Part 9

"Well, this is the end, Dora. Unless you manage to get engaged this summer, something will have to be done about you in the autumn."

Part of Dora's brain registered quite accurately the baselessness of these threats; she knew there was nothing that could be done about her, she knew that her father cared for her, but something in her cringed at the scope that would be added to Mrs. Pilkington's insults after a summer during which she would certainly be thrown into continual companionship with the younger Greene boy.

Shortly after the Greenes' arrival at the end of June, Mrs. Pilkington, unaccompanied by Dora, went up to call at The Hall in order to review the position. She found it eminently satisfactory. Mrs. Greene was unmistakably a gentlewoman, and both sons, who appeared at tea, were good-looking and well-mannered. Edwin, the younger, was charmingly diffident, but his face lit up ingenuously when Mrs. Pilkington replied to a remark of his as to the scarcity of young people in the neighbourhood:

"Why, that's what my young daughter is always complaining about. You must meet and have a good grumble together."

"It's selfish of you to complain, Edwin," Mrs. Greene interposed briskly. "You know we've come here in the hope of your father being able to get a little peace to finish his book."

"Is Mr. Greene an author then?" asked Mrs. Pilkington, delighted to find that he belonged to a profession so distinguished, and still more delighted when she elicited the fact that he was the Geoffrey Greene whose literary public consisted of a small but solid body of good opinion, ready to welcome anything from his pen.

"Of course my husband writes mostly essays and articles," said Mrs. Greene explanatorily, "but at present he's engaged on something more ambitious, and he felt it would be a help to get out of town away from people and things."

"Of course," agreed Mrs. Pilkington, "I quite understand his point of view. You'll find this quite a nice quiet neighbourhood, but we must try and provide a little amusement for your sons."

She smiled at Edwin as she spoke. Everything seemed very hopeful to her. It was obvious that Edwin was a little bored and restless. His work at the Bar was as yet negligible, and the prospect of three months' idling in the country was considerably brightened by the thought of the Pilkington girl who apparently felt as bored as he did.

He accepted eagerly Mrs. Pilkington's invitation to tennis and supper at the Vicarage a few days hence, but the elder boy, Rodney, refused. He was only spending a few days at The Hall and was then obliged to return to the engineering works where he was a very junior partner with his uncle.

That evening Dora wandered out into the garden face to face with a clear-cut issue. Her mother's injunctions were perfectly definite; every effort was to be made to attract Edwin Greene and if Dora could not succeed in eliciting a proposal she must at least entrap him into some unwary declaration which could be taken advantage of.

The sordid meanness of the project was evident, but Dora Pilkington after six years of endurance, decided that she was willing to fall in with any scheme that would lead to freedom from the incessant taunts and nagging to which she was subject.

As she looked at the moon she thought vaguely and sentimentally that perhaps he would fall in love with her, and it would turn out all right; as she thought of her awkwardness and badly made clothes, this faint hope died, and was succeeded by a resolution to capture by hook or crook the one eligible man within reach.

The afternoon when Edwin came to tennis was a success. Dora played passably, and the only other woman was the doctor's young wife, absorbed in herself and her husband. Edwin stayed on to supper, an unusually pleasant meal at which Mr. Pilkington expanded conversationally, and Dora and her mother formed a smiling and apparently harmonious background.

It was a lovely night.

"Would you two young people like to walk down to the river?" asked Mrs. Pilkington.

"May we? That would be more than charming," answered Edwin, and in a few moments Dora found herself strolling through the murmurous summer fields, with a young man saying to her ardently:

"Do let's have a lot of tennis and walks and picnics, Miss Pilkington; there are so few people round here that you really must put up with me a good deal this summer."

She felt a strange movement in her blood. It was going to be all right then; no need to plot and plan; she, Dora Pilkington, was embarking on a genuine romance. Her heart beat unevenly, and as she looked at Edwin's young face, clear and dark in the yellow moonlight, she thought suddenly: I love him; I'll do anything for him.

The days that followed were busy and happy, but July merged into August and August into September, and the harvest was stacked in the fields among the shorn poppies.

"Is nothing ever going to happen, Dora?" asked Mrs. Pilkington, and Dora asked herself the same question, still more bitterly.

Apparently nothing was going to happen. Edwin Greene enjoyed and sought her company, but by no word had he ever suggested that his feelings for her were stronger than affection and gratitude towards an acquaintance who was making a dull summer less dull.

