Radclyffe Hall: The Complete Novels

By Radclyffe Hall

This ebook compiles Radclyffe Hall's complete novels, including "The Well of Loneliness", "Adam's Breed", "The Master of the House" and "The Unlit Lamp".

Radclyffe Hall was an English writer whose novel "The Well of Loneliness" created a scandal and was banned for a time in Britain for its treatment of lesbianism.

This edition has been professionally formatted and contains several tables of contents. The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pandora's Box
• Release date: Dec 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9789897786877

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cover-image, Radclyffe Hall_The Complete Novels

Radclyffe Hall

THE COMPLETE NOVELS

Table of Contents

The Forge

The Unit Lamp

A Saturday Life

Adam’s Breed

The Well of Loneliness

The Master of the House

The Sixth Beatitude

The Forge

First published: 1924

Book 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Book 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Book 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Book 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Book 1

Chapter 1

1

Hilary Brent puffed at his pipe and studied his herbaceous borders. Through the little lumps of newly hoed earth and clay small green spikes were making their appearance. Hilary stooped down and touched one slim shoot with a large but tender finger.

‘Delphiniums!’ he murmured contentedly.

He straightened his back and thrust his hands into his pockets, observing with sympathetic eyes as he did so the efforts of a young thrush to tug an unwilling worm out of the lawn. Having satisfied himself that the worm was gradually disappearing in the direction of the thrush’s interior, he turned and walked slowly down the garden.

Presently he paused beside the head gardener, who was obviously busy over some mystery among the vegetables. The man looked up and touched his cap, then bent again to his task.

‘The year’s on the turn, Macgregor,’ remarked Hilary in a hopeful voice.

‘Frost was heavy last night,’ replied Macgregor, noncommittally.

‘The syringa bushes look as though they’d do jolly well this year.’

‘They needs a lot of moisture. I don’t think them syringas have properly recovered from the drought last summer.’

‘Oh! I don’t know. That large shrub in front of the house is covered with leaves already.’

‘You can’t judge by that, sir,’ said Macgregor lugubriously. ‘Like as not they’ll all shrivel away if we don’t get plenty of rain soon.’

‘Well, anyhow, Macgregor, the herbaceous borders will be a regular glory later on.’

Macgregor shook his head.

‘Might be if I could get this soil properly worked, but the clay in these parts is something awful, it fair breaks your back to lift a shovelful.’

Hilary sighed. He wished Macgregor would be more responsive, more quick to catch the spirit of spring that he himself had felt to be everywhere from the moment he got up that morning. Macgregor was an excellent gardener, and, of course, he never really felt as despondent as he seemed; otherwise, Hilary argued, he must have died of melancholia long ago. Still, a hopeful word or two, or even just a smile would have been pleasant on this delightful day.

He turned away, and whistling to his sable collie, he climbed a low fence at the foot of the garden and set out for a long walk. The dog barked and bounded. Hilary found a stick which he threw for him to retrieve, but in a short time the collie got bored, and, lying down, began to chew the stick, portions of which he swallowed.

‘Stop that!’ commanded Hilary in a tone of authority.

Reuben grinned and chewed more vigorously than ever; he had the measure of his master’s foot to a nicety.

The sun felt actually hot, and Hilary, in his heavy tweeds, began to be less inclined for the long walk over stubbly fields. His eye roved for a suitable place to rest, which he finally discovered under a hedge. He sat down on a fallen tree, and knocking out his pipe, refilled it. He stretched his long, thin legs more comfortably, and taking off his hat smoothed back his fair hair. The sun slanted down on him between the bare branches, bringing the nervous lines around his clean-shaven lips into relief. At that moment he looked every day of his thirty-nine years. His jaw was a little gaunt, his nose high-bridged and arrogant. But perhaps the most arresting thing about him was his curious, light hazel eyes; they had a fierce, caged look. Someone had once said that Hilary reminded them of the golden eagle at the Zoo.

At the moment only one of those queer eyes showed, the other being covered by a black patch. This patch was the only trophy that its wearer had brought back from the war, and, curiously enough, it was not unbecoming, or so his friends thought.

He turned, and leaning his back against a cleft branch, began to think about himself. Reuben lay beside him panting heavily. Hilary’s mood was changing, as his moods always did, now he felt slightly depressed. A sense of futility possessed him; he himself was rather futile, he decided. He supposed that had he not come into so generous an income when he was twenty-one, he might have made more of his talent for writing. As it was he had done very little. A few slight books of his poetry had been published and well reviewed, presumably on their merits, since he knew no literary critics. Still, he had never been recognized as a poet of any importance, perhaps he wasn’t worth it!

Yet, after all, he had been fairly busy in his life, hitherto. He had travelled half over the world, he had hunted enthusiastically for a time before the war, until he had decided that yachting was better worth while. He had had innumerable love affairs, in addition to which he had been an ardent collector of anything that had struck him as being sufficiently rare and interesting. His first serious collection had been pewter, which he had followed up with old pictures. Next he had turned his attention to valuable library editions, then to early oak furniture. And last, but not least, to Susan Wentworth, whom he had married at the outbreak of hostilities with Germany. Looking back over his past life with a mixture of tenderness and amusement, it seemed to him that he had married Susan and joined up very much in the same breath. Yes, he had certainly been fairly busy hitherto.

But his experience at the front, which he felt ought to have been epoch-making, had been a distinct disappointment. It had lasted barely two months; in fact, he had never seen a Boche at close quarters at all. A well-directed shell on the barn where he and others had been billeted for the night, a wound necessitating an operation which had thrown the focus of his left eye out of commission, formed the sum total of the war record that he so much resented. He had come home to Susan and a job at the Censor’s Office, until, with the signing of the Armistice, he and she had decided to leave London for ever and buy Bambury Hall, in Devonshire.

They had both felt so tired at the end of the war, especially Susan. She had said that the noise of the traffic got on her nerves, that London was full of nasty memories because of air raids, that everyone looked either grief-stricken or indecently frivolous; in fact, that the only possible life for weary folk like Hilary and her was a country house with lots of garden. He had agreed with her at the time and had thought it a delightful idea, only now he was feeling less tired, and so was she.

