§ 5

The woman Peter loved now left Conster more elegantly than the woman he had loved once. The Sunbeam floated over the lane between Conster and Starvecrow, and pulled up noiselessly outside the house almost directly it had started. Peter was beginning to feel a little tired of the Sunbeam—he had hankerings after a lively little two-seater. An eight-cylindered landaulette driven by a man in livery was all very well for Vera to pay calls in, or if they wanted to go up to town. But he wanted something to take him round to farms on business, and occasionally ship a bag of meal or a load of spiles. He couldn’t afford both, and if they had the two-seater Vera could still go out in it to pay her calls—or up to London, for that matter. But she refused to part with the Sunbeam—it was her father and mother’s wedding present, and they would be terribly hurt if she gave it up. Two-seaters were always uncomfortable. And why did Peter want to go rattling round to farms?—Couldn’t he send one of his men?—Vera never would take him seriously as a farmer.

This evening, thanks to the Sunbeam, they reached home too early to dress for dinner. Peter asked Vera to come for a stroll with him in the orchard, but she preferred the garden at the back of the house. The garden at Starvecrow used to be a plot of ragged grass, surrounding a bed of geraniums from the middle of which unexpectedly rose a pear-tree. Today it was two green slips of lawn divided by a paved pathway shaded by a pergola. The April dusk was still warm, still pricked with the notes of birds, but one or two windows in the house were lighted, orange squares of warmth and welcome beyond the tracery of the pergola.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” murmured Peter, taking Vera’s arm under her cloak—“Oh, my dear, you surely wouldn’t be in London now.”

“No,” said Vera—“not when it’s fine.”

“What did you think of Williams?”

“Oh, he seemed all right—I didn’t talk to him much. But his wife’s a bore.”

“I felt sorry for poor Rose, having to welcome her.”

“You needn’t worry—she didn’t do much of that.”

“She had to sit there and be polite, anyhow.”

“I didn’t notice it. But I tell you what really interested me—and that was watching Stella Mount and Gervase.”

“Oh!”

“They were most amusing.”

“I never noticed anything.”

“No, my dear old man, of course you didn’t, because you never do. But it’s perfectly plain that it’s a case between them. I’ve thought so for a long time.”

“He may be in love with her, but I’m sure she isn’t in love with him.”

“Well, she seemed to me the more obviously in love of the two. She had all the happy, confident manner of a woman in love.”

“She couldn’t be in love with him—he’s a mere boy.”

“Very attractive to women, especially to one past her early youth. Stella must be getting on for thirty now, and I expect she doesn’t want to be stranded.”

For some reason Peter could not bear to hear her talked of in this way.

“I know she’s not in love with him,” he said doggedly.

“How can you know?”

“By the way she looks and behaves and all that—I know how Stella looks when she’s in love.”

“Of course you do. But since she couldn’t get you perhaps she’d like to have Gervase.”

Peter felt angry.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. Stella isn’t that sort at all—and she didn’t love me any more than I loved her.”

“Really!”

“You all talk—I’ve heard Doris and Rose at it as well as you—you all talk as if Stella had been running after me and I wouldn’t have her. But that isn’t the truth—I loved her, and I’d have had her like a shot if it had been possible, but it wasn’t.”

He felt a stiffening of Vera’s arm under his, though she did not take it away. He realised that he had said too much. But he couldn’t help it. There in the garden of Starvecrow, which Stella had loved as well as he, he could not deny their common memories ... pretend that he had not loved her ... he had a ridiculous feeling that it would have been disloyal to Starvecrow as well as to Stella.

“You needn’t get so angry,” Vera was saying—“I had always been given to understand that the affair wasn’t serious—a war-time flirtation which peace showed up as impossible. There were a great many like that.”

“Well, this wasn’t one of them. I loved Stella as much as she loved me.”

“Then why didn’t you marry her?”

“I couldn’t possibly have done so—and anyhow,” shamefacedly, “I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Then I still say you didn’t really love her. If you had, you’d have married her even though the family disapproved and she hadn’t a penny. She’d have done it for you—so if you wouldn’t do it for her, it shows that you didn’t love her as much as she loved you.”

“I did”—almost shouted Peter.

Vera took her arm away.

“Really, Peter, you’re in a very strange mood tonight. I think I’ll go indoors.”

“I’m only trying to make you understand that though I don’t love Stella now, I loved her once.”

“On the contrary—you’re making me understand that though you didn’t love her once, you love her now.”

“How can you say that!”

“Because you’re giving yourself away all round. You’re jealous of your brother, and you’re angry with me because I don’t speak of Stella in a way you quite approve of. Don’t worry, my dear boy. We’ve been married over a year, and I can hardly expect your fancy never to stray. But I’d rather you weren’t quite such a boor over it.”

She walked quickly into the house.

Peter felt as if he had been struck. He told himself that Vera was unjust and hard and cynical. How dare she say he was jealous of Gervase? How dare she say he had never really loved Stella?—that was her own infernal jealousy, he supposed. How dare she say he loved Stella now?—that again was her infernal jealousy. He took one or two miserable turns up and down the path, then went in to dress for dinner.

A wood fire was burning sweetly in his dressing-room, and his clothes had been laid out by the parlourmaid, who was as good a valet as only a good parlourmaid can be. Under these combined influences Peter learned how material comforts can occasionally soothe a spiritual smart, dressing there in warmth and ease, he began to slip out of those distressing feelings which had raged under the pergola. After all, Vera had made him supremely happy for a year. It was ungrateful to be angry with her now, just because she had taken it into her head to be a little jealous. That was really a compliment to him. Besides, now he came to think of it, he had not spoken or behaved as he ought. What a fool he had been to kick up such a dust just because Vera had doubted the reality of his dead love for Stella. No wonder she had drawn conclusions ... and instead of trying to soothe and reassure her, he had only got angry.

He made up his mind to apologise at once, and paused at her door on his way downstairs. But he heard the voice of the maid inside, and decided to wait till they were alone in the drawing-room before dinner. She was nearly always down a few minutes before eight.

However, tonight, perversely, she did not appear. The clock struck eight, and to Peter’s surprise, Weller, the parlourmaid, came into the room.

“Dinner is served, sir.”

“But your mistress isn’t down yet.”

“She has ordered her dinner to be sent up to her room, Sir.”