Chapter Eighteen.The Reaper.Robert and Jean made no further remonstrance, but the consciousness of their disapproval was a weight from which Vanna could only escape in the company of Piers himself. Alone with him in the shelter of the den she tasted content, all the more perfect from the contrast with darker hours. Encircled by Piers’s arms, with Piers’s eyes looking into hers, the world itself had no power to touch her, and she found herself translated into that woman’s kingdom where everything thatshedid was right and beautiful.“Jean does not approve of me, Piers. She thinks I am acting unfairly by you.”“My Heart, why worry about Jean? She is a child—the most charming and lovable of children, but still a child. You have more brains in your little finger than she has in her whole head. She is incapable of understanding your sentiments.”“Robert doesn’t approve!”“Robert doesn’t count. He is an echo of Jean. He judges you from her standpoint.”“If you get tired of me, Piers, you have promised to speak!”“I’ve sworn it. I’ll swear it again, ten thousand times over. Does one grow tired of the sun?”Then Vanna would abandon argument and talk delicious nonsense, and tell herself a hundred times over that, come what might, she was the happiest, the most blessed of women, to have gained the heaven of Piers Rendall’s love.The days drifted past, quiet and peaceful except for the growing fear about Jean. The doctor shook his head, pronounced her condition “not normal,” and Robert, though invariably cheerful in his wife’s presence, grew haggard with suspense. And then suddenly, some weeks before it was expected, came the end—a ghastly day, a day of hasty comings and goings, of urgent summons for further help, of anguish of body for Jean, and for those who loved her, the mental anguish of sitting still hour after hour waiting with trembling for the verdict of life or death.It was four o’clock in the morning, the soft grey dawn of a summer’s day, when at last the waiting ended. The doctor opened the door of the den, and faced Robert’s hungry eyes.“It is all over, Mr Gloucester. Your wife is coming round. She is young, and has a good constitution. I think she will pull through. She is very low—that is only to be expected; but we have nature on our side, and must hope for the best. Unfortunately, circumstances are not so favourable for her recovery as one could wish. I regret to say that in spite of all our care we could not save the child. A fine boy! I deeply regret; but you will be thankful that your wife is spared.”The tears flooded Robert’s eyes, but they were tears of joy, not grief. At that moment he had no room in his mind for the little son whom he had never seen. After the blackness of those hours when he had seen a vision of life without Jean, he could do nothing but rejoice and thank God.But Vanna’s heart contracted with a spasm of sympathy. Poor Jean! Poor Jean! What a bitter awakening would be hers!And Jean lay on her bed, bruised, aching, incredibly fatigued. She asked no questions, displayed no interest; with eyelids closed over sunken eyes, pale lips apart, she lay like a broken flower, indifferent to everything in heaven or earth. At intervals of a few hours the doctor came and felt her pulse; at times some one put the tube of a feeding-cup to her mouth, and she swallowed, shuddering with distaste; at intervals it was dark, at intervals it was light. Once an urgent voice spoke in her ear telling of Robert’s presence, and she opened her eyes and tried to smile. All her life long Jean remembered that smile. An effort was required of her; she realised as much, and with all the force of her feeble will endeavoured to twist her lips into the looked-for greeting. They were stiff as iron, heavy as lead; she struggled wearily—was it for hours she struggled?—and at last mechanically felt them part. She smiled, and Robert cried! It seemed a poor reward, and she shut her eyes in weary despair. At times she slept, to awake with a gasp and a cry. Always she was falling—falling from the high gallery of a cathedral, from the top of a pile of scaffolding, from the topmost crag of a precipice. Then some one wiped her brow, and spoke soothing words, and she cried, weakly, without cause.Four days of nightmare, then at last rest—a real sleep, without dreams or fear; peace in the troubled frame, appetite instead of nausea. The fire burned brightly on the hearth, the curtains were drawn, nurse was drinking tea comfortably beside the fire. The old homely, everyday life, how good and natural it looked after the black, nightmare dreams.“Nurse!” whispered Jean weakly, “where is my baby?”The white-capped nurse leapt to her feet; it must be uncomfortable, thought Jean, to feel those stiff, white bows for ever pinned beneath one’s chin. She came to the bedside, and looked down at her patient with an expression of mingled anxiety and relief.“Ah, you look better! You have had a deep. You will be ready for some food—”“My baby—I want my baby! Why is it not in the room?”“You have been too ill. We had to keep you quiet. You are getting on nicely now, but you must still be careful. Be good now, and drink this milk, and try to sleep again.”“Is it a girl or a boy?”“A boy.”“Oh!” Jean’s voice thrilled with joy. “I knew it. I knew it. Isaidit could not be a girl. A boy—a son! Oh, bring him to me, nurse; bring him! I can’t wait a moment longer.”“You have waited four days; you can wait a few more minutes. Drink your milk, and I will call your husband. Poor man, he has been so wretched! You would like to see himfirst.”Nurse was masterful, and Jean was weak. She swallowed the milk, and impatiently waited for Robert’s arrival, hugging the thought of the burden in his arms. Surely he would bring him to her—the hard-won treasure, the tiny, precious son for whose sake she had gone down to the gates of death!The door opened, and Robert entered. His face was drawn and aged, his hazel eyes haggard with suffering; but for once Jean had no thought for him—her eyes saw only his empty arms.“Where is he?”Robert went down on his knees by the bedside.“Jean, darling, speak to me! I have been hungering all these days... Thank God you are better. Oh, Jean, nothing matters in all the world if I have you.”Jean smiled, and her fingers feebly returned his caress.“Poor lad! poor lad! You have suffered, too, but he will comfort us. Bring him to me! put him here, between us on the bed. Let us look at him together.”“Jean, sweetheart! We have been happy together; sufficient for each other all these months. Am I not more to thee than ten sons?”Then in a flash fear dawned on Jean’s heart; her great eyes widened, her lips fell apart.“My baby! Don’t torture me. Where is my baby?”“With God,” said Robert softly.The nurse had cleared away the tea things. After a due interval she had returned to the room, and been relieved to find the patient lying quietly on her pillow. Mr Gloucester sitting by her side looked more agitated and distressed than she did. His face wore the pitiful, baffled expression of a child whose overtures have been rejected. It was with an air of absolute timidity that he bent forward to kiss his wife’s cheek when bidden to depart by the autocrat of the situation.“I must go, darling. I’ll come back soon.”Jean’s head moved slightly on the pillow, but the movement was away from him, not nearer. She spoke no word.Nurse Emma moved about the room, performing necessary duties in the deft, noiseless manner of her kind. From time to time she cast a curious glance at the still face on the pillow. “Poor thing! Too weak, no doubt, to take it in! Yet she had seemed excited at the thought of the boy. A pity, after such a hard time, but there would be plenty more.”She shook out some dainty, lace-frilled garments before the fire, and approached the bed, judiciously cheerful.“Now, it is six o’clock! You are so much better this afternoon—what do you say? Could you fancy a nice cup of tea?”Jean opened her eyes, and looked at her. It was not a look, it was a glare; the grey eyes were dry, tearless, blazing. At the sight Nurse Emma was positively shaken with surprise.“Oh, my dear, don’t look at me like that! It was not my fault. We did our best for you—more than our best. I never saw Dr Erroll so anxious. You owe your life to him. It’s sad, of course; a great disappointment, but you are so young, and you have your good husband. You mustn’t fret.”“I am not fretting.”“Not? What then? You look—”“Furious! I’m furious. I have been cheated. It’s not fair.”“Oh, my dear! Don’t talk like that. These things happen, you know. You’re not the first. We all have our troubles, and you are pulling round so nicely. There was a time when we feared for you, too. You must be thankful that your life was spared for your poor husband’s sake. It’s been most trying for him, with your weakness, and the funeral, and all. Come now, have a little cry. It will do you good. Then you shall have some tea.”Jean glared at her again—glared with an intensity that was almost hatred.“You are a foolish woman,” she said coldly. “You have no right to be a nurse. Go away!”Nurse Emma bit her lip and went back to her seat by the fire. Really! But it was her duty to ignore the outbursts of irritable patients, and preserve an unruffled calm, and she honestly strove to live up to her creed. Half an hour later she renewed her offer of tea. When her second and third attempt alike failed to produce any response, she determined once more to summon the husband to second her efforts.Outside the bedroom door was a small square landing, the sort of landing, unworthy the name of hall, which one finds in most small, middle-class houses. The gas was not yet lighted, and it had a dreary, depressing air. Before the window, gazing blankly into the street, stood Robert Gloucester, every line of his body eloquent of fatigue and depression. Nurse Emma looked at him sympathetically; but her first thought was for her patient.“I think you had better go to Mrs Gloucester, sir. I can’t get her to eat. The food is ready on the table. Perhaps she will take it for you.”Robert passed her without a word, shutting the door behind him. Jean stared at him across the room.“Darling! Nurse is distressed that you won’t eat. She has sent me to persuade you.”“She is a stupid woman—stupid and heartless. She has no right to be a nurse.”“Don’t say that, dear. She has nursed you well—been most devoted. For three nights she has not had off her clothes.”Jean’s upper lip curled in scorn. A strong, self-contained woman, who had lost three nights’ rest in performance of her paid duty. Three nights! For how many weary months had she herself missed her sleep, dreading the night, dreading the day, travelling wearily nearer and nearer a martyrdom of pain, and now—nothing! Hungry arms, hungry heart, incredible disappointment! She pushed aside the offered cup with impatient hand.“I don’t want it. It would choke me.”“But you are so weak; you will be worse again. For my sake, sweetheart!”“No! I am better. You can see for yourself. I feel really stronger.” And strange as it appeared, Jean spoke the truth. In some mysterious fashion the flood of anger coursing through her body seemed to have brought with it fresh life and energy. The tone of her voice was clearer, a tinge of colour showed on her cheeks. She looked her husband in the face with cold, challenging eyes.“You took away my baby—my baby, and hid him for ever, without letting me have one sight of his face! Was that just? Was that fair? Does a woman wait all those months to be cheated at the end? It was a cruel thing to do.”“But you were ill. Your own life was in danger. It would have killed you to be roused to hear that news. If you think it over, dear, you will understand.”“It’s easy to talk. You saw him. You can remember. I can’t.”Robert’s face twitched. Yes! he remembered. All his life he would remember the small, dank face of his first-born—that pitiful image, so cruelly unlike the cherub of Jean’s dreams. He had another memory also—the memory of a grey, rainy morning when he stood by his son’s grave in the dreary city cemetery, while his wife lay unconscious at home, grudging each moment in his longing to be back beside her—dreading to return to hear a worse report. Jean had been spared more than she knew—more than she would ever guess, for no word of his would enlighten her. It was not Robert Gloucester’s custom to speak of his own woes.He sat by the bed holding Jean’s slack hand, gazing at her with wistful, puzzled eyes. He loved her as surely no man had loved a woman before, but he could not comfort her. That was the tragic, the inexplicable fact. In the first great sorrow of life she thrust him aside. It was terribly hard for her, poor darling; a crushing blow,butthere was still so much for which to be thankful. Her own life was spared; they were given back to each other’s love. Could she not realise, and be consoled?Poor Robert! As well expect the dead child to rise from its grave as Jean to develop patience in the crash of her first great grief. If she had fallen from one deep faint to another, if she had hysterically cried and sobbed, he could have understood and sympathised; but this bitter cry of rebellion was beyond his comprehension. At the moment when he most longed to draw near, the great barrier of temperament shut him out from his wife’s heart.The darkness deepened in the room; the face of Jean on the pillow became dim and blurred, her hand lay slack and unresponsive in his grasp. Robert sat silent, his whole being expended in a prayer for strength and wisdom—for the power to say the right word to meet his wife’s needs.“Beloved,” he whispered softly. “Be patient! Be content with me a little longer. There will be others...”But what woman fresh from her fiery trial can take comfort in that thought? With a cry of pain Jean wrenched away her hand.“Oh, you don’t, youdon’tunderstand! I want Vanna—I want a woman. Send Vanna to me.”So once again he had said the wrong thing.Vanna crept in through the doorway, and knelt down by Jean’s side. The gas was lighted now, turned up just high enough to make visible the various objects in the room, without dazzling the patient’s eyes. Those eyes were raised with strained appeal to the other girl’s face, as if mutely asking help.Here was another woman, a woman who loved her, a woman who would never have a child of her own. Would she understand? What words of comfort would she offer in her turn?But Vanna said no words. She laid her face down on Jean’s hand, and the hot tears poured from her eyes. The trembling of her form shook the bed, and Jean trembled in response. A spasm of weakness threatened her, but she would not succumb. She pressed her lips together, and stared fixedly with burning eyes. Was this the “little cry” which was to act as the prelude to the “nice cup of tea”? What comfort had Vanna to offer?“Well!” she said in that cold, faint voice which sounded so poor an echo of her usual full, musical tones. “Well! what have you to say? I sent for you, you know. My baby is dead. He isdead. I have no baby. It has been all useless, for nothing! Nothing is left—”“Jean! Jean! My poor little Jean!”“Is that all you have to say? You ought to tell me to be brave, to be brave and not fret. I am not the first person!... Can you believe it, Vanna;canyou? That little chest of drawers is full of his things. I’ve stitched at them for months, and dreamt of him with every stitch. I’ve turned them over a hundred times, waiting, looking forward to to-day. There’s his cot in the corner, and his little bath. It’s all ready—but he is not here. My baby is dead. They took him away, and hid him where I can never see. Think of it, Vanna! all those months, and never even to see his face. To have had a little son, and never to have touched him, given him one kiss—”“Poor little mother! Poor little hungry mother. Oh, my poor Jean.”Jean shut her eyes, and pressed her head against the pillow.“Vanna, Vanna! How shall I bear it? I was so happy, so content; I wanted nothing but Robert, and thenthiscame. I had never been ill before—it was dreadful to be ill, but I looked forward: you know how I looked forward. I thought and thought; it seemed at last as if one thought of nothing else. It grew so real, so near; it filled one’s heart, and then—nothing! nothing but pain and loss. You don’t understand; you can’t guess the horror of it—the baffled, incredible horror. You’ll never know it, Vanna. Thank God for that! When you grieve because you can never marry, remember this day, and what you have escaped. My little son, that I shall never see! What can you say to me, Vanna? What can you say to comfort me?”“Nothing!” said Vanna. “Nothing!” She raised her tear-stained face, and laid it beside Jean’s on the pillow, and at that touch, at the sound of the broken voice, the hard composure broke down. Jean trembled, gasped, and clinging tightly to the outstretched arms, sobbed out her heart in a paroxysm of grief.An hour later Robert was again summoned to the sick-room; but this time it was by Jean’s request, and when he entered she stretched out her hand towards him, and pitifully endeavoured to smile.“Poor darling! I’m sorry I was unkind. I will try, Iwilltry to be good! I am calmer now.”“Vanna helped you?”Jean nodded. Robert sat gazing at her, his eyes wistful, like his voice. It was not jealousy which he felt, nor anger, nor impatience—but simplest, saddest humiliation. He had failed and Vanna had succeeded. With all his soul he longed to find the secret of her power.“How did she help you, dear? What did she say?”“Nothing! She cried. The tears rolled down her face.”Robert sat silent, holding his wife’s hand, and striving, hopelessly, pitifully, to understand.
