The Freelands

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Freelands


"Ah, Miss Nedda! it's you, my dear! Bless your pretty 'eart."

But down Nedda's cheeks, behind her, rolled two tears.

"Cookie, oh, Cookie!" And she ran out....

And the first moment? It was like nothing she had dreamed of. Strange,
stiff! One darting look, and then eyes down; one convulsive squeeze,
then such a formal shake of hot, dry hands, and off he had gone with
Felix to his room, and she with Sheila to hers, bewildered, biting down
consternation, trying desperately to behave 'like a little lady,' as her
old nurse would have put it--before Sheila, especially, whose hostility
she knew by instinct she had earned. All that evening, furtive watching,
formal talk, and underneath a ferment of doubt and fear and longing. All
a mistake! An awful mistake! Did he love her? Heaven! If he did not,
she could never face any one again. He could not love her! His eyes
were like those of a swan when its neck is drawn up and back in anger.
Terrible--having to show nothing, having to smile at Sheila, at Dad, and
Mother! And when at last she got to her room, she stood at the window
and at first simply leaned her forehead against the glass and shivered.
What had she done? Had she dreamed it all--dreamed that they had stood
together under those boughs in the darkness, and through their lips
exchanged their hearts? She must have dreamed it! Dreamed that most
wonderful, false dream! And the walk home in the thunder-storm, and his
arm round her, and her letters, and his letter--dreamed it all! And
now she was awake! From her lips came a little moan, and she sank down
huddled, and stayed there ever so long, numb and chilly. Undress--go
to bed? Not for the world. By the time the morning came she had got to
forget that she had dreamed. For very shame she had got to forget that;
no one should see. Her cheeks and ears and lips were burning, but her
body felt icy cold. Then--what time she did not know at all--she
felt she must go out and sit on the stairs. They had always been her
comforters, those wide, shallow, cosey stairs. Out and down the passage,
past all their rooms--his the last--to the dark stairs, eerie at night,
where the scent of age oozed out of the old house. All doors below,
above, were closed; it was like looking down into a well, to sit with
her head leaning against the banisters. And silent, so silent--just
those faint creakings that come from nowhere, as it might be the
breathing of the house. She put her arms round a cold banister and
hugged it hard. It hurt her, and she embraced it the harder. The first
tears of self-pity came welling up, and without warning a great sob
burst out of her. Alarmed at the sound, she smothered her mouth with
her arm. No good; they came breaking out! A door opened; all the blood
rushed to her heart and away from it, and with a little dreadful gurgle
she was silent. Some one was listening. How long that terrible listening
lasted she had no idea; then footsteps, and she was conscious that it
was standing in the dark behind her. A foot touched her back. She gave a
little gasp. Derek's voice whispered hoarsely:

"What? Who are you?"

And, below her breath, she answered: "Nedda."

His arms wrenched her away from the banister, his voice in her ear said:

"Nedda, darling, Nedda!"

But despair had sunk too deep; she could only quiver and shake and try
to drive sobbing out of her breath. Then, most queer, not his words, nor
the feel of his arms, comforted her--any one could pity!--but the smell
and the roughness of his Norfolk jacket. So he, too, had not been in
bed; he, too, had been unhappy! And, burying her face in his sleeve, she
murmured:

"Oh, Derek! Why?"

"I didn't want them all to see. I can't bear to give it away. Nedda,
come down lower and let's love each other!"

Softly, stumbling, clinging together, they went down to the last turn of
the wide stairs. How many times had she not sat there, in white frocks,
her hair hanging down as now, twisting the tassels of little programmes
covered with hieroglyphics only intelligible to herself, talking
spasmodically to spasmodic boys with budding 'tails,' while Chinese
lanterns let fall their rose and orange light on them and all the other
little couples as exquisitely devoid of ease. Ah! it was worth those
hours of torture to sit there together now, comforting each other with
hands and lips and whisperings. It was more, as much more than that
moment in the orchard, as sun shining after a Spring storm is more than
sun in placid mid-July. To hear him say: "Nedda, I love you!" to feel
it in his hand clasped on her heart was much more, now that she knew how
difficult it was for him to say or show it, except in the dark with her
alone. Many a long day they might have gone through together that would
not have shown her so much of his real heart as that hour of whispering
and kisses.