He looked at his watch, it was nearly lunch-time. He got up, and brushing the leaves and twigs from his coat, turned in the direction of home.

2

Susan was waiting in the oak-paneled dining-room when he got back.

‘You’re late. I began to feel rather worried,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid the lunch will be spoilt.’

He glanced at the clock, he was over half an hour late.

‘And it’s Mrs. Jones’s afternoon out,’ she added reproachfully.

‘So it is. I got thinking about things; sorry, Susan. What have you been doing with yourself all the morning?’

She rang the bell before replying.

‘You can bring up the lunch at once,’ she ordered, as the parlor-maid opened the door. ‘Oh, me?’ I’ve been pottering about the house. I did the flowers and ordered some coal, and then Mrs. Jones said she must have a kitchen-maid or go, and I reasoned with her for twenty minutes, but I think without success. Then Macgregor came up to the house to report that Benson’s cows had broken down the fence again; he says it’s the fourth time, and he wants to speak to you about it. Oh! then the new mowing machine arrived from the station with fifteen shillings to pay for cartage, and I hadn’t got change and neither had the man, so I said you’d send it later. I think that’s all, just the usual sort of things,’ she finished with a little laugh.

‘Well, let’s eat,’ he suggested, sitting down at the table.

A long chocolate dachshund lady got up slyly from before the fire in which she had been taking illicit enjoyment for some little time, unobserved. Walking with a careful, noiseless tread to the table she sat up on her haunches and planted her fat paws on her mistress’s knee. Her expressive eyes were full of soul as they looked upwards; she suggested an attitude of prayer.

Susan glanced down and smiled.

‘Go away, Sieglinde,’ she said, giving her a push. It’s food, not me, you fraud!’

Sieglinde regained her balance with the dexterity of a tight-rope walker. She sighed and whinnied under her breath continuously, while her paws took a firmer grip of Susan’s knee. The sable collie, sitting aloof, watched the little comedy with disapproving eyes.

‘Will you be quiet, Sieglinde!’ cried Susan in exasperation.

Susan Brent was not more than six years her husband’s junior, yet she looked like a girl of nineteen at times. She looked like this now, ridiculously young, as she sat huddled up in the large oak chair at one end of the refectory table. Her glossy brown hair was straight and bobbed, and turned inwards ever so slightly at the tips, fitting close to her head like a little cap. Her large grey eyes were calm and innocent, her mouth rather demure. But the twitch that would sometimes appear at its corners and the firm modelling of her rounded chin suggested that she possessed a sense of humor and a strong will of her own. Hilary was thinking this now as he looked at her.

They had met for the first time at the house of mutual friends when she had been an art student at the Slade, and he had just returned from a prolonged trip abroad. She had struck him as being too independent, he remembered, when they had talked together over tea. An orphan, with enough money to live as she pleased, she had elected to study painting and to live in Chelsea. Several of her pictures had already been accepted by exhibitions, and she had been in a fair way to make a name for herself as a flower painter. They had met several times at the same friend’s house, and after a while he had begun to think her pretty. Finally, he had decided that she was quite beautiful, had proposed, and been accepted.

She had gone out to France in the early days of the war, but had hurried home to look after the wounded Hilary. As soon as he was better she had become a Wren, and had contented herself with work in England.

They had lived in a service flat while the war lasted, not attempting housekeeping. It was the coming of the Armistice that had made them yearn for complete domesticity, and they had enjoyed this complete domesticity now for three years, buried in an Elizabethan house in the heart of Devonshire. They had taken this house partly because it suited Hilary’s enormous oak furniture and provided accommodation for his pewter, his pictures, and, above all, for his large and valuable library.

Susan herself had had very few possessions; still, there had been her painting to consider, so that in addition to all the other requisites, their house must have a large and airy barn, capable of being turned into a studio. Such a barn they had found at Bambury Hall, only now somehow Susan painted very little. Perhaps it was because for the first time in her life she found herself living cheek by jowl with flowers. She had begun to wonder lately whether familiarity did indeed breed contempt; there was a lot of truth in those old proverbs!

They finished their meal and got up.

‘I think I’ll just peg away a bit at my book,’ said Hilary.

Susan yawned.

‘Yes, do, darling. I’m going to call on Lady Lindhurst.’

He nodded.

‘Take the small car and drive yourself, will you? The Daimler’s hors de combat.’

‘All right, but you’ll have to keep Sieglinde with you, then, this afternoon; I’m afraid of that beast of a Lindhurst cat, and I can’t leave my poor lamb all alone in the car. You’d better take her in the library, if you don’t mind; I’m always so afraid of her getting out and trying to find me. Good-bye, angel,’ she said, stooping to kiss the long muzzle, just above the nose.

‘Come on, Sieglinde,’ said Hilary, snapping his fingers. But Sieglinde pretended she was deaf.

‘Go with father,’ coaxed Susan. ‘Kind father! Go along, darling.’

Sieglinde’s tail quivered slightly, otherwise she might have been modelled in bronze.

‘You’ll have to fetch a lead,’ said Susan. ‘There’s one out in the hall.’

Hilary obeyed, and clipping the lead on to the collar, he tugged gently. At this indignity Sieglinde lay down flat and finally rolled on her back.

‘It’s no use, dear, you’ll have to carry her,’ sighed Susan.

With infinite care Hilary collected Sieglinde inch by inch into his arms, but

Sieglinde uttered two short, piercing shrieks, and Susan looked at him reproachfully.

‘I didn’t hurt her,’ said Hilary.

‘No,’ said Susan, ‘but she thought you were going to, and in any case her feelings are hurt at being left behind.’

He turned towards the library, carrying Sieglinde.

‘Take care of yourself,’ he cautioned. ‘Don’t drive too fast, and remember that dangerous bend round by the post office.’

She kissed the back of his neck.

‘I’ll be home to tea,’ she told him.