Robert and Jean made no further remonstrance, but the consciousness of their disapproval was a weight from which Vanna could only escape in the company of Piers himself. Alone with him in the shelter of the den she tasted content, all the more perfect from the contrast with darker hours. Encircled by Piers’s arms, with Piers’s eyes looking into hers, the world itself had no power to touch her, and she found herself translated into that woman’s kingdom where everything thatshedid was right and beautiful.
“Jean does not approve of me, Piers. She thinks I am acting unfairly by you.”
“My Heart, why worry about Jean? She is a child—the most charming and lovable of children, but still a child. You have more brains in your little finger than she has in her whole head. She is incapable of understanding your sentiments.”
“Robert doesn’t approve!”
“Robert doesn’t count. He is an echo of Jean. He judges you from her standpoint.”
“If you get tired of me, Piers, you have promised to speak!”
“I’ve sworn it. I’ll swear it again, ten thousand times over. Does one grow tired of the sun?”
Then Vanna would abandon argument and talk delicious nonsense, and tell herself a hundred times over that, come what might, she was the happiest, the most blessed of women, to have gained the heaven of Piers Rendall’s love.
The days drifted past, quiet and peaceful except for the growing fear about Jean. The doctor shook his head, pronounced her condition “not normal,” and Robert, though invariably cheerful in his wife’s presence, grew haggard with suspense. And then suddenly, some weeks before it was expected, came the end—a ghastly day, a day of hasty comings and goings, of urgent summons for further help, of anguish of body for Jean, and for those who loved her, the mental anguish of sitting still hour after hour waiting with trembling for the verdict of life or death.
It was four o’clock in the morning, the soft grey dawn of a summer’s day, when at last the waiting ended. The doctor opened the door of the den, and faced Robert’s hungry eyes.
“It is all over, Mr Gloucester. Your wife is coming round. She is young, and has a good constitution. I think she will pull through. She is very low—that is only to be expected; but we have nature on our side, and must hope for the best. Unfortunately, circumstances are not so favourable for her recovery as one could wish. I regret to say that in spite of all our care we could not save the child. A fine boy! I deeply regret; but you will be thankful that your wife is spared.”
The tears flooded Robert’s eyes, but they were tears of joy, not grief. At that moment he had no room in his mind for the little son whom he had never seen. After the blackness of those hours when he had seen a vision of life without Jean, he could do nothing but rejoice and thank God.
But Vanna’s heart contracted with a spasm of sympathy. Poor Jean! Poor Jean! What a bitter awakening would be hers!
And Jean lay on her bed, bruised, aching, incredibly fatigued. She asked no questions, displayed no interest; with eyelids closed over sunken eyes, pale lips apart, she lay like a broken flower, indifferent to everything in heaven or earth. At intervals of a few hours the doctor came and felt her pulse; at times some one put the tube of a feeding-cup to her mouth, and she swallowed, shuddering with distaste; at intervals it was dark, at intervals it was light. Once an urgent voice spoke in her ear telling of Robert’s presence, and she opened her eyes and tried to smile. All her life long Jean remembered that smile. An effort was required of her; she realised as much, and with all the force of her feeble will endeavoured to twist her lips into the looked-for greeting. They were stiff as iron, heavy as lead; she struggled wearily—was it for hours she struggled?—and at last mechanically felt them part. She smiled, and Robert cried! It seemed a poor reward, and she shut her eyes in weary despair. At times she slept, to awake with a gasp and a cry. Always she was falling—falling from the high gallery of a cathedral, from the top of a pile of scaffolding, from the topmost crag of a precipice. Then some one wiped her brow, and spoke soothing words, and she cried, weakly, without cause.
Four days of nightmare, then at last rest—a real sleep, without dreams or fear; peace in the troubled frame, appetite instead of nausea. The fire burned brightly on the hearth, the curtains were drawn, nurse was drinking tea comfortably beside the fire. The old homely, everyday life, how good and natural it looked after the black, nightmare dreams.
“Nurse!” whispered Jean weakly, “where is my baby?”
The white-capped nurse leapt to her feet; it must be uncomfortable, thought Jean, to feel those stiff, white bows for ever pinned beneath one’s chin. She came to the bedside, and looked down at her patient with an expression of mingled anxiety and relief.
“Ah, you look better! You have had a deep. You will be ready for some food—”
“My baby—I want my baby! Why is it not in the room?”
“You have been too ill. We had to keep you quiet. You are getting on nicely now, but you must still be careful. Be good now, and drink this milk, and try to sleep again.”
“Is it a girl or a boy?”
“A boy.”
“Oh!” Jean’s voice thrilled with joy. “I knew it. I knew it. Isaidit could not be a girl. A boy—a son! Oh, bring him to me, nurse; bring him! I can’t wait a moment longer.”
“You have waited four days; you can wait a few more minutes. Drink your milk, and I will call your husband. Poor man, he has been so wretched! You would like to see himfirst.”
Nurse was masterful, and Jean was weak. She swallowed the milk, and impatiently waited for Robert’s arrival, hugging the thought of the burden in his arms. Surely he would bring him to her—the hard-won treasure, the tiny, precious son for whose sake she had gone down to the gates of death!
The door opened, and Robert entered. His face was drawn and aged, his hazel eyes haggard with suffering; but for once Jean had no thought for him—her eyes saw only his empty arms.
“Where is he?”
Robert went down on his knees by the bedside.
“Jean, darling, speak to me! I have been hungering all these days... Thank God you are better. Oh, Jean, nothing matters in all the world if I have you.”
Jean smiled, and her fingers feebly returned his caress.
“Poor lad! poor lad! You have suffered, too, but he will comfort us. Bring him to me! put him here, between us on the bed. Let us look at him together.”
“Jean, sweetheart! We have been happy together; sufficient for each other all these months. Am I not more to thee than ten sons?”
Then in a flash fear dawned on Jean’s heart; her great eyes widened, her lips fell apart.
“My baby! Don’t torture me. Where is my baby?”
“With God,” said Robert softly.
The nurse had cleared away the tea things. After a due interval she had returned to the room, and been relieved to find the patient lying quietly on her pillow. Mr Gloucester sitting by her side looked more agitated and distressed than she did. His face wore the pitiful, baffled expression of a child whose overtures have been rejected. It was with an air of absolute timidity that he bent forward to kiss his wife’s cheek when bidden to depart by the autocrat of the situation.
“I must go, darling. I’ll come back soon.”
Jean’s head moved slightly on the pillow, but the movement was away from him, not nearer. She spoke no word.
Nurse Emma moved about the room, performing necessary duties in the deft, noiseless manner of her kind. From time to time she cast a curious glance at the still face on the pillow. “Poor thing! Too weak, no doubt, to take it in! Yet she had seemed excited at the thought of the boy. A pity, after such a hard time, but there would be plenty more.”
She shook out some dainty, lace-frilled garments before the fire, and approached the bed, judiciously cheerful.
“Now, it is six o’clock! You are so much better this afternoon—what do you say? Could you fancy a nice cup of tea?”
Jean opened her eyes, and looked at her. It was not a look, it was a glare; the grey eyes were dry, tearless, blazing. At the sight Nurse Emma was positively shaken with surprise.
“Oh, my dear, don’t look at me like that! It was not my fault. We did our best for you—more than our best. I never saw Dr Erroll so anxious. You owe your life to him. It’s sad, of course; a great disappointment, but you are so young, and you have your good husband. You mustn’t fret.”
“I am not fretting.”
“Not? What then? You look—”
“Furious! I’m furious. I have been cheated. It’s not fair.”
“Oh, my dear! Don’t talk like that. These things happen, you know. You’re not the first. We all have our troubles, and you are pulling round so nicely. There was a time when we feared for you, too. You must be thankful that your life was spared for your poor husband’s sake. It’s been most trying for him, with your weakness, and the funeral, and all. Come now, have a little cry. It will do you good. Then you shall have some tea.”
Jean glared at her again—glared with an intensity that was almost hatred.
“You are a foolish woman,” she said coldly. “You have no right to be a nurse. Go away!”
Nurse Emma bit her lip and went back to her seat by the fire. Really! But it was her duty to ignore the outbursts of irritable patients, and preserve an unruffled calm, and she honestly strove to live up to her creed. Half an hour later she renewed her offer of tea. When her second and third attempt alike failed to produce any response, she determined once more to summon the husband to second her efforts.
Outside the bedroom door was a small square landing, the sort of landing, unworthy the name of hall, which one finds in most small, middle-class houses. The gas was not yet lighted, and it had a dreary, depressing air. Before the window, gazing blankly into the street, stood Robert Gloucester, every line of his body eloquent of fatigue and depression. Nurse Emma looked at him sympathetically; but her first thought was for her patient.
“I think you had better go to Mrs Gloucester, sir. I can’t get her to eat. The food is ready on the table. Perhaps she will take it for you.”
Robert passed her without a word, shutting the door behind him. Jean stared at him across the room.
“Darling! Nurse is distressed that you won’t eat. She has sent me to persuade you.”
“She is a stupid woman—stupid and heartless. She has no right to be a nurse.”
“Don’t say that, dear. She has nursed you well—been most devoted. For three nights she has not had off her clothes.”
Jean’s upper lip curled in scorn. A strong, self-contained woman, who had lost three nights’ rest in performance of her paid duty. Three nights! For how many weary months had she herself missed her sleep, dreading the night, dreading the day, travelling wearily nearer and nearer a martyrdom of pain, and now—nothing! Hungry arms, hungry heart, incredible disappointment! She pushed aside the offered cup with impatient hand.
