The Passionate Heart (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  In Jasmine’s veins ran George’s blood. The game of pretence could not go on, she could not deny the truth to that extent. Jasmine was George’s child.

  Mary heard the wheezy latch lift. Now was the time to speak.

  II

  Jasmine hung her coat up, with her eyes shining and her hands quivering. It was a dark blue coat, and it almost slipped between her trembling fingers; from her place at the table Mary watched her, with the glaring, bubbling gas in its ugly loop between them. She said: ‘You have been a long while.’

  Her voice would sound unfriendly; a certain coldness crept into it, a coldness which she wanted to eradicate, because it was inevitable that, if they were to approach this subject properly, they must not lose their warm vital friendship the one to the other.

  ‘Yes.’ The girl came nearer. She stood there leaning her hands on the table-top, and staring at her mother. She was an exquisite picture of rapture. Her youthfully fair skin, her shining round eyes, the delicious curve of a sensitive mouth. ‘Mummy, something has happened.’

  Intuitively putting up her hands as though to ward off a blow, Mary said: ‘Not that, Jasmine, not that?’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, isn’t he wonderful?’

  Mary felt quite sick, but the girl failed to notice her ashiness; she went on impulsively: ‘He asked me to-night, Mummy. I’ve had a feeling all along that he would do. He put it so beautifully. I don’t think I have ever heard anything so lovely. I couldn’t have said “no” even if I had wanted to, but of course I didn’t want to. Nobody would want to say “no” to Hubert, would they?’

  ‘But, darling, you are only seventeen.’

  ‘We can wait a while. He isn’t making enough yet, you know. We’ll just have to be engaged.’ Then she realised her mother’s silence. ‘Mummy, what is it?’ she enquired.

  ‘You’ve considered this thing?’ Mary began gently. ‘You realise what he is? What his people are?’

  ‘They’re dears. His mother kissed me. They’re wonderful people; you’re underrating him because he did not have a commission in the war ‒ as if that mattered. Mummy, don’t be petty.’

  ‘You are ‒ you are engaged?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You at seventeen, and he hasn’t asked me a thing about it?’

  Jasmine flung back her head. ‘He is here now,’ she said defiantly, and her eyes were hostile with resentment at any criticism of her beloved.

  ‘Very well. Then I will see him ‒ but alone.’

  ‘You won’t turn him against me, Mummy?’

  ‘Oh, Jasmine, do you suppose I have not your very dear interest at heart? I love you, my child, I love you tremendously. I want you to be happy.’

  She watched Jasmine usher Hubert in; Hubert, in an old mackintosh, looking a little sheepish. His boots were too yellow, his tie was crude. She pointed to a chair beside the fire, and continued to sit herself at the head of the table so sparsely spread, with the gas gurgling derisively above them.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You wanted to talk to me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered uncomfortably, ‘yes,’ and he sat down in that self-conscious way of his. Quietly Jasmine went upstairs. It was no good beating about the bush. Mary listened to her retreating footsteps, for there was no carpet on the stairs, and then she came straight to her point.

  ‘You have spoken to Jasmine?’ she asked, and the crude yellow light of the bubbling gas lit up his face.

  ‘Yes, I did make so bold.’

  ‘You are in a position to marry?’

  ‘Well, I hope to be. The practice is looking up; ’t ’ome they’re pleased with me. I’m new at it.’

  ‘I see. And you … you care for Jasmine?’

  His weak blue eyes met hers. ‘I do,’ he said; ‘the first time I set eyes on her I knew she was my girl.’

  ‘She is very young.’

  ‘Me mother was married at eighteen; she had two children before she was twenty-one.’

  Mary fingered the knife and fork, which she had laid on the polished table. She asked: ‘It never struck you that Jasmine had been used to a rather different position from … from this?’

  ‘No, it hadn’t.’

  ‘We are only living like this because my marriage turned out unfortunately. Jasmine’s people have all been in a very different station of life. I don’t quite know how they would think about it all.’

