“yes, i am quite satisfied with things on the whole,” said lady condor. “dear roger, you need not snort. of course you are a pessimist, so nice! one of the lucky people who never expect anything, so are never disappointed. or you always expect everything bad, is it? and you are never disappointed, because you think everything is bad! it doesn’t sound right somehow, but you know what i mean.”
“certainly! it is quite clear,” said north, with commendable gravity.
they were both calling at thorpe, one cold afternoon early in october. ruth had a big log fire burning in the grate, in the room which still seemed to belong to dick carey. its warmth mingled with the scent from big bowls-full of late autumn roses, lent a pleasing illusion of summer. lady condor, wonderful to behold in the very latest thing in early autumn hats, on which every conceivable variety of dahlia seemed gathered together, sat by the fire talking of many things.
“so nice of you to understand!” she exclaimed, 227nodding at north genially. “that is the charm of talking to some one with brains. but where was i? oh yes! i am quite satisfied with things, because i see the end of this horrible adoration of money. the pithians have far surpassed my wildest hopes. it has become positively discreditable to be very wealthy. at last everyone begins to realize how truly vulgar has been their idea. i have always resented this kow-towing down to money. it gets the wrong people in everywhere, and no wonder the country goes to the dogs, as my poor dear father used to say. now why have we got dunlop rancid as our member? because he has brains to help govern? certainly not! he is our member because his father made a large fortune in buttons—or was it bones?—perhaps it was bone buttons. but something like that. and he subscribed largely to the party funds, so he represents us, and when he took me into dinner last week he didn’t know where king solomon’s islands were. nor did i! but of course that was different. my dear”—she looked suddenly at violet riversley—“why on earth don’t you make fred stand for parliament? he has a fund of common sense which would be invaluable to the country, and he has only to write a big cheque for the party funds and there he will be.”
228violet riversley was curled—almost crunched—up in the armchair opposite her ladyship. she lifted her head when directly questioned and laughed a little. it was not a nice laugh. it fell across the warm sweet-scented room like a note from a jarred string.
“why should one bother?” she said. “the country is welcome to go to the dogs for all i care. i’m sorry for the dogs, that’s all.”
there was a little silence, a sense of discomfort. the bitterness underlying the words made them forceful—of account. lady condor felt they were in bad taste, and north got up, frowning irritably, and moved away to the window. violet, however, was paying no attention to either of them. she was looking at ruth, with her golden eyes full of something approaching malice.
“you go on playing with your little bits of kindness and your toys, and think everything in the garden is lovely!” she laughed again, that little hateful laugh. “and what do you suppose is really going on all the time! you human beings are the biggest fraud on the face of the earth!”
ruth started a little at the pronoun. her serenity was disturbed; she looked worried.
“you talk of righteousness, and justice, and brotherhood, and all the rest of the rotten humbug,” 229violet riversley went on, “and hold up your hands in horror when other people transgress against your paper ideals. but every nation is out for what it can make, every people will wade through oceans of blood and torture and infamy if it thinks it can reap any benefit from it. and why not? survival of the fittest, that is nature’s law. but why can’t you say so? instead of all this hypocrisy and pretence of high morals. you make me sick! what possible right have you to howl at the germans? you are all the same—england and france and america—the whole lot of you. you have all taken by force or fraud. you have all driven out by arms and plots weaker peoples than yourselves. i don’t blame you for that—weaker people should go—it is the law of nature. but don’t go round whining about how good you are to them. you are just about as good to them as you are to your animals or anything else weaker than yourselves. why can’t you have the courage of your brutality, and your lust, and your strength. it might be worth something then. you might be great. as it is you are only contemptible—the biggest fraud on the face of creation.”
she faltered suddenly, and stopped. ruth’s eyes had met hers steadily, all the time she had been speaking; and now her hostess spoke slowly 230and quietly, as one speaks to a little child when one wants to impress something upon it.
