Puddle looked up from her embroidery frame and pushed her spectacles on to her forehead the better to see the drowsy Stephen, for Puddle’s eyes had grown very long-sighted so that the room looked blurred through her glasses.
She thought: “Yes, she’s changed a good deal in these two years—” then she sighed half in sadness and half in contentment, “All the same she is making good,” thought Puddle, remembering with a quick thrill of pride that the long-limbed creature who lounged by the fire had suddenly sprung into something like fame thanks to a fine first novel.
Stephen yawned, and readjusting her spectacles Puddle resumed her wool-work.
It was true that the two long years of exile had left their traces on Stephen’s face; it had grown much thinner and more determined, some might have said that the face had hardened, for the mouth was less ardent and much less gentle, and the lips now drooped at the corners. The strong rather massive line of the jaw looked aggressive these days by reason of its thinness. Faint furrows had come between the thick brows and faint shadows showed at times under the eyes; the eyes themselves were the eyes of a writer, always a little tired in expression. Her complexion was paler than it had been in the past, it had lost the look of wind and sunshine—the open-air look—and the fingers of the hand that slowly emerged from her jacket pocket were heavily stained with nicotine—she was now a voracious smoker. Her hair was quite short. In a mood of defiance she had suddenly walked off to the barber’s one morning and had made him crop it close like a man’s. And mightily did this fashion become her, for now the fine shape of her head was unmarred by the stiff clumpy plait in the nape of her neck. Released from the torment imposed upon it the thick auburn hair could breathe and wave freely, and Stephen had grown fond and proud of her hair—a hundred strokes must it have with the brush every night until it looked burnished. Sir Philip also had been proud of his hair in the days of his youthful manhood.
Stephen’s life in London had been one long endeavour, for work to her had become a narcotic. Puddle it was who had found the flat with the casement windows that looked on the river, and Puddle it was who now kept the accounts, paid the rent, settled bills and managed the servants; all these details Stephen calmly ignored and the faithful Puddle allowed her to do so. Like an ageing and anxious Vestal Virgin she tended the holy fire of inspiration, feeding the flame with suitable food—good grilled meat, light puddings and much fresh fruit, varied by little painstaking surprises from Jackson’s or Fortnum and Mason. For Stephen’s appetite was not what it had been in the vigorous days of Morton; now there were times when she could not eat, or if she must eat she did so protesting, fidgeting to go back to her desk. At such times Puddle would steal into the study with a tin of Brand’s Essence—she had even been known to feed the recalcitrant author piecemeal, until Stephen must laugh and gobble up the jelly for the sake of getting on with her writing.
Only one duty apart from her work had Stephen never for a moment neglected, and that was the care and the welfare of Raftery. The cob had been sold, and her father’s chestnut she had given away to Colonel Antrim, who had sworn not to let the horse out of his hands for the sake of his lifelong friend, Sir Philip—but Raftery she had brought up to London. She herself had found and rented his stable with comfortable rooms above for Jim, the groom she had taken from Morton. Every morning she rode very early in the Park, which seemed a futile and dreary business, but now only thus could the horse and his owner contrive to be together for a little. Sometimes she fancied that Raftery sighed as she cantered him round and round the Row, and then she would stoop down and speak to him softly:
“My Raftery, I know, it’s not Castle Morton or the hills or the big, green Severn Valley—but I love you.”
And because he had understood her he would throw up his head and begin to prance sideways, pretending that he still felt very youthful, pretending that he was wild with delight at the prospect of cantering round the Row. But after a while these two sorry exiles would droop and move forward without much spirit. Each in a separate way would divine the ache in the other, the ache that was Morton, so that Stephen would cease to urge the beast forward, and Raftery would cease to pretend to Stephen. But when twice a year at her mother’s request, Stephen must go back to visit her home, then Raftery went too, and his joy was immense when he felt the good springy turf beneath him, when he sighted the red brick stables of Morton, when he rolled in the straw of his large, airy loosebox. The years would seem to slip from his shoulders, he grew sleeker, he would look like a five-year-old—yet to Stephen these visits of theirs were anguish because of her love for Morton. She would feel like a stranger within the gates, an unwanted stranger there only on sufferance. It would seem to her that the old house withdrew itself from her love very gravely and sadly, that its windows no longer beckoned, invited:
