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o began my feud with the Bullstrodes.

In those early days it was to be no more than an obscure and distant hate, and Beaulieu enemy country somewhere on the horizon. If we met and passed, as meet and pass we did, these Bullstrode demigods were like figures on a lofty frieze. I might be hotly aware of the sleepy, insolent comeliness of Gavin, and of the large, imperious arrogance of Beverley, but I was no more to them than a cocky cad upon the pavement. Gavin might glance at me as though he both saw me and did not see me, with an inward and ironical smile. Beverley, I am convinced, was unconscious of my existence.

But it was Beverley upon whom my secret hatred fastened, perhaps because he was so utterly my antithesis, so seemingly sure, so floridly serene. This heir to the Bullstrode baronetcy was no mere blond brute, all blue eyes and bouncing belly. Beverley had more and more the grand air as he grew older; Beverley was much more clever than he looked. He wore his harness like a grand seigneur, and in the old days he would have passed as the patron of poets and of men of letters, and his portrait might well have come down to us by Kneller, Reynolds or Romney. His very clothes, and the supercilious solidity of his manner were to be a challenge to me, and as a man of the world he could make me feel a mere ignorant lout in fustian. Yet, let me confess that I owe much of my material success to my hatred of this man. It and its counterpart were to be my chief inspiration, a flame curling itself about my consciousness a bitter and merciless urge, a secret exultation.

That other anticlimax lies in the past.

Strange, how those who love us can humiliate us! My poor mother did recover my trousers for me. She went off besilked and bonneted to interview Mr. Gregson, and I can only suppose that Mr. Gregson indited for her a legal letter. He was to be a good friend to me in the future, and being a staunch Liberal he was not in the Bullstrode service. At all events a groom arrived on a horse, and left a parcel on our doorstep. It contained my trousers, and a polite if ironic note from the head of the clan.

“Madam,

The property in dispute is returned to you. May I suggest that in the future your son should not hazard the garments by climbing other people’s walls.”

Jocund, easy laughter! My poor mother did not hear it. She displayed my recovered nether garments to me as though she had won a victory and secured a trophy. She did not understand my hatred of those poor pants, and was indignant and a little hurt when I refused to wear them. They were garments of shame and humiliation.

“But they are perfectly good trousers, John. You mustn’t be so sensitive. Besides, we made Sir High and Mighty give them up.”

“I won’t wear them, Mother.”

She was a persistent little person, and so pestered me about those pants that, at last, I took them and threw the things into the sea. She did not understand my passionate perversity. She lectured me on it with grieved severity, until I sulked and was mute, though filled with a sense of the ridiculous paltriness of the squabble.

But my mother was to humiliate me much more shamefully by making me appear a thing of shame. Looking back now upon the incident I am moved to wonder how I should have dealt with it had I been a modern and tolerant father. Should I have understood that there was beauty in the thing, and a loveliness in the way it happened to me, and that a woman could see all that my mother failed to see, and be compassionate and giving? The Victorians drove love to sneak surreptitiously up darkened stairs, and to appear false and ashamed unless it wore the mask of a hypocritical sentimentality. Suspicion and fear are the poisoners of life, and the poison may linger with us till we die.

Mary was walking out with a bricklayer who worked for Messrs. Hickman & Snoad. He was a good oaf of a fellow, and once a week he would wait for Mary at the corner of Regal Terrace. My mother would not allow him inside the house, or permit these two creatures to meet outside our gate. Almost, it would seem that my mother considered it indecent for a girl working in her house to have a lover. I used to wonder about Mary’s love-affair and how she could have any romantic feelings for the man she had chosen. Romantic feelings! The man had bulbous blue eyes, and a ragged red moustache, and his little legs did not seem to belong to his body.

June, and a half holiday. It was Mary’s afternoon out, but that did not concern me. I was in a restless mood, yearning for I know not what. I idled out, and climbed the Fire Hills where fern had sprung up among the gorse. Here and there a wild rose trailed pink sprays. The sea was very blue, distant hills hazed in heat. You could wander as you pleased here along little grassy paths, and lie down to dream in little, sunny, secret places.

I came upon Mary sitting in such a place. She was wearing a simple, pink cotton frock, and a hat of straw shaped rather like a sun-bonnet. My mother did allow her servants to wear some sort of frock of freedom when the day was theirs, but I am sure she must have thought herself extremely broadminded, and that the wearing of such a frock by Mary was a little bold and unseemly.