3

He seated himself at the writing-table, surrounded by his book-lined walls, and stared out through the long, low windows. A white mist was already creeping up over the sloping pasture lands that fell away from the old terraced garden. The poet in him never failed to respond to the charm and peace of this particular view. He had written verses about it, and had imagined all sorts of strange things in connection with it. He felt that he had seen it many times in a previous incarnation — that every line of the ground, almost every twig of grass was unnaturally familiar. Sometimes he would dream about it at night, and always he loved it. He discussed all this with Susan and she never laughed, she was so understanding; Susan was a darling! As a matter of fact, she might very well have laughed had she been disposed to do so, for if Hilary had lived during a past life in as many places as he thought he recognized in this one, then the means of locomotion at that time must have been considerably better than history leads us to suppose.

He took up his manuscript and began to write. Sieglinde, tethered to the table leg in case she should escape, kept up a low and dismal whining, intended to convey her anxiety regarding Susan’s safety. Hilary tried to soothe her with caresses and reassuring words. This only made matters worse, however, for thinking she detected sympathy in the crooning voice, she lost all self-control, and laying back her ears she howled. But in spite of the heartbroken dachshund, Hilary felt inspired.

‘If she’d only stop yelling,’ he thought, ‘I could do really fine work this afternoon.’

He suggested to himself that he was deaf, that he couldn’t hear Sieglinde even if he tried, and had almost proved to his own satisfaction the theory of mind over matter when someone knocked at the door. ‘Come in!’ he said mechanically, without looking up.

***

It was Macgregor. No sooner had the man set foot across the threshold than Sieglinde’s howl turned to a paroxysm of barking. Reuben, who had been quiet hitherto, now joined in, and the noise they made was appalling. Neither of them for one moment mistook Macgregor for a burglar; on the contrary, they both knew him quite well and liked him; but the dogs had their own jokes at Bambury Hall.

‘Shut up! Damn you both!’ thundered Hilary.

Macgregor coughed.

‘Please, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, what is it?’

‘Those cows of Benson’s have been and knocked down the fence again. I’ve just driven two of ‘em off my artichoke bed. They’ve made an awful litter of the place.’

‘Better get the fence mended at once,’ suggested Hilary, only half turning round.

‘Can’t be done, sir. Watson’s gone to his mother’s funeral, and it’s early closin’.’

‘Then run some barbed wire across the gap — anything.’

‘We’ve used up all those three rolls of wire we got to keep the rabbits out, and they’ve been at the vegetables in spite of it!’

‘Well, for God’s sake think of something else, I’m busy,’ exclaimed Hilary irritably.

But Macgregor had not had his say out.

‘Beg pardon, sir, but I’d like you to see for yourself the mess those cows has made of my artichoke bed, so as you can write to Benson and tell him you’ll sue him if he lets his cattle carry on this way. It’s disheartening to a man to have a week’s work trodden down in twenty minutes; I can tell you it takes the heart out of you, sir.’ Hilary pushed back his chair with a groan.

‘Oh, very well, I’ll come,’ he said.

Chapter 2

The Brents were popular in the neighborhood, remarkably so for people who had no family ties with Devonshire. It had soon become evident that they were likely to be an acquisition, and they were received accordingly. People thought it rather a pity that Susan bobbed her hair; but she looked so young and pretty, and was so unaffected and hospitable, that the county could not find it in its heart to be severe.

Hilary was the sort of man who could be popular anywhere if he chose, and in his first flush of enthusiasm for everything rural he had made himself particularly agreeable to everyone. He danced well, rode well, talked well when he liked to exert himself, and, moreover, he had the rare gift of feeling, for the moment anyhow, a real interest in other people’s hobbies.

But although they had not yet admitted it to each other, the Brents were beginning to suspect that they did not really belong to this life or it to them. They had neither of them tried living entirely in the country before. As a bachelor Hilary had gone to Leicestershire to hunt, to Scotland to fish, and to Norfolk or somewhere else to shoot. But these short visits to rural places, solely for the purpose of sport, bore about the same relation to the real country life as a Rolls-Royce to a motor-bus. For one thing, you didn’t miss people when you went to stay away for a big shoot, because the people you wanted were usually there too. Hilary was beginning to be puzzled as to why it was that these people you wanted never seemed to live near you unless you lived in London or Paris.

He found, too, that there was a great difference in the people who actually gave the shoots when you saw them frequently at other times, in fact, when they became your neighbors. Under these circumstances you grew to know them more as they really were in the intimacy of the home, grew to know them when they were being just themselves, thoroughly limited and dull. You couldn’t very well refuse to go and see them unless they were giving a large house party, in which you could lose them among their more interesting guests; they expected you to enter into everything, and only by doing so could you hope to be popular. In the spring and early summer they would blossom forth into bridge and tennis and a series of dull dinners. Small dances and large garden parties were also in vogue, and these functions Hilary hated.

Then Hilary was quite hopeless in the rôle of country squire. He knew nothing about farming, fencing, artificial manures and tiresome tenants. He had started out with high hopes of success, feeling sure that no Englishman could fail to take naturally to pursuits so eminently British. He came of a very old family of landed gentry, but it was being gradually borne in upon him that his ignorance was costing him a great deal of money, and that whereas his ancestors had made their estates pay them, he on the contrary was paying his estate. He began to examine his bank book at unusually frequent intervals, alarmed as he did so at his diminished balance. He understood for the first time what must be the feelings of a parent wren while trying to feed a young cuckoo. Bambury Hall was terribly greedy.

Susan, accustomed to the life of an art student, and afterwards to the strenuous work of the war, had her moments of intense boredom, which had been growing frequent of late. But she was by far the more placid of the two, and more inclined to take things as she found them. She at all events was free from the financial responsibilities, and her happy-go-lucky artist’s temperament rendered her profoundly indifferent to ways and means. She would let the cook rob her any day rather than face an unpleasant quarter of an hour. Her mind was never concentrated on household matters for more than five minutes; it was usually wandering in the direction of Hilary. If he was not with her she would begin wondering where he was and what he was doing, and if he was with her he claimed all her attention as his right. She argued that no wife could be companion and housekeeper in one, and there was no denying that Hilary expected plenty of companionship. For one thing he liked Susan to read his poems aloud to him, and as he was constantly writing new ones, this in itself was an occupation; and for another he was always full of new ideas about which he wanted to talk to her, and of course she had to drop anything she was doing and listen when he wanted to talk.