“I don’t want it. It would choke me.”
“But you are so weak; you will be worse again. For my sake, sweetheart!”
“No! I am better. You can see for yourself. I feel really stronger.” And strange as it appeared, Jean spoke the truth. In some mysterious fashion the flood of anger coursing through her body seemed to have brought with it fresh life and energy. The tone of her voice was clearer, a tinge of colour showed on her cheeks. She looked her husband in the face with cold, challenging eyes.
“You took away my baby—my baby, and hid him for ever, without letting me have one sight of his face! Was that just? Was that fair? Does a woman wait all those months to be cheated at the end? It was a cruel thing to do.”
“But you were ill. Your own life was in danger. It would have killed you to be roused to hear that news. If you think it over, dear, you will understand.”
“It’s easy to talk. You saw him. You can remember. I can’t.”
Robert’s face twitched. Yes! he remembered. All his life he would remember the small, dank face of his first-born—that pitiful image, so cruelly unlike the cherub of Jean’s dreams. He had another memory also—the memory of a grey, rainy morning when he stood by his son’s grave in the dreary city cemetery, while his wife lay unconscious at home, grudging each moment in his longing to be back beside her—dreading to return to hear a worse report. Jean had been spared more than she knew—more than she would ever guess, for no word of his would enlighten her. It was not Robert Gloucester’s custom to speak of his own woes.
He sat by the bed holding Jean’s slack hand, gazing at her with wistful, puzzled eyes. He loved her as surely no man had loved a woman before, but he could not comfort her. That was the tragic, the inexplicable fact. In the first great sorrow of life she thrust him aside. It was terribly hard for her, poor darling; a crushing blow,butthere was still so much for which to be thankful. Her own life was spared; they were given back to each other’s love. Could she not realise, and be consoled?
Poor Robert! As well expect the dead child to rise from its grave as Jean to develop patience in the crash of her first great grief. If she had fallen from one deep faint to another, if she had hysterically cried and sobbed, he could have understood and sympathised; but this bitter cry of rebellion was beyond his comprehension. At the moment when he most longed to draw near, the great barrier of temperament shut him out from his wife’s heart.
The darkness deepened in the room; the face of Jean on the pillow became dim and blurred, her hand lay slack and unresponsive in his grasp. Robert sat silent, his whole being expended in a prayer for strength and wisdom—for the power to say the right word to meet his wife’s needs.
“Beloved,” he whispered softly. “Be patient! Be content with me a little longer. There will be others...”
But what woman fresh from her fiery trial can take comfort in that thought? With a cry of pain Jean wrenched away her hand.
“Oh, you don’t, youdon’tunderstand! I want Vanna—I want a woman. Send Vanna to me.”
So once again he had said the wrong thing.
Vanna crept in through the doorway, and knelt down by Jean’s side. The gas was lighted now, turned up just high enough to make visible the various objects in the room, without dazzling the patient’s eyes. Those eyes were raised with strained appeal to the other girl’s face, as if mutely asking help.
Here was another woman, a woman who loved her, a woman who would never have a child of her own. Would she understand? What words of comfort would she offer in her turn?
But Vanna said no words. She laid her face down on Jean’s hand, and the hot tears poured from her eyes. The trembling of her form shook the bed, and Jean trembled in response. A spasm of weakness threatened her, but she would not succumb. She pressed her lips together, and stared fixedly with burning eyes. Was this the “little cry” which was to act as the prelude to the “nice cup of tea”? What comfort had Vanna to offer?
“Well!” she said in that cold, faint voice which sounded so poor an echo of her usual full, musical tones. “Well! what have you to say? I sent for you, you know. My baby is dead. He isdead. I have no baby. It has been all useless, for nothing! Nothing is left—”
“Jean! Jean! My poor little Jean!”
“Is that all you have to say? You ought to tell me to be brave, to be brave and not fret. I am not the first person!... Can you believe it, Vanna;canyou? That little chest of drawers is full of his things. I’ve stitched at them for months, and dreamt of him with every stitch. I’ve turned them over a hundred times, waiting, looking forward to to-day. There’s his cot in the corner, and his little bath. It’s all ready—but he is not here. My baby is dead. They took him away, and hid him where I can never see. Think of it, Vanna! all those months, and never even to see his face. To have had a little son, and never to have touched him, given him one kiss—”
“Poor little mother! Poor little hungry mother. Oh, my poor Jean.”
Jean shut her eyes, and pressed her head against the pillow.
“Vanna, Vanna! How shall I bear it? I was so happy, so content; I wanted nothing but Robert, and thenthiscame. I had never been ill before—it was dreadful to be ill, but I looked forward: you know how I looked forward. I thought and thought; it seemed at last as if one thought of nothing else. It grew so real, so near; it filled one’s heart, and then—nothing! nothing but pain and loss. You don’t understand; you can’t guess the horror of it—the baffled, incredible horror. You’ll never know it, Vanna. Thank God for that! When you grieve because you can never marry, remember this day, and what you have escaped. My little son, that I shall never see! What can you say to me, Vanna? What can you say to comfort me?”
“Nothing!” said Vanna. “Nothing!” She raised her tear-stained face, and laid it beside Jean’s on the pillow, and at that touch, at the sound of the broken voice, the hard composure broke down. Jean trembled, gasped, and clinging tightly to the outstretched arms, sobbed out her heart in a paroxysm of grief.
An hour later Robert was again summoned to the sick-room; but this time it was by Jean’s request, and when he entered she stretched out her hand towards him, and pitifully endeavoured to smile.
“Poor darling! I’m sorry I was unkind. I will try, Iwilltry to be good! I am calmer now.”
“Vanna helped you?”
Jean nodded. Robert sat gazing at her, his eyes wistful, like his voice. It was not jealousy which he felt, nor anger, nor impatience—but simplest, saddest humiliation. He had failed and Vanna had succeeded. With all his soul he longed to find the secret of her power.
“How did she help you, dear? What did she say?”
“Nothing! She cried. The tears rolled down her face.”
Robert sat silent, holding his wife’s hand, and striving, hopelessly, pitifully, to understand.
Chapter Nineteen.Life Work.After the first few weeks were over Jean recovered her strength more quickly than had been expected, and by the end of the second month was able to take her usual place in the household.One of the first things which she had done after being pronounced convalescent was to fold away with her own hands all the tiny garments which had been prepared with such joy, and to cover the dainty new furnishings of the nursery with careful wrappings. This done, the key was turned in the lock, and henceforward there was a ghost-chamber in the house—a chamber haunted by the ghost of a dead hope.Jean spoke but little of her loss—the wound went too deep for words; and as time went on some of the old interest in life began to revive, aided by the joys of recovered health, and of Robert’s devotion, if possible more ardent than before. Nevertheless no one could look upon her without realising the change wrought by the last few months. She had been a merry, thoughtless girl, to whom grief and pain were but abstract words conveying no definite impression: now the great revelation had come, anguish of body, anguish of soul, and she emerged from the shadows, sobered and thoughtful.“What women have to suffer! The thought of it haunts me. I can’t get away from it,” she said to Vanna one afternoon as they sat together in the autumn gloaming, enjoying that quiettête-à-têtewhich was the most intimate moment of the day. “I walk along the streets staring at the women I meet, and marvel! There they are—thousands of them, British matrons, plain, ordinary, commonplace creatures with dolmans, and bonnets far back on their heads, each with a family of—what? four, six, eight, sometimestenchildren! For years and years of their lives they have been chronic invalids, goaded on by the precepts that it is ‘only natural,’ and that they have no right to shirk their work on that account. The courage of them, and the patience, and the humility! They never seem to consider that they deserve any praise. If they read in the newspaper of a soldier who saved a life in the rush and excitement of battle, and was wounded in the act, they rave of him by the hour together; but if you offeredthemthe Victoria Cross, they would think you were mad! Yet every life given to the world means nearly a year of suffering for some poor mother!”Vanna was silent. It was inevitable that in her position she should see the other side of the question, and feel that a year would be a light price to pay for the joy of holding Piers’s son in her arms; but Jean had lost that great recompense which wipes away the remembrance of the anguish. Her heart was still hungry and sore. Having no words of comfort to offer, Vanna deftly turned the conversation to a safer channel.“Apropos of suffering, Jean, I have been waiting to talk to you about my own plans. I’ve been here over four months, dear, and it’s time I moved on. I told you I had a plan in my head which was slowly working itself out. Well! at last, I think I can see daylight. I have my life to live, and I can’t be content just to fritter it away. I must find something that is worth doing, and which will justify my existence. I’ve thought of many things, but it always comes back to nursing as the likeliest and most suitable. For the last four years that’s been my work, and I know I did it well. Every doctor I have met told me I was a born nurse. One Sunday when you were ill I went to Dr Greatman, and had a long talk. He had asked me to go. I told him what I wanted—technical training to add to what I had learnt by experience, and then when I was properly equipped togivemy services to poor gentlewomen who could not afford to pay to be properly cared for.”“A nurse! A hospital nurse!You!” Jean’s tone was eloquent with dismay. The day of lady nurses was but in its dawn, and public opinion had yet to be reconciled to the thought. “Vanna, you could not stand the everlasting strain. And you spoke of a home, a house of your own! If you were at the hospital—”“Let me finish my story, dear. Don’t interrupt half through. Dr Greatman was most kind and understanding. I think in a kind of way he feels that he owes me some compensation, as it was he who laid the bar on my life. I took him letters from the doctors who know me, giving my character as professional nurse. They were rather nice, Jean. I was proud of them, and Dr Greatman said he wished he could speak as highly of many of his certificated nurses. He advises me to take a two years’ course of training at a hospital. I should have to ‘live in,’ and give up all my time; but as soon as the two years are over I will look out for a house and a sheep dog, and gather together my treasures to make a real little home of my own. You shall help me to arrange it, Jean! It shall be in town, as near to you as rents will allow, in a quiet street, with at least two spare rooms facing south. Then I shall be ready for work as it comes along. Sometimes I shall go to a patient’s house, and nurse her there; sometimes—if her own house is unsuitable, or if she is a poor governess, or a worker who hasn’t got a home—I’ll take her in, and look after her in my own rooms. At other times I’ll have convalescents who want kitchen food and kindness. Sometimes I’ll have guests—poor, dull drones who are suffering from all work and no play, and dose them with kindness and amusement. Then I shall fed of some use, and that my house is doing good to other people besides myself.”“They’ll sponge upon you, and tire you out, and take everything they can get, and then go away, and slander you behind your back.”“Tant pis! Let’s hope they’ll do it sufficiently far away to let me continue in my blissful delusion that I’ve done some good.”“You’ll get sick of it. It’s no use pretending; you were as fond of gaiety and amusement as I was myself. You’ll get sick of everlasting invalids.”“Then I’ll take a spell off, and do nothing, and be as selfish as I please. I’m not bound. If a roving fit seizes me I can shut up house and go off on my travels. I don’t intend to spend all my life in a rut. I’m a poor gentlewoman myself, and need my own medicine. Don’t imagine that I’m tying myself down to continual drudgery, for I’m not; but I must, I must have an object in life!”“And for two whole years you propose to shut yourself up in a hospital?”“I do; with the exception of an afternoon a week, a day a fortnight, and three weeks’ annual holiday.”“May I ask what Piers has to say?”Vanna’s smile was both whimsical and pathetic.“You may; but I shan’t answer. Several volumes of very strong language, poor dear man; but he knows—at the bottom of his heart he knows that I am right!”Not even to Jean could Vanna confess that her plans for the future had a nearer and more personal object than mere philanthropy. The conservation of love! This was the great problem with which she struggled in secret. Her clear, far-sighted brain realised the truth, despised by most lovers, that love is a plant which needs careful and assiduous tending if it is to live and retain its bloom. Kindred interests, kindred hopes, kindred efforts and aims—these are the foods by which it is nourished in happy home-life; but if these be wanting—if instead of the hill tops there stretches ahead a long flat plain, what then can nourish the plant and guard it from decay? Piers had sworn that his troth should not bind him if his heart grew tired; but, having received that promise, Vanna never again allowed herself to allude to the subject. Her woman’s instinct taught her that no good could come of continually putting such a possibility into words. She must write, act, speak, as if the eternity of the love between them was beyond doubt—fixed as the hills. What precautions seemed advisable to keep it so she must take upon herself, and with as slight an appearance of intention as might be. Piers might rage and fume at the prospect of her years in hospital, but she knew that the scarcity of their meetings would be a gain rather than a loss. Once a week they would meet for a few hours; once a fortnight there would come a long happy day, which would make an epoch to be anticipated and remembered with tenderest thought. Better so than to run the risk of satiety, and the hastening of that day when the dread question might arise: “What next?”This conviction, deeply rooted in Vanna’s mind, made her strong to resist all arguments and reproaches, and the end of the year found her established as a nurse at one of the largest and most advanced of the great London hospitals.
