She sympathized with the discontent in his mind, and recognized that he was acting well enough in still giving his loyal service to Martin as, she thought, even if a harder test were before him, he would continue to do. But though she was sorry for him, she was more sorry for others. She saw the difficulty of Martin’s position. She realized that much must depend upon the character of a woman that she had not met. But if they had believed Helen to be dead—as was natural, indeed inevitable, that they should—and had then fought, at their lives’ risk, to maintain the integrity of the bond which they had formed between them, it was no light thing that he should not only repudiate her for the sake of his recovered wife, but should do it under such conditions as should oblige her to accept an alternative, and probably unwelcome, lover. Would she submit to such a condition of life? What complication might her refusal make? What dangers for herself or others?
Muriel could not clearly visualize this woman whom she had not seen, this woman with blood on her hands, who had won the admiration of the woman-hating Monty, who appeared to Tom to be of such a kind that Martin Webster might be willing to give up Helen to hold her, if such a choice should be made inevitable. She could not visualize her, but she felt that, so far, she must have acted well—with a rare courage, and with a rare generosity. She appeared to have risked her life for the recovery of his wife and children. She had volunteered to guard those children while he returned to her rival’s arms. Muriel recognized that there might be something different here from the simple problems of human jealousy, or lust, or greed, with which her experience had been too often familiar. She saw, though the thought was scarcely definite in her mind, that the constants of human experience arise from the constants of human character and environment. Here environment, though no less powerful than of old, was of an unshaped fluidity, and the variations of character were therefore asserting themselves round her with a greater emphasis.
Then she thought of Helen. Suppose that, forced to decide between them, Martin should find it beyond his resolution to discard her rival? Knowing little of Martin, she could not readily assess this probability. But if it were so, she saw not only how great might be her grief—for she had read correctly the strength of affection which her reserve had covered—but of her humiliation also. Not merely left, as so many had been left before her, for a younger or a more attractive rival, but left under such conditions that she would be forced, almost inevitably, into a union which she did not desire, and which she would regard as a degradation. So Muriel judged her. She could refuse, of course. But what would follow under these lawless conditions, which had scattered the countryside with death during the last two days?
And then, what would be the position of her children under such circumstances? Martin dead, they would have become Tom’s care, and his mother would have bought his protection of them at the price he asked. But Martin living could hardly consent to such an allocation. She saw that the fact that Helen was not only his wife, but his children’s mother, would make it almost impossible for him to discard her, even should he wish to do so.
Always honest with herself, though the clear logic of her mind might be often warped by beliefs which she regarded as beyond inquiry or criticism, she was surprised to recognize the position to which her thoughts were leading. Marriage to her was a sacrament. Monogamy was fundamental institution of Christianity, divinely blessed and enjoined. She had never examined the bases of this belief. It was too fundamental, too obvious. But with an intellectual candour, which was the more admirable because of the hostilities of belief which confronted it, she admitted that the position was not an easy one to determine.
Her sympathy for Helen weakened with the reasoned conviction that it was not likely to be greatly needed. She reminded herself again that Martin had gone back to her with the knowledge of Claire—even, it seemed, at her own suggestion. And, besides, there were the children. If the scale should be disposed to tremble, they must surely turn it in her favour. That was natural. Under the surrounding circumstances, it was almost inevitable.
But what would tomorrow bring for the one who had rescued her rival’s children, and now slept with them at her side?
BOOK FOUR
Chapter Forty-Three
It would be illogical to conclude that Phillips had no Christian name because he was never known to produce it.
As a manservant, which had been his first occupation, and his father’s before him, he had no occasion for this distinction.
But even when his employer died, about two years before the period with which we are concerned, and he was persuaded by circumstance to take over the plumbing business of a deceased cousin in Cowley Thorn, he was never known to use it. He retained the business name of J. T. Couthlin and Co., and signed his letters and endorsed his cheques in a name which obviously was not his.
He was engaged to marry Betty Cotwin, Stacey Dobson’s housemaid, in the coming October, when it may be presumed that it would have been disclosed upon his marriage certificate, but even that occasion did not occur, for the flood came, and when the routine of the plumbing business departed he realized the necessity of extending his immediate protection to that young lady, and took up his residence with her on the following day, with Mr. Dobson’s decided approval.
Stacey Dobson had never been responsive to the pressure of outer circumstance. He had lived his own life in his own way and when the storm struck, and the news of flood and ruin assailed him from every side, he met the proposal of his frightened servants that he should join the discomforts of the northward flight with an indifferent but final negative.
