The Light Heart (37 page)

“No—please, Charles, not now, I—”

“How do you know you can’t if you haven’t even tried? Come on.” He held out his hands from ten paces away. “Nobody’s looking now but me. I’ll catch you before you can fall. Come on—try.”

With her eyes fixed on his face, she pushed the rug from her knees and stood up slowly, raising herself by the arms of the chair. For a moment she wavered and reached towards his outstretched hands, but he stayed where he was, the length of the hearthrug between them. She made an uncertain step, then two more, and finally half ran, half fell into his arms, flung up against him and crying bitterly. Silently after a moment he lifted her off her feet and sat down with her in his lap in a big chair, holding her like a child, his lips buried in her hair, while she sobbed away nine years of loneliness and humiliation and fortitude.

When Phoebe returned to the room at tea time Rosalind was lying on the bed under the eiderdown and Charles sat near-by telling stories. They explained that Rosalind had got a little tired sitting up and he had helped her to walk—
walk,
mind you—back to the bed. After tea, in Phoebe’s rueful
presence, he said Good-bye to Rosalind, for he was starting back at once to London to keep an eye on the Balkan War.

T
HE
visit which Oliver and Maia were scheduled to make at the Hall had come during the worst of Rosalind’s illness, while Phoebe had very little time to herself and grudged any absence from the room which would be long enough for riding or a dinner party. Oliver of course rode over more than once to inquire, and sometimes Maia was not with him. There were brief encounters at the tea table and at the threshold of
Rosalind’s
room, where they spoke of the invalid’s progress, of Clare’s baby (which proved to be a girl as ordered) and of certain repercussions from Conrad’s Scottish tour—a witty widow with a fortune in jewels and a rather dashing reputation had discovered him with ill-concealed rapture and they were being photographed together for the society magazines poising sandwiches at shooting luncheons or grinning over the day’s bag.

When Oliver came to Farthingale the last day before his return to Aldershot Maia came too, and remained downstairs in the drawingroom while Oliver went up to say a few words to Rosalind, who was still allowed only one visitor at a time. She clung to his hand and said, “Shan’t I see you again?” and he had to tell her that Manoeuvres were starting soon and he would be very busy.

His words echoed in Phoebe’s mind as they reached the staircase on their way back to tea. Was it the last time for her too? She voiced the question before they came to the bottom step.

“Yes,” said Oliver without qualification, and then added, “Isn’t it
beastly!
”

She paused, her hand on the newel post, feeling suddenly a little sick, but wondering at the same time what more she could have expected.

“Oliver—” she began faintly.

“I know,” His hand touched hers on the newel post and they both glanced at the drawing-room door, from which they could not be seen, but he took his hand away at once and put it into his pocket. “It’s not been much good, has it. When do you go back to America?”

“I promised Charles to stay as long as she needs me.”

“Good. I shall have a few days in London in December, but that will be too late, I suppose.”

“I don’t know. It depends on Conrad. He’s bound to take her away as soon as she can be moved. Virginia will let you know when that is.”

He glanced again towards the drawing-room door, bent quickly and kissed her hand where it lay on the newel post When he straightened, they looked at each other gravely, with despair, and moved on
in silence to the waiting tea-table and Maia’s derisive, searching eyes.

That evening, when her supper tray had been taken away and the nurse was downstairs having her own meal, Rosalind lay looking up at Phoebe who sat in an armchair beside the bed.

“Well,” she murmured, “now there are two of us.” And she smiled at Phoebe’s inquiring glance. “I know how you feel about Oliver now. I said I’d rather, and it’s happened. I want Charles.” Tears of weakness and pain gathered behind her long lashes and rolled down her cheeks into the pillow. “Even when the babies were born, I wanted desperately to live and get well. But this time I don’t seem to care. It must be the dope they gave me. I’ve lost my grip. If I’ve got to go on living without ever seeing Charles it’s not worth bothering to do.”

Phoebe took her hand.

“You’ve had a hard pull, honey. It won’t look so bad when you’re stronger. And you are getting stronger every day, you know.”