Susan was as much in love with Hilary as she had been when they married, yet at times now she felt vague longings for her old life, for the atmosphere of the studios, heavy with turpentine and cheap cigarette smoke, for hastily snatched meals cooked over a gas ring, and above all for freedom from her overbearing servants. She was as ignorant in the management of servants as Hilary in the management of an estate. When she had been a student one motherly soul had done all that was necessary for her, and done it better, or so she was beginning to think, than the five lazy females who ruled over Bambury.

‘Yet I wanted to live in the country,’ she thought. ‘I wanted Hilary to buy this place. I was out entirely to get what I wanted, and I do adore Bambury; but—’

‘Let’s go away for a bit,’ she remarked one evening. ‘Suppose we do a month in London, Hilary? We might stay at the Savoy, the cooking’s good there.’

Hilary shook his head.

‘Can’t afford it, darling, just at the moment,’ he said decidedly.

Susan looked at him in surprise; she had never heard anything like this before. Hilary was very well off; it had never been his way to say: ‘Can’t afford it.’ She became thoughtful. Of course, during the war things had been different, there had been so little of anything left to spend money on. And they had not minded that very much either, what with their work and the excitement of living through a great upheaval. It dawned on her that it was only since the coming of peace that nice people had had time to grow acquisitive again.

‘When the guns stopped booming in France, and the bombs stopped dropping on England, there was a sudden great stillness in the air,’ said Susan dreamily, ‘and through that stillness we began to hear the echoes of our comfortable pasts!’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ inquired Hilary.

Susan sighed.

‘I should have liked a month at the Savoy,’ she said.

‘When the guns stopped booming in France, and the bombs stopped dropping on England, that’s not a bad line for a poem,’ said Hilary thoughtfully. ‘And I like that idea of yours about the air being so still that one could hear the echoes of one’s past.’

‘I should have liked a month at the Savoy,’ Susan repeated.

Hilary wrinkled his brow.

‘I don’t understand it, Susie, I’ve never felt poor before; I suppose it’s the hellish Income Tax.’

‘But, my dear, are we never going to be able to get away from here?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say that, darling; I said that at the moment we oughtn’t to run to it. That new fencing round the woods is going to cost an awful lot of money, and Thomas says I ought to rebuild all the cow-sheds.’

‘I think that Thomas lies,’ said Susan. ‘I wish you’d get a new bailiff, Hilary.’

‘I don’t know that he’d be any better than Thomas; the trouble is that if he does lie I don’t know enough to find him out. It’s curious, now I should have thought I’d have made an excellent farmer!’

‘And yet we did want to come here, didn’t we, Hilary?’ mused Susan.

‘Good Lord, yes, and we both love it, only I’m beginning to think that it may be a bit on the large side. Don’t you find the house pretty big to run, Susan?’

‘Well, it is rather big,’ she admitted.

Hilary went on:

‘We ought to have taken a comfortable little house nearer London. I see lots of them advertised in Country Life this week. There’s one somewhere in Hertfordshire that I want to show you the picture of; it’s got two bathrooms.’

‘But, darling, there were your pictures and furniture and books to consider; we simply had to have big rooms.’

Hilary scratched his chin.

‘I got a good deal of stuff into my flat in the Albany. How on earth did I manage that, I wonder?’

‘Well, you said you managed it by storing all the big bits at Taylor’s. You said you didn’t like that because you wanted to live surrounded by your collections; and besides, your storage bill used to come to an income; it was a frightful waste of money, I think.’

Hilary considered.

‘We might have taken a modern house,’ he suggested, ‘instead of a place like this that’s always falling down around our ears.’

‘My dear Hilary!’ protested Susan, really shocked, ‘one doesn’t put priceless early oak into a modern redbrick villa. No, I couldn’t allow that, darling!’

Hilary stood up and his face became stern.

‘We took this place because of my mania for collecting things. If I were an old lady instead of a youngish man, Susan, I believe I’d collect empty cardboard boxes and bits of string. I’d have to collect something, it’s a disease!’

‘But you’ve collected such delicious things, Hilary. Look at them!’

Hilary waved this aside.

‘I’ve collected and collected and collected,’ he went on grimly, ‘and all the time I was doing it you can’t think what pleasure it gave me. Why, there’s not a piece of furniture in this house that’s not associated in my mind with some ripping acquisitive thrill, because I got it cheap or because I cut some other collector out, or because it’s the only bit of its kind outside a museum. To this day I can’t stop it. I’m an oak maniac, that’s what I am; you oughtn’t to encourage me, Susan, the way you do. Look at this enormous house! Anyone might suppose that we’d bought it for ourselves, but they’d be dead wrong; we bought it for our possessions.’

‘There was my studio to consider too, Hilary, you had to think of me there, you know. A smaller house would never have had such a divine Henry VII barn!’

‘A studio in which you never paint,’ he reminded her discontentedly.

‘Oh, I do sometimes, only I seem to be so busy these days, and I don’t know why it is, but I don’t feel the same urge to put flowers on canvas as I did.’

‘You see too many of them, that’s why; you’re suffering from a kind of flower surfeit.’

‘I’ve been thinking lately,’ said Susan, ‘that flowers never look so alluring as they do in Piccadilly Circus with the dirty old woman sitting behind their basket.’

‘And I’ve been thinking,’ he retorted, ‘that the country never seems so desirable as when you remember it in a fog at Hyde Park Corner.’

They both laughed.

The clock in the hall struck ten. As the last stroke died away Sieglinde rose spook-like from her cushion and crept towards the door.

‘No, darling, not yet,’ said Susan persuasively. Sieglinde fidgeted, wagging her tail.

‘Oh, lie down, do, Sieglinde!’ ordered Hilary impatiently, but he knocked out his pipe all the same.

Sieglinde breathed audibly and moved a little nearer to the door, glancing back over her shoulder as she did so.

‘Come here!’ called Susan. ‘It’s not beddie yet. Go to your cushion, naughty girl!’

Sieglinde obeyed as though in mortal terror. She dragged her stomach along the ground, and finally subsided, whining through her nose. Hilary started to refill his pipe, but changed his mind. Sieglinde was permeating the atmosphere with waves of discontent.

