She hurried to the sitting-room, switched on the light, flung herself into a chair, and, with trembling hands, tore open the envelope. The letter was addressed from Brighton.
“DEAR DAPHNE,” she read,—“It’s no good. We have tried these reconciliations over and over again with the results that we both know. What is the use of starting again and having more rows and miseries? I’m sure you can’t want that any more than I do. You remind me that we used to be happy sometimes. I know we were, but I know also how much more often we were unhappy. It’s foolish to ignore facts, and the facts are that we’re bad for each other, that we act like a poison on each other. You ask me if I haven’t punished you enough, but I haven’t the least wish to punish you. If I wanted to punish you I would ask you to come back. That, believe me, would be the worst punishment for both of us. I mean what I say and shall not change my mind.”
She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. The defeat of the impossible hopes on which she had lived for the last few days had stunned her for the moment. She didn’t weep: she felt as if she had no tears left to shed. Her heart was hard, empty, arid. Once again life had shown its hatefulness, its horrible injustice: it had refused her supreme demand and she had nothing left to live for. Then, like returning consciousness, her hatred for Roy woke and began to stir. It was he who had brought her to these agonising straits. He knew she couldn’t live without him, she had told him so in her letter, but what did he care? He hadn’t so much as referred to it in his reply. No doubt he thought it was romantic nonsense. Very well, if he did, she would show him that he was mistaken.
It was after their last quarrel that she had first contemplated suicide. The interlude of Eric had diverted her mind from that absorbing idea, but now she returned to it. It would be a marvellous revenge. That at least would convince him of his brutality. She would heap reproaches on him and then, suddenly, before he could do anything to stop her, shoot herself before his eyes. But how was she to get a pistol or revolver or whatever the thing was that one shot oneself with? There would be some difficulty, she suspected, about that. Perhaps she had better think out some other way. She thought of the gas-oven in their little kitchen, but there was something commonplace and sordid about gas-ovens nowadays. The thought of the usual drab account in the newspapers flashed across her mind. No, she must choose some less vulgar way. She would poison or drown herself, leaving behind her a letter accusing him of having driven her to it. Yes, it would have to be one of the two, and she let her fancy play with the idea, imagining herself pouring drops into a glass and then screwing up her courage and drinking; and then the pause, waiting, waiting, looking for the last time at all the things in her room in the horrible certainty that in a few minutes ... Or the heavy plunge into deep water, the water pouring in at her mouth and nose, the ghastly bursting sensation in her chest... Always, as the fancy began to take on those details of reality, she put it from her with a shudder. Until she actually did the thing, if she did decide to do it, she must not think about it at all. If she let it work on her imagination she would never bring herself to do it.
So she passed her days, in a state of morbid daydreaming broken by bursts of hilarious merriment when the arrival of Juliet or some other friend relieved her unendurable loneliness. Once again she had no work, and her craving for Roy and her hatred of him gnawed at her like a disease. Her mind was completely split in two: she longed to have him to herself again, to cling to him and devour him with kisses, and she longed to be revenged on him.
Chapter XXII
It was a quarter to three in the afternoon. At Lannery, Mrs. Dryden and Joan had finished lunch an hour ago and Joan had gone for a walk. Mrs. Dryden had been arranging flowers and was placing a vase of irises on a table near one of the windows in the drawing-room when she saw a car—a hired car, she thought—coming up the drive. She was not expecting a visitor and stood watching the car till it stopped at the front door and a young man got out. It was Norman. Without losing a moment she made for the bell, rang it and hurried out into the hall, where she waylaid Elizabeth. “Elizabeth,” she said. “Mr. Norman Gardner is at the door. He’ll ring the bell in a moment. If he asks for Mrs. Gardner, tell him she’s away and you don’t know when she’s coming back. Say that I’m at home and, if he asks to see me, show him into the drawing-room.”
At that moment the front-door bell rang and Elizabeth was on the point of going to answer it when Mrs. Dryden detained her. “One moment, Elizabeth! It’s important that he should not see Mrs. Gardner, so, in case she comes back while he’s here, lock the front and side doors. Then she’ll have to ring and you can tell her when you let her in. Say Mr. Gardner’s with me in the drawing-room and she had better go to my study.”
Elizabeth hurried away to the front door and Mrs. Dryden stepped into the dining-room and stood listening. She heard footsteps, heard Elizabeth show someone into the drawing-room and then the shutting of the drawing-room door. Thereupon she emerged. “He wants to see me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t forget to lock the doors and warn Mrs. Gardner.”
In the drawmg-room she found Norman standing with his back to the fire. He met her eyes with something less than his usual self-possession, but her smile and extended hand reassured him. They shook hands. “Do sit down, Norman,” said Mrs. Dryden, pointing to a chair and taking one herself.
Norman sat down. “I came, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Dryden,” he began nervously, “to see Joan, but I’m told she’s not here. Would you tell me how I can get at her?”
“No, Norman, I can’t do that,” Mrs. Dryden replied blandly. “Joan’s solicitor has told her that she must not communicate with you except through him.”
Norman made a gesture of impatience. “But it’s extremely urgent, Mrs. Dryden. I’ve something very important to tell her.”