“At first I thought I just wouldn’t,” Rosalind said. “But your body does what it likes, doesn’t it. Mine is mending in
spite of me. Remember that game we used to play about getting old together and reminiscing in our bath-chairs?”

“I do,” Phoebe nodded. “Perhaps we still shall, who knows?”

“Then you’ll come back to Heidersdorf sometimes?
Please
say you will!”

“Of course I will. Perhaps next summer. Even if there’s a war, America won’t be in it and I could still come to Germany.”

“If there’s a war I shan’t be wanted there myself, and I should come home at once,” said Rosalind confidently. “But there won’t be one. There are too many intelligent people like Charles in responsible posts. The Emperor can’t have a war all by himself, and besides, he’d be the first to back down if it came to fighting—bullies always are.”

“Yes—I hope you’re right,” said Phoebe thoughtfully.

The next day after that Rosalind had begun to sit up in bed, and before long she was able to be moved to the chair where Charles had found her. Then Conrad came back, and she was beginning to walk a little, to his unconcealed relief. Early in December, looking fragile and rather frightened and very beautiful, she departed with him for Germany. He had bought her a long sable coat with a toque to match for the journey, and their private train would be waiting on the quay at Flushing.

Quite suddenly Phoebe was homesick. Virginia urged her to spend Christmas at Farthingale and see the fun with the children, and it seemed a reasonable, happy thing to do in the circumstances. And perhaps by then she could see Oliver again….

She considered the prospect, lying awake in her room the night after Rosalind had gone and left her feeling bereft and useless and empty after weeks of exacting service to the creature she loved best but one in the world. She was no more good to Rosalind now, and she had never been any good to Oliver. It didn’t seem, when she stopped to look at it, as though she was much good to anybody. This was unlike her, for she was not given to self-pity. But she wondered, lying unrelaxed and wretched in the dark at Farthingale, if Cousin Sue ever had
times when she longed to do something to account for herself, to have something to show for the years she had already lived. Phoebe wanted to ask. Cousin Sue would know what to say.

I’m going home, said Phoebe to
herself. I’m going back to Williamsburg and look at Father again, I’ve got some right to Father, anyway, he’s mine. I’m going home and howl on
his shoulder the way I used to when I was little. He’ll know what ails me, he always has, but I was too spunky to admit it in the beginning. I was young then, I thought I could lick this thing alone. Now I know I can’t. He must have been through something like this with Cousin Sue, but he married Mother and we’ve all been happy together. He didn’t waste his whole life pining after something he couldn’t have. Maybe I haven’t exactly pined so far, but I’m not cured, I’m getting worse, And you
can
make a life, Oliver always said you could. Oliver’s got a life, even with Maia, he’s got a child, he gets a bit of hunting, he goes on laughing. Even Rosalind—she has Victor to show, and Conny is still mad about her in his own way. I wonder if she’ll find it harder now, or if loving Charles will comfort her. It will be much worse, I should think. But how do I know, I’ve never tried it myself. Charles says it’s my business to know these things, and I suppose it is. But Charles thinks like me, he goes on alone. Perhaps we’re wrong, Charles and I….

Perhaps I should have married Johnny, she thought, last time he asked me. He won’t ask me again, Bracken has seen to that. Maybe I should have married Miles when I first got back from England, as I meant to do. But how do you know, till you’ve tried? Maybe even now it isn’t too late for me to make something of myself—be of some
use
to somebody—maybe if Miles asked me again—oh,
Oliver
…

She sailed within the week, spent three days in New York shopping for Christmas presents for the family, and sped on to Williamsburg, convinced that there she might find sanctuary from something inside her which questioned and accused.

