Jane, I must see you. We have to talk. I was a mad young fool to marry Bella and I honestly thought she had been killed. She swears she won’t let me go. She has installed herself in the house. I’m consulting lawyers. It’s an unusual case. I don’t know what they can make of it.
Send me word and I’ll be wherever you will come to me.
I love you, Joliffe.
I read and reread that letter. Then I folded it and put it with my mother’s in the sandalwood box.
Over tea in Mr. Sylvester Milner’s sitting room he showed me some pottery he had acquired.
“Look at this delicate tracery,” he said. “The forests and hills shrouded in mist. Is it not delicate and beautiful? Would you say it is the Sung period?”
I said that as far as I could say it would seem to be.
He nodded. “There’s no doubt. What a fascinating ghostly quality there is about this work.” He looked at me closely. “Your interest in it is returning a little, I think.”
“I never lost my interest.”
“That is how it works. The attraction is always there. You are growing away from your sorrow. That is the way. Has Joliffe communicated with you?”
“He has written.”
“And asked you to join him?”
I did not answer and he shook his head. “It is not the way,” he said. “He is like his father. He could be irresistible and charming. Different from his brothers. Redmond and I were the businessmen, and Joliffe’s father was the charmer. He lived in a world of his own making. He believed what he wanted to believe. It worked up to a point and then there comes the reckoning. You will not go to him.”
“How could I? He has a wife.”
“Yes, he has a wife, but he has asked you to return to him. That is like his father. Everything must come right for him—that is what he believes. Why? Because he is Joliffe who fascinates everyone—or almost everyone. He cannot believe that he cannot fascinate Fate. But Fate will not be lured by charm.
“‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ
Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy charm (if I may paraphrase)
wash out a word of it.’
“There are the plain facts. You thought yourself to be a wife and you are not. It was a tragic experience for you. Put it behind you. Start from here. In time the wound will cease to ache.”
“I shall try to do that.”
“If you truly try you will succeed. Now I am going to work you very hard, for work is the best healer. I have no housekeeper. I want you to take over in some measure the work your mother did. Mrs. Couch will help. She has intimated that she wants no strangers here. You will decide on meals when I have guests; you will join us often as there will be talk of business and you are learning that. You will continue to read the books I give you and perhaps accompany me to sales. Your life will be so busy that you will have little time for grief. This would be what your mother would want. Do not see Joliffe. I have written to him telling him I will not receive him here. He must get his affairs in order. Will you try to take my advice?”
“I am sure,” I told him, “that your advice is good, and I will do my best.”
“Then we have made a bargain.”
THE CONVENIENT MARRIAGE
I
I tried to keep the bargain. Joliffe did not write again. Often I walked in the forest and my footsteps invariably took me to that ruin where we had sheltered and first met. I used to hope that I would find him there, that I would hear his voice calling me. If he had come to me I am sure I should have forgotten everything but my love for him. I looked for letters every day; when I was near the station if a train came in I would watch the people coming out hoping that one of them would be Joliffe.
But he did not come or write. I wondered what was happening in Kensington and if Bella was with him. At one moment I upbraided him to myself. He had not come because his uncle had threatened to disinherit him if he did. At another I feared that he would return and that I would throw all convention aside and go to him.
I worked hard. I studied books and the objects of art which were brought to the showroom. I learned as quickly as I could. I looked for and won Mr. Sylvester’s approval. I thought: He is right. This is the crutch on which I can lean until I grow stronger.
He entertained more often than before and our guests were not all those concerned in his profession. He had become more neighborly and he visited and was visited by people who lived round about. Our immediate neighbor was Squire Merrit who owned a large estate. He was a great favorite of Mrs. Couch’s for he was a good trencherman and never failed to show his appreciation of her dishes. During the season he would send a brace or two of pheasants over to her by one of his servants and he used to say that no one could cook a pheasant as she could and he hoped he’d be invited to share these.
Mrs. Couch would purr and murmur as she rocked back and forth in her chair and said that it was like the old days when gentlemen were gentlemen. She much preferred him to some of the men and women who came to talk about Art. I didn’t agree, although Squire Merrit was a jolly enough man. I found much more gratification when I was asked to attend a dinner party—as I often was—and could join intelligently in the conversation. Sometimes out walking I would catch a glimpse of the beautiful birds in Squire Merrit’s woods and I was sorry to think that they were being carefully nurtured only to be shot.
When the season started, we often heard the sound of guns. I would be glad when it was over. Mrs. Couch, however, rocked back and forth and expounded on the ways of cooking pheasant.
She had done a great deal to help me since I had been back. Her affection was warm and genuine. She would shake her head often over “that Mr. Joliffe.” But I could see that she was fond of him and she did not adopt that censorious attitude towards him which Mr. Sylvester did, and I liked her for it.
She had always been interested in what was in the future and often at tea she would make us all turn our cups upside down and then she would read the future in the leaves. Sometimes she used the cards as well and would lay them out on the kitchen table and clucking over the spades and hearts.
Dear Mrs. Couch, she had been fond of my mother and had taken on herself the duty to look after me as best she could.
I began to feel that in spite of my dire misfortune I was lucky in having such a household to return to where I might lick my wounds and prepare myself for whatever was to come.
It was a weekend. Squire Merrit was entertaining a shooting party to which Mr. Sylvester had been invited but he had declined the invitation. He confided to me that he preferred to see the picture of a beautiful bird on a vase or a scroll rather than lying dead on the grass for a dog to retrieve.
I was in the kitchen with Mrs. Couch and we were discussing the next day’s dinner as friends of Mr. Sylvester were expected.
“If it’s that Mr. Lavers,” Mrs. Couch was saying, “he’s fond of a good roast. Nothing fancy mind. He likes his food plain. A good bit of roast ribs of beef would suit him I reckon and I’ll make some of my own horse radish. I’ll have to give that Amy a talking to. She’s getting that absent-minded. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear she was expecting…”