I remember the way Mary looked up at me and smiled.

“Fancy seeing you, Mr. John.”

I could only suppose that she was waiting for her bricklayer here, and I had no intention of being superfluous.

“Just going for a walk.”

She said that it was too hot to walk, and that she had felt like sitting in the shade of the gorse after climbing the hill.

“It’s nice here, Mr. John.”

I hesitated, looked at the view, looked at her again and saw that there was room beside her, and sat down.

I have no remembrance of what we said to each other, and I do not suppose that our conversation was of more significance than the insect hum or the twittering of birds. I found myself suddenly shy of Mary, and her mood must have matched mine. She took off her hat and lay down in the shade and it seemed to me that her hair changed its colour, and was almost as dark as her closed lashes.

“This hot weather makes me feel sleepy.”

“You have to get up so early, Mary.”

“I don’t mind that, Mr. John.”

Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be smiling in her sleep, and to me she appeared a different creature, somehow strange and mysterious and very pleasant to look at. I half lay, resting on one elbow, watching her face.

“You there, Mr. John?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t you feel sleepy?”

“No.”

Her eyes opened for a moment like shadowy slits.

“It’s nice here,” and she closed her eyes and seemed to sigh.

I don’t know what made me pull a fern leaf, and gently tickle her chin. She opened her eyes at me suddenly, and made a playful clutch at the green plume. I jerked it away. Again she closed her eyes, and this time I put the fern leaf to her lips.

“O, Mr. John!”

She was quicker this time, and caught my wrist. Something must have been struggling in us both, for we tussled playfully for the piece of fern. Her face had a queer, warm radiance, and her lips were parted over her teeth. All I know is that I seemed to overbalance and fall towards her, and that all in a moment we were lying in each other’s arms.

I suppose Mary taught me much that a lad should know, and that it may be more wholesome and good for him to be taught in this way than to explore prurient illusions in the spirit of surreptitious curiosity. I have always been grateful to this working girl for the knowledge she gave me, and strange though it may sound to the purists our love affair harmed me not at all. In fact it did me nothing but good, and instead of provoking me towards a promiscuous greediness, it seemed to soothe and stabilize my passionate youth. Possibly, it was the complete naturalness of the thing that educated me to the realities of sex, and taught me to weigh them up and distinguish between the spirit and the flesh. I often wonder whether without this initiation I should have been capable of transcending mere sex in the great love that was to come to me in later days? Should I have understood the difference between a mere basket of rich fruit, and the cup of immortal and poignant wine? The whole moral of the thing is that Mary was not a slut, nor was I a mere casual little cad. She provoked the good in me by her impulsive giving. She seemed to understand my youth, just as I came to have a feeling for the essential woman in her.

I suppose this affair would have flowered and fruited and fallen upon its inevitable autumn but for my poor mother’s interference. Mary was to marry her bricklayer. I remember how the idea of it hurt me, and how I felt in a way guilty, and a thiever of other men’s goods.

“Why must you marry, Mary?”

Never have I been given a more honest answer by any human creature.

“Because I must, my dear.”

“Must?”

“Yes. I’ve got to marry a man who works. I’ve got to have children. It’s in me.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes. And Bob’s a kind chap. He won’t drink or knock me about.”

“O, Mary!”

“I don’t think I have done you any harm, my dear, and you haven’t harmed me.”

I think I understood, and that life has a sort of inevitableness for people like Mary. We should have gone our several ways with nothing but a jocund memory had not my poor mother’s suspicious and possessive soul appeared like God in our Garden of Eden. I must confess to this sorry, shameful business because it has so much bearing upon what is ugly and piously obscene in life. It is one of the most bitter memories that I possess, in that it completely estranged me from my mother, and made me regard her in secret as an alien and hostile presence, a kind of implacable and prying High Priestess in a lace cap who would allow my youth no privacy or dignity.

There had been a happy, or perhaps unhappy rearrangement of our domestic niches. My mother had been doing so well that she reclaimed for herself a bedroom on the third floor. There were three attics above. I had one, and the other two were assigned separately to the servants. I believe my mother rather flattered herself that she was spoiling the girls by giving them each a bedroom. In those days people did not worry about the air space and the privacy that should be granted to menials.

