He did not walk up to the house, but turned back where the road began its
last steep ascent; here, for a space of a few acres, were the older relics
—the original Channing Mill, the broken walls of cottages that had not
been lived in for a hundred years. George never saw them without reflecting
on the iniquity of that early industrial age—eight-year-old children
slaving at machines for fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, sunlight
falling on the tree- tops in the clough as later on rubber forests of the
Congo and the Amazon. Thus had the first Channings flourished; and it might
be Nemesis, of a kind, that had given their grand house to the bats and the
rats. But its quality showed even in ruin; it was a substantial ruin.
By four o’clock George was back in Browdley, tired and a
little footsore.
As he turned into Market Street and fished in his pocket for the door-key
there came a voice from the pavement near his house: “‘Ow do, George. Nice
night—but I’d rather be in bed all the same.”
“Aye,” answered George mechanically. Then, recognizing the policeman on
his beat, a friendly fellow always ready with a joke and (at election times)
with a vote, George pulled himself together and made the necessary response:
“How do, Tom?”
“Fine, thanks—bar a touch of rheumatics… I was at the stone-
layin’. It’s bin a grand day for ye, and I wouldn’t say ye don’t deserve
it.”
“Thanks, Tom.”
“Ye’ve worked for it hard enough. I can remember when ye used to swear
ye’d have those Mill Street houses pulled down, and folks’d laugh at ye then,
but I’ll bet they can see it’s no joke now. Aye, ye’ve made a grand start.
How long d’you reckon the whole job’ll take?”
“Years,” George answered (but he would have been shocked if he could have
been told how many). His voice was rather grim, and he did not amplify as he
usually did when anyone encouraged him to discuss his plans. Tom noticed this
and muttered sympathetically: “Well, I’ll be gettin’ along—mustn’t keep
you talkin’ this hour… ‘Night, George—or rather, good mornin’.”
George fumbled the key in the lock and re-entered his house. He felt, as
he had hoped, exhausted, but not, as he had also hoped, insensitive to the
alone-ness. It flew at him now like a wild thing as he strode along the lobby
and heard, in imagination, Livia’s call from upstairs that had so often
greeted him when he came home late from meetings—“That you, George?”
Who else did she expect it to be, he would ask her waggishly, and feel sorry
that she was such a light sleeper, since his meetings were so often late and
the late meetings so frequent…
He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea, sitting there at the
small scrubbed table till dawn showed grey through the windows; then he went
to the room with the books in it which he called his ‘study’. The time-table
lay open on the desk, reminding him of the impending journey for which his
tiredness now gave him even physical distaste; and next to the time-table was
the small pile of letters that Annie had brought in during the interview with
Winslow. George glanced through them idly, and with equal distaste. Suddenly
then his glance changed to a gaze and his gaze to a stare, for the writing on
one of the envelopes was Livia’s and the postmark was Vienna.
He read it through, and through again, stumbling to his armchair with the
alone-ness all around him as he faced the issue. Time passed in a curious
vacuum of sensation; he did not realize it was so long until he saw the
sunlight brightly shining, glinting already on the gilt titles of his books.
Then he crossed the room to his desk and reached for pen and paper.
He wrote out a wire first of all: “Regret must cancel Vienna trip for
reasons will explain fully in letter.”
Then he wrote the letter without pause as follows:
“DEAR LORD WINSLOW—By now you will have got my wire, and are
probably surprised by my change of mind. The reason for it is simply that I
have just read a letter from my wife. It came yesterday—actually while
you and I were discussing things. I put it aside with other letters and only
noticed it an hour ago. Though short, it is a very frank letter, and in view
of what it says there seems little that I can do now—except what Livia
asks. I do not pretend to understand how these things happen, and why, but I
have to take into account her age, which was not much more than half mine
when I married her, so that if it was a mistake, I’d blame myself more than
her. Anyhow, it would be unjust and stupid to expect her to cling to it for
the rest of her life. Maybe she is old enough now to know what she really
does want, and if your son is also, I won’t stand in their way—no, I
CAN’T—neither on moral grounds nor for social and professional reasons
such as you might have. So there’s nothing I could do in Vienna except make
the whole thing more troublesome for all concerned. Please excuse what may
strike you as a hasty reconsideration and perhaps even the breaking of a
promise, but I’ve already thought it all over as much as a thing like this
can be thought over. As for what I feel, that matters to no one except
myself, but I would like to say how deeply I appreciate the way you
approached me yesterday. No one could have been kinder and I shall never
forget it.—Yours sincerely, GEO. BOSWELL.”