His house was large, substantially built, isolated, and protected by the rising ground beyond Cowley Wood from the full force of the storm. It lost much of its roof: its upper rooms were damaged by falling timber. But beyond these injuries, and some internal displacements, it survived the fury of the first night, and it was from the window of an almost uninjured library (some plaster had fallen on his shoulder from a cracked ceiling, but it was nothing more than a clothes-brush would rectify) that he told the servants, who had spent a miserable night on the lawn, that they could please themselves, but that he would be obliged if they would not interrupt him further.
The fact was that he was composing a sonnet on Mutability, and the sonnet form is sufficiently exacting to make such interruptions almost intolerable.
Only Betty remained. She had already acquired a broken head, and some other damages, in attempting to rescue some of her master’s property from a roofless bedroom, and excused herself from joining the exodus of her fellow-servants by explaining that her head ached, and she did not feel fit to go.
Stacey Dobson did not fail to understand the loyalty of her decision. He even made a moderate protest against it. But it was somewhat perfunctory. He really doubted the wisdom of the wild migration which was proceeding around him. He was repelled by thoughts of the miserable conditions of food and shelter which this flying population must endure, if the floods should spare them. He could not understand anyone being willing to get hot and dirty today, to reduce the possibility of being drowned tomorrow.
He said, “What about lunch?” and Betty understood that the subject had left his mind. When the whole world is going mad around you, and the very earth seems shaky, it is very comforting to have such a master.
As Betty would not go, Phillips remained. He joined her under Stacey Dobson’s damaged roof nest day, and two young people were entirely happy.
The result showed how far it might still be possible to maintain the amenities of a drowned civilization under sufficiently favourable conditions.
Stacey was more than willing for these unpaid attendants to share the benefits of what remained of his roof, providing that his personal wants were satisfied as far as possible, as entirely reasonable—indeed, it was assumed on all sides, without the necessity for discussion arising.
Under Phillips’s efficient hands, and with the assistance of the knowledge which he had acquired in the c
ourse of his experiences as a master-plumber, the house soon became rainproof once again, though its upper story remained in a condition of partial wreckage. The drawing-room, which had suffered little, and which adjoined the uninsured library, was transformed into Mr. Dobson’s bedroom. Renovations of the dining-room were completed later, and when the events occurred with which we have been dealing it had been actually repapered and decorated and was ready to be used again, if there should be anyone who would require to occupy it.
Betty’s determination that her master should not be annoyed by any difference in the service which he received, whatever might be the extent of the surrounding confusion, would have been of little avail in itself without the assistance of Phillips, capable and experienced, anxious to please her own desires, and sharing her pride in the manner in which the house was still maintained.
Stacey Dobson was a reasonable man, and (in his own way) a good master. His debts, by the mercy of heaven, had disappeared in a night. He had no care in the world. He remained quietly among his books. His meals were still good and regular. If the menu showed an occasional monotony or omission, he was kind enough to pass it in silence. His bath was always ready when he required it, and he declined to notice that it was not filled in the old way.
So long as these conditions continued, he was not so foolish as to vex his mind by inquiring how soon they might collapse, or what might be the extent of the cellar-stores that Phillips’ foresight was industriously accumulating.
When the alarm of the approach of Cooper’s horsemen had reached them, he had insisted that Phillips should take his wife to a place of safe hiding without delay, even at the risk that the lunch should suffer.
When he had lazily refused to point out where they had gone to the impatient raiders, they had shot him in the garden-hammock in which he lay.
Tom heard of his murder while he was trying to persuade the inhabitants of a much inferior dwelling-place to vacate it, so that their new leader might be accommodated with an appropriate dignity, and being refused with some ingenuity of excuses, he lost no time in pursuing so desirable an alternative.
He found both Phillips and Betty were willing to accept a new service of such a character, and to acquire the reflected dignity of waiting upon the family of this newly elected ruler, and they were probably happier in so doing than had they asserted a right which could not easily have been disputed, and claimed the house and its contents, as its only remaining occupants.
Chapter Forty-Four
It was characteristic of Helen Webster that she had neither any disposition to avoid the subject of the woman who had shared the intimacy of her husband’s life, nor did she allow it to disturb her mind, during the first hours of their reunion. It was not merely that her joy was too great for the intrusion of any minor discords. It was rather, though not solely, because she had a confidence in Martin’s love too deep and well founded for any jealousy to disturb it. She had also acquired a habit of leaving the practical difficulties of life for him to deal with, which reassumed its influence now that they were again united. She had no doubt of his intention, nor of his capacity, to do whatever might be right, and as far as she spoke of Claire at all, it was to express the gratitude which she felt for her own and her children’s rescue, a realization of the hardship of the position, and of the generosity with which Claire had acted toward her. It was well, she felt, that she had been consolation and help to Martin when he had believed that she herself was dead. But as to any possibility of her own displacement, or of an enduring rivalry, the faintest, briefest doubt had found no entrance to disturb her mind.
