We had two cups of tea which neither of us wanted, for all we desired then was to be in each other’s arms and leave explanations until later.

“What are we going to do?” he asked desperately.

“I shall go back to Roland’s Croft. You will go to your wife.”

“You can’t do this.”

“What do you suggest I should do?”

He stretched across the table and took my hand.

“Don’t go back,” he said earnestly. “Don’t catch that train. You and I will go away together.”

“You must be mad, Joliffe. What about my son?”

“You could bring our son with you. Go back now then and get the boy. You, I and he will go away together. We’ll go right out of the country. I’ll take you to Hong Kong. We’ll start a new life…”

For a moment I gave myself the luxury of believing that it was possible. Then I withdrew my hands.

“No, Joliffe,” I said. “It may sound possible to you but not to me. In the first place you have a wife. She is with you now, isn’t she?”

He was silent and I felt a sick pain in my heart because I knew she was. I pictured her in the house where I had been so happy. So it was a fact that they were together. Annie and Albert would look after her as they had looked after me. It was more than I could bear.

“You know how it happened,” he said. “I was young and reckless. And again I swear to you that I believed her to be dead.”

“It seems to me that you accepted this solution rather gladly.”

“I’ll be frank with you,” said Joliffe earnestly. “I was relieved. You wouldn’t understand this, Jane. You are not as impulsive as I am. I was caught… as many young men are. I married Bella and then almost immediately regretted it. When I thought she was killed I admit I was relieved. It was like fate wiping out a mistake so that there was a clean slate to go on with.”

“Poor Bella! So you thought of her death as an act of a benign fate which brought relief to you! What of her?”

“Oh come, Jane, I’m telling you the truth. I’m no saint. I made about the biggest mistake a young man can make. I had tied myself for life to Bella. Naturally it seemed a relief when I thought that episode was wiped out forever.”

“What a shock for you when she came back!”

“The biggest in my life.”

“It would have been better if you had never had your temporary relief… for you… for Bella perhaps and certainly for me.”

“You’ve changed. You’ve become hard.”

“I’ve learned something of the world. I’m less easily deceived perhaps. I have a child to fight for now.”

“Who is mine too.”

“Yes, Joliffe. But he regards Sylvester as his father now.”

Joliffe brought his fist down on the table. “How could you, Jane! How could you marry him… an old man, my own uncle!”

“He is a good man and has brought me nothing but good. He loves the child. He will give him all that a child needs.”

“And his true father?”

“You have a wife. I can see endless trouble. I would not allow my son to be brought up in circumstances where there could be trouble at every turn. He now has a good home, a secure and peaceful home. How could he ever have had that when you had a wife who could appear at any moment? He is Jason Milner, and he has every right to that name. I think I have done the best thing possible in the circumstances for my child and that is my main concern.”

“What of me?”

“It is over, Joliffe. Let us try not to remember.”

“You might as well ask the sun not to shine or the wind not to blow. How could I ever forget? How could you?”

I stirred the tea which had grown cold.

Then I said: “Joliffe, what are you doing now? Tell me.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Wanting you all the time,” he said. “I had to see you. I have a friend in your husband’s office. He told me when you were coming… so I waited.”

“He had no right to do that. It was disloyal to Sylvester. Who was he?”

He smiled and shook his head. “He took pity on me,” he said.

“So Bella has moved into the house?” I asked.

He nodded. “At first I went away to a hotel. She would not leave. She threatened all sorts of things if I left her.”

“So you went back to her.”

“Not back to her. We live in the same house. There it ends. I am planning to go away in a few weeks’ time. I have business in China. I shall go to Canton for a while and then to Kowloon. I shall stay away. I can manage things very well from over there where the main business of buying is done.”

“She will go with you.”

“It is to escape from her that I go.”

“So you will leave her in your house…” I thought of it as our house. I pictured her going across into the Gardens to feed the swans on the Round Pond, and I longed for those days when I had been so blissfully happy.

The clock which hung in the refreshment hall had a malicious face I decided; its hands were turning far too quickly. The precious time was romping away.

He followed my gaze. “So little time left,” he said. “Jane, come away with me.”

“How could I?”

“You are really my wife.”

“No, I am Sylvester’s wife.”

“That marriage is a mockery of a marriage. What is marriage? Is it loving? Is it sharing? Is it living in that intimacy which makes you part of each other? Or is it signing your name on a contract? You are my wife, Jane. You are part of me and my life and when you take yourself from me, when you attempt to sever that intimacy which is between us… you have broken our marriage. We belong together. Don’t you know that?”

I said: “You are married to Bella and I to Sylvester. And it must remain so.”

“What do you know of love? It is clear that you know nothing.”

I retorted angrily: “If you knew how I had suffered… if you could understand…”

He took my hand.

“Jane, Jane, come away. Bring the child and come.”

I looked at the clock.

“I must go.”

He rose with me, his hand gripping my elbow.

I shook my head. I must get away from him. I was afraid that at any moment I would say what he wanted me to. I felt a wild impulse to throw everything away except my life with Joliffe. That was what I wanted more than anything: Joliffe and my son. The three of us belonged together.

