The Balliols (56 page)

“Hullo, Edward.”

It was a brisk, familiar voice that called his name: a voice that he had scarcely heard during the last four years.

“Stella!”

She had not altered. The same lean handsome figure, the firm stride, the firm manner. She looked well in uniform.

“I hear Hugh's out of hospital, and that Ruth's going to have another baby. What news of Lucy? I suppose Francis is almost of military age; and that before we know where we are Helen'll be coming to ask me for a job.”

She rattled the questions off as though she were giving orders to a squad of recruits. Balliol laid his hand upon her elbow.

“It'll take me twenty minutes to answer all those questions. Haven't you time to take a cup of tea with me?”

Rumpelmeyer's was within a minute's stroll. It was very crowded: officers in khaki, their buttons shining: young women smiling at them beneath wide-brimmed hats: a band playing, “Let the great big world keep on turning:” three or four couples dancing. A typical war-time scene. They had some difficulty in finding a table.

“Shall I go and get you an éclair?” Balliol asked.

“I'll choose for myself, thank you.”

Cream cakes were difficult to get in war-time. Balliol noticed with amusement that Stella took considerable trouble over her selection, and left the counter with a high-piled plate. There was something feminine about her, anyhow.

It was many months since brother and sister had seen each other. The chain of Stella's obligations and responsibilities had grown heavier every month. They had a lot to tell each other. In particular Stella wanted news of Lucy.

“It's only six years since she went. But she'll return a stranger.”

Stella nodded. She looked away, a soft reminiscent light upon her face. She could think of Lucy without heartburn now.

“Lucy was a type that will exist less and less in future,” she maintained. “She's the hundred-per-cent. woman; she fulfils herself by surrender to some creative force; a person, or a cause. She'll have given herself to marriage as she gave herself to our Cause, wholeheartedly, unquestioningly.” Stella paused. “To think that all that's only three years away.”

Only three years since a woman like Stella was the Aunt Sally of cheap gibes; had been described as woman's own worst enemy; who had put back her Cause a hundred years by proving that women were irresponsible, uncivilized, incapable of measured judgment. She was a kind of heroine now; and it was because women such as she had given during the war such irrefutable proof of their capacity that public opinion towards the vote was changing so rapidly that no one really doubted that when the franchise was extended to include soldiers and sailors, women would also be admitted to it.

“And everyone will say, of course, that we earned the vote by our war work,” Stella said. “But we didn't. We'd never have got the vote even if we hadn't forced ourselves on the public attention by breaking windows, if we hadn't had our organizations ready when the war broke out to show what we could do, if we hadn't been ready to insist, in a mood to insist, on our right to service. For we had opposition, you know. We had to fight, as we always have had to. The war gave us a chance of fighting in a different way, that's all. It's odd when you come to think of it that men only believe women are capable when they show that they can tackle a man's job. Why a woman deserves a vote because she can be a tolerable substitute for a lift attendant, rather than by being a first-class milliner, I don't know. But that's the way things are. The great thing is that the vote's become a practical certainty.”

“Do you think you'd have got the vote if there hadn't been a war?”

“Yes; only not so quickly. The war's telescoped events, but it hasn't created them. It's just made things happen in five years instead of in fifteen. It's hastened things, it hasn't changed things. Historians will probably forget or gloss over the militant side of the Suffrage Movement. They'll talk about our splendid work for the country. They'll forget all about the outcasts of 1913. But it's to people like Lucy that the women of the 1920's will owe their independence.”

“When do you expect the vote?”

“Before the next election.”

“Then I suppose you'll start agitating for a seat in parliament?”

“You know the old cliché; the thin end of the wedge.”

For a few minutes longer they sat talking, then Stella pushed back her chair.

“I must be going. I can't allow myself interludes like this. Give my love to Jane. How is she?”

“So busy that I hardly ever see her.”

“Busy? What about?”

“You should know that better than I do.”

“How do you mean?”