George always signed himself ‘Geo.’ in important or official letters
because that was how Will Spivey set up his business letter- heads—
‘Geo. Boswell, Printer and Bookbinder’. And under that, in smaller type:
‘Proprietor of the Guardian Press, Market Street, Browdley’. And under that,
in even smaller type: ‘Estimates Free. Good Work Guaranteed.’
About seven o’clock he went to the corner, posted the
letter, and
re-entered his house to find that Annie had returned from spending a night
with her mother across the town and had already noticed his bag half packed
on the bed upstairs. “ANOTHER conference?” she exclaimed. “Why, it’s only
last week-end you was away at the last one…”
“It’s cancelled,” George answered. “I’m not going after all.”
“Then I’ll unpack your things and have breakfast ready in a jiffy.”
George was suddenly aware that he had none of his usual healthy
early-morning appetite, but she was in the kitchen before he could say so,
and by the time he followed her there he had decided he might as well say
everything else that had to be said and get it over.
He stood in the kitchen doorway wondering how to make it sound not too
dramatic, yet not so commonplace that she would miss the full significance.
He began: “By the way, I’ve had news of Livia.” (He always called her ‘Livia’
to Annie.)
“You have?… Well, that’s nice. Did she say when she was coming
home?”
That was a good opening. “I’m—er—afraid she’s— she’s NOT
coming home.”
“WHAT?” Annie swung round in consternation as she interpreted the remark
in the only way that occurred to her. “Oh, my goodness, she’s not—
she’s not—you don’t mean—” And then a flood of tears.
It was quite a minute before George realized what was in Annie’s mind.
Then he had to comfort her and meanwhile explain matters more specifically.
“Good heavens, no—she’s all right—she’s quite well— nothing
at all’s happened to her. She’s just not coming home… She’s decided
to—to leave me. It does happen sometimes—that people don’t hit it
off altogether… I just wanted you to know, so that you can get her clothes
in order—I expect she’ll be sending for them soon. No need to talk
about it in the town yet, though of course people will have to know sooner or
later.” (And no need, yet, to tell even Annie the other details.)
Annie, having been heart-broken, now became furious. She belonged to a
world in which women do not leave their husbands, but regard themselves as
lucky to get and keep any man who does not drink, gamble, or beat them. And
George not only possessed these negative virtues, but others to which Annie
had for years accorded increasing admiration. She really believed him to be a
great man, and for a wife to be dissatisfied with such a paragon seemed to
her incomprehensible as well as shocking. She had never liked Livia as much
as George, and that made her now feel that she had never liked Livia at all.
“She’s a bad lot,” she whimpered scornfully. “And it’s all you could expect
from where she comes from.”
“Nay… nay…” said George pacifyingly. “She’s all right, in her own way.
And maybe I’m all right in mine.”
“I never really took to her,” Annie continued. “And I’m not the only
one… There was something queer about her, or folks wouldn’t have talked the
way they did about her father’s death and what she had to do with it—
because there’s never no smoke without fire—”
“Oh yes, there is, often enough,” George interrupted sharply.
