my palm. I thought I'd do the same with
Christian, but I reckon she's got less mother-feeling than an old
she-cat."

"She's not coming back, if that's what you hoped for. I'd better see if
I can get the nurse to stay."

"Do what you like--do what you damn well like." Then, his face suddenly
suffusing, his body trembling--"You poor fool!"

"I think I'd better go home."

"Yes, you're right there. You'd better. Go and look after your own home
instead of interfering with mine. I shouldn't have to hold my kit out of
the window to get my she-cat in if you'd keep your Tom off the tiles."

Rose turned towards the door.

"That's it. Walk out--all high and righteous. No one 'u'd guess what you
were up to. But I tell you, Missus, there's some who think it isn't too
pretty for a woman to let another woman go with her own husband rather
than send her back to the one she belongs to."

"Hold your tongue! How dare you say such things?"

He had gone too far, and she swung round on him, her cheeks crimson.

"Even though you're drunk," she said, slowly and furiously, "you should
learn to keep a decent tongue in your head and--and some control of your
wits. If you really mean what you say and aren't just trying to insult
me, you're a fool--a damned fool. No one but a fool would imagine that
Christian would look at Townley except to make fun of him or make use of
him."

"That's right--I like to hear you talk like that. You're getting to know
her. But do you really think she's stopping all these months at Bladbean
because she wants to be with _you_?"

"No, I don't. She's stopping at Bladbean because she wants to be away
from _you_. That's a good enough reason for anyone"--and she slammed the
door behind her.

A minute later she heard him being sick. But she would not go back to
him. She was shut of him. Not even her mother could expect her to go
back to him after what he said.



                            _Chapter Seven_

She felt angry for some days. Never in her life had she known her father
so offensive. As for a moment she had seen Christian with his eyes, so
she now, more steadily, saw him with Christian's. He really was
impossible to live with--for anyone to live with, even anyone who was
not a gently brought-up girl, inheriting an artist's sensibilities.
Wally Deeprose was disgusting, gross, foolish, malignant--her mother had
never seen him as he really was. As for Christian, Rose's heart was now
enlarged with pity for her; she blamed herself for having done so much
to persuade her to go back to Harlakenden. She had acted impulsively and
ignorantly, carried away by her feelings without considering the facts.
It was a mercy that she had not succeeded.

She naturally did not tell either Christian or Townley of her visit; but
its effects were shown in her changed handling of the situation. She no
longer even suggested that Christian should go back; something could be
arranged without her doing so--she herself would see about finding
another nurse. It was dreadful to think of that poor little baby being
left with such a man; but that was not his mother's fault--she was
willing enough to have him with her if his father would let him go. But
as he would not, there was nothing to be done except to find a kind,
sensible, reliable woman. Rose charged herself with the whole matter--it
appeared to her almost as a work of reparation.

There was no desperate hurry, for the present nurse was acting quite
constitutionally. She had given a month's notice and had no thought of
leaving before it was up; for the rest, she was firm and quite
uncommunicative. Rose suggested that they should put an advertisement in
the papers, but though they received a number of replies, none was
satisfactory, as they required somebody really exceptional. The nurse
must not be too young--it was not a situation for a young girl--but she
must be strong and active, since at any moment she might find herself
single-handed not only with the baby but in the house, the Harlakenden
servants having a way of suddenly disappearing. She must be experienced,
but she must not in any sense be grand, or she would inevitably fall
foul of her master. It was really difficult to find anybody, and Rose
and Christian had many discussions, all as amiable as they were anxious.

October came with clear skies and a frost that reddened their rims at
sunset. The gold of the woods had turned to rust. Standing in the high
field above the Forstal, Rose could see a country coppered over with
little creeping woods. There were no great woods in those parts, for
there had been no abbeys to tend them, and the forest that had once
covered the weald had long ago gone in fuel to the Sussex ironworks. The
woods were mostly little chestnut plantations about a hundred years old
or less, named after the farms they belonged to or the fields they
adjoined--Waxes, Hare lain, Thornden, Starvenden, Heartsup. . . . The
chestnut in them was paler than the oaks that rose above it, almost a
straw-colour against their brown. Looking over the countryside, she
could see very little green there. Only the pastures remained really
green, for the meadows were light with their aftermath crop, and fields
of stubble almost as brown as the woods. The hedges were either brown
with oak or gold with maple or suddenly scarlet as the wild cherry
flamed up in them.

Rose sighed gently; in less than two months the colour would all be
washed away, and the fogs would lie white in the valleys that now were
russet. In the garden at Bladbean the last chrysanthemums would smell
through the mist--they would be cold to touch and wet and sweet. . . .
Now they rioted so that she feared there might be none left. She had
counted on having just a few in the room when the baby was born.

She was beginning to feel unequal to much exertion and it did not seem
right that she should drive the car about the country pursuing names and
addresses, most of which, on investigation, turned out useless. She had
fallen back on private recommendation now. She had wished to avoid any
local discussion of their plight, but the newspapers had produced
nothing and she had ventured to ask one or two local ladies if they knew
of anyone.

As in most country districts in the South, society was in two
layers--the upper layer of the squires, clergy, and professional men,
whether active or retired, the lower layer of shopkeepers, farm-workers,
road-workers, small holders, and so on. The lower layer was far the more
varied of the two, ranging as it did from wealthy contractors to
labouring-men at thirty shillings a week, but it was also far the more
exclusive. There was no way of admittance to it except by birth. People
like the Deeproses, who occupied an indeterminate position between the
two classes, turned their eyes upwards rather than down for practical as
well as snobbish reasons. By way of the parson it was always possible to
know the squire, but your acquaintance with a haulage contractor stopped
there.

Rose had necessarily made few friends while she was at Harlakenden. Her
father's habits had isolated them. By the time she came to Bladbean her
interests were confined to her triangle of Christian, Townley, and her
father, so that she had none to spare for the society into which she was
moving; she had also never acquired the habit of making friends. Certain
contacts were, however, inevitable, and she had come to a slight
acquaintance with the parsons' wives both at Charing Heath and at
Egerton, also with the ladies who ran the Village Institute and the
Nursing Association.

These all seemed very ready to help her now. One characteristic of local
society was that its two layers circulated two quite distinct sorts of
gossip. There was no doubt quite another opinion of the situation at
Bladbean and Harlakenden among the workingmen of the district, but the
"gentry" were inclined to favour Christian's action in leaving her
husband, to blame him for keeping the child, and to do all they could to
help her and her stepmother in their difficulties about the nurse.

The vicar's wife at Egerton, a kind, sensible woman, only a few years
older than Rose and Christian, was especially helpful. She recommended
their getting a local girl.

"These town women often get mopey in the country, away from their
friends; and then if the slightest thing goes wrong. . . . Now a country
woman has her family and friends near her, she doesn't feel lonely or
homesick, and she takes things much more quietly. Of course she talks,
but then if she likes you she'll always talk on your side, so it does
more good than harm."

"She may not like my father," said Rose, bluntly--"and then Lord knows
what she'll say."

"A local girl wouldn't go to your father's house unless she liked the
idea of it--and him. Of course I know what your difficulties are, but I
do believe they're much more likely to upset a stranger than anyone
living round here. We're tougher here than in London, and our
working-girls are not genteel. If one could find a nice woman who
understood children and knew all about the situation--as of course she
would know, being local--I believe she'd do exceedingly well. She'd be
devoted to the child and tolerate everything else for the child's sake.
After all, they've often got to put up with that sort of thing in their
own homes."

"Yes . . . I know. Well, if we can find one----"

"I'll do my best. A parson's wife often hears of these things."


A few days afterwards she wrote that she thought she had found somebody.
She had been told about a woman--a widow without children--who had
lately come to live with her parents at Egypt Farm, near Boughton
Malherbe, while she looked for a job in the neighbourhood. She had in
the past been a children's nurse and also a housekeeper, so she seemed
suitable for Harlakenden. Mrs. King suggested that the two Mrs.
Deeproses should call and see her. She then, being a kind-hearted woman
and anxious to make herself useful, added the suggestion that she
herself should drive them over and that they should come back to tea at
the Vicarage afterwards.

Christian said she would not go; she did not care about Mrs. King, she
detested interviewing servants, and she relied absolutely on Rose to
manage without her. Rose was willing enough to act alone, and accepted
the invitation, which was for an afternoon two days later. She found it
would not be convenient for her to have the car to drive over to
Egerton, but a bus ran shortly before three; and another would bring her
back in time for supper.

She was looking forward to an afternoon away from Bladbean and its
inmates. It is true that she took its special problem with her, but
merely to talk over lightly with a woman who had no fundamental interest
in it. This easy surface talk, without any feeling of dark currents
beneath, was pleasant to her, just as it was pleasant to sit in another
woman's car and be driven by her through unfamiliar lanes--since Rose
went nowhere from Bladbean save to Harlakenden or the market towns--to a
village she had seen only two or three times in her life.

Their errand, actually, was unsuccessful. They saw the woman and she was
disengaged, but for some reason it was plain that she was determined not
to come. Rose would naturally have put down her reluctance to rumours of
her father's drinking if she had not been plainly shown by looks and
manner that it was to her the woman objected. When they first came,
before she knew who she was, she had been agreeable enough; but directly
she found out that she was speaking to Mrs. Townley Deeprose her manner
changed and became almost uncivil. No, she'd never said she was looking
out for a nurse's job, and she didn't want to go so far away from home
as Shadoxhurst. Nothing would make her change, so they came away.

Mrs. King was surprised and disappointed; Rose was affronted and
perplexed. But they did not talk about it as Rose and Christian would
have done. They dismissed it with a few remarks on human perversity and
drove back to tea at Egerton vicarage. The vicar was there and a Mrs.
Cleaver, who helped at the Women's Institute. Rose enjoyed herself; she
liked the sun-faded room with its chintz and china, the comfort that
stopped short of luxury, the good taste mellowed over with shabbiness.
It was years since she had been out to afternoon tea and sat with
pleasant strangers discussing unimportant matters. She forgot her
unpleasant interview at Boughton, and plunged herself into the small
talk of village life as into a warm, soothing bath.

When tea was over, Mrs. King, finding that Rose would have to wait
another hour for the bus, offered to drive her home. She had to go to
the station at Paddock Wood, and it would not be going much out of her
way to run round by Bladbean and drop her at the bottom of the lane.
Rose was grateful, because she was inclined to tire easily these days,
and would be glad of a short time to rest before she had to help Ivy
prepare the supper.

As she walked up the farm drive towards Bladbean's shining windows, her
heart was full of a new sort of content. For all her life she had been
as it were without a background, but now it seemed that she had found
one. She made up her mind to see more of these pleasant, friendly
people, who filled their lives so agreeably with slight activities and
small graces, who were so kind and polite and helpful, but never seemed
to want to look below the surface. When the baby was born she would
think about joining the Women's Institute, and she would go to church
more than she did, and perhaps Mrs. King would let her help her with one
of two of her clubs. . . . Her first contact with any form of social
life had curiously entranced her. Birth, death, marriage, sorrow, pain,
quarrels, drunkenness, getting one's living--one grew tired of these
heavy things; it was nice for a change to sit in a drawing-room talking
lightly and kindly about one's neighbours and tinkling a spoon against a
teacup.


By the time she reached the house the sunset had left the windows. It
was full of dusk and quiet, and she wondered if everybody had gone out.
She looked in the sitting-room, but there was no sign of Christian; her
work-basket had not been opened and the fire was ashes.

Rose wondered where she had gone--possibly Townley had taken her in to
Maidstone or Ashford to the pictures. . . . She felt a twinge of
annoyance. So that was why he had said it would be inconvenient for her
to have the car. . . . She had taken for granted that he or Cocks wanted
it for some business or other. Well, she couldn't object to their going;
but they might at least have been open about it. She suddenly remembered
her father's words of a couple of weeks ago. . . . Was there a chance
that--No, there wasn't. Her own words were still true--Christian had no
use for Townley except to make fun of him or to make use of him. She had
probably made use of him today, to help her through a boring afternoon;
and when they came back she would make fun of him to his wife. It was
all according to precedent.

She went into the kitchen, which she also found empty. That was why the
house seemed so unnaturally quiet--even Ivy was not in it. The little
wretch! she had probably taken advantage of everyone's being out to run
home for an hour or two. Rose had let her do so occasionally when she
was out, but this time she had said nothing about it, imagining that
there would be Christian's tea to get. Naughty little thing! she must be
taught better.

She lit the oil-stove in the scullery and put on the kettle. The tea at
the Vicarage had been pale and unsubstantial compared with what she was
accustomed to, and she felt the need of another and stronger cup. As she
came back into the kitchen she thought she heard a movement overhead;
some one must be in, then--she remembered that the room over the kitchen
was Christian's. So she and Townley had not gone to the pictures, after
all. . . . Perhaps she had been for a walk in the fields and was now
upstairs taking off her things, while he, of course, was still out on
the farm. It was barely six o'clock.

Her thoughts had maligned them. After all her righteous indignation she
had caught the infection of her father's mind. She had thought the worst
of Townley and Christian, jumping from flimsy premises to false
conclusions. She felt a little ashamed of herself.

The footsteps creaked overhead--they seemed heavy for Christian's. Then
suddenly she heard voices. Bladbean, like most old houses of its period,
was only roughly built; the floor boards of the room above lay right on
the beams of the room below. It was easy enough to hear voices without
distinguishing words. Above her now two voices were talking--a man's and
a woman's. She listened, confused for a moment, and then with terrible
thoughts running through her confusion like fire through mist. She heard
the woman laugh--she was plainly Christian. Who was the man?

Rose would not allow herself to think. If she started thinking, anything
might come of it--her thoughts might lead her anywhere. They had already
taken her too far. Even if Townley actually was in Christian's room he
might be there for one of many innocent purposes. She had had enough of
unjust, malignant thoughts; she would have no more of them--unproven.
She left the kitchen, ran upstairs, knocked at Christian's door and
walked in without waiting for an answer.

Of course they had heard her coming, but not in time to take any
effective measures. Townley was just struggling into the sleeves of his
coat, but had not been able to brush his hair. Christian was still in
bed. They faced Rose for a moment without speaking. That moment seemed
to prolong itself, or rather to repeat itself again and again--like
ripples round a stone or the echoes of a bell. The only emotion Rose was
conscious of was shame--shame so intense and terrible that she scarcely
realised it was not for herself. Her cheeks flushed scarlet, her eyes
filled with tears, and her hand shook on the door-knob as she closed the
door behind her.

There was absolutely nothing to say, but all three felt a compulsion to
speak. Their voices jangled together meaninglessly:

"What" . . . "I--I" . . . "You" . . .

Rose was the only one who managed to finish a sentence.

"You'd better get out of this, Townley."

She had given him a chance to bluster.

"I'm not going to leave you alone with Christian."

"I shan't do her any harm. Get out."

"I won't----"

"Oh, get out, Townley!" cried Christian. "There's nothing you can do
here except make matters worse."

He went mumbling and grumbling out of the room. As he brushed past Rose
the sudden touch of him was like the touch of a stranger. She
gulped--her shame was no longer hot, but cold, and then suddenly turned
to anger as cold as itself.

"Get up," she said to Christian.

As Townley shut the door behind him she had seen her face change. The
look of anger, fear and astonishment had suddenly gone, and in its place
was that woman-to-woman look that Christian had so often given her when
Townley went out of the room. Christian seemed to be saying to her with
her eyes: Now he's gone we can be natural--we can laugh at all this
together.

"Get up!" she shouted.

"Rose . . ."

"I'm not going to speak to you. Get up, put on your things, and get out
of this house. I'm shut of you."

"Rose, don't say such things. Let me explain to you. You'll understand."

"I shan't--I shan't understand anything except that you're a toad and a
liar. 'Explain' indeed! How dare you suggest it!"

She was trembling with anger, but her brain was calm and clear. She felt
detached from her anger, as if it were a sword she held in her hand.

"Get up," she repeated, "and dress yourself at once."

Something in her manner showed Christian that she had no choice. She got
up and began to pull on her clothes. Her hair fell over shoulders in
great ropes that hung and swung as she moved about. To Rose there was
something ugly and obscene about them. She watched her with disgust.

"You can go out of the room," said Christian. "You needn't stand there
and watch me."

"I shan't go till you do. I don't trust you out of my sight."

"Don't be a fool. You stand there striking attitudes as if it was
judgment Day and you were God."

Her face had changed again--the witch-mask had come over it. She was
dressed now and bundling up her hair.

"Your hat and coat," said Rose.

"Oh, you're throwing me out, are you?"

"Yes. Why should I keep you? You've got a home of your own."

Christian turned pale.

"I'm not going there, and you know it."

"Then you can go to your father's."

"At this time? Rose, don't be an idiot. If you'd listen to me instead of
indulging in all this drama, I could show you that things aren't nearly
so bad as you think. A man like Townley----"

"Don't you dare to mention Townley. You'd better put some things in a
case."

"How do you propose I'm going wherever I'm going?"

"I don't know and I don't care. All I care about is that you go. If you
take the small case now I'll see that your things are sent after you
later."

"I'm damned if I'll wait to pack anything with you glaring at me. Gloria
can lend me what I want. My God! There'll be a fine tale going round
tomorrow about you."

"And you."

"Perhaps and perhaps not. You're a fool, Rose. I've said that before,
but it's worth repeating."

"If you don't mean to pack you can go at once."

Christian marched out of the room and Rose followed her. As they went
downstairs Christian called--"Townley! Townley!"

She wanted him now, to help her fight Rose, but he had obeyed her orders
more literally than she had intended. He had not only left the room, but
left the house.

"Townley! Where are you? I want you to drive me to Father's. Rose is
turning me out."

There was a note of anxiety and alarm in her voice, as if she were
afraid of the darkling house in which she was alone with Rose.

"He's not going to drive you--no one's going to drive you. You can go in
the bus like anyone else."

"But I don't know what time the bus goes. Rose, you won't be such a
brute as to turn me out like this. It's twenty miles at least to Stede
Quarter and I don't know the way."

She dropped her mask and for a moment was just Christian, scared,
imploring, and rather helpless. Rose hesitated as habits of tenderness
asserted themselves in response to that familiar look. But the next
moment she was firm again--she could feel no pity for Christian, not
only because anger had frozen her heart, but because it had cleared her
head; she knew that Christian was not really afraid of the journey to
Stede Quarter, but of her arrival there, of the necessary explanations
to her father and Gloria--it would be a difficult situation to explain,
even if she lied as much as she probably would.

"If you don't know the way to Stede Quarter, you can go to
Harlakenden--it's much nearer. As I said before, you've got a father and
a husband both in these parts, so there is no need for you to come and
misbehave in my house. Get out at once."

She threw the front door open, and the little garden showed itself
innocently wrapped in twilight.

"You'll regret this," said Christian between her teeth. "You silly,
posturing, righteous fool! I'll see that you regret it."

For a moment she stood there, her eyes driving in her words like hammers
driving in nails. Then she turned and ran down the garden path,
disappearing in the shadows at the end of it.

Rose shut the door behind her and turned back into the house. She felt
bruised and shaken, as if Christian's eyes had really been hammers. She
went into the scullery, where the kettle was boiling now, and made
herself cup after cup of black, strong tea.



                            _Chapter Eight_

The maid came in soon after half-past six. She seemed surprised to see
Rose.

"Mrs. Walter told me I could go out," she said, defensively.

Rose did not doubt her.

"Mrs. Walter has had to leave unexpectedly--she's gone home. I'm not
feeling very well, so I'm going upstairs now and I've made up the
master's bed in the south room."

She had done that, and she had tidied Christian's room so that no one
should see that the bed had been used or that she hadn't taken anything
away with her--despising herself all the time for such trouble to put up
a tale.

"And what about supper?" asked Ivy.

"I don't want any. You'd better heat up that pie for the master . . . be
careful and see that it isn't overdone, because he may be in late."

It was like drawing down the blinds on a fire-gutted room. She despised
herself for doing anything so useless, but she could not help it. No
doubt tomorrow everything would be known, but till she knew that it was
known and perhaps even afterwards she must make these frantic, futile
efforts to maintain the decencies.

She went upstairs, undressed, and got into bed. She felt quite
tired--worn out and very sleepy. In five minutes she was sound asleep.

She woke, feeling that she had heard a door shut. A vague, uncomfortable
dream twisted itself away into the back of her mind. Then horror gripped
her--her heart contracted with the thought of what had happened. She sat
up in bed and struck a match. What time was it?--only ten o'clock. The
realization first comforted and then appalled her. It was comforting not
to find herself in the loneliness and darkness of midnight, to know that
vestiges of the day were still about her, that people were still awake
. . . it was appalling to find that she still had all the night to go
through, that for another seven or eight hours at least she must either
find sleep or endure herself awake.

That door she had heard shut . . . was that Townley shutting himself
into the south room? or had he just come into the house? If it was the
latter, he would not know that he was expected to sleep in the south
room, as Ivy would not be there to tell him. He might come in to hers.
. . . She listened, straining her ears for sounds; it would be dreadful
if he came. She could not lock the door, for if there had ever been keys
to any of the rooms at Bladbean, they had long ago been lost. She would
have to tell him to go away. . . . But he would not come--he would be
even more afraid of her than she was of him. There was not a sound in
the house. Perhaps that door had shut only in her dream.

Then suddenly the window square, which had been pale before, went dark.
She knew what that meant. It meant that a light had been extinguished in
another room. The window of the south room was in the gable, at right
angles to her own; Townley must be there all right.

She sank back in the pillows, feeling almost at rest--not only because
she knew that he was not coming in, but also because she knew he was
safe in the house. Her life seemed less torn when she thought of him
safely in bed. She knew then that for a moment she had imagined him
going away and never coming back, going right out of her life, perhaps
throwing in his lot with Christian's. It was not a sensible imagination
for anyone who knew Townley, but she was too shaken to be sensible. Now
she saw things more in their proper size and position.

It was not till she woke up again, two hours later, that she fully
understood what she had done to Christian. This time the consciousness
of past events did not come to her with a jar after she had wakened, but
was with her as a dull ache even before she opened her eyes. What had
happened to Christian? What time had she got to Stede Quarter? She could
not help wondering, and with wondering came the question of how brutal
she had been. She had been quite right to turn Christian out of the
house. She could not have kept her there another hour; but perhaps in a
few days' time she would feel better about it if she had had Cocks to
drive her home--not just put her outside the door without transport,
luggage, or even money . . . she could not be sure that she had taken
her handbag.

She had acted on impulse, driven by an anger that was no less compelling
because it was cold. Her heart had been full of hate and
cruelty--splinters of ice; but it was thawing now and she felt vaguely
anxious and ashamed. Suppose Christian had never got home. . . . She
could hear rain falling; it came down in a long, melancholy, sighing
drone. Suppose Christian was out in it. . . .

But what nonsense! Christian would never be as helpless as all that. She
might be unpractical, but she had all her wits about her. If she missed
the bus or had no money, she could hire a car and pay on arrival. In
worrying about her, Rose was only returning to old habits of mind. She
was done with all that now. Christian was a stranger to her henceforth.
Yesterday she had made two strangers. People talked of making friends,
but she had made strangers--Townley and Christian, who till yesterday
had been her best friends.

Some day she would be friends with Townley again, but with Christian,
never. This was the end. Christian would never forgive her for turning
her out even if she herself could ever forgive her for what she had
done. So it was a good thing that she had acted so violently, for it
would be shameful if they were ever to be friends again after all this.
She did not hesitate in her view of Christian as the seducer. She could
not see Townley playing such a part with such a girl. Not only had she
never had any reason to doubt his fidelity--she might have been mistaken
in that, since she was so badly mistaken now--but quite obviously he had
not the brain to outwit or even to influence Christian. She must have at
the very least encouraged him. Why had she done it? So that she might
laugh at him about it to his wife afterwards? . . . Rose laughed aloud
in the darkness and was frightened at the hollow sound. Had she imagined
that she would have more influence over him, more power to make him let
her stay at Bladbean even after the baby was born? Had she in fact
seduced Rose's husband so that she might go on living with Rose? It was
a preposterous idea, but not impossible with Christian--Rose almost
wished she had let her excuse herself.

But then she could not have believed her--because you could never
believe her; and it was quite possible that she had taken him as a lover
only for his black eyes. She had always said she found him attractive,
and she was used to helping herself to what she wanted. How long had it
been going on? Not long, Rose thought; she did not think she could have
been so deceived for long. Perhaps she had found them together on the
first and only occasion. They might have been suddenly moved to take
advantage of her being away from home, of the fact that she could
not--they thought--get home before a certain hour. . . . And yet the
gossip had been going on for ages. Her father had heard it; that woman
at Egypt Farm had heard it, and, judging by her manner, thought that
Rose was condoning the situation.

She hid her face in the pillow and cried out with pain. Her sharp
thoughts were hurting her; she felt them stabbing like knives in a
confused fight. Oh, if only she could go to sleep again! But she was now
far too wide awake. She would have to lie like this till morning,
thinking, guessing, wondering, fearing, but not knowing. It might be
some days before she really knew what had happened. She might never
know.


She got up at the usual time and went downstairs, her legs weak, her
eyes aching. She felt uneasy at the thought of meeting Townley. She was
bound to see him today and she could not make up her mind what line she
would take--be silent or have things out, reproach him or comfort him.
It all depended, of course, on his own attitude. She could not imagine
that even in such a situation he would own himself in the wrong; and yet
he must know it, he must feel it, and he would possibly show it. She
herself felt moved to reconciliation, as more and more her mind blamed
Christian for what had happened. On the other hand, she had not been
brought up to believe in uncontrollable male passion--her father's
weakness had been of a different sort; the men of her experience all
were faithful, and it did not occur to her to excuse her husband with
such acceptances as Men Will Be Men.

On arriving in the kitchen she found that he had breakfasted early and
gone out. So she still had time to think over what she would do, though
she did not really want to think. It would be better to act on the
promptings of the moment without confusing herself too much beforehand.
She was worried by the thought that in spite of what she had seen she
really knew so little.

She need not have been anxious, for Townley managed successfully to
avoid her all that day. Before she had finished her breakfast he had
gone off in the car and did not come back till she was in bed. The next
day he had also disappeared before she came down. Rose began to feel
irritated and scornful. The situation was ridiculous, and it was
characteristic of Townley to make it so. Again one could not help
laughing at him, though it hurt one to see him hiding like a
schoolboy--like a frightened child . . . her heart softened as she
thought of the child she carried--his child. He was only a little boy,
after all--a little boy who had stolen jam. She had better go out and
find him and bring this preposterous situation to an end.

Today he must be somewhere on the farm, as he had not taken the car; and
after all he could not altogether neglect his livelihood in order to run
away from her. Just before dinner, she asked one of the men casually
where his master was and was told that he had gone down to the Waxes
field, where they were lifting roots.

"Will you ask him to come up to the house at once--he's wanted there."

She wondered if he would come; no doubt it all depended on whether the
man said "you're wanted at the house" or "the missus wants you." The
former might alarm him, might make him think she had been taken ill--as
many women would have been in her condition. She waited nervously,
though she no longer thought of him as a stranger; his behaviour,
following such predictable, familiar lines had reestablished their
relationship.

She had just made up her mind that he was not coming, when he walked in.

"Hullo! What's happened?"

"Nothing's happened. But I want to talk to you."

He looked at her disgustedly.

"Is that why you sent for me?"

"Yes. I can't go chasing you about the farm, and I'm not going to sit
down to another meal without you. I want to talk to you. We'll never
understand each other if you dodge me like this."

"I'm not dodging you, but I'm keeping out of your way, all right. Why
should I talk to you after the way you've behaved?"

Rose stared at him. She had been prepared for a certain amount of
latitude in his defence. But this took her breath away.

"You behaved like a beast," he continued, "like a cruel beast--turning
that poor girl out of the house without any proper clothes on and no
money."

"What are you talking about? She had proper clothes on--I saw her dress;
and if she forgot her money it wouldn't make any difference--she could
have hired a car at Reeves' and paid on arrival."

"I'll ask you what _you're_ talking about--car--paid on arrival! . . .
Don't you know what happened?"

"No."

Rose turned pale.

"Well I'll tell you"--he spoke slowly and emphatically--"Tom Baitup,
their looker at Staggers Aven, found her on his way to work yesterday
morning lying in Staggers Wood, unconscious and raving, and with only a
few rags on her."

Rose could not speak. She felt that she was going to be sick.

"Where is she now?" she managed to gasp out at last.

"With her own people at Stede Quarter. Baitup took her to the farm and
she recovered a bit and said she wanted to go there. She'd been
wandering in the wood all night."

"But how did she get anywhere near Staggers?"

"Lost her way, of course. What else did you expect? It was practically
dark when you threw her out, and she doesn't know the country round
here."

"She knows her way to the village--to the main road."

"Not across the fields. She tried to cut across the fields and missed
her way at the Forstal. She went west instead of east and landed herself
in Staggers Wood, which is half bog . . ."

"Have you seen her?"--his knowledge seemed almost too detailed for
hearsay.

"No."

Rose walked over to the window. She did not know what to answer him. She
was trembling.

"You behaved like a beast," continued Townley--"like a lunatic and a
beast. How can you expect me to come near you?"

She flashed round on him, provoked.

"And how did _you_ behave?"

He looked disconcerted for a moment, then recovered himself.

"I own I did wrong," he said, pompously--"I was carried away by my
feelings. After all, I'm a human being. But in my opinion there are much
worse sins than that kind of thing--cruelty, for instance. At least I
haven't done anybody any harm."

This time Rose did not want to laugh. She was too much upset about
Christian. It was dreadful to think of her wandering about in the
darkness, in the bog and the rain. She would have been terrified, too,
not knowing where she was or how to get out of the wood. Oh, how could
she have done such a thing? She should have sent for a car--not left her
to take her chances. But she had been so angry that she had forgotten
how unpractical Christian was, she had never thought of her trying to
cut across the fields or missing her way in the dark. Townley was right;
anger had made her act like a lunatic--the only thing she had thought of
had been to get Christian out of her sight. She began to cry.

In the circumstances it was the best thing she could have done. Townley
relented at the sight of her tears. She felt his hand on her shoulder.

"Don't cry. I dare say she'll be all right. They'll look after her well
at Stede Quarter."

"Have you heard anything of her since she went there?"

"No--except that the doctor's been twice. Now dry your eyes, Rose, and
have some dinner. It's gone half-past twelve."

They had dinner together, almost in silence.


As soon as he had gone back to the fields Rose went to the telephone and
rang up Stede Quarter. She was glad to be answered by what was obviously
a maid's voice.

"Hullo! Is that Stede Quarter? . . . Will you kindly give Mrs. Lambert a
message? I'm speaking from Bladbean Farm, near Charing Heath, and they
want to know if Mrs. Deeprose would like her things sent to her now."

She had no idea what version of the facts Christian had given or who
appeared as guilty. A minute or two passed and the maid came back.

"Yes, please, Mrs. Lambert says will you send the things along by
carrier."

"I--I'll tell them. How is Mrs. Deeprose?"

"She's pretty bad."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Is--is it anything? . . . I mean, has the doctor said
what it is?"

"He says it's her lungs."

"Oh . . ." she waited a moment, the receiver to her ear, while space
hummed between her and Stede Quarter. She did not know what she was
waiting for, but she could not put the receiver down. Then "Good-bye"
came to her over the line, and then a click . . . the space between her
and Christian became dead. She turned away.

She did not say anything about it to Townley--she simply could not
discuss it with him. He no doubt had his own sources of information. She
spent the rest of the day packing up Christian's things--her heart torn
with emotion as she handled the bits of silk and lace and fur and wool
which still seemed to be the woman who had been her friend. She could
not think of Christian without the deepest distress, even though she no
longer loved her. She could not love her, yet neither could she hate
her, and certainly the feeling she had for her was not indifference.
. . . Sometimes her anger came back when she thought of the harm
Christian had done, of the people she had made miserable and made
wicked--her father, her husband, herself . . . she seemed to have cast a
wicked spell upon them all. And yet when she thought of her wandering in
the dark, crying out for help from the thickets of Staggers Wood,
probably coming round again and again to the same place, tearing her
pretty clothes on the brambles and thorns, finally losing her head and
rushing wildly about so that in the end she was found almost naked . . .
Rose's tears fell on a dressing-jacket that she was folding--a little
green silk jacket in which she had often seen Christian sit up to have
breakfast in bed. . . . Had Townley gone to her in the mornings after he
left his wife? . . . The thought came to her for the first time, and she
crumpled up the jacket and pushed it angrily into a corner of the trunk.
Christian had better die . . . it would be better for her father, better
for herself, and better for Townley. But she would not die. Why should
she die of no more than a night's exposure? She was frail; but she was
young and she was a witch--the witch of Endor, too old to die. . . . And
she must not die, because she was beautiful and delightful and they all
loved her--Townley, herself, and her father, those three who would be so
much better off if she died. She must not die, because if she died Rose
would have killed her--turning her out of the house without any thought
except to be rid of her. She would have killed her as surely as she had
killed her mother--she gave a gasp of pain as that hidden wound
reopened.

Oh, why did she do these wild, impulsive things that never failed to
bring judgment on her? She was not normally an impulsive person--she was
rather stiff and staid; but sometimes she lost her head and then there
would be no end to the dreadful things that followed. One moment's
aberration would be followed by months, by years, of payment. . . . Some
people were always acting on impulse and never seemed the worse for it.
Why was there this separate law for Rose Deeprose?


That evening her father telephoned. She had felt too broken and anxious
to ring him up, fearing that he too would round on her and abuse her for
what she had done.

"I've been to Stede Quarter," he said, "and I saw her this afternoon."

"How is she?"

"I really don't know. Nobody does. She's got a temperature and it won't
go down."

"I--I heard something about her lungs. Is it pneumonia?"

"Oh, it's too early to say anything about that yet? Of course they're
afraid of pneumonia. She's so delicate."

"I didn't know she was."

"Nor did I. But seemingly since the baby came she's gone all to skin and
bone. Didn't you notice anything?"

"Well, perhaps I may have thought she'd got a bit thinner."

How amiably they were talking! Did he know what had happened?

"Father, you don't blame me, do you?"

"What for?"

"For turning her out?--hasn't she told you?"

"Mrs. Lambert said something to me about it, but of course I knew what
must have happened . . ." a long sigh came to her over the wire. She
began to speak, then remembered that the postmistresses of two villages
might be listening to their conversation.

"I'll come over and see you tomorrow," she said. "What time are you
going to Stede Quarter?"

"I don't know that I'm going at all. But you'd better come in the
evening."

She went, and found that he had not gone--he was not fit to go; he had
been drinking.

"What's the use of my going to see her? She isn't mine any longer. It's
you who ought to go--or Townley."

"Neither of us will ever be asked. You must go, Father. You're her
husband."

"But she doesn't want to see me. She never asked for me."

"Oh . . . has she asked for anyone?"

"No."


The days dragged on. Rose rang up her father every evening and sometimes
she had an answer, sometimes a servant's voice told her that Mr.
Deeprose was not able to come to the phone, sometimes the post-office
said, "No reply." Whenever she had any news from him she went at once to
Townley with it. She could not be sure of what he really felt about
Christian; on the whole, she thought that he felt no more than pity and
the memory of passion. But even so she was sorry for him--his orderly,
well-made masculine world had ceased to turn round as usual. He had
continued to assert himself over her indignation, to put her in the
wrong even in such a matter as his own misconduct, but he was not easy
with her, he was no longer confident. He also probably had some idea of
what his neighbours must be saying about him. . . . His manner was
conscious, ashamed, resentful, unhappy--he was like a man who has
inadvertently kicked a hole in a valuable possession.

At the end of a week Rose rang up Dr. Brownsmith. She had given up her
father in despair, and she dared not again apply to Stede Quarter. His
manner was unexpectedly friendly and comforting, but his news was all
that she had dreaded most.

"I'm afraid she's in a bad way--lobar pneumonia and a temperature of
105."

"Do you think she'll get over it?"

"I hope so, Mrs. Deeprose, I hope so. After all, she's young and the
young often make astonishing recoveries."

"It would be astonishing, then?"

"Oh no--not that. Merely that one would be surprised in an older
person."

"Oh . . ."

"Now you mustn't worry about her, Mrs. Deeprose. Everything that's
possible is being done for her, and worry is bad for you as things are
now. You make up your mind to be brave for the child's sake."

"I'll try."

"That's right. I always said you were my model patient. I wish everyone
was as good a patient as you are."

Meaning, no doubt, that Christian is a bad one. . . . Rose lay awake all
night, and by the next morning had decided that she could bear no more.
She could not spend another minute _imagining_ Christian--imagining her
hollow eyes, her burning face--or else seeing her as she had seen her
last with eyes that were like blows. Nothing that happened could be
worse than this. She would drive over to Stede Quarter and ask to see
her; if Christian would not see her she would send her a message. She
could not bear to think that if she died their last memories of each
other would be so dreadful . . . that they would have parted in hate.

Without saying a word to Townley, she took the car and drove over to
Stede Quarter. No doubt she would be turned away from the door, but she
must do something. Besides, once more she had the relief of action, of
motion--she who seemed to have been kept still for so long. Whatever
happened at Stede Quarter, it could not be worse than what had happened
at Bladbean, and she would have the comfort of knowing that she had at
least tried to put things right.

It was a warm day for October, a sunny world washed clear by recent
storms. The garden of Stede Quarter was full of Michaelmas daisies,
great trusses of purple in every conceivable shade. The bees droned
among them and the butterflies hung drowsily on the last honeypots of
the year. Rose's legs shook as she walked up the crazy paving between
the clumps, and her trembling hand made an uncertain sound on the ship's
bell by the door.

A maid opened it--no Iggulsden or anyone that she knew. "I--I've come to
inquire after Mrs. Deeprose. How is she, please?"

"About the same, madam. The doctor doesn't notice much change in her."

"Would it be possible for me to see her for a minute?"

"I shouldn't think so, madam. She isn't really well enough to see
visitors."

"Well, do you mind asking her--or getting some one to ask her? It's
rather important."

"Who shall I say, madam."

"Mrs. Townley Deeprose."

The maid invited her to come and sit in the hall while she went
upstairs. Time passed . . . eternity was measured by three minutes on
the grandfather's clock. Then the girl came down.

"Mrs. Deeprose will see you, madam, just for a moment."

Rose felt herself grow weak, but forced herself upright. She stumbled on
the crooked stairs and apologized for the noise she was making. A nurse
came rustling out of the sick-room----

"Don't stay long."

Rose went inm. The blinds were drawn over the sunshine there was a
stuffy scent of flowers. Christian might have been laid out in that
room. . . . As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness Rose saw her
sitting up in bed, propped with a mass of pillows. Suddenly she held out
her arms.

"Rose . . . darling Rose."

Her voice came in little gasps. Her face seemed to have a cobweb over
it--it looked grey and shapeless; but her eyes were as bright as
candles. Under her bedjacket and nightgown her body felt all bones. Was
Rose dreaming that she had Christian in her arms?

"My darling . . . my pet. . . ."

"Oh, Rose, you've forgiven me. I--I was so afraid you never would."

"But I thought it was you who'd never forgive me--turning you out like
that. . . ."

"I lost my way--I was silly. . . . Oh, Rose, I never thought you'd
forgive me."

"Of course I'd forgive you."

"Then why didn't you come and see me? Wally's been."

"I know . . . but I thought you didn't want to see me."

"Oh, I did!"

"But you never asked for me."

"I didn't dare. I thought you'd be angry with me. I thought you were
frightfully angry."

"I was--but I'm not now. Oh, Christian, all this is my fault. Get well,
my poor pet. Get well."

"Of course I'll get well. I hate being ill. But you mustn't say it's
your fault. You didn't ask me to go to bed with Townley."

"Hush, darling."

"I'm sorry--but I wish you'd let me tell you all about it. I will when
I'm well again--but I don't feel equal to it now."

"You mustn't try."

"When you hear about it you'll laugh--you couldn't help it."

"I'll laugh when you get well. I'll dance for joy. Oh, Christian, don't
let's talk about those bad old things. You were bad to me and I was bad
to you, but we'll both forget it now."

"All right. And when I'm well, may I come back to Bladbean?"

Rose gasped. She did not know what to say or what she finally said.
Christian suddenly began to cough, and the nurse came in.

"I think it's time you went now--she's getting tired."

"I shan't stay another moment. Good-by, Christian."

"Good-by, Rose. You'll come again, won't you?"

"Yes, I will--I promise."

She stooped and kissed her; then she went out.

The next day Dr. Brownsmith rang her up and told her that Christian was
dead.



_Part III_


 MOTHER



                             _Chapter One_

The clouds were wrapped so closely round the month that Rose thought she
would never walk through them till the end of it. Outwardly there was
that fog over the weald which November always brings. The heats of
summer, driven into the ground by the sun, would seem to lie buried
there awhile, then rise like ghosts, white and drained of their
substance, building themselves a form out of earth's coarser
emanations--shapes made out of water, smells made out of turnips.

Lying in bed at night, Rose could smell their turnip smell, and in the
morning she could see their shapes, moving away before the early
sunshine. Sometimes they did not break up till later in the day, when
from the Forstal or the high ground by Bladbean Wood she would watch
them moving down the valley below like giants--clumsy, broken shapes,
that seemed to search for a way between the meadow-hills. Early in the
afternoon they would reform again into one thick cloud that swallowed
Bladbean and its barns and its fields and its woods.

The cloud in Rose's mind did not break up into shapes. At first she had
been afraid that it might, and she had not dared move her thoughts for
fear of disturbing it, for fear that it might turn into giants. But in
time she saw that she need not be afraid. There was no sun or wind to
disperse the cloud--no feelings either warm or cold . . . her thoughts
did not matter, for she could think without feeling.

At first, she realized, Dr. Brownsmith was afraid that all she had
suffered at the time of Christian's death might bring on premature
labour. He had not expected to find her so calm in both body and mind.
He came to see her one afternoon and spent an hour talking to her about
Christian and her last illness.

"In many ways she was a typical case--of phthisis, I mean."

"Phthisis?--what's that?"

"T.B., you know--consumption."

"Oh . . . but had she got that? She couldn't have!"

"The right lung was badly affected and she was wasted almost to skin and
bone."

"Then how is it that I--that nobody knew?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It sometimes takes a professional eye, when there are no definite
symptoms. . . . I'd have known, I'm pretty sure, if I'd seen her. But I
hadn't seen her since the baby was born, and she was all right then."

"She never complained of feeling ill."

"I dare say she didn't feel any worse than a little out of sorts. It's
the wasting that would have alarmed me if I'd known of it."

"I once told her I thought she was getting thinner, but she said she
didn't mind."

"She'd have minded before long."

Rose felt bewildered--she had never imagined anything like this. Did it
make things worse or better?--or easier to understand?

"Tell me, Doctor--would she have died like that if she hadn't been ill
to start with?"

"I don't think so."