“It's you who are keeping her busy.”

An extremely puzzled look came into Stella's face.

“I really don't understand you.”

“Her war work. You're responsible for that.”

Stella laughed.

“Are you going to hold me responsible for every woman who sees herself in khaki?”

“For those, anyhow, who come to you direct.”

“Jane never came to me.”

“What!”

Again Stella laughed. “I'm afraid you exaggerate my importance. I'm only one out of a great many women who sit as chairmen of committees. You mustn't imagine that because Jane said ‘I'm going to do war-work' she came to me about it.”

Balliol laughed too, at that.

“It was a very natural mistake,” he said.

But he was fairly confident that he was not mistaken.

On his return home he found a pencilled message beside the telephone. Mrs. Balliol would not be back for dinner. She would be
kept late at the canteen. That was the second time this week. There was a letter with a Fernhurst post-mark. It was addressed with such care that Balliol for a moment did not recognize the handwriting as his second son's. It was a long letter. There were no blots in it. It gave every sign of the most careful composition.

A request for money, Balliol thought.

His surmise was right. The letter started with a detailed account of the new term's opening: the probable composition of the eleven, his own chance of getting in the Colts, his new form master. There was a reference to Hugh's appointment. “Hugh seems to be all right,” it said. There was a description of various war-time economies. The eleven were not allowed to wear gold-embroidered badges upon their pockets. In his opinion this was very foolish. There were other economies. Twice a week they had meatless dinners: fish was the usual substitute; occasionally there were eggs or macaroni. It really was not sufficient. One would be terribly hungry if it were not for the tuck shop. And at the tuck shop the price of everything was going up. A sausage on toast that used to cost sixpence now cost eightpence. And on meatless dinner days one sausage was not enough; one needed two. In fact, Francis concluded, he really did not see how he was going to manage on the fifteen shillings with which his father had instructed him to balance his budget until half-term.

The argument had been led with considerable adroitness to the final climax. Balliol smiled. A letter as well-phrased was certainly worth ten shillings.

It was close on ten when Jane returned. Her face wore the tranquil, abstracted expression that during the last months had grown habitual with her. Her voice had taken on a slower cadence, in tune with her changed expression.

“I'm sorry I couldn't get back. Was the dinner all right? It's difficult to arrange amusing meals. One has to keep delicacies till one entertains. Oh, but I feel tired.”

She stretched her arms slowly behind her head, her eyes closed, her lips parted, her head leant back. It was a weary gesture, but the weariness that inspired it was a happy one: “a glad fatigue.” Balliol looked at her closely.

“I suppose it's pretty hard work there, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I don't imagine that you see Stella very often?”

“Only now and again.”

“People go to her in the first place. She finds the right job for them. And then it ends?”

“More or less.”

“That's what happened in your case, for instance?”

“Yes.”

“Who would have thought five years ago that we should be seeing Stella in a position of this kind.”

But it was not of his sister's changed position that he was thinking. Jane's lied to me, he thought. She never went to Stella. She wanted for some reason or another to have control of her spare time, to have a ready and unanswerable excuse for missed meals, irregular hours, an unregulated life. He looked closely at her. That tranquil and abstract expression; that happy languor. He had attributed them to the content that followed upon work completed. Most women were discontented because they hadn't enough to do. That had been Jane's trouble. Too much time for brooding. No wonder she seemed different now that her days were filled. That was what he had thought. But now, in the light of this new knowledge, he was less certain. He looked closely at her. How old was she? Forty-six? Forty-seven? Forty-eight? She was a grandmother, her hair was grey. But her figure had never lost its suppleness, or rather had exchanged the turbulent elasticity of youth for a slow and rhythmed ease. Spring had changed to autumn. But the grey hair did not belie the youthfulness of the grey-brown eyes. There was the same expression of puzzled candour that had made people exclaim of her in the early years of their marriage, “I can't believe that you've got two children. You look a bride!“ Because he was old himself, he thought of her as old. But a young man.…

Impatiently he shrugged away the suggestion. It wasn't possible. Jane … after thirty years of marriage … it was inconceivable. There was some other reason; there must be. Jane … at her age. It was monstrous, inconceivable. He shut away the memory of anecdotes he had heard, of novels he had read, of scandals that had found their way into the press. There might be women like that. There might be men—young men—who were attracted by women on the brink of fifty. But not Jane. It wasn't possible.

