The Balliols Read online

  Difficulties were made when she asked after Lucy Balliol. There had been a stream of journalists, suffragettes, inquisitive well-wishers to harass the hospital authorities. Even when she explained that she was the patient’s aunt, the difficulties were not removed. “Perhaps the girl’s father is here?“ she was at last desperately driven to demand. Not till her brother had actually identified her was she allowed to pass through into the waiting-room.

  There were half-a-dozen or so other people standing and sitting in the bare, melancholy room. There were two chairs before a table. Two men in the corner nudged each other and whispered. The story of Lucy Balliol was already common gossip.

  Stella looked enquiringly at her brother. He looked tired. She realized for the first time that he was in the middle forties; he was no longer young.

  “Jane doesn’t know yet,” he said. “She’s out playing bridge somewhere. No one seemed to know for certain where. I’ve not bothered to find her. Let her be happy while she could, I thought.”

  He said it with an attempt at the old lightness, with the shadow of a smile. He’s shy of being serious, Stella thought. He won’t give himself away.

  She asked him how Lucy was. He shrugged his shoulders. “She may live. She may not. You can’t tell. Doctors like to make a case seem as bad as possible. Then their patient talks of a marvellous recovery if he pulls through. She’s conscious: just. Enough to know she’s in pain; not enough to recognize me.

  Stella made no reference to the actual accident; how or why it could have happened. This was not the time for recriminations or for explanations. Nor was her brother the person to make accusations at such an hour. But of course he thinks I’m to blame. Naturally. I should, in his place. He’s angry and he’s resentful. He’s probably jealous. Because his daughter puts a cause in front of him. Because the Movement’s got more influence with her than he has. Well, I can’t help that. A great many young women feel that way.

  All the same Stella was astounded at Lucy’s conduct. What could have made her do it?

  They sat in silence; just as four years earlier they had sat in silence during the long train journey to the West of England to a dying father. Now, as then, it was Stella who broke its embarrassment by taking up a newspaper. And now, as then, when a nurse came into the waiting-room, it was to Stella not to Balliol that she spoke.

  “She’s asking for somebody called Stella. That would be you, wouldn’t it?”

  She looked at Balliol. They both remembered that earlier scene of which this was the repetition, once again there came the resentful look into Balliol’s eyes. “You and not me,” it said. “First my father. Then Lucy. And why? I’d been a good son. I’ve been a good father. After all I’ve done…” The look passed in an instant. “Go along,” he said.

  She was led down a long corridor into a long, white ward, lined with beds. Three quarters of the way down the ward was an arrangement of screens.

  “She’s there.”

  It was only seven hours since Stella had wished Lucy a casual good morning, as she had passed through to her own room. She had taken no more notice of her on this than on any other morning. And it may have been my last chance of seeing her, as she was.

  The first sight was not the shock that Stella had expected. The head was covered with bandages, but the actual face: mouth, eyes, nose and cheeks, had not been touched. She was still Lucy as she lay there: pale, weary, her lips drawn tight by pain. At the sight of Stella, a happy look came into her eyes. She tried to move, but the attempt brought back the thin-lipped look of pain. She made a sound.

  “She’s trying to say something,” the nurse said.

  Stella bent down her head, so that her ear was close to Lucy’s lips; close enough to hear the whispered, “Hand.”

  With Stella’s hand in hers, a look of peace came into Lucy’s face. She closed her eyes, the lips parted slightly. She breathed quietly. Her fingers were at first tight against Stella’s palm; gradually the tightness lessened. “I think she’s asleep.” The nurse bent over, nodded her head. Stella looked at her interrogatively.

  “Yes,” the nurse nodded, “you can go now. She should have a quiet night. It may make a difference.”

  The story of Lucy’s exploit was splashed in double column headlines across the morning papers. There were photographs of Lucy and her parents. There was an interview with Miss Draft. There was a leader on the suffragette movement, taking Lucy as its text. “Whatever one may feel about her wisdom, or rather the wisdom of her advisers, there can be no questioning the heroic courage of this girl or the depth of her devotion to the Cause.”