One Saturday after a particularly trying lunch alone with her Mother, Dora walked by herself towards the river where she and Edwin had gone on that first most hopeful night. Edwin, lying in a canoe tethered to an overhanging tree, saw her white frock coming along the bank above him. He felt comfortably lazy and disinclined to make any move to greet her, but the disconsolate swing of the hat which she was carrying in her hand, touched him. He knew by this time that the relations between Dora and her mother were not of the happiest, and he guessed at the trouble that had marred the drowsy afternoon.

When she drew near to the tree under which he was lying, he called softly. Startled, she looked around in every direction but the right one, until guided by his laughter she parted the branches and leaned through, looking down into the cool gloomy green cavern.

Edwin sat up suddenly with a quick intake of breath as he looked at her face framed by leaves and twigs that caught at her tumbled fair hair. Dora had been crying, she was flushed and tremulous, but as she looked at Edwin her eyes brightened and she smiled. In her dishevelment she achieved an unusual warm prettiness, heightened by the contrast between smiling mouth and tear-stained eyes.

"You look simply stunning, Dora," he said eagerly; "but I can see that something is wrong: you must let me help you, you really must. Wait a minute till I come up beside you."

This unprecedented offer of help combined with Edwin's flattering words and look, broke down completely Dora's already shaken self-control. She felt, as on their first walk together, that strange surging in her veins, and her response to it was one of courage and sincerity; virtues as a rule quite alien to her unreliable and compromising nature.

"You can't help me," she said desperately turning to him with tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks. "You mustn't even try; you of all people must keep clear of me; you don't understand at all; Mother is determined that you should marry me."

Dora was sobbing loudly and her words were only spasmodically audible.

"You don't know how dreadful Mother is," she gasped between sobs. "She's always going on at me about you. You mustn't come and see us any more; it isn't safe for you; I don't know what she mayn't do; she's quite set on it."

Emotions and ideas were crowding in on Edwin: surprise, amounting to amazement, genuine sympathy with the helplessly sobbing girl, pride at the thought that he and he alone could turn her misery to bliss, and at the same time, against these, the urgings of common-sense.

He recognised clearly that he was not in love with Dora Pilkington; he visualised the family difficulties that must inevitably present themselves if he adopted the heroic attitude to which he was drawn. He had shown no inkling of anything beyond the most casual affection for Dora; in conversation he had referred to her as a nice girl and a good companion, but he knew that his mother would certainly perceive an engagement between him and Dora to be the result of some transitory passion which had led to a declaration.

He hesitated, automatically patting Dora's shoulder with murmurs of sympathetic encouragement.

Suddenly she caught his hand, and held it to her hot wet cheek.

"You've been wonderful to me," she said, "nobody has ever been so kind before, but this is the end now."

This, however, proved not to be true. At the unsolicited tribute Edwin's young breast swelled with the desire to make a heroic gesture. He thought of the duty that the strong owe to the weak; visions of gallant men and kneeling beggar-maids floated cloudily in his brain; he drew himself up, and strove for his most resonant chest-notes as he said gravely:

"Please don't say anything more, Dora. You will make me very happy if you will consent to be my wife."

It was a magnificent gesture and it had its instant reward.

"No, no," cried Dora through her tears, "I couldn't take advantage of your kindness; you don't mean it; it's only that you're so good."

This protest, these doubts hazarded as to his resolution, only served to intensify it, the more so as the sound of his own voice making its formal proposal had struck chill upon Edwin's heart.

"You wrong me," he protested. "Indeed I mean it; it will make me very happy if your answer is yes."

Dora had lived her moment; she had flung away weapons and armour and renounced her hopes. It had been an impulse and she was incapable of carrying it to a conclusion of sustained unselfishness. She knew that Edwin did not love her and that the whole situation was false and garish, but the chance was too good to be let slip.

"Oh, Edwin," she gasped, "indeed it is yes," and then relapsed into further sobbing.

Edwin too had had his moment, but his was no isolated detachable fragment of his life. The results of it had closed on him like a trap; all that he could do was to follow up the line of conduct imposed on him by his own act. He put his arm round Dora, and kissed her gently.

"My dear," he urged, "don't cry any more. Please try not to; it does upset me to see you, and surely everything will be all right now. Let's sit down on the bank and discuss things.

"I'm only crying because I'm so happy," said Dora attempting to dry her tears. "It's all so wonderful. Mother and Father will be so pleased."

Edwin was conscious of a tremor of disgust at the thought of Mrs. Pilkington, but Dora seemed to have forgotten the prelude of frankness which had led to his proposal.

"Will Mr. and Mrs. Greene mind your getting engaged to me?" she asked tentatively, and Edwin's doubts were lulled by pleasure in her humility and dependence, and in his own protectiveness.