“Then write at once to Joan’s solicitor. You have his address, haven’t you?”
“But surely ...?” he began, in pained expostulation. But Mrs. Dryden interrupted him.
“Listen, Norman,” she said, rising from her chair and standing with her elbow on the mantelpiece and one foot on the fender, “there is nothing you can tell her that will alter the course of things.”
He raised his eyebrows and smiled patiently. “But how can you know?”
“I know, because I know what her present frame of mind is. I know she’s quite determined to divorce you.”
“I’m afraid,” he said, without acrimony, “you’ve been setting her against me—naturally perhaps.”
“No, Norman. I’ll be quite honest with you. When Joan told me that you ... that she was thinking of divorcing you, I strongly advised her to do so because I was convinced that you were entirely unsuited to each other. You can hardly call that setting her against you; in fact, you might more accurately have called it reinforcing your own wishes, though, as far as I was concerned, that was an accident. No, I’ve done nothing to set her against you. On the other hand, you don’t expect, I’m sure, that I’m going to plead your cause. With me, Joan’s interests come first. That’s why I refused just now to put you in touch with her, and why, if she had been here, I would not have allowed you to see her.”
“But would you have had any right to stop me?” Norman considered the point with a pensive frown.
“My dear boy,” said Mrs. Dryden, “surely you’re not going to maintain that I’m compelled to let Tom, Dick and ... and Norman into my house whether I like it or not?”
They both laughed, and that cleared the atmosphere as Mrs. Dryden had intended that it should. She became serious again. “I feel sure you don’t want to treat Joan unfairly.”
“But of course not,” Norman replied.
“Then,” said Mrs. Dryden, “you can prove that by leaving her alone.”
“But that’s just what I don’t want to do,” he exclaimed, “as you would understand, if. . .”
“You had no difficulty,” said Mrs. Dryden tartly, “in leaving her alone whe
n you lived together.”
“Leaving her alone?” he said, amazed.
“Leaving her alone, I understand, almost every evening.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Dryden, that was her own choice.”
“I know that. But do you imagine, for all that, that she enjoyed it?”
Her eyes met his searchingly and he glanced away. “You’ve only heard one side, of course,” he replied; “but, believe me, there’s something to be said on my side too.”
Mrs. Dryden nodded. “I’m sure there is, Norman, but not by you.”
He opened his hands. “If I don’t say it, who will?”
“I will,” said Mrs. Dryden. “You can rely on me to make every allowance for you. I understand very well what made it impossible for you and Joan to be happy together. I don’t put all the blame on you. You were absolutely unsuited to one another.”
“Yes,” said Norman, “we were; but I’m sure we needn’t be. It’s precisely that I’m so anxious to see Joan about.” He paused, knit his brows and stared at his feet. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind. Then with a quick movement he raised his head and faced Mrs. Dryden with his most charming smile. “If you’re really not prejudiced against me, Mrs. Dryden—and I believe you’re not—I can trust you to help me in what I came to see Joan about.”
“You can trust me to consider the interests of you both,” she said, “though, as I’ve admitted to you already, I shall put Joan’s first.”
“Yes, I quite recognise that,” he said; “in fact, I’m very glad you do.” He clasped his hands round his knees. “I want Joan to know that Pauline and I have separated. I want her to come back and make a new start. Pauline and I have discovered in time that... well, that. . .”
“That you’re not suited to one another?”
“Yes,” he said, looking up at her eagerly.
Mrs. Dryden fixed her eyes on him with disconcerting penetration. “And which of you was it that made the discovery first?”
He wasn’t ready for it. He winced, and flushed to the roots of his fair hair. “Well,” he said, “I ... er ... she . . .”
“I see,” said Mrs. Dryden thoughtfully; “it was Pauline. And that made you realise ...?”
“Yes,” he broke in eagerly, “what a fool I’d been. It opened my eyes.”
Mrs. Dryden shook her head sadly. “Not quite wide enough, I’m afraid, Norman.”
He frowned. “You mean ...?”
“This is what I mean. You found, you remember—and you were quite right—that you and Joan were unsuited to one another—that in marrying you’d made an unsuccessful experiment, and so you left her for Pauline. Now you find that you’ve made another unsuccessful experiment—that you and Pauline are unsuited. But to see in this a proof that, in some miraculous way, you and Joan have become suited ...”
“O, but I don’t regard it as a proof; that, of course, would be absurd. What I meant when I said it had opened my eyes was that it had changed me. And it has, Mrs. Dryden. I’ve come to hate the kind of life I’ve been leading.”
Mrs. Dryden shrugged her shoulders. “Of course you have, my dear boy: it’s a natural consequence of Pauline’s having ... of you and Pauline having parted.”
Norman flushed and was about to reply when Mrs. Dryden went on. “Don’t you think, even if we leave Joan out of the question altogether, that the moment when you’re in a quite natural state of emotional reaction is a very bad time to begin yet another experiment?”
Norman frowned. “Experiment? You speak as if I were as cold-blooded as . . .”