If Martin saw farther, if he saw that a question might be approaching which it would be her part to answer, the fact that he was silent need not imply that her confidence in him was without foundation…
It was still early on the following morning, and she was occupied, with a natural delight, in taking stock, under Betty’s guidance, of the resources of her new home, when the sound of horse’s hooves on the road disturbed them with recollection of the alarms of yesterday.
Phillips went out quickly, to return with the news that it was only Claire who was approaching, with one of the children before her.
They met her at the gate, and with a laughing word she gave the child to her mother. She had one of the horses for Martin also. “A king can’t walk,” she said mockingly.
Phillips, who knew less of horses than of most things, held the offered bridle with a show of confidence which he scarcely felt. Martin took it from him with a query as to the suitability of the orchard, from various standpoints, for its temporary confinement. They went off together. Claire would not get down. She had promised to return quickly for Mary, and had been delayed already.
Helen, with a recollection of the Claire of her rescue of yesterday, and of eyes that had been hard and merciless as she had fired her automatic into the body of the falling Bryan, found her less formidable than she could have expected in this laughing mood.
As she went back into the house, with Mary in her arms, to be handed over to the admiration of the waiting Betty, it seemed a very quiet and happy world, in which summer was still supreme; and if there were a chill in the morning air to remind them of an approaching autumn it passed unnoticed.
The condition of the house of which she had become the mistress so easily, and the atmosphere in which it was still conducted, assisted to persuade her, even after the experience of yesterday, that the pictures of surrounding degradation which had been given to her had been too luridly painted, and of the stability of an established order in which competent ant deferential housemaids were still available.
Had Fate designed to mislead her, in a spirit of impish humour, it could scarcely have contrived a better method with its remaining material.
Betty, though with a wider knowledge, was conscious of a somewhat similar feeling. After the nightmare of the past few months, a mistress had appeared such as she had supposed to be no longer existing, one who seemed to have been kept aloof from the violences and vulgarities which had degraded the world around her—as, in fact, she had.
Phillips, using a file on the walk below for the discipline of a rebellious lawn-mower, was of a similar complacency. He regretted Stacey Dobson’s death—though less acutely than Betty, whose tears had only been restrained by the hurried requirements and excitements of this new service—but death had become a very frequent neighbour, and he admitted the kindness of a fortune which had brought him so promptly another master whom it would be an honour to serve.
Only Martin, clothed in a fortunately fitting suit of Stacey’s in place of the filthed and tattered apparel of yesterday, and seated at Stacey’s desk, which he had swept clear of its contents so that he might commence to use it for his own purposes, was already experiencing the unescapable penalty of any form of pre-eminence, in the anxiety of doubtful thought which might need, at any moment, to be translated into swift and confident action.
He was still seated at the desk, working with the brain-tiring speed and concentration with which he had once been accustomed to get up a complicated case, when time had seemed impossibly limited, and was making a series of rapid notes of the almost endless things which he would require to know, or on which action might be needed for the organization of a chaotic community which hesitated between an old civilization and a new savagery, when Tom came to make his report.
He was able to announce that a number of those who had not gone on the expedition, and had not promised Martin their support, had now been persuaded to do so by himself and others.
After many questions had been answered he took Martin’s instructions to canvass the remaining men, and to send any to him who might give service of particular kinds, as well as any who seemed to show an active hostility, if they could be so persuaded.
Martin told him that he proposed to work quietly there for the next three days, after which he would probably require a meeting of his supporters—if possible, of the whole community.
Seeing Martin engaged as he was, and clothed from the resources of Stacey’s ample wardrobe, he was too strongly reminded of the lawyer who had put his briefs aside to defend him without hope of fee, for no better reason than that his mother had once been in the service of the family; and had saved his life, when such a result had seemed to be beyond reasonable anticipation.
This memory, and an honest belief that Martin was the one man who could rescue them from the disorders into which they were sinking, confused his resentment at that which he felt to be an injustice, but the nature of which, even in his own mind, he was unable to formulate.
“You’d better tell me,” said Martin, who could guess well enough what was coming.
It was Claire, of course. There had been reports at first that she was Martin’s wife, and as such she would have been secure from molestation. But then Helen had been seen as they had walked from the lodge last night.
Now they wanted to know which was his wife, and which wasn’t. Told that his real wife was Helen, they had concluded that Claire was unattached, and to be had by the promptest wooer. Butcher had been in Larkshill last night, which seldom happened. He said that he had come to see James Pellow about some smith’s work that he wanted. Probably he had really come to learn the truth about Cooper’s raid. Anyway, there he was. He had certainly made the trouble worse.
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