Mary and I had agreed upon a signal. If she wished me to come to her she would leave the landing window blind only half drawn. Her door would be ajar, and mine the same, and when the whole house had settled down for the night I would steal across the landing and into her room. We had to be as mute as mice lest Martha should hear us.

Shall I ever forget that night when our love affair was discovered?

My mother was in her nightdress, carrying a candle, and wearing a prim little cotton cap. I shall never forget her shocked face, nor the bleak stillness with which she stood there. Only the candle flame seemed to waver. My mother’s figure was like a thing draped in marble.

I saw her lips move.

“Go to your room.”

Her voice seemed to make a sound like something falling upon ice. I felt cold to the marrow as she looked at me. I stood up. I remember glancing at Mary, and noticing that she had buried her face in the pillow. My mother made way for me, and the flickering candle-flame seemed to fill her eyes with a frozen glitter. I went out and across the landing to my room, and sitting down on my bed, remained like one paralysed, save that the whole of me seemed to shiver.

I heard my mother close Mary’s door. I heard her voice, cruel and cold and deliberate. Never since have I heard more cruelty in a voice.

“You will leave to-morrow morning.”

Mary was mute. But my mother was saying terrible things to Mary.

“I thought I had taken a decent, God-fearing girl into my house, and not a harlot. Is this gratitude? To teach an innocent boy these disgusting things? I shall tell Robert Prout what sort of creature you are. It is my duty to tell him.”

I heard Mary cry out suddenly.

“I have not done him any harm.”

This seemed to madden my mother. Her voice became even more sharp and cruel, and I heard Mary weeping. I could not bear it. She had been good to me in a way my mother would never understand. I was conscious of sudden passionate anger. I wanted to defend Mary, to protest. I rushed across the landing, and opened Mary’s door, and saw her huddled and weeping, and my mother by the bed.

“It isn’t true. Mary—”

My mother looked at me with a kind of terrible coldness.

“Go back to your room.”

I went. I slipped into my bed, shaken with shame and bewildered anger. I heard my mother lock Mary’s door. She came across to my door, withdrew the key, and reinserted it on the outside of the lock.

“I will talk to you, my son, to-morrow.”

She locked my door, and I heard her go down the stairs. Mary was still weeping. My urge was to go to her and comfort her, but those two locked doors stood between us.

I sat there in bed, listening until the sounds from Mary’s room had ceased. I hated my mother. I hated myself. A kind of horror of life struggled in me.

I did not sleep much that night. It seemed to me as I puzzled over it that Mary and I had not committed a sin until God, in the guise of my mother, had spied upon us and surprised us. What was sin? Doing that which one’s heart desired, or being found out by someone who was too old to enjoy life in that way? And why was some function in a church necessary to make love respectable, and when did sin cease to be sin? I suppose that my mother and my father had—But I recoiled from these nude realities, and lay stiff and straight in a bed that was no couch of repentance. I knew in my heart of hearts that I did not regret those romps with Mary. I knew that I was afraid of my mother, and of people like my mother, and that somehow they had the power to make one feel hideously embarrassed and ashamed. But why?

I woke very early. I could hear sounds coming from Mary’s room, drawers being opened and shut, the creaking of boards. What was Mary doing? Packing her trunk? And was she feeling bitter against me for having involved her in this disaster? Presently, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Someone crossed the landing, and I heard the key turned in Mary’s door.

My mother’s voice said: “You can go now.”

My mother appeared to pause on the landing before she redescended the stairs. I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I heard Mary’s door open, and I went quickly to my door.

“Mary.”

“Yes, dear.”

“It was all my fault, Mary. I’m so sorry. I—”

I imagine that she had her little tin trunk by one handle. She came to my door.

“No, mine, dear. Are you hating me?”

“No, Mary.”

“God bless you, dear.”

She gave a kind of sob and hurried down the stairs, and I heard her trunk bump against the wall. I can remember thinking it strange that she should ask God to bless me, when my mother’s God was inflicting upon her dreadful curses. I went to the window, and leaning out, saw that the parade was deserted, and that a haze of early sunlight was spreading over the sea. I saw Mary go down the steps and out through the gate, carrying her trunk. She stood a moment on the pavement as though not knowing which way to turn. What would she do? Where would she go? Home?

