The Tree of Heaven Part 20

Frances looked a little careworn. She had been sent for to Grannie's house to see what could be done with Aunt Emmeline, and had found, as usual, that nothing could be done with her. In the last three years the second Miss Fleming had become less and less enthusiastic, and more and more emphatic, till she ceased from enthusiasm altogether and carried emphasis beyond the bounds of sanity. She had become, as Frances put it, extremely tiresome.

It was not accurate to say, as Mrs. Fleming did, that you never knew when Emmeline would start a nervous crisis; for as a matter of fact you could time her to a minute. It was her habit to wait till her family was absorbed in some urgent affair that diverted attention from her case, and then to break out alarmingly. Dorothy was generally sent for to bring her round; but to-day it was Dorothy who had important things on hand. Aunt Emmeline had scented the Suffrage meeting from afar, and had made arrangements beforehand for a supreme crisis that would take all the shine out of Dorothy's affair.

When Frances said that Aunt Emmy had been tiresome again, Dorothy knew what she meant. For Aunt Emmy's idea was that her sisters persecuted her; that Edie was jealous of her and hated her; that Louie had always trampled on her and kept her under; that Frances had used her influence with Grannie to spoil all her chances one after another. It was all Frances's fault that Vera Harrison had come between her and Major Cameron; Frances had encouraged Vera in her infamous intrigue; and between them they had wrecked two lives. And they had killed Major Cameron.

Since Ferdie's death Emmeline Fleming had lived most of the time in a sort of dream in which it seemed to her that these things had really happened.

This afternoon she had been more than usually tiresome. She had simply raved.

"You should have brought her round to the meeting," said Dorothy, "and let her rave there. I'd back Aunt Emmeline against Maud Blackadder. I wish, Rosalind, you'd leave off making faces and kicking my shins. You needn't worry any more, Mummy ducky. I'm going to rope them all into the Suffrage Movement. Aunt Edie can distribute literature, Aunt Louie can interrupt like anything, and Aunt Emmeline can shout and sing."

"I think, Dorothy," said Rosalind with weak bitterness, "that you might have stuck by me."

The two were walking down East Heath Road to the tram-lines where the motor buses started for Charing Cross.

"It was you who dragged me into it, and the least you could do was to stick. Why didn't you keep quiet instead of forcing our hands?"

"I couldn't keep quiet. I'll go with you straight or I won't go with you at all."

"You know what's the matter with you? It's your family. You'll never be any good to us, you'll never be any good to yourself till you've chucked them and got away. For years--ever since you've been born--you've simply been stewing there in the family juice until you're soaked with it. You oughtn't to be living at home. You ought to be on your own--like me."

"You're talking rot, Rosalind. If my people were like yours I'd have to chuck them, I suppose; but they're not. They're angels."

"That's why they're so dangerous. They couldn't influence you if they weren't angels."

"They don't influence me the least little bit. I'd like to see them try.

They're much too clever. They know I'd be off like a shot if they did.

Why, they let me do every mortal thing I please--turn the schoolroom into a meeting hall for your friends to play the devil in. That Blackadder girl was yelling the house down, yet they didn't say anything. And your people aren't as bad as you make out, you know. You couldn't live on your own if your father didn't give you an allowance. I like Mrs. Jervis."

"Because she likes you."

"Well, that's a reason. It isn't the reason why I like my own mother, because she doesn't like me so very much. That's why she lets me do what I like. She doesn't care enough to stop me. She only really cares for Dad and John and Nicky and Michael."

Rosalind looked fierce and stubborn.

"That's what's the matter with all of you," she said.

"What is?"

"Caring like that. It's all s.e.x. s.e.x instinct, s.e.x feeling. Maud's right. It's what we're up against all the time."

Dorothy said to herself, "That's what's the matter with Rosalind, if she only knew it."

Rosalind loved Michael and Michael detested her, and Nicky didn't like her very much. She always looked fierce and stubborn when she heard Michael's name.

Rosalind went on. "When it comes to s.e.x you don't revolt. You sit down."

"I do revolt. I'm revolting now. I go much farther than you do. I think the marriage laws are rotten; I think divorce ought to be for incompatibility. I think love isn't love and can't last unless it's free. I think marriage ought to be abolished--not yet, perhaps, but when we've become civilized. It will be. It's bound to be. As it is, I think every woman has a right to have a baby if she wants one. If Emmeline had had a baby, she wouldn't be devastating us now."

"That's what you think, but it isn't what you feel. It's all thinking with you, Dorothy. The revolt goes on in your brain. You'll never do anything. It isn't that you haven't the courage to go against your men.

You haven't the will. You don't want to."

"Why should I? What do they do? Father and Michael and Nicky don't interfere with me any more than Mother does."

"You know I'm not thinking of them. They don't really matter."

"Who are you thinking of then? Frank Drayton? You needn't!"

It was mean of Rosalind to hit below the belt like that, when she knew that _she_ was safe. Michael had never been brought against her and never would be. It was disgusting of her to imply that Dorothy's state of mind was palpable, when her own (though sufficiently advertised by her behaviour) had received from Michael's sister the consecration of silence as a secret, tragic thing.

They had reached the tram-lines.

At the sight of the Charing Cross `bus Rosalind a.s.sumed an air of rollicking, adventurous travel.

"My hat! What an evening! I shall have a ripping ride down. Don't say there's no room on the top. Cheer up, Dorothy!"

Which showed that Rosalind Jervis was a free woman, suggested that life had richer thrills than marrying Dorothy's brother Michael, and fixed the detested imputation securely on her friend.

Dorothy watched her as she swung herself on to the footboard and up the stair of the motor bus. There was room on the top. Rosalind, in fact, had the top all to herself.

As Dorothy crossed the Heath again in the twilight she saw something white on the terrace of her father's house. Her mother was waiting for her.

She thought at first that Aunt Emmeline had gone off her head and that she had been sent for to keep her quiet. She gloried in their dependence on her. But no, that wasn't likely. Her mother was just watching for her as she used to watch for her and the boys when they were little and had been sent across the Heath to Grannie's house with a message.

And at the sight and memory of her mother Dorothy felt a childish, sick dissatisfaction with herself and with her day, and an absurd longing for the tranquillity and safety of the home whose chief drawback lately had been that it was too tranquil and too safe. She could almost have told her mother how they had all gone for her, and how Rosalind had turned out rotten, and how beastly it had all been. Almost, but not quite.

Dorothy had grown up, and she was there to protect and not to be protected. However agreeable it might have been to confide in her mother, it wouldn't have done.

Frances met her at the garden door. She had been crying.

"Nicky's come home," she said.

"Nicky?"

"He's been sent down."

"Whatever for?"

"Darling, I can't possibly tell you."

But in the end she did.

XII

Up till now Frances had taken a quiet interest in Women's Suffrage. It had got itself into the papers and thus become part of the affairs of the nation. The names of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite had got into the papers, where Frances hoped and prayed that the name of Dorothea Harrison might not follow them. The spectacle of a frantic Government at grips with the Women's Franchise Union had not yet received the head-lines accorded to the reports of divorce and breach of promise cases and fires in paraffin shops; still, it was beginning to figure, and if Frances's _Times_ ignored it, there were other papers that Dorothy brought home.