"And if she hadn't caught cold, would her bad lung have got well again?"

"It's impossible for me to say, but the odds are that it wouldn't,
having gone so fast and so far."

"You think she would have died anyhow?"

"I think it's probable that she would. I think we can say that if she
hadn't caught this chill her death would still have happened--though not
so soon and not so easily."

"Not so easily."

"Death from advanced tuberculosis is seldom easy."

Rose thought: He's taking a lot of trouble to make me think it wasn't my
fault. She would have felt grateful to him for his kindness if she had
not been afraid to feel anything.

"Of course," he went on, "this hidden illness affected her mind as well
as her body. It accounted for--er--well, shall we say a certain rashness
in her attitude towards life. We doctors know well that consumption is
only physically a wasting disease, that mentally it often seems to act
as a stimulant--to bring a sort of wildness. . . ."

Now, Rose thought, he's trying to account for some of the things she
did; but he doesn't go back far enough.

"Take my advice," he said, "and don't think too much about all this. You
must look forward now, Mrs. Deeprose, not backward. Look forward, and,"
he added with a smile, "don't drink too much tea."

Rose blushed, not with the guilt of Christian's death, but because she
knew she was drinking too much tea. She took after her mother in that
way.


Other people as well as the doctor tried to be kind. Mrs. King and many
of the local ladies sent cards of sympathy; and when she met them in the
village they were always careful to walk up and shake hands with her.
She did not quite like this deliberate shaking hands--it was a creaking
piece of the machinery of kindness; but she could not help being soothed
by their careful talk about the price of tea and biscuits, about the new
bungalows being built at Starvenden, about the motor accident there had
been at Four Wents. Never, never, she knew, would they risk bringing
tears to her eyes or pain to her heart, by repeating with their tongues
those phrases of sympathy they had written in the corners of their
visiting-cards. She was safe with them--they would do or say nothing to
make her feel again.

Sometimes she did not think they could altogether approve of her--they
must have heard of how she had turned Christian out of the house, and no
doubt they thought that she had gone too far in righteous indignation.
On the other hand, they would be filled with horror at Christian's
treachery, which they must now have heard of . . . she was quite
convinced that the story of how she had found her friend and her husband
together had by this time gone seven times round the neighbourhood,
though there had been no witnesses but themselves. Townley had received
some exceedingly cold looks from the very quarters that had given her
kind ones; she was sorry for him, but not desperately sorry.

She herself had had cold looks, coming mostly from that stratum of local
society which must all along have condemned her. Oddly enough, she saw
herself more clearly with their eyes than with the eyes of their social
superiors. She could not quite make out what Mrs. King and Mrs.
Singleton and Mrs. Cleaver and other ladies thought of her, but she
guessed pretty well what the publican's wife, the shopkeeper's wife, the
looker's wife and the cowman's wife were thinking. They thought either
that she had tolerated her husband's infatuation and then for some
reason rounded on the guilty pair, or else--and this would equally win
their censure--she had been a fool who for months had failed to see what
was going on under her nose, and on discovering it had not realized that
she had no one to blame but herself. Christian had never been popular in
the neighbourhood, but her death would have done much to reconcile a
public opinion which, even before it, had not been inclined to blame her
more than Rose for the state of Bladbean.

Rose accepted the ill opinion of some of her neighbours, just as she
accepted the kindness of others. In time she would be able to live them
both down, and Townley must do the same, though in his case there was no
kindness to reckon with--no anxious, nervous hands held out in doeskin
or chamois gloves. When the baby was born on the other side of the
cloud, at the end of the month, bad opinion would be softened and
kindness become spontaneous. She must look forward to that.

When the baby was born, too, she and Townley would be husband and wife
again. They were not strangers now, but they were not husband and wife;
they were two polite and distantly friendly acquaintances, not quite
sure of each other. They were not, Rose thought, quite sure who had to
forgive whom. Sometimes Townley would forget his part and be kind to her
or superior, but he always remembered it before she had time to change
into his wife. He still slept in the south bedroom, and she could not
bring herself to ask him to leave it. Besides, what would be the use,
seeing that he would have to move back there so soon? After the baby was
born she would have him with her again. She would lie in his arms and
forget the enchantment that had taken him from her. For she knew that
one had to forget these things; in her case it was vain to hope that
anything could come of confidences, appeals, or explanations. She and
Townley must leave the mending of their breach not to understanding, but
to time.

Meanwhile, it was good to find that her father did not blame her, even
though he was of the number of those who thought she had been a fool not
to know more than she did.

"You were blind because you loved her," he said, "which is better than
loving her and not being blind. If I'd been blind I might have kept
sober, but as I wasn't I had to get blind--see?" and he laughed rather
piteously.

"But you weren't blind even then," said Rose, deliberately avoiding the
joke. "You still knew what she was like--in fact you seemed to see it
more clearly."

"You mean you can't think what I got drunk for. If you were me, you'd
know."

Rose hoped she was not being unsympathetic. She put out her hand and
laid it over his.

"I do know a little of what you've been through, and I know a great deal
of it has been my fault, so you mustn't think I blame you. You've been a
good husband to her."

"Do you really think that?"--his eyes brightened.

"Yes, I do. I think it's her fault that things went badly. But don't
let's talk about her unkindly, now she's dead. How's the boy getting
on?"

"Oh, he seems fine, and Aunt Hannah manages him uncommonly well. I'm
glad we thought of getting her in."

It had been Rose's suggestion that they should send for Aunt Hannah when
the nurse went away and they still had no one to take her place. Aunt
Hannah was glad to come, and though Wally had not been too pleased to
have her spying on him, as he said, he had realized that there was
nothing else to be done. Rose could not have the child at Bladbean,
being so near the end of her time, and anyhow Wally did not want to part
with him. In time he came to the conclusion that it was better to have a
woman like Hannah in the house--a woman who knew him if she did not
understand him--than a starchy, genteel nurse who made fusses and took
offence and was liable to give notice. Aunt Hannah would not give
notice; she would stay with him longer, no doubt, than he'd care to have
her. She was bored living in Smarden Street with Aunt Alice, and enjoyed
having the care of a good-sized house, the rule over servants, and also,
he suspected, the supervision of her brother. He hoped he had not got
her for keeps--Rose must find a nurse as soon as she was about--but
meanwhile she was a good exchange.


On the 30th of November, Rose gave birth to a daughter. She had never
till then thought of her child definitely as boy or girl. Unlike so many
mothers, she had not concentrated her hopes and imaginations on a son.
She had chosen names for a son--Walter Townley; they were inevitable,
though she did not care for either of them. Just as inevitable six weeks
ago had seemed the names for a daughter--Harriet Christian. Now she felt
that she could not give the second. Apart from any objection Townley
might have, it would hurt her too much to use it. Besides, Christian now
meant only one girl--the girl whom at the beginning she had loved too
much and at the end too little . . . the name would always rebuke her
and scare her with the thought of feelings hidden away. . . . She could
not possibly call the baby that.

She chose Margaret instead. Townley had suggested Martha, but had no
real affection for it and agreed that it was not pretty. Margaret was a
name quite outside the family, something new and yet with a definite
tradition behind it; they were not importing any frivolous new name to
match the Glorias, Normas, Polas, and Ramonas, of the district. Besides,
it allowed so many attractive abbreviations, such as Peg or Madge or
Daisy. . . . Rose herself favoured Madge and whispered "little Madge"
once or twice to the child.

She was pleased with herself for having gone her full term, for not
having let her fears and miseries upset her health and give her daughter
the bad start of a premature birth. Nor did she herself expect to be any
the worse for having damped them down; she knew nothing of suppressions,
but she knew that if you did not control these things they sometimes
picked you up in pincers. Now she was happier than she had been for
years, lying at ease with this new being whom she really and truly
loved, as in all her life she had never loved anyone but her mother.

She had loved the child, in a way, before it was born, but such a love
had been cloudy and cold compared with the warm and solid feeling that
now seemed to wrap them both together like a blanket. Sometimes she
would find herself trembling, at the sight of anything so small, so
sweet, and so entirely hers as this baby. The warmth and lightness of
the little bundle that it made, the tiny sleeping noises that came from
it, and the smell that reminded her somehow of fresh, baking loaves
. . . all filled her with a happiness so piercingly tender as to be
almost sorrow.

In sorrow thou shalt bring forth, but she, having conceived in sorrow,
had brought forth in joy. And not only her body but her mind had been
delivered. Her mind carried that weight of sorrow and self-reproach no
longer. Now, at last, she was looking forward, with her burden dropped
behind. Just as she had tried by her devotion to her husband to make up
for her neglect of her father, so she would now more fruitfully atone
for both her tolerance and her intolerance of Christian, by her loving
care for this child. The connection was not very clear, but it satisfied
her. The little girl should grow up all that Christian was not, all that
she herself had failed to be. Perhaps one day she would marry
Christian's boy . . . in that way, she felt, the double dishonour of
Bladbean and Harlakenden would be wiped out.

So Rose dreamed on, sometimes knowing even herself that her dreams were
foolish, but enjoying them because it was so beautiful to move her mind
above, to be no longer weighed down by the hidden fears it carried.
Moving her light, delivered mind was as delightful as moving her body
would be in a week or two, when she would run up and down stairs, and
jump in and out of the car and go down to Monday Boys twice a day, just
to show herself how light and free she was.

She had another source of happiness, and that was her better relations
with Townley. They were husband and wife again, or rather father and
mother. He was delighted with the baby, and only a little disappointed
that it was a girl. He had suffered a great deal at the time of its
birth--more, probably, than Rose, though she had not had altogether an
easy time of it. Labour had gone on for two days, and though Dr.
Brownsmith had never been really anxious, he had been crafty and cruel
enough not to be too reassuring with Townley. Let him imagine what it
would be like to lose his wife--and he would not imagine it unless he
thought her dying--and he would value her more and perhaps treat her
better. So Dr. Brownsmith reasoned in his heart, and looked grim, and
said very little--till he was upstairs again chatting with Rose and the
nurse. Townley meanwhile mourned distractedly through the barns,
confiding his anxieties to the men, who told him dreadful stories of
catastrophic births, and finally ended as a statue of misery under
Rose's window, which the nurse opened suddenly and announced--"A dear
little girl, Mr. Deeprose."

"What! Already?"

"Well, and about time, too."

"But I never heard anything--she never made a sound."

"She's plucky--that's all," said the nurse, and shut the window.

Rose, awaking from what seemed a long sleep, saw Townley's eyes quite
close to hers, with tears in them which seemed to make them blacker and
larger.

"Hullo, boy!" she murmured, faintly.

"Hullo, sweetheart! I've brought you these. They're all I could find in
the garden."

And he held under her nose a small yellow bunch of chrysanthemums.



                              _Chapter Two_

It was lucky for Townley that the scandal which for a time had blackened
his name should have been ancient history by the end of the year. If it
had broken out in the spring, it would not have had time to die down
before the Hollinsheds were due, and they might have thought Bladbean an
undesirable holiday-place for themselves and their children. Even as
things were he had been very miserable for a while, fearing that they
would hear of it from local correspondents. The good opinion of the
Hollinsheds meant more to him than that of any of his neighbours, and
though by the following June he had ceased to expect cold looks from
Mrs. Singleton or Mrs. Cleaver or to notice a certain derision in the
smiles of acquaintance as far distant as the Swaffers of the White Hart,
he felt his nervousness grow as the time drew nearer when a letter
should come announcing either the date of his visitors' arrival or their
decision not to come at all.

Rose was sorry for him. Her love for him might not be deep enough to
drown her sense of justice or her even more unsubmergible sense of the
ridiculous, but she thought that he had already been punished enough by
public opinion. She was relieved when the letter came as usual,
announcing their arrival for the first week in July. Either the scandal
of two Kentish parishes had not travelled so far as London, or Mr. and
Mrs. Hollinshed thought that in their own best interests it should be
ignored.

These particular Hollinsheds were a younger son's family, and Lord
Haverford's death had meant no more to them than a small increase of
income. But Townley would not have thought any more of them had they
returned as Lord and Lady Haverford. It sufficed that they were the
Bladbean Hollinsheds; for his devotion was quite without snobbery, and
did not even make free with the Honourable on their visiting cards. It
was a family tradition, a part of his inheritance, and would have been
theirs even in the workhouse.

Rose had not realized till then how really innocent it was. The fuss he
made about their coming had always annoyed her--partly because it had
meant so much interference with her daily life and her stricter
confinement to Bladbean, partly because she had always been prejudiced
by the views of Harlakenden. Her father still looked upon the
Hollinsheds' visit as a degradation and Townley's position as one of
ignominy. But now she suddenly saw him no longer as a fawning servant,
but as a proud son--his attitude towards the Hollinsheds was almost
filial . . . they were his fathers; and all his study to honour them was
also a study to honour his own name.

She first knew the depths of her understanding when she saw how much he
was looking forward to showing them the child. If she had imagined this
a year ago she would have seen herself resenting it; but now, instead,
she shared it. She herself was looking forward to showing them little
Madge, and she could, in the light of her sympathy, forgive the fact
that a great deal of his interest was new. Townley was no more
interested than most men in a six-months-old baby. Doubtless later on he
would proclaim his views on her upbringing, but up till now he had left
her entirely to Rose, giving her rather an amused, superior glance now
and then. He was pleased to hear of her health and progress, but he
never offered to take charge of her or nurse her, and grumbled
characteristically when she cried at nights.

On the whole she was a good baby and did not cry much; in fact, Rose
would have been pleased to have her a little less lethargic and
indifferent to the world in general. She often lay in her cradle with
her eyes wide open, staring upward in a sort of dream. At first Rose
thought she was gazing rapturously at a woollen parrot hung with bells
that she had bought for her in Maidstone, but even when she took it away
the ecstatic stare remained. On occasion she could roar lustily,
especially when kept waiting for her meals.

Rose had been unable to feed her herself after the first three months.
She was annoyed at this failure, though the child did not seem to mind
the change and throve on the patent food that Dr. Brownsmith
recommended. This food took a certain time to prepare, and Rose had
begun to wonder how much bigger an undertaking she would find the
Hollinsheds this year when Townley unexpectedly offered her the help of
a daily woman. She was touched as well as surprised, even when she
remembered that he had doubtless done it as much in Mrs. Hollinshed's
interests as in her own.

The visitors arrived, and the proud parents displayed their offspring.
Rose felt almost feudal as she stood before Mrs. Hollinshed with the
baby in her arms and answered questions as to its health and diet;
though she had a good laugh about it in her room afterwards. Mrs.
Hollinshed was a sensible woman and knew a great deal about small
children, so Rose could not help wondering why she seemed unable to talk
to her as one woman to another even about a baby. No doubt she, too, was
following a family tradition, and perhaps it was just as well to have it
as strictly maintained on her side as on Townley's. But Rose sometimes
wished she had Christian with her to help her laugh at it; for it is not
always good to laugh alone.


That summer was the happiest she had spent since her marriage or indeed
since her mother's death. It was not only that the baby filled a corner
of her heart that had been empty and aching for many years, but she
had--no doubt because of this--a general sense of reconciliation with
life. She had forgiven herself for what she had done to Christian just
as she had forgiven Christian for what she had done to her; and she had
ceased to struggle under the weight of her marriage. Acceptance came no
longer with an effort of will and imagination, but as one of the normal
processes of life. Besides, she had so much less to accept with any
pretence of resignation. She now definitely enjoyed much that had
hitherto harassed and bored her. Formerly she had, even during the
Hollinsheds' visits, been forced to make quite a business of filling up
her time--she had spent hours trying to read, she had copied patterns of
clothes she did not want, she had dug and planted in the garden just to
make herself forget that she wanted to be out on the farm or going with
Townley to market or in fact doing anything of importance outside the
house.

Now she felt important enough indoors, and she had plenty to do, even
when the Hollinsheds were not there. The baby's meals and the baby's
clothes, the baby's baths and the baby's airings in the perambulator
seemed to fill her day. She did everything herself--she would not have
dreamed of having a nurse-girl even if Townley had offered her one--and
little Madge had not been born more than a couple of months before Rose
felt a unity with her as close and complete as when she had carried her
in her womb.

For the first time in her life she had a being wholly dependent on
her--not just occasionally and incompletely dependent as Christian had
been, but fully and absolutely. It gave her a sense of power which
sometimes she herself knew to be dangerous . . . when Madge was no
longer a baby she must not keep her dependent, she must let her grow
into a girl and into a woman without any selfish attempts to drag her
back into her cradle. But it also gave her a comfort which she knew was
safe and right.

Ever since her mother's death she had suffered from the feeling of a
little girl lost. Sometimes it had been more acute than others, but it
had always been there, at the bottom of her heart, making her feel
strangely young and defenceless, giving her a desperate ache of
loneliness that nothing--not even Townley warm and strong and heavy in
her arms--had been able to soothe away. Now that ache was gone; not
because she loved her mother any less, but because she had as it were
herself stepped into her empty place. She was her mother, and little
Madge was Rose. There they were, mother and daughter, together as she
and her mother had been . . . she remembered how in Boorman's teashop
she had noticed herself and her mother repeated in a mirror-sequence
that apparently went round the world. . . . There they were, herself and
her mother, sitting together again . . . herself and Madge . . . Madge
and some other daughter--and so on and so on--and on and on--forever and
ever . . . O Lord! what funny thoughts you make me think, you funny fat
baby. Kiss mother--there's a duck.

As she pushed Madge in her perambulator along the lanes, Rose's mind
would become stormy with imagination. Her feet would move mechanically
and her hands guide the pram, scarcely knowing where she went. She would
come to herself on the top of Forstal hill with Madge married to a
millionaire prince and receiving herself and Townley at the top of a
hundred marble steps edged with palm trees, or she would find herself
outside the shop at Monday Boys with Madge a film star, smiling on the
screen of the Ashford picture palace to an audience of Hollinsheds,
Swaffers, Singletons, Kings, and Cleavers, all clapping and marveiling
and gathering round her afterwards to hear about the trip to Hollywood
that she and Townley had just come back from. . . .

She was half ashamed of these fancies and would start guiltily if anyone
spoke to her. She never gave a hint of them to Townley--he would have
laughed at her. He saw Madge only as a baby, probably the first of
several. . . . He absolutely failed to realize her marvellous,
glamorous, and unique position. Rose did not mind; she was richly
content to plan for her daughter in secret, thankful that at last she
had a love that did not come into conflict with any other.

Her love of little Madge never conflicted with her love of Townley, as
her love of Christian had done. He was pleased to see her so devoted. It
was right in his eyes that a woman should always be feeding, nursing,
watching, wheeling, or carrying her child; he did not even worry in case
the Hollinsheds were neglected. For the first time since her marriage
Rose was behaving like a proper woman, and, far from objecting to her
devotion, he more than once expressed his pleasure at seeing her so
suitably occupied.

"You're not always wanting to go out the way you used to."

"But I go out quite a lot--I walked as far as Scrag Oak this afternoon."

"Pushing the pram. I mean, you aren't always wanting to go out in the
car. Last summer you were always dashing over to Harlakenden."

"Well, I--I had to."

"Yes, I know. You had in a way. But I didn't like it. That's why I
suggested that Christian should come over here."

Rose thought: How nicely he's thought this out for himself. She smiled
at him.

"Are you glad to have me at home?"

"I've just said so."

"Well, kiss me, then."

He did so, his surprise passing into delight as her mouth laughed under
his.


It was comforting to have her heart like this, quite untorn. Her love of
Christian had always been tearing her away from some other love--from
Townley or her father. But now she could love her father, too, again.
She did not go often to Harlakenden, but she persuaded him more than
once to come to Bladbean. At the baby's birth she had been able to work
a reconciliation between him and Townley. It had been difficult, but in
the end his wish to see his grandchild had prevailed over his
indignation against his son-in-law, though he generally timed his visits
for an hour when he knew he would be out.

Rose he had forgiven long ago; in fact, he did not seem to bear
resentment against any of the three who had treated him so badly.

Once he said:

"I'm sorry you haven't called her Christian."

She was surprised.

"I never thought you'd like it--any more than I should."

"I should have liked it--I'd like her name to go on. But I quite see it
wouldn't do. . . . We might have called the boy Christian, if we'd
thought of it. It's not a bad name for a boy."

"Well, if I ever have a boy we can think again. . . . But no--Townley
would object."

"I guess he would; and it wouldn't be right for him to use it. It's a
name that doesn't belong to him."

"Or to me."

"Yes, it belongs to you. Oh, forget that day when the worm turned and
remember the years you were friends. She was happier with you than she
ever was with me."

"Sometimes I wonder you can bear to think of her at all."

She spoke gruffly, for she disliked a sentimental attitude towards
Christian that she saw growing up in his mind. He seemed to forget how
miserable she had made him and how much he had hated her. Probably he
still remembered when he was drunk; for a curious thing about him was
that he often seemed clearer in his judgments when he had been drinking.
But nowadays he did not drink so much--partly because of Aunt Hannah's
vigilance and partly because of his release from the very torments he
was now sentimentalizing. Rose did not want to discuss Christian with
him, drunk or sober.

"How's Ronnie?" she asked, turning the conversation in a direction which
she knew he was always eager to follow.

"Ronnie? Oh, splendid! He has two front teeth now. And talk! you should
hear him talk. Why, yesterday he said to me--'Ronnie want see cows.' Not
bad for fifteen months, eh?"

"Remarkably good."

"I suppose Madge doesn't say anything yet."

"Oh no--she's much too young."

"Ronnie could say Dada at eight months."

"He's a very forward child. Madge isn't at all--in fact, she's rather
backward. But I think that's just as well. I'm always afraid of a child
being too bright."

"Oh, Ronnie isn't that. Hannah says he's just above the average for his
age; and such a sturdy, healthy little fellow."

"Madge is healthy, too. She hardly ever cries."

Rose did not like these comparisons between Madge and Ronnie. They were
not fair comparisons, for the children were six months apart, but she
had a feeling that at Ronnie's age Madge would not equal his
achievements. She was an exceedingly quiet child, who did not, at nine
months, show much interest in her surroundings. Sometimes she made
noises which Rose thought were attempts at words, but they were never in
the least degree recognizable. Of course everyone said that it was most
unusual for a child to talk before the end of the first year; but
meanwhile it was annoying to find Ronnie so advanced and then to be told
that he was only just above the average. For this reason she was glad to
have the Hollinsheds as an excuse for not going over to Harlakenden.


October came and the excuse was no longer there. She must go over and
see her father occasionally, for he expected it; but she would not go
often, because Townley disliked it, and she did not think that long car
drives were good for the baby, whom she was obliged to take with her, as
she had no one to leave her with at home.

Apart from this secret jealousy, which she was ashamed of, Rose found
Harlakenden a more comfortable place to visit than it had been a year,
or two years, ago. Aunt Hannah had made a remarkable difference. Not
only had she managed to keep her brother-in-law more sober, but she had
taken from the house that air of raffish neglect it had worn for so
long. Without removing any single one of Christian's additions, she had
somehow contrived to make it look more or less as it did before she came
into it. Her sofa in the drawing-room had been set against the wall and
covered with hard cushions, with the result that it appeared as little
voluptuous as the rest of the drawing-room suite. Her bathroom looked
like a housemaid's cupboard, with an ironing-board laid over the bath,
for which there was seldom enough water; while her bedroom adornments
had already been dispersed about the house, as she herself migrated from
room to room before finally leaving it. What used to be her bed curtains
now hung across the entrance-passage to keep off the draughts, and the
wooden tester from which they had once festooned now jutted nakedly
above her father's bed with nothing heavier dependent from it than a
fly-paper, which he said he found a very great improvement.

For the rest, the house was utterly clean and dustless, smelling of
furniture polish and linoleum wax. Aunt Hannah did the work and looked
after Ronnie with the help of a daily girl; she had also reduced the
housekeeping bills by more than half. None of Christian's money had come
to her husband, being held under a trust that at her death passed it on
to other members of her mother's family, but Wally Deeprose had no cause
to feel himself any poorer.

The farm, too, seemed more prosperous than it used to be. Barnes had
guided it through those periods when the master's hand had fallen from
the helm, and though it was not the place Rose had once hoped to see it,
at least it was in fair order and paying its way. The boy Swift had
grown into a moderately useful lout, and Barnes himself, though slow,
was so reliable and so knowledgeable, that his master had at last
stopped calling him Silly Sussex.

But the most encouraging aspect of the whole thing, in Rose's opinion,
was her father's renewed interest in it. He no longer worked as little
as he could, just because he had to, or even as much as he could, for
his health's sake. He seemed genuinely keen on progress and
improvements. He took Rose out to Owls' Entry and showed her how the
Angry Wood had been cut and the hedge laid along. He and Barnes and
Swift had laid along the hedges and cleared the ditches of the Angry,
the Tory, and Venus fields, while nearer the house the cow-lodge had
been modernized and almost rebuilt.

"I'm going it for the boy," he said. "I want him, when he grows up, to
find a nice place waiting for him. I don't want him to go off and leave
me here, but to stay here with me. So I've got to give him something
worth staying for. Barnes is as slow as judgment, but we'll most likely
have been round all the hedges by the time Ronnie's twenty-one."

Rose admired the trimness of the pleached poles, so different from the
tufted, brambled, bunched thickets she remembered, just as the
well-cared-for sheep were an improvement on those poor fly-ridden
animals of years ago. . . . Certainly these days were better than those.
She thought that her father himself looked better, though he also looked
older. He had lost some of the boiled, florid look he used to wear; his
colour had died into soft brownish tones--the tan of his skin fading
into greyish hair and whiskers, so that his face had an autumnal
softness about it. . . . He was still talking of his son.

"I don't think he'll leave me; I think he's going to be keen on the
land. Why, would you believe it, he's already been trying to dig in the
drain with his little spade? Barnes and Swift were roaring fit to bust
themselves the other day, watching him stagger about with it and try to
imitate them. Of course Hannah didn't like him getting his clothes in a
mess, but I don't want her to stop him playing with dirt, for it's what
I hope he'll get his living by."

Rose could not help being fond of her little half-brother, though it
seemed to her that both his father and his aunt were tactless in singing
his praises. He was a pretty child, with masses of light gold hair and
large brown eyes--some day he would look very like Christian. In
character he did not seem to resemble her at all, being of a quiet,
stolid disposition. Though intelligent, he was not temperamental. All
this was very good; for though he could not do better than favour his
mother's looks, he could scarcely do worse than inherit her disposition.
In fact, Rose thought, rather sadly, it would be a pity if he took after
either of his parents. Perhaps he was a throw-back to other, earlier
Deeproses, and would grow up like them--sturdy yeomen and tillers of the
soil, men not unlike Townley, self-reliant, loyal, independent, stupid,
male; men who are nearly always happy, even if not always loved.



                            _Chapter Three_

The year dipped through winter and rose into the spring and soon once
more Townley was looking out for the Hollinsheds' letter. It came, and
the summer repeated itself with but little alteration from last year's
rhythm.

Rose felt that there should have been more, that she should have seen
more, change; Madge should have varied the scene for her with her first
attempts at walking and talking. But Madge, though nearly two years old,
was very little altered except in size from the baby of nine months or
even of three. She was well grown and quite pretty with her curly brown
hair and big blue eyes--that was a great comfort; there could be no
uneasy comparisons with Ronnie's fair good looks. But, alas; in every
other respect Ronnie could crow over poor little Madge.

He trotted everywhere after his father, chattering away in a language
which was quite intelligible to Wally, though obscure to everyone else.
With his cropped head and his tiny jersey and knickers he no longer
looked a baby--he was a little boy. Sometimes Wally brought him over to
Bladbean; he was so proud of him that he wanted to show him to as many
people as possible, and was quite unaware that he upset Rose and
Townley.

For Townley had now come to share his wife's jealousy. He, too, knew
that Ronnie was a forward and Madge a backward child. Rose had Mrs.
Hollinshed to thank for this. Up till this year's visit he had taken for
granted that all babies were dull, that their only activities were
feeding and squawling and that only women could be expected to take any
interest in them. He was surprised to hear from Mrs. Hollinshed that
there were quite a number of things that Madge ought to have done during
her second year of life which she had so far failed to do. At first he
was inclined to blame Rose for her deficiencies; she should have taught
her to say a few words, not just mumbled baby talk to her. He himself
would instruct. . . .

But Madge remained obstinately dumb even when for several days in
succession he held her up and said Da-da to her slowly and patiently
about twenty times. She stared at him solemnly and blew bubbles, which
he thought a dirty habit. After he had put her down she would break into
a torrent of sound, but none of it had any relation to human speech, not
even that distant kinship of a child's first efforts--it was a kind of
roar, without consonants or inflections, a cheerful animal noise.

"Do you think she's dumb?" he once asked Rose.

"Oh no. Of course not. Her tongue's quite free."

"Yes, but for other reasons. Perhaps she's deaf. Children can be born
deaf and dumb."

"She's certainly not deaf. She simply loves it when I sing to her, and
she often looks round when she hears me come into the room."

Townley, who was standing behind the cot, clapped his hands loudly.
Madge took no notice.

"There, you see! She didn't hear that."

Rose clapped hers gently and the baby looked round.

"It's plain that she hears quite well."

"Then why didn't she take any notice of me?"

"I suppose it's because she knows me better. She'll notice you more when
she's older."

"But don't babies notice everyone?"

"No, not when they're very small."

"But she's nearly two."

Rose flushed uncomfortably.

"She's backward."

"Oh, you agree that she's backward?"

"Yes, of course I do. She ought to be walking now and beginning to talk.
But she's not at all unusual. Mrs. Hollinshed was telling me about the
child of a cousin of hers who didn't talk till she was four."

"And was she all right?"

"All right! Why, yes, of course. Perfectly."

Her eyes challenged him as if to say "Are you wanting to make out that
there's something wrong with Madge?"

Of course there was nothing wrong--how could there be? She was healthy
and she was pretty and she was good. She was only a little backward;
that was all. Lots of children were backward and all the better for it
in the end. Dr. Brownsmith had attended a little boy who did not walk
till he was three and then grew up to be an Oxford cricket blue, and
Mrs. Swaffer had a niece who had just won a London University
scholarship but had never uttered a word till she was four and a half;
and Mrs. King and Mrs. Cleaver and Mrs. Singleton all knew of similar
cases. For the last six months she had done nothing but hear such tales
. . . everyone seemed anxious to reassure her--to reassure her about
what? There was nothing, no need for reassurance. If Madge was--let her
face the word--an idiot, there would be something in her face to show
it. Rose remembered the idiot boy who used to live in Shadoxhurst, with
his heavy, ugly, lifeless features, so different from Madge's little
waxflower of a face that wore smiles and tears like other children's. It
was true that she sometimes seemed not to notice things, but then on the
other hand she sometimes did--she had screamed with terror when Lucy,
the cat, jumped on her pram one afternoon while she was sleeping in the
garden, and she had roared with delight when Rose brought her back a
coloured woolly ball from Maidstone--roared and roared so that Ivy had
come running upstairs to know what on earth was the matter. . . .

Oh no, there was nothing to worry about; she had only to be patient and
to endure as well as she could the visits of that over-bright Ronnie,
who rushed about and chattered much too fast. She only hoped her father
would be careful and not force him on--it was bad for a child to be so
forward.

The great, enduring comfort of it all was that Madge loved her. Though
she took very little notice of Townley or of anyone else, she adored her
mother and could not bear to be parted from her. She would cry if Rose
went out of the room, even though she was unable to call, "Mum! Mum!"
like most children of her age; and when her mother took her in her arms
she snuggled against her so confidingly that Rose would feel tears of
love come into her eyes.

Sometimes she was sorry that Madge would not notice Townley. He seemed
upset about it, and took a great deal of trouble to attract her
attention. But if ever he picked her up she would twist round her little
body from him and stretch out her hands to Rose, calling her with a
plaintive wordless cry like a bird's.

Rose would rush up and take her from him, and he would push her into her
arms, saying, "There, go to your mammy, you dumb little brat."

It was a great misfortune; and for that reason she was glad when she
found out that she was going to have another child. She hoped it would
be a boy this time--a little sturdy boy, who would run after Townley and
chatter all day as a preliminary to growing up into a strong, silent
man. She herself was perfectly satisfied with Madge, who would of
course, in the end, turn out the more brilliant of the two--win
scholarships and go to a university, and perhaps write a book or act in
a play before she made a splendid marriage. But since Townley wanted a
boy, a boy who would be smarter than Ronnie Deeprose, he had better have
one, and she was glad to know that there was a chance of him.

Alas! that chance was short-lived. In her fourth month Rose miscarried.
She was very ill and had to go into Maidstone Hospital for an operation.
When she came out she knew that Townley could never have his son.

She felt the blow more for him than for herself. It was dreadful that he
should have to go without his little sturdy boy. Of course in time Madge
would come to love him--she would teach her how to become her father's
darling. But until she realized this new dream for her daughter, it was
sad for him to have no one but a baby who scarcely noticed him and would
not let him play with her. And there was something in the situation
still more sinister--ever since Rose's illness, Townley seemed to have
taken a definite dislike to Madge.

He had convinced himself that it was her fault her mother had done so
badly. Nothing that Rose or the doctor could say would make him think
otherwise. She had borne her first child quite successfully; why should
she fail with the second? The answer must be, of course, that she had
not taken proper care of herself the second time. Little Madge had made
too many demands on her, and no doubt Rose had injured herself lifting
her about. She was still unable to walk, but she could crawl with
startling rapidity, rushing about on her hands and feet like a funny
little animal. It was impossible to leave her alone--she was not to be
trusted for a moment. Once she had nearly pulled a kettle of boiling
water down on herself, and another time she had only just been stopped
picking a red-hot coal out of the grate. Rose did not like even leaving
her with Ivy, and as a result had kept her almost always with her,
carrying her about from room to room, playing with her, allowing her to
interrupt hours that should have been hours of rest.

There had been that perambulator, too, and those long walks about the
country. Townley was too much of a countryman to expect a pregnant woman
to be continually lying on a sofa, but now he discovered that he had
always secretly disapproved of those walks.

"Stands to reason if you tire yourself out things will go wrong."

"But Dr. Brownsmith told me it was quite all right. He says he even lets
women go on playing tennis if they're used to it--one shouldn't consider
oneself an invalid."

"No, but there's a happy medium. I didn't expect you to be always lying
down, but your housework would have given you all the exercise you
wanted."

"I don't think it would. I'm a very active woman."

"Yes, you are--a long sight too active. Why should you push that heavy
child about? She ought to be walking at her age."

"My dear, she's only two."

"Two and a half. Most children are running everywhere at that age."

"Yes, but they still require prams for long distances."

"There's no need whatever for her to go long distances."

Rose knew that this was true, but she had enjoyed those long walks with
the pram so much that Dr. Brownsmith had encouraged her to take them,
and she had seen no reason for giving them up. It had been lovely to
walk in the little by-lanes that spread a net below the car-swarming
Maidstone road, to push that dear little face in front of her between
hedges raggedly topped with winter. She had talked to Madge, knowing
that no one could overhear her and feeling that the baby understood her,
though she made only formless sounds in reply. "Mother's girl . . .
Mother's queen" . . . again and again her dreams built a happy new world
for her daughter.

She was quite convinced that those walks had not done her any harm; but
as Townley thought so she was sorry she had taken them. She would not
take any more, though to abstain now was only, as Townley said, to shut
the stable door after the horse was stolen. Still, we may think less of
the vanished horse if we cannot see through the open door his hanging
bridle and empty stall, and Rose wanted Townley to think less of the boy
he had convinced himself he had lost because of Madge. She must not grow
up with her father's mind set against her, so her mother must be careful
to do nothing to remind him of his loss. After all, now that the warm
summer days were coming, Madge could quite well and safely play in the
garden.

There was a little cropped space among the flowers and vegetables
outside the drawing-room window. Bladbean was too busy to indulge in an
orthodox garden of lawns and flower-beds, and did not possess a lawn
mower; but once or twice in the season one of the farm men would scythe
this patch of ground, and here little Madge might safely play--if her
rather strange activities could be described as playing--rolling and
crawling about on the grass with its matting of white clovers, reassured
by her mother's presence at the drawing-room window or in a chair beside
her, and mercifully far too much afraid of the rustling world behind the
beanstalks ever to go outside her enclosure.

Sometimes Rose would take her on her knee and make desperate efforts to
teach her the names of things. If only she could teach her to talk,
Townley might be reconciled. She would hold up a rose and say "flower"
and Madge would sometimes look at it and sometimes not; her custom
varied except in the one respect of her silence. Rose would point to
herself and say "Mum," and Madge would hurl herself upon her, hugging
her speechlessly; but if ever the word was said without the gesture she
took no notice. Except for the obvious fact that she was afraid of
certain sounds and pleased with others, one really might think her deaf
and dumb. That she was not--that there was no physical barrier between
her and speech--was one day startlingly confirmed.

It was a sultry afternoon, and a storm was blowing up towards Bladbean.
Great fannings of warm air came from the south-west; in the fields the
cows lay down, while the sheep moved restlessly down the wind's path; in
the yard the cocks were crowing. Rose sat in her rocking-chair, mending
a basketful of Townley's socks, while Madge crawled at her feet, rolling
a large rag doll over and over like a rolling-pin. A cock crowed just
beyond the fence, and she looked up.

"What's that, darling?" asked Rose--"what d'you think that is?"

Madge continued to stare, and after a time the cock crowed again.

"That's a cock," said Rose, "and he says cock-a-doodle-do."

The cock obligingly repeated--"Cock-a-doodle-do."

"There," said Rose--"hark to him--cock-a-doodle-do."

"Cock-a-doodle-do," said Madge. But she did not say it as Rose had said
it--she said it like the cock.

From her throat came a tiny but perfect imitation of the cock's crow. It
was like a bantam crowing, or like the voice of another cock answering
from a distant farm. Rose was astonished. She would have been more
pleased if Madge had imitated her instead of the cock, but she was
delighted to have her make even such a strange response to the world
outside her, and told Townley of the exploit that evening with some
pride.

"Do you think she's beginning to talk?" he asked.

"Well, I don't know--I hope so. It was queer her imitating the cock like
that, when she takes no notice at all of anything I say . . . and it was
such a good imitation, too."

"She can't be deaf, anyhow."

"Oh no. I never thought she was; and I expect in time she'll come to
imitate words. At present she finds sounds are easier."

"Do you think she'll know any words before the Hollinsheds come?"

"Well, I shouldn't hope too much. They'll be here in a fortnight."

"But she's made some sort of a start."

"Yes, she has. . . . I hope she'll go on."

Rose felt sorry for him; he was so anxious that his beloved Hollinsheds
should not think meanly of his child. They had not thought well last
year, when they had found her so backward, and this year they would find
her more backward still, unless she made truly startling progress in the
next fortnight. Rose hoped that she would, for the Hollinsheds'
disappointment was bound to react on her sooner or later. If, on the
other hand, they were pleased with Madge, Townley too might become
pleased with her and forgive her for the imaginary ill she had done him.

All the next day she watched her daughter anxiously, tempting her with
words, and winning nothing in response but that funny little crow. Madge
was evidently pleased with her own exploit, and though she would not
repeat it on demand, she did it of her own free will so often that
Townley heard her and was impressed by the faithfulness of the
reproduction. Two days later she gave such a realistic imitation of the
cat that Ivy thought it was in the room. But nothing would make her
utter a word, though her father and mother and Ivy all tried to teach
her; and when the Hollinsheds arrived she was to all human intents still
dumb.

Otherwise she had added to the range of her accomplishments. The night
before the visitors came Rose had been unpacking some curtains just back
from the cleaner's. After she had taken them out of their box and had
begun to hang them up she could still hear a rustle of tissue-paper. She
put this down to the breeze from the open window, till later in the
evening, when all the wrappings had been picked up and cleared away she
heard a soft persistent rustle of tissue-paper coming from Madge's cot.


In spite of these portents and anxieties the Hollinsheds' visit was not
so harassing as she had feared. Indeed, in one or two respects it
brought unexpected comfort. Mrs. Hollinshed was a sensible woman, and
saw no reason for upsetting the young husband and wife because their
child was backward. After all, she was not yet three years old, and
children have been known to delay walking and talking for longer than
that. If there has been no other disquieting symptoms--no strange air of
torpor, no inability for normal play--she would have thought nothing of
it. As things were, she thought it best to say as little as possible.

"If in a year's time you find she doesn't improve I should take her to a
doctor--one who specializes in children, I mean. I can give you the
address of a very good one."

"Dr. Brownsmith has seen her quite often."

"And what does he think of her?"

"I--I don't think he thinks there's anything wrong. Of course she's
backward, but then some children are."

"Of course they are. Children vary tremendously, and it makes very
little difference to their ultimate futures. But if you aren't satisfied
I really should consult a specialist--she may need education."

"Sending to school!"

"Oh dear, no! But there are things that you can do at home to bring her
on. I know of a backward little boy who benefited enormously by quite a
simple home treatment."

"Did he get all right?"

"Quite all right."

Rose was comforted. Townley would believe all this from Mrs. Hollinshed,
as he would not have believed it from Dr. Brownsmith or anyone else. It
was only a question of patience--always a difficult virtue for males.
Her own reassurance made her more tender with him; she was able to bear
with his quicker revolt just as she had learned to wait for his slower
opinion. The best thing to do was to keep little Madge as much as
possible out of his way, so that he would not see her till she was
closer to his idea of what a normal child should be.

The summer passed pleasantly. The laughter of the young Hollinsheds rang
in the yard as they played among the barns and haystacks. Rose could not
suppress an unworthy satisfaction in their contempt of Ronnie Deeprose,
whom, for all his precocity, they looked on as a mere baby. His father
brought him over once or twice to see Christian's friends, but it did
not seem that his visits were encouraged by the Hollinsheds of either
generation. Though Mr. and Mrs. Hollinshed had remained friends with
Christian after her marriage, they evidently did not mean their
friendship to go farther than her death, or include those she had left
behind her, while Rosemary and Pamela had no use for anyone under six.
Rose found him one afternoon wandering in the yard with his brightly
coloured cup and ball, crying bitterly because the little girls had told
him it was a baby's toy.

"Never mind," she said, comfortingly, her heart touched by the sight of
the big tears rolling down his face. "Come along with me and we'll show
it to Madge."

"Madge won't take any notice--she never does."

"Oh, I expect she will. It's only sometimes when she's sleepy that she
doesn't care to look at things. I expect she'll love your cup and ball;
let's go to her now."

"No, I don't want to--she's stupid."

Rose did not feel sorry for him any more. But the next minute he added:
"She's only a baby," and she understood that he was transferring to her
the burden of contempt that the little girls had laid on him--"She's
only a baby--she's too young to play with a cup and ball."

"Well, let her see _you_ play with it."

This evidently appealed to him, and he went with Rose into the kitchen,
where, watched by Ivy, Madge was crawling about in her play-pen--the
Hollinsheds' occupation of the drawing-room making the garden no longer
possible as a nursery.

