By the time they had returned to Martingale she had pulled herself together again and the black pall had lifted. She was restored to her normal condition of confidence and assurance. She went early to bed and, in the conviction of her present mood; she could almost believe that he might come to her. She told herself that it would be impossible in his father's house, an act of folly on his part, an intolerable abuse of hospitality on hers.
But she waited in the darkness. After a while she heard footsteps on the stairs - his footsteps and Deborah's. Brother and sister were laughing softly together.
They did not even pause as they passed her door.
Upstairs in the low white-painted bedroom which had been his since childhood Stephen stretched himself on his bed.
"I'm tired," he said.
"Me too." Deborah yawned and sat down on the bed beside him. "It was rather a grim dinner-party. I wish Mummy wouldn't do it."
"They're all such hypocrites."
"They can't help it. They were brought up that way. Besides, I don't think that Eppy and Mr. Hinks have much wrong with them."
"I suppose I made rather a fool of myself," said Stephen.
"Well, you were rather vehement.
Rather like Sir Galahad plunging to the defense of the wronged maiden, except that she was probably more sinning than sinned against."
"You don't like her, do you?" asked Stephen.
"My sweet, I haven't thought about it.
She just works here. I know that sounds very reactionary to your enlightened notions but it isn't meant to be. It's just that I'm not interested in her one way or the other, nor she, I imagine, in me."
"I'm sorry for her." There was a trace of truculence in Stephen's voice.
"That was pretty obvious at dinner," said Deborah dryly.
"It was their blasted complacency that got me down. And that Liddell woman.
It's ridiculous to put a spinster in charge of a Home like St. Mary's."
"I don't see why. She may be a little limited but she's kind and conscientious.
Besides, I should have thought St. Mary's already suffered from a surfeit of sexual experience."
"Oh, for heaven's sake don't be facetious, Deborah!"
"Well, what do you expect me to be?
We only see each other once a fortnight.
It's a bit hard to be faced with one of Mummy's duty dinner-parties and have to watch Catherine and Miss Liddell sniggering together because they thought you'd lost your head over a pretty maid.
That's the kind of vulgarity Liddell would particularly relish. The whole conversation will be over the village by tomorrow."
"If they thought that they must be mad.
I've hardly seen the girl. I don't think I've spoken to her yet. The idea is ridiculous!"
"That's what I meant. For heaven's sake, darling, keep your crusading instincts under control while you're at home. I should have thought that you could have sublimated your social conscience at the hospital without bringing it home. It's uncomfortable to live with, especially for those of us who haven't got one."
"I'm a bit on edge today," said Stephen.
"I'm not sure I know what to do."
It was typical of Deborah to know at once what he meant.
"She is rather dreary, isn't she?
Why don't you close the whole affair gracefully: I'm assuming that there is an affair to close."
"You know damn well that there is -or was. But how?"
"I've never found it particularly difficult.
The art lies in making the other person believe that he has done the chucking.
After a few weeks I practically believe it myself."
"And if they won't play?"
" Then have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' "
Stephen would have liked to have asked when and if Felix Hearne would be persuaded that he had done the chucking.
He reflected that in this, as in other matters, Deborah had a ruthlessness that he lacked.
"I suppose I'm a coward about these things," he said. "I never find it easy to shake people off, even party bores."
"No," replied his sister. "That's your trouble. Too weak and too susceptible.
You ought to get married. Mummy would like it really. Someone with money if you can find her. Not stinking, of course, just beautifully rich."
"No doubt. But who?"
"Who indeed."
Suddenly Deborah seemed to lose interest in the subject. She swung herself up from the bed and went to lean against the window-ledge. Stephen watched her profile, so like his own yet so mysteriously different, outlined against the blackness of the night. The veins and arteries of the dying day were stretched across the horizon. From the garden below he could smell the whole rich infinitely sweet distillation of an English spring night.
Lying there in the cool darkness he shut his eyes and gave himself up to the peace of Martingale. At moments like this he understood perfectly why his mother and Deborah schemed and planned to preserve his inheritance. He was the-first Maxie to study medicine. He had done what he wanted and the family had accepted it. He might have chosen something even less lucrative although it was difficult to imagine what. In time, if he survived the grind, the hazards, the rat race of competition, he might become a consultant.
He might even become sufficiently successful to support Martingale himself. In the meantime they would struggle on as best they could, making little housekeeping economies that would never intrude on his own comfort, cutting down the donations to charity, doing more of the gardening to save old Purvis’s three shillings an hour, employing untrained girls to help Martha. None of it would inconvenience him very much, and it was all to ensure that he, Stephen Maxie, succeeded his father as Simon Maxie had succeeded his. If only he could have enjoyed Martingale for its beauty and its peace without being chained to it by this band of responsibility and guilt!
There was the sound of slow careful footsteps on the stairs and then a knock on the door. It was Martha with the nightly hot drinks. Back in his childhood old Nannie had decided that a hot milk drink last thing at night would help to banish the terrifying and inexplicable nightmares from which, for a brief period, he and Deborah had suffered. The nightmares had yielded in time to the more tangible fears of adolescence, but the hot drinks had become a family habit. Martha, like her sister before her, was convinced that they were the only effective talisman against the real or imagined dangers of the night. Now she set down her small tray cautiously. There was the blue Wedgwood mug that Deborah used and the old George V coronation mug that Grandfather Maxie had bought for Stephen. "I've brought your Ovaltine too, Miss Deborah," Martha said. (‹I thought I should find you here." She spoke in a low voice as if they shared a conspiracy. Stephen wondered whether she guessed that they had been discussing Catherine. This was rather like the old comfortable Nannie bringing in the night drinks and ready to stay and talk. But yet not really the same. The devotion of Martha was more voluble, more self-conscious and less acceptable. It was a counterfeit of an emotion that had been as simple and necessary to him as the air he breathed. Remembering this he thought also that Martha needed her occasional sop.