‘Sleepy?’ asked Susan, with one eye on Sieglinde.

‘Not really; still, we’d better go to bed, perhaps.’

‘I think so, it’s ten o’clock,’ said Susan with a note of relief in her voice.

Chapter 3

1

The promise of spring did not last very long; a few days later the snow lay thick along the herbaceous borders.

‘Ugh! It’s cold!’ shivered Susan, warming her hands on the breakfast plates.

Hilary did not answer, he was in one of his black moods. Lines of irritation showed round his mouth and eyes, and his lips drooped sulkily at the corners. Susan glanced at him as she handed him his coffee, which he accepted glumly. Then he reached across the table for the sugar basin.

‘I put in two lumps,’ she warned.

Without replying he dropped in a third. He knew that this would make the coffee too sweet, but he longed to put someone in the wrong this morning. He hated this sudden change back to winter again, it made him feel shriveled.

Susan, who knew his moods by heart, held her peace, feeling certain that a storm was brewing. Given the slightest provocation Hilary might flare into a sudden fit of temper, might even break something, one never knew. His tempers were often ludicrous and rather pathetic, so utterly futile and without justification. When he felt happy and at peace with the world he would sometimes discuss their psychology with Susan and laugh. She had found, however, that it was very unwise to be the one to start this discussion. He had always been like this, it seemed, a victim of quick reactions. Once as a very little boy he had rolled in the mud to express his rage. He was a queer, jumbled-up kind of creature; capable of great happiness and unhappiness, of tearing good spirits and deep depression, of big generous impulses and little stinginesses, of profound tenderness and unexpected hardness. But through it all Susan was wont to say that at heart he was always the same — fundamentally good. She told him that his bark was worse than his bite.

He put down his cup with a sound of impatience, the pattern of the breakfast set bored him, everything did. He felt at the moment that he wanted nothing that he had and innumerable things that he had not got. He hated the snow, he hated the house, and, most of all, he hated England in this weather. When these moods had come over him in the past he had been free and able to act on impulse. Many a time he had thrown a few things into his portmanteau and gone abroad, leaving no address. But now he was not free any longer; and besides, there were the woods to fence and those new cow-sheds to build.

He pushed up his patch and turned his queer, eagle eyes on his wife.

‘I’m miserable!’ he said rather apologetically.

She got up and stroked his hair.

‘I know you are, Hilary. What’s to be done?’

‘I’m fussed and worried about those cow-sheds!’

‘My dear, they’re not really important.’

‘Of course they are, fearfully important, that’s just what irritates me, cowsheds oughtn’t to be important, they oughtn’t to count.’

‘Then don’t let them. What do they matter!’

‘You’d think they mattered all right if you had to pay for them! Susan, fancy fooling money on cow-sheds!’

She saw his lips twitch; it was all over for the moment. Hilary was going to laugh.

He did laugh.

‘It’s you and me, Susan, sitting and shivering in our Elizabethan house, feeling hard up and thinking of cow-sheds, while the sun’s shining gloriously all over the south of France, and we might be in it if it weren’t for ourselves.’

‘If it weren’t for ourselves? Yes, we did buy the cowsheds, didn’t we? And the cows,’ she added as an afterthought.

He went over to her, still smiling, and put his arm around her.

‘Darling, are you very bored?’ he inquired.

She hesitated.

‘Well, sometimes,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But I won’t let myself be bored, it’s too humiliating. Hilary, do you remember how mad I was for you to buy this place? And I do love it, it isn’t as though I didn’t love it, I do!’

"Let’s suggest,’ he said gravely, ‘we do love the place, we do love the place, we adore the place and we never want to leave it.’

‘We never want to leave it!’ echoed Susan doubtfully.

2

As they dressed that evening to dine with the Lindhursts, they talked to each other through the communicating door.

‘Hilary!’

‘Hallo!’

‘Mrs. Jones came to me this morning again about that kitchen-maid; she’s decided not to stay without one, she says.’

‘Wait a minute, you’ve made me spoil my tie!’

A pause.

‘Can I go on now?’

‘No, wait. Yes, now you can.’

‘Well, am I to pamper her or not? She’s honest and sober and you like her cooking.’

‘Oh, I suppose so. What’ll it cost?’

‘I’ve no idea, but she won’t stay single-handed. She says she had two under her when she lived with the Duchess.’

‘But didn’t you explain to her that you’re not a duchess?’

‘No! On the contrary, I tried to look like one!’

‘Oh! —’

‘Hilary! Is this a leak above my dressing-table or a shadow?’

‘What?’

‘Do please come here and look. Oh, it’s a leak. Come quick, it’s dripping!’

Hilary struggled into his coat and went to inspect. Large discolored drops of water were splashing on to Susan’s ivory brushes.

‘My God!’ he moaned. ‘It must be the snow on the roof.’

He rang the bell violently and ordered a bucket and some towels to be brought.

‘Dear old house!’ said Hilary bitterly. ‘How I love you!’

3

The dinner party was large and long. Lord Lindhurst enjoyed such functions. A small, spare man with a clipped moustache, his appearance did not suggest pomposity, and yet he was a mass of it. He had married the tall and stately type of woman that little men are supposed to admire: the mere fact that such a tradition exists may even have influenced his choice; he was very conventional. But long years of training, coupled with a naturally humble spirit, had deprived Lady Lindhurst of any advantage that her superior height might have given her. She was now a placid echo of the opinions, political and otherwise, of her better half.

Lindhurst Park had once been dignified, but its interior had succumbed to Victorian stuffiness in the time of the present owner’s grandfather. Being conservative people, the two following generations had refused to part with the hideous furniture, of which they genuinely liked the effect. Susan said that the place was a veritable chamber of horrors, from the bewhiskered portraits of latter-day Lindhursts to the gaudy carpets and fat satin upholstery. Her artistic eye was wont to rove round the finely-proportioned rooms, reconstructing them into the things of beauty they must once have been.

‘Give me comfort!’ Lord Lindhurst was fond of saying whenever opportunity occurred.

And his wife would echo dutifully: ‘Yes, we’re comfortable people; old-fashioned furniture suits us.’