"Look, Madge," said Rose--"look what Ronnie can do."

But Madge took no notice. She merely rolled her doll to and fro and made
monotonous, crooning sounds.

"Isn't she stupid?" said Ronnie, who had caught the ball quite a number
of times, and would have liked some admiration.

"She's only a tiny little girl."

"Are all girls stupid?"

"No, of course not; and she isn't stupid. It's because she's a baby."

"Was I like that a long time ago when I was a baby?"

"I expect so."

"Oh . . ." He seemed surprised, then began to move away. As he did so
the sound of a cup and ball being played with came from Madge's pen. He
turned round sharply--"What's that?"

Rose laughed.

"It's only Madge imitating you. Isn't she clever?"

He looked at her for a moment, as rolling her head from side to side she
repeated the sound. Then suddenly he rushed up to Rose and hid his face
in her skirt.

"Oh no, no, no!--I don't like it . . . take me away . . . I'm
frightened."


Early in September a cousin of Mrs. Hollinshed's, a young man called
Lennox, came to Bladbean for a while. Rose had never seen him before and
he provided her with an entirely new experience, because he fell in love
with her.

This was new in a more complete sense than it could have been with many
married women of her age. She certainly knew love in its physical
approaches and consummations, and she was familiar with one man's
reactions to it on such a plane. But beyond this her experience was
doubly narrow; no other man, as far as she knew, had even thought of
her, and Townley's love was and had always been as simple, concrete, and
limited as her love for him. Certainly neither her courtship nor her
marriage had been in the least romantic; both were responses to a need
that was mainly practical and social. It was something quite new for her
to be romanticized or even idealized--so new that for some time she
failed to recognize it.

Young Lennox was only twenty-seven, but he already held an important
position in a firm of engineers, and had spent the last five years
bridge-building, first in Australia and then in South Africa. His
grown-up life had been lived mostly in out-of-the-way places, where
female society was limited even more in quality than in quantity, or
perhaps he would not have been so immediately attracted by Rose. She was
not beautiful; for though her colouring was deep and vivid, her features
were inclined to sharpness, and now that Christian was no longer there
to advise her in dress, she looked much older than her twenty-six years.
Possibly he saw in her a personification of the Kentish countryside,
which had seemed fairyland and heaven to him after his years of exile.
He had come by train to Maidstone, where he had hired a car for the rest
of the journey. Owing to some confusion of time-tables, everyone was out
when he arrived except Rose, who was wheeling little Madge in the farm
lane.

Out-of-doors, hatless, with the wind ruffling her rich, dark hair, and
wearing the shabby but well-made coat and skirt which had been
Christian's last choice for her, she had given him an impression that
was almost startlingly dispelled when twenty minutes later she brought
his tea into the drawing-room. Her hair was smooth then, parted
madonna-wise on her forehead, and she wore an apron. For a moment he
scarcely recognized her. Then he wondered if, after all, it had been a
servant that he had met in the lane.

"I--I say--are you Mrs. Deeprose?"

"Yes, I am. I've brought you some tea, because I don't know when Mrs.
Hollinshed will be in, and I expect you'll need it after your journey."

"It's awfully kind of you."

He would have liked to say more, but did not know how--she walked out of
the room so decidedly.

Later on he met her in the farmyard, and asked her to explain the
oast-houses to him. Mrs. Hollinshed had already done so, in that she had
dismissed them as "the places where they roast the hops," while the
little girls had confused him with much excited information. But Rose,
still with her push-cart and solemn child, was willing to take him
inside their dark towers and show him furnaces which had just been
lighted for Bladbean's first drying. No doubt that was why she became
associated in his mind with the sweet, heavy hop smell--he could have
sworn afterwards that she smelled of hops, that the smell of hops came
with her into a room. When they had seen the fires and the drying-floor
and old Watt of Harnicles, the drier and charcoal-burner, at work with
his shutter, she took him down into the hop-garden, where the picking
was over for the day. Here the hop clusters hung from the trellises like
bunches of grapes, and the scent they gave was slighter than the drying
hops in the oast. They did not really smell, she said, till you crushed
them or dried them.

They walked up and down together under the vines, pushing the little
cart. He wanted to push it for her over the bumpy ground, but she would
not let him do it, and once when he tried to take the handles the silent
child became suddenly noisy with cries of fear and protest. He asked her
numberless questions about hops and farming, which she answered
patiently.

"You must know a lot about it all," he said at last.

"I reckon I do. I was born and bred on a farm."

"Do you help run this one."

"Oh dear, no. I never do a thing outside the house. But when I lived
with my father I was practically in charge of the place--for a time at
least."

He thought she spoke wistfully.

"You sound as if you were sorry to give it up."

"Oh, I've things that I like better now."

She would not allow herself to complain before this sympathetic stranger
of Townley's law over her. Besides, what she said was true, now that she
had Madge, though it would not have been true if she'd said it five
years ago. She managed to turn the conversation and asked him questions
about Africa--what had he done out there? Did he like it? Was he going
back there again?

He had built a bridge, he told her, over a mile-wide river that came
rushing down from a range of blue mountains, where little men, no more
than so high, lived in caves decorated with mysterious carvings that had
come there, no one knew how. No, he had not liked being in Africa, and
he was not going back there--he was going east, to the same sort of job.
He did not expect to like that, either, but he was lucky to be on it.
For it was a good job, and in time he hoped he'd have made enough money
to come home and buy a little farm.

"A farm!" cried Rose. "Do you like farming?"

"Like it? I know nothing whatever about it, except what you've told me.
But at the present moment I feel there's nothing I want more in the
world than a farm in Kent."

"In Kent?"

"Certainly in Kent--somewhere in these parts. I've never seen anything
more beautiful than the fall of land to those woods."

Rose could not see what that had to do with farming.

"They say there's better farms in the shires."

"I don't care what there is in the shires. My farm shall be in Kent."

He talked on, raving as it seemed to her. But she liked his voice; it
was pleasant, with modulations that she did not usually hear in the
voices round her. She also liked the way he opened gates for her to pass
through, and helped her lift Madge's cart over the bumpy ground. When
they got back to the house Mrs. Hollinshed seemed surprised to see them
together.

But after that, for the rest of his visit, he was always meeting and
talking to her. He continued to ask her questions about the farm;
evidently he wanted to find out all he could about farming before he
went to India. He also asked her questions about the surrounding
district, and these, to his surprise, she was unable to answer. She did
not know why cross-roads were called throws or wents, except, of course,
that a lane was a went, so perhaps that had something to do with it
. . . she had no notion of the origins of such farms names as Staggers
Aven, Witsunden, Crooked Neals, Potkiln or Rats Castle. They were just
names--every place must have a name.

"Do you think a farmer once decided to call his house Staggers Aven just
as your parents once decided to call you Rose?"

"Maybe. When people build bungalows they always call them something."

"And you think the farms were like the bungalows to start with? But
_why_ call a place Staggers Aven?"

In the end he sought and found enlightenment from Mr. Hollinshed and the
Kentish volumes of the Place Name Society. But he went on meeting and
talking to Rose. Scarcely a day passed without their having a few words
together in the garden or the orchard or the farmyard. She would not
have noticed it so much if the Hollinsheds had ever done the same; but
the traditions of their visit has always limited conversation to those
interviews when Rose stood before Mrs. Hollinshed in her white
apron--interviews that were often very friendly, but which were
obviously no more than a part of the day's routine. Townley always went
out partridge-shooting with Mr. Hollinshed once or twice in September,
but that too was a part of the routine; he would have been horrified if
his visitor had suggested their dropping into the village inn together
at the end of the day. He did not approve of Mr. Lennox's friendliness.
Not because he, for a moment, doubted either his intentions or his
wife's rectitude, but because it was not a normal part of Hollinshed
behaviour.

"He seems to me a queer sort of chap--not quite all there, I should
say."

"He's perfectly all there," said Rose--"I'd call him sharper than many."

"He's not the thing, anyhow."

"What do you mean by not the thing?"

"I expect it's living in those wild parts. He doesn't know how to
behave."

"I've never noticed anything wrong with his behaviour"--though she
guessed what was coming.

"He takes liberties with you, for one thing."

"Liberties! how can you say so? He's never been anything but polite and
friendly."

"That's it. He's a sight too friendly."

Rose searched the darkness for his face, as this conversation was taking
place in bed. She could see only his profile, dark and keen, against the
glimmer of the moonlit blind. Since she could not read him, she must
question him.

"Townley, you're not jealous, are you?"

"Jealous? Good God, no! Why should I be? It's only that I don't like to
see a relation of Mrs. Hollinshed taking liberties like that."

"Perhaps she doesn't think conversation a liberty."

"I'm pretty sure she thinks what I do."

"Then hadn't you better ask her to speak to him about it?"--she could
not resist the temptation of a little mockery under cover of darkness.

"No, it isn't worth while. He'll be going soon--back to his black
servants, whom he can take what liberties he likes with."

She suddenly found herself growing angry.

"Well, if you think amusing conversation, and taking interest in a
person and being polite to them a liberty, all I can say is that I wish
more people would take them."

"I dare say you do. You've no sense of dignity. That's always been a
trouble to me, Rose, your not seeing eye to eye with me about the
Hollinsheds."

"You think your attitude more dignified than mine?"

"Well, isn't it? You're all for being level and friendly, but I don't
hold with taking liberties."

"Nor do I. Nor does anyone. That's not what we're quarrelling about.
We're quarrelling about whether Mr. Lennox's talking to me once or twice
a day in the garden or the farmyard is taking a liberty."

Her voice cracked on the last word, which suddenly seemed to her
meaningless and ridiculous.

"Rose, you're not upset? I didn't know we were quarrelling. We're not
quarrelling."

He turned towards her and took her in his arms. She began to cry, partly
with anger, partly with a queer sense of outrage and loss.


She knew then that she must watch herself, that she must be on
guard--not against falling in love with Mr. Lennox, for such a
possibility did not enter her consciousness, but against setting too
much store on the attentions he paid her. They must not become
indispensable, because she would soon--very soon--have to do without
them. He was leaving Bladbean at the end of the week and would not
return before he sailed for India. It would never do if she made a habit
of his conversation, his courtesy, his interest. . . . She avoided him
during the next few days, only to realize how very much she missed him.

Well, in that case it was a good thing he was going so soon, for he was
spoiling her. She was glad to have met him, to have talked to him so
often during these three weeks, and she would never forget him and would
always think kindly and gratefully of him; but it would have been
awkward if he was really home for good and looking round for that little
farm he talked about--she was glad that there was no chance of her
seeing him again for years. So she told herself.

The day before he left he upset the balance of her thoughts by asking if
he might write to her. He had come to her in the orchard where she was
sitting with Madge, and had flung himself down on the long grass at her
feet. Overhead the Kentish codlings hung in the boughs, a lemony green,
paler than the leaves that moved their shadows over the grass. The green
of the leaves was already slightly rusted, and the apples had put into
the thick, slow afternoon the very smell of autumn, to which the sad
falling song of the robin gave a voice.

"I hope you won't mind if I write to you."

"Oh no, of course not."

She had answered mechanically, almost without thinking. But she saw no
reason to regret her words. What's in a letter, anywa?

"Thank you so much. It'll be nice for me, when I'm away in the wilds, to
have some one to write to."

"But surely you've got other people besides me."

"Yes--but they're different."

She did not know what to say. She did not think she had better ask him
how they were different.

"I'm a very bad letter-writer," she said, hastily--"I'm not used to it."

"But you'll send me a line now and then, won't you?"

"I shouldn't know what to say."

"Oh, you can tell me how things are here--how Madge is getting on--if
the crops are good--what price your husband got for his bullocks at
Maidstone--if it's a cold winter--if it's an early spring--if you had
fine weather for harvest . . ."

"My Lord! what a lot of things!" They sounded safe enough.

"Well, I'll want to know about them all, for I'll often be thinking of
you here--picturing you as you are now, sitting so still . . ."

He squatted back on his heels as he spoke and looked up at her. His face
looked pale in the green shadow--pale and yet somehow lit up and alive.
It was not handsome, like Townley's, and there was a formlessness about
it--irregular features and vague, narrow eyes . . . but she liked his
mouth with the well-shaped upper lip, his smoothly shaved chin--by this
time of day Townley was getting quite dark around the jaw. . . . She
must not look at him like this; but it was for the last time . . . she
dragged her eyes away.

"You sit so still," he said.

"Do I? Then it's more than somebody else does. I must take her indoors."

She rose suddenly and went to where Madge was rolling in the grass.

"You're not going in now."

"Yes, I must. It's her tea-time."

He looked bitterly disappointed, and for a moment her heart failed her.
But she hardened herself.

"I really can't stay here any longer. I've a busy evening."

"But it may be the last time I'll see you alone."

She said nothing, for again she did not know what to say. She began to
settle Madge in the push-cart. He smiled sadly, but scrambled to his
feet and helped her; he also picked up her work-basket, which she was
forgetting.

"I'll carry it in for you."

"Oh, don't trouble. I can put it by her feet."

But she could not prevent him walking with her to the house, and when
they reached it he said:

"Remember, I'll write--and you've promised to write too."

She murmured something. He held out his hand.

"Good-by."

"But I'll be seeing you tomorrow."

"That won't count. This is good-bye."

"Good-bye, Mr. Lennox."

"Good-bye, Mrs. Deeprose."

Their hands touched awkwardly. She was so embarrassed and afraid of she
knew not what that she pulled hers away before he had properly taken
hold of it. They smiled at each other uncertainly and rather sadly; then
he turned and walked quickly away.


His first letter was written on the liner that carried him eastward.
Rose looked at the foreign stamp and the firm graceful writing that she
had never seen before, and guessed at once whom it was from. She felt a
queer reluctance to open it, a reluctance mixed with eagerness. For a
moment she hesitated, fingering the envelope. . . . She did not want to
go through any of that again--she was ashamed of it. Then she told
herself that a letter is safe enough.

She opened it and read--"Dear Kentish Rose."

She had never expected him to begin like that. That was not safe. That
was not the way to address Mrs. Townley Deeprose. He ought to know
better. If the rest of his letter was like this. . . . It went on----

"Now that there are no horizons, only sea and sky melting together in
haze, I feel that I am free to write to you as I would have spoken to
you if I had dared."

She felt her cheeks grow hot, and a kind of mist danced between her and
the page. He ought not to write like that, and she ought not to read it.

"I am going to put myself back with you in that orchard where you sat so
still" . . . she could hear him saying 'You sit so still' . . . "and
throw myself down again in the grass at your feet and look up at you.
When I shut my eyes I can see us both there. I can see the shadows of
the leaves moving over your face, over your body. The sun has dappled
you like a roe. . . ." How queerly he writes, she thought; but then he
sometimes talked queerly, too--"and above you in the apple tree I see
red apples that might have hung over Eve"--but they weren't red, they
were green--I was under the codlings. "If your name wasn't Rose it
should be Eve--Eve under the apple tree; but I don't think you have
picked the fruit yet--I don't think you ever will. For you're good, and
that is why I love you. You are good, not with the goodness of heaven,
but with the goodness of earth. You are sound and hard and sweet like a
Kentish apple"--if only he knew, Kent codlings are as tart as
vinegar!--"I expect you will be surprised to be told how happy you made
me for three weeks. After all, you were most of the time listening to me
while I talked and answering my stupid questions. But there was so much
more in it than that, more than you will ever understand, because, after
all, you do not really know me or what my life has been. I've met so
many people--but they're none of them like you. You are some one quite
new to me, and I don't know what to do about you. I feel I want to ride
out and slay a dragon for you; I should like to die for you except that
you make me more than ever want to be alive. I feel that there has been
and is still a lot of suffering in your life; but you accept it as the
apple tree accepts winter. I would like to give you sunshine, some of
the warmth that is beating on me now as I write. Oh, Rose, I cannot
think that our lives will always be separate. Yet here I am, throbbing
across the Bay of Biscay, while you--what are you doing? I expect it's
too cold now for you to sit in the orchard, so perhaps you're sitting by
the fire, or you've met the postman as you set out with Madge and are
now in the crooked lane by Delmonden, pushing the little cart with one
hand while you hold this letter in the other. I can see the tall banks
each side of you and the ash tree striding the corner--but of course
it's bare now and I can hardly imagine it. I've never seen your country
in winter. In fact, it's years since I've seen an English winter, and it
will be years before I see one again. For another three years at least
I'll have to bear the hot winds and the desert, before I can come back
and look for my Kentish farm. . . ." Rose dropped her hand with the
letter in it--three years! and she had thought he was planning for his
old age. Three years! Was it really possible that he might be back in
three years, with enough money to buy a farm? It would never do. He must
not come so soon.

She suddenly found herself unable to read the rest of the letter, merely
skimming through it till she came to the end. He was telling her about
the place he was going to, about the ship he was travelling on. But she
did not want to know. She must not listen to him, for he was too near to
her in time if not in space. Three years! It would never do if he came
back in three years and started looking for a farm near Bladbean. But he
would change his mind before then--he must change it; she would see that
he did. After all, he was very young--her twenty-five felt a whole heap
older than his twenty-seven. If he were not so young he would not have
written this letter. He said at the end----

"I hope you don't mind me writing like this--saying all the things I
didn't dare say to you when I was with you. You needn't say anything to
me, only tell me the things you do, so that I can think of you and see
you doing them. God bless you, my Kentish Rose,


                     Your humble lover and servant,
                                                            Geoffrey."


She raised the letter to her face and sniffed it--a faint smell of him
seemed to come from it in the Egyptian cigarettes he smoked. Yes, if she
shut her eyes. . . . She opened them, and tore the letter in pieces.



                             _Chapter Four_

During the next six months she saw at least six times that same firm yet
sensitive handwriting, with the foreign stamp in the corner of the
envelope. That was all she ever saw, for she always tore up the letter
unopened. She would not risk reading another. Not that for one moment
her loyalty to Townley ever wavered; her marriage was a part of her life
and she would no more think of changing it than she would think of
changing the weather. Like the weather, it was sometimes better and
sometimes worse--a mixture of rain and sunshine, heat and cold.
Sometimes she endured it, sometimes she enjoyed it, always she accepted
it; that brief period of rebellion, years ago at Primrose Hall, now
seemed to her a madness and a dream. She would not rebel again; she
could not, for she had Madge now. Till Madge came her marriage had
sometimes felt unreal, but now it was as real and substantial as her own
body, and made to last just so long as her body should last.

No, her temptation was not to any outward break or unfaithfulness, but
to the inward schism of regret. If she read any more of this strange
man's letters she might wish that she had not renounced that dream lover
who had looked down at her through the clouds at Fakenham . . . she
might think how different her life would have been if she had met him
six or seven years ago. But then he would have been only a boy with all
his way to make--he could not even have thought of her. What Might Have
Been was as foolish as it was barren. She had no reasons for regret. It
was only when she touched romance that she felt it tingling through her
body till it reached her heart as pain . . . then it was clear that she
must not touch it--it was not for her. What a mercy it was that she had
only letters to deal with and not a living, beseeching man.

Of course there was the man who had written the letters, but she did not
have to see or hear him and generally she could stop herself thinking of
him. Of course he would suffer when he heard nothing from her, but that
was his own fault. If he had written her plain, sensible letters
beginning "Dear Mrs. Deeprose" and ending "Yours sincerely, G. Lennox,"
she would have answered them or some of them. But she could not answer
letters like the one she had read--it would be doing wrong, just as he
had done wrong to write it. Besides, how could she, when he wrote so
queerly, when he said such strange things, almost like poetry? . . . But
he had said he didn't want her to write as he had written; he only
wanted her to tell him things that happened to her--just as she would if
he had written sensibly. She might have told him that she had won a
prize for table decoration at the Women's Institute, that Townley had
bought a new car, that Madge had actually walked three steps last
Tuesday. . . . Oh, how she would have liked to tell him these things!
. . . Then it was just as well that he had put it out of her power to do
so. She might have gone deep into danger before she knew what she was
doing. And Townley--he would have been bound to know of a regular
foreign correspondence, unless she stooped to be deceitful. He would
have brought the matter to an end even if she had not. He would have
thought Mr. Lennox's writing to her an unpardonable liberty.


It had cost her very much to tear up the first letter, very little to
tear up the last; by the time it arrived her life once more lay solid
and firm around her, so crowded with other cares that those he had given
her seemed unsubstantial--no more than ghosts.

Her heart was quite full of Madge, a little girl of nearly four, who
could not talk, who could not play like other children, who, though she
could walk at last, preferred running about on all fours like a little
pig. It was impossible any longer to believe that this was just an
ordinary case of backwardness. There was something wrong, which she
could not hide either from herself or from anyone else.

"Madge is stupid," said Ronnie--"she doesn't know how to feed the
chickens," and Rose no longer answered him that Madge was only a baby or
only a tiny girl.

The child would stand motionless among the hens, watching their bobbing
combs and occasionally imitating their clucks or the rattle of their
beaks on the farmyard stones, but she was either unwilling or unable to
put her hand into the basket and scatter the grain.

"Feed the pretty hens--give the hens their breakfast."

Rose coaxed her in vain, though she would do things for her mother that
she would do for no one else. She was not, however, a disobedient child,
and apparently understood the meaning of certain words even though she
never attempted to say them. One of the most noticeable things about her
was her happiness. She seemed completely happy, running to and fro in
the orchard or playing her queer games on the grasspatch in front of the
house. She took little or no interest in other children or in animals,
except to imitate the sounds they made. Her world contained only herself
and her mother; but in that world she seemed utterly content. Only
sometimes a dark storm of temper would seize her and shake her,
springing up from no outward source, or from a source so trivial as to
be meaningless. On these occasions Rose would be careful to hide her
away from Townley. He tolerated her only because on the whole she was
quiet and good. Her prettiness was still there, too--the blue eyes and
the brown curls and the golden rose complexion; but lately it had seemed
to Rose to lack something, to adorn a vacancy--as if it were not so much
the prettiness of a picture as the prettiness of a frame, where a
picture should be and is not.

She knew that something ought to be done about Madge, but she felt a
queer reluctance to act. Not only was she afraid of what the result
might be, but she knew that before she did anything she would have to
consult Townley and she dreaded to hear his true opinion of the child.
They avoided talking about her, though sometimes she felt he wanted to
do so; she turned off his remarks, just as she turned Madge's push-cart
into a by-lane when she saw people she knew coming along the highroad.
She could not bear now to discuss the child with anyone--the comforting
stories of backward prodigies no longer applied or carried conviction.
It was not only speech that failed Madge; it was something more.

She decided to wait for Mrs. Hollinshed's arrival and then ask her for
the name of the specialist she had talked about; but, fortunately, it
was not left to her own will to act--a course was in a measure forced on
her.

In May Madge developed a heavy, streaming cold. Rose was afraid of
measles, which had appeared in the district, and sent for Dr.
Brownsmith. He reassured her about the measles, but he was far from
reassuring on other matters. It was now more than a year since he had
seen the child--a year that should normally have been full of progress;
he saw none, but rather a settling down, a stabilizing of a condition he
had hoped would pass. He suggested that Rose should take her to London
for an expert opinion.

"Mrs. Hollinshed told me she would give me a specialist's address. I was
meaning to ask her when she came."

"I suggest your going to Dr. Leslie Pleasants. He's consulting physician
to two children's hospitals and an authority on child psychology."

"Oh . . ."

It all sounded very big and terrifying for such a little person as
Madge, but Rose knew that she must not let herself be scared out of a
painful duty.

"I dare say that's the same man that Mrs. Hollinshed is thinking of,"
continued Dr. Brownsmith, "and it would be more satisfactory for you to
go to him on the advice of your family doctor than on a private
recommendation. Will you let me write to him and fix an appointment."

"Yes. . . . But I must ask Mr. Deeprose first."

"Of course. I'll be calling again tomorrow, and if you like I can
explain the matter to him."

"Oh I can do that. If you'll tell me what it is. I--I mean you don't
think Madge is"--she faltered; a dozen common, silly expressions crowded
mockingly to her tongue--loopy, batty, balmy, mental, half-witted. . . .
She rejected them all, but she could not think of anything else to say;
there seemed to be no kind, dignified word to describe her little girl's
condition. Her tongue stuck and tears filled her eyes.

"Abnormal in any way? I think she is probably not normal, though I don't
think it's more than a case of arrested development, and if we tackle it
sensibly a lot can be done. That's why I want you to get the best advice
as soon as possible. But on one thing you can set your mind at rest.
She's not an idiot; there's nothing that we doctors call mongoloid about
her--nothing repulsive. She's a sweet little girl, but she doesn't grow
up."

"Do you think she ever will?"

"I can't tell you, my dear Mrs. Deeprose. My experience of such cases
isn't wide enough for me to dogmatize. That's why I want you to consult
some one else. My own belief is that she will, though she may not be one
of the more brilliant members of the community."

Not an author, not an actress, not a film star . . . her mother must not
think of these things any more for her. Well, they were silly things to
think of, anyway, for a farmer's daughter. She would have to give up her
dreaming and face life as it was--very plain and hard.


Rose had not expected Townley to make any objection to her taking Madge
to see a specialist, but she was surprised to find him so shocked by the
necessity. Apparently he had never imagined anything as bad as that. He
thought the child a poor sort of child, slower than most, and he
couldn't bear to see Wally Deeprose's brat so perky and forward beside
her; but he had never thought she could be "mental"--all the words that
Rose had rejected poured out of his mouth in the first five minutes of
enlightenment.

She wept when she heard them--they were like a cruel rain pattering on
Madge's head; and when he saw her cry he took her in his arms and
comforted her, and they were together again as they had not been for
months, sleeping in each other's arms with their heads on one pillow
which was wet with their tears.

Townley's tears were for Rose rather than for himself. His feelings for
himself were mostly feelings of shame. He was ashamed to think he had
begotten a half-witted child, and he could not understand how such a
thing had happened.

"Is it because my wife and I are cousins?" he asked Dr. Brownsmith the
next morning.

But Dr. Brownsmith would not say. They must make sure of facts before
they looked into causes. They were as yet quite uncertain what was wrong
with Madge--it might be nothing very serious, nothing that time would
not remedy. He spoke cheerfully and Rose went off to London a week later
with her cares chiefly set on the difficulties of the journey.

Townley had offered to come with her, but she felt that she could manage
better without him. Madge would give her no trouble; she was perfectly
good--only too good. She had never seen a train before, but apart from a
little panic as it steamed up to the platform, she took no more notice
of it than she took of the car. As she sat on Rose's knee, little
whining rattling sounds came from her in imitation of the wheels'
rhythm. They had a carriage to themselves, and Rose was glad, for she
knew that these sounds would have aroused the comment of other women
travelers, perhaps their admiration, and she would have had to face the
battery of their questions, of their surprise to discover that apart
from such mimicry the child was dumb.

She had dressed Madge in a little green-and-white flowered dress with a
bonnet to match. Nothing prettier, she thought, could ever have trotted
into Dr. Pleasant's consulting room. Madge could walk quite nicely now
if her hand was held--without guidance she seemed unable even to follow
her nose.

Rose was shaking with fright, not only for fear of the specialist's
verdict, but for fear of the man himself. The waiting-room, which seemed
so huge and dark and richly furnished compared with the rooms she was
used to, had given her an impression of gloom and majesty which she had
expected to see fulfilled in the consulting-room--she had expected to
see an elderly, solemn gentleman in a frock-coat and striped trousers
and a waistcoat adorned with a stethoscope as well as a watch chain. It
was almost a shock to find quite a young man, younger than Townley, fair
and rather untidy-looking. She at once felt more at ease, for though his
manner towards her was rather offhand and abrupt, he was quite different
with Madge. To her he was charming, and she at once became more animated
than her mother had ever seen her in anybody's company but her own.

The tests that followed seemed artless enough. He gave Madge various
toys--a doll, a little cart on wheels, a doll's tea set. She rolled the
doll on the floor, according to custom, but she trotted about quite
naturally holding the string of the cart; though she did not seem to
notice when it turned over and no longer ran on its wheels. When the
doctor gave her the teaset she did not know what to do with it; she took
one of the little flowered cups, looked at it, then licked its shiny
surface and made sounds of pleasure. She held it fast and would not give
it up when the doctor asked for it; she made angry noises when he
pretended to take it from her.

"Give it back, darling," said Rose--"it isn't yours."

"No, let her keep it," said the doctor, sharply--"and please don't
interfere. Madge, look at those pretty flowers."

Madge looked, and Rose was delighted to see her obey so quickly.

"Would you like to have one for your own? Then go and pick one out of
the vase."

The flowers were well within the child's reach, but she made no attempt
to take one. Instead, she threw her little cup on the floor and shouted
with delight as it broke in pieces.

Rose began to apologise, but Dr. Pleasants cut her short. He was used,
he said, to seeing things broken; and several more were broken before
the consultation was over. Rose sat patiently, no longer attempting to
advise or control her child. She could not see any reason for many of
the things the doctor did, but she had confidence in him by this time.
She realized, too, that Madge was surprisingly at her best with him,
that there was no need--as she had expected there would be--for her to
explain that her little girl was shy and usually did better at home.

At last he seemed to have finished with her.

"Very well, then; that will do. I needn't keep you any longer."

"What do you think of her?"

"I'll send a full report to your doctor tonight."

"But, please . . ." Rose gasped and fought away tears of terror and
reaction. She could not bear to be left in suspense, even for no more
than another day. "Won't you tell me something?" She pleaded nervously.
"You needn't be afraid of talking in front of her. She--she doesn't
understand."

"I know that. In most cases it's untrue, and a highly pernicious form of
parental delusion; but with your child it's true enough, I'm afraid.
Well, what is it you want to know?"

"Will--will she grow up like other children?"

"I doubt it. Of course she's still very young, and if you bring her back
to me in a year's time I may see a change in her. But my opinion is that
she'll never be very different from what she is now."

"Oh! . . ." cried Rose, covering her face--"Oh! . . ."

He began walking up and down the room, and if she could have noticed
anything she might have thought that his gruff manner was hiding very
deep and painful feelings.

"What you've got to decide for yourself, my dear madam, is whether it's
such a very great loss. Are you and I, who presumably have grown up like
the rest of the world, any happier than those who haven't? Personally, I
should say we are not--that from the point of view of mere natural
happiness we are very much worse off than those who spend their lives in
the limbo of infants. I've seen hundreds of children who will never be
anything else, but I can't say that I've felt disposed to pity them."

"You mean that you think she'll be happy?"

"She'll be happy if you let her alone--if you don't force her, don't
worry her, don't let her feel she's inferior to the rest of the world."

"Then you"--Rose could hardly force the words out, but she had to,
because it was a thing she must know at once. "Then you don't think she
ought to go away--to a--home? . . ."

"That all depends. Have you any other children?"

"No--she's the only one."

"Then I expect she'll be all right at home. If there had been other,
normal children I might have advised sending her away. But as there
aren't, and if you feel equal to the strain of looking after her, I
certainly think she'll do best in ordinary home surroundings."

Rose could have cried with thankfulness.

"Oh, I can look after her--she's always good with me. And I'll make her
happy. I'll see that she's happy."

"She will be if you're not always egging and urging her on. That's why
I'm against these special nurses--they drive the children too hard;
they're all for visible results and would rather see them well behaved
than happy."

"Madge shall be happy." She repeated the words like a vow.

"Very well, then"--he looked at his wrist watch--"I'll write to Dr.
Brownsmith tonight. I won't keep you any longer now, for I've a number
of patients waiting. Good-bye and good luck to you."

He rang a bell and an attendant showed them out.


On the return journey the carriage was crowded, but Rose did not mind,
for Madge was asleep. She lay in her mother's arms, a heavy,
sweet-smelling bundle. Rose had taken off her bonnet, and the brown
curls tumbled on her shoulder. The little face, composed in sleep, was
like other children's faces--it no longer looked empty. She had been
very tired and a little fretful before they got into the train, but now
she was at rest. Her mother's arms were her rest and her protection, as
please God they would be all her life through.

Rose gulped away her tears; there were too many people around her to let
them fall. But if she had been alone she could have cried for a number
of reasons--for her own pain, for her husband's, for her child's
deprivation of a common human right, for all her hopes and dreams to
have ended in this. For these reasons she could have cried for sorrow,
but she could also have cried for joy--for joy that her darling would
not be taken from her, for joy that she was hers in a special way that
few women could know, for joy that she would be happy, and that her
mother's whole life would henceforth be devoted to making her so.

She was glad, too, at last, that she had no other children, that she
could have no others. All her sorrow on that account was turned to joy.
It now seemed a merciful dispensation of Providence that her son had not
been born and never would be born. What would she have done if she had
had to choose between Madge and Townley's little sturdy boy? . . . She
would have been sorry for him, of course, but not as she would have been
sorry for Madge if she had had to be sent away on his account. That
sorrow would not have been bearable, for it would have been pity--that
dreadful, tortured, naked pity that had nearly broken her heart when she
felt it for no more than a dumb sheep . . . how could she have borne it
for Madge?--her arms tightened round the child, sleeping so peacefully,
so full of trust in her mother's love. Oh, her trust should not be
misplaced. Her mother would not fail her. Her mother would make her
happy. She should be the happiest child in the world.

The wheels beat her promise to Madge into their rhythm.


                Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
                She shall be happy wherever she goes.


Poor innocent, helpless little Madge--to all appearances such a
disappointment, such a cross of sorrow to her parents--and yet she had
given her mother her great chance. Rose had failed to make her father
happy--failed without much trying; she had tried and failed to make
Townley happy--her marriage was not what she had meant it to be. But she
would not fail with Madge. She could not fail, for in this case she had
no refractory will to struggle with; all she had to do was to foster a
natural contentment, to protect it from the assaults of an unkind world,
to shelter it, to cherish it, to feed it, to encourage it gently into
new safe paths of satisfaction. And how easy to shelter that which is
beyond the reach of words or thoughts, those first, most insolent,
disturbers of our peace. Madge should be happy as a little bird is happy
in the nest, as a little rabbit is happy nibbling the young
grass--natural happiness . . . the doctor had used those words. Most
happiness is too hardly striven for, too insecurely held, to be natural;
but this child's should grow as easily and sweetly as the young grass
. . . the young, sweet grass outside the warrens--on the little fall of
land by Bladbean Wood . . .

There they were, she and Madge. How very strange! Well, the doctor had
said that she would never be more than only so high--no bigger than a
rabbit. But she had never thought she would be like that herself . . .
though it stands to reason she would have to be if she was to live with
Madge in the place of natural happiness--no bigger than a rabbit. Here
they were together and she was glad. How lovely the light was!--just as
it used to be in her own childhood . . . the doctor was quite right--the
common world was grey--but here there was light and flowers--such lovely
flowers! as tall as themselves. Can this be a daisy? Is this what a
daisy looks like when you're very small? . . . She saw Madge's face
lifted to hers--she was trying to speak; in another moment she would
speak, but Rose knew now that she must not. If she spoke, that lovely
shining world around them would be gone. A terrible fear possessed
her--"Don't say it, Madge--don't say it." But Madge opened her mouth and
spoke in a harsh, loud, dreadful voice that seemed to split the sky.

"Tickets, please."

Rose struggled awake, her heart beating violently. In her dream the
words had had a different, more sinister meaning. She stared up at the
ticket-collector who had come in from the corridor; he had a kind,
middle-aged face with a grey moustache.

"Feeling tired? Had a long day?"

She murmured something and straightened her hat.

"We'll be there in ten minutes now."

Before he went he put out his finger and gently touched Madge's sleeping
face.


Rose did not for a moment delude herself with the hope that Townley
would find any of the comfort she had found in the situation. To him it
would be unrelieved shame and tragedy, and she was sorry for him, though
at the same time her heart was bitter with the defence of Madge, whose
champion she knew she would have henceforth to be, against half the
world, against her own father.

Poor Townley had been so unsuspicious of marriage and fatherhood that it
seemed a shame they should have used him so ill. He had had none of her
swaying reactions during courtship, none of her vision of the
difficulties of married life, none of her anxiety and restlessness
during those first childless years. He had seen a girl who pleased him,
he had wooed her patiently, he had won her successfully. He had never
doubted that children would come in time; and when his first child was a
girl he had looked forward hopefully to the arrival of a boy. And now
the whole thing had, so to speak, gone bad on him. His wife could never
have another child, and the one she had--the girl whom he had never
really wanted--was worse than unborn. He was to all intents childless,
for he would never take the slightest pleasure in Madge. He would never
know the warmth of protecting love that overflowed his wife's heart,
making her feel in this hour of anguish that she had given birth to her
a second time. How could he ever feel like that? He was a man, outside
the very range of such things. His very maleness debarred him from a
comfort that welled up each hour more richly in her heart. She pitied
him; she must be good to him and she must bear with him. She knew that
she would have to bear with him.

He did not meet her at the station--Cocks came with the car; but he was
there at the house, and she saw with a pang of tenderness that he had
got tea ready for her. It was waiting for her in the sitting-room.

She was glad of it, for she was feeling very tired. She laid Madge,
still asleep, upon the sofa and sank down in one of the armchairs.

"Well?" he asked her--"Well?" and she remembered a verse from the Bible:
"Is it well with the child? and he answered, It is well."

She poured out a cup of tea before she said anything, and swallowed one
or two hot, reviving mouthfuls. He saw her hand trembling against the
cup.

"You're upset? The doctor's upset you?"

"He has in a way. But, Townley, it _could_ be worse. . . ."

"How? Tell me at once." He sat down on the arm of her chair and drew her
to him. She could feel his heart thumping heavily, and she was touched
by his solicitude. He could not know her comfort. "My poor girl! Does he
think she's mental?"

She challenged the word.

"He doesn't think she's an idiot, if that's what you mean. He thinks
that she's backward, and that she'll never be quite like other people.
She'll always be more or less a child."

"Childish." He said it with disgust, and she felt a shiver go through
the arm that lay across her shoulders.

"Like a child--as she is now . . . so very sweet--and happy . . ."

She found her voice faltering and her eyes filling with tears.

"My poor, poor Rose. I was afraid it was something like that--directly
Dr. Brownsmith sent you to a specialist. Can't anything be done about
it? Nowadays there must be ways of training them."

"He says he doesn't approve of that sort of training--it only hustles
them and makes them unhappy. What he specially said was that she can be
just as happy as any normal child--happier--if she's let alone and not
made to feel she's different from other people----"

"But she is different, so how can she help feeling it? What nonsense!"
He sprang up and began to pace the room.

"He was speaking of other children--he says she ought to be kept away
from other children. Oh, Townley, that was the first time I've felt glad
she's the only one."

She had made him angry--she saw it in his altered face.

"Glad, are you? Well, I'm not. If we'd other children we'd have some
comfort now in life, while as it is we've got none. I'm not blaming you;
but you're talking nonsense when you say you're glad she's the only one.
You're a fool if you wouldn't rather have other children or else none at
all."

"I certainly wouldn't rather have none at all."

"But what use is she to either of us? We can't keep her here."

Rose sprang to her feet, and at the same time the blood seemed to drain
from her heart in terror. She clutched the back of the sofa to steady
herself.

"We _must_ keep her here, Townley. There's nowhere else she can go."

"There are homes, aren't there?"

"No--not for her. The doctor said she wasn't to go to a home--as there
are no children in the house, there isn't any need for it."

"There'll be children here in a month."

"You mean the Hollinsheds? But what difference will they make? She'll
never go near them."

"They'll see her about, and now she's able to walk we shan't always be
able to keep her out of their way. Your doctor said she wasn't to be
with other children, and Mrs. Hollinshed won't like it, either."

"What the--" she had begun to say: What the hell do I care what Mrs.
Hollinshed likes? But she managed to check the words. She saw that she
was getting angry and doing herself no good. She must somehow persuade
him out of this dreadful idea. Madge must not--could not--be sent away;
she had plenty of unanswerable arguments against it, but she must keep
her head cool or she would not be able to use them. She fought the anger
and misery out of her voice and said----

"Listen, Townley. Mrs. Hollinshed herself, last time she was here, said
there would never be any necessity to send Madge away. She told me about
a little boy who was very backward, but was trained quite easily at
home. . . . I spoke to her then about sending Madge away, and she said
that from her own experience it would be quite unnecessary."

"But this precious doctor of yours doesn't hold with home training."

"No, he doesn't in any professional sense, though of course there are
things one can do, ways I can teach her. . . . But what I'm trying to
tell you is that Mrs. Hollinshed wouldn't want or expect her to be sent
away--just because she's a little backward."

"Oh, that's all she is now--a little backward? I thought he said she was
M.D."

"No, he didn't--only undeveloped."

"And will stay undeveloped all her life?"

"Not necessarily. He doesn't think she'll ever be quite like other
people, but that doesn't mean she'll be always like she is now. And,
anyhow, he can't say anything for certain yet. He wants to see her again
in a year's time."

"Oh, he does, does he? You never told me that."

"You didn't give me a chance. You frightened me so with your talk of
homes. . . . Townley, if we send her away we'll ruin what hope she has
of growing up at all. If we keep her here and she's happy she's sure to
improve."

"I should think she'd improve a lot more in a home, with nurses and
teachers."

"But Dr. Pleasants said not--he said----"

"He seems to have said first one thing and then another."

"He's sending a report to Dr. Brownsmith. Then you'll be able to see
what he really said, and you'll see I've not been lying."

Her voice shook with fatigue and anger. She was dreadfully tired and
wished that she hadn't let the argument begin. But how could she have
known that he would take up such an attitude, that he would threaten
such unspeakable things? She sank down on her chair and poured herself
out another cup of tea.

"I never said you were lying," said Townley, "but I think you're talking
nonsense. You're so set on keeping Madge here that you'll say just
anything. I can't think why you want to keep her. She'll be nothing but
a burden to you--I don't suppose she'll ever be able to do a thing for
herself."

"And you're afraid I'll neglect the Hollinsheds." O Lord! she thought, I
must stop snapping, or I'll put him right against me. "Townley, dear, I
promise you it will make no difference to the Hollinsheds or to you or
to anybody if I have her here. I'll see she never gets in anyone's way.
She's a good little girl."

"But she'll be a burden to you. You'll get tired of having to do
everything for her, always."

"I shan't. Besides, in time I know she'll learn things. I'll be able to
teach her--for she loves me. I'll teach her better than any trained
nurse, and I'll make her happy, too. That's the whole point of her being
here. The doctor said that if she wasn't forced or frightened she'd
always be happy. If I make her that I don't care how much of a tie she
is. I don't care how much I have to do for her. It'll be worth while.
Oh, Townley, can't you see how it is? Can't you understand why I want
to--why I must keep her with me? If I send her away I'll be childless
again, and I'd die--I'd rather die than that. Oh, I know you don't love
her, but I do, and I'd break my heart if she went away from me. Let her
stay and I'll make her so happy. Only think, we have it in our power to
make her completely happy. Surely that isn't a thing we can refuse
anyone?"

"But I don't see how she can be happy."