“why do you talk like that, violet riversley?” she asked. “you know you do not think like that yourself.”
north, standing by the window, watched, with the fingers of a horrible anxiety gripping him. his daughter’s face in the leaping firelight looked like a twisted distorted mask. lady condor, open-mouthed, comically perplexed, stared from one to the other, for once speechless.
“it is the truth.” violet riversley uttered the words slowly, it seemed with difficulty.
“you do not think so,” answered ruth, still as one who would impress a fact on a child. then she rose from her chair. “come!” she said, with a strange note of command in her voice, “i know you will all like to walk round the place before tea.”
violet passed her hand across her eyes, much as a person will do when waking from the proverbial forty winks. she stood up, and shivered a little.
ruth was talking, after a fashion unusual to her, almost forcing the conversation into certain channels. “yes, of course, you are very right, lady condor,” she said. “no man can be valued truly until you see what he can do just 231with his brain and his character and his own two hands. now i can give violet a really fine character for work. as a matter of fact i am filled with jealousy. she can milk quicker than i can. i think because she learnt when she was quite young. mr. carey taught her.”
“poor dear dick! he did teach the children such queer things,” said lady condor, allowing herself to be assisted out of her comfortable chair by the fire without protest. “but who was it learnt to milk? some one quite celebrated. was it marie antoinette? or was it queen elizabeth? it must be just milking time; let us go, dear violet, and see you milk. it will interest us so much,” she added, with that amazing tact which no one except those who knew her best ever realized.
violet followed them into the garden without speaking. her eyes had a curious vacant look; she moved like a person walking in her sleep.
lady condor took ruth’s arm and dropped behind the others on the way to the farmyard. “my dear,” she said, “i don’t know what’s the matter, but i see you wish to create a diversion. poor dear violet, i have never heard her talk such nonsense before. rather unpleasant nonsense too, wasn’t it? can it be she has fallen in love with one of those dreadful 232socialist creatures? i believe they can sometimes be quite attractive, and the young women of the present day are so outré, you never know who or what they will take up with. besides, i believe they wash nowadays. the socialists i mean, of course. in my day they thought it showed independence to appear dirty and without any manners. so funny, was it not? but i met one the other day who was charming. quite good looking and well dressed, even his boots. or, let me see, was he a theosophist? there are so many ‘ists’ now, it is difficult not to get them mixed up. but where was i? oh yes—dear violet! where can she have got those queer ideas from? i do hope she is not attracted by some ‘ist.’ i so often notice that when a woman gets queer opinions there is either a man, or the want of a man, at the bottom of it. and it cannot be the latter with dear violet. ah, now here we are. don’t the dear things look pretty? and you have such a lovely milking shed for them. violet, you really must show me how you milk. i should like to begin myself. but don’t you have to lean your head against the cow?—and it would ruin my dahlias.”
“come and see the real dahlias instead,” said violet, laughing. “yours are the most wonderful imitation i have ever seen. i don’t 233believe you could tell them from the real ones. where did you get them? madame elsa?”
her voice and manner were wholly natural again. north looked palpably relieved, but when his daughter had disappeared with lady condor towards the flower garden he turned anxiously to ruth.
“does she often talk like that?” he asked. “it is so unlike her—so absolutely unlike—” he stopped, his eyes searched ruth’s, and for a moment there was silence. “what is it?” he asked.
they were wandering now, aimlessly, back to the house.
“if i were to tell you what i think,” said ruth slowly, “you would call me mad.”
“you don’t mind that.” he spoke impatiently. “tell me.”
“not yet—wait. did anything strike you when she burst out like that just now?”
north did not answer. he had ridden over and still held his whip in his right hand. he struck the fallen rustling leaves backwards and forwards with it as he walked, with the sharp whish expressive of annoyance and irritation.
“you women are enough to drive a man crazy between you,” he said.
this being plainly no answer to her question ruth simply waited.
234“how often has she talked in that strain?” north asked at length.
“twice only, before to-day.”
“and you—call her back to herself—as you did just now?”
“yes.”
they had reached the terrace, and he stood facing her. he searched her eyes with his as he had done before.