I watched her walk away, and when she disappeared I was acutely conscious of a sense of bitter loss, and the provocation of a passionate protest. Why should Mary have to suffer, and be thrust out into the street, because—? I sat down on my bed and gnawed my fingers. I was feeling bitter against my elders and the world as they and God had created it. What would happen to Mary? Would my mother honour her threat and tell poor Bob Prout?

I felt a little guilty when I thought of that plain fellow.

But, after all, Mary was too kind and comely to marry a man like Prout. She would get another place, marry someone else. I tried to will these things, and to console myself by willing them.

I washed and dressed myself and sat on my bed. Sandbourn and No. 42 were coming to life. I heard the clop-clop of hoofs as a milkman’s cart went by. I got up and looked out of the window and saw two fishing-boats with brown sails putting out from the harbour. Next door a maid was busy cleaning the front steps. Some early bather with a bath-towel round his neck went strolling along the parade.

I sat down again on the bed. Martha’s door had opened some time ago, and she had gone below.

Footsteps on the stairs. Someone knocked at my door.

“Breakfast, Mr. John.”

My door was unlocked, and a tray pushed in with a cup of tea and two slices of dry bread on a plate. I did not see Martha’s face, but only a big, red, knuckly hand. She re-closed the door, but did not lock it. I heard her voice again, dry and austere.

“Your mother wishes to see you, Mr. John, when you have had your breakfast.”

That meeting with my mother! She was dressed as on Sunday, with a white lace cap on her head, and she sat with her back to the window, while I stood with my face to the light. Her eyes looked small and bright, and seemed to fix themselves on me and make me blink and fidget. Somehow she was like a little priestess on a throne, and I the predestined penitent who was to confess and admit my shame.

She began, with gentle severity, to impress upon me the disgraceful and disgusting quality of the sin I had committed, and I began to realize while she lectured me that she was ready to regard me as more sinned against than sinning. I was the innocent lamb, and Mary the black she-wolf. I was to utter Adam’s old cry, “The woman tempted me.” All the shame was to be fastened upon Mary, and I had only to admit it, and my mother would relent.

But as I stood there confronting my mother and her vindictive goodness I felt myself growing stubborn and sulky. It is not that I possessed more courage and sincerity than other lads, but my emotions had been stirred by Mary’s tears, and the magnanimity she had shown me. I stood there and blurted the truth at my mother.

“It wasn’t Mary’s fault more than mine.”

My obstinacy seemed to exasperate my mother. No doubt she had every right to be shocked as a mother by my lapse into naturalness. She was the child of her generation, and she could not help herself or me. She could only abuse Mary, and scourge me with all the old conventional phrases. I had sinned most dreadfully, and I did not appear to be conscious of the heinousness of my sinning. Was it her fault? Had she failed to impress upon me lessons of cleanliness and of self restraint? She was becoming emotional, and her emotion embarrassed and hurt me. Somehow I felt that it was not fair.

“If you won’t say anything more about Mary, or tell Bob Prout, I’ll promise—”

“John, do you expect me to make a bargain with sin?”

“Well, why should Mary have to suffer when it was my fault as much as hers?”

“Nonsense. The girl’s ten years older than you. To take a child and cause him to offend! Unforgivable. I expected a different spirit in you, John.”

I stood to the challenge.

“I’ll say I’m sorry, if you won’t say anything more about Mary.”

To my astonishment my mother compromised. She grew more gentle, and allowed herself to assume that I was behaving better than I knew. I was trying to defend the wretched girl who had overpersuaded me. It was a generous if mistaken gesture, and my mother seemed eager to accept her own explanation of it.

“This has been a terrible grief to me, John. I’m your mother—”

She began to weep a little, and in a little while I was weeping with her.

“It shan’t happen again, Mother.”

“My dear, you’re the only thing I’ve got. Everything I have done is for you.”

“I promise.”

She made me kneel, down and pray with her, and I remember that while my lips uttered the words, my head was examining the realities behind them.

“Now, my son, I will try and forgive and forget.”

Forgive she may have done, but forget she did not.

A very plain and elderly maid was engaged in Mary’s place, and every night my mother locked my bedroom door.

Did she expect me to forgive her that?