He had known she was unhappy, and yet he couldn't! It had only made him
more dumb! It was awful to be like that! But now that she knew, she was
glad to think that it was buried so deep in him and kept for her alone.
And if he did it again she would just know that it was only shyness and
pride. And he was not a brute and a beast, as he insisted. But suppose
she had chanced not to come out! Would she ever have lived through the
night? And she shivered.

"Are you cold, darling? Put on my coat."

It was put on her in spite of all effort to prevent him. Never was
anything so warm, so delicious, wrapping her in something more than
Harris tweed. And the hall clock struck--Two!

She could just see his face in the glimmer that filtered from the
skylight at the top. And she felt that he was learning her, learning all
that she had to give him, learning the trust that was shining through
her eyes. There was just enough light for them to realize the old house
watching from below and from above--a glint on the dark floor there,
on the dark wall here; a blackness that seemed to be inhabited by some
spirit, so that their hands clutched and twitched, when the tiny, tiny
noises of Time, playing in wood and stone, clicked out.

That stare of the old house, with all its knowledge of lives past, of
youth and kisses spent and gone, of hopes spun and faiths abashed, the
old house cynical, stirred in them desire to clutch each other close and
feel the thrill of peering out together into mystery that must hold
for them so much of love and joy and trouble! And suddenly she put her
fingers to his face, passed them softly, clingingly, over his hair,
forehead, eyes, traced the sharp cheek-bones down to his jaw, round
by the hard chin up to his lips, over the straight bone of his nose,
lingering, back, to his eyes again.

"Now, if I go blind, I shall know you. Give me one kiss, Derek. You MUST
be tired."

Buried in the old dark house that kiss lasted long; then, tiptoeing--she
in front--pausing at every creak, holding breath, they stole up to their
rooms. And the clock struck--Three!


CHAPTER XVI


Felix (nothing if not modern) had succumbed already to the feeling that
youth ruled the roost. Whatever his misgivings, his and Flora's sense of
loss, Nedda must be given a free hand! Derek gave no outward show of his
condition, and but for his little daughter's happy serenity Felix would
have thought as she had thought that first night. He had a feeling that
his nephew rather despised one so soaked in mildness and reputation as
Felix Freeland; and he got on better with Sheila, not because she was
milder, but because she was devoid of that scornful tang which clung
about her brother. No! Sheila was not mild. Rich-colored, downright
of speech, with her mane of short hair, she was a no less startling
companion. The smile of Felix had never been more whimsically employed
than during that ten-day visit. The evening John Freeland came to dinner
was the highwater mark of his alarmed amusement. Mr. Cuthcott, also
bidden, at Nedda's instigation, seemed to take a mischievous delight in
drawing out those two young people in face of their official uncle.
The pleasure of the dinner to Felix--and it was not too great--was in
watching Nedda's face. She hardly spoke, but how she listened! Nor did
Derek say much, but what he did say had a queer, sarcastic twinge about
it.

"An unpleasant young man," was John's comment afterward. "How the deuce
did he ever come to be Tod's son? Sheila, of course, is one of these
hot-headed young women that make themselves a nuisance nowadays, but
she's intelligible. By the way, that fellow Cuthcott's a queer chap!"

One subject of conversation at dinner had been the morality of
revolutionary violence. And the saying that had really upset John had
been Derek's: "Conflagration first--morality afterward!" He had looked
at his nephew from under brows which a constant need for rejecting
petitions to the Home Office had drawn permanently down and in toward
the nose, and made no answer.

To Felix these words had a more sinister significance. With his juster
appreciation both of the fiery and the official points of view, his far
greater insight into his nephew than ever John would have, he saw that
they were more than a mere arrow of controversy. And he made up his mind
that night that he would tackle his nephew and try to find out exactly
what was smouldering within that crisp, black pate.

Following him into the garden next morning, he said to himself: 'No
irony--that's fatal. Man to man--or boy to boy--whichever it is!' But,
on the garden path, alongside that young spread-eagle, whose dark,
glowering, self-contained face he secretly admired, he merely began:

"How do you like your Uncle John?"

"He doesn't like me, Uncle Felix."

Somewhat baffled, Felix proceeded:

"I say, Derek, fortunately or unfortunately, I've some claim now to a
little knowledge of you. You've got to open out a bit to me. What
are you going to do with yourself in life? You can't support Nedda on
revolution."

Having drawn this bow at a venture, he paused, doubtful of his wisdom.
A glance at Derek's face confirmed his doubt. It was closer than ever,
more defiant.

"There's a lot of money in revolution, Uncle Felix--other people's."