After the first few weeks were over Jean recovered her strength more quickly than had been expected, and by the end of the second month was able to take her usual place in the household.
One of the first things which she had done after being pronounced convalescent was to fold away with her own hands all the tiny garments which had been prepared with such joy, and to cover the dainty new furnishings of the nursery with careful wrappings. This done, the key was turned in the lock, and henceforward there was a ghost-chamber in the house—a chamber haunted by the ghost of a dead hope.
Jean spoke but little of her loss—the wound went too deep for words; and as time went on some of the old interest in life began to revive, aided by the joys of recovered health, and of Robert’s devotion, if possible more ardent than before. Nevertheless no one could look upon her without realising the change wrought by the last few months. She had been a merry, thoughtless girl, to whom grief and pain were but abstract words conveying no definite impression: now the great revelation had come, anguish of body, anguish of soul, and she emerged from the shadows, sobered and thoughtful.
“What women have to suffer! The thought of it haunts me. I can’t get away from it,” she said to Vanna one afternoon as they sat together in the autumn gloaming, enjoying that quiettête-à-têtewhich was the most intimate moment of the day. “I walk along the streets staring at the women I meet, and marvel! There they are—thousands of them, British matrons, plain, ordinary, commonplace creatures with dolmans, and bonnets far back on their heads, each with a family of—what? four, six, eight, sometimestenchildren! For years and years of their lives they have been chronic invalids, goaded on by the precepts that it is ‘only natural,’ and that they have no right to shirk their work on that account. The courage of them, and the patience, and the humility! They never seem to consider that they deserve any praise. If they read in the newspaper of a soldier who saved a life in the rush and excitement of battle, and was wounded in the act, they rave of him by the hour together; but if you offeredthemthe Victoria Cross, they would think you were mad! Yet every life given to the world means nearly a year of suffering for some poor mother!”
Vanna was silent. It was inevitable that in her position she should see the other side of the question, and feel that a year would be a light price to pay for the joy of holding Piers’s son in her arms; but Jean had lost that great recompense which wipes away the remembrance of the anguish. Her heart was still hungry and sore. Having no words of comfort to offer, Vanna deftly turned the conversation to a safer channel.
“Apropos of suffering, Jean, I have been waiting to talk to you about my own plans. I’ve been here over four months, dear, and it’s time I moved on. I told you I had a plan in my head which was slowly working itself out. Well! at last, I think I can see daylight. I have my life to live, and I can’t be content just to fritter it away. I must find something that is worth doing, and which will justify my existence. I’ve thought of many things, but it always comes back to nursing as the likeliest and most suitable. For the last four years that’s been my work, and I know I did it well. Every doctor I have met told me I was a born nurse. One Sunday when you were ill I went to Dr Greatman, and had a long talk. He had asked me to go. I told him what I wanted—technical training to add to what I had learnt by experience, and then when I was properly equipped togivemy services to poor gentlewomen who could not afford to pay to be properly cared for.”
“A nurse! A hospital nurse!You!” Jean’s tone was eloquent with dismay. The day of lady nurses was but in its dawn, and public opinion had yet to be reconciled to the thought. “Vanna, you could not stand the everlasting strain. And you spoke of a home, a house of your own! If you were at the hospital—”
“Let me finish my story, dear. Don’t interrupt half through. Dr Greatman was most kind and understanding. I think in a kind of way he feels that he owes me some compensation, as it was he who laid the bar on my life. I took him letters from the doctors who know me, giving my character as professional nurse. They were rather nice, Jean. I was proud of them, and Dr Greatman said he wished he could speak as highly of many of his certificated nurses. He advises me to take a two years’ course of training at a hospital. I should have to ‘live in,’ and give up all my time; but as soon as the two years are over I will look out for a house and a sheep dog, and gather together my treasures to make a real little home of my own. You shall help me to arrange it, Jean! It shall be in town, as near to you as rents will allow, in a quiet street, with at least two spare rooms facing south. Then I shall be ready for work as it comes along. Sometimes I shall go to a patient’s house, and nurse her there; sometimes—if her own house is unsuitable, or if she is a poor governess, or a worker who hasn’t got a home—I’ll take her in, and look after her in my own rooms. At other times I’ll have convalescents who want kitchen food and kindness. Sometimes I’ll have guests—poor, dull drones who are suffering from all work and no play, and dose them with kindness and amusement. Then I shall fed of some use, and that my house is doing good to other people besides myself.”
“They’ll sponge upon you, and tire you out, and take everything they can get, and then go away, and slander you behind your back.”
“Tant pis! Let’s hope they’ll do it sufficiently far away to let me continue in my blissful delusion that I’ve done some good.”
“You’ll get sick of it. It’s no use pretending; you were as fond of gaiety and amusement as I was myself. You’ll get sick of everlasting invalids.”
“Then I’ll take a spell off, and do nothing, and be as selfish as I please. I’m not bound. If a roving fit seizes me I can shut up house and go off on my travels. I don’t intend to spend all my life in a rut. I’m a poor gentlewoman myself, and need my own medicine. Don’t imagine that I’m tying myself down to continual drudgery, for I’m not; but I must, I must have an object in life!”
“And for two whole years you propose to shut yourself up in a hospital?”
“I do; with the exception of an afternoon a week, a day a fortnight, and three weeks’ annual holiday.”
“May I ask what Piers has to say?”
Vanna’s smile was both whimsical and pathetic.
“You may; but I shan’t answer. Several volumes of very strong language, poor dear man; but he knows—at the bottom of his heart he knows that I am right!”
Not even to Jean could Vanna confess that her plans for the future had a nearer and more personal object than mere philanthropy. The conservation of love! This was the great problem with which she struggled in secret. Her clear, far-sighted brain realised the truth, despised by most lovers, that love is a plant which needs careful and assiduous tending if it is to live and retain its bloom. Kindred interests, kindred hopes, kindred efforts and aims—these are the foods by which it is nourished in happy home-life; but if these be wanting—if instead of the hill tops there stretches ahead a long flat plain, what then can nourish the plant and guard it from decay? Piers had sworn that his troth should not bind him if his heart grew tired; but, having received that promise, Vanna never again allowed herself to allude to the subject. Her woman’s instinct taught her that no good could come of continually putting such a possibility into words. She must write, act, speak, as if the eternity of the love between them was beyond doubt—fixed as the hills. What precautions seemed advisable to keep it so she must take upon herself, and with as slight an appearance of intention as might be. Piers might rage and fume at the prospect of her years in hospital, but she knew that the scarcity of their meetings would be a gain rather than a loss. Once a week they would meet for a few hours; once a fortnight there would come a long happy day, which would make an epoch to be anticipated and remembered with tenderest thought. Better so than to run the risk of satiety, and the hastening of that day when the dread question might arise: “What next?”
This conviction, deeply rooted in Vanna’s mind, made her strong to resist all arguments and reproaches, and the end of the year found her established as a nurse at one of the largest and most advanced of the great London hospitals.
Chapter Twenty.After Five Years.Five years later Vanna Strangeways and Piers Rendall were taking tea with Robert and Jean Gloucester in their London home. Those years of busy living had left their trace on all four friends; but, as is usually the case, these changes were most marked on the faces of the women.A man of forty is almost invariably handsomer than the same man at the age of twenty-five; but though a woman may gain in expression, the delicate bloom of youth is a charm which can never be replaced.Jean Gloucester would always be beautiful, but already in her thirtieth year she wore a worn and fragile air. The two children who now occupied the nursery upstairs had made heavy demands on her strength. Jean was one of the women who, though naturally robust, seem totally unfitted for the strain of child-bearing. Her figure was slight almost to emaciation, and her cheeks had lost their bloom, but she was still a picture fascinating to the eye as she leant back against the cushions of the sofa—bright rose-coloured cushions, newly covered to show off the beauty of a wonderful grey gown made in the long flowing folds which she affected, and which were in striking contrast to the inartistic dresses of the period.In whatever direction Jean economised it was never in dress or household decorations. She was one of the women in whom the beauty instinct takes precedence above other tastes. If it had been her lot to live in a garret on ten shillings a week she would have deprived herself of food until she had saved enough money to paper the walls with a harmonious colour, and to buy a strip of curtaining to match. To purchase a prosaic garment for five pounds, when an artistic one could be procured for ten, was to her practically an impossibility. She stifled any pangs of conscience by arguing that the outlay was economical in the end. Good things wore longer, one did not grow wearied of them as of cheaper designs; and, to do her justice, these theories were invariably supported by her husband. His wife’s beauty was a continual joy to Robert Gloucester, and he took a boyish delight in the moments when, walking by her side, he encountered chance City friends, and watched the first casual glance brighten into surprised admiration. It appeared to him but another instance of Jean’s surprising cleverness that she always “hit upon such stunning clothes,” and he pitied from his heart the poor fellows who possessed dull, dowdy wives. Jean looked like a queen beside them; but a queen is an expensive luxury in the home of a struggling business man. The process of “selling out a share or two” had been resorted to several times in the course of the last few years, and Robert had begun to lie awake at nights, pondering uneasily about the future. The lines in his forehead had deepened into furrows, but his eyes were clear and bright as ever; he moved in the same quick, alert fashion, and his laugh rang full and joyous as a boy’s.Piers Rendall’s dark hair had turned grey—a curious dark shade of grey which gave an effect ofpoudré. The change gave an added distinction to his appearance, and showed the dark eyes and eyebrows in striking contrast. He was thin, however, and the nervous twitching of the features was more frequent than of old.As for Vanna, what attractions she possessed had never been of the golden-haired, pink-cheeked category, and there was consequently little change visible at a casual glance. She was prettily dressed in a soft blue gown, and the stag-like setting of the head, the arched black brows, and the delicate oval of the face were untouched. Love and work had filled her life, and her expression was both sweet and strong; but there were new lines written on her face—lines whose secret no one knew but herself.All these years Vanna had been fighting a battle—a battle against self and fate. When at the end of her hospital courseshehad settled down in her own house, Piers had been hotly indignant at discovering that the same embargo as of old was to be laid against his visits. One night a week! The thing was preposterous. He had given way to her wishes, had been patient and self-sacrificing, more patient than ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have been under the circumstances. He had waited, marking off the months as they passed, counting on the future to reward him for his abstinence, and now was she going to put him off again, to forbid him the house, to treat him like a common acquaintance? He stormed and argued, Vanna stood firm. They parted for the first time in coldness and anger, but the next day Piers took back his words, and begged for forgiveness.“You may be right, I don’t know. Women are so confoundedly calm and reasoning; but it’s hard, Vanna! If you knew how I long for you—what a lost, aimless wretch I feel hanging about, knowing that you are alone—a few streets off! It was easier when you were shut up in hospital and I couldn’t get to you; but now! Sometimes it drives me half mad. You can’t blame me for flaring out. It’s because I love you, darling—love you so wildly. You wouldn’t have me love you less?”“No! a thousand times no.” Yet no persuasion could move Vanna from her point. On that one evening a week she was all that the most ardent lover could desire; with every power she possessed she strove to secure the perfection of that hour. Piers’s favourite dishes appeared at dinner; his favourite flowers decked the rooms; she rested during the day, so as to be at her best and brightest in the evening, dressed herself in his favourite colours, lavished love upon him in generous, unstinted flow. Every evening he left her aglow with love, chafing at the thought of the time which must elapse before their next meeting, breathing out threats of rebellion. Now and again he did indeed break through the rule, making an excuse of an opportunity to take Vanna to some special entertainment; but these occasions had the excitement of stolen pleasures, and were not allowed to become common.Sometimes when Piers was visited by one of his black fits of depression; when she realised that these fits grew more frequent with each year as it passed, Vanna knew a terrible sinking of the heart. But she strove valiantly to disguise it even from herself, for she realised that for her wisdom lay in living in the present and resolutely shutting her eyes to the future. Piers also she strove to inoculate with this doctrine, forcing him to see outside reasons for his depression.