She stayed at home nine days. Once during this time she heard Delia’s husband speaking to her outside the room. He spoke in a low voice and she did not hear what he said, but his voice made a definitely unpleasant impression on her. Delia never mentioned him to her.
She thought a great deal about Penn during these days. Because she was not in love with him it did not occur to her to feel surprised by the prolonged silence between his letters. Her own feelings and ambitions absorbed her so that when she thought of Penn it was of someone to whom she felt bound by a past life. Therefore it never entered her mind to wonder what his feeling was towards her. Since for her he belonged to the past she supposed him to be unchanged—still in love with her and dependent on her even when he was behaving with the utmost unkindness or brutality. This blindness of hers was part of her sole vanity—she believed that she changed but that others did not.
She made countless plans for their living together. At one moment she thought that she could live happily with Penn and her son in a cottage. I shall write books, with which I shall earn a little money; Penn can teach Latin in the nearest school and he will earn what may just keep us. As soon as she had thought this, her ambition sprang up and she knew that she could not endure a quiet and obscure life. At another moment she said to herself, with a grave air: One does what one can, something will come of it. The one fixed point in all her plans was Richard: the promise she made him when he was born—to get him everything he wanted—was always in her mind.
Chapter XI
Penn Becomes A Civilian
Penn was released from the Air Force in February 1920. He came up to London, and was waiting for Hervey in her room when she came home. She was overjoyed to see him out of uniform, and for a few days, watching him in clothes he had worn in 1917, before he went into the Flying Corps, she felt deeply moved and gentle.
He had made no plans for the future. To the last moment he had refused to consider any life outside the easy pleasantly exciting life of a ground officer in the Air Force. Now he had nothing but his gratuity. Hervey thought that this money should be spent to establish them with Richard in a small house. She grudged every pound he drew from it. When he had been at home for a week without making an effort to start work she became anxious.
Only a few years earlier she would have spoken directly of her hopes. But she had lost the courage for this. A harsh upbringing had destroyed much of her self-confidence and Penn’s attitude to her completed the damage. Though no thrashing would now follow she hated to be found out in a mistake. Her unnatural pride suffered, too. And she hated as much to be seen wishing or hoping for something. She expected to be laughed at. Young as she still was, her subtle and slow-moving mind had created a maze of defences for her, through which her impulses had to find their way out—now often so changed by the journey that their own mother would not know them. Astonishing how many twists and turns her thoughts made—even with a simple and honest end in view.
She brought home a copy of the Educational Supplement and showed Penn that three London schools needed classics masters. Penn smiled. ‘What’s the hurry?’ he said amiably.
‘Your gratuity won’t last for ever,’ Hervey said. ‘If you were at work you would have it to spend on other things.’
‘I’m spending it on other things now. Don’t you think I deserve a rest?’
Hervey looked at him. She felt herself growing red in the face. ‘No.’ She tried to smile.
‘Why are you so anxious to drive me to work? Have you made plans for spending my money?’
‘No,’ Hervey said. She added with an effort: ‘Perhaps you’d like to go up to Danesacre to see Richard? You haven’t seen him for a year and a half.’
Penn’s face changed instantly. ‘So that’s it! You want my gratuity money for the boy. Why didn’t you say so? I have never known anyone with so dishonest and tortuous a way of going about things. It doesn’t do you any good with me!’
‘It’s not true,’ Hervey said. Her pride was roused. She began like her mother to j ustify herself, in a sharp passionate voice. ‘Your money is nothing to me. I have my own. Enough for Richard.’
When she spoke to him in her mother’s voice Penn hated her. In her soft youth there were so many hard rocks scarcely beneath the surface. Each time he caught a glimpse of one of these he lost all kindness for her: he wanted to wound and punish. Even if he could make her cry he was not satisfied.
‘Don’t be too sure you’ll always have Richard,’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s my son.’
‘Then you should be glad to spend money on him,’ Hervey said. She could not endure him and running from his room fastened herself in her own. The past year now seemed to her a period of delicious tranquillity. Forgetting how often she had been lonely she cried tears of rage at the thought of living with Penn for years to come.
