Chapter XL

In the rejuvenating effect of a conspiracy Mr. Bligh consoled himself for the shock of Wivvle’s depravity.

On the whole he wasn’t as much shocked as he would have been ten years earlier. Wivvle wasn’t under his charge any more, and seduction is an aristocratic vice. No one would ever know anything about it.

Mr. Simmons was his own family lawyer, and they moved cautiously around the subject and the documents concerned with it over some excellent port. Mr. Simmons recalled how very good-looking Emily had been, and they talked for some time about the awkwardness of handsome housemaids.

Mr. Bligh wrote a very verbose and cordial letter of invitation to Jim, and Jim wrote back in three words that he would come on the date and at the hour mentioned.

Mrs. Bligh did not mind Viola’s staying away from the garden party at Downley. It was her yearly duty, and she took Mabel to it for the last time. Mabel wasn’t to go to any more parties.

They went off together dressed in blue and white like the Madonna and the very youngest and most innocent of the St. Catherines.

The communion between mother and daughter was so intense that there were moments when it seemed as if Mrs. Bligh was going into the convent, too—her imagination never left her daughter’s side.

It was not easy for Jim to get away from London. Mr. Bligh’s letter reached him when he was submerged in the strike. It was as difficult for him to snatch his mind off it as it is for a watcher in the sick room to take notice of the outside world. The work he lived in had the same urgency as illness—hundreds of people were swayed by his presence and fed on his vitality. To leave them for a few hours was to wrench himself away from a need.

He could not guess why Viola wanted him, the thought of her cut across his judgment and left him helpless and afraid. She asked too much of him if she did not ask all he had, and she would never ask that. It did not occur to Jim that she could, in her unimaginable life, be as swayed by him as he was by her. He knew she believed in him and even relied on him, but he was used to this reliance of others on his strength; it was an irrelevant reliance and did not shake his heart, even when it touched it. He did not dream that Viola could like him for himself as women like men.

Jim did not feel any pain at re-visiting Warren Manor. The boy who had left it had passed out of his life. He thought of it indistinctly, without unfriendliness. But when he pushed open the gate and saw the same rush of flowers—the wide, smooth placidness of the green lawns, the rich, contented strength of the old red walls, as of a ripe fruit for ever hanging in a patch of sun, memory shot into his heart, and he almost expected to see Mrs. Bligh behind the tea-table, smiling at him with her serene, protective eyes. He found instead Mr. Bligh, older and less formidable than ever, full of incoherent friendliness and apologetic enthusiasm.

Mr. Bligh did not, of course, touch on anything painful, but his attitude itself was a little painful. He seemed to take it so for granted that he was in the wrong; and Jim had forgotten what the wrong was. He only wanted to enjoy the garden and see Viola.

But when he saw Viola at lunch she seemed incredibly far away. He was struck as he had been long ago, with the innate leisure of prosperous lives.

Nothing critical ever took place at once.

Viola greeted him like a casual acquaintance, and then there was a gong and lunch. Even after lunch Mr. Bligh held him back with port wine which he never drank, and a cigar which he was much too nervous to smoke.

Mr. Bligh was nervous, too; only Viola appeared at all composed, she looked in at the long French window at exactly the time she intended to talk to Jim, and suggested a stroll in the orchard.

Jim joined her without a word. Mr. Bligh watched them a little wistfully. They did not look as happy and lawless as he liked. They looked as if they dreaded what lay before them. It was not Mr. Bligh’s idea of a comfortable flirtation. They walked far apart without looking at each other until they disappeared into the orchard.

There was a pause in the life of the spring. The blossoms were over, and the young leaves hid the promise of the fruit.

Viola’s powers of speech were stopped by something trembling within her.

‘I haven’t found the pearls,’ Jim said at last in a constrained voice. ‘I’m afraid I shan’t now, the police say they have been on her track for a long time. Occasionally she lets me know where she is, but of course she won’t now. I’m very sorry.’

Viola sat down with her back to a tree and looked away into the sunlight.

‘I don’t care in the least about the pearls,’ she said slowly, ‘and I hope they’ll never catch Eliza.’

A separating wall of silence cut them off from each other.

Then Jim said as if he were breaking it down stone by stone,—‘Well, I’m here—what do you want with me?’

