Dark Hester/Chapter 9

Perhaps that was really the best thing she could do, Monica thought, sitting at her solitary tea-table in the still room afterwards. Hopelessness was flowing over her, hopelessness of herself, now, more than of the predicament; she herself, she saw it plainly, was, as much as Hester, the predicament. She was too young, too fierce, too unsubmissive to life. She could not give up Clive or Robin, that extension of Clive. As long as they were there and she loved them, she must suffer from the lack of them; and as long as Hester was there she must lack them. Why not make some excuse of health or purse—and go to France;—not with Norah and Celia and Captain Ingpen, that was a friendly absurdity;—but go;—far away; so that she might be removed, and finally removed from Clive’s life. Then she could remember him; as if he were dead.

As she was thinking these thoughts—half believing them, but only half—she saw his car drive up. She rose to her feet, pressing her forefinger hard against her lip, and, as she stood there, it was ​Robin’s face that came to her; Robin startled, frightened, his happiness all broken. That was what Hester had done to Robin; and she must not do it to Clive again. She was always breaking Clive’s happiness. It grew up; it sought the light—and she broke it off. It was cruel; she must not be cruel. ‘Help me not to be cruel,’ she muttered, with the child habit of prayer that had never left her. And, as he came in, she saw that Clive, too, had equipped himself. He was pale, but he was smiling, and he came towards her almost as little Robin had done, almost as if he was calling out to her and wanted her. Then, as he took her hands, his face altered: ‘Why, Mummy,’ he faltered, ‘you’ve been crying.’

She had not known it. She was unaware of tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. Was it not only that her hot parched gaze betrayed her?

‘Crying, Clive?’ she, too, faltered.

‘Yes— what is it? Oh, Mummy—are you so unhappy?’

They were back, mother and son, in the past; but she now seemed the child, for she was in his arms and the tears had come indeed and though she still heard herself saying, far away, ‘Help me not to be cruel,’ she was sobbing helplessly.

​‘What is it?—Oh, Mummy, what is it?’ Clive murmured; and his face was full of fear.

‘I am foolish.—I mind things so foolishly.—It’s only that Hester has been here ———’

As she named his wife she felt that Clive’s flesh contracted, contracted and shrank from her; as though she laid hot iron on it, and as she felt him shrink from her the lava flood of her misery heaved and overflowed.

‘Hester was angry with me.—Because I kept Robin for a little. I didn’t ask him to come.—I knew better than that!—I am well trained.—He called to me and wanted to see the fountain. And Hester came for him and found him with me—and was very angry.’

Stillness was about them. His arms had slipped down from her but he held her hands—tightly—as he intently thought.

‘There must have been a misunderstanding,’ was what he said.

‘I am afraid not. No, there was no misunderstanding.’ She drew her hands from his and dried her eyes. Her tears were checked and thoughts—cold, fiery, rapid — sped through her mind, as she scrutinized her peril and the relief of truth; and under her thoughts her heart seemed sinking from her.

​‘Tell me what happened, will you?’ Clive spoke in a dry, deadened voice. He remained standing in front of her, but he looked away; he, too, was taking counsel with himself. ‘You have every right to see Robin, of course,’ he said. ‘That was one of the reasons why we came here;—so that you should see him.—That was one of the reasons Hester wanted to come.’

‘How much Hester wants me to see Robin was displayed the other night, wasn’t it? She takes away with one hand what she makes a parade of giving with the other.’

‘Mummy! Mummy!’ he glanced at her askance; but he pleaded with her; he would not face the truth. ‘Truly you misunderstood; I promise you did. I asked her about it—about the fairy-tales, you know, at once. I told her I did not agree with her. Of course she was miserable. She had not meant to hurt you. It’s only that she cares so about her ideas;—and she’s been worried about Robin.’

‘She may well be worried about him. He was happy with me this afternoon and when he saw her she frightened him.—It’s frightening to a little child to see his mother insult his grandmother.’

‘Mother, you are very unfair.’