“Our love is more perfect, we mean more to each other than nine out of ten married couples. If we have not their joys, we are spared their griefs. Dearest, is any human being really content? Is hemeantto be content? The animals are peaceful and satisfied to browse, and eat, and lie down and sleep; they are in their rightful environment, but we as spiritual beings are wandering adrift. The divine spark within is eternally urging us on, further, higher—casting aside the baubles. It is not a fault; it’s a birthright. We can be patient, but never, never content.”“Robert—”“No! He has Jean, and she has his heart, but he wants her to be stronger; he wants to be richer for her sake. He craves for the perfection which he can never know.”But it was hard to be always strong, to be compelled to reason and argue, and fight down self, instead of claiming her woman’s privilege of being cared for and protected. There were hours when Vanna would have given all she possessed to break down and cry her heart out in Piers’s arms; but it was an indulgence she dared not claim. A fuller knowledge of her lover’s character had shown that his powers of endurance were less than her own. He would have been all tenderness and compassion, but she would have paid for that hour by weeks of heavy depression. So Vanna fought on, and was silent.In one respect her circumstances were happier than her lover’s; for while Piers’s interest in business was of the perfunctory order of the already rich man, her own work was a continual delight. From time to time she visited a patient, but by far the greater number came to her to be housed and tended. They were a pathetic crowd; middle-aged and elderly women of gentle birth, worn out with the struggle of life, shrinking with terror from bodily illness, not because of the suffering involved, but from the fear of loss of employment and subsequent want which it involved. To be nursed, housed, and fed free of charge was a godsend indeed, and Jean’s prophecy of ingratitude was rarely fulfilled. Sometimes, indeed, Vanna felt that ingratitude would have been easier to bear than the trembling blessings called down on her head by those poor souls for whom perforce she could do so little. She grew to dread the last few days of a visit, to shrink afore-hand from the pitiful glances which the departing guest would cast around the pretty, cosy rooms, as if storing up memories to brighten barren days. Her charity had the sting of all such work, the inability to do more; but in it she found interest and occupation, and a continual object-lesson. These poor waifs and strays, who were thankful for a few weeks’ haven, would think themselves rich beyond measure if they owned one half the blessings she herself possessed. Ought she not to be grateful too?On this autumn afternoon Jean had an exciting piece of news to tell to her visitors.“Guess who is engaged! Some one you know—know very well: an intimate friend.”“Fine or superfine?”“Both, of course; but you know her best. A very old friend. Near here—”“Don’t tell, Jean; don’t be in such a hurry. Let them guess,” cried Robert, laughing; but already Vanna was gasping in incredulous tones:“NotEdith Morton!”“Yes! Yes!” Jean clapped her hands with her old childlike abandon. “Isn’t it lovely? Aren’t you pleased? She came round last night to tell me. To Mr Mortimer. She has seen a lot of him at their literary society. He is a clever man; every one speaks highly of him, and he is rich. It’s all as charming as possible, and most suitable.”Mr Mortimer! Vanna knitted her brows, recalling a grave, middle-aged figure, and striving to imagine him in the new rôle of Edith Morton’s lover. Edith had sailed for Canada shortly after Jean’s marriage to pay a visit to a married sister, and had returned at the end of two years, apparently heart-whole; but Vanna knew that her life had been empty of interest, and feared lest the attraction of a home of her own and a definite place in the world might have induced her to give her promise without love.“Mr Mortimer! He is a fine man; I like him—but for Edith? He seems so old, so settled down. I never dreamt of his getting engaged.”“Nonsense! He is forty-five and she is thirty-two. Very suitable. A woman ages more quickly than a man. He will look years younger with a wife to smarten him up; and they are as much in love as if they were twenty; beaming, both of them—the picture of happiness. The wedding is to be almost at once. He says they have waited long enough, and can’t afford to waste another day. I shouldn’t wonder if they rushed it through in six weeks, and took a furnished house till they had time to look round. Much the best plan.”“Much!” agreed Vanna quietly. Jean’s impetuous speech often planted a dart of which she was the first to repent; but as she would ruefully confess to Robert, it was so difficult to think of Vanna and Piers as an engaged couple. They were so much more like a settled-down, married couple, living on quietly from day to day, taking life as it came, making no plans. It was only when she saw the shadow fall on the faces of the two listeners that she realised her mistake. She sprang to her feet and pulled loudly at the bell.“We’ll have the children! Lorna would never forgive me if I let you go. Babs looks too sweet in her new frock...”“Just for a moment. I must be taking Vanna home. It’s damp, and I can’t let her risk cold.”Piers spoke hastily, and rose to his feet as if in preparation for saying adieu. Jean’s children were dainty little creatures, to whom he and Vanna were truly attached; but each shrank from seeing them in the presence of the other. The family group of the lovely mother, with her golden-haired babies, the proud, happy father, was so perfect, so complete, that less happy mortals looking on might well be excused a stab of envy. Vanna and Piers each knew the pang of the childless, which was doubled in intensity in the knowledge of the other’s suffering.The two little girls entered the room side by side. Their sex had been a grievous disappointment to Jean, who had the overpowering desire for a son which possesses many women; but the little maids were pretty and charming enough to satisfy any parent. Lorna, dark, glowing, with her mother’s wonderful eyes; the baby Joyce, a delicious fat ball crowned with a mop of yellow curls.They were delightfully free from shyness, and greeted the two visitors with sweet, moist kisses, and “bears’ hugs” from tiny white arms. Vanna took Joyce on her knee and tried bravely to talk baby-talk, and keep her eyes averted from Piers’s lowering face; but at the end of ten minutes she gave up the struggle, made her farewells and followed him into the street.It was a dark, misty evening—one of those evenings when the cold penetrates to the marrow, and the great city is at its worst and dreariest. Piers turned up the collar of his coat, so that Vanna could see little of his face; but his walk, his bearing, the forward droop of his head were painfully eloquent. During the whole of the ten minutes’ walk he did not speak a word, but Vanna knew that when they were alone in her own quiet room the floodgates would open, and trembled at the thought of yet another scene. When the door was opened she went straight to her bedroom, lingering purposely over her toilette, in the hope that Piers would have time to calm down, and remember his resolution made so ardently after each fresh outburst. Of what avail to rail against fate, when the effort could only revert on one’s own head in weariness and remorse? Was it not he who had first preached the beauty of a spiritual love? This was the view on which she must lay fullest stress to-night, this the pure and lofty ideal to which she must raise his thoughts. And then Vanna—a woman through and through—stood another five minutes before the glass, carefully bestowing those little touches to her toilette which would add to her physical charm, and evoke Piers’s admiration to the uttermost.He was pacing the room from end to end. The sound of his footsteps reached her ears before the door opened, and the moment she appeared he came towards her with outstretched arms.“Vanna! this must end. It is unsupportable. We cannot endure it any longer. Why can every one be happy except us? Edith Morton married in six weeks! Good God, and we have waited five years; may wait for ever. To hear Jean prattling of its being so wise, so sensible, and you agreeing in a calm, even voice—it drove me wild! There are some things a man cannot stand. I have come to the end of my tether.”Vanna stood like a statue, eyes cast down, hands clenched by her sides. No! this was not one of the scenes to which she was accustomed; this was something more. There was a note in Piers’s voice which she had not heard before—a note of determination, of finality. Within her soul she heard the knell of the end.“Vanna, you must feel for yourself that things are impossible. We must marry. We must risk all. This farce cannot go on. We have done our best, and we have failed. Nothing that could happen could be worse than to go on through the years wasting our lives. We must take our risks, and face them together. We must marry!”To the last day of her life Vanna never ceased to marvel at her own courage and calmness at this moment of supreme temptation. A hundred times over she had tremblingly acknowledged to herself that if Piers made a violent attack upon her determination she could not answer for the result. The temptation to consent, to gain happiness at whatever cost, would be so immense that continued resistance would be next to impossible; but at this moment there was no feeling of temptation. The steady, persistent effort of years finds its reward in these crises of life—in a strength of character, a stiffening of the mental muscles, which changes tumult into calm. Vanna ceased to tremble; she stood motionless before her lover, oblivious of his outstretched arms, her whole being projected into the thought of the future.It was as if on a darkened night a sudden flash of light had been vouchsafed, by which the landscape was revealed, with the pitfalls yawning at her feet. A tranquil, trustful soul like Robert Gloucester might have taken on himself the burden of her life, and have come unscathed through the ordeal—calm himself, calm in his influence, a true doctor in the home; but Piers, by reason of those very qualities which endeared him to her woman’s heart, was the last man on earth to support the strain. His fear, his anxiety, though expressed in tenderest devotion, must inevitably act and react on both. At this moment the great question appealed to her woman’s heart less in its abstract than in the personal form, as affecting the happiness of the beloved. Whatever he might feel at this moment of stress and passion, it could not be for Piers Rendall’s ultimate happiness to marry a woman over whom hung the deep cloud of inherited madness. His aim accomplished, joy would be speedily eclipsed in dread. In imagination she could see his haggard looks, feel the dark eyes brooding over her with fearful care. So far he had been free. If the chains fretted too sorely he had only to drop them, and go forth. How would he bear it if there were no escape? How couldshebear it for his sake?Vanna lifted her head and looked deep into her lover’s eyes. Her voice was clear and steady:“No, Piers! I will never marry you. Never, to the end of time. But I will not bind you. You are quite free—”“Free!” He turned from her with a loud, harsh laugh. “Good God, how you quibble with words! I have loved you, I have given you my life—how can I be free? What have I left if you cast me off? What haveyouleft? How can you insult me with such words? How can you be so cold, so cruel? Women have no hearts. They don’t know what it is to love—” The wild words flowed on in breathless torrent. Then suddenly came the collapse: he turned towards her, met the glance of her piteous eyes, and melted into remorse. “My poor Vanna, I am hurting you. Forgive me, darling! I am a brute, a selfish brute; I am half mad myself... Oh, this world! what a hell it can be! What have we done to be cursed and set aside? It is cruel—unjust. If we can never marry, why did we ever meet?”Vanna shivered. “Why did we ever meet?” Was it Piers who had spoken those words?—Piers, who had declared that to love her was a higher joy than to be the husband of any other woman! Once again the knell-like bell tolled in her ears. It was almost a relief when, after a few more incoherent words, Piers suddenly turned to depart.“I won’t stay. I am hurting you. I’ll go now, and come back when I am calm. You’ll be better alone—”For the first time in five years he left her without a kiss or a caress, and Vanna sat, stunned and motionless, gazing on the ruins of her life. No one came near to interrupt her solitude. It was a rule that she should be uninterrupted when Piers was present, and his departure had apparently passed unnoticed by the household. A dense, overhanging shadow possessed her spirit, out of which one thought alone was clear. Piers was unhappy. She, who would have sheltered him from every ill, had brought upon him the keenest suffering of his life.Two hours later, when Piers himself opened the door, he found Vanna in practically the same attitude in which he had left her, crouched in the corner of the sofa. The fire had died out in the grate, and the air of the little room struck bleak and chill. The face turned towards him had the delicacy of an etching, the dark brows arched above the deep-set eyes, the finely moulded cheeks white and wan. Unlike most women, Vanna’s attraction was distinct from colour; she looked her best, not her worst, in minutes of mental strain. Piers closed the door, approached her hastily, and, taking her hands in his, drew her to his side. He spoke but two words, but they were prompted by the force which is the greatest diviner of the needs of the human heart, and the whole wealth of the language could not have added to their eloquence.“My Joy!” he said, in that deep, full voice which Vanna had heard but once or twice before, in the great moments of their love.They wept, and clung together, and Vanna’s hungry heart found comfort once more. After all, would she have been more content if Piers hadnotrebelled?
Five years later Vanna Strangeways and Piers Rendall were taking tea with Robert and Jean Gloucester in their London home. Those years of busy living had left their trace on all four friends; but, as is usually the case, these changes were most marked on the faces of the women.
A man of forty is almost invariably handsomer than the same man at the age of twenty-five; but though a woman may gain in expression, the delicate bloom of youth is a charm which can never be replaced.