Dash the young brute! There was something in him! He swerved off to a
fresh line.

"How do you like London?"

"I don't like it. But, Uncle Felix, don't you wish YOU were seeing it
for the first time? What books you'd write!"

Felix felt that unconscious thrust go 'home.' Revolt against staleness
and clipped wings, against the terrible security of his too solid
reputation, smote him.

"What strikes you most about it, then?" he asked.

"That it ought to be jolly well blown up. Everybody seems to know that,
too--they look it, anyway, and yet they go on as if it oughtn't."

"Why ought it to be blown up?"

"Well, what's the good of anything while London and all these other big
towns are sitting on the country's chest? England must have been a fine
place once, though!"

"Some of us think it a fine place still."

"Of course it is, in a way. But anything new and keen gets sat on.
England's like an old tom-cat by the fire: too jolly comfortable for
anything!"

At this support to his own theory that the country was going to the
dogs, owing to such as John and Stanley, Felix thought: 'Out of the
mouths of babes!' But he merely said: "You're a cheerful young man!"

"It's got cramp," Derek muttered; "can't even give women votes. Fancy my
mother without a vote! And going to wait till every laborer is off the
land before it attends to them. It's like the port you gave us last
night, Uncle Felix, wonderful crust!"

"And what is to be your contribution to its renovation?"

Derek's face instantly resumed its peculiar defiant smile, and Felix
thought: 'Young beggar! He's as close as wax.' After their little
talk, however, he had more understanding of his nephew. His defiant
self-sufficiency seemed more genuine....

In spite of his sensations when dining with Felix, John Freeland (little
if not punctilious) decided that it was incumbent on him to have the
'young Tods' to dinner, especially since Frances Freeland had come to
stay with him the day after the arrival of those two young people at
Hampstead. She had reached Porchester Gardens faintly flushed from
the prospect of seeing darling John, with one large cane trunk, and a
hand-bag of a pattern which the man in the shop had told her was the
best thing out. It had a clasp which had worked beautifully in the shop,
but which, for some reason, on the journey had caused her both pain and
anxiety. Convinced, however, that she could cure it and open the bag the
moment she could get to that splendid new pair of pincers in her trunk,
which a man had only yesterday told her were the latest, she still felt
that she had a soft thing, and dear John must have one like it if she
could get him one at the Stores to-morrow.

John, who had come away early from the Home Office, met her in that
dark hall, to which he had paid no attention since his young wife died,
fifteen years ago. Embracing him, with a smile of love almost timorous
from intensity, Frances Freeland looked him up and down, and, catching
what light there was gleaming on his temples, determined that she had
in her bag, as soon as she could get it open, the very thing for dear
John's hair. He had such a nice moustache, and it was a pity he was
getting bald. Brought to her room, she sat down rather suddenly,
feeling, as a fact, very much like fainting--a condition of affairs
to which she had never in the past and intended never in the future to
come, making such a fuss! Owing to that nice new patent clasp, she had
not been able to get at her smelling-salts, nor the little flask of
brandy and the one hard-boiled egg without which she never travelled;
and for want of a cup of tea her soul was nearly dying within her. Dear
John would never think she had not had anything since breakfast (she
travelled always by a slow train, disliking motion), and she would
not for the world let him know--so near dinner-time, giving a lot of
trouble! She therefore stayed quite quiet, smiling a little, for fear he
might suspect her. Seeing John, however, put her bag down in the wrong
place, she felt stronger.

"No, darling--not there--in the window."

And while he was changing the position of the bag, her heart swelled
with joy because his back was so straight, and with the thought: 'What
a pity the dear boy has never married again! It does so keep a man from
getting moony!' With all that writing and thinking he had to do, such
important work, too, it would have been so good for him, especially at
night. She would not have expressed it thus in words--that would not
have been quite nice--but in thought Frances Freeland was a realist.