She had walked away from him in the dusky ​room and stood at the window looking out, and his voice, trembling yet austere, followed her. ‘You are unfair to Hester. She is not capable of what you think. I mean—Hester may have lost her temper; but she could not have insulted you.’

‘I am sorry, Clive. I felt it so; and so did the stranger who, unfortunately, was present—and whose presence did not restrain Hester. Captain Ingpen was there and saw it all.’

‘Ingpen! What had he to do with it!’ Clive stood where she had left him but his voice was altered and as she turned she saw the frosty anger of his face.

‘What had he to do with it?—Your manner is very strange, very unbecoming, Clive. He had nothing to do with it except that he was there.’

‘And how did you know what he felt? What right had he to feel anything about you and Hester? I begin to see. I begin to understand. Hester doesn’t like him. She came for Robin and found him with that man—and it made her lose her temper. She doesn’t like him,’ Clive repeated, ‘and I wonder you do, Mummy, I do indeed.’

Was it Clive who spoke such words? Clive who thus inconceivably arraigned her, seizing the specious pretext so that he might shield Hester?

​‘You forget yourself, Clive.’ She tried to speak quietly; she was right and Clive wrong; she had the advantage and she must speak quietly. ‘Your solicitude for your wife makes you forget yourself. I cannot consent to have my friendships proscribed by you and Hester.’

‘Your friendships? Why, you don’t know the man! You saw him for the first time the other day!’

‘What is that to you, if it was so? One may like a person very much in a day. I have met Captain Ingpen three times and feel him almost a friend.’ ‘So I see. So I saw the other night. Please remember, then, that he isn’t our friend and don’t discuss Hester with him — as I gather you have been doing.’

‘Very well, Clive; very well. All I have to say, then, is this— and then I will ask you to go:—I have not discussed Hester with him. Hester insulted me in his presence and I saw that he felt it an insult.—But he said not a word against her. It was I who said, to explain, to exculpate—that she had lost her temper:—that is all. I insist on your understanding what passed between me and Captain Ingpen. I have not discussed Hester with him.’

‘Very well. Have it as you wish. I will go.’

‘One moment more.—Since you and Hester ​object to my friends—I have a right to ask you why. What are Hester’s objections to Captain Ingpen? and yours?’

Clive had turned on his heel, and now paused, not looking at her: ‘Mine were based entirely on what I saw of him. I don’t like his manners.—I thought him too—easy.’

‘I see. And Hester? You object to his manners and she to his morals, I suppose. I did not know that the modern woman kept our old scruples. I certainly imagined none in Hester. If she has heard stories about his love affairs, or saw irregularities in his past, let me tell you that I am perfectly aware of all that can be said against him.’

‘Love affairs?’ Clive had now completely turned and was staring bitterly at her. ‘Who cares about his love affairs? Hester hardly knew the man. But can’t you see for yourself how a reactionary cynic of his type would antagonize her? He sneers at everything she believes in.’

‘So I am to be insulted by Hester because my friends are not Socialists and feminists.—What I feel about hers—about Mrs. Jessup and her sister—and Mr. Gales and his mistress— and all the others—I won’t go into.—What I have had to put up with at their hands!—If you talk about ​manners;— about easy manners!— However—. All that I have to say to you, then, is, that I cannot satisfy you and Hester and forbid Captain Ingpen the house.’

‘We won’t go on wrangling, Mother. You are talking extravagantly. You know I have not asked you to forbid him the house. All I have asked is that you should not discuss Hester’s shortcomings with him. And now I had better be going. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ said Monica. She turned to the window. She held back wild tears. If only death would take her! He could leave her like this. If only she could die! — But Clive was not gone. He still stood there, behind her. ‘Mummy.’ That was what she heard. She turned and looked at him. ‘Mummy,’ he repeated; and she saw the supplication of his face.

‘Clive— Clive———’ she faltered, holding out her arms. He came into them. He put his head down on her shoulder. And suddenly she felt that he had broken into sobs. Never, never since his childhood, had she seen Clive weep. He had hidden from her, during those years after the war. The abysses of his suffering were revealed to her as, aghast, yet melted to an ecstasy of tenderness, she ​heard the dry, rending sobs. ‘Oh—Clive—Clive!’—she murmured. He was in her arms. They had sunken on the window-seat and his face was pressed against her breast;—‘Oh, Clive—what have we been saying to each other—you and I?—Forgive me!’

