Soames Green

Chapter One I

THE September mists were rising in the water-meadows below Soames Green. Swathing the dwarf trunks of the alders by the river, they reached out in thin spears and shafts and delicately suspended wreaths and scarves towards the little town across the fields. But the sun was still well above the lifting edge of mist and cloud near the horizon, and its tempered brightness lay like a bloom upon the red roofs of Soames Green, upon its old walls and the placid surface of its canal. There was no wind, and no suggestion yet of anything but autumn’s most gracious aspect in that mild and beneficent air. The leaves still hung like ripe fruit on the trees, and the sunshine had its special September quality — divided between haziness and clarity — in which the houses appeared to possess breadth without depth, and all the excrescences of porch or lattice or projecting roof to be merely painted on a flat and fragile surface with an edging of painted shadow.

The town ran east and west, cut in two by the canal and rising a little on the eastern bank, so that on this side such windows as faced the dropping sun were now flaming in its rays, while below the bridge the streets were mostly in shadow, pierced here and there by long shafts of light like fallen pillars of gold. The High Street, sloping gently upward and eastward from the canal, was irregular in design, with trees growing unexpectedly out of a broad sidewalk that lifted or dropped here and there in shallow steps towards the old shop-fronts standing far back from the street. Where this street — dignified, beautiful, leisurely — was intersected by the more modern and bustling Station Road, the corner was emphasised by the sudden jutting out of a small Queen Anne house whose west wall formed a buttress to the retiring sidewalk. The main entrance, its brass plate inscribed with the words ‘Messrs. Celian and Somerdew,’ gave directly upon the High Street, but another door and several wired windows faced the Station Road, and a private entrance and one square ground-floor window opened onto the High Street sidewalk.

Upon this entrance and this window the level sun now laid a reddening beam; and finding the window open it penetrated into the room beyond and settled on the bent grey head of Mr. Peter Celian at his office table.

With his back to the door, his left cheek receiving the sun’s mild ray, he sat facing a second window that opened into the garden, a small, turfed square tightly wedged into the congested angle between the yard of a Station Road shop and the neat patch of flowerbedded grass belonging to the High Street chemist. But on all three sides the Celian and Somerdew garden was enclosed by a high brick wall, so that from the northern window of Mr. Celian’s office little could be seen but grass and leafage and the fine tracery of apricot and plum tree climbing the old red brick.

Sitting in that office, at its scrupulously tidy table, Mr. Celian had only to lift his eyes for them to rest immediately on a pleasant tangle of yellowing leaves; and only to turn his head to command a prospect of the High Street, with its haphazard trees, sloping down to the bridge. Below that bridge, to the north, invisible from the office but visible in every detail to his mental vision, stood Mulberry Lodge, Mr. Celian’s private house. These twin centres of his universe — his home, and the building in which he laboured to support it— lay not more than three hundred yards apart; a circumstance which impressed him as an asset or a disadvantage according to his mood. For within the walls of this Queen Anne house, which witnessed daily the routine of his material career, Mr. Celian permitted himself some elasticity of mood, a thing he was more careful to standardise in the confines of his home. It appeared to him that if any human beings were obliged to run the risk of discomfort from exposure to his moods they should more fittingly be such as were adequately paid for their peril; the unpaid — his wife, his son and daughter and niece, severally persuaded into proximity by his own acts — could more justly, he felt, claim exemption from any penalty the proximity might impose. What penalties were to be apprehended he hardly knew, but suspected that without due precaution they would take shape. Most people had failings of one kind or another, some of which were distressing to those in intimate contact with them; and being in general a modestminded person he assumed that his own failings would be as distressing as his neighbours’ unless a very careful guard were kept upon their activities. That guard, therefore, was least relaxed in the circle in which the majority of men feel entitled to relax themselves most.

Upon this middle-aged and middle-class solicitor of Soames Green Nature had bestowed a face that was oddly out of keeping with his temperament. For an alien and deceptive cynicism curved his wide and clearedged lips, and in the long furrow drawn from nostril to chin lay a suggestion of self-indulgence and nervous irritability that were equally strangers to his disciplined and equable temper. Under a high and wide brow, the candour of which was the truest index to his character, two rather small and cold blue eyes looked out with a dispassionately critical and ironical gaze that bore no real relation to the sensitive and charitable soul hiding behind it; while a slow, precise, and sometimes pedantic form of speech, in an ungentle voice with no warmth of tone, was the medium of Mr. Celian’s unfailing sympathy with human joys and griefs.