When he was gone, and she could do as she liked, she sat stiller than
ever, knowing by long experience that to indulge oneself in private only
made it more difficult not to indulge oneself in public. It really was
provoking that this nice new clasp should go wrong just this once, and
that the first time it was used! And she took from her pocket a tiny
prayer-book, and, holding it to the light, read the eighteenth psalm--it
was a particularly good one, that never failed her when she felt
low--she used no glasses, and up to the present had avoided any line
between the brows, knowing it was her duty to remain as nice as she
could to look at, so as not to spoil the pleasure of people round about
her. Then saying to herself firmly, "I do not, I WILL not want any
tea--but I shall be glad of dinner!" she rose and opened her cane trunk.
Though she knew exactly where they were, she was some time finding the
pincers, because there were so many interesting things above them, each
raising a different train of thought. A pair of field-glasses, the very
latest--the man had said--for darling Derek; they would be so useful to
keep his mind from thinking about things that it was no good thinking
about. And for dear Flora (how wonderful that she could write
poetry--poetry!) a really splendid, and perfectly new, little pill. She
herself had already taken two, and they had suited her to perfection.
For darling Felix a new kind of eau de cologne, made in Worcester,
because that was the only scent he would use. For her pet Nedda, a piece
of 'point de Venise' that she really could not be selfish enough to keep
any longer, especially as she was particularly fond of it. For Alan, a
new kind of tin-opener that the dear boy would like enormously; he was
so nice and practical. For Sheila, such a nice new novel by Mr. and Mrs.
Whirlingham--a bright, wholesome tale, with such a good description of
quite a new country in it--the dear child was so clever, it would be a
change for her. Then, actually resting on the pincers, she came on
her pass-book, recently made up, containing little or no balance, just
enough to get darling John that bag like hers with the new clasp, which
would be so handy for his papers when he went travelling. And having
reached the pincers, she took them in her hand, and sat down again to be
quite quiet a moment, with her still-dark eyelashes resting on her ivory
cheeks and her lips pressed to a colorless line; for her head swam from
stooping over. In repose, with three flies circling above her fine gray
hair, she might have served a sculptor for a study of the stoic spirit.
Then, going to the bag, her compressed lips twitching, her gray eyes
piercing into its clasp with a kind of distrustful optimism, she lifted
the pincers and tweaked it hard.

If the atmosphere of that dinner, to which all six from Hampstead came,
was less disturbed than John anticipated, it was due to his sense of
hospitality, and to every one's feeling that controversy would puzzle
and distress Granny. That there were things about which people differed,
Frances Freeland well knew, but that they should so differ as to make
them forget to smile and have good manners would not have seemed right
to her at all. And of this, in her presence, they were all conscious; so
that when they had reached the asparagus there was hardly anything left
that could by any possibility be talked about. And this--for fear of
seeming awkward--they at once proceeded to discuss, Flora remarking that
London was very full. John agreed.

Frances Freeland, smiling, said:

"It's so nice for Derek and Sheila to be seeing it like this for the
first time."

Sheila said:

"Why? Isn't it always as full as this?"

John answered:

"In August practically empty. They say a hundred thousand people, at
least, go away."

"Double!" remarked Felix.

"The figures are variously given. My estimate--"

"One in sixty. That shows you!"

At this interruption of Derek's John frowned slightly. "What does it
show you?" he said.

Derek glanced at his grandmother.

"Oh, nothing!"

"Of course it shows you," exclaimed Sheila, "what a heartless great
place it is. All 'the world' goes out of town, and 'London's empty!' But
if you weren't told so you'd never know the difference."

Derek muttered: "I think it shows more than that."

Under the table Flora was touching John's foot warningly; Nedda
attempting to touch Derek's; Felix endeavoring to catch John's eye; Alan
trying to catch Sheila's; John biting his lip and looking carefully at
nothing. Only Frances Freeland was smiling and gazing lovingly at dear
Derek, thinking he would be so handsome when he had grown a nice black
moustache. And she said:

"Yes, dear. What were you going to say?"

Derek looked up.

"Do you really want it, Granny?"

Nedda murmured across the table: "No, Derek."

Frances Freeland raised her brows quizzically. She almost looked arch.

"But of course I do, darling. I want to hear immensely. It's so
interesting."

"Derek was going to say, Mother"--every one at once looked at Felix, who
had thus broken in--"that all we West-End people--John and I and Flora
and Stanley, and even you--all we people born in purple and fine linen,
are so accustomed to think we're all that matters, that when we're out
of London there's nobody in it. He meant to say that this is appalling
enough, but that what is still more appalling is the fact that we really
ARE all that matters, and that if people try to disturb us, we can, and
jolly well will, take care they don't disturb us long. Is that what you
meant, Derek?"

Derek turned a rather startled look on Felix.