‘No.—It’s I.—It’s I who have been wrong,’ he uttered with difficulty.

‘No! No!—I am your mother. It is for me to understand.’

‘It’s I’ Clive repeated. ‘If I were stronger I could make you see.’

‘But I do see.—I see that you must be loyal.—

I see that you must love your wife.—I should not have spoken as I did. I have been very wrong.—Wrong and disingenuous.—Yes, Clive, disingenuous. It was not as bad as I said.—Not as bad as I felt it to be.

‘Bless you, Mummy.—Bless you for saying it.—She hurt you. She startled you.—I understand what happened. It was because she was hurt and startled.—She is fierce, like you, when she is hurt.—It was only because of him.—She didn’t mean to insult you.—Oh, please see that, Mummy.’

‘Of course I see it. I saw it when I said it. It was almost a lie when I said it. Words are so dreadful, ​Clive.—They pin us down to what we do not really mean.—No; Hester was harsh, peremptory; that was all.’ Ardently, with a passionate tenderness, she unravelled the past, forgetting all but her need for unity. ‘And—I wish you didn’t dislike him — but what you say of Captain Ingpen is true;—I felt that, too, about his manners. I see what you see in him—although I like him so much that when you attacked him it made me angry.’

‘Of course it did,’ said Clive. ‘Of course I see why you like him.’ His weeping had ceased. He spoke with utter weariness, his head still leaning against her breast. ‘We always see alike. That’s the trouble, isn’t it?’

‘Do we? Always see alike?—Why is it the trouble, Clive?’ But, feeling a sudden stillness in him, feeling that she must not probe the avowal of his exhaustion, she said: ‘You haven’t seen the side of him that I have. He doesn’t show it easily. But he is strong and kind. There is something almost beautiful in him, Clive;—though of course he is a bad man.’

‘Bad! Darling Mummy!’ Clive actually laughed, faintly. It was like wine upon her lips to hear him. ‘What a funny Victorian word!’

‘I know. But it’s true. He has been bad, poor ​fellow; perhaps is bad still.—But when one is as old as I am one has a right to like the bad.Oh, Clive—you have made me so happy!’

‘Have I, darling?—That’s beautiful of you,’ said Clive in his exhausted voice.

Yes; she was happy. So long as she could hide herself with him, in him, there could still be happiness; the happiness of closed eyes, stopped ears. Everything was shut out but their nearness. Hester was forgotten. Clive allowed her to forget Hester;—was it because he was so tired? He was so tired that it might have been as if she were to gather him up in her arms and carry him to bed, her little child again.

They sat in silence for what seemed to Monica a long time, a silence so profound that she felt it, at last, lapping insidiously at the ramparts of her contentment. If they were silent for too long they might remember too much and Clive felt that, too, perhaps, for he raised his head, not looking at her, and, lifting her hands, kissed them gently, first one and then the other, holding them clasped in his as he said, finding his words with such care that it was as if he sifted them out and laid them in a symbolic mosaic before her: ‘You see, you’ve always been so much more than a mother.’

​‘Can one be more, Clive?’

‘Yes. Mothers take advantage. You have never taken advantage.’

‘Till just now, you mean?’

He sat for a moment longer, holding her hands, then rose, still holding them and looking at her with his gentleness that could be almost stern. ‘Perhaps. But it was my fault, too. We put it behind us, don’t we? It’s forgotten and wiped out. Or, if we must remember—only that because of it we understand each other better. You will help my weakness—that’s what I mean, Mummy; because you are my friend as well as my mother.’