Jean Gloucester would always be beautiful, but already in her thirtieth year she wore a worn and fragile air. The two children who now occupied the nursery upstairs had made heavy demands on her strength. Jean was one of the women who, though naturally robust, seem totally unfitted for the strain of child-bearing. Her figure was slight almost to emaciation, and her cheeks had lost their bloom, but she was still a picture fascinating to the eye as she leant back against the cushions of the sofa—bright rose-coloured cushions, newly covered to show off the beauty of a wonderful grey gown made in the long flowing folds which she affected, and which were in striking contrast to the inartistic dresses of the period.
In whatever direction Jean economised it was never in dress or household decorations. She was one of the women in whom the beauty instinct takes precedence above other tastes. If it had been her lot to live in a garret on ten shillings a week she would have deprived herself of food until she had saved enough money to paper the walls with a harmonious colour, and to buy a strip of curtaining to match. To purchase a prosaic garment for five pounds, when an artistic one could be procured for ten, was to her practically an impossibility. She stifled any pangs of conscience by arguing that the outlay was economical in the end. Good things wore longer, one did not grow wearied of them as of cheaper designs; and, to do her justice, these theories were invariably supported by her husband. His wife’s beauty was a continual joy to Robert Gloucester, and he took a boyish delight in the moments when, walking by her side, he encountered chance City friends, and watched the first casual glance brighten into surprised admiration. It appeared to him but another instance of Jean’s surprising cleverness that she always “hit upon such stunning clothes,” and he pitied from his heart the poor fellows who possessed dull, dowdy wives. Jean looked like a queen beside them; but a queen is an expensive luxury in the home of a struggling business man. The process of “selling out a share or two” had been resorted to several times in the course of the last few years, and Robert had begun to lie awake at nights, pondering uneasily about the future. The lines in his forehead had deepened into furrows, but his eyes were clear and bright as ever; he moved in the same quick, alert fashion, and his laugh rang full and joyous as a boy’s.
Piers Rendall’s dark hair had turned grey—a curious dark shade of grey which gave an effect ofpoudré. The change gave an added distinction to his appearance, and showed the dark eyes and eyebrows in striking contrast. He was thin, however, and the nervous twitching of the features was more frequent than of old.
As for Vanna, what attractions she possessed had never been of the golden-haired, pink-cheeked category, and there was consequently little change visible at a casual glance. She was prettily dressed in a soft blue gown, and the stag-like setting of the head, the arched black brows, and the delicate oval of the face were untouched. Love and work had filled her life, and her expression was both sweet and strong; but there were new lines written on her face—lines whose secret no one knew but herself.
All these years Vanna had been fighting a battle—a battle against self and fate. When at the end of her hospital courseshehad settled down in her own house, Piers had been hotly indignant at discovering that the same embargo as of old was to be laid against his visits. One night a week! The thing was preposterous. He had given way to her wishes, had been patient and self-sacrificing, more patient than ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have been under the circumstances. He had waited, marking off the months as they passed, counting on the future to reward him for his abstinence, and now was she going to put him off again, to forbid him the house, to treat him like a common acquaintance? He stormed and argued, Vanna stood firm. They parted for the first time in coldness and anger, but the next day Piers took back his words, and begged for forgiveness.
“You may be right, I don’t know. Women are so confoundedly calm and reasoning; but it’s hard, Vanna! If you knew how I long for you—what a lost, aimless wretch I feel hanging about, knowing that you are alone—a few streets off! It was easier when you were shut up in hospital and I couldn’t get to you; but now! Sometimes it drives me half mad. You can’t blame me for flaring out. It’s because I love you, darling—love you so wildly. You wouldn’t have me love you less?”
“No! a thousand times no.” Yet no persuasion could move Vanna from her point. On that one evening a week she was all that the most ardent lover could desire; with every power she possessed she strove to secure the perfection of that hour. Piers’s favourite dishes appeared at dinner; his favourite flowers decked the rooms; she rested during the day, so as to be at her best and brightest in the evening, dressed herself in his favourite colours, lavished love upon him in generous, unstinted flow. Every evening he left her aglow with love, chafing at the thought of the time which must elapse before their next meeting, breathing out threats of rebellion. Now and again he did indeed break through the rule, making an excuse of an opportunity to take Vanna to some special entertainment; but these occasions had the excitement of stolen pleasures, and were not allowed to become common.
Sometimes when Piers was visited by one of his black fits of depression; when she realised that these fits grew more frequent with each year as it passed, Vanna knew a terrible sinking of the heart. But she strove valiantly to disguise it even from herself, for she realised that for her wisdom lay in living in the present and resolutely shutting her eyes to the future. Piers also she strove to inoculate with this doctrine, forcing him to see outside reasons for his depression.
“Our love is more perfect, we mean more to each other than nine out of ten married couples. If we have not their joys, we are spared their griefs. Dearest, is any human being really content? Is hemeantto be content? The animals are peaceful and satisfied to browse, and eat, and lie down and sleep; they are in their rightful environment, but we as spiritual beings are wandering adrift. The divine spark within is eternally urging us on, further, higher—casting aside the baubles. It is not a fault; it’s a birthright. We can be patient, but never, never content.”
“Robert—”
“No! He has Jean, and she has his heart, but he wants her to be stronger; he wants to be richer for her sake. He craves for the perfection which he can never know.”
But it was hard to be always strong, to be compelled to reason and argue, and fight down self, instead of claiming her woman’s privilege of being cared for and protected. There were hours when Vanna would have given all she possessed to break down and cry her heart out in Piers’s arms; but it was an indulgence she dared not claim. A fuller knowledge of her lover’s character had shown that his powers of endurance were less than her own. He would have been all tenderness and compassion, but she would have paid for that hour by weeks of heavy depression. So Vanna fought on, and was silent.
In one respect her circumstances were happier than her lover’s; for while Piers’s interest in business was of the perfunctory order of the already rich man, her own work was a continual delight. From time to time she visited a patient, but by far the greater number came to her to be housed and tended. They were a pathetic crowd; middle-aged and elderly women of gentle birth, worn out with the struggle of life, shrinking with terror from bodily illness, not because of the suffering involved, but from the fear of loss of employment and subsequent want which it involved. To be nursed, housed, and fed free of charge was a godsend indeed, and Jean’s prophecy of ingratitude was rarely fulfilled. Sometimes, indeed, Vanna felt that ingratitude would have been easier to bear than the trembling blessings called down on her head by those poor souls for whom perforce she could do so little. She grew to dread the last few days of a visit, to shrink afore-hand from the pitiful glances which the departing guest would cast around the pretty, cosy rooms, as if storing up memories to brighten barren days. Her charity had the sting of all such work, the inability to do more; but in it she found interest and occupation, and a continual object-lesson. These poor waifs and strays, who were thankful for a few weeks’ haven, would think themselves rich beyond measure if they owned one half the blessings she herself possessed. Ought she not to be grateful too?
On this autumn afternoon Jean had an exciting piece of news to tell to her visitors.
“Guess who is engaged! Some one you know—know very well: an intimate friend.”
“Fine or superfine?”
“Both, of course; but you know her best. A very old friend. Near here—”
“Don’t tell, Jean; don’t be in such a hurry. Let them guess,” cried Robert, laughing; but already Vanna was gasping in incredulous tones:
“NotEdith Morton!”
“Yes! Yes!” Jean clapped her hands with her old childlike abandon. “Isn’t it lovely? Aren’t you pleased? She came round last night to tell me. To Mr Mortimer. She has seen a lot of him at their literary society. He is a clever man; every one speaks highly of him, and he is rich. It’s all as charming as possible, and most suitable.”
Mr Mortimer! Vanna knitted her brows, recalling a grave, middle-aged figure, and striving to imagine him in the new rôle of Edith Morton’s lover. Edith had sailed for Canada shortly after Jean’s marriage to pay a visit to a married sister, and had returned at the end of two years, apparently heart-whole; but Vanna knew that her life had been empty of interest, and feared lest the attraction of a home of her own and a definite place in the world might have induced her to give her promise without love.
“Mr Mortimer! He is a fine man; I like him—but for Edith? He seems so old, so settled down. I never dreamt of his getting engaged.”
“Nonsense! He is forty-five and she is thirty-two. Very suitable. A woman ages more quickly than a man. He will look years younger with a wife to smarten him up; and they are as much in love as if they were twenty; beaming, both of them—the picture of happiness. The wedding is to be almost at once. He says they have waited long enough, and can’t afford to waste another day. I shouldn’t wonder if they rushed it through in six weeks, and took a furnished house till they had time to look round. Much the best plan.”
“Much!” agreed Vanna quietly. Jean’s impetuous speech often planted a dart of which she was the first to repent; but as she would ruefully confess to Robert, it was so difficult to think of Vanna and Piers as an engaged couple. They were so much more like a settled-down, married couple, living on quietly from day to day, taking life as it came, making no plans. It was only when she saw the shadow fall on the faces of the two listeners that she realised her mistake. She sprang to her feet and pulled loudly at the bell.
“We’ll have the children! Lorna would never forgive me if I let you go. Babs looks too sweet in her new frock...”
“Just for a moment. I must be taking Vanna home. It’s damp, and I can’t let her risk cold.”
Piers spoke hastily, and rose to his feet as if in preparation for saying adieu. Jean’s children were dainty little creatures, to whom he and Vanna were truly attached; but each shrank from seeing them in the presence of the other. The family group of the lovely mother, with her golden-haired babies, the proud, happy father, was so perfect, so complete, that less happy mortals looking on might well be excused a stab of envy. Vanna and Piers each knew the pang of the childless, which was doubled in intensity in the knowledge of the other’s suffering.
The two little girls entered the room side by side. Their sex had been a grievous disappointment to Jean, who had the overpowering desire for a son which possesses many women; but the little maids were pretty and charming enough to satisfy any parent. Lorna, dark, glowing, with her mother’s wonderful eyes; the baby Joyce, a delicious fat ball crowned with a mop of yellow curls.
They were delightfully free from shyness, and greeted the two visitors with sweet, moist kisses, and “bears’ hugs” from tiny white arms. Vanna took Joyce on her knee and tried bravely to talk baby-talk, and keep her eyes averted from Piers’s lowering face; but at the end of ten minutes she gave up the struggle, made her farewells and followed him into the street.
It was a dark, misty evening—one of those evenings when the cold penetrates to the marrow, and the great city is at its worst and dreariest. Piers turned up the collar of his coat, so that Vanna could see little of his face; but his walk, his bearing, the forward droop of his head were painfully eloquent. During the whole of the ten minutes’ walk he did not speak a word, but Vanna knew that when they were alone in her own quiet room the floodgates would open, and trembled at the thought of yet another scene. When the door was opened she went straight to her bedroom, lingering purposely over her toilette, in the hope that Piers would have time to calm down, and remember his resolution made so ardently after each fresh outburst. Of what avail to rail against fate, when the effort could only revert on one’s own head in weariness and remorse? Was it not he who had first preached the beauty of a spiritual love? This was the view on which she must lay fullest stress to-night, this the pure and lofty ideal to which she must raise his thoughts. And then Vanna—a woman through and through—stood another five minutes before the glass, carefully bestowing those little touches to her toilette which would add to her physical charm, and evoke Piers’s admiration to the uttermost.
He was pacing the room from end to end. The sound of his footsteps reached her ears before the door opened, and the moment she appeared he came towards her with outstretched arms.
“Vanna! this must end. It is unsupportable. We cannot endure it any longer. Why can every one be happy except us? Edith Morton married in six weeks! Good God, and we have waited five years; may wait for ever. To hear Jean prattling of its being so wise, so sensible, and you agreeing in a calm, even voice—it drove me wild! There are some things a man cannot stand. I have come to the end of my tether.”
Vanna stood like a statue, eyes cast down, hands clenched by her sides. No! this was not one of the scenes to which she was accustomed; this was something more. There was a note in Piers’s voice which she had not heard before—a note of determination, of finality. Within her soul she heard the knell of the end.
“Vanna, you must feel for yourself that things are impossible. We must marry. We must risk all. This farce cannot go on. We have done our best, and we have failed. Nothing that could happen could be worse than to go on through the years wasting our lives. We must take our risks, and face them together. We must marry!”
To the last day of her life Vanna never ceased to marvel at her own courage and calmness at this moment of supreme temptation. A hundred times over she had tremblingly acknowledged to herself that if Piers made a violent attack upon her determination she could not answer for the result. The temptation to consent, to gain happiness at whatever cost, would be so immense that continued resistance would be next to impossible; but at this moment there was no feeling of temptation. The steady, persistent effort of years finds its reward in these crises of life—in a strength of character, a stiffening of the mental muscles, which changes tumult into calm. Vanna ceased to tremble; she stood motionless before her lover, oblivious of his outstretched arms, her whole being projected into the thought of the future.