But even in that moment common sense was telling me that what I wanted was impossible.

The train was coming into the station—and only a few more moments were left to us.

He took my hands; his eyes were pleading.

“Come, Jane.”

I shook my head; my lips were trembling and I could not trust myself to speak.

“I shall go away soon,” he said. “It will be for a long time.”

Still I could not speak.

“We belong together, Jane… the three of us,” he said.

The train was in the station. I withdrew my hands. He opened the door for me. I went into the compartment and stood at the window. He was on the platform, all the longing which I felt myself, clear in his eyes.

The train started to move. I stood at the window after I could no longer see him and I said to myself: This is what they mean when they say one’s heart is broken.


* * *

I did not go to London for some time after that. I made excuses and cut off my visits. When I finally did go I believed Joliffe had already left for China.

My child was my consolation. No boy ever had a happier home. He was completely secure and this made him contented. He was an inquisitive little boy as Mrs. Couch used to say fondly “into everything.” No child was ever more greatly loved. To me he was everything in the world. Sylvester, I knew, doted on him. I don’t think he had ever visualized such contentment—even incapacitated as he was. I was glad that his marriage had not been a failure for him. As for Mrs. Couch her greatest pleasure was to have Jason in the kitchen and she was overcome with delight when he sat on the floor and played with the saucepan lids. Nothing we could give him attracted him so much up to the time he was two as those saucepan lids and it delighted Mrs. Couch that these desirable objects came from her domain.

His second birthday was celebrated by a cake with two candles and I don’t think Mrs. Couch put as much loving care into anything she had ever cooked before. To her he was “Master Sly Boots” or “Sir Know It All” or “Me Lord into This and That.” “Under my feet morning, noon and night,” she would say with a cluck of the tongue. Of course he loved her. He would take currants and nuts from the table when she wasn’t looking; she would pretend to chase him with her rolling pin and when he was tired she would gather him up on her ample lap and sing him to sleep.

His coming had changed the household, but perhaps most of all it had affected Sylvester.

I learned a great deal about him. He had always been overshadowed by his brothers—Joliffe’s father and Redmond. He had been aloof and never able to shine in company. He had made up for it by a certain business ability which the others could not rival. I wondered why he had not married until he had married me—and I often thought that ours was such an unusual marriage that it could scarcely be called one at all.

Once he told me that years ago he had thought of marriage. She was a young actress, beautiful, lively, charming—he ought to have known she would never seriously have considered him. She had married Joliffe’s father.

Yes, I was learning.

And his feelings for me. I had interested him from the moment I came into his house. I had a vitality, a curiosity, a desire to learn which won his respect.

My mother had brought a homely atmosphere to Roland’s Croft; when I came home from school for holidays the place was like a home. He had always wanted a home. Then of course his accident had happened and his whole life was changed.

Marriage between us had offered a smoothing out of our problems.

I was to have a home for a child, a name, security, as for him he acquired that family which he had always wanted and as soon as Jason was born he regarded him as his son.

He said on more than one occasion: “It worked out well, did it not?”

And I assured him that it did.

Jason’s third and fourth birthdays were celebrated as the main events of the year. Christmases were now important occasions. There was a great tree in the kitchen and I was surprised when Sylvester wanted one in his sitting room. I decorated them with the help of Jason. And in the kitchen he helped Mrs. Couch hang sugar mice and bags of humbugs on the tree. “And no taking the eyes off mice when my back’s turned. Nor popping humbugs into your mouth,” admonished Mrs.Couch. “The place for eyes is on the mice and humbugs in their bags.”

But she would be the first one to pop a sweet into his mouth and if she occasionally overindulged him in such matters the love she bestowed on him made up for that.

Sometimes I wondered what Sylvester was thinking when he listened to the whoops of delight and the blasts from tin trumpets, for Jason greatly loved noise of any sort.

I did not have to ask myself. He loved it as we all did for the pivot of our existence was this son of mine—mine and Joliffe’s.

It was during Jason’s fourth Christmas that the idea became a certainty.

We had decorated the rooms and among the paper fripperies were some small Chinese lanterns. They had stumps of candles inside them and looked very pretty when they were lighted.

Sylvester stared at them when we put them up.

After Jason had gone to bed he said to me: “They remind me of my house in Hong Kong.”

“The House of a Thousand Lanterns,” I said. “Are they like these then?”

“No, quite different. I must go there, Jane. I am going there.”

“Do you really think you could make that journey?”

“If you came with me.”

“Leave Jason!”

“I wouldn’t ask such a thing.”

“Then you mean take him with us?”

“I want him to learn the business as he grows up. You can’t begin too early. If you are steeped in these things from childhood they become part of your life.”

“But to take a child all that way!”

“He will not be the first. You teach him yourself. So he will go on learning his lessons as he travels and later in Hong Kong. It is six years since I was there. I get reports of what is happening but it is not enough. I must go. And Jane, I want you to come with me.”