  Jane read through the account in silence, then flung the paper on the table.

  “They treat it as though it were a public show. They don’t realize what it is to us.”

  Balliol made no comment. He had no idea, in point of fact, how much or how little this tragedy meant to her; or in what way it touched her. He had been told that tragedies of this kind brought married people close to one another. Very often they only showed how far husband and wife had drifted away from one another. He and Jane got on very well together; they never quarrelled; they discussed amicably the various problems that their joint life presented. They enjoyed each other’s company. But the technique of teasing flippancy with which in earlier days he had half cloaked and half conveyed his very real devotion to her, had now become a fixed mould incapable of expressing real emotion. They could no longer speak seriously. They were strangers to one another.

  In her office Miss Draft was busily marshalling the maximum publicity. With the aid of the Encyclopaedia Britannica she had contributed to the Press a host of paragraphs and leaderettes, drawing parallel instances of other women who had risked their lives for the sake of a cause. She was in constant touch with the hospital. If the worst were to happen, she would not be unprepared. She had drawn up long lists showing the contributions in funds and followers each Branch was to make to the funeral procession.

  “It’ll be disappointing for you, won’t it, if all those preparations are wasted?” was Stella’s comment.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If they are not needed.”

  “One’s got to be prepared for the worst, hasn’t one?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Miss Draft looked suspiciously at Stella. She did not know whether or not she were being laughed at. She sniffed; then returned her attention to the Encyclopædia’s biographical note on Charlotte Corday.

  Through the next three days the outcome of Lucy’s struggle remained uncertain. Half the time she was unconscious. For hours on end she would murmur and toss deliriously. There was no consecutive thread of thought discernible behind her mutterings. Certain names were repeated: her parents, Ruth’s, Stella’s, the girls who had been in prison with her. It was Stella’s name that was most frequently on her lips.

  “It’s you that she’s really worrying over,” the doctor informed Stella.

  The news astonished Stella. She had seen so little of her niece. She had been her employer. But they had not been brought into particularly close contact. She had had no opportunities of being tyrannical or unjust. Anyhow, it could not be enmity that Lucy was cherishing. Otherwise she would not on that first night have relapsed so quickly into that easy sleep.

  “I don’t begin to understand it,” she told the doctor. Then, after a pause: “Does my brother know that it’s me she’s asked for?”

  “He knows she’s spoken of you, but not more than that.”

  “You’d better leave it, then, at that.”

  If the worst were to happen, Edward would want to think that his daughter’s last thoughts had been of him.

  For three days and four nights the fight continued. It was on the fourth morning that the long sleep that promised ultimate recovery supervened. Even so it was a slow, gradual recovery of strength. It was not for another week that Lucy was allowed to see visitors for more than a few minutes, and in the presence of a nurse
. When at last she was allowed to see Stella alone, it was a pale thin face that looked up, from the helmet of bandages.

  All the same, there was a light, a glow in her eyes that Stella had never seen before. She’s beautiful, not pretty—beautiful. I’d never realized it before. There was a proud smile on her lips, with the suggestion, Stella could not exactly say how or why, that the glow and the pride were alike suffused with tenderness.

  Lucy patted the chair beside her, then, curling over on her pillow, looked up at Stella.

  “You’re not angry with me any longer?”

  “Angry with you?”

  “You don’t think I’m a coward any longer: that I’m not worth anything, because I’ve been brought up soft: that I can’t be trusted?”

  “My dear child, what are you talking about?”

  Lucy did not notice the astonished note in Stella’s voice or her expression of complete incomprehension. She was conscious of nothing but the relief of being able at last to pour out the thoughts, feelings, aspirations, fear, that she had kept locked within her breast. She was vindicated. She could now speak freely. The words poured forth in an eager, unheeding torrent.