"They won't interfere," he assured her stoutly. "Mother will say I'm too young and we must wait a little and are we sure we know our own minds and so on, but Father won't take any part. He never does; he says everyone must buy their own experience."

At his own careless words, Edwin again felt chilled and dismayed; he was buying his so dear, at the cost perhaps of all his future happiness.

Suddenly in a fever of impatience to make it irrevocable and be quit of doubts and tremors, he dragged Dora to her feet.

"Let's go home at once," he said, "and tell them we're engaged; let's get all the fuss over and be married as soon as we can; I'm not earning any money yet, but I shall soon, and Father gives me a decent allowance."

As they walked back to the Vicarage through the warm afternoon, Dora thought vaguely of how crossing these fields an hour ago, she had been disconsolate, futureless, forlorn.

The miseries of her immediate past were already dimming; her facile and slovenly character found in her present triumph enough satisfaction to obscure the legitimate rancour of six sordid years.

III

Shortly after his marriage which took place in the Spring of 1901, Edwin Greene found that the qualms which had shaken him at the very moment of proposing to Dora Pilkington were amply justified.

His father had increased his allowance in order to make it possible for him to marry and take a small house while waiting and hoping for work to materialise. Dora, who had chosen the house in Maida Vale, furnished it with the help of her mother who since the announcement of the engagement had been her daughter's admirer and ally, and had thrown herself with zest into preparations for the wedding.

It was an inconvenient little house, made still more inconvenient by the profusion of small tables, ornaments and unnecessary objects which cluttered up the floor space and made it impossible to cross the room with any ease. To Dora these represented the perfection of gentility; this picture was a signed water colour, that vase a wedding present from the choir, the rug in front of the fire superimposed on a larger rug of different pattern, had come from Dora's own home which gradually acquired in her mind an aura of sanctified sentimentality.

Three months after her marriage she referred to "my old home in the country" in such languishing tones that Edwin, who had been the easy victim of the old home's cruelty could not restrain himself, and burst out, "My dear Dora, for goodness sake don't talk like that; you know perfectly well you were utterly miserable at home."

Resentful of this plain-speaking, not even recognising its truth, Dora shed a few tears through which she contrived to utter: "You do exaggerate shockingly, Edwin. I really think you might try and spare my feelings more."

"Well, I'm sorry, and I don't say it wasn't a better home than this."

Edwin looked gloomily round the crowded little drawing-room, but Dora immediately flamed up in its defence.

"There you are, criticising again. You only do it because Mother and I chose it. It's a lovely little house, and I'm sure I take enough trouble to keep it nice. Look at the way I dust all the china myself every morning."

Her sobs redoubled in vigour, but Edwin sat humped up in his chair.

He wondered if all young wives cried on an average three times a day and if all women twisted every remark into an insult directed against themselves, their taste, or their relations. There must be some who don't, he thought drearily; some women that you can talk to without having to remember not to say this or that. Oh well, it's my own fault, I suppose; I must make the best of it.

He got up, came over to where Dora sat, and awkwardly patted her bowed head.

"Don't cry," he said, and even as he said the words he wondered savagely how often he had said them since the day of his engagement. He pushed the thought away.

"Don't cry," he repeated mechanically. "I must go and do some work in my study."

"But you do like the house?" Dora looked up at him plaintively.

"Of course I do," he answered reassuringly, and when he stumbled over a footstool on the way to the door, he put it tidily on one side instead of kicking it under the nearest table as he was tempted to do.

By 1904, when Dora was expecting her first child, their positions were reversed. After one visit to her sister-in-law's new house in Sussex Square, Dora came back to Maida Vale discontented and jealous. She attacked Edwin that night after dinner with a complaint which could not fail to arouse his annoyance.

"Oh, Edwin I went to tea with Edith to-day, and I do think it's dreadfully unfair that she and Rodney should have so much more money than we have."

Edwin felt completely helpless. He knew by this time that if Dora felt a thing to be unfair, no amount of proof to the contrary would convince her, but he felt constrained to reason gently with her petulance which he supposed to be in part due to her condition.

"I don't think you see it quite clearly," he urged, "Rodney and I both have the same allowance from Father, but for one thing he is three years older than me, and then being in the Works with Uncle Hugh he is bound to make more money than I am at first."

"I don't see why," said Dora rebelliously.

"The Bar's always slow at the beginning," explained Edwin. "You know I've often told you it may be a long time before I make a decent income."

"It seems very cruel to me," said Dora, her voice trembling with self-pity. "Here am I boxed up in this little house, and there's Edith with her lovely new drawing-room and two perfect nurseries."

"But I thought you liked this house?" Edwin was upset at the new development.

