I
That October there arose the first dark cloud. It drifted over to Paris from England, for Anna wrote asking Stephen to Morton but with never a mention of Mary Llewellyn. Not that she ever did mention their friendship in her letters, indeed she completely ignored it; yet this invitation which excluded the girl seemed to Stephen an intentional slight upon Mary. A hot flush of anger spread up to her brow as she read and reread her mother’s brief letter:
“I want to discuss some important points regarding the management of the estate. As the place will eventually come to you, I think we should try to keep more in touch. …” Then a list of the points Anna wished to discuss; they seemed very trifling indeed to Stephen.
She put the letter away in a drawer and sat staring darkly out of the window. In the garden Mary was talking to David, persuading him not to retrieve the pigeons.
“If my mother had invited her ten times over I’d never have taken her to Morton,” Stephen muttered.
Oh, but she knew, and only too well, what it would mean should they be there together; the lies, the despicable subterfuges, as though they were little less than criminals. It would be: “Mary, don’t hang about my bedroom—be careful … of course while we’re here at Morton … it’s my mother, she can’t understand these things; to her they would seem an outrage, an insult. …” And then the guard set upon eyes and lips; the feeling of guilt at so much as a hand-touch; the pretence of a careless, quite usual friendship—“Mary, don’t look at me as though you cared! you did this evening—remember my mother.”
Intolerable quagmire of lies and deceit! The degrading of all that to them was sacred—a very gross degrading of love, and through love a gross degrading of Mary. Mary … so loyal and as yet so gallant, but so pitifully untried in the war of existence. Warned only by words, the words of a lover, and what were mere words when it came to actions? And the ageing woman with the faraway eyes, eyes that could yet be so cruel, so accusing—they might turn and rest with repugnance on Mary, even as once they had rested on Stephen: “I would rather see you dead at my feet. …” A fearful saying, and yet she had meant it, that ageing woman with the faraway eyes—she had uttered it knowing herself to be a mother. But that at least should be hidden from Mary.
She began to consider the ageing woman who had scourged her but whom she had so deeply wounded, and as she did so the depth of that wound made her shrink in spite of her bitter anger, so that gradually the anger gave way to a slow and almost reluctant pity. Poor, ignorant, blind, unreasoning woman; herself a victim, having given her body for Nature’s most inexplicable whim. Yes, there had been two victims already—must there now be a third—and that one Mary? She trembled. At that moment she could not face it, she was weak, she was utterly undone by loving. Greedy she had grown for happiness, for the joys and the peace that their union had brought her. She would try to minimize the whole thing; she would say: “It will only be for ten days; I must just run over about this business,” then Mary would probably think it quite natural that she had not been invited to Morton and would ask no questions—she never asked questions. But would Mary think such a slight was quite natural? Fear possessed her; she sat there terribly afraid of this cloud that had suddenly risen to menace—afraid yet determined not to submit, not to let it gain power through her own acquiescence.
There was only one weapon to keep it at bay. Getting up she opened the window: “Mary!”
All unconscious the girl hurried in with David: “Did you call?”
“Yes—come close. Closer … closer, sweetheart. …”