Penn had gone out. He was determined not to apply for any of the schools Hervey had suggested. That would look too much like obeying her. He went instead to call on T. S. Hey wood, whom he found alone. T.S. made no show of being pleased, but Penn talked affably, and talked himself into good humour and at last said outright that he was here, at Hervey’s suggestion, to ask her friend whether Evelyn had room for an intelligent man on the London Review.
‘Yourself?’
‘Naturally,’ Penn laughed.
‘But I don’t know anything about my wife’s editorial work,’ T.S. said coldly. He did not believe that Hervey had sent her husband. If she wanted anything she would try to get round me herself, he thought. ‘Why don’t you see Evelyn about it?’
Penn’s face assumed an air of idiot cunning. ‘Well. I suppose I can say you sent me?’
‘No that you can’t,’ T.S. said at once. ‘Leave me out of it.’ He stood up, his face twitching with a nervous anger.
There was nothing for Penn but to leave. He went home, turning in his mind reasons for T.S.’s manner. He found them in jealousy and envy of himself. If Len Hammond had been in London he would have run straight to her to be comforted.
He went into Hervey’s room and in a grave voice said :
‘Oh Hervey, I’ve had a miserable evening. I met your friend Heywood and asked him civilly whether there would be any hope of his wife giving me a chance on her Review. From the way he spoke you’d think I was nothing. I felt miserable, I can tell you. I thought he was a friend of mine.’
Hervey was touched by his look of childish unhappiness. She knew exactly why T.S. had refused and that he did not trust Penn. At the same time she was nearly angry with him. It was always so—Penn had only to tell her in a simple voice that he was unhappy and her heart melted. This voice of his recalled the time when she admired him above anyone. In those days he had discovered how to rouse in her an agony of pity for him, and this weakness of hers—it had become a habit—was the hold he had over her.
Trying to say what would console him, she stroked his cheeks. ‘But, my darling, you don’t want to review books, do you? What else could Evelyn Lamb give you to do?’
‘She could make me her assistant editor,’ Penn said, with a happy smile.
‘You have had no experience,’ Hervey exclaimed. She did not know whether to laugh or cry at the singular notion he had formed of his chances.
‘What of it? I have a better head than the run of literary journalists. You’ll see, I shall get my foot in somewhere, and then I’ll go out after your friend T.S. and make a public fool of him.’
‘No, no,’ Hervey said, alarmed. ‘You must hold your tongue—I don’t care yet to offend Evelyn Lamb. We’re not rich, we have to make our way yet, and we shall only do it by being more intelligent than other people. We have no friends in London to help us. Why waste energy going out after anyone? It does no good and it is uncivilised.’
‘Oh you! you would do anything to avoid trouble,’ Penn sneered.
This was so close to the truth that it silenced her. Penn walked to the door. He waited a moment and said coldly: ‘Let me tell you, your cleverness
doesn’t impress me. When I feel like making trouble I make it, and damn public opinion. That’s the kind of man I am.’
He shut the door. Hervey rested her head in her hands. She felt tired and contemptuous. One half-formed thought crossed her mind: I could perhaps make friends with Evelyn myself. At the moment she felt more inclined to give up everything and run back to Danesacre. Surely Penn would not let her stay there, on her mother’s charity, but would look for work.
She stood up, looked at herself closely in the glass, and laughed. But of course I shan’t go back, she thought.
It was already eleven o’clock. Creeping downstairs to fill her water-jug in the bathroom she heard curious sounds issuing from the Hunts’ room—a fall and a woman’s groan. Is he cruel to her? she wondered. Her heart moved quickly and painfully.