  ‘Mine is a profession,’ said Hubert hurriedly. ‘It’d be different to this if I’d carried on with the shop.’

  ‘Yes, yours is a profession, but there are your people.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed of them.’

  ‘Oh no, I know you are not, you have no cause to be; it’s just …’ her voice trailed away. It was difficult to explain. ‘It is all a manner of upbringing,’ she ended lamely.

  ‘I have been brought up very nicely. I never went to any but a private school, me mother saw to that. I never thought about there being what you might call, so to speak, a social difference.’

  Mary sat there staring at the little room, such a poor little room, with Mamma’s bright furniture in it by strange contrast. Hubert, too, how gauche he looked, the cheap ring on his little finger, the brazen tie, and all the little mannerisms.

  ‘Now you know about the social difference,’ she said, ‘what do you intend to do?’

  ‘I don’t see as how it makes things any different,’ he asserted.

  ‘No, it doesn’t really. But Jasmine is only a child; later, when she realised it more, you would do things that grated.’

  ‘Who? Me?’ he demanded in bewilderment.

  ‘It’s just … just the difference of upbringing.’

  He blinked at her in amazed wonder for a moment, then, getting annoyed, he said: ‘You should talk to me mother about that. She was always most careful. I don’t say we had fal-lals … like serviettes and things; it was always good but plain. I didn’t play with the other little nippers, but kept meself to meself. It’s just because of that shop.’

  Mary took in a deep breath. ‘You are quite right in defending your mother, but you see it is difficult. Both your parents speak of me as “ma’am”.’

  He reddened. ‘They won’t now,’ he assured her.

  ‘Pardon me, but they will.’ Some latent pride handed down (perhaps from Mamma) stirred a faint colour to her cheeks; there was a certain quiet dignity about her as she spoke. ‘I shall send for Jasmine’s father, for frankly I consider this marriage to be impossible.’

  Hubert fingered his hat. ‘That’s a nice thing to tell a chap,’ he said. ‘Aren’t my feelings and Jessamine’s to be considered at all? It’s all very well for you to talk, you’ve had your fun. It’s a free country and a girl should choose for herself and no mistake about it.’

  Jessamine! How the name stung and hurt her! She remembered with a ghastly vividity Hannah in the kitchen, and the round flabby face of Mr. Hoskings, ‘a gentleman with “Jass-a-mine” round his cap.’ She said coldly: ‘I know you will think me harsh, but I am Jasmine’s protector and guardian, and she will have to be protected. I shall send at once for her father.’

  ‘I’ll see him,’ declared Hubert stoutly. ‘I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I daresay he’s been in love himself, as like as not. And what’s more, I shouldn’t be surprised as how he understands.’

  ‘It is no use our going on talking. Nothing is to be gained by it. I shall tell Jasmine what has happened.’

  ‘Yes,’ he grunted.

  She showed him out; he had lapsed into a sulky mood and hardly said good evening. She stood in the lintels watching him as he went up the little road in the moonlight toward the sea. A starry night and the wavelets winking and glistening in the whiteness of it; wavelets threaded with silver ribbon of moonshine. That was how she thought of them. Such a squalid little street, with the prim workmen’s houses, and hers one of them. Her heart was very heavy; she, who had ‘had her fun’.

  How brutal is youth! The young take a fierce hold on life and want i
t all; they never credit anybody else with having emotions or loves or hates. She had had her fun, and was just old and useless and done for, and in reality she was just a little over forty.

  A sea threaded with silver, the same sea which had borne Peter swiftly and remorselessly from her. She visualised a phantom ship rising and falling again. She visualised it in its raw cold grey, with its ensign fluttering from the quarterdeck, patchy of white and red and blue, a splash of colour in the light. Grey upstanding masts and blur of a crow’s-nest, the fine lace of rope and ladder and spar, a ship with outpointing guns and gleaming tampions.

  Tired with the bludgeoning of life she visualised it again, and saw it change from the cold grey of steel to the silver of moonshine and phantasy. It was a radiant silver ship sailing across the sea of her memory. It was the love ship of her desire, bearing her lover swiftly towards her.