Williamsburg
Summer,
1913

I
T WAS an old-fashioned Christmas of the kind Phoebe had almost forgotten. Dinah was up again and able to travel, she and Bracken came down from New York with Eden. Bracken’s elder sister Marietta, who had married the Princeton professor, brought her husband and a daughter Audrey, very shy, with braces on her teeth, and a bookish boy turning twelve who wore spectacles. Miles was there, of course, having an assistant professorship at William and Mary now, so that he lived in Sue’s house and occupied the same room his father had had as a boy. His parents arrived from Charlottesville, and his sister Belle, recently widowed, from Richmond, with her twins Calvert and Camilla, who were now eighteen, a handsome pair exactly alike and devoted to each other. Phoebe’s own brother Fitz and his wife Gwen had two children, neither of whom Phoebe had yet seen—Rhoda was three and Stephen nearly two.

So it was a children’s Christmas at Williamsburg too, with a tree and games and laughter and a great deal of food. But Phoebe couldn’t help counting up. She and Miles were the only ones who hadn’t got families, except for Cousin Sue—and of course Bracken, but that was just bad luck, and anyway
he had Dinah, and couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight for long, he had come so near to losing her. And Phoebe thought, If Miles and I had gone on with it ten years ago—if I hadn’t been such a muddleheaded fool—if I’d stuck to my guns, and married Miles…. And Miles, a little adrift in his bachelorhood, much climbed upon by the young Spragues who after the fashion of children were strangely attracted by the person who made the least effort to secure their good will—Miles met her eyes across the room, Gwen’s Rhoda dozing in his lap, and the look seemed to say, This one could have been ours.

Phoebe rose impulsively and went to him.

“Shall I put her away?” she offered. “The young ones are being rounded up for bed now.”

“I’ll carry her up, she’s too heavy for you.” He stood up with the drowsy child in his arms. “I expect they’ll all be sick tomorrow.”

“What matter, we’re only young once!” said Phoebe, and Gwen came by with Stephen, saying, “Bring her up, Miles, they’re dropping in their tracks!”

Phoebe watched them go up the stairs and realized with a new desolation that she had never put a child to
bed in her life and would not know how. Even Cousin Sue was better off than that. Restless and troubled and very thoughtful, she turned back into the room. Fitz was playing the piano softly, for Belle’s twins to
sing duets. Camilla wanted to sing
professionally
, but they were all hoping she would outgrow it.

“Well, my dear—” Her father’s arm came round her waist. “It’s good to have you home again.”

Phoebe hugged herself to him gratefully, and made no reply.

“Still running away from things?” Sedgwick murmured, and after a moment’s indignation she gave a little laugh and said, “I suppose that’s what it is. How did you know?”

“Because you’re very beautiful—oh, yes, you are!—and very successful and very wealthy—according to our standards here—and very unhappy.”

“Does it show as much as that?” she asked ruefully.

“More than I like to see.”

“You lawyers are all too smart,” she whispered, leaning against him.

“This one isn’t quite smart enough to help, is he?”

Before she could find a reply Miles loomed up on her other side, having deposited Rhoda on the bed upstairs, and said, “Like old times, isn’t it, Cousin Sedgwick—having Phoebe here again. You’re going to stay home a while,” he added, looking down at her from his great height, “aren’t you, now that you’ve come?”

“Yes—I think I am,” said Phoebe soberly, and her eyes went round the bright room full of voices and music, and the faces she had known all her life.

Camilla ran over from the piano, attached herself to
Sedgwick’s
elbow, and begged him prettily to come and sing with them. Like all female creatures of any age whatever, she always wanted to flirt with him, and loved to have him near her. Three-year-old Rhoda was the same, even if he was her grandfather.

Phoebe and Miles were left standing together and the music rose again, cruelly, on that most nostalgic of all tunes, even in its first youth, the
Merry
Widow
waltz. Camilla’s clear soprano soared, half a dozen other good voices followed.
When
did
I
waltz
with
you
last?
said Oliver.
Don’t
tell
me.
It
was
only
a
week
ago
…. She turned sharply, so that her back was to the piano, and laid her hand on Miles’s arm.

“The way I feel now I’ll never leave Williamsburg again,” she said. “Let’s sit down somewhere, and you tell me all the dullest things you can think of about the College and what you do there and how you spend your days.”