Chapter XII
Hervey Loses a Patron
Hervey now did what any sensible young woman, who wished to do the best for herself, would have tried a year earlier. The inconsistency in her nature went too deep: she would use all her wit, shrewdness, and tact on behalf of another person or to get something she did not want but only needed for the security which disgusted her—but for herself, to advance her as a writer, she never lifted a finger. This was not the result of delicacy. Only the effort bored her to such a degree that she would never make it for herself alone. Other people might have reproached her if she refused to exert herself on their behalf, but she would not reproach herself for having neglected her own interests.
With the idea of helping Penn to get what he wanted she took endless trouble to please Evelyn Lamb. It was not impossible. Hervey had great natural charm when she could use it, and her childhood had been one long severe training in diplomacy. She had learned young to read faces, tones of voice, and hearts.
Before long the older woman found it natural as well as pleasant to talk to Hervey more freely than she had talked to any woman since the death of her sister. The young girl listened with the whole of her mind. This happens so rarely to anyone—half of your friend’s mind is a generous gift—that it is the finest flattery. Moreover, it is a true gift—you cannot make a feint of listening with your whole mind. Hervey felt a deep interest in the older woman. Without knowing why, she was sorry for her. She was also greatly frightened by her. Even when she saw Evelyn two or three times a week she went through the same tortures of shyness and sighed with relief when she escaped. Though Evelyn was really pleased with her, she could not resist making the young girl pay for their friendship by nipping her sharply several times the week. Since Hervey could never think of any retort that was not fatally harsh she blushed and was silent.
She was ashamed of being shy, and she failed to realise that nothing, in a society of writers, is so dull as civility and a soft heart. She met a great many well-known or about to be well-known people in Evelyn’s house. Only a few of them spoke twice to a polite young woman with nothing to say for herself. On these persons she made a deep impression, but not in all cases a good one. William Ridley had the wit to notice that she was obstinate, opinionated, and malicious.
Evelyn allowed her to write short unsigned notices for the London Review and employed her to check references and quotations. She did not pay her for these services, which engaged all Hervey’s leisure. Hervey toiled cheerfully, since she meant at the right moment to suggest making use of Penn. It was ironical—since she wanted nothing for herself—that Evelyn kept promising to take signed paid work from her when she had learned her trade. As to that—Hervey considered that she wrote a great deal better than William Ridley, whose weekly essay followed Evelyn’s in the paper.
One Thursday in April she was drinking tea alone with Evelyn. Evelyn had asked her opinion of Ridley. Hervey had none. She did not know that he was Evelyn’s lover, and spoke honestly.
‘I should say he was a very commonplace writer. He has so much energy, and he notices everything—I think perhaps he is a commonplace genius. He’s very conceited.’
‘He was laughing yesterday over your novel,’ Evelyn said dryly. ‘Are you writing another, by the way?’
‘Yes,’ Hervey said. She blushed.
‘Try to write about what you feel,’ Evelyn went on. ‘That might be new. Do leave clever talk about problems to the undergraduates, and write only what you have felt—about falling in love, or mathematics, or talking to other women. That will be first-hand revelation. You should use your mind to search your heart. Anyone can search the newspapers, for stories of unhappy marriages, suicides, and all that.’
Hervey looked down. She longed to deserve praise, but the truth is that she learned nothing by hearing it, and years would pass over her before she understood what Evelyn meant. At this moment the door opened and William Ridley came in. He sprawled on a chair and talked to Evelyn without paying any attention to Hervey. She walked over to a window and tried to think of a way of leaving without seeming awkward. It was clear that she was unwanted, but Evelyn had borrowed five shillings from her to pay for a cab and if she went without it she would be penniless until tomorrow afternoon. At last she jumped up and calling out—‘Goodbye, I shall see you again this week’—she ran from the room.
As soon as she had gone Ridley said, jerking his thumb: ‘I can’t stand the airs she gives herself.’
‘Airs?’ Evelyn said. ‘My poor young Hervey? Nonsense.’
‘I didn’t come to talk about her. What’s this someone’s been saying in the Review about my friend Mrs Harben? She’s in a rare temper. I said I’d ask you about it.’
Evelyn smiled slightly. So he is going without me to Lucy Harben’s, she said to herself.