"I don't; I hate it. It's a mean little house, and I know perfectly well that Edith looks down on it, and me, and you, and everything. But there's no use speaking to you; you won't do anything about it."

She left the room, holding her handkerchief to her eyes in a gesture so familiar that Edwin did not notice it.

He sat still, oppressed by the bitterness of his thoughts. All his youthful flamboyance was gone, and with its going he had gained immensely in appearance.

Edwin Greene at twenty-nine was extremely good-looking in the austere manner affected by young barristers. He looked older than his age and the lines from nose to mouth were deeply carved, but the modelling of his face, with its unmistakable resemblance to his mother, was excellent.

I'm damnably handicapped, he thought, and there's no way out. I'm beginning to get on now; with luck another five or six years will see me with as much work as I can tackle, but what's the use of it all?

The door opened gently, and Dora came in and knelt by his side.

"Oh, Edwin, dear," she said. "I never meant to get so cross; I am sorry. But I feel so ill and miserable these days, and it was just too much for me to see Edith's beautiful new house."

At the recollection her mouth trembled again, and Edwin roused himself from his abstraction.

"Don't worry," he said heavily. "We'll be able to have a house like that later on. But in the meantime you must try not to make yourself so wretched over things."

"Oh, Edwin, I do try, but I feel so terribly ill; you can't possibly understand what I'm feeling."

"I'm sure it's perfectly rotten for you, but do you think you go out enough? It's supposed to be good to take a little exercise, isn't it?"

"I do go out a little of course, but I really don't like to be seen very much."

"I think that's nonsense, Dora. Edith tells me that before her two babies were born she used to go out every day, and just not think of it, and she's having another now, isn't she, but she seems quite bright."

Dora's face flamed. "It's all very well for Edith," she exclaimed loudly. "She's got other nice things to think about, and anyhow she's as strong as a horse. But it's very different for me."

She flounced from the room for the second time, and listening to the sounds overhead, Edwin judged rightly that this second flight was final and that she would now withdraw for the night.

Their son, Edwin Pilkington, was born and lived for the first five years of his life in the same small house that had provoked so many battles between his parents.

Dora was an injudicious mother, prodigal of caresses, bribes, scoldings and injunctions. Nurses and nursery governesses succeeded each other so rapidly that the little boy had no sooner got used to eating, sleeping, and going for walks with one person than another was immediately substituted. This was partly because no one could put up for long with the suspicions and jealousies of such an employer and partly because Dora suffered so intensely when she saw her son developing any affection for whomsoever was in charge of him, that she immediately trumped up some excuse for getting rid of the interloper.

The small Edwin, living in this state of emotional bewilderment gradually grew to rely on his quiet and repressed looking father as the one normal steady person in an otherwise chaotic existence.

Edwin himself who had looked forward with foreboding to the birth of the child was surprised and amused when he found what pleasure he gained from his son's companionship.

By 1909 he was a busy man with a steadily increasing income, and Dora was able to move to the larger house on which her heart had been set since Edith's move to Sussex Square. For a time she was so happily occupied in furnishing and decorating that life flowed more evenly for both husband and son. The former was spared anything in the nature of a scene for some months; days and even weeks went by without Dora having recourse to her favourite weapon--tears--and the younger Edwin for nearly a year enjoyed the ministrations of the same nursery governess.

This tranquil state of things was only a lull. It occurred to Edwin one day that the time had come for his son's education to begin. He mooted the project very tentatively to Dora, hoping that the idea of looking for a suitable kindergarten would prove some solace for what he knew she would regard as a tragic break in her relationship with the little boy.

His hopes were unfounded. As he mentioned the word "school," she produced her handkerchief, and before the end of his sentence she was sobbing bitterly.

"It's the beginning of the end," she wept, "the beginning of the end. He'll never be mine again; once he goes to school he is lost to me."

In vain Edwin pointed out half-jocularly that it was the inevitable destiny of mothers to lose their sons in this way; in vain he attempted to console her by saying it would only be for a few hours daily. She was inconsolable.

"It's the beginning of the end," she repeated. "You don't understand how a mother feels, but at least you might postpone it for a year or two."

But Edwin was determined that some consistent influence should be brought to bear on his son's impressionable nature and he persisted.

A satisfactory kindergarten was decided on, and this in turn was succeeded by a day-school.

The younger Edwin adapted very easily to school life, but retained an immense admiration for his father which at times provoked his mother to jealous annoyance.

"You're silly about your father," she would say. "It's all very well for me to take you about with me, but it isn't manly to hang round your father as you do."

However, Edwin, so easily swayed in many ways, presented a quietly stubborn front to her on this point, and continued to seek his father's company.