It was as if on a darkened night a sudden flash of light had been vouchsafed, by which the landscape was revealed, with the pitfalls yawning at her feet. A tranquil, trustful soul like Robert Gloucester might have taken on himself the burden of her life, and have come unscathed through the ordeal—calm himself, calm in his influence, a true doctor in the home; but Piers, by reason of those very qualities which endeared him to her woman’s heart, was the last man on earth to support the strain. His fear, his anxiety, though expressed in tenderest devotion, must inevitably act and react on both. At this moment the great question appealed to her woman’s heart less in its abstract than in the personal form, as affecting the happiness of the beloved. Whatever he might feel at this moment of stress and passion, it could not be for Piers Rendall’s ultimate happiness to marry a woman over whom hung the deep cloud of inherited madness. His aim accomplished, joy would be speedily eclipsed in dread. In imagination she could see his haggard looks, feel the dark eyes brooding over her with fearful care. So far he had been free. If the chains fretted too sorely he had only to drop them, and go forth. How would he bear it if there were no escape? How couldshebear it for his sake?
Vanna lifted her head and looked deep into her lover’s eyes. Her voice was clear and steady:
“No, Piers! I will never marry you. Never, to the end of time. But I will not bind you. You are quite free—”
“Free!” He turned from her with a loud, harsh laugh. “Good God, how you quibble with words! I have loved you, I have given you my life—how can I be free? What have I left if you cast me off? What haveyouleft? How can you insult me with such words? How can you be so cold, so cruel? Women have no hearts. They don’t know what it is to love—” The wild words flowed on in breathless torrent. Then suddenly came the collapse: he turned towards her, met the glance of her piteous eyes, and melted into remorse. “My poor Vanna, I am hurting you. Forgive me, darling! I am a brute, a selfish brute; I am half mad myself... Oh, this world! what a hell it can be! What have we done to be cursed and set aside? It is cruel—unjust. If we can never marry, why did we ever meet?”
Vanna shivered. “Why did we ever meet?” Was it Piers who had spoken those words?—Piers, who had declared that to love her was a higher joy than to be the husband of any other woman! Once again the knell-like bell tolled in her ears. It was almost a relief when, after a few more incoherent words, Piers suddenly turned to depart.
“I won’t stay. I am hurting you. I’ll go now, and come back when I am calm. You’ll be better alone—”
For the first time in five years he left her without a kiss or a caress, and Vanna sat, stunned and motionless, gazing on the ruins of her life. No one came near to interrupt her solitude. It was a rule that she should be uninterrupted when Piers was present, and his departure had apparently passed unnoticed by the household. A dense, overhanging shadow possessed her spirit, out of which one thought alone was clear. Piers was unhappy. She, who would have sheltered him from every ill, had brought upon him the keenest suffering of his life.
Two hours later, when Piers himself opened the door, he found Vanna in practically the same attitude in which he had left her, crouched in the corner of the sofa. The fire had died out in the grate, and the air of the little room struck bleak and chill. The face turned towards him had the delicacy of an etching, the dark brows arched above the deep-set eyes, the finely moulded cheeks white and wan. Unlike most women, Vanna’s attraction was distinct from colour; she looked her best, not her worst, in minutes of mental strain. Piers closed the door, approached her hastily, and, taking her hands in his, drew her to his side. He spoke but two words, but they were prompted by the force which is the greatest diviner of the needs of the human heart, and the whole wealth of the language could not have added to their eloquence.
“My Joy!” he said, in that deep, full voice which Vanna had heard but once or twice before, in the great moments of their love.
They wept, and clung together, and Vanna’s hungry heart found comfort once more. After all, would she have been more content if Piers hadnotrebelled?
Chapter Twenty One.Parted.The next year passed slowly and heavily. In the spring Jean had an illness which made it necessary for her to spend several months on the sofa—a decree which she accepted with extraordinary resignation. Nothing could have demonstrated so powerfully the change which the last seven years had wrought in her physical condition as this willingness to be shut off from social life.“I’ve been so tired,” she confided in Vanna, letting her head fall back on the pillow, and closing her eyes with a long-drawn sigh, “so tired, that it’s been a struggle to get through each day. It’s bliss to be lazy, and to feel that one is justified. When I wake up in the morning and remember that I needn’t get up for breakfast, I could whoop with joy. The doctor expected me to rebel. Goodness! I wonder how many thousand tired women would hail such a prescription—to lie in bed until eleven; dress quietly, and go down to the sofa; read amusing books; have a friend to tea; sleep again, to be fresh for the husband’s return; to bed at nine; andyou must not be worried! My dear, it’s Heaven begun below! I don’t say I should like it as a permanency, but as a change from general servants’ work (which is plain English for a middle-class wife and mother) it is highly refreshing. We’ll have to get an extra maid, of course. I’ve worked like a slave to keep the house as it must be kept if I’m to have any peace in life. We have such heaps of silver and in town it needs constant cleaning, and the mending is everlasting, and the making for the children,andthe shopping, and helping in the nursery to set nurse free to do some washing. The laundry bills are ruinous; but youmusthave children in white! It’s a nuisance having to spend more. It always happens like that with us. Just as we say, ‘the next quarter must be lighter; we shall need nothing new,’ bang comes another big drain, and sends us back farther than ever. Moneyisa trial! You don’t half realise how much you are saved by having a comfortable income, Vanna. That’s abigblessing, and you ought to be thankful for it.”Vanna considered. No! she was not actively thankful. When at any special moment the subject was brought before her, she could indeed realise the benefit of a sufficiency of money, which enabled her to choose and carry on the work which was most congenial; but as a rule the accustomed good was calmly taken for granted, and brought no feeling of joy. She made a mental note, and passed on to the consideration of Jean’s problem.“Couldn’t you contrive to reduce work while you are laid up, dear? Lock up all the silver that is not absolutely needed, and let the children wear coloured overalls. I’d make them for you, of a pretty, becoming blue, which would save half their washing. You might shut up the drawing-room, too. You can’t entertain, and you are comfier here in the den. It would be so nice if you could avoid extra help. Another servant in the house would be a trial.”But Jean only smiled with indulgent patronage.“Oh, my dear, I can’t upset everything. And I shall need some one to wait upon me, and run up and down. It would be very poor economy to save a few pounds, and be worried to death. You have no idea how difficult it is to get any rest when you are the mother of a family. One day—I’ve often intended to tell you about this, and make you laugh!—you know how you have told me how lonely and sad you feel whenyouare ill, and lie all day alone in your room, never seeing a soul except when your meals are brought up.Well, at the beginning of this attack I awoke one morning with a crashing headache. I struggled up, hoping it would go off after breakfast, but it grew worse. Robert brought me in here and tucked me up on the sofa, and ordered a ‘quiet day.’ He said it was such a comfort to think that Icouldbe quiet, and need do nothing but lie still and rest. He could not have borne to go away and leave me ill if he had not been sure of that. Dear, blind bat! He had not been gone five minutes when cook arrived for ‘orders.’ There was nothing in the house except the bit of mutton, and she thought that was going bad. Would I like to look at it? She stood there gazing before her in that calm, detached way they have—it is so maddening!—never making one single suggestion, while I wrestled with it all—children’s dinner, kitchen dinner, dining-room dinner, kitchen supper, to-morrow’s breakfast... I was so worn out that I forgot all about my own lunch. So did she! After she went it took about ten minutes before the horrible throbbing in my head calmed down to what it had been before, and by that time nurse appeared to say that Joyce had some spots on her chest, and did I think it was wise for her to go out? Would I be able to keep her for an hour while she promenaded with Lorna? Lorna got so fratchety if she was in all day. I investigated the spots. I sent for the doctor, and said they wereallto stay in, and nurse was cross, and slammed the doors all day long. I lay down again, and sniffed smelling-salts, till cook came back to say the fishman was very sorry, but hehadno smelts, and what would I have instead? After that I slept for a good quarter of an hour, till a parcel arrived with tenpence to pay. I had only a sovereign in my purse, and no one had change. There was nothing for it but to get the keys and go upstairs to my bureau. After that the piano-tuner arrived. He comes once a quarter, and picks his visits with demoniacal cunning for the veryworsttimes in the whole three months. Mason hadn’t the sense to send him away, and I didn’t know he was there until the awfularpeggiosbegan. Then I worked myself into a fever trying to decide whether I should send him away, whether he would charge twice over if I did, whether it would be bad for the piano, whether he would be long, whether I could bear it if I covered my head. At last the strum, strum, on one note began, and I rang and told Mason to send him away at once, andshewas cross. Half an hour later some one sent a note with, ‘bearer waits reply’ on the envelope, and I had to sit up and write. The doctor came at twelve, and said Joyce was perfectly well, but I looked feverish; couldn’t I lie down and rest? I could not look at lunch, which was just as well, as there was none for me, and Joyce fell off her high-chair just over my head, and I thought she was killed. She screamed for an age, and I forgot my own head, thinking of hers; but afterwards! I cried to myself with sheer pain and misery, and I thought of your ‘long, solitary day’ with such envy. The afternoon was the same story, and when Robert came home he wassodisappointed to find me worse! I didn’t tellhimmy experiences; he doesn’t see the humour of them when they affect me, but I said miserably to myself, ‘some day I’ll tell Vanna, and we’ll laugh.’ Dear me, what a comfort it is to have a woman friend!”Vanna smiled at her affectionately. It was good to hear Jean rattle away in her old racy fashion, but her skilled eye was quick to note the signs of fragility in the lovely face, which paled and flushed with such suspicious rapidity.“I think Sister Vanna had better apply for the vacant ‘place,’ and take possession until you are strong. Would you like to have me with you, dear? We have been having rather a strenuous time lately, and when the present inmates leave at the end of this week, I should be quite glad to shut the house and give the staff a rest. It’s a poor thing if I give my life to nursing, and can’t wait upon my one friend when she needs me. Would you like to have me?”Needless to say, Jean was enchanted at the prospect; so was Robert when he returned at the close of the day; so also, more inexplicably, was Piers himself. Vanna had been prepared for expostulations against a proposal which would leave her less free for his visits, but none came, and their absence added to the dull weight of oppression which had hung over her ever since the evening when she had heard of Edith Morton’s engagement. Try as she would to live in the present, and avoid vain imaginings, she could not blind herself to a certain change in Piers, which seemed to increase rather than diminish. It was not a lessening of love; never had she known him more devoted, more passionately her own; but in his tenderness was an element of sorrow, of self-reproach, which chilled her heart. Piers was sorry for her! Some thing was working in his mind, the knowledge of which must give her pain. What could it be?The revelation came one evening after she had been located for some weeks in the Gloucesterménage, and for all her forebodings, found her unprepared.“Vanna, I have something to tell you to-night. I have been trying to say it for some time. Darling, can you be brave?”Vanna looked at him sharply. They were sitting together on a sofa drawn up before the fire, and the kindly glow hid the sudden whitening of her cheeks. She leant back against the pillows, feeling faint and sick with the rapid beating of her heart.“Not—very, Piers! Tell me quickly. Don’t wait.”“Vanna, I’m going abroad.”Her eyes dilated with surprise. This was not what she had expected. Compared with the greater dread, the announcement came almost as a relief. She struggled with the oppression in her throat and breathed a breathless, “Where?”“To India. I have a chance. A junior partner is invalided home. I can take his place for a few years. It is the best thing—I am sure of it. I have made up my mind.”“Is it because you are—tiredof me, Piers?”He turned upon her in passionate protest.“Tired? Heaven knows I am tired; tired to the soul of waiting for the woman I love; of eternal fighting against self! It’s more than I can bear. I can’t go on without some change, some break.”“You would find it easier to leave me?”He hesitated, shrinking, then braced himself to a painful effort.“Yes! it would be easier. You think me brutal, but I am a man. I cannot endure this life. If you cannot be my wife, I must go. It is hard to part, but it will help us both, and after a year or two we can begin afresh. I have been trying to tell you. I was thankful to know you were to be here, with Jean, for I must sail soon. In a few weeks.”“Yes.” Vanna had a sudden rending remembrance of the moment when she sat in Dr Greatman’s consulting-room, and heard her life laid waste. Now, as then, she felt no disposition to weep or lament; the fountains of her heart were frozen, and she was numb with pain. “Yes; I suppose so. The best time for the Red Sea. You must avoid the heat... You will enjoy the voyage, Piers.”Her frozen calm was more piteous than tears. Piers groaned, and buried his face in his hands.“Oh, Vanna, Vanna! my poor, poor darling! What must you think of me? I have failed you after all my vows; and yet, God knows, it isbecauseI love you, because my love is stronger than myself, that I must go! You will never understand, but can’t you believe me? Can’t you trust me still?”“I know you love me, Piers. Will you write to me when you are away?”“Will I write? Do you need to ask? I shall live for your letters. There will be nothing else to look for but their arrival, and being able to write back, and tell you all my thoughts. I’ll make a diary for you, dearest; write something every day, so that each mail shall bring you a small volume. We have always maintained that distance could make no difference to our love, but it does this much, darling—it silences angry words! I have made you miserable with my repinings many times these last years; but whatever I might feel, I could never endure to send a hard word travelling to you across the world. It may be happier for you, darling—more peaceful.”She smiled—a wan, strained smile.“I won’t try to keep you, Piers, if you want to go, but—I can’t pretend! Letters can never make up. I have been happy—happier than I even thought I could be; but Jean was right, Robert was right—it has not been fair to you. I should not have consented, but I loved you so; I was so tempted. Even now I am not sorry. No; I amnotsorry! Even if I never see you again, I have had these years—six years of happiness and love, and you are still young, you have your life ahead—”He stopped her with his lips on hers.“You don’t meant it, you don’t believe it. Don’t hurt me, my heart! Be generous; be patient; and I’ll come back more your own than ever. It’s because I love you—because I love you—.”That was the strain which he dinned into her ears—the one fundamental fact on which all arguments hung; but Vanna’s sore heart could find in it no solid comfort. A love which finds separation easier than loving intercourse is incomprehensible to a woman’s mind.