“it is not possible,” he said, but the words lacked conviction.
ruth said nothing. her eyes were troubled, but they met his steadily.
then at last north told her. “it might have been karl von sch?de speaking,” he said.
“come indoors,” she said gently.
he followed her into the warm rose-scented room and sat down by the fire, shivering. she threw more logs upon it, and the flames shot up, many-hued, rose and amber, sea-green and heliotrope.
“tell me what you think, what you know,” said north.
ruth looked into the leaping mass of flame, her face very grave. her voice was very low, hardly above a whisper.
“i think the hatred in which karl von sch?de passed into the next world has found a physical 235instrument through which to manifest here,” she said.
“and that instrument is—good god!” north’s voice was sharp with horror. “it isn’t possible—the whole thing is ridiculous. but go on. i heard to-day. that has happened twice before you say. you suspected then, of course. is there anything else?”
and even as he spoke, things, little things, that violet had said and done, came back to him. the shrinking of the dogs, his own words—“she is not herself”—took on new meaning.
“there is a blight upon the farm since she came,” said ruth. “the joy and peace are not here as they were. perhaps you would not feel it, coming so seldom.”
“yes, i noticed it. but violet has not made for peace of late. i thought it was just her being here.”
“the children don’t care to come as they did, and there have been quarrels. the creatures are not so tame. nothing is doing quite so well. these are little things, but taken all together they make a big whole.”
“anyway it’s not fair on you,” said north shortly. “the place is too good to spoil, and you——”
in that moment, the supreme selfishness with which he and his had used her for their own 236benefit, as some impersonal creature, that could not be weary or worried or overtaxed, came home to him. he felt suddenly ashamed.
ruth smiled at him. “no,” she said. “the farm, i, you, are all just instruments too, as she has become, poor child. only we are instruments on the other side.” her voice dropped, and he leant forward to catch the words. “dick carey’s instruments; we cannot fail him.”
“then you think——”
“see!” she held herself together, after her queer fashion, as a child does when thinking hard. “you remember in the letter about von sch?de, when mr. carey wrote: ‘he died cursing england, the english, me and mine and thorpe. it was like the evil of this war incarnate.’ do you think that force of emotion perished with the physical, or do you think the shattering of the physical left it free? and remember too, karl von sch?de had studied those forces, had learnt possibly something of how to handle them. then violet, violet whom he had loved, after his own fashion, and to whom he would therefore be drawn——”
“but if there is any justice, here or there,” broke in north, “why should she become the brute’s instrument?”
“because she too was filled with hate. only 237so could it have been possible. think for a minute and you will see.”
in his youth, north had been afflicted with spasms of stammering. one seized him now. it seemed part of the horror which was piercing the armour in which he had trusted, distorting with strange images that lucid brain of his, so that all clear train of thought seemed to desert him. he struggled painfully for a few moments before speech returned to him.
“d—damn him. d—damn him. damn him,” he said.
ruth sprang up, and laid her hand across his mouth. fear was in her eyes. he had never thought to see her so moved, she who was always so calm, so secure.
“for pity’s sake stop,” she said; “if you feel like that you must go. you must not come here again. you must keep away from her. oh, don’t you see you are helping him? i ought not to have told you; i did not realize it might fill you with hate too.”
“i’m sorry,” said north harshly. “i’m afraid anything else is beyond me.”
he had given up all attempt to insist that it was impossible. the uncanny horror had him in its grip. he felt that he had bidden farewell to common sense.
ruth grew imperative. “for god’s sake, 238try!” she said. “don’t hate. don’t curse him like that. don’t you see—you cannot overcome hate with hate; you can only add to it. i find it so hard myself not to feel as you do. but oh, don’t you see, all his life dick carey must have loved, in a small far-off way of course, as god loves. and everything that lived and moved and breathed came within the scope of his tenderness and his pity. and that which was himself did not perish with the physical either. that too is free—free and fighting. you can only overcome hate with love. but on a physical plane, even god himself can only work through physical instruments.”
she stopped, and looked at north imploringly.