In the rather rare moments when he took an interest in his own personality —for he was unegotistical and more concerned with the interests of others than with himself — he sometimes paused during the process of shaving to stare with amused surprise at the reflection of his soap-smeared face. Its incongruity was palpable even to him, though he was far less aware of his own claims to virtue than his intimates had cause to be. And standing with razor poised, gazing at the cold blue eyes in his ironical red face, he would murmur —‘ Good God — is that really the impression I convey? —that most ungullible and disillusioned rake?’

Concluding that Nature had considerately provided him with protective colouring to save him from the follies he and she knew well, he would then — twisting his mouth askew — draw the razor gingerly about its corners and dismiss himself from his mind.

II

UNPERTURBED and placid though he contrived to appear in the immediate circle of his office and home—a circle in which the cynic theory had long been exploded — Mr. Celian had just now several burdens on his mind. And on that more than ordinarily lovely September day, observing the sun’s finger light up the brass face of his clock, he was relieved to find that its hands pointed to six, an hour when his conscience allowed him to put aside work that was not pressing in favour of any private concerns that were. That afternoon, though the private concerns involved — to his regret — no definite action at present, they demanded thought; and making a neat pile of the letters he had been signing, making little tidying movements with his square brown hands on the already super-tidy table, he left his chair, shut and bolted the two windows in case any one else neglected to do so, took his Homburg hat off its peg, and went out of the room.

A narrow hall crossed the width of the house, with the stairs facing the main entrance; beyond them, a passage leading to the housekeeper’s quarters held also the door of Mr. Somerdew’s room, and a second door, Standing usually wide open, was that of the clerk’s office with the wired windows looking onto the Station Road.

Mr. Celian paused near the staircase, glancing first out into the street and then, more reluctantly, towards his partner’s room. Then, conscience having long held dominion over mere desire, he went down the short passage and opened Mr. Somerdew’s door.

‘[’m just off, Frank,’ he said from the threshold. ‘ Nothing you want me for?’

His junior partner, whom he had caught with a tilted chair and hands locked behind his head, brought the castors down with a thud on the carpet and hastily transferred his idle hands to a letter lying on the desk. ‘Only this Maitland-Challerton affair, Mr. Celian. I hardly know what to say to the fellow.... I was just thinking it over...’

The furrows in Mr. Celian’s leathery cheek deepened, augmenting the cynicism of his lips, which in reality concealed a quite gently understanding smile. He knew Frank Somerdew’s characteristic postures well enough to be certain that neither Mr. Maitland nor Lord Challerton nor any other client had been filling his thoughts or staying his pen just then. But without comment he advanced and picked up the letter. Seeing at once that it had no connection with the hurriedly improvised topic, and much disliking to make people uncomfortable by catching them out in harmless evasions, he said mildly, ‘This appears to be the wrong letter. ... But you needn’t bother about it to-day, need you? Speak to me in the morning.’ |

As he turned discreetly away from the immediately embarrassed colour in his partner’s face, he added over his shoulder — Look in to-night if you’ve nothing better to do — and shut the door quickly on the other’s slightly stammering ‘Thanks very much —I’d like to ...’

With that invitation obscurely soothing his conscience — for actions that went against his own inclination seemed usually to benefit someone else — Mr.

