Stephen, recovering from the merciful numbness of shock and facing her first deep sorrow, stood utterly confounded, as a child will stand who is lost in a crowd, having somehow let go of the hand that has always guided. Thinking of her father, she realized how greatly she had leant on that man of deep kindness, how sure she had felt of his constant protection, how much she had taken that protection for granted. And so together with her constant grieving, with the ache for his presence that never left her, came the knowledge of what real loneliness felt like. She would marvel, remembering how often in his lifetime she had thought herself lonely, when by stretching out a finger she could touch him, when by speaking she could hear his voice, when by raising her eyes she could see him before her. And now also she knew the desolation of small things, the power to give infinite pain that lies hidden in the little inanimate objects that persist, in a book, in a well-worn garment, in a half-finished letter, in a favourite armchair.
She thought: “They go on—they mean nothing at all, and yet they go on,” and the handling of them was anguish, and yet she must always touch them. “How queer, this old armchair has outlived him, an old chair—” And feeling the creases in its leather, the dent in its back where her father’s head had lain, she would hate the inanimate thing for surviving, or perhaps she would love it and find herself weeping.
Morton had become a place of remembering that closed round her and held her in its grip of remembrance. It was pain, yet now more than ever she adored it, every stone, every blade of grass in its meadows. She fancied that it too grieved for her father and was turning to her for comfort. Because of Morton the days must go on, all their trifling tasks must be duly accomplished. At times she might wonder that this should be so, might be filled with a fleeting sense of resentment, but then she would think of her home as a creature dependent upon her and her mother for its needs, and the sense of resentment would vanish.
Very gravely she listened to the lawyer from London. “The place goes to your mother for her lifetime,” he told her; “on her death, of course, it becomes yours, Miss Gordon. But your father made a separate provision; when you’re twenty-one, in about two years time, you’ll inherit quite a considerable income.”
She said: “Will that leave enough money for Morton?”
“More than enough,” he reassured her, smiling.
In the quiet old house there was discipline and order, death had come and gone, yet these things persisted. Like the well-worn garment and favourite chair, discipline and order had survived the great change, filling the emptiness of the rooms with a queer sense of unreality at times, with a new and very bewildering doubt as to which was real, life or death. The servants scoured and swept and dusted. From Malvern, once a week, came a young clock-winder, and he set the clocks with much care and precision so that when he had gone they all chimed together—rather hurriedly they would all chime together, as though flustered by the great importance of time. Puddle added up the books and made lists for the cook. The tall under-footman polished the windows—the iridescent window that looked out on the lawns and the semicircular fanlight he polished. In the gardens work progressed just as usual. Gardeners pruned and hoed and diligently planted. Spring gained in strength to the joy of the cuckoos, trees blossomed, and outside Sir Philip’s study glowed beds of the old-fashioned single tulips he had loved above all the others. According to custom the bulbs had been planted, and now, still according to custom, there were tulips. At the stables the hunters were turned out to grass, and the ceilings and walls had a fresh coat of whitewash. Williams went into Upton to buy tape for the plaits which the grooms were now engaged upon making; while beyond, in a paddock adjoining the beech wood, a couple of mares gave birth to strong foals—thus were all things accomplished in their season at Morton.
But Anna, whose word was now absolute law, had become one of those who have done with smiling; a quiet, enduring, grief-stricken woman, in whose eyes was a patient, waiting expression. She was gentle to Stephen, yet terribly aloof; in their hour of great need they must still stand divided these two, by the old, insidious barrier. Yet Stephen clung closer and closer to Morton; she had definitely given up all idea of Oxford. In vain did Puddle try to protest, in vain did she daily remind her pupil that Sir Philip had set his heart on her going; no good, for Stephen would always reply:
“Morton needs me; Father would want me to stay, because he taught me to love it.”
And Puddle was helpless. What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself, dared not say: “For your own sake you must go to Oxford, you’ll need every weapon your brain can give you; being what you are you’ll need every weapon,” for then certainly Stephen would start to question, and her teacher’s very position of trust would forbid her to answer those questions.
Outrageous, Puddle would feel it to be, that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth. It said to itself: “If seeing’s believing, then I don’t want to see—if silence is golden, it is also, in this case, very expedient.” There were moments when Puddle would feel sorely tempted to shout out loud at the world.
Sometimes she thought of giving