“It is pretty dull, I expect,” he agreed with his habitual humility. “But I like it. And it might even be a nice change for you, after the gay life you’ve had.”

“If I thought it was really dull enough,” said Phoebe through her teeth, using all her will power to keep from covering her
ears with her hands to shut out
The
Merry
Widow,
“I’d ask you to take me back.”

“If I thought you meant a word of that,” said Miles, “I’d catch you right up on it.”

They stared at each other, both of them startled and a little apprehensive. Calvert and Camilla were dancing together now, singing as they swung by …

Phoebe’s beautiful lower lip came out.

“You mean—get married after all—the way we should have done in the first place?”

“We’re only ten years late,” said Miles.

“All right,” said Phoebe, through her teeth. “What’s ten years between friends?”

“Phoebe—you won’t ever be sorry?”

“Not any more,” said Phoebe cryptically, and Miles took her hand.

“Shall we tell them?”

“Yes, tell them now!” cried Phoebe, and her eyes were very bright. “Let’s scream it from the housetops! I’ve come home! I’m going to marry my first beau and settle down!
Stop
the
music
and
tell
them
now!”
Her hands went up over her ears.

Later that evening those who were staying in Sue’s house walked home through the quiet, frosty streets from Sedg wick’s house where the party was. Dinah and Bracken, hand in hand, still humming
The
Merry
Widow
—Dabney and Charlotte, his hand holding her elbow, his limp quite noticeable because he was tired, and even Charlotte’s chatter silenced by her doubts about the thing which had caught up with Miles all over again—Belle with Camilla, shushing her too audible
astonishment
that Uncle Miles and Cousin Phoebe were in love with each other—and Miles, with Sue on one arm and Eden on the other. Sedgwick’s house was big enough to hold all the rest of them.

Toasts had been drunk, and Miles was slightly exhilarated. It was the old story with Miles, as his mother well knew, but such a thing never occurred to him. There was something in his sober make-up, some shining skein of submerged
adventurousness
, which responded to the rich and strange. Virginia had caught and tangled it, in the pride of her first London Season. The Phoebe of the old days, simple and worshipping and shy, had never roused in him anything but kindly affection and a well-considered desire to establish himself with a home like other people in the most comfortable way possible and with as little inconvenience to himself as might be. But the Phoebe he saw to-night, with her hair wrapped around her head in an intricate sheath, with a perfect complexion discreetly enhanced, wearing a low gown which shimmered as she breathed—a Phoebe haloed by success, mysterious with travel and conquest and some tragedy, cast like a spent bird back into the scenes of her childhood—Miles’s thoughts grew lyrical and his metaphors became reckless. For Miles was prone to worship, not to conquer, and his nebulous ideal woman was a cross between goddess and queen, and he would never have dreamt of presuming on his own mere maleness. Miles’s ideal must always stoop to him with divine condescension, invite him into possession, and graciously, even grudgingly, permit him his privileges. It seemed to him that Phoebe, in consenting to live out the rest of her life in Williamsburg as his wife, had so condescended, and he was prepared, even eager, to spend the rest of his own life kneeling, in a suitably grateful attitude. It was not within the scope of Miles’s comprehension that Phoebe, with whatever laurels on her childlike brow, only wanted a master.

But Sue, unable to keep step with his suddenly debonair stride, still dazed and fretful from the impact of the unexpected announcement which had broken into the
Merry
Widow
music, was silently reiterating all the way home with an inward wringing of hands, Oh, darlings,
no,
that’s not the way, it’s all
wrong,
we’ll all be
sorry
….

B
UT
somewhat to her own surprise Phoebe was not sorry as the months slipped by and she settled back into the leisurely Williamsburg life as into an armchair. They went to Norfolk for a three-day honeymoon, and returned to Sue’s house, where Miles had made of Ransom’s library a private study which he and Phoebe now used as a sitting-room. She had no particular wish for a house of her own, when Sue had so much space going to waste and plenty of trained help, so that Miles’s bride need have no housekeeping problems and could devote herself to starting a new book.