Celian passed through the open hall door into the street. This action also went slightly against the grain; for, being by no means free from foibles, he derived always a very secret and childish pleasure from using his’ own private door in the High Street sidewalk. No one else had the privilege of doing so; and for years the insertion of its key on entering, the sharp snap of its closing when he went out, had fed his private satisfaction in being Mr. Celian of Soames Green —a circumstance which no other act so emphasised to his consciousness. Frank Somerdew went in and out of the main entrance, as junior partners had always done; Frank Somerdew, moreover, on leaving for the day, took train to Wintlebourne, two stations up the line. He was not with any completeness Mr. Somerdew of Soames Green. It was reserved, and had been for three generations, for the reigning Mr. Celian to shut his private office door and walk leisurely home — responding affably to the greetings of neighbours — to his private house by the bridge. And for Mr. Peter Celian, most unpretentious and socially unaspiring of men, this small tradition had a quite disproportionate value. He was aware of his own absurdity and faintly ashamed of it, yet it was one of the few failings he had never made any attempt to eradicate. Indeed he rather fostered it, hugging its cause to his heart. For in an existence which to himself seemed relatively insignificant and futile, he clung to the one small material evidence of justification for existing at all. He was Mr. Celian of Soames Green. The familiar phrase, with its hint of dignity and respect, held always a little balm for his inward conviction that he had missed his way in life. Fully conscious of the microscopic significance, to the large world, of his place in it, it yet supported and consoled his diffidence that he should be definitely known — if only to a little country town just beyond the London suburbs—as Mr. Somebody of Anywhere.

The street received him, and he was enveloped soothingly in an air that seemed to be composed of the dust of gold coins. His back straightened, his worries slid away, and he turned into the Station Road with a little song bubbling up from the recesses of his chest and emerging — for he was not musical — only as a vague murmur on his lips. He was bound for the station, to enquire into the non-arrival of a brace of partridges despatched some days earlier from the North. The sender was old Mr. Somerdew, Frank’s father and late partner to Mr. Celian and his father before him. Mr. Somerdew senior was no sportsman himself, but he was visiting a son-in-law who was; and Mr. Celian could not avoid a suspicion that the partridges were sent less for the sake of pleasing the Celian palate than of a small display of affluent connection. He had heard so often of ‘my son-in-law’s shoot ’—‘ my son-in-law’s coverts’ —and so little of the daughter who provided the agreeable link, that there was at least some justification for the ungrateful thought. And on finding that the missing birds were apparently still in passage, for the station-master knew nothing of them, Mr. Celian again departed from his habitual kindliness of mind so far as to wonder briefly whether the promised brace had ever materialised beyond the postcard on which the promise was inscribed. |

Pulling himself up self-reproachfully, he realised that he was feeling a little out of joint with the world; and in spite of the gentle exhilaration of the atmosphere he remembered the disturbing matters that had drawn him so punctually from his work.

Phebe ... that dear eee of his ... What was going to react of her?... Frank Somerdew — the fellow had just bought a car, too, confound him — though, of course, very jolly for him and Mr. Celian didn’t grudge it in the least....Dr. Briton — what chance had he with Phebe? ... and then poor Martin Holme with that ghastly wife.... Flora had always seemed a good sort of name till she spoilt it for him ... poor wretch, poor wretch — who might have been almost as charming a creature as his own girl if the fates had been kinder to her.... Unless one must blame only her parents before her and theirs before them — or blame nothing and no one at all.... But there was undoubtedly a taint somewhere — look at that poor sister of hers with her lovely little face ruined by its vacant stare, and her undersized, undeveloped body. Parental responsibility was the devil of a load, and it went so irretrievably far back.... That brought his thoughts to Lena Corry, his wife’s niece. Her mother was a fool and her father a knave; but whose fault was that? Anyhow, Lena—though no fool — was undeniably something of a problem for her present guardian—difficult, perplexing, worrying.... Mr. Celian feared that his son Roger found her intriguing enough to be charming —he didn’t grudge her her charm, but not for Roger, not for Roger.... Odd, he thought, that this pleasant corner of the world, this Soames Green that had held the larger part of his life, should propagate problems so out of harmony with its gracious peace. And he himself in the midst of them — disturbed, anxious! —How came he among them or they pressing about him?...

Being unaware of his own selflessness, Mr. Celian was also unaware that upon those who evade the tyranny of Self there falls at once the immense burden of other people’s woes.

Soames Green Station—the termination of a short branch line which, with no through trains to London, secured the town from suburbanism — stood in comparative isolation on a high bank above the canal. Mr. Celian descended from it by a steep path leading to a plank bridge, painted black and white, that spanned the stretch of unnavigable water bordering his own grounds. From that elevation, as he went slowly downwards, he had a good view of his house immediately below the main bridge. A plain, early-Georgian structure, it yet had the dignity of right proportions and maturity, and the reflection in the canal of its creamy walls and yellowing slate roof gave it an added importance and charm. Its lawns, walled garden, and field narrowing to the plank bridge were bounded on the east only by the smooth water of the canal; a screen of high trees enclosed the small property on the west, shutting out the farther houses and fields. But from the gate near the plank bridge, by which Mr. Celian presently paused, there was an uninterrupted view of the water-meadows stretching away to the trout stream known as the River Jenny. Just now the mists obscured the distances, and only the tops of the little alders showed, like trees half-submerged by a flood.