"What he meant to say," went on Felix, "was, that age and habit, vested
interests, culture and security sit so heavy on this country's chest,
that aspiration may wriggle and squirm but will never get from under.
That, for all we pretend to admire enthusiasm and youth, and the rest of
it, we push it out of us just a little faster than it grows up. Is that
what you meant, Derek?"

"You'll try to, but you won't succeed!"

"I'm afraid we shall, and with a smile, too, so that you won't see us
doing it."

"I call that devilish."

"I call it natural. Look at a man who's growing old; notice how very
gracefully and gradually he does it. Take my hair--your aunt says she
can't tell the difference from month to month. And there it is, or
rather isn't--little by little."

Frances Freeland, who during Felix's long speech had almost closed her
eyes, opened them, and looked piercingly at the top of his head.

"Darling," she said, "I've got the very thing for it. You must take some
with you when you go tonight. John is going to try it."

Checked in the flow of his philosophy, Felix blinked like an owl
surprised.

"Mother," he said, "YOU only have the gift of keeping young."

"Oh! my dear, I'm getting dreadfully old. I have the greatest difficulty
in keeping awake sometimes when people are talking. But I mean to fight
against it. It's so dreadfully rude, and ugly, too; I catch myself
sometimes with my mouth open."

Flora said quietly: "Granny, I have the very best thing for that--quite
new!"

A sweet but rather rueful smile passed over Frances Freeland's face.
"Now," she said, "you're chaffing me," and her eyes looked loving.

It is doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix's exordium, it is
doubtful if he had quite listened--he having so much to not listen to at
the Home Office that the practice was growing on him. A vested interest
to John was a vested interest, culture was culture, and security was
certainly security--none of them were symbols of age. Further, the
social question--at least so far as it had to do with outbreaks of youth
and enthusiasm--was too familiar to him to have any general significance
whatever. What with women, labor people, and the rest of it, he had no
time for philosophy--a dubious process at the best. A man who had to get
through so many daily hours of real work did not dissipate his energy
in speculation. But, though he had not listened to Felix's remarks, they
had ruffled him. There is no philosophy quite so irritating as that of
a brother! True, no doubt, that the country was in a bad way, but as to
vested interests and security, that was all nonsense! The guilty causes
were free thought and industrialism.

Having seen them all off to Hampstead, he gave his mother her good-night
kiss. He was proud of her, a wonderful woman, who always put a good face
on everything! Even her funny way of always having some new thing or
other to do you good--even that was all part of her wanting to make the
best of things. She never lost her 'form'!

John worshipped that kind of stoicism which would die with its head up
rather than live with its tail down. Perhaps the moment of which he was
most proud in all his life was that, when, at the finish of his school
mile, he overheard a vulgar bandsman say: "I like that young ----'s
running; he breathes through his ---- nose." At that moment, if he had
stooped to breathe through his mouth, he must have won; as it was he had
lost in great distress and perfect form.

When, then, he had kissed Frances Freeland, and watched her ascend the
stairs, breathless because she WOULD breathe through her nose to the
very last step, he turned into his study, lighted his pipe, and sat
down to a couple of hours of a report upon the forces of constabulary
available in the various counties, in the event of any further
agricultural rioting, such as had recently taken place on a mild scale
in one or two districts where there was still Danish blood. He worked
at the numbers steadily, with just that engineer's touch of mechanical
invention which had caused him to be so greatly valued in a department
where the evolution of twelve policemen out of ten was constantly
desired. His mastery of figures was highly prized, for, while it had
not any of that flamboyance which has come from America and the game of
poker, it possessed a kind of English optimism, only dangerous when, as
rarely happened, it was put to the test. He worked two full pipes long,
and looked at the clock. Twelve! No good knocking off just yet! He had
no liking for bed this many a long year, having, from loyalty to memory
and a drier sense of what became one in the Home Department, preserved
his form against temptations of the flesh. Yet, somehow, to-night he
felt no spring, no inspiration, in his handling of county constabulary.
A kind of English stolidity about them baffled him--ten of them remained
ten. And leaning that forehead, whose height so troubled Frances
Freeland, on his neat hand, he fell to brooding. Those young people with
everything before them! Did he envy them? Or was he glad of his own age?
Fifty! Fifty already; a fogey! An official fogey! For all the world like
an umbrella, that every day some one put into a stand and left there
till it was time to take it out again. Neatly rolled, too, with an
elastic and button! And this fancy, which had never come to him before,
surprised him. One day he, too, would wear out, slit all up his seams,
and they would leave him at home, or give him away to the butler.