An extraordinary emotion seized her. She shuddered at the complacence with which he uttered the words ‘my friend Mrs Harben’—never had he looked less pleasing—and in the same moment she was waiting, rigid, for the clumsily violent caress she expected. Her fingers gripped the edge of her chair. It would give her no pleasure, it confused and wearied her, yet she craved it. It was as though she craved the confusion, but without knowing what she hoped from it.
Her inner life had fallen into disorder. She felt that for years she had been keeping up a pretence of order in her mind by an effort of nerves or will. Now that the pretence was finished she looked inward at a life which had collapsed on itself.
Her first thought was that no one else must see it. There must be a rigid outer order—in everything, in her actions and writing, in other people’s, everywhere. She wrote the first of a series of unsigned essays condemning romantic licence. In the second, she allowed herself to make fun of Mrs Thomas Harben’s taste in art—it was the week the other woman lent her house for an exhibition in aid of blinded soldiers. This was not pure criticism—she had always been subject to impulses wildly at variance with her known character. Already she bitterly regretted the attack. It threatened her social front with disorder, at the moment when order, and more order, was what she wanted.
Ridley was disconcerted by her smile. Even now, though he believed firmly that women are at the mercy of their feelings, he was a little intimidated by her reputation as a clever woman. Moreover she was an editor, one of the creatures upon whom he depended for his life. He threw himself back in his chair. ‘I suppose you didn’t write the article yourself.’
‘Certainly not,’ Evelyn said, without giving herself time to think. ‘In fact, it was set up in mistake for another with much the same title. You know I was ill last week and left that idiot Kerr in charge.’
‘He didn’t write it! Come now, you’d better tell me who did. I can soothe Lucy Harben for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Evelyn said, smiling. She felt a spasm of fury. ‘The little Russell wrote it. She writes very well, and though I can’t use much she writes it is good practice for her.’
‘I never see anything by her in the London Review? ‘
‘She hasn’t signed anything.’
‘She’d better not,’ Ridley chuckled. ‘Our Mrs Harben won’t forgive you for encouraging
her after this.’
Evelyn said nothing. She felt as though she were being crushed from all sides. And there was nothing, no force in her, to keep her safe. She would die. But it was her own fault, and her own act had started the destruction. I shall repair it, she thought, with growing energy; my mind is not weakened, I shall repair everything. Shall I at least get rid of this fellow? She had closed her eyes. Opening them she saw first Ridley’s thick short hand on the arm of her chair. It would not be a bad idea to pick it up between finger and thumb and drop it.
She began to laugh.
When Hervey came to see her on Saturday she brought with her the criticism of a play. The dramatic critic of the Review was going to resign and Evelyn had half promised to try Hervey in his place. This half promise had excited Hervey so that she was afraid to think about it. She laid the copy of her criticism on Evelyn’s desk and waited. Her stomach felt horribly empty.
Evelyn read it through quickly and said: ‘You can do another one or two if you like. I’ll pay for them but I’d rather you didn’t sign them. I’ve taken on a young man as dramatic critic. He’ll begin in a fortnight.’
Hervey fell down an endless flight of stairs. When she could speak she said quietly: ‘I don’t mind working for you for nothing. But—will you give Penn a chance to do something? He reads Greek and Latin and knows a great deal of history, he could review solid books for you.’
Suddenly, while she was still speaking, it came to Evelyn that Hervey was responsible for the mistakes she had made in the last few months. There was something disturbing, unreliable, about the young girl. She gave way to a cruel impulse.
‘Don’t talk to me about that ridiculous husband of yours,’ she cried. ‘I don’t mind your bringing him here in the evening now and then, if it helps you, but I warn you not to let him make a nuisance of himself.’
Hervey walked out of the room.
In the hall she found T.S., half in his overcoat. He asked her where she was going and offered to walk part of the way with her. She nodded. She was trembling, but he did not notice it. In the street he stumped along beside her in silence, head down, until they reached Ebury Street. Then he said : ‘Philip’s in hospital.’
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