“Well, anyhow, there was something queer about Stoneclough altogether
—what with ghosts and drownings and everything—and I’m sorry if
I’ve let out something I wasn’t supposed to…”
She was on the point of weeping again, so George made haste to reassure
her. “Oh, that’s all right, Annie. I don’t think you could tell me much that
I didn’t hear at the time. But it was all gossip—not worth repeating
now or even remembering—that’s the way I look at it. I doubt if we’ll
ever know the whole truth about what really happened.” He found something he
could force a smile at. “And as for the ghosts—why, that’s only an old
yarn—a sort of local legend… I heard it long before Livia was
born…”
Livia had first heard it from Sarah (combined cook, nurse,
and housekeeper to the Channing family for half a century); it was the story
of three girls who had lived about a hundred years ago in the cottages in the
clough. They had been little girls, not more than nine or ten, and in those
days children of that age went to work at the Channing Mill (the original one
that straddles the stream where the water-wheel used to be); and what was
more, they had to get up in the dark of early morning to be at their machines
by half-past five. Because they were always so sleepy at that hour the three
had an arrangement among themselves that while they hurried from their homes
they should link arms together, so that only the middle girl need keep awake;
the two others could then run with eyes closed, half sleeping for those few
extra minutes. They took it in turns, of course, to be the unlucky one. But
one winter’s morning the middle girl was so sleepy herself that she couldn’t
help closing her eyes too, with the result that all ran over the edge of the
path into the river and were drowned. And so (according to legend—the
story itself might well have been true) the ghosts of the three are sometimes
to be seen after dark in the clough, scampering with linked arms along the
path towards the old mill.
Sarah told this to Livia by way of warning to the child never to stray out
of the garden into the clough, for it was always dark there under the trees,
and also, added Sarah, improving the legend to suit the occasion, the ghosts
were really liable to be seen at any time of the day or night. But that made
Livia all the more eager to stray. She was an only child, without playmates,
and it would surely be breathlessly exciting to meet three possible playmates
all at once, even if they were only ghosts. She was not afraid of ghosts. In
fact she was not then, or ever, afraid of anything, but she had a precocious
aversion to being bored, and it WAS boring to sit in the Stoneclough
drawing-room with her nose pressed to the window-pane, staring beyond the
shrubs of the garden to that downward distance whence she believed her
father, in some mysterious way, would return, since that was the way Sarah
said he had gone.
One grey October afternoon she managed to elude Sarah and escape from the
house. There was a wet mist over the moorland; the shrubs of the garden
dripped noisily as she ran among them and through the gate into the forbidden
clough. She ran on, under the drenched trees, keeping watch for the ghosts,
and presently the moisture that had been mist higher up turned to heavy rain;
then she grew tired and cold, and—though still not in the least
afraid—considerably disheartened by not meeting anyone. At last she
came to the road to Browdley, though she did not recognize it, never having
been walked so far by Sarah or her mother; but as she stared round, a horse
and carriage came along which she did recognize. The horse was William, and
Watson was driving, and inside the carriage, calling to her from the window,
was her mother.
So she was promptly rescued and made to sit on the familiar black cushions
through which the ends of hairs stuck out and pricked her legs. It was an
unfortunate encounter, for it doubtless meant that her mother would tell
Sarah and Sarah would be cross (which Livia did not fear, but it was tiresome
to anticipate), and worst of all, she would be watched henceforward more
carefully than ever. So she made a quick and, for a child, a rather
remarkable decision; she would say she had met the three little girls—
the ghostly ones—in the clough, and had run after them because they
beckoned her. That could serve, at worst, as an excuse; at best, it might
completely divert attention from her own misdeed. Yet as she began, a moment
later, she was curiously aware that her mother was showing little interest in
the story; nor did she seem angry, or startled, or impressed, or any of the
other things that Livia, aged four, had ideas but no words for. Her mother
merely said: “Livia, you’re wet through—you must have a bath and change
all your clothes as soon as you get home.”
Nor later on was there any crossness even from Sarah, but instead a
strange unhappy vagueness, as if she were thinking of something else all the
time. When Livia retold her yarn, Sarah answered disappointingly: “It’s only
a story, Livia, you mustn’t really believe it. There aren’t any such things
as ghosts.”
“Isn’t there the Holy Ghost?” Livia asked, remembering religious
instruction imparted by Miss Fortescue, who came to the house every week-day
morning, and seemed already to Livia the repository of everything knowable
that one did not particularly want to know.