To Hilary, with his passion for monastic oak, Lindhurst Park was an anguish. He declared that he felt acute symptoms of nausea whenever he stayed in the house for more than a few minutes. But Hilary’s estheticism, like nearly everything else about him, was not always proof against discomfort; and although he would not have admitted it to himself, he took a certain pleasure in the immense and thickly-padded chairs in Lord Lindhurst’s smoking-room.

They sat down twenty to dinner on this occasion, including Lord and Lady Lindhurst and their unmarried daughter. The guests were carefully selected from ‘The County,’ and they talked, as such people are wont to do, of politics and local affairs. As the interminable courses followed each other, Hilary’s attention began to stray. He ceased altogether to make conversation for the stout lady whom he had taken in, and his mind became preoccupied with the leak in Susan’s bedroom. Where was the damned thing coming from? Was there a tile loose, or had that old lead gutter sprung some new defect owing to the weight of the snow? He glanced up at the ceiling above his head. No signs of leaking here, the whole place seemed as weatherproof as a water-tight compartment. The stout lady on his right was saying something to him.

‘I quite agree with you,’ said Hilary, not having heard a word.

‘It’s the extraordinary way it affects the gooseberry bushes,’ the stout lady went on. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to dig all ours up and burn them.’

Hilary pulled himself together.

‘I know, a kind of greyish, moldy, shrivelly look,’ he said with quick inspiration.

‘Precisely. I believe it’s the new disease. I hope it won’t spread to the fruit trees.’

‘One must hope for the best, but I should think it probably will,’ remarked Hilary lugubriously. ‘You can never tell where that sort of thing is going to end; it may be something like dry rot, you know. We’ve got dry rot in one of our attics.’

The fat lady shook her head.

‘I can’t remember our having all these worries before the war, can you?’ she inquired.

‘No,’ said Hilary decidedly, ‘I can’t.’

‘It seems as though the very fruits of the earth were enleagued with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ruin us!’ sighed the fat lady, as she helped herself generously to the Charlotte Russe.

But Hilary’s attention had wandered again. After all, a four-pronged fork was more comfortable to eat with than the two-pronged forks which he insisted on using, because they were more in keeping with the refectory table! And the electric candles affected by the Lindhursts had the advantage over wax in that they did not drip every time there was a draught from the open door. He felt thoroughly discontented and unsettled about things. Come to think of it, they were living in the twentieth century, and perhaps it was a mistake to try to get back to the fourteenth; when you did, you couldn’t eat peas except with your knife, and you must expect your roof to leak all over your dressing-table. He wondered vaguely whether they had had peas in the fourteenth century at all, or whether, like potatoes and tobacco, they had been a much later importation.

He heard his host holding forth at the other end of the table, snatches of the conversation drifted towards him.

‘But there’s no doubt about it, my dear lady,’ Lord Lindhurst was saying in his dry, dictatorial voice. ‘There’s no doubt about it, the money is all in Gloucester Spots.’

Hilary sighed. He felt that he ought to be able to enter into these interests, so vitally important to impoverished landowners. Of course, it was a disaster if the gooseberry bushes had engineered a new microbe entirely on their own, and obviously if all the money was in Gloucester Spots then Gloucester Spots ought to have his close attention. But this evening he was not feeling rustic at all. He was feeling like London and the Café Royal, or, better still, Paris and a Bal Bullier. He glanced across at his wife where she sat opposite him. She looked very young and charming in her simple dinner dress with her close, bobbed hair. And she was adaptable, too, wonderfully adaptable; she appeared to be getting a great deal of amusement and pleasure out of this deadly function. It seemed to him that Susan managed to extract pleasure from the most unpropitious circumstances; it was a great gift.

4

The dinner was over at last, and Lady Lindhurst drove her female guests before her into the drawing-room. Hilary moved nearer to his host, carrying his glass of port with him. He was feeling a little penitent now and anxious to make the best of these dull, kind people.

Lord Lindhurst turned to him cordially.

‘Have you gone in for Gloucester Spots yet, Brent?’ he inquired.

‘No, we don’t keep any pigs; we’ve got a lot of cows and they’re quite trouble enough.’

Lord Lindhurst nodded slowly.

‘Trouble! I should think so! Is there anything that isn’t trouble these days? But I always find that given my personal attention things come all right in the end. I’m enlarging our home farm enormously; in fact, I intend to run it as a paying concern.’

‘But will you ever be able to make it pay?’ inquired Hilary doubtfully.

Lord Lindhurst chuckled.

‘My dear fellow, it’s only a matter of my putting my mind into it. You were talking of cows just now. Well, cows are tiresome. At the present moment I’ve got about thirty milking cows, which makes sixty altogether, including the dry ones. Now I intend to make this a paying proposition. How, you ask? Ah, that’s the point. I have my own ideas about cows! I have my own theories with regard to cow-houses. I have thought for a long time that these places were unnecessarily dark and dull for the beasts, and that boredom probably tends to reduce their milk-giving capacities. I’m building an entirely new range of cowhouses on a plan evolved by myself; I shall have a distinct note of green about the places, a suggestion of the fields and meadows, so that when the cows see it they will be reminded of grass.’

‘Why not fresco the walls with rural scenes?’ murmured Hilary.

A laugh went round the table, in which, however, Lord Lindhurst did not join.

‘I had thought of that, too,’ he said gravely.

Hilary looked at him, and then round the dining-room with its oppressive atmosphere of unbreakable tradition, and as he did so Lord Lindhurst struck him as being less ridiculous than pathetic. It was common knowledge that his host had been hard hit by the war, and he saw in this scheme to enlarge the home farm a mighty if tardy effort on Lord Lindhurst’s part to enter into competition with the post-war business world. That the scheme was doomed to failure from birth seemed to Hilary almost a certainty, but he recognized the courage that lay behind it, feeling sorry for this old-fashioned, pompous little aristocrat.

Lord Lindhurst interrupted his meditations.

‘I shan’t get up to London this season, none of us will.

I mean to stick to the farm with my nose to the grindstone for six or seven months at least. We’re letting Belgrave Square furnished for a year — rich Americans or war profiteers or something. They call themselves Bettleheim — sounds like Jews; but they’re paying us thirty-five guineas a week, and that’s not bad.’