The next year passed slowly and heavily. In the spring Jean had an illness which made it necessary for her to spend several months on the sofa—a decree which she accepted with extraordinary resignation. Nothing could have demonstrated so powerfully the change which the last seven years had wrought in her physical condition as this willingness to be shut off from social life.
“I’ve been so tired,” she confided in Vanna, letting her head fall back on the pillow, and closing her eyes with a long-drawn sigh, “so tired, that it’s been a struggle to get through each day. It’s bliss to be lazy, and to feel that one is justified. When I wake up in the morning and remember that I needn’t get up for breakfast, I could whoop with joy. The doctor expected me to rebel. Goodness! I wonder how many thousand tired women would hail such a prescription—to lie in bed until eleven; dress quietly, and go down to the sofa; read amusing books; have a friend to tea; sleep again, to be fresh for the husband’s return; to bed at nine; andyou must not be worried! My dear, it’s Heaven begun below! I don’t say I should like it as a permanency, but as a change from general servants’ work (which is plain English for a middle-class wife and mother) it is highly refreshing. We’ll have to get an extra maid, of course. I’ve worked like a slave to keep the house as it must be kept if I’m to have any peace in life. We have such heaps of silver and in town it needs constant cleaning, and the mending is everlasting, and the making for the children,andthe shopping, and helping in the nursery to set nurse free to do some washing. The laundry bills are ruinous; but youmusthave children in white! It’s a nuisance having to spend more. It always happens like that with us. Just as we say, ‘the next quarter must be lighter; we shall need nothing new,’ bang comes another big drain, and sends us back farther than ever. Moneyisa trial! You don’t half realise how much you are saved by having a comfortable income, Vanna. That’s abigblessing, and you ought to be thankful for it.”
Vanna considered. No! she was not actively thankful. When at any special moment the subject was brought before her, she could indeed realise the benefit of a sufficiency of money, which enabled her to choose and carry on the work which was most congenial; but as a rule the accustomed good was calmly taken for granted, and brought no feeling of joy. She made a mental note, and passed on to the consideration of Jean’s problem.
“Couldn’t you contrive to reduce work while you are laid up, dear? Lock up all the silver that is not absolutely needed, and let the children wear coloured overalls. I’d make them for you, of a pretty, becoming blue, which would save half their washing. You might shut up the drawing-room, too. You can’t entertain, and you are comfier here in the den. It would be so nice if you could avoid extra help. Another servant in the house would be a trial.”
But Jean only smiled with indulgent patronage.
“Oh, my dear, I can’t upset everything. And I shall need some one to wait upon me, and run up and down. It would be very poor economy to save a few pounds, and be worried to death. You have no idea how difficult it is to get any rest when you are the mother of a family. One day—I’ve often intended to tell you about this, and make you laugh!—you know how you have told me how lonely and sad you feel whenyouare ill, and lie all day alone in your room, never seeing a soul except when your meals are brought up.Well, at the beginning of this attack I awoke one morning with a crashing headache. I struggled up, hoping it would go off after breakfast, but it grew worse. Robert brought me in here and tucked me up on the sofa, and ordered a ‘quiet day.’ He said it was such a comfort to think that Icouldbe quiet, and need do nothing but lie still and rest. He could not have borne to go away and leave me ill if he had not been sure of that. Dear, blind bat! He had not been gone five minutes when cook arrived for ‘orders.’ There was nothing in the house except the bit of mutton, and she thought that was going bad. Would I like to look at it? She stood there gazing before her in that calm, detached way they have—it is so maddening!—never making one single suggestion, while I wrestled with it all—children’s dinner, kitchen dinner, dining-room dinner, kitchen supper, to-morrow’s breakfast... I was so worn out that I forgot all about my own lunch. So did she! After she went it took about ten minutes before the horrible throbbing in my head calmed down to what it had been before, and by that time nurse appeared to say that Joyce had some spots on her chest, and did I think it was wise for her to go out? Would I be able to keep her for an hour while she promenaded with Lorna? Lorna got so fratchety if she was in all day. I investigated the spots. I sent for the doctor, and said they wereallto stay in, and nurse was cross, and slammed the doors all day long. I lay down again, and sniffed smelling-salts, till cook came back to say the fishman was very sorry, but hehadno smelts, and what would I have instead? After that I slept for a good quarter of an hour, till a parcel arrived with tenpence to pay. I had only a sovereign in my purse, and no one had change. There was nothing for it but to get the keys and go upstairs to my bureau. After that the piano-tuner arrived. He comes once a quarter, and picks his visits with demoniacal cunning for the veryworsttimes in the whole three months. Mason hadn’t the sense to send him away, and I didn’t know he was there until the awfularpeggiosbegan. Then I worked myself into a fever trying to decide whether I should send him away, whether he would charge twice over if I did, whether it would be bad for the piano, whether he would be long, whether I could bear it if I covered my head. At last the strum, strum, on one note began, and I rang and told Mason to send him away at once, andshewas cross. Half an hour later some one sent a note with, ‘bearer waits reply’ on the envelope, and I had to sit up and write. The doctor came at twelve, and said Joyce was perfectly well, but I looked feverish; couldn’t I lie down and rest? I could not look at lunch, which was just as well, as there was none for me, and Joyce fell off her high-chair just over my head, and I thought she was killed. She screamed for an age, and I forgot my own head, thinking of hers; but afterwards! I cried to myself with sheer pain and misery, and I thought of your ‘long, solitary day’ with such envy. The afternoon was the same story, and when Robert came home he wassodisappointed to find me worse! I didn’t tellhimmy experiences; he doesn’t see the humour of them when they affect me, but I said miserably to myself, ‘some day I’ll tell Vanna, and we’ll laugh.’ Dear me, what a comfort it is to have a woman friend!”
Vanna smiled at her affectionately. It was good to hear Jean rattle away in her old racy fashion, but her skilled eye was quick to note the signs of fragility in the lovely face, which paled and flushed with such suspicious rapidity.
“I think Sister Vanna had better apply for the vacant ‘place,’ and take possession until you are strong. Would you like to have me with you, dear? We have been having rather a strenuous time lately, and when the present inmates leave at the end of this week, I should be quite glad to shut the house and give the staff a rest. It’s a poor thing if I give my life to nursing, and can’t wait upon my one friend when she needs me. Would you like to have me?”
Needless to say, Jean was enchanted at the prospect; so was Robert when he returned at the close of the day; so also, more inexplicably, was Piers himself. Vanna had been prepared for expostulations against a proposal which would leave her less free for his visits, but none came, and their absence added to the dull weight of oppression which had hung over her ever since the evening when she had heard of Edith Morton’s engagement. Try as she would to live in the present, and avoid vain imaginings, she could not blind herself to a certain change in Piers, which seemed to increase rather than diminish. It was not a lessening of love; never had she known him more devoted, more passionately her own; but in his tenderness was an element of sorrow, of self-reproach, which chilled her heart. Piers was sorry for her! Some thing was working in his mind, the knowledge of which must give her pain. What could it be?
The revelation came one evening after she had been located for some weeks in the Gloucesterménage, and for all her forebodings, found her unprepared.
“Vanna, I have something to tell you to-night. I have been trying to say it for some time. Darling, can you be brave?”
Vanna looked at him sharply. They were sitting together on a sofa drawn up before the fire, and the kindly glow hid the sudden whitening of her cheeks. She leant back against the pillows, feeling faint and sick with the rapid beating of her heart.
“Not—very, Piers! Tell me quickly. Don’t wait.”
“Vanna, I’m going abroad.”
Her eyes dilated with surprise. This was not what she had expected. Compared with the greater dread, the announcement came almost as a relief. She struggled with the oppression in her throat and breathed a breathless, “Where?”
“To India. I have a chance. A junior partner is invalided home. I can take his place for a few years. It is the best thing—I am sure of it. I have made up my mind.”
“Is it because you are—tiredof me, Piers?”
He turned upon her in passionate protest.
“Tired? Heaven knows I am tired; tired to the soul of waiting for the woman I love; of eternal fighting against self! It’s more than I can bear. I can’t go on without some change, some break.”
“You would find it easier to leave me?”
He hesitated, shrinking, then braced himself to a painful effort.
“Yes! it would be easier. You think me brutal, but I am a man. I cannot endure this life. If you cannot be my wife, I must go. It is hard to part, but it will help us both, and after a year or two we can begin afresh. I have been trying to tell you. I was thankful to know you were to be here, with Jean, for I must sail soon. In a few weeks.”
“Yes.” Vanna had a sudden rending remembrance of the moment when she sat in Dr Greatman’s consulting-room, and heard her life laid waste. Now, as then, she felt no disposition to weep or lament; the fountains of her heart were frozen, and she was numb with pain. “Yes; I suppose so. The best time for the Red Sea. You must avoid the heat... You will enjoy the voyage, Piers.”
Her frozen calm was more piteous than tears. Piers groaned, and buried his face in his hands.
“Oh, Vanna, Vanna! my poor, poor darling! What must you think of me? I have failed you after all my vows; and yet, God knows, it isbecauseI love you, because my love is stronger than myself, that I must go! You will never understand, but can’t you believe me? Can’t you trust me still?”
“I know you love me, Piers. Will you write to me when you are away?”
“Will I write? Do you need to ask? I shall live for your letters. There will be nothing else to look for but their arrival, and being able to write back, and tell you all my thoughts. I’ll make a diary for you, dearest; write something every day, so that each mail shall bring you a small volume. We have always maintained that distance could make no difference to our love, but it does this much, darling—it silences angry words! I have made you miserable with my repinings many times these last years; but whatever I might feel, I could never endure to send a hard word travelling to you across the world. It may be happier for you, darling—more peaceful.”
She smiled—a wan, strained smile.
“I won’t try to keep you, Piers, if you want to go, but—I can’t pretend! Letters can never make up. I have been happy—happier than I even thought I could be; but Jean was right, Robert was right—it has not been fair to you. I should not have consented, but I loved you so; I was so tempted. Even now I am not sorry. No; I amnotsorry! Even if I never see you again, I have had these years—six years of happiness and love, and you are still young, you have your life ahead—”
He stopped her with his lips on hers.
“You don’t meant it, you don’t believe it. Don’t hurt me, my heart! Be generous; be patient; and I’ll come back more your own than ever. It’s because I love you—because I love you—.”
That was the strain which he dinned into her ears—the one fundamental fact on which all arguments hung; but Vanna’s sore heart could find in it no solid comfort. A love which finds separation easier than loving intercourse is incomprehensible to a woman’s mind.