Like a nightmare it came upon us, waking terrible memories, confronting us with a possibility which we could not even believe, and then, like a nightmare, it was gone; Stella was said to be recovered. Indeed she went about a little, came in to tea and lunch with us, and walked out in Kensington Gardens. But she had a relapse, and then another; and the doctors ordered that for a certain time she should stay in her room. But she could see us; and it seemed that although the time was interrupted by terrible fears, to which we got accustomed however, and was never quite secure, our hopes were realized. She was certainly happy; she was less despondent, less modest than ever before, as though Jack had finally convinced her of her worth. That indeed was a service for which one might forgive much, and under the influence of her large presence and repose he lost many of his difficult ways, his emphatic insistence upon the commonplaces of life, and showed himself loyal and kind as he had always been, but more gentle, and far more sensitive of perception than he was of old. He only needed perhaps some such happiness to discard all his angularities, which were partly produced, no doubt, by the need he had been in for so many years of forcing his way through obstacles. All her arrangements prospered; she had her stepfather to tea with her regularly, and marvelled at his good spirits and health, and he was very tender to her when he heard that she was to be a mother. George and Gerald had their interviews alone. And your mother ‘came out’ that summer, and Stella had one of the purest pleasures of her life in gazing on her beauty and speculating on her success. She felt what a mother would have felt, and this was the sort of triumph that she could herself understand to the uttermost; she had attempted it. But once more she fell ill; again, almost in a moment, there was danger, and this time it did not pass away, but pressed on and on, till suddenly we knew that the worst had actually come to pass. Even now it seems incredible.
fn1 Kitty Maxse (née Lushington) was a frequent visitor to Hyde Park Gate. See here, and here.
fn2 Corby Castle, just east of Carlisle, was the home of the Hills.
Chapter Four
IT GENERALLY HAPPENS in seasons of such bewilderment as that in which we now found ourselves, that one person becomes immediately the central figure, as it were the solid figure, and on this occasion it was your mother. Many reasons combined to give her this prominence. She fulfilled the duties which Stella had but lately fulfilled; she had much of the beauty and something of the character which with but little stretch of the imagination we could accept as worthy to carry on the tradition; for in our morbid state, haunted by great ghosts, we insisted that to be like mother, or like Stella, was to achieve the height of human perfection. Vanessa then at the age of eighteen was exalted, in the most tragic way, to a strange position, full of power and responsibility. Everyone turned to her, and she moved, like some young Queen, all weighed down with the pomp of her ceremonial robes, perplexed and mournful and uncertain of her way. The instant need was to comfort, say rather, to be with, Jack. He had lost infinitely more than anyone could calculate; his sorrow seemed to stretch over years to come, withering them, and to cast a bitter light on his past. Never was there so cruel a loss, for it was cruel in the harshest way, in that it somehow seemed to damage him. Like some animal stunned by a blow on the head he went methodically about his work, worn and grim enough to behold, taking an abrupt mechanical interest in substantial facts, the make of a bicycle, or the number of men killed at the battle of Waterloo. But in the evenings he would come and sit with your mother, and loosen this tight tension and burst out what he could speak of his sorrow. Poor inarticulate man! In his dumb way he had worshipped beauty; it had been a long discipline; and he may well have doubted half consciously, whether he could ever achieve such heights again. Stella had been his pinnacle, all through his tenacious youth; he had loved her and her mother with all that he had of love; they had been to him poetry and youth. A very high nature perhaps might have preserved the echo; but Jack was more inclined to set his eye upon the hardship of his loss, unflinchingly, as he would have considered the harm done him by some unscrupulous human enemy. His attitude was courageous indeed, in a dogged way; but there was little of hope in it, and it threatened to cramp his future.
Your mother, as I have said, coming into this inheritance, with all its complications, was bewildered; so many demands were made on her; it was, in a sense, so easy to be what was expected, with such models before her, but also it was so hard to be herself. She was but just eighteen, and when she should have been free and tentative, she was required to be definite and exact. It came to pass then that she acted at first as though she had her lesson by heart but did not attach much meaning to it; to George she would be devoted and submissive; to Gerald affectionate; to her father helpful; to us protective. She was more than anyone, I suppose, left desolate by Stella’s death, bereft of happy intercourse, which had grown daily more intimate, and also she had much responsibility and there was no woman older than herself to share it with her.
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