  “You understand, now, don’t you? I couldn’t be a coward, could I, or I wouldn’t have done that? It was just that they broke down my nerve the other time: in prison. They wore down my strength and patience; I wasn’t well. I could have stood it, if I’d not been sick. But that, on the top of everything. It was too much. Then when I came back and you wouldn’t let me be your secretary, when you didn’t seem to care whether I was there or not, when I saw that you’d never really seen how hard I was working for you—I never took the same trouble for Miss Draft.… I thought at first that you’d be proud of me, that you’d let me be your friend, take me into your confidence. I thought you’d understand. Even if the others didn’t. I used to picture when I was in prison the way you’d welcome me when I came out.…

  “Then, when I did come out, it wasn’t like that at all. I had to sit in that outer office with Miss Draft, and I thought: ‘So she doesn’t understand. Then I’ve got to prove it to her!’ But you wouldn’t give me a chance of proving it. You said you wanted me in the office. But that wasn’t the reason. You didn’t trust me. You thought I wasn’t any good. So I had to show you. It was against all the rules. But you’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?”

  “There was nothing to forgive.”

  “And I have shown you, haven’t I? You know now that I’m not a coward? I could not bear to have you thinking that of me.

  “You mean that you did that, simply to prove you weren’t a coward?”

  “To prove to you,” Lucy corrected her.

  “To me?”

  Lucy laughed happily. “Do you think I should have bothered to be a suffragette if it hadn’t been for you? It’s just because you’re there. If you believe in it, then I believe in it. Oh, you wouldn’t understand. But you’ve been a hero to me, so long; ever since I was a child. You wouldn’t have noticed. Why should you? I was just a kid. I thought you marvellous. Everything about you was marvellous: your clothes, the way you walked, the way you came into a room; the way you made people listen to you; oh, everything… I wanted you to notice me. I wanted to mean something to you. That’s why I became a suffragette: so that there would be something for me to share with you.”

  She spoke quickly, eagerly; with the flushed, emotional excitement of the invalid. Stella felt the colour rising to her cheeks. No one had ever spoken to her like this, felt for her like this. Except her father there had never been anyone personal in her life, to believe in her and by that belief make her capable of what would be otherwise outside her scope; to look up to her; for her to share things with, so that life would not be lonely any longer; someone who needed her, whom she needed. There had never been anyone in her life like that.

  “And you trust me now, don’t you?” the eager voice was saying. “You’ll take me into your confidence. You’ll let me work with you? I could help you in so many ways. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help you. It would be so marvellous!”

  It would be another life, thought Stella, to have someone who mattered to you, to whom you mattered; round whom you planned things; who relied on you and on whom you relied; someone that you could be yourself with; with whom you could relax, speak your true mind to, knowing that you would not be misunderstood. To be open instead of cautious; expansive, not reserved. Your life could only be full, if another fulfilled it for you.

  “You trust me now, don’t you?” Lucy whispered.

  “My precious one.…”

  Leaning forward, Stella gathered up the thin, small body and held it close, close, against the breast upon which since her father’s death no head had lain. If I try to speak, I’ll cry. It’s so long since I’ve felt anything. She rested her cheek for a moment against the girl’s soft hair, then gently laid her back upon the pillow.

  “I must go now,” she whispered.

  At the door Stella paused, looking back.

  In the girl’s eyes was a mingled look of pride, happiness, humility, tenderness, adoration. She raised her fingers to her lips, kissed them, fluttered them towards the lean-faced, grey-haired, strong-chinned woman.

  It was four years since Stella’s life had presented her with a personal problem, since she had stood at the window in a small bed-sitting-room looking out over the vast sea of London’s roofs and chimney stacks; its spires, its lighted windows, its dull murmur; its red flush cast upwards to the clouds; London and all it symbolized; wondering whether to accept Alan Cheyne’s proposal.

