ON Monday, after tea, Rosemary sat in her studio and knitted. Not long ago her studio had been the schoolroom, and its name now was little more than an attempt to make the best of its northern aspect. There was an easel in a corner and in a drawer somewhere various sticks of charcoal and tubes of paint, but the room was used chiefly, when she troubled to think of it, as a field for Rosemary's decorative instinct. Just now its walls were cream, its paint dark purple, its furniture very subtly purple and blue. This was an arrangement which gave many opportunities. When Rosemary was feeling brilliant and worldly and successful with life she could put on a rose-coloured dress and dominate the colour scheme, or, if she were restless, she could be ultra-modern and temperamental in orange and dark green. This afternoon she was knitting in the coat and skirt she had worn on her walking-tour and the room, undominated, looked a trifle gloomy. Rosemary always carried knitting on a walking-tour. Landladies who did not think well of young girls tramping about in couples would grow friendly when they saw the knitting-needles. And Rosemary was anxious now to finish what she was doing before she had forgotten all about it.
Anthony, when he came in, found her pulling out a row of stitches. His attention was drawn to this because she would not allow him within reach until the affair of getting them back was safely finished. Then he received his greeting, but Rosemary's mind was with her wool. After a question or two she went back to her knitting. "Bother the thing," she said a minute later, "I'm getting it wrong again!"
Anthony sat down on the hearth-rug and asked her, in a tone that did not call for an answer, why, in that case, she troubled to do it at all. He was slightly annoyed. If it had not been for her idiotic fancy-work he could have sat on the arm of her chair.
Rosemary did not knit with the grace that comes of skill, and now, since she was deeply preoccupied, her air was impersonal and unreceptive. She might have been more glad to see him, Anthony thought. Nevertheless she was lovely, and, he reminded himself, her lack of sentimental pretence was one of the things he most admired in her. It was so unlike Gladys. He had been in love with Gladys before he met Rosemary, and whenever he had said that he felt anything Gladys had always felt it too, only rather more intensely.
At this point Rosemary, the fresh difficulty surmounted, began to amplify her grievance. "Why are one's hands so inadequate?" she said, clicking off a plain easy row. "Why do they go on making mistakes after you understand exactly what to do? It's awfully annoying being beaten by a thing like this knitting—the pattern is perfectly simple." She reached the end of the row and looked across to him, frowning a little. "Why should I care about knitting?" she went on, "I believe being engaged to you is making me womanly, old Tony!"
Anthony, hands round knees, imparted a little information. "You'd have got womanly anyhow," he told her. "It's a way women have. But I don't see why you should waste your time knitting. An intelligent being, say a man, wouldn't be bothering about mistakes, he'd put in the time inventing a knitting-machine. You can prove this if you go into any big shop. The proper department is replete with knitting-machines. And how many men knit? They smoke their pipes and think. But you go tangling up wool with two clumsy needles—I withdraw that if you think it's unkind!"
This row was complicated, and Rosemary did not look up. "Knit two together," he heard her say.
"Listen to me please," he urged. "As for your hands being silly, it's you who are silly to put them to such uses when you might be letting me hold them. Being held is one of the things hands were made for; knitting is not. And having your hands held is one of the things you were made for, and you know it."
Rosemary stood up and put her knitting aside. Then she held out her hands. "All right," she said, "here they are. Only if I don't finish that wretched thing quickly it will just lie about and get dusty."
Anthony pulled her down on to the rug beside him and then made himself thoroughly comfortable.
"Put your head on my shoulder," he advised her, "if you're not feeling affectionate. And kiss my chin once or twice. I want you to feel affectionate because I've something to say to you, and a nice woman is swayed by her emotions."
Rosemary straightened herself at once. "What ridiculous plan have you got," she asked, "that you can't trust to my calm judgment?"
Anthony looked straight ahead of him, at the fire. "It's a very good plan," he said, "it's an excellent plan, and I've given a good deal of thought to it. I think it's time we got married."
He did not turn, but her shoulder was against his, and he felt her stiffen. "Why—particularly?" she asked.
"Oh, general reasons. As a matter of fact it's your duty to be pining to marry me, and I think it's rather giving in to you to tell you reasons, but I will if you like."
Rosemary believed that life is a serious thing, and she could not now help him to be flippant. "Yes, do!" she said, and Anthony honourably tried.
"Wouldn't you agree," he began, "that the art of living is largely not going on with things after you've had the best of them? When things begin to shrink instead of expanding, you ought to change them—don't you agree?"
Rosemary was looking down at the floor. "But why has our engagement begun to shrink?" she asked. "I don't think it has."
Anthony put his arm round her and pulled her so close to him that she could not see his face. "Do you really want to know—are you quite sure you want to know—won't you just take it from me?" she heard him saying.
"No," she said, "I'd rather you told me!" She was not afraid of knowing about life, she reminded herself, her cheek safely against his coat. She hoped he would always tell her everything.
He was silent for a moment, and then he drew her closer still. "You see," he said, "Rosemary darling, I want you so much. I used to be happy just because I loved you and you loved me. I liked to be with you, and talk to you, and argue about things and feel that we were great friends. But now I seem to have lost all that—" He hesitated.
Rosemary did not speak, and he went on. "It isn't that I love you less, only it's different. I love you more—I think about you all day, I can't help it, I keep seeing you, and remembering how beautiful you are, and how jolly your hair is—and all that sort of thing."
"The fact is, young woman," he went on, "you've become an obsession, do you see? A poet would be delighted if he lay awake all night thinking of your eyelids, but I'm not a poet. And if I can't do my work properly what's to become of us?"
