She held up her hand, commanding silence; commanding that slow, quiet voice to cease speaking, and she said: “As my father loved you, I loved. As a man loves a woman, that was how I loved—protectively, like my father. I wanted to give all I had in me to give. It made me feel terribly strong … and gentle. It was good, good, good—I’d have laid down my life a thousand times over for Angela Crossby. If I could have, I’d have married her and brought her home—I wanted to bring her home here to Morton. If I loved her the way a man loves a woman, it’s because I can’t feel that I am a woman. All my life I’ve never felt like a woman, and you know it—you say you’ve always disliked me, that you’ve always felt a strange physical repulsion. … I don’t know what I am; no one’s ever told me that I’m different and yet I know that I’m different—that’s why, I suppose, you’ve felt as you have done. And for that I forgive you, though whatever it is, it was you and my father who made this body—but what I will never forgive is your daring to try and make me ashamed of my love. I’m not ashamed of it, there’s no shame in me.” And now she was stammering a little wildly, “Good and—and fine it was,” she stammered, “the best part of myself—I gave all and I asked nothing in return—I just went on hopelessly loving—” she broke off, she was shaking from head to foot, and Anna’s cold voice fell like icy water on that angry and sorely tormented spirit.
“You have spoken, Stephen. I don’t think there’s much more that needs to be said between us except this, we two cannot live together at Morton—not now, because I might grow to hate you. Yes, although you’re my child, I might grow to hate you. The same roof mustn’t shelter us both any more; one of us must go—which of us shall it be?” And she looked at Stephen and waited.
Morton! They could not both live at Morton. Something seemed to catch hold of the girl’s heart and twist it. She stared at her mother, aghast for a moment, while Anna stared back—she was waiting for her answer.
But quite suddenly Stephen found her manhood and she said: “I understand. I’ll leave Morton.”
Then Anna made her daughter sit down beside her, while she talked of how this thing might be accomplished in a way that would cause the least possible scandal: “For the sake of your father’s honourable name, I must ask you to help me, Stephen.” It was better, she said, that Stephen should take Puddle with her, if Puddle would consent to go. They might live in London or somewhere abroad, on the pretext that Stephen wished to study. From time to time Stephen would come back to Morton and visit her mother, and during those visits, they two would take care to be seen together for appearances’ sake, for the sake of her father. She could take from Morton whatever she needed, the horses, and anything else she wished. Certain of the rent-rolls would be paid over to her, should her own income prove insufficient. All things must be done in a way that was seemly—no undue haste, no suspicion of a breach between mother and daughter: “For the sake of your father I ask this of you, not for your sake or mine, but for his. Do you consent to this, Stephen?”
And Stephen answered: “Yes, I consent.”
Then Anna said: “I’d like you to leave me now—I feel tired and I want to be alone for a little—but presently I shall send for Puddle to discuss her living with you in the future.”
So Stephen got up, and she went away, leaving Anna Gordon alone.
II
As though drawn there by some strong natal instinct, Stephen went straight to her father’s study; and she sat in the old armchair that had survived him; then she buried her face in her hands.
All the loneliness that had gone before was as nothing to this new loneliness of spirit. An immense desolation swept down upon her, an immense need to cry out and claim understanding for herself, an immense need to find an answer to the riddle of her unwanted being. All around her were grey and crumbling ruins, and under those ruins her love lay bleeding; shamefully wounded by Angela Crossby, shamefully soiled and defiled by her mother—a piteous, suffering, defenceless thing, it lay bleeding under the ruins.
She felt blind when she tried to look into the future, stupefied when she tried to look back on the past. She must go—she was going away from Morton: “From Morton—I’m going away from Morton,” the words thudded drearily in her brain: “I’m going away from Morton.”
The grave, comely house would not know her any more, nor the garden where she had heard the cuckoo with the dawning understanding of a child, nor the lakes where she had kissed Angela Crossby for the first time—full on the lips as a lover. The good, sweet-smelling meadows with their placid cattle, she was going to leave them; and the hills that protected poor, unhappy lovers—the merciful hills; and the lanes with their sleepy dog-roses at evening; and the little, old township of Upton-on-Severn with its battle-scarred church and its yellowish river; that was where she had first seen Angela Crossby. …
The spring would come sweeping across Castle Morton, bringing strong, clean winds to the open common. The spring would come sweeping across the whole valley, from the Cotswold Hills right up to the Malverns; bringing daffodils by their hundreds and thousands, bringing bluebells to the beech wood down by the lakes, bringing