  III

  She went up to the room which she and Jasmine shared. The girl lay in her own side of the bed, under the faded eiderdown, the gas, with its naked light, flickering spade-shaped from its bracket above her head. Beside her was the polished tallboy of Mamma’s with its round brass rings of handles. In the window a heavy mahogany chest which served as a dressing-table. Splendid furniture in this cheaply rickety room, with the paper peeling off the walls, and the stone-coloured paint chipped and showing deal through.

  ‘Well?’ said Jasmine questioningly. Her eyes were like stars with the fever of excitement.

  ‘I’ve been talking to him, darling.’

  ‘Mummy, you haven’t been cruel?’

  ‘Cruel? How could I?’ She sat down nervously on the edge of the bed and began taking off her shoes. She noticed how worn they were; there was no doubt about it, cheap shoes were a poor investment, but what else could she do? She drew off her stockings.

  ‘What has happened?’ asked Jasmine.

  ‘My dear, I think this needs very serious consideration. I have told him so.’

  ‘I knew you’d try and spoil it all. You have always hated my having love affairs. Father said so, and he was quite right. You don’t seem to realise that I love him.’

  ‘I do realise it.’

  ‘You were the same over Caleb.’

  ‘Neither Caleb nor Hubert have been in our position.’ The remembrance throbbed within her that George had always chosen women beneath him in position. Jasmine’s taste had also been lamentably poor.

  ‘I don’t see that positions matter. The war did away with all that sort of rot.’ She was sitting up in bed, her arms clasping the huddle of her knees, her chin resting upon them; it was a determined face with a set chin. She was reproachful and there was something flinty about her eyes; she was youth defending its love, she wore bright armour, but there were vulnerable chinks in it. Mary shut her eyes to obliterate the picture. When she opened them again she said:

  ‘I shall have to ask your father to come down; it is his business really.’

  ‘He won’t let you trample on my love. I care for Hubert. I can’t live without him. I don’t think people like you understand love, not this sort of love. Sometimes I wonder if you understood Father.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Mary weakly.

  ‘Well, I do wonder. I thought you understood me but you don’t. Mummy, haven’t you ever been in love yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you were lucky. Your mother let you marry him.’

  ‘No,’ said Mary, ‘I was unlucky. I met him after I was married, so I could not marry him.’

  Jasmine stared at her incredulously. ‘How awful,’ she said.

  ‘It was awful for me. If I had had a little courage I should not have been sitting here now. I’d be the other side of the world.’

  ‘Yet you are angry with me because I have the courage to want Hubert.’ The girl shook her bright hair out of her eyes. ‘Not only do I want him, but I mean to have him. I don’t care what I say or what you say, I shall.’ She turned and buried her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically. There was no comfort that Mary could offer. Dully she realised her own aching demand for consolation. She undressed and drew the cheap cotton nightdress over her body. It was still a beautiful body, in spite of the little swelling in her side. Her hair had whitened, but it was rather lovely in its bluish grey; she felt that her tears must have washed some of the blueness from her eyes, but that was not so. With Jasmine’s sobs shuddering through the room, Mary turned out the gas, and after the little plop which it made there was only the silver shading of the impersonal night. She crept into bed, she reached out a hand. ‘Darling ‒ darling ‒’

  But the girl twisted her young urn-shaped body away. ‘Can’t you leave me alone? It’s you who have made me miserable. I want a room of my own where at least I can cry in peace. It’s hateful …’

  And then Mary lay still in a tragic deathly stillness. She cried, but she cried tearlessly, for Jasmine must not know. She lay there in her dreadful loneliness, alone in the depths of life, with her parched throat and stinging eyes, and no one to care. If only the little hands would descend again, would lift her up and draw her gladly into the warm radiance of the light.

  But there was no light …

  There were no little hands.