“i have your meaning,” he said more gently. her sudden weakness moved him indescribably.
“and the worst of it is,” she went on, “i have lately lost that sense of being in touch with him. you remember how i told you about it. it came, i thought, through us both loving the farm, but indeed i did know, in some strange way, what he wanted done and when he was pleased. you will remember i told you. if i could feel still what was best to do, but it is like struggling all alone in the dark! only one thing i know, i hold to. you cannot overcome 239hate with hate. you can only overcome hate with love. but the love is going out of the farm. it was so full of it—so full—i could hear it singing always in my heart. but now there is something awful here. i can sense it in the night, i can feel it in all sorts of ways. the peace has gone that was so beautiful, the radiance and the joy. and always now i have instead the sense of great struggle, and some evil thing that threatens.”
“it is not fair on you or on the farm,” said north, very gently now. “violet ought to leave.”
“i don’t know. sometimes i have thought so—and yet—i don’t know. i am working in the dark. i know so little really of these things—we all know so little.”
“her presence is injuring the farm, or so it seems. indeed, it must be so. a human being full of hate and misery is no fit occupant for any home. also we have no right——”
ruth looked at him, and again he felt ashamed. “i beg your pardon,” he said.
“we have the sort of right that you acknowledge, i know, but i don’t think we should claim it.”
“she came to me, or rather, i think, to the farm, to the nearest she could get to him. or 240again, it might be the other force driving her. i don’t know. but i can’t send her away. i think of it sometimes, but i know i can’t.”
“what is she like on the whole?”
“dull and moody sometimes, wandering about the place, hardly speaking at all. once or twice she stayed in her room all day and refused all food. but at other times she will follow me about wherever i go, clinging to me like a child, eager to help. sometimes she will commit some horrible little cruelty, and be ashamed of it afterwards and try to hide it. if she could speak of it at all, confide in anyone it would be better i think. but she does not seem able to.”
north sat staring into the fire with haggard eyes, the deep lines of his face very visible as the flames leapt and fell.
“it will send her out of her mind if it goes on,” he said at length.
ruth did not answer. her silence voiced her own exceeding dread; it seemed to north terrible. if she should fail he knew that it would be one of the worst things which had ever happened to him. in that moment he knew how much she had come to stand for in his mind. he kept his eyes upon the fire and did not look at her. he dreaded to see that fear again in her eyes, dreaded to see her weak. it 241was as if the evil of the world was the only powerful thing after all. and he knew now that he had begun to hope, things deep down in his consciousness had begun to stir, to come to life.
but presently ruth spoke again, and, looking up, he met the old comforting friendliness of her smile. her serenity had returned. her face looked white and very worn, but it was no longer marred with fear.
“i am sorry,” she said, “and i am ashamed to have been so foolish, to have let myself think for a moment that we should fail. hate is very strong and very terrible; but love is stronger and very beautiful. let us only make ourselves into fit instruments for its power. we must. if karl von sch?de lasts beyond, so too, more surely still, does dick carey. why should we be afraid? will you give to karl von sch?de the instruments for his power and deny them to the friend you loved? and is it so difficult after all? think what he must have suffered, his poor body broken into pieces, his mind full of anguish that his country was ruined, beaten, and full of the horrors he had seen and which he attributed to us. think of those last awful hours of his, and have you at least no pity? try for it, reach out for it, get yourself into that mind which you knew 242as dick carey. take karl van sch?de into it too in your thought.”
she stopped, her voice broken, but the light that shone in her face was like a star.
“i will try,” said roger north.
in the pause that followed the approaching clatter of lady condor’s re-entry was almost a relief. she brought them back into the regions of ordinary everyday things. violet, too, was laughing, getting more like herself. the tension relaxed.