"She can--she can have natural happiness. That was what he said; he said
a purely natural happiness, and what could anyone have better? Have our
noble intellects made us so happy that we can afford to despise her and
grudge her her tiny right to a home and a mother's love. . . ."

She burst into a storm of weeping. She sobbed and cried and begged him
not to send Madge away. She was too tired, too scared, too wretched to
carry on any longer a more dignified form of argument; so for the first
time in her life she assaulted him with her tears and battered him into
the promise that Madge should stay at Bladbean, at least for another
year, till the doctor had seen her again.



                             _Chapter Five_

The next day a new life began for Rose--a life as separated and as
dedicated as the life of a nun. Her life was dedicated to Madge, to her
welfare and happiness, and for that reason it must be separated from a
world in which the child had no place. Bladbean was her convent, almost
entirely enclosing her. She seldom went beyond it now. She took no
pleasure in long walks, and she was always glad to send Ivy to the shop
or even to give her orders through the telephone. She did not want
friends or strangers, however kind, to speak to Madge or to ask her
mother how she was getting on. Those days of motherly pride were over.
Everyone must now know that the child was not normal, that her father
was ashamed of her; so her mother, who was not ashamed of her, must
gather her under her wing as a hen gathers her chick, spreading herself
above her in warm protection.

Yes, perhaps, on the whole, she was more like a hen in a coop than a nun
in a convent. For a nun has with her others consecrated like herself,
whereas Rose had nobody, not even her husband. Once more she was back in
her old state of conflicting love. Her love of Madge was no longer at
peace with her love of Townley, but bitterly at war with it. The
interests of her child and her husband clashed as desperately as his had
once clashed with Christian's and as Christian's had clashed with her
father's.

It seemed to be her fate that she should never be able to love singly
and whole-heartedly. The only love she had known which had not been
armed against another had been her love for her mother. Her love for her
mother had not been at variance with her love for her father, but should
for its completeness have contained it as the greater contains the less.
But she had never loved her father, so her love for her mother--she saw
now--had never been complete. To that incompleteness she owed much of
her present sorrow, which appeared to her sometimes not so much fate as
punishment. She had not loved her father as she ought; in that respect
she had failed her mother and the most devoted, unselfish love she had
ever known. Now, in consequence, the house of her heart must always be
divided. Suppose she had really loved her father and been so good to him
that he had not looked for happiness to Christian . . . then she would
not have challenged nature by marrying Townley, and Madge might have
been born to some other man, with a mind as clear and as glowing as any
other child's.

But then she would not have been Madge. In the midst of all that pain
and denial there was a core of sweetness which she could not have
enjoyed if Madge had been like other little girls. It was in some way an
unworthy sweetness, since it was the sweetness of complete possession,
of the mother who will never see her baby grow up and leave her. But it
had a more unselfish side in the knowledge that her child's happiness
depended on her almost entirely and that her life's work must be to
preserve the only gift that heaven had bestowed on this poor waif of
natural law and human perversity.

The only gift . . . when she thought of how rarely and how fleetingly
that gift had been in her own hands, she was almost inclined to envy
Madge, to feel that she could willingly sacrifice her own powers of mind
and body to join her in the land of simple, natural happiness where she
alone had the right to dwell. "Behold thy dwelling shall be the fatness
of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above." Poor Esau had lost
his inheritance, but he was not without his blessing, the blessing of
the wild things and the hairy things to whom he belonged. They are
happy, they draw their breath without care or thought of tomorrow, their
pleasure is in a few, sweet, easy things, they do not have to plan or
contrive or count the cost or choose between two loves, neither do they
ever renounce or regret or forgive.

She pondered these things during the summer months, when she spent a
long part of each day sitting with Madge in the orchard, where a year
ago she had so often sat and talked to Lennox. It seemed impossible that
only a year had gone by since then. He was further away than India now;
India is only on the other side of the world, but he was in a different
world altogether. She seldom thought of him. She thought of herself and
Madge, she thought of Townley, she thought of her mother, she thought of
Christian, and she thought of God.

She had never thought so much in her life before, but it was not only
because of her quiet times. After all, during her first years at
Bladbean, she had been idle and bored enough, but she had never found
refuge in thought--thought had been a goad, pricking her to discontent.
Her mind had been restless and her body unfulfilled. Now both were calm
and strangely satisfied, and she could think without fear of finding
herself galloping wildly down paths of revolt. She would rather think
than read--she had no taste for reading. So she thought, while her hands
pushed the needle in and out of the pretty frocks that Madge must always
wear, and the little girl played her queer games in the grass and the
cloud of the chervil, a little, happy creature, running to and fro
without direction save when the impulse took her to run to her mother's
knee and hide her face in it with formless cries of love.


Rose did not find in Mrs. Hollinshed that year the support she had
hoped. She had hoped that she would approve of her resolve to keep Madge
at home--earlier conversations had suggested this. But she had made an
unfortunate mistake. Dr. Pleasants was not the physician that Mrs.
Hollinshed would have recommended--she had had quite a different man in
her mind--and she was not altogether pleased with Rose for having gone
to him without even asking for the name and address she had promised. In
consequence, she was inclined to distrust his verdict. Dr. Warburton was
the man for children--she'd never heard of Pleasants. It seemed odd that
he should be against special training--everyone knew what it could do.

"Not in Madge's case. You see, I'm afraid, she's not just backward . . .
she'll never be like other children."

"But that doesn't mean you want her to grow up like a little animal."

"No--and she won't. She's just a very young child, and the doctor thinks
she will grow a little older, even though she'll never be really
grown-up. There are things I can teach her--Doctor Brownsmith's got him
to give me a list of suggestions--but he doesn't want her forced."

"Probably an expert would be less likely to force her than a fond mother
who'd like to see her get on."

"Well, that's what he says. . . . He says that she can't do much with
her life, but that she can be as happy as any normal child; and he
thinks it would be a pity to spoil her happiness by making her do things
she doesn't want or letting her feel too much she's different from other
people."

"You'll have to beware of letting her grow up a naughty child."

"So far she's an extremely good one. She has her little tempers, but
most of the time she's as good as gold."

It was a pity that after her mother had said that, Madge should have a
fit of screaming wickedness, in which she smashed to pieces a china dog
belonging to the younger Hollinshed girl. It was a gay dog, covered with
blue and green spots on a pink ground. Madge, seeing it left out one day
on the sitting-room window-sill, took a violent fancy to it and lifted
it down into the garden. She did not know what it was, but the bright
colours fascinated her, and she squatted in front of it, roaring with
delight.

"That's Pamela's, darling," said Rose. "Take great care of it, and give
it back to her when she comes."

But Pamela was an unselfish little girl and did not claim her dog till
it was time for Madge to go to bed.

"Please, I'd rather she didn't take him with her--you see, he sleeps
with me."

Unfortunately, Madge refused to be parted from her treasure. Her roars
of delight became roars of grief, then roars of anger; when Rose,
compelled to firmness, took it out of her clutching little hands, she
flew at its rightful owner, screaming, scratching, and biting. Her
mother snatched her up before she could do more than frighten Pamela,
but in the scuffle the toy was dropped and broken.

"Oh, Madge is naughty! Madge is naughty!" sobbed the poor little girl as
her nurse led her away.

Rose was in agony. All through the evening, after Madge had gone to bed,
smiling and sweet again, the whole episode wiped off her mind, she
waited for Mrs. Hollinshed's reproaches or to hear that she had
complained to Townley. The next morning she slipped out before breakfast
and went to the shop at Monday Boys, where she spent seven and sixpence
on the only toy dog they had--a startling, pink and blue velvet creature
left over from Christmas.

"My dear Mrs. Deeprose!" cried Mrs. Hollinshed, when Rose brought it
into the sitting-room the next morning. "You really shouldn't have done
it. Why, the dog Pamela lost only cost a shilling, and it's her own
fault, as I tell her, for having left it on the window-sill."

"But I should have looked after Madge--I shouldn't have let her touch
it. I do hope Pamela will accept this."

"Ooh--it's lovely!" cried Pamela, holding out her hands, and as Rose
gave it to her she could not help thinking that she had never given such
a toy to Madge. She had spent all this money on Pamela for Madge's sake,
to placate Mrs. Hollinshed, to stop her complaining to Townley.

"I--I hope you'll excuse what happened yesterday," said Rose, despising
the servile words as they came out of her mouth and yet determined to
make peace at any cost to pride.

"Why, of course--it was nothing. Run out into the garden, Pamela dear,
and play with your lovely new dog out there."

"Madge hardly ever loses her temper. But yesterday she was tired--I'm
afraid I was late fetching her to bed."

"Yes, I dare say it was that. But, Mrs. Deeprose, I really should be
grateful if you didn't let her play in the front garden. I think she
generally plays in the orchard, and that seems to me a very much safer
place. After all, you can't expect my little girls to _understand_. . . ."

"No, I don't; and I nearly always have her in the orchard. It was only
yesterday evening----"

"And two or three days ago Rosemary said she looked in at the window and
made a face at her."

"Oh dear! She must have run round the house while I wasn't looking."

"Of course, and you can't always be looking after her."

"I manage pretty well--she's the easiest child in the world, as a rule.
But this hot weather's been trying her."

"Yes, I think it's tried us all."

Rose had it on the tip of her tongue to ask Mrs. Hollinshed not to say
anything to Townley about what had happened, but after all these years
she still did not feel able to take her even so little into her
confidence. Mrs. Hollinshed was on Townley's side--that was how she
grouped her; she played his game and saw things his way. Moreover,
though she was still in her early thirties, Rose always thought of her
as belonging to an older generation--she was certainly unlike most of
her social contemporaries, who would have been too casual to play
Townley's game. For his sake it was as well that Tony Hollinshed had
married the daughter of a wealthy Midland parsonage, brought up in a
more aristocratic tradition than many a modern aristocrat and at the
same time well founded in good works. For Rose it was not so well; she
did not know that her own manner had a great deal to do with the lack of
cordiality between them. . . . "Such a dull, unfriendly little woman--I
can hardly ever get anything out of her. I try to make her talk, but I
suppose she takes a pride in 'keeping herself to herself.' It's often
the way with people who are neither one thing nor the other."


But Mrs. Hollinshed did not say anything to Townley about the
catastrophe of the china dog. No doubt it was not a matter to trouble a
man with, and only Rose's fears had made her expect her to do it. At the
end of the summer visit Townley was left with no worse impression than
that Madge should have been taken to Dr. Warburton and not to Dr.
Pleasants. He talked vaguely of making good the blunder when her year's
probation had ended, but Rose hoped that by that time Mrs. Hollinshed's
influence would have worn off sufficiently for her to persuade him, with
Dr. Brownsmith's help, to allow her to go back to Dr. Pleasants. She had
quite made up her mind that Mrs. Hollinshed's doctor would at once order
the child into an institution.

She was now more determined than ever that this must not happen, and
with her determination grew the fear that Townley would ultimately
insist on it. She sometimes could not help seeing his point of
view--indeed, there were moments when she reproached herself with
injustice towards him. She could not be at the same time his wife and
Madge's mother, and she had chosen to be Madge's mother. Not only did
she love her more, but her helplessness made a claim on her which could
never be equalled by the self-sufficient male. Her love for Madge was
akin to pity and pity had over her life the power of red-hot pincers.
Not that she never pitied Townley nowadays . . . she had come to see how
sorely she had stricken him; but it was pity of a different sort; it did
not compel her, though it made her feel vaguely uneasy. She was
constantly putting Madge before him--she saw herself do it and sometimes
wondered, not that he protested, but that he did not protest more.

Of course some of her choices were thrust on her by him. The one that
seemed most radical, most divorcing, was his own doing. Sometimes Madge
cried out loudly in her sleep, and if by any chance she was awake in the
night she would lie making her "noises" as they were called--an owl's
hoot, a cock's crow, the clatter of crockery on a tray--all came
unexpectedly from her little bed. Townley, not unnaturally, disliked
having his nights disturbed, and found in the cries something sinister
that had no effect on Rose. He suggested that she should be put to sleep
in another room, but Rose would not hear of it. It would not be safe for
her to sleep alone, or even with Ivy, who was a great heavy lump, able
to sleep through any catastrophe. Besides, the child would fret herself
ill at being separated from her mother, whose bedside she had never left
since Rose's illness of three years ago.

So in the end it was Townley who moved into another room. This was
indeed a sundering--after the years they had slept side by side in that
great creaking bed. Rose felt its solemnity and at the same time knew a
secret relief. She did not have to worry about Madge disturbing him, and
she herself slept better without him lying hot and heavy beside her--he
often disturbed her without meaning to.

But she was sorry for him, desperately sorry, even though--perhaps
because--she felt he did not really mind very much. For a long time she
had guessed that he found little more pleasure than she did in embraces
that could never bring them another child. That sad knowledge had taken
all the reality and purpose from their love-making, leaving a desire
that was little better than wind. Poor Townley! If one day a little
sturdy boy should look up at her from some village doorstep with his
dark-fringed eyes, she did not think that she would find it in her heart
to blame him.


There was a little sturdy boy at Harlakenden of whom nowadays she saw
almost nothing. Occasionally she forced herself to drive over for her
father's sake, as he seldom had time to come to Bladbean, nor did
Townley make him particularly welcome there; but she always disliked
going, partly because of the ignoble jealousy that would arise--though
now he knew how things really were with her, Wally Deeprose had ceased
to display his offspring--partly because of her reluctance either to
leave Madge at home or to take her with her.

If she left her at home she fretted, though Ivy on the whole looked
after her very well; and there was always the danger that she might run
into Townley and upset him. If she took her with her, she was only
exposing her griefs in public. Her father was tact and gentleness
itself--"Well, little lady," he would say, "what fine blue eyes you
have," and pat her calm cheek and leave it at that; but Aunt Hannah
would purse her lips and evidently think that she ought to be in a home,
and even Ronnie had nothing to learn about her.

Once he said to Rose--"When Madge is grown up, who will look after the
poor thing?"

She turned on him angrily.

"Who taught you to call her that?"

"Nobody, but I've heard Aunt Hannah say it."

"Oh . . ." Rose could have strangled Aunt Hannah. "Well, you're not to
say it, for it isn't true. She's a very happy little girl."

"Is she? But how can she be happy if she doesn't know anything?"

"She knows enough to be happy. You don't have to know a great deal to be
that. In fact, you're happier if you don't know too much."

"Are you? Do I know too much?"

She could not help saying: "I think you know more than is good for you."

He was silent a moment, then said:

"But _who_ will look after her when she's grown up?"

"I will, of course--if she still needs looking after."

"Oh . . . but I thought mothers always died before their children grew
up."

Rose's heart sickened at the dreadful thought.

"They don't--of course they don't. What ever put such an idea into your
head?"

"Well, my mother's dead, and Dad's mother's dead, and your mother's
dead, and so's Uncle Townley's; so I thought they prob'bly all died."

"Our family's been unlucky. Most people have mothers, and grannies too.
Why, even Barnes has a granny in Sussex. She's very old, of course."

"Is she? Barnes says Madge is natural."

Once more Rose felt her cheeks turn red; then she suddenly relented at
the word. Natural--there was nothing unkind or contemptuous about that.
Natural--simple--those country words were kinder than any, and described
her darling better than any terms of medical knowledge or vulgar
ignorance. Natural--what more appropriate description for one who is to
spend her days in a state of natural happiness?

"Yes, she _is_ natural, Ronnie; you may call her that. That's why she's
always happy."

"Aren't people happy who aren't natural?"

"Oh yes, they are sometimes, but things come along to disturb and upset
them. And they think about things that worry them and want things they
can't get."

He seemed deep in thought, and suddenly she pitied him. Poor little
chap! She had no good reason to feel jealous of him. Madge must
undoubtedly be the happier child of the two. Bright and intelligent as
he was, he had a dreary life in some ways. Aunt Hannah did not really
understand children, and was inclined to be severe. Once Rose had
offered him a kitten from a new litter at Bladbean, to take the place of
old Peter, who had finally departed full of years and his own swallowed
fur. Ronnie had bitterly mourned his death.

"He liked me"--he sobbed--"when I scratched his head he used to sing."

It was then that Rose had offered the kitten, but Aunt Hannah had
refused to let him have it. She said that kittens destroyed the
furniture and could not be trusted to behave inside the house. Poor
Ronnie had been left to get what comfort he could from the very bitter
and unfriendly yard cat.

He was fond of his father, and Wally was on the whole extremely good to
him, but he could not stand up against Hannah. Besides, he still had his
bad times. One day Rose had called at Harlakenden and found her little
half-brother looking very worried.

"Daddy's ill," he said--"and he's praying."

"Praying?"

"Yes, he's in his bedroom, and I can hear him through the door
saying--'God--God--God.'"

No, she really did not have to be jealous of him, and yet that queer
jealousy persisted, keeping her away from Harlakenden, from her father
and from Christian's son, though she knew that they all had need of her,
and there was no true reason, apart from her jealousy, why she should
not bring Madge. Ronnie, who was a lonely little boy, was always pleased
to see her, and would do his very best to play with her--taking her to
see the ditch he had dug, the seeds he had planted, or the hut he had
built with Barnes's help of pea sticks and chestnut pales. He would
explain it all very carefully to her, and, in spite of experience, wait
for her admiration; but she never took any notice, and Rose could hardly
bear it--for Madge's sake, not his.

The year declined from the Hollinsheds, and reascended to them as to a
solstice. Already Rose was examining her curtains, deciding which were
to be cleaned and which to be renewed, while Ivy's broom moved over
sun-changed carpets, and old heavy pieces of furniture leaped to
brightness under beeswax and turpentine.

Towards the end of April she had taken Madge back to Dr. Pleasants. It
was a little before the visit was due, but she did not want to wait for
any possible letter from Mrs. Hollinshed, and procured Dr. Brownsmith to
emphasize to Townley the necessity of her reporting to the physician who
had already seen the case.

"To take her to another man would be starting all over again--the
important thing is what progress she's made between this visit and the
last."

Rose flattered herself that Madge had made some definite progress. She
could actually talk--that is to say she used words, though apparently
without sense of their meaning. She would repeat "Mum" and "dog" over
and over again as part of her "noises"--Rose could not be sure even that
she related the first to her mother. But the marvellous thing was to
hear her speak at all, and the first time, one early morning, that the
word "dog" had come clearly if tonelessly from the silence of her cot,
Rose's heart had leaped for joy and the world had filled with sunshine.

Dr. Pleasants was not as impressed as she had hoped--he said very
little--but he was just as decided as ever that she was better off at
home than in an institution.

"I wonder if you'd mind putting that into your report to Dr. Brownsmith?
Then he can show it to my husband."

"Oh, your husband doesn't care for her being at home, eh?"

"Well--he's a man; and of course that makes a difference."

The doctor looked at her in a way that showed her she had made a
perfectly idiotic remark. But he put it in the report all the same.

Rose was happy again. Her life had recovered much of its lost
tranquillity. She no longer feared that she would have to lose Madge.
Now that she had actually taken the child back to Doctor Pleasants and
obtained what she considered a satisfactory report from him, she did not
think Mrs. Hollinshed could continue to force Dr. Warburton upon her.



                              _Chapter Six_

A whole year passed and Ronnie had started school--travelling, as Rose
had done, by bus to Ashford, with a change and a wait at Dogkennel. It
was difficult for Wally Deeprose to keep back his tales of his son's
progress, and it was difficult for Rose not to suffer when he told them.
But lately she had taken her jealousy in hand--she would not let it
master her and make a rift between herself and her father. Sorrow and
retirement had had their common effect on her--she had looked at
herself, and not particularly liking the picture, had tried to improve
it.

Until her solitude she had seldom thought of religion. She had never
doubted God's existence or His responsibility for the moral code her
mother had passed on to her. She also thought He wanted her to go to
church, but that demand had always seemed to her unreasonable--she was
too busy. Now she had begun to go--not regularly, for there was the
problem of Madge--but once or twice a month, generally in the early
morning. She had chosen that time because there were few people, all
devout, so that she could take Madge without fear of her being stared
at.

The vicar's wife had asked her to breakfast afterwards. She could not
stay, because she had to get back to Bladbean, but she had been grateful
for a cup of tea and for that detached, incurious kindness that before
Madge was born had made her think of making herself a place among these
people, of joining clubs, attending tea-parties . . . she could not help
smiling when she thought how once she had planned these things.

Still, she found comfort now in different approaches--in the mornings
when she sat at the back of the church with Madge, watching the pattern
of fir trees that the sun, like a magic lantern, cast on the whitewashed
wall, while Mr. King's voice drawled slowly through ancient, hallowed
words. She did not go up to take the Sacrament, because she thought she
was not good enough, and also there was the difficulty of leaving
Madge--the little creature would have followed her to the altar, with
embarrassing results. But she said many prayers while she sat and
watched others more fortunate spiritually and materially than herself
perform what she regarded as an act of inimitable piety. She prayed that
she might overcome those faults which had already brought so much
suffering to herself and others--she prayed that she might lose her
jealousy of Ronnie, her occasional impatience with her father, that she
might still make Townley happy and that some day their hearts might be
one.

Most of all she prayed for Madge, for her to be left undisturbed in her
birthright of happiness, for her to grow up beautiful and gentle and not
so very different from other girls, for her to die before her mother.
There were moments when Rose saw the whole of her effort to lead a more
godly and kindly life as nothing but an act of propitiation, an attempt
to placate a God who might take Madge from her or her from Madge . . .
or if this was not the whole of it, it was at least a part. She had come
to church to find better comfort than in dreams, a better path than
through the thicket of human strifes; but she had also come in obedience
to a primal fear, to appease an old savage god who otherwise might seize
and devour her child . . . "Almighty God," prayed Mr. King at the altar,
"who art always more ready to hear than we to pray and art wont to give
more than either we desire or deserve . . ." There was nothing in his
prayers to account for the tom-tom that thudded through them, the savage
drum that was Rose's fearing, loving heart.

For though she had temporarily settled the rival claims of Dr. Warburton
and Dr. Pleasants, her relief had been short-lived. She felt sure that
the matter would come up again, probably at the Hollinsheds' next visit.
The last one had passed off harmlessly, as the result of great efforts
on her part coupled with an accident to Mr. Hollinshed which had
happened towards the end of the summer. He had gone out cubbing, and his
horse, stumbling at a fence, had thrown him and broken his collar bone.
His three weeks' pain and misery had been of the greatest service to
Rose; for naturally all his wife's thoughts were centred on him, and as
for Townley, he could think and speak of nothing else.

But she did not expect the unfortunate man to be sacrificed a second
time, and this summer she felt that Mrs. Hollinshed would notice Madge
and criticize her adversely. Sometimes she would feel furious at the
idea of her child's happiness depending so much on this stranger--for so
she was virtually for nine months of the year. If the servants of the
house and farm, and the neighbours in the village, were all content to
take things as they were and not to interfere, why must Mrs. Hollinshed,
who had no claim on the family that she did not pay for, make so much
trouble?

Of course the answer was that Mrs. Hollinshed alone had any influence
with Townley. It was vain to urge against her the neighbours'
indifference, the servants' toleration, or even the doctor's advice.
Mrs. Hollinshed was Public Opinion, she was Tradition, she was
Authority, she was, Rose sometimes thought, Religion. Mrs. Hollinshed,
of course, included Mr. Hollinshed, as the greater includes the less;
not that he was an ineffective or dominated man, but because Rose
herself had not had many personal dealings with him, nor did she regard
him as having any direct voice in Madge's destiny.

Sometimes she could not help seeing that she was becoming morbidly
obsessed by Mrs. Hollinshed, that the situation was not really half so
bad as she imagined, that what she took for interference was only
ordinary human interest, and that Townley's reactions were probably much
slighter than she believed. He was a perfectly normal man who would
never let anyone else, however respected, run his life for him or force
him against his natural inclinations. . . . The danger lay there, of
course. His inclinations were all on the side of Mrs. Hollinshed; in
wanting Madge to be sent away he did not slavishly follow her opinion,
but rather used it to support his own. He felt that his home would be
happier without the child, and she felt that the child would do better
away from home.

It was this combination against her that year by year Rose felt herself
less able to face, and this year she knew that it would be worse than
ever. For Madge's development had not--she was forced to own--been
entirely quite what she had hoped. She was now six years old and had
grown quite big and strong. It was almost impossible for Rose to control
her as she had done. She could not pick her up and carry her away if she
kicked and fought, and she would kick and fight anyone who thwarted her,
even her mother. She was extremely active, and it was difficult to keep
her out of mischief, to prevent her smashing things or making a noise.
Once she broke a basketful of eggs, just for fun, and if ever she found
one of the men's hats in the farmyard, she would throw it in the
pond--they had to watch their pipes and matches, too, or any small
belongings that she could snatch up and smash or throw away. Also Rose
had to confess that she was coming to look less attractive--the vacancy
of her expression seemed to dominate rather than lurk in her face; no
one who looked at her now could ever think her normal.

But the worst development, as far as her mother was concerned, was that
she had taken an intense dislike to Townley. Or rather the dislike which
she had always felt but had at first shown only by indifference she now
showed in a more obvious manner. When she was a baby he had complained
that she refused to notice him, but now he was glad enough to escape her
notice, which often took the form of rushing at him and kicking his
shins, or running behind him, growling like a vicious little dog.

Rose could not blame him for resenting such treatment, and she laboured
frantically to keep Madge out of his way, but it was difficult to
control such an active little person, and encounters were bound to take
place.

"I wish you'd keep that child in order," he said to her once--"she's
getting quite out of hand. I found her wandering this afternoon right
down by the oast barn."

"I know. I'm sorry, dear. But I had to go out and speak to Sivvers about
whitewashing the scullery, and Ivy let her slip."

"Well, if no one can control her but yourself, it s a bad lookout. You
can't always keep her tied to your apron strings."

"She's perfectly good most of the time. I say, 'Stay there, Madge,' and
she nearly always stays. Besides, even if she does get away she's quite
harmless."

"I'm not so sure of that. She's sometimes had a good rap at my shins,
and this afternoon she made a hideous face at me. It would have
terrified another child."

"Oh, you're thinking of the Hollinsheds!" She could not quite keep the
bitterness out of her voice.

"Yes, of course I'm thinking of them; they'll be here next month."

"Must they be here? We'd get on so much better without them."

He stared at her as if he thought she had gone off her head.

"Yes," she repeated, "we'd get on much better without them. Then we
shouldn't have to worry about Madge. I can't think why we've always got
to have them here, why you can't put your own child first, for a
change."

Her voice rose sharply. Her nerves were getting frayed.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said--"you must have gone
out of your mind. And as for not worrying about Madge except on their
account . . . well, I find her quite bad enough from my own point of
view. It's not much fun for me living here in what's no better than a
mental home."

Rose's face darkened.

"Townley . . ."

"Leave me alone. I'm not going to argue about it. But I tell you I won't
stand this forever."

She swallowed her words, she would not provoke him further.


The Hollinsheds arrived, and three weeks later the crisis came. The
wonder was that it did not come earlier, for the situation seemed too
heavily charged for the storm to be long delayed. Short of keeping Madge
entirely shut up, which was impossible, there was no way of hiding her
from the visitors, who were bound to comment on her unfavourably even if
only among themselves. Rose had done her best for her by making her
three little frocks of flowered shantung, with hats and knickers to
match. Seen from a distance, she looked charming, but unfortunately
there had also to be that nearer view, which was sometimes even less
prepossessing than it need have been, owing to Madge's developing
tendency to make faces.

She resented the presence of the visitors, whose arrival meant her
banishment from the garden and from the front part of the house. One day
Rose saw her running after Mr. Hollinshed in the same way that she used
to run after Townley, and caught her only just in time to prevent her
kicking his ankles.

Then shortly afterwards Townley said--"Mr. Hollinshed's been talking to
me about Madge."

"Oh . . ."

"Yes, both he and Mrs. Hollinshed think we ought to have another opinion
on her."

Then Rose burst out.

"What business is it of theirs? Why do they come here interfering with
us? They can go somewhere else if they don't like Madge."

"You don't know what you're talking about; they're only acting out of
kindness. After all, their family has known our family for more than
fifty years, and it's only natural that they should take an interest in
us. Mrs. Hollinshed never thought it was a good thing, taking Madge to
Pleasants, who's quite a young man and can't have the same experience as
an older man like Dr. Warburton----"

"Oh, she's still on about him, is she?"

"Rose, don't talk like that. You talk as if she was trying to do you an
injury, while all the time she's doing her best to help us. Dr.
Warburton is a personal friend of Mr. Hollinshed's, and out of kindness
to you, and to save you the bother of taking Madge again to London,
they're having him down here one week-end--as their visitor, but at the
same time to give Madge a proper professional overhaul. . . ."

Rose sprang to her feet. She had been sitting in the kitchen, mending
the house linen, and as she stood up a shower of towels, dusters, and
napkins fell to the brick floor. She did not notice them; she saw
nothing but Townley's face--the face of her enemy.

"He's not to come. I won't let him. I never heard of such a thing! How
dare they do it?"

"Don't be a fool, Rose. Of course he's coming. This is my house and I'm
glad--grateful--to have him here. We really must do something about
Madge--we can't go on like this."

"Madge is perfectly all right--she's--she's happy. Dr. Brownsmith says
she's all right. You can't go behind his back and get in another doctor.
I shouldn't think he'd ever come near us again."

"Why should Doctor Brownsmith mind which specialist we go to? You've had
two goes of his man, and you've a perfect right to ask for another
opinion. We're not doing this behind his back. Hollinshed said that of
course he would have to be consulted--and you too. I was all for
settling things up without you, knowing how you'd take on. But both he
and Mrs. Hollinshed said you had better be consulted first."

"And you call this consulting me?"

"Well, I'm telling you about it, anyhow."

"And if I refuse--if I refuse to let this Doctor Warburton come near
Madge?"

"You can't refuse. She's my child as well as yours, and it's my house.
Besides, why should you refuse? Surely you can see that it's for her
good?"

"It isn't--it's for her harm. He's sure to send her away; and that's
what you've got him for, of course. You want her sent away. You hate
her, so you want to get rid of her. You want to take from her the only
thing she's got--her happiness. She'll die of misery if she's sent away
from me. . . . Oh, Madge! Madge!"

She burst into sobs that shook all her body. Three years--two years--ago
this would have meant Townley taking her in his arms. He used not to be
able to resist her crying and the opportunities it gave him for
comforting her and being kind. But now he stood looking at her with a
sort of disgust, then he turned and walked out of the room.

Directly he was gone Rose let her sagging knees give way. She sank to
the floor among the fallen linen, which had now a heavy, scorching smell
from the heat of the kitchen fire.

She cried till she felt sick and her head ached. Her tears were a long
overdue release of terror, and in spite of their physical effect they
did her good. She struggled to her feet among the linen, then went to
bathe her hot, aching face in the scullery sink. She looked a sight, she
knew, but she did not care--she was past caring for anything, her mind
was choked by her body into a kind of peace. She came back and picked up
the linen, folding it carefully and laying it in separate piles,
according to which pieces she had mended and which she had not. Then she
looked at the clock. A quarter to ten--time to heat the water for the
visitors' hot-water bottles. They had hot-water bottles all through the
summer, to the shared contempt of Rose and Ivy, neither of whom had had
a bottle in her life except when ill, and the admiration of Townley,
who, though equally accustomed to cold sheets, liked his Hollinsheds to
be different.

Tonight there was some excuse for them, since the weather was more
suggestive of January than August. A cold rain slashed the windows, and
the temperature was much below normal. Rose was quite glad of the fire,
though usually she disliked having to keep it in so late at this time of
year. It was Ivy's evening out, but that too was a relief, as her
mistress's appearance was not such as anyone would care to make even
before a servant of Ivy's long-tried standing. She would fill the
bottles and put them in the beds, then creep away to bed herself--and
think; her mind would be active again by then and she must think how she
could prevent this catastrophe that threatened her and Madge.

At present the only idea that presented itself was an appeal to Mrs.
Hollinshed as from one woman to another, but she was rational enough to
see the futility of such an approach at such a time--if she ever made it
she must choose all the circumstances with care, she must risk nothing.
So she filled the bottles, put them in the beds, then sought the refuge
of her own. But she did not think--she slept.

Her heavy, tear-soaked brain weighted her down into abysses of sleep,
where there were scarcely dreams, only shadows and presaging movements,
with which she dimly felt her own to mingle, searching through the paths
of this dark sea for the sunny land where she had once for a brief time
seemed to share the happiness of Madge's enduring infancy. That land was
gone; she floated, drifted, swam, sank through images she scarcely
recognized, that were dark and not light, old rather than young, in a
place of storm and threat rather than of sunshine. Then in the end she
woke with thoughts that seemed empty and blind.

She rose and dressed Madge, curling her hair almost passionately round
her fingers in her efforts to give her beauty, to make other people see
her with her mother's eyes. Madge had, as usual, woken happily. She
smiled and gurgled, she made a noise like water coming out of a jug, and
then she imitated the clucking, murmuring sound of the starlings on the
roof, then the mewing of a cat. Then she suddenly said "Mum," and
clutched Rose's skirt each side with her two little hands, and hid her
face in it.

It was the first time the child had said a word with any appearance of
knowing what it meant, and to Rose it seemed almost a divine
reassurance. She clasped Madge in her arms . . . "That's right--Mum
loves you, darling--Mum will stand by you--she'll never let you go."

She felt the tears pricking the back of her eyes, but she fought them
away; she had already shed enough, and there was no more relief in them.
She knelt down by the bed and prayed instead, as she prayed every
morning, with her arm round Madge. The little girl would probably never
be able to say any prayers of her own, but then neither would she sin or
commit mistakes or follies; her soul stood apart, a dumb priest,
offering its innocence for the sins of others.

Then began all the business of the day--pulling up blinds, lighting
fires, boiling kettles, fetching food and crockery from the cupboards,
talking to Ivy, laying tables, picking flowers and arranging them in the
visitors' room. All the while Madge ran about the kitchen, throwing a
little celluloid ball, which had beads inside it that rattled and
pleased her.

Rose and Townley breakfasted in the kitchen. It did not hurt his pride
to give up the dining-room to the Hollinsheds, but he would have been
disgusted if Ivy had ever presumed to sit down with her master and
mistress, as her predecessors would have sat with his yeomen ancestors.
Ivy gave Madge her breakfast in the scullery, which was an arrangement
doubly in accordance with his wishes. It hurt him to see the child's
helplessness at table.

The meal was eaten almost entirely in silence, though Townley made one
or two remarks about the weather, and Rose once asked him if he expected
harvesting to begin that week. More than half her morning had been
silent, so it was strange that she had not yet been able to think. Her
mind was heavy and inert, without movement, but pushing her along, it
seemed, with its weight. It had crushed all her thoughts into a single
resolution, which was no more than the resolution she had half formed
last night--to appeal to Mrs. Hollinshed. It was not a particularly
brilliant one, and it would be rather difficult to carry out, but she
did not see what else she could do, and she must do something--she could
not let this monstrous thing be done to her without protest or defence.

The time she chose was when she went in as usual after breakfast to take
orders for the day. She tied on her apron as a warrior might have
buckled on his armour, and murmured a prayer for help--"O Lord--help me
to make her see." . . . She went into the dining-room, and was a little
disconcerted to find Mr. Hollinshed there as well as his wife. He
generally went out directly after breakfast, but today he probably
thought the weather too cold and disagreeable, for he was sitting by the
fire and reading a weekly review. Rose ought to have remembered that
they had asked for a fire to be lighted. . . . Should she wait for a
better day? No; her resolution might not last--she might let herself be
intimidated by the sheer weight of domestic routine; also she should
speak before Mrs. Hollinshed had actually written to invite Dr.
Warburton--Rose knew that she had not done so yet, for she herself had
given the letters to the postman that morning. After all, Mr. Hollinshed
might be a help rather than a hindrance--she had always found him more
pleasant and friendly than his wife on the few occasions she had had to
deal with him.

Irish stew and mutton loaf were discussed, with raspberry tart, rice
pudding, and orange jelly. Two meals were disposed of and a third hinted
at. The weather was given its mead of blame. Then that dull, unfriendly
little woman, Mrs. Deeprose, suddenly astonished Mrs. Hollinshed.

"Excuse me, but Mr. Deeprose tells me you were thinking of asking Doctor
Warburton to come here one week-end."

Her hands were locked together with nervousness under her apron, but
that same nervousness had made her voice loud and aggressive.

Mr. Hollinshed looked up from his review, which he had read all through
the Irish stew and orange jelly, and Mrs. Hollinshed answered stiffly:

"Yes, we were."

"Well, then, I must tell you that if he comes and sees Madge it will be
against my wishes."

Both the Hollinsheds looked astonished, and for a moment nobody spoke.

"Your husband is very anxious for Doctor Warburton's opinion," said Mrs.
Hollinshed at last. She was obviously annoyed, but forcing herself to
speak calmly.

"I know he is. I--I mean you've been trying to make him go to Doctor
Warburton ever since you heard I'd been to Doctor Pleasants. But I'm
quite satisfied with Doctor Pleasants' opinion. He was recommended to me
by my own doctor, and I don't see why I should be made to consult anyone
else."

She had not meant to talk quite like this, but her nervousness and
anxiety seemed to have got the better of her and to be forcing both her
voice and her words in directions outside her control. Mrs. Hollinshed
did not answer, but Mr. Hollinshed stood up and said quietly:

"Neither Mrs. Hollinshed nor I have the slightest intention of trying to
persuade you to do anything you don't like. We were convinced that you
saw this matter in the same way as your husband."

"Well, I don't."

"My dear Mrs. Deeprose," said Mrs. Hollinshed, "I don't think there is
any need for you to talk quite so--emphatically."

"I'm sorry. I don't want to be rude. But I--I don't think you realize
what this means to me. For two years now I've been fighting to keep
Madge at home, and Doctor Pleasants has backed me up. He doesn't believe
in institutions--he believes in happiness, and Madge is happy with me.
So he says I had much better keep her, but Townley--Mr. Deeprose wants
her to go. He doesn't feel about her as I do, and he wants to get rid of
her."

Both the Hollinsheds looked embarrassed. They had not realized the
division of the Bladbean household on the subject of Madge, and were
distressed to find themselves involved in what looked like a matrimonial
row. The suggestion about Dr. Warburton had been made in perfect good
faith, mixed with only a little interference on Mrs. Hollinshed's part,
and they were really upset to see its effect on Rose.

"If I'd wanted Doctor Warburton to see Madge," she continued, "I could
have taken her to London to see him, but I didn't want it."

"We thought we'd save you the journey," said Mr. Hollinshed--"the doctor
is a friend of mine, and I'd like to have him here for his own sake.
Then when your husband told me how worried he was, I thought . . ."

"Townley wants him to see her because he thinks he'll order her to go
into an institution. That's why. . . ."

"But why should you think Doctor Warburton more likely to send her away
than Doctor Pleasants?" asked Mrs. Hollinshed. "He isn't connected with
any home for backward children. All he'll do will be to give an
opinion."

"You always talked as if he'd want her to go into a home--and if he does
no more than say she'll be better in one, Townley will make it an excuse
for sending her away. Doctor Pleasants is all against these things. . . ."

She broke off. She saw the husband and wife exchanging glances. They
were astonished at her behaviour. They would possibly talk about it to
Townley. Oh, she had managed things badly! She grew desperate.

"Oh, please, if you have any human feelings, don't make things worse for
me. Don't make it any more difficult for me to keep my child. I love
her, even though she's natural, as they say. I don't mind what I do for
her, how much I have to slave. And what's more, she loves me--she'd be
wretched away from me, and happiness is all she's got in life. I know
you think she's dreadful, and you'd be pleased if she went away, but I'd
rather see her dead than in an institution--I'd rather see us both dead.
And if I thought there was a chance of her being taken away from me
I'd--I'd put an end to both of us . . ."

She saw an expression of relief come suddenly on to their faces, and
looking round she saw that Townley was in the room. She had not heard
the door open, but the echoes of her voice, which still seemed to ring
in the silence, told her whyshe had not, and why he had come in. She
must have been shouting. . . .

"Has anything happened?"

His face was an almost comical mixture of bewilderment, indignation, and
shocked alarm, incongruously decorated with a polite smile. Two years
ago she would have laughed at him.

"Your wife's worried about the child," said Mr. Hollinshed, "and she
doesn't want Doctor Warburton to see her. I'm telling her that of course
we shouldn't think of inviting him here if she has any objection."

"She has no objection," said Townley. "What on earth's the matter,
Rose?"

"Only that I've been telling Mrs. Hollinshed that he mustn't come."

He would have answered angrily, but she saw that he was restrained by
the presence in which their battle must be fought.

"Her nerves are all to pieces," he apologized--"it's looking after the
little girl."

"Yes, I guessed that," said Mrs. Hollinshed, "and that's why. . . . But
it's all over now. It was only a suggestion, and since it upsets Mrs.
Deeprose we won't give it another moment's thought."

"Of course not," said Mr. Hollinshed.

"Come away, Rose," said Townley.

He held open the door for her, and she went out, not knowing what else
to do. He followed her to the kitchen, and she expected a scene--a
violent scene. But all he said was:

"I don't trust myself to speak to you. Get on with your work," and shut
the door on her.


She lived through the day somehow. The Hollinsheds made it easy for her
to go in and clear away lunch. They said they were glad the rain had
stopped, and that the Irish stew was delicious. They asked if it would
be all right for the children to go and see the new calf that afternoon.
Of course the presence of the little girls would prevent their reopening
the morning's matter, but even if they had not been there she knew that
no one would have mentioned it. She was in that safe, smooth society,
which she had once enjoyed so much with Mrs. King, a two-dimensional
world of surfaces only, where no depths would ever be explored. She
wished that she could feel as safe with Townley, and dreaded his evening
return. He had not been in at midday, but she had not expected him, as
it was market day at Headcorn.

She did not see him in the evening, either--a message came, not to
herself but to Cocks, saying that he was stopping in Headcorn for supper
and would not be back till late. So he was avoiding her . . . as he had
done when years ago their marriage had rocked over Christian. In a way
Rose was relieved, but not as she had been before. There was too much
that she distrusted in the situation, too much that she wanted to know.
What was he going to do about things? She felt sure that he had had or
was going to have another interview with the Hollinsheds. He would at
least think it his duty to apologize for her behaviour, and he would
want to make further plans--some different arrangement about Dr.
Warburton. She felt that he would be plotting with the Hollinsheds
against her and Madge. She would never find out anything from them--it
was on him that she depended. And he was dodging her. . . . The next
morning he had had his breakfast before she came downstairs.

She decided to go and see Dr. Brownsmith, and leaving Ivy in charge of
Madge and the visitors, drove over to Shadoxhurst directly after
breakfast. She wanted him to make, if possible, an objection to Madge's
being taken to another doctor--she hoped, though scarcely believed, that
his opinion might influence Townley a little.