She gave him a quick look and glanced away again. It was strange how with Reggie she had always had to try to make up for what she didn’t find in him by his handsome exterior. She had relied on him physically to let her off an innate distaste, and to smooth down a curious hostility. But with Jim it was just the opposite. She knew profoundly that he was dear to her, that she revered and longed for his strength and companionship, but she had always to get used to his physical awkwardness, to his heavy features, and his holding himself as if it didn’t matter. This didn’t make her feel hostile, but it made her want to hide her eyes, and keep him only in her heart. She felt responsible for Jim and for his appearance as she had never felt for Reggie. It was as if he was curiously near her, yet he had never touched her, and Reggie had been her demonstrative lover; but Reggie’s demonstrations had never been solidly a part of her imagination, they had happened to her as accidents happen. Her nearness to Jim was as organic as the air she drew into her lungs, and as vital to her.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ she said, hardly speaking above a whisper, ‘that I know all about Emily——’

Jim stared at her without speaking. Then he said—

‘Who is Emily?’

It was incredible that he had forgotten! Viola could not imagine how Jim, and even Emily, had recovered from such a blow from destiny.

She thought that tragedies were lifelong and continuous. She did not know that even the heaviest sorrows are rarely continuous. They maim, but their consciousness passes. Emily and Jim had been too busy and too brave to keep any dramatic memories, they had stood what they had to stand; and then gone on without the luxury of a perpetual record.

‘Oh, but you must remember,’ Viola exclaimed, ‘that poor Emily, who was here—you took the blame for what happened to her, and then afterwards you helped her?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jim, ‘I remember Emily, of course. She’s all right, isn’t she?’

Viola waived Emily’s present ease aside.

‘It’s the most dreadful thing I ever heard of,’ she said in an awestruck voice, ‘and what makes it all even worse is that Mrs. Bligh knew the real truth, and when I asked her about it she let me think it was you!’

To Viola’s surprise and horror Jim laughed outright.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not really! ’Pon my soul I shouldn’t have thought she’d have dared!

‘Religious people do juggle with the Almighty. How she must hate me to let herself tell a lie! Are you certain she knew?’ He wasn’t even sorry now that Mrs. Bligh hated him.

‘Yes, but don’t you understand?’ said Viola, ‘if I hadn’t found out, and Mr. Bligh hadn’t been a dear, and gone to the lawyer for me, that story could have been used against you?’

Jim stopped laughing.

‘They could have used it against me any time these ten years,’ he said gravely, ‘but they haven’t used it.’

‘I don’t mean the Blighs,’ said Viola, ‘I mean my parents. Mrs. Bligh may tell them, only I think Mr. Bligh will stop her now.’

Jim whistled.

‘D’you mean the strike?’ he asked. ‘Your father would have dragged it out, to down me? Yes, he might. I never thought of that.’

‘No, I didn’t mean the strike,’ said Viola under her breath. Jim looked at her. She felt his gaze upon her, searching and tender, but as if he dared not find what he searched for. He waited, saying nothing. ‘You don’t seem to think,’ she said in a trembling voice, ‘how I might mind—or why I tried to find out the truth.’

‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, choosing his words carefully, ‘because you are a loyal person and a kind friend. I knew that already—I knew it the first time I saw you. I couldn’t get you out of my head, and if you’d been only pretty, I think I could have got you out of it. I can stand a pretty face.’

‘It wasn’t only that,’ said Viola; ‘I don’t want to be kind.’

The silence between them widened out through the orchard until they could not hear the birds twittering, or the soft, lazy, summer sounds over the open fields. Viola hung dizzily upon the verge of miracle. She held destiny on her lips, for Jim’s were sealed. He only looked at her and waited. ‘I found out,’ she whispered, ‘because I had to, Jim—because I loved you——’

She turned her head away to hide the acuteness of life. She dreaded the change between them which she herself had made. But Jim did not stir, he did not touch her or take any advantage of the change.

When he spoke it was very quietly and not as if she had done anything tremendous.

‘I should lie if I pretended I wasn’t glad,’ he said, ‘to hear you say a thing like that is like knowing the Kingdom of Heaven’s true. But you see, the gladness can’t make any difference, can it? I shall just have to bottle it up and sit on it for the rest of my life. I can’t act on what you’ve told me.’

‘Oh, but why?’ she asked. ‘You’re not going to say because of those stupid pearls?’

‘Well,’ said Jim, ‘Eliza counts. People who ought to go to prison, and who will go to prison if they’re caught, must count, as family connections, you know. But not wholly because of Eliza. If your father had misappropriated trust funds—and, of course, from my perverse point of view he practically _has_—I shouldn’t wish you to throw me over. Eliza dots an “i” but she isn’t an “i.” I’m that myself, I know. Viola—look at me.’

She raised her eyes obediently, they sank into his and became a part of his being; she no longer saw him as ugly or awkward, or as outside herself.

The barriers between them fell like straws.