“No, Norman,” Mrs. Dryden broke in. “I don’t think you are cold-blooded, but I’m quite certain you’re far too impulsive and thoughtless, and if you were to persuade Joan to break off proceedings and go back to you—which I assure you you won’t succeed in doing—you would simply be using her for an even more precarious experiment; and that, believe me, Norman, would be the most monstrous selfishness on your part.”
He looked at her like a frustrated child. “But what am I to do?” he exclaimed in despair, never realising, until he saw it in Mrs. Dryden’s coldly piercing grey eye, the inner significance of that too spontaneous outburst. Again he blushed to the roots of his hair, but Mrs. Dryden had the magnanimity, or perhaps the tactical skill, not to exploit his selfbetrayal. In her reply she took what he had said at its face value only.
“What are you to do? Are you asking my advice?”
He scowled like a petulant child. For the moment he was too angry at his humiliation to follow her lead. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t asking for advice.” Then his face cleared and his lips curled to a charming, faintly roguish smile. “But if you had been advising me, what would you have said, Mrs. Dryden?”
She too smiled. She was, in fact, considerably disarmed. “What I should have said, Norman,” she replied, serious, yet poking fun at him, “supposing you had asked my advice, would have been:’ Engage a good cook-housekeeper to run your flat for you and don’t marry for some years. I’m sure you’d be much happier. You’re young and there’s plenty of time.’”
He raised his eyebrows. “You think so?” he asked, really interested.
“I do indeed,” said Mrs. Dryden. “Why not try it?”
There was a sound of wheels on the gravel. Norman glanced at the window. “That will be my car,” he said. “I told the fellow to come back in time for the four-fifteen.”
He got out of his chair and Mrs. Dryden took and held the hand he offered. “Promise me,” she said, “that you won’t bother Joan. This is rather an agitating time for her and you owe it to her not to add to her worries.”
He hung his head. “Now promise me,” she said, still holding his hand, “like a good boy.”
He raised his eyes. He was both touched and amused. “All right,” he said; “I will.”
She shook his hand, and as they went to the front door she added: “And promise me you’ll think over the advice I would have given you if you had asked for it.”
He laughed. “O, of course I’ll think it over.”
“And when this tiresome business is finished,” she said, “you must come and stay again.”
His face lit up. “That’s awfully nice of you.” She opened the front door. “If Joan were to turn up now,” she thought with some trepidation, “it would be a hideous piece of bad luck.” But there was no sign of Joan as she stood on the steps watching Norman get into the car. He waved his hand as the car drove away, and, when it had vanished round the bend in the drive, Mrs. Dryden turned back into the house. “Poor little wretch,” she said to herself; “he really is very charming.”
Chapter XXIII
On a saturday afternoon—the last Saturday of October—Cynthia and Joan sat on a hillside above Lannery. Cynthia had arrived that morning and Eric and Frank were expected in time for tea. The short grass had been burnt to a pale gold by the heat of summer and the rainless autumn, and on the wide plain beneath them the stubble-fields lay spread like golden and ruddy carpets, among which the river curled itself lazily between its borders of pollard willows. Two days previously Joan’s divorce, which she had been dreading for months, had come on. Edna had called for her at half-past ten and carried her off to the Law Courts, and, when they had arrived there, had asked questions and led her up stone stairs and down long passages with the most amazing efficiency. How would she ever have found her way and got through it all without Edna? In a long, upstairs passage, flanked with seats, they had met Mr. Rocket, her solicitor, and then had sat waiting for what had seemed hours. When the moment arrived and they stood up and were ushered into the court, her nervousness had hardened to a cold self-possession. She was ready.
The court was rather like a pleasant lecture-room. They took their seats and her counsel made a speech in which she heard, to her surprise, a strange, detached history of her married life, and then she was told to go into the witness-box, and the judge, a charming old gentleman, had gently and politely asked her a few questions. Then
Edna went into the box and, after her, some friend of Norman’s whom she did not know. He had hardly got started, it seemed, when, to her surprise, everyone got up and hurried to the door, and Edna, who was sitting beside her, took her arm. “So much for that,” she said cheerfully; “let us go and have some lunch.”
“Is it finished?” Joan had asked.
“Of course it is!” Edna had replied. “Didn’t you hear the judge say,’ Decree nisi’?”
How extraordinary that an event which had entailed all those months of elaborate preparation and filled her with such misgiving should be so simple! The whole thing had lasted hardly ten minutes.
It was all over. There was nothing more to worry about. It had been wonderful to wake up yesterday morning and this morning and realise that the anxiety to which she had woken every day for all these months was gone. She was glad that she had made up her mind to it. She had no regrets. It was horrible to live with one you loved on the hopeless footing on which she had lived with Norman for so long: it was much better to be free, even though freedom seemed empty and purposeless.
Cynthia spoke, and it seemed that she had been following Joan’s unspoken thoughts. “Isn’t it a blessing,” she said, “to feel that everything’s over, that you’re free to start afresh?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Joan. “It’s wonderful to be done with all the anxiety and worry, but, as for starting afresh, that’s another matter. I haven’t an idea how or what I’m going to start. You’re lucky, Cynthia; you have a job that fills your life, a job that you want to do and can do.”
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