Mr. Celian, leaning on the gate, ran his eye along the fence that dipped to the water’s edge, and observed with satisfaction that a length of clean white wood replaced the broken rail he had discovered the day before. Murmuring, ‘Good man, Pinkett — wastes no time ’— he remembered that the hinge of the little gate onto the plank bridge — his own property though established as a right of way — also needed repair; and returning to look at it found that Pinkett’s haste had clouded his memory, for the hinge was still unmended. To a mind so precise as Mr. Celian’s the omission was a source of irritation; but kindliness holding sway over less admirable emotions, he thought only, with mildness, ‘Damn the fellow, he’s got no head —’ and stooped to examine a small flower, growing at the water’s edge, to which he could put no name.

As he crouched there on his heels, the loud hoot of a car crossing the main bridge made him look up; and for some moments he continued in his cramped posture, in a suddenly uneasy meditation, staring at the bridge. For on the nearer side, with his back to the row of youngsters kicking their heels against the farther parapet, stood a man Mr. Celian recognised as the Martin Holme who had been lately in his thoughts. He was standing rather rigidly upright, with a hand on the stone parapet and his head turned a little to the left, towards Mr. Celian’s garden. And in that garden, close to the water’s edge, sat Mr. Celian’s daughter Pheebe, with her face lifted towards the bridge.

The situation, in itself, had no special significance, for Martin Holme, returning from London, was obliged to cross either that bridge or the smaller one to reach his house in the lower village; but the circumstance that arrested Mr. Celian’s attention, making his heart thump a little as if he had caught himself eavesdropping, was the lack of any greeting, any sort of normal exchange between the two. They remained, oddly immovable, looking fixedly at each other across the space of water that divided them. And something in this immobility — something tallying with Mr. Celian’s earlier reflections — struck him as at once ominous and disturbing and sweet. His sensitive heart, almost guiltily throbbing, stirred afresh with a sensation as if a breath of high romance had blown upon it, blowing away the slumbering thoughts of law-suits and broken fences and the details of daily life. That daily life seemed suddenly very trivial and meaningless compared with the quiescent force and significance of this long, grave motionless gaze. Its length and gravity and stillness created for the soul of Mr. Celian — that secret Romantic — an atmosphere of far more vital life than could have been conveyed by any emotional movement or speech.

Martin Holme moved at last, lifted a hand in vague salute, and disappeared across the bridge. But, transferring his gaze immediately to his daughter, Mr. Celian saw no answering movement. With her face still gravely raised, her hands still clasping the book on her knees, she watched Holme pass out of sight.

With a little sigh, his stiffening knees cracking faintly as he rose from his unintentional covert, Mr. Celian recrossed the canal and entered his field.

Iil

THE dining-room at Mulberry Lodge, though fitted for convenience with electric light, dispensed at dinnertime with a modern device which seemed at variance with its atmosphere of earlier times; and the faces of the Celian household, gathered round the table, were lighted only by six candles behind apricot-tinted shades. That delicate light subdued and warm, with faintly fluttering shadows— shone now upon a company of five.

Phebe Celian had one side of the table to herself, facing her brother and their cousin Lena Corry. The heads of these two, one fair and one very dark, had for background an uncurtained window giving upon the curved sweep of cobblestones leading to the unused stable-yard. Beyond that space the houses jutted out again, yet not so far but that from Phcebe’s place she could command a limited prospect of the street. Dusk had descended there now, and the window-panes had turned such a deep blue that the reflection of candles and white cloth and the heads of Roger and Lena were painted upon them like a dark picture in a white frame. But here and there the yellow of a street lamp, the red glow through a closed shop-door, obtruded into the picture from outside; and Phebe’s eyes could pierce the familiar image of her surroundings to the familiar realities beyond. She loved her surroundings and her family and the comfortable candle-lit dinner-table; but in her mood of that evening it was a deeper pleasure to ignore them and to project herself, psychically, into the dusk-grey street that led between irregular lines of old houses to a cross-road branching northwards to the water-meadows. That road would be nearly dark now, with hardly a lamp to lighten its tree-bordered gloom and few houses to break the margin of trees. But at its farther end, where the trees stopped and the meadows began, the road to the river passed a small house — creamy-fronted and black-shuttered behind a high yew hedge — where a yellow light would be shining benignly from a dark-walled room, shining upwards from the surface of a polished table set with old silver and glass. And at that table, in an atmosphere laceratingly different from the harmonious one at Mulberry Lodge, Martin Holme would be sitting now, with his wife and sister-in-law....