"But, my dear Mrs. Deeprose, I can't do that. Doctor Warburton is a
highly reputable physician and a great authority on child psychology. I
might have sent you to him in the first place, but for one reason or
another I chose Doctor Pleasants. It's now more than a year since you've
seen Doctor Pleasants, so I don't see how I could possibly object to
your consulting another man. Besides, why do you want me to?"

"Because I don't want Madge to be sent to an institution. Doctor
Pleasants said it wasn't necessary--he said it the second time as well
as the first. But I feel sure that Doctor Warburton will want it; if he
even suggests it, it'll be enough for Mr. Deeprose. The whole reason he
wants him to see Madge is because he thinks he'll say she ought to go
into a home."

"And you don't want it?"

"No! How could I?"

Dr. Brownsmith looked at her for a moment or two without speaking.

"Aren't you very tired?" he said, gently, at last.

"No, I don't think so. I'm worried--that's all."

"Well, to me you look absolutely done, and I can well imagine that your
husband wants you to have a rest. After all, the care of a child of six
who has the mind of a small infant is much more exhausting than the care
of a real infant, and----"

"But, Doctor!" cried Rose in agony--"You're not telling me I ought to
send her away?"

"I think it would be a very good thing for _you_ if you did."

"But I couldn't--and it wouldn't--nothing could do me good that would do
her harm."

"But why should you think it would do her harm?"

Rose began to tremble. It seemed as if Dr. Brownsmith had turned against
her, as if her only friend had deserted her.

"Because she'd fret her heart out--she loves me and she'd pine without
me, just as I should without her. She's happy now, as things are. Doctor
Pleasants said she has a better chance than most people of a happy life,
if she isn't forced or driven or made to feel different from everyone
else."

"But she'd feel much less different in a home, where she'd be with other
children like herself. As things are now, she either has to be alone or
to mix with ordinary people, whose reactions are probably obvious, even
to her. That's why she's getting to be a little more difficult than she
used to be, and why you're feeling the strain of looking after her so
much."

"But I don't feel any strain. And she isn't difficult--not with me. Who
can have told you that? She's perfectly good when she's with
me--perfectly good and happy. If she was sent away from me she'd
probably die, and I--I'd rather she did."

She choked a little and again he looked at her without speaking. Then he
said:

"My dear Mrs. Deeprose, even a normal child of six hasn't very deeply
rooted affections or a very long memory. Your little girl might, I
think, feel unhappy for a few hours----"

"Hours!"

"I really don't think it would be for much longer. She would soon attach
herself to anyone who was kind to her, and I assure you that people
_are_ kind in institutions, especially to children. She loves you, but
you mustn't think she has for you the affection of a grown-up person or
even--" he had almost added "an intelligent dog," but stopped himself in
time. "She'd probably soon become very fond of some nurse or matron; and
apart from that, she would, as I said before, find the life of the place
far more in harmony with her social powers than the life at home."

"Then why-why, if all that's true--did Doctor Pleasants say I ought to
keep her at home?"

"I don't think he meant it to be for more than a while, at least not
after he'd seen her the second time. I haven't his report by me at the
moment, but I can easily turn it up. I know that even in the first
report he said--as naturally he would say--that the question of her
living at home must be decided by its effect on that home and on her
mother's health."

"My health is excellent."

"I don't at all like the looks of you."

"I tell you that's only the worry there's been--I'm worried to death.
Oh, if only my husband would let us keep our home to ourselves and not
have people every year who object to the poor little thing, and if only
he'd feel for her as a father should feel . . ."

She began to sob, and the doctor poured her out a glass of water.

"You're not yourself, Mrs. Deeprose; you're in a very bad nervous state,
and the cause of it is, I'm sure, the effect on your home of Madge's
living there. You've been tremendously good and enormously plucky; no
mother could have done more for that child than you have and few would
have done so much. But now I think the time has come for you to consider
yourself and--and other people."

"I don't care for anyone but Madge."

She stood up. She must go. He was no use to her, and--she suddenly
stiffened with a new fear.

"Doctor Brownsmith, you won't tell Mr. Deeprose anything of what you've
said to me--you won't try and persuade him?"

"No, of course not. I shouldn't dream of such a thing."

She looked relieved, and shook hands in her quiet, ordinary way, though
she took no notice of his remarks about the weather.


She knew now that she was alone. She had no one to help her. She must
act for herself. As she drove home from Dr. Brownsmith's she wondered if
Townley had already seen him and put him against her--he seemed to know
more about conditions at Bladbean than she would have thought possible.
But the next moment she realized that the doctor could not have been
made to say anything he did not himself believe--he was not the sort. No
doubt he had heard about life at Bladbean from her father, and his
changed attitude towards Madge was the result of what he had heard, and
also no doubt the result of her own appearance. She should have taken
more care--she should have gone to him looking neat and jaunty; and she
should have argued better than she did, she should have been able to
change and persuade him. How was it that she always managed people so
badly, while Christian had managed them so well? Christian had always
been able to get what she wanted out of anybody. . . .

She thought of Christian as she drove through the stuffy August lanes,
with the dust flying out in a plume behind her. She thought of how she
and Christian had gone away together, escaping from their troubles and
cares, from their marriages. . . . If only she could do that now--go
right away, away from Bladbean, away from the Hollinsheds, away from
Townley, away from everybody but Madge . . . Well, she could, couldn't
she? She could go where she had gone with Christian--to Primrose Hall.
Her uncle and aunt would be glad to have her, she knew, and the child,
too. If she took Madge away for a long time, Townley might lose his
antagonism and drop the idea of sending her to a home. Of course he
would object to her leaving while the Hollinsheds were still there--so
perhaps she had better endure them and go away directly their visit was
over. She would say nothing to Townley just yet, but she would write to
her Aunt Susan--it was a long time since she had written.

She felt that her visit to Dr. Brownsmith had not been a failure, after
all, since it had put this new idea into her head. She had come out in
the car and she was able to think, as she always found she could when
she was moving quickly. Motion always made her feel enterprising and
hopeful; it was her inaction, her passive pain, that had made her feel
so broken-down and ill. Yes, it was a good thing that she knew herself
now to stand alone, to have no friend or helper on whom she could lean,
for now her mind was sharpened like a sword.



                            _Chapter Seven_

She wrote her letter to her aunt that evening, and a few days later
received a most cordial invitation to come with Madge as soon as she
chose--"You will always be welcome here, and we shall be glad to see the
little girl"--though she had told them that Madge was "natural," taking
the word from a kindly mouth to use as her own.

She felt relieved, even from the weight of her daily life at Bladbean.
In a short time she would be free of that burden, and she did not expect
anything terrible to happen before she was free. Mrs. Hollinshed would
never force Dr. Warburton upon her after her protest, and Townley would
be careful not to provoke another scene. She had at least some respite,
and she would not think beyond it. She would content herself with
looking forward to safe and happy days with her mother's people. How
happy she and Christian had been at Primrose Hall six years ago! Suppose
she had done what Christian wanted and never come back. . . . She
wondered how different life might have been; then called back her
thoughts. She did not regret coming back--she could not have acted
differently.

Townley had been angry with her then--just as he was angry with her now.
He had refused to write to her just as now he refused to speak to her.
They had their meals in silence except for "Please pass the salt" or
"Please pass the bread." . . . She wondered how long he would keep it
up. He had kept up his refusal to write till she had broken it down with
her return. Would he keep up this silence till she broke it down? She
hoped he would; it did not distress her as the other had done, because
she did not love him as she had loved him then. In those days she had
always loved him a little, sometimes very much--now she did not love him
at all. He was Madge's enemy, and every time he opened his mouth he
threatened her happiness, so he had better hold his tongue.

Having made up her mind that things were going to be this way, she felt
surprised the following afternoon, when she was sitting with Madge in
the orchard, to see him coming towards her. She had thought him away in
the fields. Why was he seeking her out like this? She tried to comfort
herself with the thought that he had come to call her to the telephone,
but she knew well enough that if her father or anyone had rung her up
the messenger would have been Ivy.

"Hullo," she said in a voice she meant to be careless.

He said nothing, but sat down on the grass close by--where Geoffrey
Lennox used to sit, with the shadows of the leaves dappling his face in
the same way. He was so unlike him in features, expression, build,
manner and clothes, that her memories seemed to rise in protest--she
wished he would sit somewhere else.

"Look here," he said at last, "you and I have got to have things out."

She felt herself turning cold and pale, and looked anxiously at Madge,
who was playing with her celluloid ball a few yards away.

"Townley, I don't want to quarrel."

"It'll be your own fault if we do. I'm going to tell you what I've
decided and if you've any sense you'll fall in with it."

She had just been going to thread a needle when he came, and now in her
nervousness she dug the unthreaded needle in and out of the stuff as if
she was sewing with it.

"What have you decided?"

"Well, I've been talking to Mr. and Mrs. Hollinshed. I had to--I had to
apologise for that disgusting scene you made."

Of course he would have apologised--she had guessed that. What else
besides apologies had passed between him and the Hollinsheds?

"Naturally," he continued, "they're very much upset about it all, and
they say they've given up the idea of asking Doctor Warburton
here"--another thing she had guessed right. "But I told them I wouldn't
hear of his being put off, and I was quite sure that now you saw the
matter in its proper light----"

"Why did you say that?" There was anger as well as fear in her voice.

"Because, for one thing, I'm not going to have my visitors interfered
with and ordered about by you, and for another, I'm going to do what I
like in my own house."

"In other words you're going to have him here, whatever light I see him
in."

"Yes, if Mr. and Mrs. Hollinshed would agree, but they say they think
that in the circumstance it would be better if we took Madge to him in
London."

Rose said nothing, but she pricked her finger with the empty needle.

"They only suggested inviting him to save you trouble; they thought it
would make things easier. But since it doesn't, they'd rather not have
anything more to do with the business. So you see how you've insulted
them."

"I don't see it."

"You've turned down their kind action--you've made it difficult for them
to have a personal friend of their own to visit them, you've kicked up a
horrid row, and what's more you've made this house almost impossible for
them to stay in. Mrs. Hollinshed as good as said that she couldn't go on
coming here unless something was done about Madge."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Madge must be sent away. There's no good beating about the
bush any longer. I'd rather do the thing properly through Doctor
Warburton--get him to see her and recommend a home for her--but if
you're going to make difficulties, I'm not going to take the brat up to
London. I'll get Doctor Brownsmith to recommend me a place or find out
one for myself. But she's going."

"She's not going." She spoke slowly and tensely, as if her words could
build a wall round Madge.

"Oh, come on, Rose, don't be a fool. You can't stop me doing what I like
with my own child. If I refuse to keep her here nobody can make me, and
you'd much better give in and help me find somewhere nice for her. I
really can't understand why you don't see my point of view. This is my
home, but it's all spoiled for me; you're my wife, but you scarcely give
me a moment's notice--you're always fussing after the child; and even
then you can't keep her in order but let her run around and upset my
visitors."

"I don't--she doesn't. They must be a fine lot to let themselves be
upset by a poor little innocent thing like Madge."

"Not such a little innocent thing, when she runs after you and kicks
your legs. Mr. Hollinshed was as decent about it as he could be, but of
course it upset him. And both Pamela and Rosemary are scared of
her--they daren't play anywhere near the orchard."

"Then they're fools." But she remembered how even sturdy little Ronnie
had been scared.

"They're natural, healthy kids, and it's wrong that they should have to
associate with one who's no better than an idiot."

"They don't associate with her."

"They're always seeing her, anyhow--she's always around. Don't flatter
yourself, Rose, that you keep her out of the way."

"There's no real reason why I should keep her out of the way. This is
her home, and it's a shame that she should be boxed up in a corner of
it. Why do you let these people come here? They're the cause of all our
misery. Oh, why can't we just be by ourselves?"

"My dear girl, you're quite wrong if you think I'm doing this on account
of the Hollinsheds. I'm upset about them, but I'm more upset about
myself. I want my home and I want my wife, and that darned brat has
spoiled them both for me. Even if I knew the Hollinsheds were never
coming back whatever happened I should still send her away. Where the
Hollinsheds come in is that I don't want them to feel insulted as well
as upset, so I'd like the arrangements about the home to be made through
them, as they know a lot about these things--at least Mrs. Hollinshed
does--and have been extremely kind about it all. Do you understand me? I
want Doctor Warburton to come down here, as an act of politeness to Mr.
and Mrs. Hollinshed and to make up for the rudeness they've had from
you."

"But if they themselves say they won't have him?"

"They wouldn't say it if you went to them and said you'd come to see the
matter in its proper light."

"Well, I'm not going."

"Are you determined to make me hate you?"

He was no longer sitting at her feet; he stood up, but the shadows still
moved over his face--it looked so angry that she thought of the markings
of some wild animal.

"You hate Madge, so you may as well hate me. If you send her away I
shall hate you."

"There's no 'if' about it. She's going. The only question is where and
how she goes----"

"She shan't go--I won't let her. I'd rather see her dead."

"You're talking like a mad woman."

"You're driving me mad."

They stood facing each other and shouting. They no longer cared what
they said. Their marriage seemed to lie broken round them and they were
trampling it as they trampled the broken light in the grass. Their
argument was crude and shrill, with no force behind it but anger. There
was no longer any persuasion in it--only assertion and hate. At that
moment they well and truly hated each other.

They were so busy with their quarrel that they neither of them noticed
Madge standing near. Their noise had broken into even her enclosed
world, and she had stopped playing with her ball. She stood watching
them, and as she listened to their rattling voices a little of their
commotion seemed to reach her, to fill her with anger and fear. Her
little face twisted up with rage; she had always hated this man, with
his dark face and long stride and heavy touch; she hated him more than
ever now that he seemed to threaten the protecting kindness that she
loved--Mum--the only thing in the world that had a name. . . . Before
Rose could stop her or even realize what she was doing she had jumped
upon him and fastened on his hand with her teeth like a little animal.

"Hell! . . . Hell!" With a violent cuff on the head he loosened her grip
and with another sent her flying, rolling over and over in the grass.

"You little devil--I'll take you to the county asylum tomorrow. I shan't
pay five guineas a week for you after this. Mark that--tomorrow she goes
where she deserves--to join the pauper idiots"--and grimacing with pain
and rage, he ran off to the house.


Rose picked up her screaming child, but she dared not follow him. She
crouched in the long grass, rocking and soothing her. The evening sank
round them, folding them into long blue shadows and a quiet, brooding
cold. Then at last, when Madge had sobbed herself to sleep and it was so
dark that she could hardly see, she struggled to her feet and carried
her into the house. The lamp was lit in the kitchen, and Ivy was already
busy preparing the Hollinsheds' supper. Rose stood at the kitchen door.

"Ivy, do you think you can manage without me tonight? I've got a
dreadful headache."

"I expect I can. My! you do look bad."

"I feel bad. I thought that when I've put Madge to bed I'll go myself."

"What'll you do about supper?"

"I don't want any."

"Shan't I make you a cup of bovril?"

"No, I'd rather not. And Ivy, the rest of the cold meat is for the
master, and Mr. and Mrs. Hollinshed are to have--" She stopped abruptly.
What should she care if they all ate sawdust? She turned away with a
groan.

Upstairs she gave Madge her evening glass of milk. The little girl had
woken up without apparently a single memory of what had happened. She
crowed and laughed, though there was a big bruise at the side of her
forehead where Townley had struck her. Dr. Brownsmith had said that she
would forget her mother just as quickly.

While she was being tucked into bed, she grew suddenly fretful and began
to make a little rattling noise, like the noise of the beads inside her
celluloid ball. Rose realised that it had been left outside in the
orchard.

"That's all right, duckie. You want your ball? Mum will get it for
you"--and she went downstairs, though she was terrified to walk through
the house, in case she should meet Townley. She did not see him; she
slipped out into the orchard and found the ball lying under the apple
tree. It was wet with dew, and round it the broken light was silver
instead of gold. She picked it up and took it in to Madge. "There you
are, pet--there's your pretty ball. Now cuddle down and go to sleep."

She herself lay down on the bed without undressing. She felt too tired
and broken to undress. The night stretched ageless before her, scarcely
begun; but she did not fear it, she did not want to sleep--the night was
just long enough to plan in. As soon as she saw Townley's bedroom light
reflected on the wall opposite, she would slip down and fetch the
railway time-table. She must keep awake till then.

Once more pain had crushed her thoughts into a solid mass of resolution.
She would take Madge away at once--tomorrow--to Fakenham, to the only
friends she had. She could rely on no one else; Dr. Brownsmith had
failed her, and even if any of her neighbours could be trusted to take
her part, they were not far enough away. Her mother's people would stand
by her, they would not let her husband rob her of her child. She was
going to them, and this time she was never coming back. The very thing
that had brought her back before would prevent her coming now. Madge,
whom she now carried far more painfully than in her womb, would keep her
away forever.

She must go as soon as she could. She could not afford to wait even half
a day. Tomorrow morning Townley might want to take Madge to the county
asylum--she believed that he was cruel enough for that . . . anyhow, he
was angry enough for that, and his anger, as she knew, died slowly. Of
course he might not really act with such scrambling speed--he might not
be able to; there might be forms to fill in, a doctor's certificate to
obtain. . . . But that did not make any difference--no matter when he
acted, she must act at once. If she lingered, something might happen to
rouse his suspicions. . . . Besides, she could not endure the agony of
waiting; she could not face another day of Bladbean and the Hollinsheds.
She was going, and they could all stew in their own grease; she was shut
of them.

The hours ticked by on her little "bee" clock. Its ticking seemed to
fill the room. Down in the house she heard sounds; doors opened and
shut, plates were being moved. The Hollinsheds were having supper. No
doubt Mrs. Hollinshed was making kind enquiries about her headache; she
wondered if Townley would tell her about the scene in the orchard--she
did not think he would. Somebody turned on the wireless . . . damn them!
would they never go to bed?

She got up and counted the money in her housekeeping purse--two pounds
eleven shillings and fourpence; that would be just enough to take them
to Lavenham and to buy food on the way. How lucky that she had not paid
the books this week! Then she wondered about luggage. She could not
carry a heavy suitcase and it would be impossible to get out the car if
she left early; the lodge where it was kept was just under Townley's
window and he would hear everything. No, she would have to sneak out and
get the bus at Monday Boys, taking no more than her little attach case,
which would just hold enough for the journey and the following night.
She must leave all their clothes behind. . . . Well, she did not want
them; it was difficult to see how they would ever buy new ones, but she
really could not bother now about that--all she cared for was that they
should get out of the house as quickly as possible and escape to the
only refuge that she knew. She did not want to think--she wanted to act.

She was not able to do so till nearly twelve o'clock, when the house was
completely silent and the reflection of Townley's light extinguished on
the opposite wall. Then she crept unshod downstairs, to the little room
next the kitchen which he used as an office and where the time-tables
were kept. She found a local railway time-table and a bus time-table,
and took them both upstairs to her bedroom.

The railway time-table did not give any trains beyond London, but she
remembered that the train she and Christian had taken left Liverpool
Street at twelve o'clock. She could easily be there long before them and
make enquiries. There were plenty of trains from Maidstone to London,
and she decided to catch one that left soon after eight. She must be out
of the house before six, or Townley would be getting up. The only
difficulty was the bus. None of them was running as early as that.

She then remembered that a bus ran all the way to London three times a
week, passing the throws between Egerton and Pluckley at half-past
seven. It was not marked in the time-table as it belonged to another
company, but she knew that it ran on Wednesdays, because Ivy had taken a
day trip to London by it only a few weeks ago. It had got her up to town
soon after ten, Rose remembered her saying. That would be even better
than the train, and very much better than travelling to Maidstone by the
local bus, whose driver and conductor would be sure to recognize her.
She wanted to cover her tracks, though she realized it could be only a
question of time before her hiding-place was known. The important thing,
she felt, was that it should not be known till she had got there.

She crept downstairs again and put back the time-tables exactly where
she had found them. She thought of taking some food from the larder, but
was afraid that Ivy would notice its disappearance and possibly suspect
what she had done. She did not want anyone to know she was out of the
house till she was out of the county. She could buy chocolate and
biscuits on the way up, and in London they would have time for a good
meal.

She lay down on the bed, feeling strangely tired after her efforts. She
must somehow rest herself before morning. She ought to sleep, but she
could not, and she dared not. Suppose she overslept herself . . . She
closed her eyes, and the scene in the orchard formed beneath her
eyelids. She saw Townley's face--his look of hatred--and opened her eyes
again. She must not hate him or God would not bless her escape. Yet how
could she help hating him after the dreadful things he had said? Madge
in the county asylum . . . She felt sick. How terrible it was lying here
and thinking of these things! Would the night never pass?

She could hear rain falling. What should she do if it was a wet, squally
day, like so many they had had? She did not want them both to get wet
through, with no proper change of clothes. The rain hissed down through
the darkness--there was no wind. Then suddenly it stopped, and she could
see the moon shining through the curtains. A clock down in the house
struck one.

She heard two strike, then three. If only she dared sleep . . . she
closed her eyes again--she would risk it; she must sleep, or she would
be too tired for her difficult day. But her thoughts were turning in her
head like a wheel. They went round and round herself and Madge like a
grinding wheel; she could not get away from them. The clock struck four.

Now she did not dare go to sleep. She sat up to keep herself awake, for
a perverse drowsiness was stealing over her. She would get up at a
quarter to five, and be out of the house by half-past. That would keep
her clear of Townley's six-o'clock rising, though it would mean a long
time to hang about before the bus came. It would be nearly four hours
from now before she was in the bus; but then the time would pass
quickly--they would rumble along the country lanes and out into the big
arterial road at Lenham . . . the road from Ashford to Maidstone was a
big, arterial road now, with hundreds and hundreds of cars passing every
hour . . . there were roadhouses and tea gardens all along it . . . once
she and Christian had had tea at one of them called the Lilac
Sunbonnet--they had gone there just for fun . . . Christian wearing a
yellow dress like her hair . . . Christian's getting very thin . . . I
mustn't let her look at me, for if I saw her face I couldn't bear it
. . . a flushed cloud like that means rain . . . Good Lord! I've been to
sleep.

She started up--light was pouring through the curtains, but an agonized
glance at the clock reassured her. It was not yet five. She slipped off
the bed and bathed her face and neck and arms in cold water. That was
better, but it was a pity she had not undressed, for her clothes felt
stuffy now, and there was no time to change them, at least not to change
them all; she changed her blouse and her stockings.

Then she very gently woke Madge. Generally the little girl was awake
before her mother, but this was much earlier than her usual time, and
she was a little peevish when she found that she was to be washed and
dressed. Rose soothed her urgently----

"Be a good girl--don't cry. You're going away with Mum."

"Mum," said Madge.

"Yes, to a lovely place where Granny used to live when she was a little
girl and where everyone's kind and will love you."

Madge picked up her ball and shook it.

"Yes, and you may take your ball."

The child was dressed, with her blue frieze coat over her best frock.
Rose put on a beret and a raincoat--she had better be prepared for wet
weather even though at present the day was fine. She could see blue sky
between the curtains, but she would not draw them--she must leave her
room looking closed and asleep. Then an idea struck her. She tore a leaf
out of her account book and wrote on it "Am sleeping late. Please do not
disturb," and pinned it up outside the door. That would prevent Ivy or
anyone coming in till probably quite late in the morning. Then she
picked up Madge and her attach case and carried them both downstairs.
Her outdoor shoes were in the scullery and she put them on there. Then
she opened the back door, which was never locked, and they went out
together into a beautiful August morning. By the time Townley's alarm
clock went off they were halfway to Pluckley Throws.


The rain had washed all the clouds from the sky, which looked cold in
spite of its deep blue. The air still held the chill of the night's
downpour, and even the long yellow rays that the sun slanted over the
fields from Dockenden were warm in their colours only. Rose thought that
it would probably rain again before night, for the country was very
clear, contracted in the rinsed air. Egerton church on its hilltop among
the pines looked only a few yards away, while the white-rimmed windows
of Island Farm stood out sharply from its red-pippin face, and it seemed
as if you could have chucked a stone on to the roofs of Hunger Hatch. If
only the country were contracted in fact as well as in appearances.
. . . She would have to walk two and a half miles to the throws, and for
part of the way she would have to carry Madge. She had thought of
bringing her push-cart, but she could not have taken it with her in the
bus, and to leave it anywhere would have given her away.

Two and a half miles would have been nothing to her if she had not been
so tired. She was tired with all she had been through and her almost
sleepless night; and the fear which was goading her had also made her
tired. She would feel better when she had had a cup of tea. The bus
would be sure to stop at some place on the way up to London, where the
passengers could have tea.

She came to the throws shortly before seven. Three little cottages stood
with the sun shining in their windows. They were thatched, and their
long roofs sloped behind them towards the south-west, into thickets of
dahlias and sunflowers and scarlet runners. Rose thought of knocking at
the door of one of them, and asking for a cup of tea, but she shrank
from speaking to anyone who might afterwards remember her and give
Townley a chance of knowing she had gone by bus. If he had no idea where
she was he might think she had committed suicide and spend days dragging
the ponds round Bladbean. . . . Of course he was bound to know sometime
that she had gone to Norfolk, but she felt as if a large measure of her
safety depended on that time being put off as far as possible. Once she
was established among her mother's people . . . Oh, Mother, if you know
what I'm doing, think of me now and help me if you can. Make Aunt Susan
let me stay there always. Don't let Townley come after us or get hold of
Madge. . . .

She was trembling, and sat down on a little stile. It had suddenly
occurred to her that Townley might be able to get Madge from her by some
process of the law--either indirectly, through the courts, or directly,
sending a policeman. She knew little or nothing about these things. Now
she wished that she knew more. It was a pity she had read so little all
her life. Even the newspapers might have helped her to some knowledge.
But now her ignorance might lead her into trouble.

She sat on the stile, waiting for the bus to come. When she was in the
bus she would no longer think of these dreadful things. It was waiting
that stirred up her thoughts, sitting on the foot of a stile with Madge
half asleep in her arms. If she had been alone she might have walked
about, up and down the lane . . . but then some one in the cottages
would probably notice her. She was best off where she was, even if
sitting still made her feel wretched. But she wished the bus would come.

It must be late. She looked at her watch and saw that it was past the
half-hour. She waited and looked again--a quarter to eight, five minutes
to. . . . Something must have happened. She did not know exactly where
the bus started from, but it must be somewhere quite near. What could
have happened to delay it like this? If it was much later she might not
get up in time to catch the twelve o'clock train at Liverpool Street.
She wondered if she had made a mistake; but no--she was sure that Ivy
had gone on Wednesday. A quarter past eight . . .

"Are you waiting for the bus?"

Rose looked up and saw that a woman with a basket of washing had
appeared in the garden nearest her.

"Yes, I am."

"Well, it don't run no more. Mr. Horngate found it didn't pay--hardly
ever got more than half a dozen passengers and that didn't pay for the
petrol even."

"But--but my maid went up in it only a little time ago."

"That must have been in June. He took it off at the end of June. He'd
been meaning to do it long before that and put it on his Ashford to
Tonbridge route, but the trouble he had with the transport people you'd
never believe. Won't let you call your soul your own, they won't, let
alone your bus. He was telling me only the other day----"

"But--but--" Rose nearly screamed--"how am I to get to Maidstone?"

"Oh, is it Maidstone you want to go to?"

"I want to go to London, but if I can get to Maidstone there'll be a
train."

"Oh yes, there's plenty of trains from Maidstone. If you go back to
Egerton, there's a bus leaves for Maidstone at ten."

"I know, but that's much too late. I must be in London by eleven."

"Oh," said the woman, "I don't know how you're going to do that."

Rose was almost in tears.

"I must get there. Isn't there anyone around here who can take me in?"

"I don't know that there is. But I'll ask my husband."

She went up to the back of the house and shouted, "George!"

A man came out in his shirt sleeves and wearing postman's trousers.

"George, this lady wants to get to London by eleven. She didn't know the
bus had stopped running."

"Isn't there a farmer or anyone going into Maidstone today?--or could I
borrow a bicycle?"

"Not as I know of, leastways not hereabouts; but if you walked into
Pluckley Thorn, you might be able to hire a car."

"I can't do that." If she paid for a car to Maidstone she wouldn't have
enough money left for her ticket--perhaps not any money left at all.

"It's a pity Mr. Horngate's stopped running," said the woman. Rose could
not speak, but something in her stricken look must have spoken for her,
for the man suddenly became more helpful. "I'll tell you what I'd do if
I was you," he said. "I'd cut across the fields to Lenham. You can do it
quite easy by that stile. It won't take you more than half an hour, and
when you get to Lenham there'll be several buses, quite a lot of 'em,
from Ashford and Folkestone and all those parts."

"Going to London?"

"Yes, you can take your choice. They're fine big buses, too, and ull get
you there quicker'n ever Mr. Horngate could. If you're at Lenham by
nine, and there's no reason why you shouldn't be, you're sure to get to
London by eleven."

"Oh, thank you so much. But how shall I know the way across the fields?
Is there a footpath?"

"Yes, with a bridge at the stream and another across the river. You
can't miss it."

"Oh, thank you--thank you so much."

"You're welcome. I hope it keeps fine."

"I hope it does," said the woman; "I never got my drying out yesterday,
and if I don't get it finished today it'll set me right back."

Rose muttered something grateful and lifted Madge over the stile.


"Mum."

"Yes, duckie, we're going to walk in the fields."

She set off down the little path that led from the stile to a hedge with
a heave-gate. She was leading Madge by the hand; in time she would have
to carry her, but she must let her trot as long as she was able. She
hoped that the man at the cottage had been right and that she would get
to Lenham in half an hour, but people so often underestimate distances
. . . What would happen if she did not catch that twelve-o'clock train
at Liverpool Street? . . . There was sure to be another--she must not
worry; the journey took no more than five hours, and even if she could
not leave London till the evening there would be time to reach Primrose
Hall that night. By the way, she must send Aunt Susan a telegram . . .
probably she would have time to do it at Lenham--no, better wait till
she got to London and ran no risk of being recognized.

How carefully she was covering her traces . . . and yet she knew that it
was impossible to cover them entirely. Probably the first idea to come
into Townley's head when he missed her would be that she had gone to her
mother's people. He might think of that before he thought she had
committed suicide. She began to feel uneasy again. For a few minutes she
had been reassured by action, by the fact that she was once more on her
way, but now she began to lose her reassurance, to feel that she was
only putting off catastrophe . . . she was like a child running away
from an angry parent, running as fast as it can, but knowing all the
time that the parent can run faster and is sure to catch it in the
end--and be all the angrier with it for running away.

But Townley couldn't take Madge from her if she refused to let her go.
The child belonged to her as much as to him, and surely there was no law
giving him powers that it denied her. But again she realized that she
was not certain of this. The law was queer, and she remembered once
having heard it said that an unmarried mother had the advantage of a
respectable wife in her rights over her children. Townley might have the
right to follow her to Primrose Hall and take Madge away. . . . If he
had the right he would certainly use it; for he was her enemy, and her
fighting him would only make him more bitter against her. Perhaps she
would be wiser to turn round and go home--she could hide the attach
case, and if she did not succeed in creeping back unnoticed into her
room, she could pretend that she had taken out Madge for an early
morning walk in the fields. A fine hope and a fine pretence. . . . By
the time she got back they would certainly have missed her, and even if
he believed her tale of the walk in the fields, Townley would be furious
with her for having gone out like that, leaving her morning's work and
the visitors' breakfast. It would make matters even worse between them.
But perhaps Townley himself had gone out and knew nothing of her
absence, in which case she could easily deal with Ivy. He might have
gone, as he had said he would, to the County Asylum. . . . She
hesitated, standing on the green curve of the field, just before it
sank, spotted with fleabane and coltsfoot to the hedge. If she went back
she could have a cup of tea--she was dying for a cup of tea and she
might not get one for hours if she went on.

Her craving was so great that it would have settled a less desperate
choice. But she knew that if she went back she would certainly lose
Madge--even if he never heard of this escapade, Townley would send her
away; while if she went forward she might be able to save her--her
mother's people would rally round, they would help them both, they would
keep them . . . keep them for ever? She would not have a penny piece of
her own. But she would work, she would, if necessary, go out to service
and work for Madge. She would manage somehow, and now she must stop
thinking or she would make herself quite ill.

She lifted Madge over the heave-gate and they found themselves in a
stubble field. The stubble was full of little wild pansies, delicately
freaked with colour. The path seemed to have disappeared; then she saw
that it followed the hedge. She carried Madge along it, for there was
not room for her to trot beside her. At the end of the hedgerow it
entered a small wood.

The footpath was evidently very little used. Like most in the district,
it suffered neglect for bus and bicycle. In the wood it was thickly
overgrown; Rose had to push her way under the low sweep of hazel and
sallow boughs, while her feet squelched in mud. Outside the wood it
seemed to have disappeared altogether.

They were in a big pasture field, dotted with sheep. The land still
sloped north-west and she could see spread out before her the valley of
the Stour, sheeted with water. The rains had over-brimmed the river, and
every now and then a great pool stretched between the meadow-hills. How
should she ever cross? The man at the cottage had spoken of a stream as
well as a river . . . she comforted herself with the thought that the
path was no doubt banked up across the marsh.

There seemed no trace of it in this field, but she thought she
distinguished a faint mark by the hedgerow and at the end was another
heave-gate. That was evidently the way. She crossed the field, and
climbed the gate into another like it, fringed by a little wood. There
seemed no way into the wood, though she saw that she must go through it
to reach the valley. She wandered up and down looking for a gap, for any
trace of the path. . . . She suddenly felt angry with the man at the
cottage. He had directed her wildly, without knowing if the path was
clear or not. He probably had not been that way for years, and
everything had grown up since, as was the way with paths that were
seldom used.

She thought of going back to the road, but that would not help her much.
The way to Lenham by road was bound to be much longer than by the
fields. She knew roughly how it ran, through Pluckley and Charing and
Great Hook--five or six miles at least. No, here she was, almost halfway
across the valley; she had much better go on--if only she could find an
entrance to this darned little wood.

She found it at last--the remains of a broken stile--and soon once more
she was pushing her way through a tangle of branches. Madge whimpered
behind her, clutching her skirt. The little girl was growing tired, but
Rose could not possibly carry her.

"Follow me, darling. That's right--hold on to Mum. I'll carry you when
we get outside."

She had completely lost the path. But the slope and size of the wood
allowed her to see the open sky beyond it, and she knew that all she had
to do was to crash on. She could at least be thankful that she had
daylight. Suppose she had found herself in this wood in darkness. . . .
She would have been completely lost like Christian. . . . She shuddered,
and as she floundered among the brambles she thought of Christian
floundering in the brambles of Staggers Wood, struggling round and round
in circles, so that in the end her clothes were torn to pieces and she
was almost naked. . . .

Madge was crying because her legs were scratched. "Mum--Mum"--and she
sat down heavily in a clear patch, refusing to go any farther and crying
with a large round mouth.

"Sweetheart--come on, or we'll never get out of here."

But Madge refused to move, and in the end Rose had to pick her up and
carry her--under her arm, as the branches were too low for her to be
carried in any other way. She resented such treatment and kicked and
struggled, giving Rose a momentary spark of feeling for Townley and Mr.
Hollinshed. "Keep quiet, darling. Let Mum carry you or else be a big
girl and walk." She found she could not possibly carry her attach case
as well as Madge, so she dropped it under a bush--she had ceased to care
about anything except getting out of the wood.

She must be nearly out--she could see the ridge of meadow-hills beyond
the river. But the wood was all marshy now, with rushes and tall grasses
sticking up out of pools of water. She trod carefully from tussock to
tussock, watching the marsh gas bubbling between. Then suddenly one leg
sank right in . . . She fell, only saving herself from sinking by
grasping a sallow branch. Madge fell too and was covered with mud.

"Oh! . . ." mourned Rose to herself . . . "Oh! . . . Oh! . . ."

She took Madge by the arm and dragged her after her by the wrist. She
could not possibly carry her any farther. The child was screaming now,
and pulling from Rose's arm like an obstinate puppy. But she did not
care--she just dragged her on, stumbling and trailing, till, quite
exhausted, she reached the hedge and scrambled over with her last
strength.

She collapsed on the turf beyond it. Her head sang and throbbed with
fatigue, her stomach felt empty and her legs weak. Oh, what a fool she
had been not to make herself a cup of tea before she started! She would
have had plenty of time--but she had been in such a state, such a panic
to get away . . . and she had made so sure of being able to buy
refreshments on the road--she had seen a picture of herself sitting with
Madge safe in the arbour of the Lilac Sunbonnet, already halfway to
London before this hour. . . . Instead of which she sat here, exhausted
and far from safe, only a few miles from home, with the greater part of
the journey still to go. Madge was yelling lustily, and the sound rolled
like a cannon ball in Rose's aching head.

"Oh, do stop crying, can't you?"

It was the first time she had spoken angrily to her, but the child took
no notice; she went on bawling, and suddenly Rose could bear no more of
it. She seized her and shook her roughly.

"Be quiet! Be quiet!"

She saw Madge's head rolling terrified and astonished between her
gripped and shaken shoulders, and suddenly came to herself with a qualm
of horror. What had she done? She had laid violent hands on her helpless
child, her darling, for whose sake she was breaking her own and her
husband's life to pieces. She burst into tears.

She wept for some minutes, with Madge held tight in her arms. She did
not know if the little girl was still crying; only the sounds of her own
grief reached her, drumming in her ears. Then suddenly she recovered
herself. There were some blackberries in the hedge behind her and she
picked a few of them for herself and Madge. The poor child must be
missing her breakfast--she should have had it an hour ago. It was
already a quarter past nine--so much for the half-hour she had been
assured it would take her to reach Lenham. She had been a fool to come
this way, and yet what else was there to do? It had seemed quite a
sensible suggestion when the man at the cottages had made it. How was
she to know that the floods were out? The man at the cottages should
have known that--he shouldn't have sent her here. And now, how was she
to get across? There was no sign whatever of a bridge or a causeway, and
in many places the outline of the river was lost in great spreads of
water. . . .

She sat miserably staring at it, trying to make up her mind what to do.
The sun shone gaily on the flood water out of a blue sky, which the
floods also bore in their mirror. Beyond the river was a long slope of
fields and a little wood--and she could see huntsmen on the fringe of
it, with hounds, evidently cubbing. The bright colours of their coats
stood out against the darkness of the wood--moving to and fro on the
edge of it, very small and clear, like a picture in a child's book. They
seemed just as unreal as a picture, for the valley had swallowed their
cries--only their movements proclaimed them alive.

She wondered where exactly she was. She had never been in this part of
the country before, but she knew she was not far from home. Then,
looking towards the west, she caught sight of Egerton church on its
tree-clad hill, not more than a couple of miles away. . . . That meant
she was less than four miles from Bladbean as the crow flies. . . . She
stood up. To be so near home made her at once uneasy. Her absence must
have been discovered by this time, and if Townley had not gone out
early--and she had no real reason to think that he had--he was probably
already making enquiries. He might have traced her to Pluckley
Throws--how he could have traced her there did not matter, for there was
always the possibility, the unlucky chance, to upset her reasoning, so
why trouble to reason? If he had traced her so far he would certainly be
told which way she had gone and would follow her. Perhaps he was
following her now. . . . It was all most improbable, but the thought of
his striding figure smote with the suggestive power of a nightmare on
her fear-ridden mind. She must get away, out of this valley, where he
could see her from any point of the hillside, into some
swiftly-travelling vehicle that he could not follow or see.

"Come, Madge, darling--we're going on."

She took her by the hand, for she did not feel equal to carrying her.
The little girl was quite good now, but she was tired and almost
certainly hungry. She had enjoyed the blackberries, but evidently she
did not consider them an adequate substitute for breakfast, for every
now and then she repeated urgently a sound which her mother recognised
as the noise she made when she was drinking her milk.

"Come on, duckie--and we'll have breakfast soon."

She walked down towards the river, or rather towards the shapeless
spread of the floods through which the river ran. There was no sign of a
bridge, and it seemed impossible that she should ever get across. If she
followed the valley westward she could be at Egerton in less than an
hour, and could go to the vicarage where she knew she would be given
breakfast and then driven home. . . . The way home was temptingly easy
to her exhaustion. But how could she go back? If she went back she would
certainly, inevitably, lose Madge; and she would rather die--yes, she
would rather they both died--than that. She could not go back; she must
follow the valley eastward to the lane from Pluckley to Lenham, and
perhaps some passing car would give her a lift to the main road. She
could still be at Primrose Hall tonight, and if she got to Primrose Hall
there was at least a chance, even if no certainty, that she could keep
Madge.

But between herself and Primrose Hall stretched the wilderness of her
own fatigue. She felt as if she could never cross it. Days of nervous
exhaustion, anxiety, and foreboding had been followed by a sleepless
night and now by this appalling struggle. Suppose she reached the lane
and could not find a car to take her to Lenham. . . . She and Madge no
longer looked a respectable pair. They were spattered with mud--one of
her legs was caked up to the knee, and Madge's pretty coat was spoiled
and her hair was all rough--she looked like a tramp's child. Rose began
to cry again at the sight of Madge.

What could she do? Once she was in the lane she might have to walk to
Lenham, and she felt that she could not walk another mile, let alone
three or four. Then, when she got there, she would have to find a bus,
and if she missed the last of the morning buses there might not be one
till the afternoon, in which case she would probably miss the last train
to Fakenham.

And the end of it all was only more uncertainty, more waiting to know
the worst. . . . She had been a fool to plan to go to Norfolk--she
should have made arrangements to disappear completely; she should have
found some corner where she could never be traced, where she could work
and keep herself and her child. . . . But even in such hiding she could
still be found. She had seen in the paper cases of missing people being
traced after weeks, or even after months . . . and Madge being different
from other children would make it all the easier for them both to be
recognized. . . . No, there was nowhere in this world where she and
Madge could be absolutely safe.

They had come down to the water's edge, and the huntsmen beyond the
floods were close enough for her to hear their cries as they moved up
and down against the wood. She wondered if the waters could possibly be
shallow enough for her to wade across them--no, they could not, for
there was the river lost in them somewhere, and the man had also spoken
of a stream . . . If she attempted to wade across both she and Madge
would certainly be drowned, and when their bodies were found Townley
would probably say just what she had said of Christian--"How could she
have lost her way?--why didn't she hire a car? How could I think
that . . ."

Perhaps this was a judgment on her for what she had done to Christian.
. . . Here she was wandering, as Christian had wandered, only a few
miles from home--but lost, irretrievably lost and hopeless and
frightened and tired. . . . Only judgment could account for her plight,
for her folly. . . . What a fool she had been to think she could escape!
Even if her plans had worked smoothly she would still have been undone.
Even if she had arrived at Fakenham by the early train, neat and tidy,
with food in her stomach and money in her purse, it would still have
been all for nothing. Townley would get Madge, no matter where she took
her, no matter where she tried to hide her. There was only one place
where they would both be safe, and that was in the flooded river. She
had better drown herself and Madge right away. Then and then only they
could not be parted.