Hilary sighed. It all sounded so strenuous, yet so pathetically unconvincing.

‘Won’t you go to Scotland in August either?’ he inquired. ‘You’re not going to let the shooting, are you?’

‘Rather!’ exclaimed Lord Lindhurst with something almost approaching enthusiasm. ‘I shan’t have time for that sort of thing yet awhile, I’m afraid. I can’t possibly leave the farm.’

5

The Brents were rather silent as they drove home in the car. Some people’s hopefulness is depressing; the Lindhursts’ was of that kind.

Presently Susan said:

‘Those poor old things, with their pigs and their new cow-houses!’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Hilary. ‘I’ve been feeling like that about them all the evening.’

‘I can’t think why they don’t let the place for a bit, Hilary, and go abroad and enjoy themselves. It’s all so silly this trying to compete with the real farmers, at their age. Of course, they’ll never make it pay, and things may get better later on.’

Hilary frowned.

‘Yes, it does seem idiotic their sticking on there, Susie, but I think one can understand it. I can imagine just how it must feel to have a place like Lindhurst dependent on you. Dependent on you, remember that, that’s the point. Every broken fence screaming out to you to mend it, and every decrepit old tree imploring you to spare it from the axe. You couldn’t turn a spadeful of earth in a place like that without its reminding you that it was yours to do as you liked with, and getting at your heart through your chivalrous instincts. You couldn’t move a hedge without feeling that you were worrying some ancestors who’d put it there, or mend a chimney without asking the builder to tone down the new brickwork in case it offended the rest of the house. Every fresh Lindhurst who inherits Lindhurst finds it more difficult to get away than his predecessor. He has just so much more tradition on his back, you see. Tradition is a terrible but rather fine thing, Susie, don’t you think so? It always thrills me when I meet it.’ Susan yawned and laid her head down on his shoulder. ‘Oh, I’m so sleepy,’ she said. ‘Wake me up when we get home, will you, darling?’

Chapter 4

1

That summer two things happened: the Brents had servant trouble and Susan had cravings. The servant trouble had started with the departure of Mrs. Jones, whom even the kitchen-maid had failed to satisfy, and she had taken all the other servants with her as if by magic. Susan said she must have been a female Pied Piper. The local registry offices proved most unsatisfactory, so Susan toiled to Exeter and finally to London for two days. She arrived home thoroughly discouraged, and, for her, in a very bad temper, to be met by a nervous and depressed Hilary, who had been left in charge of Sieglinde and a temporary cook.

‘Well?’ he inquired, forgetting to kiss her.

She flung off her hat and coat.

‘I’m nearly dead!’ she announced. ‘I can’t talk till I’ve had some tea.’

‘I only hope you’ll get it!’ said Hilary.

‘Why shouldn’t I get it? Is everyone defunct since I’ve been away?’

‘No, but I am very nearly. This woman in the kitchen’s impossible!’

Susan looked at him unsympathetically.

‘Well, you’d better bring your mind to her, for we don’t look like getting a cook for the rest of our lives.’

‘Nonsense, Susan! Everybody else has cooks!’

‘Then they may consider themselves fortunate.’

‘Don’t be so cryptic. Haven’t you found servants even in London?’

‘No, I haven’t. They don’t like being so far from the station, or so far from London, for that matter. I’ve spent two whole days sitting in registry offices. I can’t do more, can I?’

‘Yes, you can,’ said Hilary, with some asperity. ‘You can keep your servants when you have them.’

Susan jumped up.

‘Well, of all the unjust things to say! Was it my fault that that old devil left us and took the whole household with her?’

‘Was it mine?’ inquired Hilary in an irritating voice. ‘Am I supposed to look after the maids or are you?’

‘I do look after them. I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You don’t look after them. You’re a rotten bad housekeeper, and that’s the truth, Susan. You’ve no more idea of running a big house than Sieglinde.’

‘I never wanted a big house,’ Susan protested. ‘I was happy enough in a small flat before I married you.’

‘I like that. Why, you were mad for me to buy this place; you can’t deny it.’

‘And why was I? Because of your beastly old oak and things. Nothing short of the British Museum was big enough to take them. As far as I can see I have to keep house for all your collections as well as for you!’

‘And why shouldn’t you, pray? Isn’t that your side of the bargain?’

‘Well, you don’t make it very easy for me to keep it, do you, Hilary?’

‘Now, look here, Susan, we’ve had enough of this. I mean to be comfortable, and you’ve got to see to it that I — am. I’m spending my whole income in keeping this place up, and the least you can do is to run it properly.’

‘Hilary, you’re being perfectly grotesque. Come off that high horse and listen to me. What time do I get to run the house properly? I’m at your beck and call from morning till night. I never sit down to balance the books that you don’t come after me to read your poems; and only last Monday when I was in the middle of ordering the food — and you know I have to order groceries on Monday for the whole week — you called me away to look up Hydrocephalus or Beri-Beri or something in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.’

‘That was for my book,’ said Hilary sulkily.

‘Precisely. Well, you can’t have it both ways. If I’m your housekeeper then I can’t be your collaborator; and if I’m to be your collaborator then I can’t be your housekeeper, and that’s all there is to it!’

‘I should have thought an intelligent woman ought to be able to be both,’ he retorted unfairly.

‘You can damn well go and find servants for yourself!’ said Susan, seizing her coat. ‘I’ve got a headache. I’m going to bed.’

2

They were cold to each other all the next day, in the evening of which they made friends again.

‘I’m sorry, Susie, I lost my temper.’

‘I’m sorry, too; it was my fault, darling.’

‘No, it wasn’t, it was neither of our faults, Susie. I think it was all Bambury’s fault.’

‘Poor Bambury,’ said Susan, with tears in her eyes, ‘I did mean to be a success when we bought you!’

‘And so you are, indeed you are,’ he comforted.

But she was not, she seemed to lack the right touch somehow. The servants, for instance, mistook her kindness for timidity, and they presumed accordingly.

‘You talk to them too much,’ Hilary was always saying. But she could not help talking to them. When all was as it should be, and they did their work properly, she felt so grateful that she treated them as though they were her friends.