  IV

  George came down rather flustered and very pompous. It had happened inconveniently, he explained; he had been in the midst of arranging a carol party, and then this had occurred. Anyway, seeing that Jasmine had deliberately left him and gone with her mother, he did not see that it was any business of his. He said he supposed that Mary did not realise that people could fall in love, and he wished to wash his hands of the whole affair. George had come down in a very bad temper owing to the fact that the affair with Mrs. Knight had come to a finish. Mary was not told this, she only gathered it in between the sentences. Mrs. Knight had been truculent; she had shown mercenary instincts; she had apparently found the ivy-leaf and forget-me-not a phase that palled. George interviewed Hubert in the small room where the practice was carried on, and came away and told Mary that he thought that Hubert was a dreadful young man, but if that was Jasmine’s taste he could see no reason for interfering.

  ‘She loves him,’ he explained, ‘that is the part you don’t understand. I think he’s awful, but I haven’t got to marry him, thank God. Marriage is always a mistake. One can’t fetter love.’

  They were sitting on a green seat in the marine gardens laid out by the sea. From the distance came the pleasant hum of the surf, the deep breathing of the water. The gardens were dead now, for all vegetation was at a standstill, but the bright sun was pleasant, and it was easier to talk here than in the crazy cottage where Jasmine could overhear.

  ‘I might understand,’ Mary protested.

  ‘It isn’t any of our business. I’m a peace-loving man. I hate rows. I shan’t interfere; I’ve seen too much of that in my time.’

  ‘But his people?’

  ‘She isn’t marrying his people. That will be her funeral, not ours.’

  ‘Her happiness is our business,’ Mary reminded him.

  ‘Now why? She has never been daughterly to me; she came off here with you; why should I trouble myself about the little minx?’

  ‘You once said you wanted her to marry a duke. Surely Hubert falls a little short?’

  ‘I’d have been proud if she had married a duke ... no more,’ said George sententiously.

  ‘What are we to do?’

  ‘I shall do nothing. I would never dare trespass on another’s romance. I have respect for people’s feelings.’

  For the first time in her life Mary ached for Mamma. Mamma would not have sat down under this. War would have been declared; a terrible, insistent war. Hubert, frightened out of his few poor wits, would have been vanquished and made to leave the small town. Jasmine would have been reduced to pulp. Mamma, glorious and victorious, and thoroughly enjoying the whole affair, would have solved the knotty problem by literally screaming them into her way of thinking. But, alas, Mamma could
only look down from Heaven, whence Mary felt sure that her hands itched to do battle. This was a warfare of Mary and George, Jasmine and Hubert, and no more.

  ‘So you will acknowledge the engagement?’ asked Mary.

  ‘They love each other,’ declared the romantic George, and that, for him, settled the question.

  There was no more to be done. Hubert bought Jasmine a diamond ring with a good deal of gold setting because ‘me mother’ averred that gold looked good. He often came to tea, and, be it said to his credit, he never alluded to the fact that his first reception had not been warm.

  Mary was alone. She was desperately alone, and she knew it. She would walk against the wettish wind along the cliff edge, far beyond the town, where the Essex marshes met the sand, where the great grey North Sea rode in a mighty and voluptuous tide in upon the little islands. She would walk till she came to the land which lay uncultivated and wild, and where she could sit among the sedge where the grasses were bleached white, and try to think. There were sea-pinks in reddish clusters, and pale sea-lavender in autumn, ripples of colour against the dunes and the mud washed wet by the high tide. Crumbly earth cliffs and, beneath, the moist sand imprinted with gulls’ pink feet; there was the gleam of flat rocks, and long flexings of vividly green seaweed. After that the sweep of the sea, blue in summer ‒ green in winter.

  There she would sit, listening to the jumble of frothy sound and of screaming gulls, watching the fishing-boats a mile out, and wondering if life were a huge joke or a grim tragedy. Here she could tell herself those weird and fantastic stories and live in them. The little arms, how dear they had been; one day they would come back. They would descend into her blackish depths and cry! ‘Surely … surely you never thought that we would leave you? We are here … here … we are yours …’ And when they lifted her she would find something new and wonderful, something which she had never guessed, some delirious joy.