She began to sob hoarsely with self-pity.

"Oh, Madge, Madge, darling--what shall I do? I'm so tired--I'm done. I
can't go any farther."

She clasped the child to her heart, so far lost in grief that she
searched her empty face for tenderness. Surely even Madge must know that
her mother was unhappy and wish to comfort her. But there was no
response--only, at last, a look of fear as the sobs grew louder. Rose
checked herself with a desperate effort. She had done and suffered all
this for Madge's sake--to preserve her right to natural happiness; and
here she was herself destroying that happiness, showing her both grief
and violence. What hope had the poor child if her mother failed her?

"It's all right, darling--don't be frightened. It's all right. Look,
Mum's smiling."

She stood up and took her hand. For Madge's sake she must end all this;
she must put them both beyond the reach of such misery--into the only
safety that there was. The water lay spread before her in a great lake,
and as she came to the edge of it, she saw the young grass under it like
weed. It was very shallow--too shallow to drown in; but there was a
river further on. . . .

"Come along, duckie. Mum is going to carry you. We're going to see
Granny."

She stooped and picked her up. The little girl was tired. She was glad
to be carried, and her tousled head fell against Rose's shoulder. O God
forgive me for what I'm going to do!

She put first one foot, then the other, into the lapping waters. They
struck cold--she could feel the coldness of them in her knees, though
they reached scarcely above her ankles. As she moved slowly forward she
suddenly saw a bridge about fifty yards away to the right, only just
awash. If she could wade as far she would be able to cross the river and
reach the opposite slope; but she no longer cared about that--the bridge
was no longer any use to her, except to show her where the river was,
where they could drown quickly.

The water rose suddenly to her knees. She had a moment of panic, and
told herself that she was only wading to the bridge . . . but a few
yards further on she knew that she had not changed her purpose. She had
given up the struggle which was too hard in its waging, too uncertain in
its results. She was plunging to rest and safety. She wished that she
could reach them quicker, but the water dragged at her skirts and she
found it difficult to go forward . . . on and on . . . she felt giddy
with the sunlight on the water--she seemed to have lost the world
already, to be struggling through fallen skies . . .

Then suddenly the earth was gone, and water was everywhere--beneath her
and above her as well as all around . . . she was struggling and choking
in darkness and Madge was clinging to her, pulling her down . . . then
Madge was lost and she seemed to shoot upwards into light and air. She
dragged the air somehow into her bursting lungs, and a scream rang out
which she knew rather than felt to be her own--she saw her hand and arm
raised high above her head. . . . Then she was lost again, choking and
struggling in the dark--she had not thought that drowning was like this.
. . . She had not thought it would last so long. . . . Oh, would she
never die? But she did not want to die. Help! Help! She was up again,
clutching at the stuffless air . . . and now she did not know where she
was, for there was a great roaring in her ears and the world was black
and she was lost in nothing.



                            _Chapter Eight_

The faintness of dawn against the window, the suck and gurgle of
starlings in the freshening air . . . the roughness of blankets against
her face, a sense of flatness and weakness in her body, just coming out
of sleep . . . I have suffered many things in a dream. . .

Then suddenly an unknown voice said: "That's better--she looks as if she
was coming round."

She opened her eyes.

Oh! Oh! Was she still asleep, still dreaming that dreadful dream? She
did not know this room, which was a dark, untidy, crowded cottage room.
People she did not know were stooping over her. She saw a large, stout
woman, and two men in their shirt sleeves. There was some one, too,
behind her, but she felt too weak to lift her head. Then, realizing her
body last of all, she knew that she was naked, wrapped in blankets in
front of a fire heaped high in a duck's-nest stove.

Surely she was still in her dream . . . but she could not bear any more
of it--she had had enough. She must wake up. She struggled into a
sitting posture.

Kind hands immediately pushed her back.

"Lie still, dear--don't strain yourself."

Then some one put a flask to her lips--she felt the hot taste of brandy,
and in a moment the blood had coursed back to her brain, bringing
dreadful enlightenment. She was not asleep. She was awake. It had really
happened.

She looked desperately round her.

"My little girl . . ."

Nobody said anything for a moment, then a woman's voice--a clipped,
educated voice--spoke behind her:

"She's quite all right. You mustn't worry about her now."

"But where is she?"

"Quite close. You needn't worry."

But Rose knew that Madge was dead. She burst into tears. The stout woman
patted her shoulder:

"There, there, dearie--don't take on. I'll get you a cup of tea in a
minute."

But grief had the better of Rose.

"Madge! Madge! My poor little Madge. Oh, why didn't you let us die
together?"

She knew now that one or some of these people must have pulled her out
of the water and had at the same time failed to rescue Madge. She felt
no gratitude, only desolation, for how was she to live without her
child? "Why wouldn't you let us die?" she sobbed.

"My dear soul," said the educated woman's voice, "I shouldn't talk now."

She came forward and Rose saw that she was in riding-dress--evidently
one of the followers of the hunt. She knew something about nursing, too,
for she felt her pulse in quite a professional manner.

"She might move into a chair now," she said. "She'd be more comfortable
if she sat up to drink her tea."

So Rose, still wrapped in blankets, was hoisted up into a big,
dilapidated armchair and given a cup of tea. If only she had had it four
or five hours earlier she might not have been where she was now; but for
the moment regret was lost in gratitude--she drank it slowly in great
sighing gulps.

She was now enough revived to take in all that was going on round her.
There were four people in the room besides herself--the hunting-woman,
the stout woman--who was evidently the mistress of the cottage--and the
two shirt-sleeved men, who looked like farm labourers. While she was
looking at them the door opened and another man came in.

"Ah, that's right, Mr. Chantler," said the stout woman--"I hope you
don't find those trousers too much of a squeeze."

"They're a bit on the tight side. Do they look it?"

"Oh, not too bad . . ." then she turned to Rose--"that's Bill Chantler,
who pulled you out of the water."

"Thank you very much," said Rose, miserably, and began to cry again.

"Poor soul, she's feeling weak. You drink your tea, dear, and I'll get
you another cup."

"And perhaps you could let her have some clothes, too," said the
horsewoman--"just to wear till her own are dry."

"Reckon I could, though she'd go twice into anything of mine. Still, as
you say, it's only till she can put on her own."

She went out of the room, and Rose asked Bill Chantler: "Did you--did
you see my little girl?"

"'at that, I didn't, mum. I got hold of you and I hadn't time to think
of no one else. By the time I had you out I saw that the huntsman and
the two Spellman boys had gone in after her, so I carried you up here."

"Then is she still in the water?" She asked the question with a strange,
flat calm.

"I dunno, mum. They seemed to have difficulty in finding her."

Rose said nothing. She had suddenly and completely lost the wish to cry.
She could feel her limbs glowing and warm again, almost too hot among
the blankets, and a sudden crazy relief seized her that she had not got
to walk to Lenham and find a bus. That nightmare was over, and for a
moment this new one felt almost slight in comparison.

There was a movement outside the cottage, a bicycle sliding to a
standstill.

"That must be P. C. Gardner," said one of the shirt-sleeved men. . . .
"Come in," as a knock sounded on the door.

A young, red-faced policeman came in. He looked round him in a slow,
excited way.

"Good-morning"--he seemed to know everybody there.

The hunting-lady came forward.

"Don't you think you'd all better go into the next room till we've put
on some clothes? It's a bit awkward sitting in blankets."

They all moved willingly enough into the cottage parlour, where Rose
could hear their voices--released from the weight of her presence--all
roaring softly together. Meanwhile the hunting-lady called upstairs:

"The policeman's here, Mrs. Jarman. Hadn't you better come down?"

"I'm coming as soon as I can find a pair of stockings without holes in
them," came from a surprisingly short distance away.

"That doesn't really matter, as Mrs.--er--this lady will soon be able to
wear her own. We'd better be as quick as possible, for I'm afraid I
shall have to be getting back to Surrenden--and I expect you'd like to
have me with you while the policeman questions you?" she added to Rose.

"Yes, thank you," said Rose, politely, but without much enthusiasm. The
hunting-lady was being very kind, but she reminded her too much of Mrs.
Hollinshed for her to feel really at ease with her. Besides, what
difference did it make to her who was with her?

Mrs. Jarman came down with her old best dress and some rather ragged
underclothes; and she and the hunting-lady, whose name Rose discovered
to be Mrs. Willoughby, helped her to dress herself. Then the policeman
was called in.

"You others had best stay back there," he said.

"You don't mind me being in the room, do you?" said Mrs. Willoughby.

"Oh no, ma'am--not at all."

"I'll go down and see what they're doing," said Mrs. Jarman,
mysteriously, and went out of the cottage door.

The policeman sat down and pulled a notebook and pencil out of his
pocket.

"Your name, please?"

"Rose Deeprose."

She saw him write "Rose Deeprose" in a large, round, childish hand.

"Mrs. Deeprose, I take it."

"That's right."

"And where do you live?"

"Bladbean Farm, near Charing Heath."

"I think I know where that is," said Mrs. Willoughby, but evidently five
miles was farther from home than Rose would have thought possible.

"And do you remember how you came to get into the water?"

"Yes. I walked in."

"You walked in?"

"Yes. I wanted to drown us both."

Rose could feel the start Mrs. Willoughby gave, though she was sitting
behind her. The policeman's pencil hovered over his notebook while he
stared at her with his mouth a little open. Mrs. Willoughby spoke first.

"Be careful what you say. And, Constable, oughtn't you to caution her?"

"That was just what I was thinking of. Remember that anything you say
may be used in evidence," he added to Rose.

She began to wonder at this new turn the nightmare had taken; not that
she minded very much what happened next. Of course, suicide was a
crime--you could be sent to prison for attempting suicide. There had
once been a woman in Shadoxhurst who had gone to prison for three
months. Well, what did it matter where she went, now that Madge was
dead?

"Oh," she cried out, "I wish they'd let me die. I don't want to live
without my little girl."

"Why did you want to--" began Mrs. Willoughby, then broke off, looking
at the policeman.

"I think she'd better come with me to the station and I'll take a
statement from her," he said. "Is the child dead?"

"She's still in the water. They haven't been able to find her."

"Then I reckon she's drowned. Did you get into the river?"

"I--I don't know. I was making for the river through the overflow, but I
seemed to fall into deep water before I came to it."

"You must have got into the stream--there's a stream as well as a river
down there. You'd better come along of me and I'll take a full statement
from you."

"Is Mrs. Deeprose able to walk as far as the station? She's had a great
shock--been wet through and nearly drowned . . . it was quite ten
minutes before we could revive her. Doctor MacIntyre may be here any
moment--I sent for him at once--and he'll come in his car, so that he
can drive her anywhere you like."

"Very good, ma'am, or I can get a car down from the village."

"The doctor can't be long now--in fact, I think I hear him."

A car was stopping at the door. Mrs. Willoughby went at once to open it.
Rose noticed that she rode side-saddle, and wore an apron skirt over
high, mud-splashed boots. "Oh, here you are, Doctor----"

The doctor came in, a little countrified man. He examined a Rose, felt
her pulse, said that she seemed all right now but that the effects of
immersion might appear later, so that she must take great care of
herself. She had better go straight home to bed.

"I'm afraid that P. C. Gardner wants to take her to the station first."

"Why's that?"

"I must question her, sir, and take a statement."

"Oh--attempted suicide, is it? Well, I suppose she can be bailed out as
soon as you've done with her?"

"I dunno about that. You see, there's a child still in the water."

The doctor looked grave.

"Has anyone let your people know?" he asked Rose. "Where do you come
from?"

"Near Charing Heath; but I don't want anyone to know."

"Nonsense! Your people--your husband--must be told. You're in a fix."

"I don't care. I don't care what happens to me. But I couldn't bear--"
The thought of Townley being sent for to bail her out was too dreadful
to contemplate.

"Look here, Doctor," said Mrs. Willoughby--"we were wondering if you'd
be so kind as to run her up to the station, to save her walking. Then
I'll get back to Surrenden and see what can be done about communicating
with her people."

"The police ull let 'em know, ma'am," said P. C. Gardner--"We'll get on
to them through the constable at Charing Heath."

"Oh, please!" . . . Rose had begun another entreaty. Then she realized
that whatever happened, that however angry Townley was, he could now do
nothing to hurt Madge; and a deep overpowering relief surged into her
heart. Is it well with the child?--it is well.


So here she was in Lenham. After all her agony and striving she had
reached it at last, though not in the way she had expected. There was
now no need to send a telegram or make inquiries about buses. Again she
felt the relief of inactivity--a queer, blessed relief she had never
known before. For the first time in her life she was glad that she could
do nothing, that there was nothing she could do.

The doctor had run her up to the village in his car, and had then gone
back to see what was happening down at the river. The police station had
shown itself unexpectedly homely, with the policeman's wife standing in
the doorway and telling them dinner was just ready.

"Maybe you'd be glad of a bite," said the constable. "I reckon you're
hungry."

"No, thank you. I don't feel at all hungry."

"Oh, come, it'll do you good to eat something. What is it today,
Missus?"

"Rabbit pie."

"That's prime. The missus makes a splendid rabbit pie. You try some."

Rose was touched by his kindness, but she was past responding to it. Two
hours ago she had been hungry enough, but now, on the contrary, she felt
sick, and thought she would vomit if she had so much as to look at food.
She persisted in her refusal, and succeeded in offending him.

"Very well--please yourself; and if you'll step into my office, we'll
get our business done."

"Oh, won't you have your dinner first? Don't let me stop you."

"No--no. You come along with me."

She saw that he had put on an official manner and began to feel uneasy.
She wondered what would be done to her, if Townley would come to Lenham,
and when they would find Madge.

"Are you still looking for my little girl?"

"I guess they are--unless they've found her."

"They'll let us know when they do, I suppose?"

"Oh yes."

"Because, I--I'd like to see her."

"We'll think of that when the time comes. Now would you like to make a
statement to me about what happened?"

She nodded silently. He took out his notebook and pencil.


Two hours later she was in a whitewashed cell, lying on a very hard bed,
warmly wrapped in rugs. The policeman had told her to rest there while
he did some telephoning. Rose had wondered vaguely what would happen
next. Was he telephoning for Townley to come and fetch her home on bail?
Had she, in fact, been arrested? He had not charged her with anything,
and the cell door was unlocked, but she could not go out without passing
through his office. She did not much care what happened now, even if
Townley came. All she wanted was to rest and not to think of Madge.

Both wishes were more difficult to realize than she had hoped. Directly
she closed her eyes she seemed to see the morning's scene flitting
before them--the valley of the Stour, and the spread waters, and the
little figures of the huntsmen moving to and fro against the wood . . .
then she would feel water swirling round her, closing over her, and
start up choking and terrified. This happened many times, until the cell
was grey with dusk. Then at last she saw the door opening and the
constable standing just outside.

"You come along with me."

She slid out of her rugs.

"They've found your little girl," he said.

She opened her mouth, but could say nothing.

"Please come along with me."

She followed him into the office, where the lights were on. Two other
policemen sat there, superior officers, she sup supposed. She wondered
if Madge's body had been brought to the police station.

"Can I see her?" she asked.

"See who?"

"Madge--my little girl."

"Not now. But tomorrow we may get permission for you to see her."

It was one of the other two officers who had spoken. She thought that
Gardner looked both awkward and pompous; he had quite lost his friendly
manner. Evidently her refusal to eat his missus's rabbit pie had been
unforgivable.

"Are you taking her at once?" he said.

"When I've charged her."

Then he turned to Rose. "I charge you," he said, "that on the morning of
Wednesday, August the twenty-ninth, you attempted to take your life by
drowning and also on that day did murder Margaret Harriet Deeprose by
drowning her in the River Stour at Lenham. And I caution you that
anything you say may be used in evidence."

"Murder!" cried Rose. "But I never murdered her. I loved her more than
anyone on earth."

She began to sob hoarsely, without tears. She had never thought of
this--this was dreadful, terrible beyond imagination--that she should be
proclaimed her darling's murderer. "I only wanted to save her--to spare
her--my sweet!--my love!" . . . Her sobs rose on a high shriek--the
whole of her now was broken. She cried, she screamed, she tore open her
blouse; it was some time before she could be quieted.



                             _Chapter Nine_

The next morning Rose was brought before the magistrates at Ashford. She
had spent the night at the police station there. A doctor had seen her
and given her a sleeping-draught, so she had slept that night, after
all, and today she felt rather stupid and drowsy. She sat in a kind of
dream between a policeman and the matron who had looked after her at the
police station, facing two old gentlemen whom she had never seen before
and one whom she had often seen at markets, but whose name she had at
the moment forgotten--she thought he lived at some big place outside
Ashford. There was a woman, too, plainly but expensively dressed, and
Rose at once felt for her that distrustful antagonism she felt for Mrs.
Hollinshed. She did not know her and had no reason to think ill of her,
but in her broken mind every woman of the upper middle classes was Mrs.
Hollinshed.

Before the court opened she had had an interview with a certain Mr.
Cole, an Ashford solicitor who had transacted many small matters for her
father in the way of buying and selling. She had been surprised when she
was told he had come to see her.

"Your father asked me to look after you," he said. "This isn't exactly
in my line of business, and if you--if you're remanded we'd better look
out for some one else. But I'll do the best I can for you now."

"Did you say my father sent you?"

"Yes, he rang me up last night. I think he means to be in court today.
You'd like a word with him, I expect."

Rose gulped. She felt suddenly on the verge of tears again. In all her
trouble and misery she had never once thought of her father, but he had
thought of her and was doing the best he could for her. And what about
Townley? What had he done? Would he be in court today? She looked for
him from her high place in the dock, but he was not there. Her father
was sitting beside Mr. Cole at the solicitors' table. He turned round
and looked at her as she came in. He tried to smile, but his smile
twisted away.

Mr. Cole had told her that she was to leave everything to him, and say
nothing except "Not Guilty" when she was asked to plead. The proceedings
surprised her with their extreme shortness--everything was over in a few
minutes, the only witness being P. C. Gardner, who still wore his
official manner of oafish pomposity and seemed to be reciting what he
had to say. Then Rose found herself remanded for a week.

She was told that after dinner she would be driven to London, as there
was no local prison for women, and female prisoners on remand were
always sent to a large prison in the south-eastern suburbs of London.
But before she went she was to see her father. Mr. Cole had got
permission from the magistrates.

She wondered if she would be allowed to see him alone; she hoped so, but
was not surprised to find that it was not to be the case. A policeman
was in the room the whole time, making them feel constrained and
awkward.

"Well, my dear," he said to her, "I'm sorry to see you in such trouble.
But I'm sure it will come right in the end."

"It can't," said Rose--"without Madge."

She had been allowed to see Madge for a moment in the police mortuary,
but she had immediately turned her eyes away. The waxen child under the
sheet was not her little girl. She was sorry now that she had asked to
see her.

"Yes, poor little soul," said her father. He looked at her with puzzled
eyes that asked her a dozen questions. But with his mouth he would ask
her nothing, in case she should be embarrassed or compromised. It was
she who asked him:

"Father, what about Townley? Have you seen him?"

"No--he rang me up."

"He rang you up and told you what had happened to me?"

"Yes."

"But he isn't here. Is he coming?"

"Well--er--no; not just yet, anyhow. He's--the truth is he's very much
upset . . . but he's going to stand by you. He told me I could bank on
him for the defence----"

"The defence?"

"Yes--lawyers and barristers to defend you. I could think of no one but
old Cole, but he said this wasn't exactly in his line and he's putting
me on to some one really good in London."

"I--I don't want Townley to ruin himself defending me."

"Oh, he won't do that. Besides, he's quite well off. I'm going to help a
little, but I'm afraid I can't do much--Harlakenden isn't doing as well
as Bladbean."

"I don't want either of you to spend your money on me."

"Oh, come, my dear--we like to feel we're doing something. And you must
have a good man to defend you--it's most important, Cole says."

They were silent for an awkward moment. Both wanted to say many things,
but were afraid of saying them. Then her father asked----

"How are you, Rose? I hope you don't feel any bad effects from--from
yesterday."

"I'm all right. The doctor gave me a sleeping-draught last night, and
the matron was very kind."

"They tell me you'll be very well looked after where you're going--they
say you'll probably be put in hospital for a while. You mustn't think
you're going to prison, for you'll be on remand; and that isn't at all
the same thing--is it?" with an appealing glance at the policeman.

"Not at all. Quite different," said the policeman, heartily.

"I don't worry about that," said Rose, and she spoke the truth, for that
side of the nightmare had scarcely reached her yet. "Tell me, Father,
how are you?"

"Oh, I'm pretty fair."

"And Ronnie?"

"Oh, he's fine."

Another awkward silence.

"What about clothes and things for you?" he asked at last. "You'd like
to have some sent to you."

She was no longer wearing Mrs. Jarman's clothes, but her own, which had
been roughly dried. She realized for the first time, as she followed his
glance, that she must look a sight.

"Shan't I be wearing prison uniform?"

"Oh dear, no!"

"Then if you could ask Ivy to send my coat and skirt, and my best
hat--and my night things. . . . She'll know what to put in. But please
don't bother Townley."

"No, I'll see that Ivy does it."

Another gaping silence.

"Time's pretty nearly up now," said the policeman.

They were both relieved; and yet Rose did not want her father to go. She
suddenly felt a very little girl, being left alone among strangers.

"When shall I see you again?"

"I'll be here next week, and if--if for any reason it still goes on,
I'll run up and see you in London. But cheer up, my dear; I'm sure it's
going to be all right."

He kissed her, and she felt a queer chokiness in her throat and breast.
It was not till she was in the police car, driving towards London, that
she remembered she had never thanked him.

The South eastern prison for women was not designed, either within or
without, to please the eye. Seen from the outside it was an enormous
rock of dirty brick, its walls blind to the street and given the sight
only of its own grim courts; inside it suggested an unlimited nightmare
enlargement of a station lavatory--whitewash reaching down from high
ceilings to dark green dadoes, scrubbed woodwork and a haunting smell
that no amount of cleanliness or disinfectant could exorcise completely.

To Rose's country experience it was something quite new and dreadful.
The police stations at Lenham and at Ashford had been both--in spite of
certain strangenesses--linked in definite ways with the things she knew.
But this place was in a different world. The air that blew through
it--for iron bars do not keep out the air even if they do most
emphatically make a cage--was not fresh air, but flat and stale, already
breathed by the foul giant, whose hydra-throats of chimneys belched
against the sky all round the building. The high ceilings, the stone
floors, all threw back echoes, and Rose was not used to echoes, except
such as came to her from the meadow hills. As she entered the place she
felt a kind of horror steal over her, and she wondered if she would have
to stay there long.

She was slowly waking out of the trance into which shock and grief and
drugs had plunged her, and a horrifying awareness of her position grew
during the formalities of her admittance. She was interviewed first by
the lady superintendent--a kind, quiet woman, who, being in uniform, did
not remind her of Mrs. Hollinshed--and then by the prison doctor, who
ordered her into the hospital on a special diet.

She had been prepared for this, and the idea of hospital was reassuring.
She had been in one before, for her operation, and she had often visited
her friends in hospital. She associated a hospital ward with shining
floors and massing flowers, and little groups of people chatting softly
round white beds, where more flowers--homely, individual gifts--stood in
glasses and pots on the patient's bed tray. She naturally did not expect
the prison hospital to be quite so friendly and comfortable, and no
doubt it was unreasonable of her to be depressed by the double row of
extremely narrow beds, some with women lying in them, some with women
sitting on them--women on remand like herself, who wore their own
clothes, and, judging by appearances, had access, licit or illicit, to
their vanity-bags.

They were talking to each other in a desultory way, some were sewing,
and one was reading; one lay quite still in her bed without moving and
with a queer yellow look about her face. They stared at Rose as she came
in, and she felt herself suddenly afraid and shy. She was not used to
being with other women like this, and these women must be--some of them
at least--criminals. The thought came to her with a stab of uneasiness,
almost of disgust. Then suddenly she began to cry.

"There, there, cheer up," and the wardress who had brought her in patted
her kindly on the shoulder--"things are never as bad as they seem. You
get into bed and you shall have a nice cup of tea."

Tea was evidently not one of the things one had to go without in prison.
Rose, who had had an idea that prisoners lived on gruel and cocoa, drank
it gratefully, and so did the other women in the ward, at least three
times a day, though one or two occasionally said that they could do with
a drop of something stronger. These women spoke to her; they asked her
what she was in for, and said "Poor dear" when she told them. But she
did not talk to them more than she could help, for she was far more
afraid of them than of the wardresses. To her country imagination
prisoners were dangerous and unpleasant creatures, and she felt nervous
whenever the nurse went out and left her alone with them. Most of these
women were quite different from the women she was used to--she was used
to respectable, well-spoken women like the wardresses. Why, there was
actually a gipsy in here.

The evening dragged on through an early dusk into the light of six
unshaded electric bulbs. Everybody had to be in bed and settled for the
night by seven o'clock, which would have seemed ridiculous if she had
not felt so tired. As things were she fell asleep at once, without
seeing the little figures of horsemen that had moved before her eyes the
night before. But she woke up in an hour, feeling frightened, as if she
were in some sudden danger; she was not used to sleeping with a light in
the room, and a light was always kept burning here.

After that she tried in vain to settle herself. Her bed felt hard, and
though she knew it was clean she had all a country woman's fear of
"London bugs." She tossed to and fro, turning her hot pillow, and a
terrible homesickness came to her for her bed at Bladbean and her cool
dark bedroom. Outside the window she could hear the distant sound of
traffic and the hooting of cars . . . at home she had heard nothing but
the sighing of trees or the hiss of rain or the long, plaintive hoot of
an owl in Bladbean Wood. When would she be back in those quiet, dark
nights? . . . and suddenly, lying there, she realized--never. She had
committed a crime for which the punishment is death, and though that
extreme punishment might be spared her, it would be only through its
commutation to something that now appeared to her much worse, her
imprisonment for life or for so many years that it was as bad as
life. . . .

Up till this moment she had been too tired, too doped, too
grief-stricken to realize what with many women would have been the first
appalling apprehension. But now it smote her fully and drove her almost
out of her mind. She felt as if she had stopped breathing, and sat up in
bed with gasping screams.

The wardress came hurrying towards her, and she saw heads lifted
protestingly from their pillows. But she could not stop screaming; in
fact her screams grew louder and louder till they seemed to ring from
somewhere above her head, battering her ears.

"Let me go! I can't stay here! Let me go! Let me go!"

She tried to get out of bed, but the wardress held her down. She pressed
a bell and soon another wardress came in, and then the doctor.

"There, there, it'll be all right--lie down. Drink this and go to
sleep."

Voices murmured over her; a glass rapped against her teeth, and as she
shrieked something went down her throat, nearly choking her.

"Mother!" she cried--"Oh, Mother! Mother!"

How many years was it since she had uttered that cry?--and yet it was
quite a common one in the South-eastern prison. There it was not unusual
for twenty or thirty years to be suddenly washed away and women who were
mothers themselves to cry out on the full tide of childhood's
grief--Mother! Mother! . . .

"Fallada! Fallada!--If your mother saw you now her heart would break."


The next day she felt calm and stupid, as she always did after drugs.
But she was awake enough to be a little ashamed of herself. She had
disturbed people and made a scene; she was surprised that no one seemed
angry with her. She lay in bed till about twelve o'clock, when she was
told she could get up and dress herself, for her solicitor was coming to
see her in the afternoon.

Her solicitor? Was that Mr. Cole, or the better man he had promised to
find for her? For the first time she felt urgent about her defence. And
yet she did not want Townley and her father to ruin themselves over it;
because she did not see how any defence, even by the cleverest lawyer in
the world, could save her. She had actually told people in so many words
that she had meant to drown herself and Madge, and she had made and
signed a statement to that effect. Of course she had not known that she
was committing murder, but she did not suppose that would make any
difference. She had been a fool--she had hopelessly given herself away.
But then she had never thought . . .

She was taken downstairs into a big room barely furnished with a table
and a few chairs. Here an unknown man was waiting--a very
different-looking solicitor from Mr. Cole, for he wore striped trousers
and a morning coat, and had a dark unusual face that she puzzled over
for some time before--helped by the fact that his name was
Blumenfeld--she came to the conclusion that he must be a Jew.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Deeprose."

"Good afternoon."

To her great relief she found that she was to be allowed to talk to him
alone. There was a glass panel in the door, and the wardress looked
through it at intervals, but she could not hear anything.

"Now, Mrs. Deeprose, I want you to tell me everything that happened on
Wednesday, and everything you can think of that led up to what happened
then."

With many women this would have meant the bursting of the flood gates,
but from Rose came only the most hesitating trickle . . . he soon found
that he would get nothing from her unless he helped her with questions,
suggestions. . . . She sat before him on the other side of the table,
her handkerchief crushed into a ball between her nervously moving hands.
He noticed that they were a housewife's hands, working hands and yet not
work-worn; they were sunburnt, but he did not think that they had done
much work out-of-doors. Her face, too, was sunburnt, but so ravaged with
grief and exhaustion that the sunburn seemed as startling and
incongruous as the make-up with which some of his clients tried to
restore their stricken faces.

He carefully extracted from her what he felt was the last drop of
information, then he said:

"Is that all?" She nodded. "You're sure you're keeping back nothing from
me?"

"Certain."

He leaned back as far as he could in his hard, upright chair and put his
finger tips together.

"Now I'm going to tell you what happened Wednesday."

She looked a little surprised, but settled herself to listen politely.

"You had a dear little girl, Mrs. Deeprose, whom you loved more than
anyone in the world. The fact that she was not like other children--that
she was what outsiders might call feeble-minded--made no difference to
you at all; on the contrary, it made you love her more than ever. Now
you have been told by a doctor that there was no reason why your little
girl should not be as happy as any other--that, in fact, she always
would be happy while she was with you."

Rose's eyes were swimming now--she was touched by the understanding of
this stranger.

"So you devoted your life to her. Your whole time was spent in caring
for her and making her happy. But, unfortunately, your husband didn't
see eye to eye with you. He hadn't your feelings for the child--in fact,
he rather disliked her. He was annoyed because he thought she disturbed
his summer visitors, and also he thought that his wife was giving her
too much of her time and affection; he was jealous----"

"Oh no, I don't think he was jealous--" She wondered if she ought to
tell him that Townley had stopped loving her long ago.

"But I feel sure he was jealous, and what more natural than jealousy
when a man sees his wife devote all her time to a child he doesn't
particularly care for? He wanted to get rid of Madge, and he decided
that she must go into an institution. He was actually making
preparations for her to do so. . . . But you, of course, wouldn't hear
of such a thing and you decided to take her away to relations of yours
who you knew, who in fact had told you--that they would welcome you
both. You knew, of course, too, that your husband had no power to take
the child from you or put her in a home without your consent---"

"Oh, but I didn't know that!" cried Rose. "If I'd known it I----"

"My dear Mrs. Deeprose, you read the newspapers; you can't have missed
the recent amendments to the Guardianship of Children Act. You know that
the injustice which gives an unmarried mother a better control of her
children than a lawfully married wife has been removed, and that now no
mother--married or unmarried--can have her child taken from her by the
father, unless he is willing to embark on expensive legal proceedings.
Now, please let me go on----"

Rose sat with her handkerchief crammed against her mouth. Above it her
eyes stared at him round and fixed.

"You knew all this, Mrs. Deeprose, but you knew also that life would be
much easier for you if you were no longer under your husband's roof. You
didn't want a lot of discussion and opposition first, so you left
secretly, early one morning. You had meant to travel to town by bus, but
you made a mistake, through consulting an out-of-date time-table, and
when you came to the bus stop you found that the bus had just been taken
off that route. So, following advice you were given on the spot, you
decided to cut across the fields to Lenham, where you would be sure to
pick up a bus on the arterial road. Unfortunately, owing to a remarkably
wet Summer, the River Stour is in flood and you found your way across
the valley blocked by a considerable overflow. You thought of turning
back--or of making for the Pluckley to Lenham road; then you noticed a
bridge not far away, and you decided to wade to it. The water looked
quite shallow, and you were desperately anxious to get across; there
seemed to be no risk except of wetting your clothes. But you don't know
there was a stream between you and the river, and suddenly you found
yourself in deep water. You screamed for help, but failed to keep hold
of the child, and she had disappeared when a member of the local hunt
very pluckily rescued you. You were grief-stricken when you were told of
it--you wished that you had died with her, you were at the moment sorry
that you yourself had been saved. That's your story, Mrs. Deeprose--the
story you will tell the court."

Rose still stared at him. Had it really happened like that? It hadn't,
she knew, but he had made it seem as if it had. She found it quite
difficult to believe her own memories.

"The whole thing was an accident," he summarised, firmly--"of course it
was an accident."

"But," she faltered--"I meant to drown us both--there seemed nothing I
could do to save her."

"But you were doing everything to save her. You were taking her to
relations where she would have been perfectly safe."

"Oh, if I'd only known that--" She began to weep.

"You did know it."

For a time he let her cry, then he said, quietly----

"Of course there's another interpretation of your actions or you
wouldn't be here, but it's my business to convince the court that that
interpretation is wrong; and it's your duty, Mrs. Deeprose, to help me.
Both your husband and your father are making every effort, every
sacrifice, to defend you, and I'm sure you aren't going to let them
down."

"I don't want them to waste their money on me."

"Come, come . . . they won't consider it wasted if they get you back.
And you yourself, Mrs. Deeprose, I take it you don't want to
be--er--condemned to death?"

She shuddered deeply. His words--the way he said them--had given her a
new fear of death; and that very fear brought back into her mind a
memory that seemed to make escape hopeless.

"But--how can I--can you tell that story--when I told the policeman
quite a different one, and signed it, too?"

He puffed away this insuperable obstacle as if it had been thistledown.

"You weren't yourself when you made that statement--you'd only just been
picked out of the water. You didn't know what you were saying. And the
circumstances in which it was taken were most improper. I have little
doubt but that I shall be able to prevent it being put in as evidence."

Rose stared at him in bewilderment. He was so confident, so assured,
that for a moment she felt already acquitted. Then fresh doubts assailed
her, and strange scruples.

"But-" she began again.


But the result of it all was that at the resumed hearing before the
Ashford magistrates, Mr. Blumenfeld, looking still more unlike Mr. Cole
when he sat beside him at the solicitors' table, cross-examined all the
witnesses with a view to showing that everything that had been done or
said by the accused pointed to accident more clearly than to suicide. He
also succeeded in preventing the statement she had made at Lenham police
station being put in as evidence at this stage of the proceedings--"this
poor woman, exhausted, only half-revived from drowning, overwhelmed with
grief at the loss of her child, reeling under shock after shock . . ."
Rose, looking back at herself through his words, had a moment of amazed
pity, which the Bench evidently shared, though they committed her for
trial at Maidstone Assizes.

This, Mr. Blumenfeld assured her, was just as it should be; and the fact
that the Assizes were not till the middle of October gave them all the
time they wanted to prepare the defence. Rose dreaded the thought of
another six weeks in prison, but again he talked until she saw those six
weeks almost as a rest-cure.

"You'll be a different woman at the end of them," he assured her.

Then she asked him, "Will my husband have to give evidence at the
trial?"

She had been infinitely relieved not to see him at Ashford police court.
He had, as she knew, attended the coroner's inquest on little Madge, and
that had been one of her reasons for refusing to avail herself of her
right to be present--the thought of facing Townley or even seeing him
was still more than she could bear.

"The law cannot compel a husband to give evidence at his wife's trial,
but I've no doubt that he'll be willing to help us."

"You mean that he'll give evidence for the defence?"

"Of course. Surely you didn't think that he'd give evidence against
you?"

Rose did not really know what she had thought. She blushed and hung her
head.



                              _Chapter Ten_

In the middle days of October, Rose Deeprose came back to the
red-and-golden country that she had left in its last summer green.
Driving down almost luxuriously in a fast car, between two wardresses,
she watched the passing of the great arterial road, to reach which had
once been the motive-power of every thought of her mind, every breath of
her body. It was queer and rather terrible to recognize the familiar
outskirts of Maidstone on such an occasion. Familiar turnings, familiar
houses, familiar shops, familiar names all seemed to greet her with a
new and dreadful question. As they drove into the town she leaned back
in her seat and would not look.

Outside the Moot Hall was a huge crowd of people; she could hear them
moving and talking, and the car had to slow down because of them.
Immediately the wardresses pulled down the blinds, but it was not till
later that Rose understood that these people had come to look at her.
Murder trials had been so much outside her normal interests that it had
never occurred to her to think of herself as a popular spectacle, though
of course she had expected a certain amount of local curiosity, and the
attendance of her neighbours. The crowds, the pressmen, the columns in
the newspapers were about the only horrors that her imagination had not
pictured during the last six weeks.

As it happened, her case had not attracted much public interest in its
earlier stages. There was nothing particularly sensational about it--as
a newspaper reader means sensation. Women who make a bungle of killing
themselves and their children are not, properly speaking, murderers at
all in public opinion. It is true that if convicted they are sentenced
to death, but everyone knows that the sentence will not be carried out,
and for that reason their trial lacks drama and no newspaper will expect
to increase its circulation by briefing famous counsel for their
defence. The crowds that came to see Rose Deeprose tried today had been
largely drawn by the knowledge that she was to be defended by Sir George
Hallows, who had recently figured in two sensational murder trials. This
meant that the situation could not be as commonplace and undramatic as
had at first been supposed--and even if it were, Sir George would not
suffer it to remain so.

He had not been briefed out of the modest sum which represented the
sacrifices of Townley and Wally Deeprose. His appearance, of which Rose
did not wholly appreciate the significance, was due to causes that she
fully and deeply appreciated.

Some weeks ago, shortly after her return to the South Eastern prison,
"remanded to the Assizes," she had been told that she had a visitor and
on entering the room where interviews took place was astonished to find
Mrs. Hollinshed. At first she was shocked--no other word could describe
the feeling that made her at once motionless and speechless. Mrs.
Hollinshed stood up. She looked nearly as awkward as Rose, and for a
moment her face worked. Then she recovered and forced out a few
stumbling words. . . . "My dear . . . I'm sorry . . . I've come with a
message."

Rose moved to a chair and sat down. Her first shock had been succeeded
by the fear and foreboding which Mrs. Hollinshed's presence invariably
stirred up and which her words seemed to make, for once, reasonable. And
yet what power had Mrs. Hollinshed to hurt her now? Madge was beyond
reach of the uttermost she could do--safe on the far shores of death.
The mother lifted her head, feeling strangely immune and superior--a
beggar who need fear no thief.

But Mrs. Hollinshed had not come to give her any sort of bad news. Her
words "I'm sorry" had been the spontaneous tribute of her heart to
Rose's adversity. Her message was a message of hope--in fact, of love.

"You remember that Mr. Lennox who stayed with us one year?"

"Oh yes . . ."

"Well, he's just heard about--about . . . We send him out a weekly
newspaper, and of course we write--it only takes a few days by air mail
. . . and he's just sent me this."

She showed Rose a cablegram.


Engage best man possible to defend Deeprose. Guarantee expenses. Letter
follows. Geoffrey.


"You see," continued Mrs. Hollinshed, "he thought--thinks a lot of you
and your husband. He was so much impressed by his visit to Bladbean
. . . you must let him do what he can for you; he'll be terribly hurt if
you refuse, and he really can quite well afford it."

"Can he really?"

She spoke only to cover herself, to give her mind time to adjust itself
to a new set of emotions.

"Oh yes. He's made a lot of money in the last few years--quite a lot for
such a young man. It may mean that he won't be able to retire quite so
soon as he'd hoped, but that won't do him any harm at all--good, rather.
I don't approve of young men retiring."

"He wanted a farm . . ."

"Well, he'll still be able to have that--some day. You really must let
him do as he wants about this, Mrs. Deeprose. It would upset us all if
you didn't. We all--my husband and I--feel this very much"--her strong
voice caught for a moment, then went on--"so we'd like to think that the
family was doing something to help you. It's been a great worry to us
that we ourselves can do nothing; we aren't rich people, and we have the
children. . . . But Geoffrey--he has no one, literally no one, to spend
his money on but himself. If you let him do this for you it will make
him and us all really happy; and of course I needn't tell you--I'm sure
you won't mind my saying--what a help it will be to your husband and
father."

Rose had long been tasting the happiness of that thought. Mrs.
Hollinshed perhaps imagined that her pride would resent receiving
financial help from a stranger, not knowing how little of a stranger he
was; and some women, she knew, would object to taking money from a man
who once had loved them--who, indeed, judging by this generosity, loved
them still. But Rose was past all kinds of pride; all she thought was
that her father and Townley would now be spared the crippling sacrifices
involved by her defence--the mortgaging, even the sale, of their farms.
The circle of misery she had spread round her was already
narrowed--perhaps the day would come, though she dared not count on it,
when it would enclose no one but herself.

"Oh, of course I shall be pleased--grateful."

The other woman's expression changed.

"I'm so glad. I'll cable out to him at once."

"Does my father know?"

"I haven't told anyone yet. You had to be the first to hear and to
decide; but now I have your acceptance I'll write to anyone you like."

Perhaps she thought that Rose was not allowed to write letters in
prison.

"Oh, thank you, but I'll be writing to him tonight, so I'll tell him.
He'll be pleased."

"And of course your solicitors must be informed."

"I'm seeing Mr. Blumenfeld tomorrow."

"Better not wait till then. I'll ask my husband to go round directly I
get home."

A short, embarrassed silence followed. Both women felt awkward with each
other, for both realized how much there was that they could not speak
of. After a time Rose asked, stiffly, after the little girls.

"Oh, very well, thank you."

And how much do they know about all this? Do they realize that I am here
because of them, for it was on their account that Townley wanted to send
my darling away? Are they happy to think that they will never see her
again, that she will never frighten them any more? Did they resent being
taken away from Bladbean a fortnight earlier than usual, and did they
understand why? She could not ask these questions, yet she felt that
Mrs. Hollinshed guessed that she was asking them or questions like them.
Mrs. Hollinshed was uneasy with her; she knew the share she had had in
this tragedy, and she was sorry, bitterly sorry, and almost tragically
relieved at being able to help at last, even though indirectly through
Geoffrey Lennox. It was kind of her to have come, too--to have brought
her message in person instead of sending some one else or communicating
first with the solicitors. She was not used to this sort of thing and
obviously was not enjoying it. Rose should feel grateful to her--and yet
she could not. Too much had happened. She wished she would go.

"Good-bye," said Mrs. Hollinshed.

"Good-bye--and thank you."

They shook hands, as they had shaken hands every first day and every
last day of the Hollinsheds' visits to Bladbean. But this time their
hands did not quickly fall apart. Rose's was slack enough, but Mrs.
Hollinshed's gripped tightly in its suede glove, and for a moment she
seemed to be trying to say something that would not pass her lips. Then
she gave a sob and turned away. Rose was surprised that she felt so
much.