Later, however, alone in his dressing-room, standing before the mirror, he took stock of himself as one might of the debit column of a balance sheet, noting the white hair that receded about the temples, the pouches that grew beneath the eyes, the teeth that no dentist's skill could make to seem his own, the strain upon the button of his
coat, the added weight that had made him hesitate in crossing streets.

I'm old. I feel old. I look old. Youth, all that goes with youth is a closed door to me. How should I know how they feel, through whose veins the blood runs hotly? I've forgotten. It's the wise course to shut one's eyes, to see only what lies under one's immediate vision. They'll let me alone as long as I keep quiet. I can preserve my dignity if I preserve my ignorance. It may be, or it may not be. I can't do any good by interfering. It was different ten years ago when young Rickman was about. There might have been a scandal then. There was Lucy to be considered. She had to be given a fair chance. But there's no one to be considered now. It's too late for there to be any talk of home-breaking. The time for
that
has passed, with it the need for interference.

To close one's eyes, to shut one's ears, that was the wise course when one was old.

Francis's terse comment that “Hugh seems to be all right” was as far as Fernhurst in general was concerned an accurate communiqué. The announcement at the close of the Easter term that the Shell was to have a new form master caused little interest to anybody except the Shell. The school was accustomed to sudden changes in the Staff. But to the Shell the news of this change was exceedingly unwelcome. Its members were reluctant to be woken out of their scholastic lethargy and relieved of their privilege to rag.

“It'll be pretty grim, if we can't amuse ourselves, and have to work,” they thought.

Their ragging was less an ebullition of natural high spirits than an attempt to relieve boredom. They had never needed to work in form. They had never needed to prepare their lessons. Consequently since they had had to have something to look forward to, to plan for, to feel alive about, they had ragged. They were on the whole less alarmed at the prospect of work than of the loss of entertainment.

The chief ragster, Nichols, did his best to reassure them. He was a burly, aggressive creature who had more wits than his position in the school suggested. He was lazy, but not a fool. He enjoyed the exercise of authority, in the Shell he was able to indulge this instinct. He had no ambition to rise above it. In the days when “the bad hat of the family” was shipped to the Colonies, he would have profited by his transportation to a rougher atmosphere. His capacity for leadership would have been effective, he would have probably returned to England a millionaire. In 1917, at the age of fifteen, he was definitely a nuisance. And an unpleasant nuisance in a lower form of an inadequately staffed public school.

On the news that Hugh Balliol was to be his future form master, he assumed a superior, contemptuous manner.

“What, the brother of that young ass in the School House? I'll soon put him in his place. You wait. We'll soon have things going just as happily next term as we have this.”

The boast had been repeated to Francis. It disquieted him. He
had more faith in Nichols as a ragster than in his brother as a disciplinarian. I do hope he doesn't make an ass of himself. It was a bit thick anyhow having one's brother coming as a master to one's own school; knowing everything that one was doing. It would be more than a bit thick if that brother were to make himself ridiculous, so that one got ragged about it. It simply wasn't giving one a chance. The sins of the elder brother would be visited on the younger brother. “Oh, hell!”

Francis had made no reference during the holidays to the kind of reception that the Shell had in readiness. That was Hugh's own lookout. Hugh might be his brother, but he was a master. He had joined the other camp. Hugh had brought this on himself. There had been no need for him to take on the job. Francis maintained an impassively surly countenance, which he mistook for dignity, when Helen made joking references to “What'll Hugh do if he finds Francis smoking?” He frankly disapproved of the arrangement.