‘You are not weak, Clive. You are the strongest person I know.’ She felt it indeed as she sat looking up at the archangel face, intent with its demand that she should be worthy of his faith in her.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m weak because I can’t bear things. I lose my footing. It’s as if the tide bore me out, or as if my breath gave way.—Perhaps it was the war.—If I could only be tough;—grow another skin;—not feel so much more than there’s any good in feeling———’ He broke off. ‘All a sort of weakness, you see.—Mummy, I’ll go now. Hester will be wondering what has become of me.​—Bless you.’ He leaned to her and kissed her. It was as if in leaving her he placed a gift in her hand and closed her fingers upon it, whispering: ‘Don’t look.’

The moon had risen and the stars come out. She went to the dim clock and saw that it was past seven. Clive had had no tea. Up there at The Crofts Hester must indeed have waited for him, wondering. First the child and then the husband:—Would that be what she would be saying to herself? It was so women’s minds moved; poor, wretched women, dramatizing their griefs. To see Hester, with herself, as one of them, brought a pang of actual pity for her. It was good to be able to pity Hester and the balm of her contentment still breathed upon her as she stepped out into the quiet evening, delicious with its smell of darkened earth and fading smoke. She walked up and down the lawn, looking at the stars. What sorrow and what happiness were hers. For the first time she knew the unity brought by shared suffering, and in securing her insight, under the illumined sky, she felt herself, if only for a moment, lay hold of some deep secret of life. Only through such sorrow was such happiness distilled. She must be worthy of it; worthy, or it would melt from her grasp; and it ​fell like a thick dew upon her heart while she walked there in the darkness.

Miriam had turned off the fountain but the basin was still brimmed with water and, when she came back to the house, she bent to peer at the goldfish, drowsing, it seemed, three motionless little shadows, among the reflected moon and stars. All would be well with Milly, Tilly and Lacey. Captain Ingpen had promised her and Robin that they should come to no harm and he was a man to be trusted. Robin trusted him. And, thinking now of Robin and of her friend, she turned away and her eye was drawn to a sharp, small glint of light lying on the ground; not a glow-worm at this season, too small, too bright for a glow-worm. She stooped and found Captain Ingpen’s ring half embedded in the sods and remembered how he had held the globe under the water with Robin. The ring must have slipped from his finger when he raised himself. She wiped the mud from it and put it on and went into the house, closing her hand upon it, for even for her middle finger it was too large, and to feel it thus recovered and protected warmed her kindliness towards the owner; it was like a piece of his life that she held. He would miss it, for it was a ring he cherished; he was not a man to wear a ring unless it had meaning for him ​and he would certainly have felt its loss at once had it not been for Hester’s eruption on their halcyon hour. She still thought of him as she went upstairs to dress, remembering that Clive had laughed when she called him a bad man, and taking comfort from the remembrance. Clive had said that he understood her kindness; but that had been a concession to their need of unity. He did not understand it; and he would never like Captain Ingpen. But Clive had not repudiated him, and she must find what comfort she could in that fact, for though she had said in her anger that he should not proscribe her friendships, it had been of Hester, not of Clive, that she had been thinking; she knew that she would find little savour in a friendship repudiated by Clive. The lamp and candles were waiting for her in her room and she took off the ring and laid it with her own rings on the dressing-table while she washed and changed. And, while she sat between her candles, dressing her hair, she glanced at it once or twice, lying there in the little tumbled heap of pearls and diamonds. It looked old, a mourning-ring perhaps, that had, perhaps, belonged to some ancestor; a sorrowful ring somehow; but then Captain Ingpen was a sorrowful man. That was one reason why she liked him; he understood sorrow. ​Perhaps—her thoughts flowed on while she twisted and bound her hair—the reason one felt him bad was because he had never been worthy of sorrow. ‘That’s the difficulty;—for all of us,’ Monica said aloud, and she took up the ring and held it to the light and examined it, and, seeing that it was engraved inside, put on her glasses to look more closely at what might be some quaint posy. But there were only four initials and a date;—not an old date—she bent her head and turned the ring to the light to read:—not 1718 or even 1818;—it was only the other day; only ten years ago:—G. I. from H. B. 1918.—‘G. I. from H. B. 1918,’ she repeated slowly, looking up at the candle-flame.