She herself felt very little now, except for occasional outbreaks of
storm and panic; but this day she felt a tenderness for Lennox. She took
unexpected comfort from the thought that he had not forgotten her. She
had meant him to, of course, or thought she had, when she destroyed his
letters. But now when she found that, unrequited, he thought of her
still, even if no more than in pity, her heart filled with an emotion
that was nearer happiness than any she was likely to know for many weeks
to come.

That night she dreamed of the orchard at Bladbean. There was a flicker
of sunshine in it, and she sat there with Lennox at her feet, as on the
afternoon when he had asked if he might write to her. It was all so real
that even while dreaming she told herself that she was awake--"the other
was the dream." She was back in her old life, starting afresh from a
point safely remote from the present . . . but without Madge; she knew
now that she was without Madge. Madge was gone, lost . . . the shadows
moved on the grass in a sort of wheel, and suddenly in the middle of it
where the hub should be she saw Madge's celluloid ball. The ball made a
rattling sound, though no hand was shaking it, and at the same time she
saw that what she had taken for sunlight was really moonlight. . . .
Then immediately she was full of the wildest, most overpowering fear.
She tried to scream, but could not. She tried to move, but stood rooted
in the tall wet grass. Something--somebody--was coming . . . her screams
burst out--she was screaming a name--"Christian! Christian!" . . . She
woke up to find a wardress bending over her with kind, soothing words.


She came to her trial fortified by a great deal of human kindness. She
had not expected to find so much kindness in prison. Everyone, from the
wardresses up to the lady superintendent and the governor himself,
seemed anxious to do everything possible for her, to make the time pass
tolerably if they could hardly be expected to make it pass pleasantly.

The doctor had treated her with such care and success that in spite of
the strain which sometimes prevented her sleeping and often gave her bad
dreams, she was actually at the time of her trial in better health than
she had been for several months. She liked his visits, for he talked
cheerfully of simple things that were the same in prison as outside. The
chaplain talked cheerfully, too, but she did not enjoy his visits so
much. She had an uneasy feeling that she ought to be taking him into her
confidence, asking his advice as to whether it was right for her to
allow a defence to be put up which was not true. She felt she ought to
consult him, and in many ways it would have relieved her soul to do
it--in others she was afraid. He might talk about her--let other people
know . . . she could not be sure, and she knew that she must keep her
own counsel.

So she said nothing and the chaplain did not encourage her to speak. He
once asked her if she would like to come to Holy Communion, but made no
attempt to persuade her when she hurriedly said no. He was more
assiduous in lending her books. She had never cared for reading, and now
it was almost impossible for her to concentrate on anything she read.
But she received the books and looked at them--she could do no more.

She had a small number of visitors. Her father came generally once a
week, and Mr. Blumenfeld called almost every day to straighten out some
point in her defence. Rose grew heartily weary of living over and over
again two days of almost unendurable affliction. That she did not relive
them quite as she had lived them made her ordeal even worse, for it
showed her every time what a fool she had been. If only she had acted as
Mr. Blumenfeld said she had acted everything would have been so
different . . . even more than he made it appear; because she was quite
sure that if she had known all he said she must have known and done all
he had said she meant to do, she and Madge would now be safe at Primrose
Hall--waiting for Townley to decide whether he would live without them
both or have Madge at home in order to keep her mother.

Townley neither came nor wrote. She gathered from her father that his
bitterness was too great to risk expression--"at present, that is. Don't
you worry, my dear. He'll come round." He was going to give evidence at
her trial, however. She had begged that he might not be asked, but Mr.
Blumenfeld and her father had assured her that the defence could not do
without him. "If he doesn't appear, the jury's bound to think that he's
no use to us--that anything he could say would bolster up the other
side. We must have him in the box for a few minutes--and of course he
wishes it." . . . So Townley was willing to pay for her and to speak for
her--but he would not look at her or speak to her. Even on the first day
of the trial he was not in court. She gazed round anxiously directly she
came into the dock, but he was not there. He would not see her face
before he was obliged to.


"Rose Deeprose, you are charged on indictment with the offence of
murder, the particulars being that on the twenty-ninth day of August in
this year you murdered Margaret Harriet Deeprose. Are you guilty or not
guilty?"

"Not guilty."

She was able to say that with perfect truth and peace of conscience, for
she still did not believe that she had murdered Madge. Murder is an ugly
word with an ugly meaning, too bad, she thought, even for that dark
impulse which had made her so insanely and vainly seek death for them
both.

When she had pleaded--"in a clear, confident voice," as one of the
newspapers recorded--she was told that she could sit down, and the
swearing-in of the jury began. It seemed to take a long time and to have
very little to do with her. She saw ten men and two women stand up one
after another, holding a Bible and repeating what seemed to her to be a
sort of prayer . . . "well and truly hold . . . and true deliverance
make . . . between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the
bar. So help me God." After a while the words "and true deliverance
make" printed themselves on her mind. Oh, if she could but hope for true
deliverance . . . to be set free, to go out alone into the bitter-sweet
October day, never to go back to the South-eastern prison with its
chimneys and high walls and haunting, institutional smell. So help me
God indeed!

But would God help her? Did she deserve His help? Could she even ask for
it?--ask God's help to make the judge and jury believe a lie? . . . And
_true_ deliverance make? . . .

The jury was sworn at last. There was some sort of fuss at the end that
woke her out of her thoughts. One of the jurymen was a Jew, and was
given the Pentateuch instead of the Bible, and a hat had to be borrowed
for him, as apparently he could not be sworn without a hat on his head
and he had come into court without one. She found the circumstance
vaguely reassuring--any Jew was connected in her mind with Mr.
Blumenfeld and he was connected with her deliverance (she must not worry
about "true"). The women, on the other hand, had given her feelings of
anxiety. However, when she had studied them, she felt easier. One was
quite old, with grey hair, and the other was stout and rather vulgar
looking. Neither in the least suggested Mrs. Hollinshed.

The trial began with a speech by an impressive gentleman in wig and
gown, whom Rose knew was Mr. William Beard, counsel for the prosecution.
Very quietly and firmly he told the court a story about a farmer and his
wife whose only child was mentally deficient. In some points the story
was not unlike that of Townley and Rose Deeprose and their daughter
Madge, in others it seemed quite different. She listened in a kind of
bewilderment. This could not be her and Townley . . . yes, it was--it
must be. And there she was, setting out with Madge for London . . . But,
oh no! she had never thought of killing Madge--she had never threatened
to kill her--it had never entered her head till that awful moment of
exhaustion and despair on the very edge of the flood waters. She had
genuinely intended to go to her aunt in Norfolk, and she would never
have thought of death for either of them if she had not been so tired,
so badgered, so uncertain, so delayed. . . .

Counsel for the prosecution did not speak for very long, but when he sat
down Rose had found unexpected relief. The whole thing was unreal--the
prosecution wasn't true any more than the defence. So why worry? This
court, so full of people, of scratching pens, of rustling papers, of
staring faces, of policemen, of lawyers, of wigs, was really dreamland,
and the ordinary values of the world outside did not apply. The judge,
sitting up there under the Lion and Unicorn was like no one she had ever
seen in the streets or in the market-place; and she would have laughed
if she had found any of those wigged and gowned gentlemen round the
central table wandering in Bladbean Lane. These proceedings were not
real and had nothing to do with facts. All that was real was their
effect on her--life or death (living or otherwise). All that was true
was deliverance.

Her mind had found a refuge, an escape from its difficulties, and from
that refuge she watched the dream proceed. A little man entered the
witness-box, where he revealed himself as a member of a firm of
surveyors. He had made a plan of the Stour Valley between the
Pluckley-Lenham road and Water Street. He had shown by a dot the actual
place where the prisoner entered the water, and he had marked the hidden
course of the Lenham Ditch, also the bridge across the Stour. The
overflow varied in depth from eighteen inches to two and a half feet,
and extended from a hundred yards south of the river to forty-five north
of it.

The next witness was William Albert Chantler of Foxen Houses near
Lenham. He worked as carter and teamster at Tins Farm, Water Street, but
on the morning of August 29th, he had gone out to watch the hunt, who
were cubbing in Tins Wood. While he stood outside the wood, waiting for
hounds to find, he saw a woman and child standing on the far side of the
valley, just below Claypits Shaw. He did not take any particular notice
of them till he saw the woman pick up the child and enter the
floodwater. She was about a hundred yards south-west of the Stour
bridge, but did not appear to be making towards it. He shouted at her to
go back, for he knew that she would come to deep water very soon. But
she took no notice and went on. He and another man called Spellman went
down to the edge of the flood, and just at that moment the woman
disappeared. He knew she must have fallen into the Lenharn Ditch, so he
ran through the floodwater to the river, crossed by the bridge, which
was only awash, and dived in after her. Spellman, who could not swim,
ran back to fetch help, and by the time he'd got the woman out, the
huntsman was there and several others. They carried the prisoner
straight to Tins Cottage and Mrs. Willoughby and Mrs. Jarman took charge
of her.

Then prosecuting counsel sat down and another man stood up, looking
strangely like him, in his wig and silk gown. Rose knew that he was her
man, Sir George Hallows.

"When you saw the woman and child at the far side of the water," he
asked, in a rich, husky voice--"exactly how far were they away?"

"I couldn't say exact, sir. Maybe about a hundred and fifty yards."

The plan was consulted, and Rose was proved, greatly to her counsel's
satisfaction, to have been nearly two hundred yards away.

"And which way was the wind blowing?"

"West-sou'-west."

"In other words, from the prisoner to you. In that case, two hundred
yards away, and with the wind blowing against you, was it likely that
she would hear your warning shouts?"

"I dunno, sir. But there wasn't much else I could do, as I saw then."

"Oh, I'm not blaming you--far from it. I'm only wanting to find out what
were the chances of her hearing you. You think it quite probable that
she did not--in fact that it is almost impossible that she could have
heard you. Therefore she did not persist in entering the water in
defiance of your warning?"

"No, sir."

"Thank you."

After that various members and followers of the hunt gave evidence,
including Mrs. Willoughby, who described how, having some experience of
nursing and first aid, she had directed the efforts to revive the
prisoner when she was carried unconscious into Mrs. Jarman's house. Her
first words on recovering had been to ask for her little girl, and on
finding out that she was still in the water she had cried out, "Why
wouldn't you let us die?"

Sir George Hallows cross-examined all these witnesses as to the exact
words Rose had used on this occasion. He succeeded in shaking them all
except Mrs. Willoughby. They were willing to admit that they might not
quite have got her right, that she might have said, "I wish you'd let us
die together," and agreed that the second version would bear quite a
different construction from the other.

Mrs. Willoughby stuck to her assertion, though it evidently pained her
to do so. She had taken the words to mean that the woman had intended to
drown herself and the child, and for that reason she had offered to be
present while the constable questioned her.

Earlier in her examination there had been an argument between the
prosecution and the defence as to the admission of certain answers made
by the prisoner to questions by P. C. Gardner in the presence of the
witness. Sir George insisted that they could not be admitted, as the
constable had neglected to caution the accused, and had done so only
when reminded of his duty by Mrs. Willoughby. After both counsels had
stated their arguments "with great respect," the judge gave his ruling
that these answers were not admissible as evidence.

Sir George had not, however, been able to exclude the statement made by
Rose in Lenham police station, and as read out by P. C. Gardner it
sounded damning past hope of redemption. The odd thing was that Rose
could not remember making it, or rather, only a little of it. She had
been so tired, so done, so wretched . . . and he had asked her so many
questions and had written out the answers so slowly. She certainly
didn't remember having said quite a lot of the things he had written
down, and in some places the language sounded less like hers than P. C.
Gardner's.

Sir George, however, was alive to all this.

"When you took this statement from the accused, how long was it since
she had been taken out of the water?"

"About an hour and a half."

"And was she still feeling the effects of her immersion?"

"She was a bit ordinary."

"What do you mean by ordinary? Do you mean that she was exhausted,
shattered, done in?"

"Oh, not all that."

"Not all that when she had been immersed for ten minutes in icy water,
when she had had nothing to eat that day, when she had heard her only
child is dead?"

"She was well enough to answer questions."

"She gave you the statement entirely in answer to questions?"

"That's right."

So it went on, Sir George doing his best to make out that Rose's
statement was valueless, merely the ramblings of a sick woman who in
more than one instance had been definitely prompted and led along
certain lines of evidence. At one point the judge interfered.

"If this statement, Sir George, had been made under conditions that were
definitely and legally improper, I should not have allowed it to be put
in."

Whereat Sir George apologized humbly and effusively.

Mr. Blumenfeld was a little upset by this incident. He had an interview
with Rose shortly after her return to the prison.

"I'm afraid you've got the judge against you."

"Against me?"

In her conception of British justice she had not imagined a judge could
be for or against anyone.

"Yes. The way he pulled up Sir George in his cross-examination of
Gardner. A judge doesn't generally interfere with anything the defence
does to the police. His idea is that they can look after
themselves--and, anyhow, deserve all they get."

Rose was puzzled. On the first day of the trial she had looked upon the
judge as a sort of impersonal idol, apart from human persuasions and
predilections. On the second day she observed him more naturally, tried
to picture the sort of man he was without his wig and gown. A grave,
grim, rather fussy old man, she thought; wise, and not unjust. Then with
a shock she realized that wisdom and justice were against her in this
battle. The reason the judge was against her probably was that he
already saw through her defence. She should have prayed for a stupid and
unjust judge.


On the second day of the trial the witnesses surprised her. The first to
be called was Mr. Hollinshed, who gave an account of the sad scene Rose
had made a few days before she ran away. She had said she would rather
see her little girl dead than in a home for mental defectives. Then,
Mrs. Hollinshed, looking very pale and unwilling, went into the witness
box and gave her account of the incident. Both witnesses were ready
enough to agree with Sir George that they had not at the time taken the
prisoner's words as a serious threat, but merely as a symptom of her
overwrought state. They had not felt really anxious for the child's
safety.

The case for the prosecution ended with the evidence of Dr. MacIntyre,
who stated that he considered the prisoner to be in a perfectly fit and
proper condition to make a statement when he left her at Lenham police
station.

Directly after the luncheon interval Rose went into the witness-box. Mr.
Blumenfeld had hesitated a little over this step, but in the end he and
counsel had agreed that the risk was worth taking. Her examination would
probably increase the sympathy of the court, and though they were
nervous for her under cross-examination, her failure to give evidence at
all would inevitably be put down to a bad case and a guilty conscience.

So Rose sat in the witness-box--"a little dark nut of a woman" as a
romantically-minded reporter described her in a passage deleted by his
sub-editor, partly on account of the language and partly because his
space had been cut down, owing to the defence pleading accident instead
of mercy killing, and thus losing his chief's interest. She wore a dress
and coat that Christian had chosen for her long ago, and a small felt
hat. Mr. Blumenfeld and Sir George noted with approval her neat,
unfashionable clothes and unpowdered face--all calculated to make a
favourable impression on English justice. The hands that gripped the
edge of the box, however, were no longer a housewife's hands; they had
grown pale and slack in prison.

Sir George then became her escort through the last dreadful days of
Madge's life. Very tenderly and courteously as one handing a lady along
a difficult path, he guided her through her interview with the
Hollinsheds, which in his company no longer appeared the dreadful,
humiliating episode she had always thought it, but the brave protest of
a devoted mother, prepared to fight to the end for her child's rights
and liberties. He then set out with her to Pluckley Throws, waited with
her anxiously for the bus, and shared both her despair on being told it
had stopped running and her thankfulness on being shown a short cut
across the fields to Lenham. Once more they were on their way, and the
journey became more painful as she trod that lost footpath, that
dreadful, marshy little wood. She described how she had dropped her
attach case in a thicket of brambles, and immediately the case was
produced in court, looking muddy and shapeless, but still containing the
evidence of her intention to spend at least one more night on earth.
They went on to the water's edge--she saw the little bridge, and tried
to wade to it; she could truthfully say she did not know that there was
the Lenham Ditch between her and the river. She lost her footing and
shouted for help, she was saved and Madge was drowned. Oh yes, in Mrs.
Jarman's house she may well have said that she did not want to live
without Madge. Her tears were flowing now, exactly as Sir George had
meant they should. But she was bitterly ashamed--it humiliated her to
cry before so many people.

When at last he had left her in Lenham police station, dazed with grief,
exhausted with struggle and lack of food and confused by P. C. Gardner's
questions, her counsel sat down and counsel for the prosecution stood
up. For some reason Rose liked his face better than she liked Sir
George's, and found his calm, direct manner a relief after the other
man's emotional appeal. He did not seem in the least unfriendly, but the
journey she took with him was very different from the journey she had
taken with Sir George. The very objects in it looked different--her
attach case, for instance. In Sir George's hands it had been the
guarantee of unimpeachable intentions, in Mr. Beard's--or rather in the
bramble-thicket where he saw it--it became the token of her surrender to
death. When she had seen the floodwater spread out in the valley she had
decided then and there to end her life with Madge's, and had thrown away
the case, now useless to those who would never spend another night on
earth.

"Now, Mrs. Deeprose, can you tell me why, when you saw the whole valley
flooded, you did not turn round and go back to Pluckley Throws?"

"I was too tired--and I couldn't face going back through that awful
wood."

"I see. But you knew that the Pluckley to Lenham road was quite
near--this map shows it to be only five hundred yards away. Why didn't
you walk down the valley, along the edge of the water, till you came to
it?"

"I was too tired--it was too much trouble."

"More trouble than wading with a child in your arms through a hundred
and fifty yards of floodwater?"

Rose nodded, though she herself thought it an unconvincing choice.

"Think. You would have been wet through up to the waist by the time you
had got to the other side, and you had no clothes to change into. Did
you propose to travel like that to London?"

"I didn't know how deep the water was."

"And how did you propose to cross the river when you came to it? You
knew there was a river, though you had forgotten the Lenham Ditch."

"There was a bridge across."

"The bridge is marked on this map, also the point where, according to
the evidence, you entered the water. Can you account for the fact that
this point is fifty-one yards west of the bridge? I mean you actually
gave yourself something like fifty yards more wading than you need, than
if you had entered the water exactly opposite the bridge."

"I didn't see the bridge till after I was in the water."

Lord! that was a fool thing to say! She realised it directly she had
said it, even before she saw Mr. Blumenfeld pick up a pen-holder and
bite the end of it. The court seemed strangely silent. Wasn't counsel
going to ask her any more questions?

After a longish pause he did, but they were not easy ones, nor did they
contribute in any way to her rehabilitation. More than once she caught
herself floundering as desperately as she had floundered in the
overflow, and when at last she left the box she felt very much as she
had felt when the cold, suffocating waters of the Lenham Ditch closed
over her head.

That night in the South-eastern prison, Mr. Blumenfeld was not
encouraging. He said nothing unkind or reproachful, but Rose felt that
he was disappointed in her; and once or twice she thought he was trying
to convey to her that if things turned out badly it would be nobody's
fault but her own.

As it happened, Mr. Blumenfeld was not disappointed. He had taken a
chance and lost it--it was all in the nature of the case, and need be a
matter of regret or reproach to no one. Nor had he entirely given up
hope. He had noted the effect of Rose's evidence upon the jury, and had
decided that though his case might have failed in strict fact and logic,
there was a chance--just a chance--that it might triumph emotionally. In
such matters there is always a second line of defence--in the heart,
which may still resist arguments to which the mind has surrendered.


The third day of the trial was expected to be the last. There were four
witnesses for the accused, but it was not thought that their evidence
would take up much of the court's time. There remained only the speeches
by counsel, the summing up by the judge, and the jury's final
deliberation and verdict.

The general opinion was that the prisoner scarcely had a chance. She had
made one or two dangerous admissions under cross-examination, and though
some of the prosecution's evidence was rather thin, the impression of a
deliberate intention was much stronger than the defence's theory of
accident. A kindly authority had prepared Rose herself for an
unfavourable verdict--it had told her that sentence of death in her case
would almost certainly be only a matter of form. She was not to be
frightened, for there was scarcely a chance that it would be carried
out.

Unfortunately, Rose was not frightened of death; she was frightened of
death's alternative. Though she said very little, she would rather be
hanged than spend the rest of her life, or even many years of it, in
prison. The thought of death was endurable, for it was mingled with
thoughts of release and reunion; but life-long imprisonment, even if
everyone remained as kind as they were now, was a nightmare she could
not face even in thought.

She came into court feeling very much less well than on the two earlier
days. She had hardly slept at all that night, as since the beginning of
the trial she had refused to take sleeping-draughts, fearing that they
would make her drowsy and slow-witted. The doctor had given her a
sedative, but though it had calmed her it had not made her sleep; she
had lain for most of the night fighting away her thoughts, and she took
her seat in the dock feeling certainly wide-awake, but nervy and jaded.

Also today she would have to endure what, apart from the verdict and
sentence, would be her greatest ordeal--she would have to listen to
Townley's evidence. He came into the box almost directly the court
opened, and she did as Mr. Blumenfeld had told her to do--she smiled at
him. He, too, had evidently been told to smile, but it was not a
success--she wondered if hers had been.

He was examined by Sir George Hallows' junior, a young man called
Fothergill. Led by him, Townley told the court of his wife's love for
her child.

"Is it imaginable to you that she should have killed that child?"

"No, it is unimaginable."

He was then shown the signature of her statement at Lenham
police-station.

"Is that your wife's usual handwriting?"

"No--it looks very weak and shaky."

He gave his evidence in an odd, struggling voice; he was evidently
fighting with strong emotion, and no doubt to the court it all appeared
natural and right. To Rose it was plain agony--she imagined, if she did
not actually hear, the undertones of hatred and disgust that hid beneath
the words of loyal praise that human decency and kindness forced him to
give her. He hated her--he must hate her now. She did not doubt that he
believed her guilty; and though he had never loved his child he must
hate the wife who had killed her and brought shame and horror into his
upright, prosperous life. He hated her . . . and yet because he had
loved her once he must stand by her now. And she, because there was
still so much in life that she feared, must accept his help, his
outraged kindness. This was the man she had loved, in whose arms she had
slept, whose mouth she had kissed. Even if she were set free tonight she
could never go back to his arms or feel his kiss again. This court might
have been a divorce court, set up to proclaim the sundering of those who
had been one flesh. . . . As she listened to his hard, anguished voice,
she bowed her head into her hands and wept silently. The reporters' pens
were busy with the sorrow of that loving pair.

Townley was let down very lightly in his cross-examination--which
referred only to the differences between him and Rose on the question of
Madge--and Wally Deeprose, who succeeded him in the witness-box was not
cross-examined at all. To the public eye he must have looked more
distressed than Townley, for he had not his son-in-law's self-command,
and grief showed itself freely in his twitching, trembling hands and
tearful voice. To Rose, knowing what he had been through and would have
to go through today, it was a miracle that he should be sober. He had
shown his love for her in nothing more than this, his refusal for her
sake to seek the refuge he had run to on so many smaller occasions. But,
like most habitual drinkers, he found it hard to stand up sober to his
ordeal. More than once he seemed on the verge of collapse, and sometimes
his voice became so choked with sobs that it could scarcely be heard.

"You are of course, Mr. Deeprose, familiar with your daughter's
handwriting?"

"Yes--yes, sir."

"And do you consider this a typical specimen?"

"N-no--oh no. She has a firm hand, as a rule."

Here the jury expressed a wish to see other specimens of the accused's
handwriting, and were told by the defence that a number of these were
available for their inspection.

Wally Deeprose's evidence was followed by that of George Budgen of
Coldhatch Cottage, Pluckley Throws. He told the court how, seeing the
accused waiting for the London bus which was no longer running, he had
pointed out to her the way across the fields to Lenham. He had not been
that way for some time and had no idea the river was in flood--it was
most unusual for it to flood at this time of year. The accused had
appeared greatly relieved to find there was a short cut to the main
road; she told him that she had to be in London by eleven o'clock. She
had set out across the fields at once.

Mr. Beard did not seem to think his evidence at all important, and asked
him only one or two questions as to the woman's manner and appearance,
eliciting from him the fact that she appeared "worked up about
something"--yes, it did seem to be more than just missing the bus.

The last witness of all was a flustered, upset and embarrassed Aunt
Susan Medlar, who described how on August 20th she received a letter,
which she had not kept, from her niece, Rose Deeprose, asking if she and
the child could come to her for a few weeks in September. In reply she
had sent the letter produced and read by Mr. Fothergill, welcoming them
both in the warmest terms. Rose could not have been uncertain of her
reception at Primrose Hall.

Once again the prosecution asked no questions.


The last stages of the trial centred round three women called Rose
Deeprose, none of whom seemed to have any connection with the Rose
Deeprose who sat listening in the dock.

First came Sir George's Rose Deeprose--a noble, suffering creature, whom
life and mankind had treated with perverse cruelty. Through all her
griefs this woman had behaved with courage and uprightness. She had
sacrificed herself consistently for the welfare of her daughter, a
charming, happy little girl, whose mental backwardness called for
cherishing rather than segregation. Forced to a choice between husband
and child, she had decided in favour of the child and had set out with
her one morning for a house where she knew they would be welcome. Down
in the Stour Valley, to which she had been directed by almost incredible
ignorance, she had been faced with difficulties which she had tackled
courageously--inevitably to be overwhelmed by them. Then unsympathetic
bureaucracy and fussy officialdom had taken charge of her broken state,
had shown her no pity, but on the contrary had driven her cruelly and
blindly into worse trouble.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury--or rather let me say men and women,
for it is to your human qualities of sense and kindness that I address
myself--think of this poor girl--poor child, I might well say, for her
weakness and helplessness had brought her almost to the level of a
child--think of her being hustled from the cottage where anyone of us in
such a plight would have expected to be allowed to rest for many
hours--think of her being driven to the police station and harried with
questions, when she is so weak, so dazed, so grief-stricken that she can
hardly think or speak. I dare say that from a detached, medical point of
view there is nothing alarming in her symptoms; but can any doctor know
what that poor little mother is feeling in her broken heart? You have
seen for yourselves that she is quiet and gentle in her manner--she will
not release her emotions as so many would in complaints and hysterics.
But that does not mean that she is not suffering--suffering so much in
mind and body, suffering so much from the shock of all she has been
through, that she is quite incapable of making a reasoned statement, or
of following the trend of the questions that are asked her. All she
knows is that each question cuts like a whip. She herself has told you
that she did not grasp the meaning of several of them--in blunter words
she had no idea what the police were getting at. But every one of them
hurt her, and no doubt she tried to ward them off, as a beaten child
will ward off blows, by dodging them--answering hurriedly--wildly--
anything--anything they wanted. She tells you that she remembers very
little of what happened, and I'm sure she tells you the truth. You have
seen her weak and quavering signature and compared it with specimens of
her normal handwriting. You have seen, too, her demeanour in the
witness-box, which was that of a woman truthful to the point of scruple.
Her truthfulness is further confirmed by the wild cry with which she
answered the charge that was finally brought 'Murder! But I never
murdered her! I loved her more than anything on earth.' Ladies and
Gentlemen, you heard those words read out to you in the calm,
unemotional voice of a police sergeant, but can you have any idea how
they really sounded? . . . Afterwards, we are told, 'the prisoner had to
receive medical attention.' Need I say any more?"

Sir George did, in point of fact, say a great deal more. His voice blew
about the court like a wind--now loud, now soft, now hushed for a
moment, but never entirely still. It seemed to blow people's thoughts
about as a wind blows paper. It left only the strong things standing,
love and pity and tenderness, and even these were bowed like trees.
After him the speech of prosecuting counsel was a flat, deadly calm.

Mr. Beard, too, had his Rose Deeprose--a hysterical, impulsive woman,
who certainly suffered, but whose reaction to suffering was wild and
unbalanced rather than courageous. She too loved her little daughter.

"The prosecution is not out to prove that the accused murdered her child
from any motive of greed or hatred, such as are the common motives of
murder. Her love for the little girl is undoubted and the testimony of
her husband and others in this matter does not affect the situation as
viewed by the Crown. Murder is murder, even if it is committed for what
seem laudable motives or for no motive at all. The circumstances that
turn murder into manslaughter or into justifiable homicide are of a
different nature and do not arise here."

Mr. Beard's Rose Deeprose was a woman who had not waited to think of
death till she found herself in the flooded Stour Valley, "though the
prosecution does not set out to prove that she left home with the
deliberate intention of drowning herself and the child." She had always
thought of death as a possible way out of her difficulties, and though
for a time she had planned more hopefully, despair had overwhelmed her
at a critical moment and she had chosen the darker, swifter way of
escape.

Mr. Beard spent a considerable time with her in the Stour Valley. "I ask
you, can you believe that she seriously thought that to wade through
floods of unknown depth would be an easier way of reaching Lenham than
returning to Pluckley Throws or walking a few hundred yards to the road?
Would any of you have done it, or even thought of doing it, if you had
found yourselves in her situation?" There was also her admission that
she had not seen the bridge till after she was in the water. . . . Mr.
Beard was not vindictive, but he did not scruple to show up the
weaknesses of the defence, which was certainly at this point very weak
indeed.

As to her condition of mind and body when taken to Lenham police
station, they had Dr. MacIntyre's evidence that he thought her quite
sufficiently recovered to make a statement. It had not once occurred to
him that she was unfit to do so, any more than it had occurred to
Constable Gardner. She herself had made no protest, and though of course
tired and upset seemed perfectly to understand her situation and
everything that was going on round her.

"The prosecution has no wish to press anything beyond its fair value,
but it is my duty to ask you not to let natural feelings of pity and
sympathy interfere with your reasonable assessment of the evidence you
have heard in this court, or to shirk for one moment to give a sound
construction to every incident in the case, even though it results in
your returning a verdict of guilty of wilful murder."

Then Mr. Beard sat down, and the next moment a new Rose Deeprose
appeared, as the judge began his charge to the jury. This Rose was
mainly a fusion of the other two, and more unlike than either of them to
the Rose in the dock. She was also the least prepossessing of the three,
for she was perverse and hot-headed, not a very good wife, but one who
had invariably sacrificed her husband's interests to her child's. Of the
three speakers the judge was the only one who seemed at all concerned
with Townley, though the Townley he created came little nearer than his
Rose to the facts of life at Bladbean. Townley was a good, devoted,
patient husband who had endured much. His wish to have the child placed
in an institution had been laudable, and his wife had been running
counter to the best interests of her child in opposing it. When the
judge came down into the Stour Valley the figure of Rose Deeprose grew
dim; or rather it was blurred--blurred into two women, one the defence's
and one the prosecution's. He told the two conflicting stories with
little or no elaboration, he carefully analysed the evidence of the
various witnesses and read out some of their depositions. He was
scrupulously fair, just where her case seemed weakest. But the Rose
Deeprose he had at the beginning of his charge presented to the jury was
a woman who would certainly have drowned herself and the child--almost,
one felt, to spite her husband. . . . Rose had a moment of indignation
and revolt, in which she almost forgot that she was guilty.

It was past four o'clock when the judge finished his summing-up, and the
jury retired. Rose was feeling exhausted and bewildered. She could not
identify herself with any of the three women whose fate they were to
decide, and the discrepancies and unrealities of the proceedings had
exasperated her frayed nerves. If she was to be found guilty, and she
now had very little hope that she would not, let her at least be guilty
of her own misdeeds and not of the misdeeds of a stranger. As for that
other stranger whose fantastic innocence was her only hope of salvation
. . . she was past caring any more for true deliverance; all she wanted
was her freedom, and she did not mind how it was won--freedom, escape
from all this. . . . She would not ask herself whom she would escape to,
where she could find a refuge, what she still could make of her life.
She would not think of escape of all--it hurt her, just as it hurt her
to see the sudden dart of a bird across the blue sky outside the window.
She began to cry weakly.

"There, there," said one of the wardresses--"cheer up. In half an hour
you may be walking down the street."

She was brought a cup of tea, a black draught of life, and immediately
felt better.

"You're luckier than the men," said the wardress, "poor chaps, they're
not allowed to smoke, and it's just the time they're dying for it."

"How long do you think the jury will be?"

"I couldn't say. They're seldom less than half an hour in a case like
this, but I don't suppose they'll be very long."

Oh no, why should they? They must have known ever since yesterday
afternoon that she was guilty.

Mr. Blumenfeld came in and spoke a few cheerful words, but he said very
little about the trial. He wondered if his client realised that things
had gone against her. Should he prepare her for the worst? . . . No, he
did not think he need. She looked utterly dejected.

"Like another cup of tea?"

It was five o'clock. The jury had been away an hour. They couldn't have
disposed of her quite easily, after all. . . . As time dragged on, she
wondered if she dared hope anything from this delay. Evidently the
wardresses thought she could, for at twenty minutes to six one of them
said--"It's always a good sign when they're a long time at it."

The electric lights were burning, and the patch of sky outside the
window had darkened. Rose wished she had taken a sleeping-draught, as if
she had she would now be feeling stupid and drowsy, she would not have
to bear this pain of dread. . . . She would ask for a sleeping-draught
tonight. Would she be able to have one every night, to spend her days in
prison as it were under an ansthetic? . . . No, she would not--she
would have to face them. But she could not face them now. She must not
think. She must talk--chatter--as she had never chattered before . . .
about different brands of tea and women smoking. . . .

A policeman put his head into the room.

"They'll be out in a minute. Are you ready to come up?"

Rose put down her teacup and rose to her feet. The wardresses stood up,
too. Time passed . . . much? little?--she did not know. They were
moving--she seemed to be floating along the passage, up the stairs to
the dock. Oh, why do I care so much when I've lost everything? But I do
care--oh, Mother, I care. Oh, Mother, help me--be with me.

She did not dare look round her in court, for fear that she might see
her doom on the jury's faces. She stood staring at the ground as they
filed in. There was a lot of shuffling and scraping and coughing. Then a
voice said:

"Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?"

"We have."

"Do you find the prisoner, Rose Deeprose, guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty."

Immediately there was a murmur in court, a murmur of pleasure, but also,
it seemed to Rose, of surprise. The ushers cried for silence, and
silence came, complete and rather sinister. It might almost have been a
silence of doom. Everyone was waiting for the judge to speak.

Rose lifted her eyes at last and met his--cold, disapproving,
disbelieving. He looked at her for a moment, then he said:

"You are discharged."

She could not have felt more utterly condemned if he had sentenced her
to death.



                            _Chapter Eleven_

The whole of life became blurred. Downstairs in the passage below the
court she turned giddy and thought she would faint. The prison doctor,
who was waiting there--no doubt to minister to a woman condemned to
death--gave her a peg of brandy.

"Here you are! You'll soon feel better. Very best congratulations. I
can't tell you how glad I am."

The wardresses, too, shook hands with her and congratulated her.

Mr. Blumenfeld came bustling up, holding out both hands.

"My dear little woman, this is splendid. I'm more delighted than I can
say. Now come along with me--your father wants to see you."

"My father? . . ."

She feared that Townley might be with him.

"Yes; he's in a room just down this corridor. Come along with me."

She wondered if he was surprised at the verdict, but did not like to ask
him.

"Sir George was at the top of his form," he said as they went off
together--"I never saw him handle a jury better."

"Yes, he was wonderful."

"I expect you'd like me to thank him for you--perhaps you'd like to see
him?"

"Oh no, no. . . . I--I'm sorry, but I don't feel equal to it."

She was nearly crying again.

"That'll be all right--don't you worry; I quite understand and so will
he. Here we are."

He opened a door and Rose found herself in another of those green-dadoed
rooms with which she had grown so familiar. Her father was sitting in
the inevitable wooden chair, his stick between his knees and his hat
balanced on the end of it. When the door opened he stood up, and as it
closed he put down his hat and stick and came towards her.

"Rose--poor little Rose."

She was in his arms, her head burrowed into his shoulder, his little
daughter as she had never been till then, sobbing out her sorrow and
relief upon his heart--the faithful heart that had stood by her in all
her shame and misery and danger and was offering her comfort now.

"There, there, don't cry, pet. It's all over."

All, all . . . how much was all? More than he meant, more than the trial
and its terrors and griefs. Her marriage was over, her motherhood; life
itself was over as surely as if she had been sentenced to death.

"Father, you've been so good."

"No, no, dear--not a bit of it. I've done my best, as everyone has, but
I didn't have to do much. Oh, Rosie, thank God for this!"

"Yes, it's good."

"And now you're coming home with me."

"To Harlakenden?"

"Of course; I've phoned Aunt Susan to get your room ready. Oh, my dear,
I can hardly believe you're free. They were all so certain you'd be----"

"Yes, and so was I. Father, you know, I--I did mean to drown Madge."

"Hush, my dear. Don't say it. Not that it makes any difference to me. I
know how you must have suffered."

"Did you think I'd done it?"

"I guessed. I've often felt that way myself. But I shouldn't talk about
it, dear."

"No, I won't--Father . . ."

"Yes?"

"Where's Townley?"

"He's gone home. He waited for the verdict--though he wouldn't go inside
the court."

Rose was silent. It seemed futile to ask if he had left her a message,
if he had been made happy by her acquittal, if he had said anything
about her ever coming to Bladbean. . . .

"I'm ready to go, Father, when you are."

"Well, they say we'll have to wait a bit. There are still a lot of
people hanging about. The police are getting us a car."

They sat talking rather aimlessly. Rose had begun to have a headache and
was feeling so tired that she could feel nothing else. Relief,
excitement, shame, fear of the future, painful thoughts of Townley, all
soon were swallowed up in the exhaustion which sagged her shoulders,
flopped her limbs, and bowed her head. People came in and out of the
room. They looked happy and pleased with themselves--no one but the
judge had seemed to mind that she had been found innocent when she was
guilty. She could hear her father thanking Mr. Blumenfeld, and her own
voice, tired and flat, joining in with conventional, unfelt words. Then
a policeman said, "It's all clear now." . . . She was walking along a
passage, she was sitting in a car, her head had fallen sideways on her
father's shoulder, she was sleeping, drugged by an agency more potent
than any chemist could supply.


That night a number of young barristers on the Southeastern circuit
dined together at the Saracen's Head, Maidstone.

"I've half a mind," said one of them, "to go down to the Stour Valley
and see if it's really easier to wade across twelve acres of flood than
walk five hundred yards to the nearest road."

"Well," said another, "there's a story that Old Parr at the age of
ninety swam the River Swale rather than walk thirty yards to a bridge."

"I wonder the defence didn't bring that in."

"They'd no need to."

"And I believe the prisoner said she couldn't swim."

"What difference does that make to twelve kind-hearted men?"

"Ten kind-hearted men and two kind-hearted women. That's the astonishing
part."

"I wonder who won the day for mercy killing. They must have had some
sort of an argument or they wouldn't have been away so long."

"Oh, that was for form's sake--they probably spent the time playing
whist. They made up their minds when she gave herself away in the
witness-box yesterday afternoon."

Mr. Blumenfeld was having dinner with his wife in their flat near
Holland Park.

"Now at last," she said, "you have an appetite."

"Yes. I can now tell you for certain that your new cook's first class.
It's not her fault that everything has tasted like sawdust for the last
three days."

"What a soft-hearted old boy you are! Most men would have got used to
it."

"And I never shall. Well, it's all to your advantage. I tell you I'm so
pleased with myself tonight that tomorrow I'm going to buy you that fur
coat you've been nagging me about since August."

"Oh, Vernon! Not really! Oh, you darling!--that kolinsky?"

"Anythinksi you damn well like."

"Darling! Angel!" she ran round the table to hug him--"I feel I ought to
write a letter of thanks to Rose Deeprose."

Mr. Justice Burdon was writing home to his daughter, who kept house for
him.


DEAR ETHEL.: Please send me the pair of bed socks and the two Jaeger
vests that are in the bottom drawer of my wardrobe. The cold here is
detestable, and I'm afraid now that I shan't get away till Saturday
afternoon, as we have a highly technical fraud case coming on tomorrow.
My love to Janey and the children if you see them on Friday.

                                                 Your affectionate
                                                              FATHER.


Sir George Hallows was dining at his club with a friend.

"Here's to British juries!" he said, lifting his glass of Chteau Neuf
du Pape, '19.

The friend grinned.

"You certainly wouldn't do so well without them."

"No, I should have been sorry to have had to address the Old Man this
afternoon."

"I hear he was rather peeved at the way things went."

"He was, but he'd no cause to be. The poor little woman deserved to get
off."

"Then you really think she didn't do it?"

"I don't care if she did it or not. It's a rotten law that puts her
through all this just because she failed to carry out half her
intention. If she'd failed on both counts all she'd have got would have
been a good talking to."

The friend nodded.

"Yes, I think that till we start having degrees of murder British juries
had better remain."

Mr. William Beard dined alone at his home in Ennismore Gardens. He was a
bachelor and during dinner he read _Puss in Books_, a literary study of
cats. After dinner he took his book into his study and settled himself
by the fire to read it, with his big Siamese on his knee. But he had had
a long and tiring day, and soon he was as soundly asleep as Rose
Deeprose in her bedroom at Harlakenden.


She did not wake till twelve o'clock the next morning. Her father was
standing in the doorway.

"There you are, dear. Would you like some breakfast?"

"I'd like some tea. What time is it?"

"Five minutes past twelve. I've been in twice and Hannah's been in once,
but you were sleeping so sound that we didn't like to disturb you. How
do you feel?"

"Oh, much, much better."

She raised herself on her elbow and looked out over the low window-sill
to Plurenden Woods, huddled against a soft grey sky with sunshine behind
it. Her heart unaccountably began to sing.

"I'll get up and come down."

"Oh, don't do that. Hannah has your breakfast practically ready. It'll
be up in five minutes. I think you ought to spend the day in bed."

"No, Father, please. I--I want to see the place."

"It's just the same as it always was."

"Oh no, it's not. Nothing is. Father, you don't know what it's like not
to be in prison."

He patted her arm.

"My poor darling. But it wasn't so bad in prison, was it? They said
you'd be quite comfortable on remand."

"It was prison. . . . Oh, don't let's talk of it. Father, tell me--how
are you? Did you sleep all right?"

"Fairly. I never sleep very well. There were reporters ringing up last
night, and this morning, too. A couple of them called, but I said you
were too ill to see anyone. So I hope you don't mind, dear--I made a
statement."

"A statement? "--she was back in Lenham police station. "What do you
mean?"

"I just told them something to put in the newspaper. I did it to get rid
of them."

"What did you tell them?"

"Oh, some things about you as a child, and how you worked on the farm at
one time, and how you're going to stay here and help me now. Of course
they were wanting to know why you hadn't gone back to Bladbean."

"How did they know I hadn't gone?"

"Apparently they tried there first."

"Oh! . . . Did Townley see them?"

"No, I gather he didn't, but Ivy or somebody sent them here. I told them
you couldn't bear the thought of Bladbean for the present because of the
way it was all mixed up with the child--with Madge--so you were staying
here till you felt better."

"Thank you, Father." She bowed her head. "How long do you really think
I'll stay?"