Mr. Celian, watching his daughter unobtrusively, observed how often her eyes went to the blue-paned window. The suspicion which for some weeks had been obscurely troubling him had hardened to certainty that afternoon while he watched her in the garden looking up at the bridge; and now his imagination followed with difficulty the journey of her thoughts to the white-walled house. And envisaging, as she had, the three who sat within it, his heart felt heavy and sore in his breast. It was true, then; but how true? —to what extent?... Without malice, he tried a little experiment.

‘The curtains aren’t drawn, Amy. Do you like to be observed of all Soames Green in the gross act of dining?’

Phebe said at once, ‘Oh, Guwnor, they’re much jollier like that. Don’t have them drawn.’

Her mother glanced at the window. ‘There won't be many people about just now — and I always think the light looks so pretty from outside. But just as you like, darling.’

Mr. Celian stopped the advancing maidservant with ‘Leave them alone, Ellen; Miss Phoebe likes them like that.’

Well, so he might have liked them himself once, and for a similar reason; and if he deplored the source of her preference, he had nothing but kindness for it. In

SOAMES GREEN 15 that far-off time, thirty years ago now, he had had his own wild and lovely adventure of the heart, and its frustration had left him very gently disposed towards all womenkind, but especially towards such as were led by their emotions into unorthodox paths. How seldom —he thought now with unaccustomed melancholy — how seldom those dark paths emerged again into the light.... This wife of his, with her plump, soft face and slightly bulging kind blue eyes, was not the goal his young feet had sought. The real goal was missed, remained obscured and dark — though its missing had been the outcome of a deliberate mutual act, a deliberate mutual abandoning, rather than the loss of mere mischance.... Yet Amy was there, in a light of a sort; not dazzling, never quite satisfying to his frustrated and still imperfectly disciplined soul, but at least a pleasant glow, a loyal and kindly effulgence that had burnt steadily through everything and never gone out. And the warmth of it had engendered, primarily, the quiet flame he could guess at now in the soul of his daughter as she looked through the blue window into the dusk.... A most strange world, he thought pensively, with its beckonings and bafflings, its will-o’-the-wisps and culs-de-sac.... For there was he himself, leading a straight-forward, practical, fairly useful if rather monotonous existence, with his kindly wife, his much-loved son and daughter and his niece—that perplexing, repelling yet attractive girl —and thirty years lay between this day and the day when he and a woman quite unlike his wife had put aside, in pain, the desire of their sad hearts. ...

Roger Celian announced suddenly, ‘I saw Briton this morning. Cicely’s coming home.’

Lena drawled, ‘How charming for you; you'll be able to renew your vows.’

‘Vows, dear?’ echoed Mrs. Celian. ‘ What vows?’

*Didn’t you know?’ Lena turned her dark eyes gravely upon her aunt. ‘Ten years ago Roger and Cicely Briton were irrevocably engaged.’

‘You silly ass!’ said Roger, without vehemence. But his father saw a small cloud of distaste and embarrassment pass into his face; and thinking —‘ Poor lad, he’s remembering he’s lost an arm since then’ —he said at once, ‘A lot can be forgotten in ten years, Lena. And Cicely’ll find in these days a much pleasanter object than the grubby schoolboy Roger was then.’

Gratefully conscious of the soothing intent behind his father’s speech Roger answered, with a brief upward smile, ‘ Less of him, though, Guv’nor!’

‘What a donkey you are, Roger,’ Phoebe placidly interposed. ‘As if any decent girl —now—minds a missing arm. Its absence is a decoration.’