‘If you’d only keep them more in their places, Susan, you’d get on better. I heard you discussing politics with the housemaid yesterday.’

‘Well, why not, she’s an intelligent girl. I can’t treat them like machines, Hilary.’

The books were very heavy, thirty pounds a week. Hilary grumbled, declaring he’d be ruined. Susan excused it by blaming local prices, but promised to see what she could do. Exactly what it was she did Hilary never knew, but the cook gave notice and so did the parlor-maid, and once again the hunt was up. Undoubtedly the place was lonely for the pleasure-loving, post-war servant, being situated, as it was, six miles from the nearest town. It had many disadvantages — there were no young men worth mentioning to walk out with, and no cinemas nearer than Exeter.

Maids came and went — it was a bad cycle. They had kept their first lot of servants for over two years, but now they seemed unable to keep any for two months. Susan’s nerves began to feel very near the surface. She dreaded getting up in the mornings to confusion consequent on new maids or no maids at all, and above all she was growing to dread Hilary’s moodiness, which was daily becoming more pronounced. The new cow-sheds had cost forty pounds more than he had expected, and in his present frame of mind he magnified this expense. Susan herself had to admit that something always needed doing about the place; if it wasn’t a leak it was a wall falling down, if it wasn’t a wall it was a stopped drain. Small or big as the case might be, repairs, like the poor, were always with them.

3

It rained continually, a phenomenally wet summer. Unsuspected springs started on the hill at the side of the house, and one of them did great mischief, for it managed to find its way into an old well in the scullery, which had been the original water supply of Bambury Hall. This well had been long disused, and no one had given it a thought; least of all Hilary, who had never seen it uncovered. But now, reinforced by the hillside spring, water made its appearance in a cellar close to the kitchen, whence it spread rapidly right into the kitchen itself and proceeded to rise to the depth of several inches.

They were having their dinner when the cook first screamed.

‘Good God! What’s that?’ said Hilary, jumping up.

The parlor-maid came in pale-faced and frightened.

‘Please, sir, there’s water coming up in the kitchen; it’s rising every minute, it’s above cook’s ankles now.’

‘There’s water rising up in the kitchen?’ said Hilary incredulously. ‘Where’s it coming from?’

‘We don’t know, sir, but it’s rising every minute, and cook says will you please come at once, as she’s frightened, she don’t feel safe.’

Accompanied by Susan he hurried to the kitchen; it was all quite true, the cook was wading.

‘It came all of a sudden, sir,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘I was standing with me back to the door over there, turning the jelly out into a hontray dish, when something cold and wet touched the back of me stocking. It gave me the most awful feeling, as though it was a dead hand trying to get hold of me leg. And then, sir, before me and Sarah knew where we was, it was a-spreading all over the kitchen, and rising on us inch by inch. It’s my opinion that this ‘ouse is ‘aunted, like the one they mentioned in the Sunday Herald last week, Poultry Something they said that had, and I believe we’ve got one of ‘em ‘ere!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ commanded Susan sharply. ‘We haven’t got a Poltergeist or any other kind of spook at Bambury!’ She turned to Hilary. ‘It must be a spring. Macgregor told me yesterday that they had started all along the hillside.’

‘I know,’ said Hilary. ‘It’s that old well in the scullery; give me a candle and call Macgregor. Tell him to bring one of the other men along with him. Oh, yes, and tell him to bring a bucket and rope.’

They waded about in the ice-cold stream. After what seemed an interminable interval, Macgregor arrived and shook his head ominously. He was alone.

‘Where’s Watson?’ demanded Hilary.

Macgregor looked stupid.

‘I said Watson. Where is he? Why didn’t you bring him with you?’

‘He wasn’t about anywheres that I could see. I expect he’s gone off.’

‘Then why didn’t you get one of the other men to help us? Merciful heavens! Is there no one I can depend on in an emergency?’

‘Don’t seem like it,’ said Macgregor unsympathetically.

Hilary controlled himself with an effort.

‘Try the old pump first,’ he said.

‘It ain’t working,’ remarked Macgregor, flapping the handle up and down.

‘Then uncover the well and lower a bucket; we must try to reduce the water level.’

Slowly but methodically Macgregor obeyed. They worked for an hour without making any perceptible effect.

‘It fills up as fast as you take it out,’ said Macgregor, with something very like grim enjoyment in his voice.

‘It’ll spread into the library soon,’ called Susan. ‘Come here and look at this!’

Hilary paddled into the kitchen again and looked towards the corner at which Susan was pointing.

‘Listen! Hush!’ she whispered.

Hilary put his head on one side and listened. A low, unusual sound was proceeding from the corner, where the water was forming into little eddies.

‘My God!’ said Hilary in a muffled voice. ‘It’s gurgling, it’s actually flowing!’ He considered a moment. ‘We must barricade,’ he said, ‘make dams like they do in Holland, anything to keep it where it is for the night. Fetch some planks and some clay and earth, Macgregor; and be quick, man, before it gets worse.’

As Macgregor went off they stared at each other. The cook in tears stood on the kitchen table.

‘This is an awful ‘ouse and no mistake,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve been frightened out of me life ever since I come ‘ere. This water raising must have something to do with spirits. I can’t see what else it could be; it’s most unnatural!’

When Macgregor came back they did what they could, bedding planks in clay across the doorways that led to the library passage.

‘Well, that’s all for to-night,’ said Hilary in his tired voice. ‘We can only hope for the best, and telephone to Exeter for an engineer to-morrow morning. Anyway, let’s get to bed now.’

Outside the kitchen they found Sieglinde. Disliking the wet, she had not ventured in, but nevertheless stood there trembling for their safety. She capered with relief at the sight of them, screaming hysterically the while, and then, still screaming, rushed up the stairs to bed.

‘Come back!’ called Susan. ‘You know you’ve not been out yet. Hilary, just take her down the drive for a few minutes, will you?’

Chapter 5

1

When the flood abated it left the kitchen damp, so the cook got lumbago and took to her bed. Macgregor’s wife came in to oblige, but did not prove to be very obliging; in any case, the time she could give to the Brents was limited.

In the midst of this discomfort Hilary became