"My poor Rosie . . . I don't know what to . . . But I mustn't stand here
talking. I must go and tell Hannah to bring up your breakfast."

"All I want is some tea."

"You'd better have a proper meal. We must feed you up. Eat what you can,
dear."

He smiled at her wanly and went out.


An hour later Rose stood in the yard, gazing round her. It was quite
right, what he had said--nothing had changed; and of course there was no
reason why it should. She had visited the place as recently as July,
though it seemed like a hundred years ago. This feeling was entirely
artificial--that she ought to find herself in a new world, just because
her own personal, interior world had been turned upside down. The
unchangedness around her was partly a comfort, partly a rebuke.

Of course the yard of Harlakenden was not a spot where anyhow one would
look for change. Such changes as a new coat of paint to the barn-roof
gutters and a new cowl for the oast were long overdue. She smiled
crookedly as she noticed the same roll of wire netting in the corner by
the pump, the same gash in the tiles of the "old part" just above the
back door. If she stayed here she must tidy up things a bit--improve
them. She would like to do a bit of farming again. . . . Her father
would not object; in fact he might be glad of what help she could give.
And she'd soon get back into things, though she'd been out of them for
so long . . . for nine years she had done no outdoor work, nothing but
housework, which she hated. It would be pleasant to wear breeches again,
to carry a spade, to lead horses. . . .

She knew now that she was glad Townley did not want her back at
Bladbean. She could not have gone there--this was much the best, broken
stump of life as it was. Perhaps she and Townley would make things up
some day, but she could not think of that now--she did not even want it.
For the first time for many weeks little springs and shoots of happiness
were stirring in her--happiness to be free, happiness to be in her old
home again, happiness to think that she might work on the farm.

"Hullo, Rosie! There you are!"

She turned round and saw her father coming into the yard, followed by
little Ronnie. It was the first time that she had seen the child for
nearly a year--as she had always timed her visits to dodge him--and here
at last was change. He now no longer looked a child, but a real little
boy, sturdy and fair, with a face more than ever like his mother's. He
wore shorts and a blue sweater, and his legs were brown and bare in
spite of autumn.

In his hand he carried a bunch of chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies.

"Look, Rose, I've picked you some flowers."

He held them out to her, and as she took them her heart was strangled.
She felt her breath go as her body was convulsed by a new sense of her
loss of Madge--Madge lost both before and after her death. She had been
only six months younger than Ronnie, but she had never looked like this,
never looked a little girl, but only a baby, an animal, and at last a
waxen doll. . . . She burst out crying.

"Oh, Daddy! what is it? Doesn't she like my flowers?"

The anguish in his voice rebuked her.

"Oh yes, I do--thank you so much."

"Poor Rose isn't feeling very well," said her father.

"I know, Aunt Hannah said she wasn't. That's why I picked her the
flowers."

Rose valiantly dried her eyes.

"They're lovely. Did they come out of your garden?"

"No. I haven't got a garden. But Daddy said I might pick them."

"How is it you're not at school?"

"Daddy said I might have a holiday to welcome you back."

He spoke importantly, not knowing half his meaning. She wished that she
could respond, but it was useless, and she turned away, sniffing with
display at the flowers she longed to throw on the dung-heap.

After dinner she could not help being relieved to find the little boy
had disappeared--he had gone out into the fields with Barnes, her father
said. She was beginning to feel tired again, and was glad to go upstairs
and rest in her room. She said she would be down to tea, but she fell
asleep and did not wake till nearly supper-time.

When she came down to supper, washed and changed and feeling more
cheerful, her father was not there. She did not need to be told that he
was unwell in order to know that he had been drinking again, and this
time she felt no disgusted recoil, but rather pity, strangely mixed with
gratitude and relief. For her sake he had kept sober through what must
have been the most exacting and terrible week of his life. Even when her
dependence on his unimpaired faculties was over, he had refused to turn
immediately to his escape, knowing that she still needed his kindness.
But now she was recovering, reestablishing herself--she could do without
him and he could relax. For the first time in her life she felt almost
thankful.



                            _Chapter Twelve_

At the end of a week Aunt Hannah went home. This move showed Rose
clearly that her stay at Harlakenden was expected to be a long one. If
any further enlightenment were needed it was provided by the news coming
a fortnight later that Aunt Hannah had gone to Bladbean. The settlement
of the two houses was now as it had been ten years ago--Aunt Hannah
keeping house for Townley, Rose keeping house for her father.

She had not been altogether pleased to see Aunt Hannah go. Her nearly
silent presence had been no vexation, and her management of the house
had been much smoother than Rose's was ever likely to be. Now she saw a
rebuke in her departure--Aunt Hannah had been "on Townley's side." If
that were really so, her discretion was praiseworthy; you could not help
admiring her. You missed her, too, for housekeeping had never been your
strong point, and it was odiously connected in your mind with servitude.
Moreover, it involved attendance on Ronnie.

"Father, I think the best thing for me to do would be to engage a
reliable woman to 'live in,' if I can find one. She'll do the cooking
and housework much better than I should, and she'll be able to look
after Ronnie. I don't really understand little boys. . . . Then I'll
take on some of the outdoor work--I should like to."

"Well, do whatever you like, my dear."

"Of course there'll be the wages; I might have saved you those. . . .
But really I feel I could make more than a woman will cost us if you'll
let me take some of the farm in hand."

"I know there's a lot wants doing. But things have been terrible
lately--prices slumping all round."

"Well, now's the time to buy. Sheep were down to a few shillings at
Ashford, and we've lots of room. I went round the place yesterday, and I
don't think there's enough on it."

"No, there isn't; we've got only half the number of tegs we had last
year. I've been too busy to attend to things."

"Yes, I know, and as it was because of me I want to try to help you pull
round."

"That's very good of you, dear."

Rose blushed, for in spite of all she had said she knew that, as things
were, she would probably save her father more money if she did the
indoor work than if she worked on the farm. Then suddenly a terrible
thought struck her.

"Father, you didn't have to pay anything--sell anything--for my defence,
did you?"

"Oh no. Your friend in India paid it all--that is, all except what
Townley insisted on paying."

"Did Townley pay, then?" She felt chilled.

"Yes, he paid what he said he would have paid if the other money hadn't
come along. He wouldn't be beholden to anybody."

"I'm sorry. I'd hoped he----"

"Don't you worry about him. He can afford it. Bladbean's always done
well."

"But times have been bad for everyone lately."

"Not so bad for him as for others. And he got a mortgage on all the
Forstal part of his land--five hundred pounds, I believe, and only three
and a half per cent."

"I'm sorry, all the same."

"I say if he wants his pride let him pay for it. I didn't feel at all
that way myself and I knew you wouldn't want me to. I can't tell you how
pleased I was when the lawyers told me what had happened--and surprised,
too. I hadn't even heard of the chap. A relation of the Hollinsheds,
isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's the kindest, noblest thing I've ever heard of--to do all
that for some one he scarcely knows at all. There's no good thinking we
can ever repay him, but, as I told him, it's altered my whole view of
life and changed my feelings towards my fellow men--"--

"You've written to him, then, have you?"

"Oh yes, of course. I wrote directly it happened, and after the trial,
too. You'll be writing yourself, I reckon?"

Rose turned away her face, for it was scarlet.

"I shall have to."

"Oh yes, my dear--you couldn't not write."

He did not know how difficult such a letter would be.

She wrote it a week later, stiffly and badly, the weight of her feelings
dragging like a brake upon her words.


DEAR MR. LENNOX: I do not know how to thank you for your great kindness
in paying for my defence. I owe my freedom to you and I am extremely
grateful, also my father, who would have been in great difficulties
without your help. I wish I could say more to thank you. I hope you are
in good health.

                                               Yours sincerely,
                                                        ROSE DEEPROSE.


She might have been thanking him for a subscription.


Three weeks later the answer came. So powerfully did the sight of the
envelope with its Indian stamp rouse long-buried emotions that her first
impulse was to tear it in half. She must not read his letters. Oh, but
she could read this one. It was different and she ought to read it.
Besides, he would not write as he had written before.

The letter was certainly different from the first she had received from
him, the only one besides this that she had read. After all, she had no
idea what the others had been like. . . . This one began calmly, "Dear
Rose"; but from that calm opening--which yet was more fervent than her
own stiff "Mr. Lennox"--flowed four pages of his neat, artistic writing.
She read them with her hands trembling, her eyes occasionally dim. It
was funny how she had not forgotten him, how she could still see him
sitting in the orchard, his fine, eager, serious face lifted to hers
with the shadows of the moving leaves upon it. . . . An uncontrollable
yearning seized her, which she knew was not so much for him as for the
little figure that had played in the background of their conversation.
Seen from the sad ground of the present, that day, all those days,
seemed happy, blessed. . . . She must not think of them.


I don't want you [he wrote] to waste any time feeling grateful to me.
It's I who am grateful to you for letting me do what I did. I can't
think how I should have borne it if you had refused me, so thank you,
thank you, a thousand times.


He told her that he had left the district from which he had written to
her two years ago. He was now up in the mountains, working very hard on
a new road that was being made across them. The work was difficult and
interesting, and he enjoyed it.


But I still look forward to my little farm, though that will not be for
another three years. Thirty is really too young to retire from this job,
though I shall probably come home next year for two or three months,
when my road is finished. I hope I shall see you then, but it must be
exactly as you wish. My letters did not please you and I see now that I
did wrong to persecute you with them. You must forgive me and try to
look upon what I have done as something in the nature of an apology,
though it was also much more than that.


Her hand clenched on the letter, crumpling it. What was the good of
writing like this? She was as much forbidden him now as she had been two
years ago. She was still the wife of that other man who had sat at her
feet in the orchard, whose face also had been dappled with the shadows
of moving leaves, making her think of a wild beast's. . . . She had not
loved him for three years, she had not lived with him for six months,
she had not seen him for six weeks, but she was still bound to him. She
was not free to dream, to dally, to write to India. . . .

She ought not to answer this letter. He did not ask her to, but the
spirit that breathed through it asked her. Why couldn't he have matched
her coldness? And he talked of seeing her, too. Would she have the
courage to refuse to see him if he came to England? Of course he would
never come to Bladbean again, even if the Hollinsheds could bring
themselves to return there which was most unlikely; but he still might
write and suggest a meeting. . . . He oughtn't, he shouldn't, but he
might. Restrained as his letter was in comparison with that earlier one,
it was still too bold. She was astonished at his boldness. What did he
think of her?

Perhaps he thought she would be divorcing her husband. . . . No doubt he
had heard from Mrs. Hollinshed how Townley had behaved and that she had
not gone back to him. Besides, she had not written from Bladbean, but
from Harlakenden. He might have taken for granted that her marriage was
over and done with.

There was a tumult in her heart, which was not of hope so much as of
shame. She still saw these things with her mother's eyes and she knew
that where her mother had succeeded she had failed. The very fact that
she had entered into marriage unblinded by romance only made her failure
more notable. The blame was not all hers. Townley had been cruel--the
cruel, domineering male, kicking the weak thing out of the way; she had
suffered because she had tried to protect the weak--suffered, and
offended him. She could not blame herself for this; but she felt
uneasily that if she ever had--which she had not--the courage to look
back on the last six months she would find that their tragedy was due to
another of those hot-headed explosions, which, flaring suddenly out of
the quiet ways of her life, had never failed to bring wreck and ruin.
She thought such a lot, as a rule, that it was queer how sometimes she
did things without thinking--and always with reckonings that never came
to those whose whole lives were thoughtless. . . . To Christian, for
instance, whose wildness had never brought her to judgment. She had been
destroyed less by any climax of her own continued rashness than by the
sudden, unprepared-for rashness of her friend.

Rose looked down at the letter in her hand. Her thoughts had carried her
a long way . . . and yet not so far as it seemed, for Christian had been
linked up with all that unnatural world where women refused to have
children and divorced their husbands. If she had been Christian, now,
she would at once have asked Townley to let her divorce him, so that
they could both be free. But because she was not Christian she could not
do so. Of course if he asked her, it would be a different matter. . . .
But the first move must come from him--she could not even suggest it.
The chivalry which had decked out the first difficult years of marriage
had not been entirely lost in pity's grave, but now, when all else was
dead, had risen again, slightly mad, among the ruins.


Time passed. It was not many weeks, but it seemed like years. This grief
seemed to disappear into time more quickly than the earlier grief of her
mother's death. It may have been because she was older, and losing
youth's faculty for sorrow, or because shock had amputated at least a
part of her life. The edges that knit themselves together over the wound
were the edges of years long passed, when Harlakenden had been her home.
It seemed natural that the place should reject those memories that had
been forged away from it; old habits, abandoned for ten years or more,
revived and held her. Her eyes felt as if they had never lost that early
morning view of Plurenden woods and the straight road stabbing through
them--though the woods were not quite the same; for a scar had been made
in them about half a mile down the road, where a little house had been
built, with a red roof like a drop of blood.

Her bedroom seemed almost exactly as it had been in the old days before
her marriage. Aunt Hannah had undone it's masquerade as Christian's
Victorian guest-room, and now she had made it her own again with her
possessions--even her mother's china cat had come from Bladbean to sit
on her mantelpiece. She had asked Aunt Hannah to send it.

Her days were moulded on an old routine. She rose early and went out to
the farm. There was not much to do in winter, but she would walk out to
where Barnes and Swift were at their everlasting hedging job, and watch
them bend the sapless boughs, to plait and bind a barrier that spring
should sprout with maple and oak and beech. By advertising in the local
paper they had got thirty more tegs for keep, so that the fields were
properly grazed. Twice a day she went round the place, counting the
winter stock, and helped Barnes generally with the lookering. She also
helped him milk the cows, though this, in the farming tradition both of
her Kent and his Sussex, was as much a female intrusion as her other
jobs. Women's work was hop-tying and poultry-keeping. She had lost the
technical skill necessary for the first, and the second bored her;
though she had persuaded her father to change his casual barn-door ways
for something more intensive and profitable.

She wanted to feel that she was earning her keep, and worth more than
the wages she would have saved if she had done the indoor work. She had
found quite a decent woman for this--the widow of a cowman at Lashenden,
who was glad to do all the cleaning and cooking of Harlakenden for a
comfortable home and ten shillings a week. There had been a chance of
her having Ivy, who had not long survived Aunt Hannah's arrival at
Bladbean, but Rose could not bear the thought of her coming to
Harlakenden--she would have brought with her too much that she was
anxious to keep out. Ivy, who would have been pleased to unite herself
again with her mistress's misfortunes, took offence when she was passed
over in favour of the cowman's widow, and married in a huff the
shopkeeper's son at Monday Boys.


Sometimes a kind of desolate astonishment would come over Rose when she
realized how much she had forgotten. It seemed incredible that such
memories should have been dulled by so short a time. It was humiliating,
too; she was young enough to feel a certain humiliation in her quick
forgetting. But she was also old enough to be grateful and wise enough
not to probe these covered wounds; she knew that she had not so much
forgotten things as set up certain defences in her mind. She could not
have kept a clear picture of her life between July and November and be
now, in January, living the daily life of an ordinary sane woman. She
had to forget, so let her be glad that she had forgotten; even though it
hurt both her pride and her love.

Every now and then she touched a bruise which showed her how much she
had been damaged. For the most part these bruises displayed themselves
as dark tendernesses--pity, for instance, always with her a painful and
ready emotion, was now almost intolerable and overwhelming. It
interfered with her farmwork, making her suffer out of all proportion
for an animal in pain, and burdening her with grief at necessary
farmyard slaughter. She hid her feelings as well as she could, for she
knew that they were unhealthy, representing a bruise. If her pity had
been normal she would have felt it for her father, so tired, so
undistinguished, so burdened both by inward weakness and outward
circumstance. But though she no longer felt for him the disgust and
intolerance she used to feel, though she hoped and almost believed that
she was really now what is called a good daughter, she knew that her
motive power was based in gratitude and that tolerance which comes of
understanding, rather than in pity--a better base, after all.

If her pity had been healthy she would have pitied Ronnie. The poor
little boy had rather a dreary life. She had been surprised to find how
few toys he possessed--much fewer than Madge--and his school did not
seem to furnish many playmates. No doubt other children's parents did
not approve of Harlakenden; her father's drinking had been for more than
thirty years in local knowledge, and her own return would not help
matters much. Though she had received no unkindness, and believed that
on the whole her neighbours had been pleased at her escape, she knew
that her trial had placed her among the more sinister objects of the
countryside. She was, moreover, that focus of rural censure, a woman
living apart from her husband. . . . She could not expect little boys'
mothers to allow their children to play where they were sure of meeting
her, to rub their innocent minds against her uncertain sin and her
certain sorrow.

For that reason she should have done everything she could to make his
life happier, to atone to him for the added burden of scandal she had
brought into it. But she just couldn't force herself to make friends
with the child. She made no attempt to rationalize her motives, to tell
herself that he was not a nice little boy. On the contrary, she told
herself again and again that he was a fine specimen, a good, sturdy,
upstanding little chap, and then was compelled to own that it was for
that very reason that she disliked him. She disliked him because he was
all that was not and had never been Madge. He was no trouble, whereas
she had been a constant charge; he was alert and intelligent where she
had been merely "natural"; he prattled and she had been dumb--most of
all he was alive and she was dead.

She recognized her old jealousy in all its earlier force and with this
last added cruelty. She was ashamed of it, she struggled against it, she
prayed to be delivered from it, but she could not help it. In time it
might pass--she trusted to time to do more for her than it had already
done-but at present she must endure it; for sometimes she felt herself
to be enduring rather than committing this injustice. She told her heart
that this little boy was her own half-brother and Christian's son, a
pledge of comfort to her in the loneliness of her life, but she could
still do nothing. She must bear the bewildered, unhappy look he
sometimes gave her--it was obvious that she had disappointed him--she
must dodge his company, see him trotting forlornly at Barnes's heels
when his father was out or incapacitated, she must let him depend on
Mrs. Hornblower for such services as his independent spirit had not yet
been able to compass for himself; she must realize how much she missed
in his companionship and his affection. It was part of her doom, part of
the sentence life had passed on her.


Towards the end of January Mr. Cole wrote saying that Townley was
anxious to have their separation regularized by a deed, under which he
proposed to make her an allowance. The first instinct of pride was to
refuse, but second thoughts told her that she had no right to deprive
her father of what would be a very real assistance to his kindness.

He, for other reasons, approved of the scheme, and to her great relief
undertook the preliminary interview with Mr. Cole at Ashford. He came
back well satisfied. Townley was offering her two hundred and fifty a
year.

"Oh, that's too much," she exclaimed.

"Nonsense! he can afford it."

Rose knew that it was a tradition of Harlakenden that Bladbean could
afford anything.

"I don't think he can."

"Why not? Aunt Hannah will save him nearly that much by living with him.
You've no idea how she screws and saves."

"But he's hit by prices the same as everyone else, and he's already paid
five hundred pounds towards my defence."

"I told you he got that out of a mortgage; and Breeds of Gablehook was
telling me only last Wednesday that he sold five beasts at Maidstone for
thirty pounds each. He doesn't let the hard times hit him."

"But I don't want an income from him--only just enough to make sure that
you're not out of pocket. If I give you fifteen shillings a week for my
keep, and pay Mrs. Hornblower's wages, and then take half a crown a
week, say, for pocket money--that doesn't come to a hundred a year. If
he gave me a hundred a year I could get my clothes out of it, too."

"No, my dear, you take what he offers. You've a right to it."

"I don't think I have."

"Of course you have! He's treated you shamefully--refusing to let you
live in your own home. . . . The least he can do is to give you a proper
income. And even that doesn't make up for what he's done."

It was the first time she had heard him speak indignantly of Townley. As
a rule he had avoided him in conversation, out of care, she imagined,
for her feelings; but when obliged to mention him he had always done it
with temperance.

"Father, you mustn't make a mistake. I wouldn't go back to Townley if he
asked me."

"No, of course not, dear, and I wouldn't blame you. A man who can't
forgive . . . and most of it was his own fault, too."

"Please don't be angry with him. I treated him badly--yes, I did, though
I won't deny he was to blame--and he's been exceedingly generous."

"Proud, Rose. It was pride made him pay his whack for your defence and
not leave it all to that Lennox chap, as I did. Still, it's right that a
wife should stand by her husband, and I admire you for it. In spite of
all that's happened I can't help hoping that one day you'll make it up
and be together again. Cole said that Townley began by asking about a
divorce, but he advised him to let it be a separation; then, you see,
the door is still open."

"Yes," she said, "the door is still open"--and seemed to hear a door
shut.

In the end her sense of justice towards Townley made her allow him to be
as kind to her as he still wanted to be. It was no longer her business
to save his pocket, but she still felt an obligation to save his pride.
He had suffered on her account quite horribly--in a different way he had
suffered as much as she had. She must not refuse to let him put his
broken house into the best order that he could--his broken house with
the door still open. . . .


It was not long, scarcely three months, that she had to bear this last
bitterness of his kindness. Only one instalment of her allowance had
been paid when one morning, just as she was finishing breakfast, the
telephone bell rang in the next room. Her father was upstairs, sleeping
off one of his bad times, which, with a measure of self-reproach, she
realized were more frequent now that Aunt Hannah had left. She picked up
the receiver. A man's voice said:

"Hullo."

"Hullo."

"Who's there? Is that Harlakenden?"

The line was not very clear. She heard a roaring, with a thin pin of a
voice coming through it--a man's voice.

"Yes, this is Harlakenden. Who are you?"

"I want to speak to Mrs. Deeprose."

"Speaking."

"Oh . . ." A moment's silence, then, "This is Townley."

She could say nothing. The pin had become a dagger.

"Are you there?"

"Yes."

His voice seemed to recede immeasurably. Far off she thought she heard
him say:

"I've rung up to say good-bye."

He could not have said that. She cried:

"What's that? I didn't hear."

"I've rung up to say good-bye."

"Are you going away, then?"

"Yes--at once."

"For long?"

She was not sure, but it sounded like "for ever," so she cried:

"I'm sorry, but I didn't hear."

His voice suddenly swelled again; it came roaring down the wire like
wind.

"You'll never see me again. Won't you be glad!"

"Nonsense, Townley. You know it's entirely your own choice that we
haven't met."

She spoke in the sharp, matter-of-fact voice that had been only too
customary between them. Then, ashamed of her lapse, she listened and
heard him say:

"I don't want to see you."

He must be mad, she thought--ringing her up to talk this painful
nonsense. And where could he be going?--for ever? Had he sold Bladbean?
Then suddenly she understood.

"Townley!" she screamed, "don't do anything foolish! Wait--wait till I
can get over! Don't--" But the telephone had gone dead. He was no longer
there.

Frantically she dialled Bladbean's number. Aunt Hannah answered.

"Where's Townley?"

"Townley? I don't know. Is that Rose speaking?"

"He rang me up a minute ago. Can't you get hold of him?"

"He didn't ring you up from here. He's been out for at least an hour.
Can I give him a message when he comes back?"

"No--no--but you must get hold of him at once. Send some one after
him--I tell you he's in danger."

"He's what? I can't hear you."

"He's in danger--he may do something desperate. Send the men after him,
wherever he's gone. Did he go in the car?"

"I'm sure I don't know. He went out before I came down. He's all right,
Rose. Why are you making such a fuss?"

"Because he as good as told me he was going to kill himself. I'm coming
over to Bladbean at once."

She banged down the receiver and ran out of the room. But before she
could shut the house door behind her the bell went again. She hesitated.
. . . Should she go back? That damned old bitch was still on the line.
. . . She called through the dining-room door:

"Ronnie, go and see who that is, and if it's Aunt Hannah tell her I've
started for Bladbean. If it's anyone else, come and tell me. I'll be in
the yard, getting the car."

Three minutes later she had driven round to the front. Ronnie stood
waiting just outside the door, dressed for school with his satchel and
crimson cap.

"It wasn't Aunt Hannah, Rose; it was Townley."

"Townley!--Is he still there?" She jumped out of the car and began to
run towards the house.

"No, but he gave me a message for you. He said I was to say he was sorry
he had spoken like that and he sent you his love."

"O my God! why didn't you come for me?"

"He told me not to. He said he'd rather talk to me."

"Did--did he say anything else?"

"No, he only asked me how I was and I told him about that caterpillar
thing I found in the shaw. He called me Sonny."

Rose made an inarticulate sound. For a moment vision too was blurred,
then she saw that she must at all costs control herself, and hurrying
back to the car she climbed into it and drove away.


This time she was to be spared the drag and shatter of suspense. Before
she could reach Bladbean they had found Townley lying beside his gun in
a little old lodge that stood away from the others at the corner of a
field called Waxes. One of the hedgers had seen him go in there; he must
have gone straight from the telephone box, which he had left twice,
returning to apologize for his first ungracious leave-taking, to say
"I'm sorry" to Rose for the only time in his life: though even then he
had been glad not to have to say it to her personally but to leave it as
a message with a little sturdy boy. No one had heard him fire the gun,
but the gun had been fired . . . they would not let Rose see him.

Of course there had to be a coroner's inquest, and the past must be
taken out and looked at again, and made to account for the present. He
had never been the same after his wife's trial. He had taken it very
much to heart, and its fortunate ending had come too late to save his
ruined nerves. No one wanted to be unkind to Rose, but she must stand up
and explain why it was he would not have her back after her release. He
could not forgive her for the shame and anxiety she had brought
him--nerves, of course . . . nerves stretched to the point of insanity
. . . suicide while temporarily insane.

After the inquest the police handed over some letters they had found in
his pockets. They had not been read in court, as they obviously had no
bearing on the case. There were one or two bills, which could not have
troubled him, as he was financially in a very good position, and a
couple of personal letters, both friendly and unimportant. The first was
from Uncle Hugh, suggesting a visit--Rose scarcely troubled to read it;
but when she came to the second her heart stood still under a sudden
weight of painful understanding.

It had arrived the day before his death and carried a London postmark
and the neatly engraved address of the Hollinsheds' flat. It was from
Mrs. Hollinshed, announcing that they would not be coming to Bladbean
this year:

"My husband and I both think that it is time Rosemary and Pamela had
their first visit abroad and this summer we are taking them to France.
We shall miss Bladbean in many ways and often think of our happy times
there, but now that the children are older . . ."

Rose could read no more--she was blind with tears. So this was why.
. . . Oh, it was no good saying he wouldn't have taken his life for such
a thing, though in a sense it was true--he must have known all along
that they would not come back. After all the scandal there had been you
could not expect--and he would normally have been the last to
expect--people like the Hollinsheds to compromise their children by
coming back to the very site and centre of it. He must have known they
would not come; and yet he must have hoped. . . . Perhaps he had even
dreamed that the Hollinsheds would crown their half-century of
honourable association with the Deeproses by standing by them as the
Deeproses would have stood by the Hollinsheds if they had been attacked
by scandal and prison and murder. This letter had come to tell him he
had hoped too much and dreamed too wildly, and on the top of all his
other cares it had crushed him. He had been unable to face life without
his Hollinsheds. . . .

Rose was weeping bitterly.

"All this is my fault," she sobbed.

"Nonsense!" said her father. "How can you say that?"

"I disgraced him, and he couldn't get over it."

"He made it a thousand times worse than it need have been by refusing to
let you go back to him."

"I wouldn't have gone back to him--no, not if he'd asked me. I couldn't
have borne it. And if I had, the Hollinsheds still wouldn't have come."

"No, of course not. Why should they? And if they had, it wouldn't have
made any difference. You surely don't think he killed himself because of
them?"

Rose would not argue with him, for she felt more than she could prove or
explain. Besides, he was still angry with Townley--partly, she
suspected, because he had taken his life at a time when Wally Deeprose
had been too incapably drunk to help his daughter in her second bout
with adversity as he had helped her in the first one.

She herself had lost all her anger, for pity held Townley now as surely
as it held Madge. She saw how cruelly she had killed his small
ambitions--the ambitions of an unambitious man simple, limited,
laudable. . . . She had wrecked no dangerous machine, but a child's toy.
Townley dead seemed to her infinitely helpless and pathetic--a little
boy whose sand castle had been washed away by the sea. "I'm the king of
the castle. Get away, you dirty rascal"--that was all his swaggering and
domineering had been. And in the end he had said he was sorry. . . .
Poor little boy!


Townley's will had been made soon after his marriage, and he had not
thought of remaking it. Rose found herself his sole inheritor, the owner
of a thriving farm. Bladbean had been left to her in trust for their
children, or if there were none surviving, to her absolutely. She was
astonished, for he had always been secretive about his financial affairs
and she had not expected such an unrestricted provision.

Her father was delighted.

"There you are, Rose; a big landowner and the mistress of the old place.
Bladbean has belonged to the Deeproses for close on two hundred years."

After that it seemed ungracious to say that she did not want to live
there.

"But I couldn't, Father. It's mixed up with too much that has been
dreadful in my life. And I never really cared for it as a place. I think
I shall sell it, and if you'll let me, I'll put the money into
Harlakenden, and we'll work that up--that is, if you don't mind me
living on here."

"Mind you here? No, of course not. You're more than welcome--always.
But, my dear, I should mind if you sold Bladbean. It's the real Deeprose
place, and I'd be sorry if it went out of the family. If you don't feel
like living in it now, why not let it for a bit? You could ask a big
rent for land in such good heart . . . and then, later on, if you felt
like it . . ."

Perhaps he had been going to say "We could all move there." But even
with him, perhaps least of all with him, she did not want to live at
Bladbean. Harlakenden was still her refuge, her shelter, her home, and
she wanted to stay there--away from the orchard of shuttling leaves and
the garden where the storm-cock used to sing, away from the high fields
of the Forstal and the lodge in the field called Waxes, away from the
view of Egerton church among its trees, and from the shop at Monday Boys
where you could buy toys at Christmas.

Nevertheless, she thought his plan for letting better than her plan for
selling. Even while he spoke she had realized that there might be
conditions under which she would not be unwilling to return to Bladbean.
. . . Oddly enough it was the first time since Townley's death that she
had really savoured her freedom. Some censoring tenderness of her mind
had forbidden her to contemplate the door that stood open. But now she
suddenly knew that at last she was free to write a letter to India.

"Oh yes," she said; "I think you're right. It would be a shame to sell
it. We could arrange for a three years' lease."

A sudden happiness irradiated her. It was as if a flower had opened.


Meanwhile, she would help her father at Harlakenden. There was an amount
of ready money she could lay her hands on, apart from any rents or the
income from Townley's investments-mostly in building societies. She
would be able to smarten and improve the place. That afternoon she and
her father walked round the farm, discussing repairs and improvements.
Rose had not felt so light-hearted for weeks. Life once more contained a
future, albeit an uncertain and distant one. . . . For a long time it
had been all past, a wheel to which she had been bound and which she
must tread in her own defence as a prisoner treads a treadmill. Then she
had been released into the small shelter of the present; but it was not
only now that she had become aware of far horizons beyond the sheltering
wall.

Spring seemed already come this February afternoon. She and her father
stood in the yard, where the flagstones were warm with sunshine. The
first lambs had arrived--she could hear one calling far away, with a
faint disturbance of her heart.

A little figure came hurrying along the road from Plurenden. It was
Ronnie on his way home from school. Every now and then he broke into a
run, and directly he caught sight of Rose and his father he shouted,
"Hullo!"

"Hullo, boy!"

"Dad, I've got something wonderful to show you--and you, too, Rose," he
added, politely.

She still felt that pain of jealousy when she looked at him. She longed
to turn and go back into the house, leaving him with his father; but she
forced herself to stay and show an interest.

"What is it, Ronnie?"

"It's a pencil-sharpener," he answered, lifting a face suffused with
joy. "Toby Bateman gave it to me; he's got two, but he's given me the
one _I_ think the nicest."

"Let's see it," said his father.

Ronnie rummaged in his satchel.

"I've got such a lot of things in here that they get all mixed up, and I
put it right at the bottom to make sure it didn't fall out."

He went on rummaging. "Where can it have got to?"

"Better take all the things out one by one," suggested Rose.

He did so, laying them carefully on the big slab by the
horse-trough--his school books, a pencil-box, a ruler, a bus time-table,
a ball of string, a broken knife, a piece of blotting-paper containing a
melancholy specimen of a pressed flower, a piece of cholocate, a puzzle,
but no pencil-sharpener.

"Where can it have gone?"

The joy had left his face, giving place to a deep anxiety. He scraped
round his hand inside the bag, and she saw anxiety change to the full,
incredulous shock of grief.

"Where can it have gone?"

Wally Deeprose suddenly pointed.

"Look, there's a hole in your satchel--that's where it's gone."

Ronnie stared at him, then at his satchel, struggling for self-control.
But his grief was too much for him, and he burst into tears.

"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"

"Come, come," said Wally; "don't go on like that. You're a big boy, not
a baby."

"But I've lost my pencil-sharpener. I--" He suddenly fought back his
tears. "Perhaps it's on the road between here and the bus stop. May I go
and look for it?"

"Yes, you cut along. But be careful you don't get run over, and come
back before it's dark."

Ronnie went, but returned unsuccessful. For the rest of the day a sniff
would break from him occasionally and he went to bed resigned rather
than comforted.

Wally Deeprose was inclined to view the situation humorously, but to
Rose it was disturbing. She had seen on Ronnie's face a joy, an anxiety,
and a grief, which seemed, in their causes, only, inferior to what she
herself had experienced. Was this what it meant to be a normal child?
Was it this that Madge had escaped?

That night she slept badly. She could not rid herself of the thought of
Ronnie's trouble, and felt irritated with her father for his facetious
heartlessness. Couldn't he see that the poor child was suffering just as
much as he or she had suffered? The only difference lay in the smallness
of the cause and therefore in the ease of the remedy. . . . Why didn't
he tell him he would buy him another pencil-sharpener? It would not cost
more than a few pence. If Madge had lost or broken a much more expensive
toy Rose would at once have bought her another, even though Madge would
have forgotten her loss in a few moments. Of course Ronnie would forget,
too, in time--or wouldn't he? Were children's sorrows as transient as
grown-ups liked to believe? She could not tell, having mostly forgotten
her own childhood and never having had the charge of a normal child. But
she could not believe that such bewildered disappointment--bereavement,
rather--as she had seen on that little face would quickly pass away. On
the other hand, he might accept consolation more easily, because less
critically, than an older person. It seemed cruel that it should not be
offered him. She said to herself--I will buy him a pencil-sharpener.

She was as good as her word. The next day, when she went in to Maidstone
to see Mr. Cole and the house agents about letting Bladbean, she went
into a stationer's shop and bought a really superior pencil-sharpener,
costing one and sixpence.

"My word!" said her father, "that's kind of you, Rose."

She felt almost angry with him. Why hadn't he thought of getting one
himself?

She gave it to Ronnie when he came home from school that evening. He
seemed scarcely able to believe his luck.

"Oh, Rose--oh, but have you really. . . . Oh, but it's a much better one
than the one Toby gave me. Oh. I say, how kind you are!"

His sorrow was turned to joy--and all for one and sixpence.

Later on he said, suddenly: "It seems too good to be true. I feel I
shall wake up and find it's all a dream."

Something very old in her could not help saying: "It's only a
pencil-sharpener, Ronnie."

"I know. But I've always wanted a sharpener more than anything; and this
is such a beauty. I'm going to sharpen every single pencil in the house,
and tomorrow I'm going to sharpen all the ones at school."

She felt a sudden pity for him invade her heart, and for a moment she
was no longer jealous. Poor little boy! He certainly didn't have much
fun--not so much as most children had. His father was kind, but
curiously lacking in imagination. She felt protective and indignant--and
then suddenly ashamed. Why didn't she love him? He was so lovable.


That night she dreamed of Madge, far the first time since her death.
Something in Rose's mind had shut her out of her dreams, or at least out
of the remembrance of them. But tonight she saw her plainly.

She found herself in that green tremulous land she had visited long ago,
when she had first heard that natural happiness was all her child could
ask of life. Here she was again on that sunny slope, among the flowers
and the browsing rabbits, the little helpless, happy world of those who
will never know adult care. She was alone in it, but she knew at once
that Madge must be near, and the next moment she saw her running towards
her, alive--and changed. Yes, there was a look on her face that she had
never seen in life--a look of eagerness and intelligence. "Look, Rose!"
she cried, "look what I've got here." Rose saw in her hand the celluloid
ball that she had often seen in other dreams, a symbol charged with
torment; but this time the significance was changed. It was no longer
sinister. It looked like a ball, but was in fact, she knew, a
pencil-sharpener. "Oh, I'm so glad!" an infinite relief had seized her,
and still full of that relief she woke.

She sat up in bed, with tears pouring down her cheeks. The dream seemed
to her nothing less than a divine revelation. Hitherto she had always
pictured Madge dead very much as she had been alive--her limited soul
lived on with all its limitations. But now she knew that this could not
be. If Madge had survived death--and Rose had never doubted with her
mind that she had, though her heart had not till this moment been able
to feel it--she would have left behind her all that had crippled her in
life, as much as a blind man leaves his blindness. Her sad, impaired
little body no longer shut in her soul, which had sprung free with all
its powers. Her innocence was now united with intelligence, her
sweetness with light. Madge is with Mother, and she is like
Mother--knowing and loving me. O my God! I am so happy--so happy!

But the dream did not stand only for theological revelation. More
objectively, it stood for psychological release. She found that she
had--miraculously, it seemed--lost all her jealousy of Ronnie, those
unhappy feelings that had stood between her and the happiness she knew
that she could both give him and find in him. She felt now as if the
dream had been about Ronnie rather than about Madge. After all, the
child in the dream had not called her Mum, but Rose. . . .

At breakfast she said to him:

"Today's Saturday, Ronnie. How would you like to come with me to the
pictures this afternoon?"

His face beamed with delight. "Oh, Rose!--to the pictures at Ashford?"

"Yes, the picture palace. You've been there, haven't you?"

"I went once with Dad, but we had to come out before the end, because he
was busy."

"Is that, the only time you've been?"

"Yes. There was a man wearing funny spectacles and climbing up a great
big house. He kept on trying to get in at the windows and walk upstairs,
but there was a policeman there who wouldn't let him. I wonder what he
did. I 'spect he fell off the top when he got there." And he laughed
happily.

Rose had already looked at the local paper and seen that a film of the
Marx Brothers was showing. She found herself looking forward eagerly to
Ronnie's delight. It was just what he would enjoy, and it seemed a crime
that he had never before enjoyed it. Well, she would change all that
now. She would see that he had all the happiness he was capable of
savouring so richly with his quick, active little mind. He should no
longer go trailing after Barnes on his half-holidays. . . .

She had a curious sense of importance as she sat down beside him in the
Ashford cinema. It was the first time that she had ever taken a child to
the pictures. She found the experience delightful. His eager interest,
his excitement, his laughter, called out a grateful, charmed response in
her. And yet she already knew the other side, the dark side of his
intelligence--she knew that he had as much need of her tenderness as
ever Madge had had. . . .

She was looking forward to her life with him, and arranged it in her
mind as the shadows swam past her eyes. She would always give him some
little treat on Saturdays, treats much as her mother had given her. She
had money to spend on him--he should have the toys and books he wanted.
She would so much enjoy giving them to him that she must be careful not
to spoil him. He was too good to spoil. He must keep that honest,
independent, cheerful spirit.

She would see that he had friends. The little boys and girls at his
school must be encouraged to come to tea with him. They must be shown
that Harlakenden was a decent place with a claim to social life. She
would revive all the social contacts that she could, with people who,
since her trial, had been kind to her, but whom she had fled from--Dr.
Brownsmith (who had even sent his wife to call on her at Harlakenden),
and Mr. and Mrs. King at Egerton, and others whom she now could bear to
know again. She would build up a new life for herself so that Ronnie
could grow up in it.

But what would happen when she went to live at Bladbean? . . . Here in
the dark she could think of Bladbean and feel bold enough to see herself
there, in company so good that she need not be afraid of ghosts. . . .
Ronnie could come to Bladbean--he could stay there in the holidays; it
would be a better place for him than Harlakenden, though of course she
must not take him from his father entirely. He would be always running
over. . . . And, anyway, all that was three years ahead. She crouched
behind those three years as behind a sheltering wall. The day would come
when she would want to look across them, but not just yet. She would
rather stay awhile in the comfortable shadow that they made against a
sunshine that was still too bright for her tired experience.

"Look, Rose--look!"

He was pointing at the screen, but she saw only his excited face in the
light that came from it. In his eagerness he looked more than ever like
Christian, and she realized that she would find Christian again in him
as well as Madge. She would find all of Christian that she still missed,
for it had not required this afternoon's companionship to show her that
the dark side of Christian did not live on in her son. The dark part,
the old part, the witch part of Christian was dead--all that lived of
her now was her brightness, her eagerness, her sweetness, her last
penitent, forgiving kiss.

Rose brushed the tears from her eyes as the piano-organ started "God
Save the King" and the audience stood up. She had been so busy with her
thoughts that she had not paid much attention to the happenings on the
screen, and had some difficulty in replying sensibly to his comments and
questions. He seemed to have accepted her now. Her suddenly changed
attitude might have surprised him at first, but it had been altogether
too delightful a change for criticism. He accepted it as one of life's
puzzles, and a better one than most; and he seemed without fears for its
duration--what had begun would go on. He had not learned to doubt.

"How late we shall be for tea," he said, cheerfully.

"Oh no, we shan't. We're going to have tea in Ashford."

"In a shop?"

"Yes, at Boorman's."

Newer and more enterprising places had opened since the day when she
used to go to Boorman's with her mother, but she felt that no other
place would do so well for the inauguration of her new life as the
sister-mother of this little boy. It had not altered much; the big
mirrors were still there, and Ronnie noticed them immediately.

"Look, Rose," he said; "look at us."

"Yes, I remember those mirrors when I used to come here as a little girl
with Granny. You can see us going on and on and on--and then we come
back here on the other side."

"But isn't it interesting? I'm going to count us--one, two, three, four,
five, six . . ." he counted up to eighteen: "I can't see any more--they
get dark farther on, but they don't stop."

"No, they lust come round again."

"Isn't it funny? It's just as if we went round the world and came back
here." Then he added, looking more than ever like Christian: "I wonder
what's happening to us in the dark part we can't see?--Do you think we
aren't sitting still any more, but have gone out to shoot crocodiles?"

"Crocodiles?--You funny boy! Why should we shoot crocodiles?"

"Well, why shouldn't we? We might be doing anything in that dark part on
the other side of the world. I'm going to try and think of all our
adventures in the dark part, and when I've thought of them I'm going to
tell them to you like a story."

"And I'm going to think of our adventures here in the light. You've no
idea of the nice things you're going to see presently. Now tell me, what
sort of cakes would you like for tea?"

"May I have one shaped like a bird's nest? I saw one in the window as we
came in. If you like, I won't think of the dark part till later. But I
say, Rose, aren't you glad you've got back safe into Boorman's Shop
again?"

                                THE END




[End of _Rose Deeprose_ by Sheila Kaye-Smith]