  A great deal of change, a great deal of drama had come her way during those four years. Then she had been an obscure woman; now she was one of the leaders of the Movement. She had been poor; now she had an independent income. Thirty girls had been under her control. Now thirty thousand owed her their allegiance. Her name was familiar enough for Punch quotation. Yet the actual setting of her existence had not altered. She was in the same small room with its narrow iron bedstead; its bare wash-hand stand; the chest of drawers from which a leaf for writing could be drawn; that was her desk; the one wicker chair, the linoleum-covered floor; her library, her wardrobe; the curtained corner where her half-dozen dresses hung; the one hard chair; the one neutral-coloured rug; the framed photograph of her father. A Picasso had supplanted the Medici reproduction of Rembrandt’s warrior, but there was no other change. She had not considered herself justified in spending money on herself. Beyond bare essentials everything must be given to the Cause.

  And just as the external change was negligible, so in its essentials was the problem that was set to her unchanged. Now, as then, personal happiness was contrasted with an impersonal sense of duty. And now, as then, the scale was lifting steadily against her. She knew how much easier, how much happier, how much fuller life would be for her, if Lucy were to be her lieutenant. She had never deluded herself. She had faced the looking-glass. She was not a fish: warm blood ran through her veins. She knew what she had missed, and in what measure. She knew her loneliness.

  It was indeed the honesty of that self-knowledge that was now weighing down the scales. She knew, by her own loneliness, how fiercely, how jealously, she would fight against its return. Nothing was more ruthless, acquisitive, possessive, jealous than the domination that women could exert over their juniors. How many girls had not been ruined by the selfishness of their mothers? That’s how I might behave. Lucy would become indispensable to me. I should be afraid of losing her. I should be suspicious. I should try to absorb her. I should try and keep away from her the men who would take her from me. I should ruin her life; thwart her instincts; spoil her chance of a natural happiness. I might suffice her now; but I couldn’t in five years’ time. Heaven knows what I might become, how I might treat her when the time came for her to go. It might not be that way, of course. But it might be. The risk’s too great, just because the temptation is so great. If I let her absorb herself in me, if I cajoled this need in me to b
e admired, to be looked up to, I might find myself in toils with which in my turn I should try and bind her. The risk’s too great. I must let her go.

  Next day she called upon her brother. His manner was as affable as always. But she could tell that she was not welcome; that the old jealousy started by her father’s preference for her had been reborn by his daughter’s attachment, and the accident for which he considered her responsible. His reception of her irritated her; for the very reason that he would never recognize how much he should owe to an interference that he would consider a presumption. She went straight to the point, bluntly, in the manner of a man.

  “You’ll think what I’m going to say an impertinence. I’m sorry. I can’t help that. It’s about Lucy. You’ll say it’s nothing to do with me. But I see a good many of the young women of to-day. I know how this business takes them. I know what it means to them. It’s not altogether what you think it is. It’s bound up with a lot of other things. And when it takes them badly, it can be dangerous. If they’re going to lead anything but exceptional lives afterwards, which Lucy isn’t. In five years’ time she’ll be like anybody else: married, with children. That’s to say, if she gets out of this right now. If she doesn’t, I won’t answer for the consequences. This business gets certain girls in the same way that religion got girls eighty years ago. They’re in the equivalent of convents before they know where they are. If you’re wise, you’ll get her right out of here, as soon as possible, and as far away. By the time she’s back, she’ll have forgotten all about it.”

  Balliol’s pale face seemed to grow paler, and thinner, as she spoke; as though he were contracting it like a concertina, in irritation. He waited quietly till she had finished.

  “Without taking the situation quite as seriously as you do, I had in my own mind decided to take very much the action that you suggest. Less, perhaps, for Lucy’s mental, than for her physical, health. As a very old friend of mine who is a lawyer in Penang has frequently invited any member of my family to visit him, and as his wife is going out to join him in a few weeks, it had occurred to me that I might, as the cliché has it, ‘avail myself of the twin opportunities’ and send Lucy out on the same ship with her.” He spoke in his most precise, punctilious tone of voice.