“miss seer, if i had planted my dahlias among yours, really you would, never have found it out. they are an amazing imitation—quite amazing. condor thinks my taste in hats too loud. but if men had their way we should all dress in black. so depressing! tea? i should love it. but no, i cannot stay. i have a duty party at home. so dull, but condor is determined that hawkhurst shall stand for the division now he is safely tucked away in the other house himself. all the old party business is beginning again, just as if there had been no war, when we were all shrieking ‘no more party politics.’ ‘no more hidden policies.’ so like us, isn’t it? i shall put caroline holmes in the chair at all the women’s meetings. she does so love it—and making speeches. yes. she is to marry her major this 243autumn, but she assures me it will not ‘curtail her activities.’ curtail! so nice! but where was i? oh yes, my tea-party, and i would so much rather stay here. i remember i was just going to be clever, and what happened? oh, we went out to see violet milk, and we saw the dahlias instead. good-bye. good-bye. and come soon to see me.”
so lady condor conveyed herself, talking steadily, outside the sitting-room, with roger north in attendance carrying her various belongings. but as she progressed across the hall, and into her waiting car, she fell upon a most unusual silence. it was not until she was well settled in that she spoke again.
“i don’t like violet’s looks, roger,” she said then, her shrewd old eyes very kindly. “why are there no babies? there should always be a nursery full of babies for the first ten years of a woman’s married life. and where is fred? you should speak to him about it.”
she waved a friendly hand at him, various articles falling from her lap as she did so, and the car rolled away.
north gave a little snort of bitter laughter as he turned back into the house. fred? fred was eating his heart out, catching salmon in scotland; and violet was at thorpe, obsessed by a dead man’s hatred. he was filled with all a 244man’s desire to cut the whole wretched business summarily, but the thing had got him in its devilish meshes, and there was no escape. he stayed to tea because he felt he must help ruth, and yet with the uneasy consciousness that he was doing rather the reverse. violet had fallen into one of the moody silences so common to her now, and, after she had had her tea, went back to her chair by the fire and a book. ruth and roger talked of the farm intermittently and with a sense of restraint, and presently violet tossed her book on to the opposite chair and left the room.
“what is she reading?” asked roger.
he crossed to the fire and picked the book up. it was the road to self-knowledge, by rudolph steiner, and on the flyleaf, neatly written in a stiff small writing, “k. von sch?de.” then roger suddenly saw red. the logs still burnt brightly in the grate, and with a concentrated disgust, so violent that it could be felt, he dropped the book into the heart of the flames and rammed it down there with the heel of his riding boot. the smell of burnt leather filled the room before he lifted it, and watched, with grim satisfaction, the printed leaves curl up in the heat.
he made no apology for the act, though presumably the book was now ruth’s property.
245“that will show you just how much help i’m likely to be,” he said. “always supposing that you are right. and now i’d better go.”
ruth smiled at him. the child in man will always appeal to a woman. “yes, go,” she said. “i will let you know if there is anything to tell.”
north rode home with all the little demons of intellectual pride and prejudice, of manlike contempt for the intangible, whispering to him, “you fool.”
his wife made a scene after dinner about his visit to the farm. she resented violet having gone there. it had aroused her jealousy, and her daughter came under the lash of her tongue equally with her husband. then north lost his temper, bitterly and completely; they said horrible things to each other, things that burn in, and corrode and fester after, as human beings will when they utterly lose control of themselves. it ended, as it always did, in torrents of tears on mrs. north’s side, which drove north into his own room ashamed, disgusted, furious with her and himself.
he opened the windows to the october night air. it was keen, with a hint of frost. the thinned leaves showed the delicate tracery of branches, black against the pale moonlit sky. the stars looked a very long way off. utterly 246sick at heart, filled with self-contempt for his outbreak of temper, struggling in a miasma of disgust with life and all things in it, he leant against the window-sill; the keen cool wind seemed to cleanse and restore.
a little well-known whine roused him, to find vic scratching against his knee. he picked her up, and felt the small warm body curl against his own. she looked at him as only a dog can look, and, carrying her, he turned towards the dying embers of the fire and his easy chair. then he stopped, remembering, noticing, for the first time, that larry had not come back with him.