‘I’m not,’ said Jim with a twist of his mouth, ‘attractive, not even to you, and I’d have to be rather attractive to carry you off under all your guns, shouldn’t I? No—don’t be nice to me, it’s bad enough without that.

‘You don’t know how bad, because you’re romantic, and romance is like a drop of laudanum to a toothache. You see, I can stand doing without you. All my life I’ve done without things, not because I was virtuous, but because I hadn’t got ’em. Doing without is a habit like any other.

‘When I saw you, I knew I’d got to have the edge of it against me always. But it was worth it. I’ve never been in love before. I’ve wanted women, but that’s natural; any man can stand what his senses do to him.

‘I knew I wasn’t going to get over what I felt for you. I know now why I’m alive. Being let out of prison is pretty good—I’ve been let out of prison, but not for stealing pearls. I’ll tell you about it some day—it was the first decent thing I did—which got me locked up. But not even getting out of prison was as good to me as seeing you. No—don’t touch me.’

But she had touched him. She had put her small, fine hand over his roughened fingers. Jim looked at it and then at her. He thought she was too small and beautiful for love. He couldn’t go on talking; his voice died away in a sigh of sheer content.

‘But I’m not just something in your mind,’ Viola said quietly. ‘I’m myself—I’m like any other woman. I think I know everything in all the world now, and I know that there aren’t any real barriers between us.’

‘You say that,’ he murmured, ‘but you don’t know, how can you? I’m raw to you, my life’s hard and ugly, full of rough people, and I’m rough myself. I’m not a mystery, I’m only a lout! Why, if you only knew what I was like when I first came here—I couldn’t sit down in a chair or hold a tea-cup, and I didn’t understand half any one said to me, even now I don’t always understand your thoughts; I’m trained, I’m educated—but I’m not like you. If you marry me you won’t only have to live with a strange man, you’ll have to live with a strange man who isn’t a gentleman.’

‘I don’t want you to be anything you aren’t,’ said Viola firmly. ‘I want you to be what you are. I’ll take care of the rest.’

‘You don’t know what the rest is,’ said Jim, ‘and the Lord knows I don’t know how to tell you! What I am is all mixed up, more than most men are. I might not always be able even to _try_ to be what you like. I told you I never loved any one before I saw you—but that’s not true. I’ve always had in me something that I loved—I don’t know what to call it—but I know it leads me, and it takes me into some damned queer places. I believe it’s the love of God. But if you told me it wasn’t I should have to go on following it just the same. It’s always telling me what I am to do, and half of the time it makes me look all wrong. I can’t go by any other rule, and people—even my own people down in Poplar—don’t like it. When it suits their book they like it, of course, but it doesn’t always suit their book. It doesn’t suit my own. How do I know it’ll suit yours? You don’t please other people if you please God, and you mayn’t be pleasing God either—that’s the risk, and you can’t keep them in separate packets because I’ve tried—other people is what you’ve got to learn God out of. You’re no good at all if you keep off by yourself, but you’re less good still if you try to please people. You’ve got to be with them and hold on to something outside of them. Why, even you, if you were to see a thing that mattered differently from me—I’d have to let you rip—can you face living with a man who’d let you rip?’

Viola smiled a queer little smile.

‘I’ll risk the love of God,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe I shall mind it. You see, I shan’t have to take the risks most women take in other directions. But, Jim, it’s only fair to tell you that though I’m interested, I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t got the love of God.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’re part of it!’

He bent his head till his lips touched her hand. He could not let it go unless she took it away.

Nothing on earth could release him, his spirit and his body were as bound to her as the sap is to the tree. He tried to drag himself back to the obstacles which had seemed to him invulnerable an hour ago.

‘I haven’t said anything about your people,’ he said. ‘But don’t think I’m not upset about them—they’ve loved you, and been good to you. This will be worse to them than if you fell under a train. I feel rather as if I’d pushed you under.’

Viola stood up suddenly with a little gesture of freedom.

‘Oh, no, you haven’t,’ she said. ‘If you’d pushed me I wouldn’t have gone. I’m tired of being pushed under trains. This time I’ve jumped on to the line myself.’

Jim looked up at her. The laughter and the joy were struck out of his face.

‘Oh, but if the engine’s there,’ he said, ‘you’ll get smashed whichever way you look at it.’

He had never been afraid since he had struggled out of his earlier life, and he had never, even in those earlier days, learned the deadliest lesson fear can teach—precaution. But he felt both now. He would rather have left her where she stood, with all his hopes upon her, than let her run the risk her heart was set on. But he could not leave her. He had gone too far; to leave her now would be to forsake her. Love, which is the most dangerous of all human accidents had broken Viola’s security.