Roger laughed. ‘One might have been hit in the elbow, though—a rearward projection!... But this is quite beside the point. The point is that Christopher’s tremendously pleased, and his mother’s more incoherent than usual with joy.’

Mrs. Celian said in a tone of doubtful perplexity, ‘I suppose people know their own business best, but I never could understand how Florence Briton — or any mother — could consent to part with her girl for so long.’

‘My dear Mummie,’ said Phebe with affectionate scorn, ‘I’m perfectly sure you’d do without me for twice as long if you thought it would be to my ad: vantage.”

‘But could it be to your advantage?’ Mrs. Celian protested, and looked surprised at her family’s laughter. ‘I mean, you foolish people, isn’t it best for a girl to be with her mother while she’s growing up?’

‘Depends on her mother,’ Roger said. ‘And on her mother’s circumstances. Anyhow, Cicely’s had a rattling good time, I imagine, at someone else’s expense, and now the someone has conveniently died, and Cicely’s coming home with a nice little income of her own.’

‘Oh, is she?’ Lena glanced at him significantly. ‘Then you'd better be the quicker with your vows.’

With an acerbity that rarely appeared in his own house, Mr. Celian said, ‘Lena, you’re rather a vulgar young woman at times. Roger’s mind doesn’t run solely on money and matrimony.’ Turning to his son, he asked. ‘Talking of money — how does the stern business of publishing progress?’

‘ All the better, sir, for my entry into it! No other business would have benefited so much.’

‘Any business would have benefited, I’m sure,’ said Mrs. Celian, who was very literal and very partial. ‘Phoebe darling, would you pass me the salt, please.’

Pursuing, outwardly, the topic of his son’s employment, Mr. Celian’s mind dwelt subconsciously on his own disappointment with regard to it. As a consequence of Roger’s aversion from the study of law, the firm of Celian and Somerdew would come to an end on the senior partner’s retirement from it. Or, if the two names survived, it would be for the sake of mere expediency, the carrying on of a tradition in which the soul was dead. There would be no more Celians to keep that soul alive; no longer, after he himself had yielded up the precious key of his private entrance, would Mr. Celian of Soames Green take a secret and absurd pride in that cherished alliterative phrase; and no more, when the grave hid his pride and his follies and chastened desires, would any Celian come after him to resuscitate the phrase. Roger might become a prominent and prosperous partner in his publishing firm of Sirkett and Cole, but the more intimately involved in it his life became, the farther he must drift, in essence, from being Celian of Soames Green. The name of Somerdew would gradually supervene in the neighbourhood — Frank Somerdew would probably marry and settle in the town, and the senior partner’s share in that small and homely tradition would soon be obliterated and lost....

His own thought repeated itself with significance in his mind. ‘Frank Somerdew would probably marry and settle in the town....’

Frank Somerdew’s partner raised his eyes again to his daughter’s face. Hadn’t he, earlier in the day, deliberately associated that name with that face? Hadn’t he, most distastefully and with grindings of conscience, tried to accept the desirability of a permanent association between the two? Thinking of new cars, old Somerdew’s sudden promotion to affluence, his own comparatively humble fortune, he had persuaded himself — against all his instincts of simplicity — that if Frank wanted Pheebe, Pheebe’s father must put no stone in his path. That had seemed a duty then — the more so for its going against the grain; yet now, after Phcebe’s unconscious revelation of her own unwise desires, wasn’t it both confusingly less of a duty and a more urgent one than ever to coax her into a path less sad and hazardous than she seemed to have chosen for herself? Or should he—her father, responsible for her existence and so for her welfare as far as he could secure it— should he be wiser to stand quietly aside and let matters take entirely their own course? ... Well, to be sure, that was practically all it was possible to do, when it came definitely to the question of action. Phoebe was twenty-five, and, especially in these postwar days, must be regarded as entirely her own mistress. Yet it seemed to her father —wistfully regarding the clear line of her eyebrows, the resolute sweep of her straight brown lashes as her eyes again travelled past Roger’s head to the darkness beyond — that she could not be considered wholly independent of whatever mastery he might obtain over his own desires. Victory over himself, in however obscure and trivial a direction, must surely react in some degree upon her well-being. There must be more influences to be reckoned with between one soul and another than the merely expressed, felt, deliberately exercised.... Or if not, what purpose was left for the spirit in man to pursue?