She found it a cosy sort of novelty, working at a little desk set up in Miles’s study, with the typewriter on a near-by bridge-table, and Sue for company every day. The book was to be a real departure from what Phoebe Sprague’s devoted public expected from her, though it was written with the same light touch, and no melodrama. But it was a pitiless picture of the Prussian type, both in its own home and loose in England among a tolerant society which would not or could not realize the
Prussian
mentality. It was not Conrad or Cuno or Gerzlow she was writing—but it was the essence of all three; their arrogance, and stupidity, and self-esteem; their picturesque uniforms and their deplorable manners and their brutal charm laid on with a
sledgehammer
; and the uncritical, mindless, obedient complacence which they demanded and received from their womenfolk.

Miles as he read the manuscript chapter by chapter was disturbed and shocked and almost incredulous. Sue took it very seriously indeed, and noticed with satisfaction the increased maturity and sureness of the work. She was by no means convinced that Phoebe had not made a mistake when she married Miles, even though things were going far better than she had dared to hope. But when in the following November Phoebe began to feel very queer and learned without surprise and apparently without dismay that she had started a baby, even Sue began to wonder.

The prospect of the baby fitted in with Phoebe’s new scheme
of life, which was to be a good wife to Miles now that she had undertaken it, and to give him the home and family which she considered that her girlhood blunder had cheated him of. She had had little experience of illness and the inevitable woes and discomforts of her condition bore very heavily upon her, and the book began to suffer. Patiently, determined to do
everything
right and with a minimum of fuss, she laid the manuscript away—everybody said the first months were the hardest.

Christmas, 1912, found her quite miserable but
uncomplaining
, and nobody suspected that now she had begun to cast
backward
looks over her shoulder to the time, just a year ago, when she was still free, and had no obligation to Miles, and always felt well, and could write for six hours at a stretch if she wanted to….

The enforced mental idleness, which drove her to
novel-reading
and embroidery and what she inwardly termed female conversation, and the new preoccupation with her own physical sensations, were rousing in her a slow, reluctant, but inevitable rebellion, and her high intentions began to recede into a mere dogged endurance of what she had let herself in for. She had practically asked Miles to marry her, and she wanted a child. Very well, then. Here she was. Everything according to plan. Just what she asked for. She was not going to change her mind
again.
No more running away from things. This time she was caught. This time she had burnt her boats. This time she was really done for.

Miles, who seemed unreasonably astonished, Phoebe thought, that any such thing had occurred, adjusted himself rather cautiously to the idea of being a father and at once gave his attention to the question of names. Phoebe, rather drearily aware that there would be lots of time, suggested that they wait and see which kind of name they would want. But Miles went into committee with himself and emerged convinced that if it was a boy it should be called Jefferson after the man who had built his beloved University at Charlottesville, and if it was a girl it must be named for its Great-great-great-grandmother Tabitha Day, who was still a lively legend in the family. Phoebe agreed listlessly, for it looked to her a long way to the
christening
.
And she thought, At least it will never be called Oliver, and then she busied her mind resolutely for Oliver must have no part in Miles’s child, and she would not allow herself to dream of him any more.

Snow fell the week before Christmas and Miles came home from the College with wet feet and began to sneeze. By
Christmas
Day, when all the family had gathered again, he had got one of his beastly colds which always settled on his chest and always caused endless anxiety and precautions. Anything like a bronchial attack shook him to pieces with coughing and left him exhausted and run down for weeks. But with a secret wish not to miss the festivities this year, which would include congratulations on his own approaching fatherhood, he
insisted
on going to Christmas dinner at Sedgwick’s as usual. Afterwards, as they prepared for bed that night he confessed that he felt a little feverish. Phoebe was tired, and had troubles of her own, and felt she simply could not bear it if Miles was going to be ill now, and beyond a sympathetic murmur or two did nothing about it. Before morning he began apologetically to have a chill, and she woke Sue and they fixed hot water bottles, and as early as possible called the doctor.