Rosemary still said nothing, and the lightness died out of his voice. "I hate it," he told her, "it's perfectly beastly. Even when I'm with you I'm wondering all the time whether you really love me, and when I'm away from you I'm simply miserable. I know it's idiotic, but I can't help it. And it's spoiling everything, it isn't the way you ought to be loved. It's greedy and ugly. I suppose really you're too fine for me. But I feel as if once we were married it would be all right again."
He turned, trying to see from her face what Rosemary thought, but the room had grown dark, and the fire threw confusing shadows. She did not move; he supposed she was thinking about it in her lucid, reasonable way, when suddenly he heard her whisper, "Tony—darling—I can't! Don't make me!"
His sense of disappointment was so immediate and so strong that he jumped to his feet. He could not sit next her, touching her, when they were so deeply divided. He picked up a bowl that stood on the mantelpiece and pretended, in the dark, to examine it.
"It's all right," he reassured her, "it's quite all right, old darling. Even if I could, I wouldn't make you do anything you didn't want to do."
But Rosemary was on her feet now, appealing to him. "Tony, let me explain—you explained to me—of course I'll marry you if you feel we must—it isn't that I don't love you. It's Laura. It's the change in Laura that has made me afraid of getting married."
She put her hand gently on to his arm, but he moved in a way that was meant to show that he had not noticed it. "Laura seems to me very happy," he said, unable not to argue, "happier now than she was before she married."
"Oh, I know she's happy—I'm not afraid of not being happy"—she could not bear him to think that—"but she's grown so soft, Tony, and she used to be so keen. It's just as if she were drunk with happiness—it has got the better of her. She's not herself any more. I can't explain, because I don't understand what it is has changed her, but it has made me feel that marriage is dreadfully important. It does things to you. It alters you. It's a terrible risk."
She paused, hoping that he would help her, that he would agree with her, but he said nothing.
"I've always thought that however much I loved anyone I should love them proudly, as a free person, as an equal. And I thought Laura was like that too—and now she's horrible, she's abject—I've seen her looking up at Harry like a dog!"
Another thought came to her, and she flushed. "That white thing I was knitting is for Laura's baby. She was pleased when I told her I was making it. But, Tony, if that were going to happen to me I'd die rather than have people know, have all those women chattering about it and fussing over me and bringing me cushions and telling me to keep my feet up. If you didn't tell them they'd guess—it's indecent."
He looked up quickly. "We could go right away," he said, and stopped. She had turned to the mantelpiece, and her face was hidden on her arm.
Anthony felt very much to blame. He turned up the electric light, as a sign that the time for common-sense had come. "Darling," he told her, "I've said so—you shall do just what you like! I oughtn't to have bothered you—I ought to have remembered that you're so young! But it is all right, isn't it? I mean, you do love me?" he went on, made anxious by the heaviness of his heart.
"Aren't you sure?" he pressed, as she did not speak.
His tone had loosed a tumult of misgiving in Rosemary's mind. He was hurt, she had hurt him—the idea brought with it a sense of intimacy. Perhaps she had been wrong to be afraid—he was Tony, not Harry, not just a man. She had not meant to hurt him. Perhaps she had been giving words to thoughts that she ought to have left in their vague confusion, indefinite, disregarded. She had let herself be afraid, but what she owed him was love and belief, not fear. Perhaps this fear was one of the hard things women have to conquer. Perhaps they all felt it, but they were braver than she was. If she let him go now, his hopes bruised, his desires rejected, wouldn't she be guilty of treachery, wouldn't she be throwing away her great opportunity? If you love freely, proudly, she told herself, you don't rule your love by your fear. If she was really Tony's equal, his mate and his comrade, why was she afraid? She had given herself to him, and she could not, because she was a coward, take her gift back again.
She went up to him, and put her arms round his neck. "I love you better than anything else in the world," she said, "and I want to marry you."
Anthony looked down miserably for a moment at her flushed face. He knew that she was excited, exalted, moved by a sudden impulse. But why was he to pay less attention to this impulse, this mood, than to the mood that had gone before? The main thing was that she loved him. He put his arms round her, unable for the moment to find speech. "Little Rose," he told her at last, "I will be good to you, honestly I will. I do want you so badly, and if you love me I can't feel that it's wrong!"
Rosemary, trembling and clinging close to him, found that she was crying.
She dried her tears hastily, left him, and went back to her chair. She took the knitting on to her lap, but forgot to go on with it. She was glad she had done what she had, but she had not, all the same, left off being afraid. It did make a difference being married—it must. It had made, people said, "a woman" of Laura. She didn't want to be a woman, she thought. Most women were cowardly creatures, lazy, ridden by feeling, immersed in their own little pools of happiness or discontent. She liked girls, she liked being a girl, ignorant and adventurous, with nothing in her life about which she could not speak and be honest. When you married the most important things in the world were private, secret things, you shared them with one other person, you lost your sense of the freedom, the spaciousness, of life. Laura had said that once, even Laura hadn't lost what she'd lost without regretting it. It wasn't that she didn't love Tony, she loved him so much that she was happy to be giving up everything for him, but she regretted herself, the self that was soon to be changed into a wife and a mother. She liked the world, she liked adventures; a wife is shut away from adventure, a mother shuts the world away from her children. She consoled herself by thinking that every woman who marries young has had these thoughts.
Meanwhile Anthony fidgeted. He was never easy under prolonged sentimental tension, and he did not want to think now of the scene they had just been through. He wanted, leaving that as a background of general exultation, to talk about a house he had seen that morning. It was to let; he wasn't sure that it mightn't do. But he realised that while Rosemary's expression remained what it was it would be extraordinarily tactless to talk about the house. His nerves were a little upset, and the house obsessed him, he could think of no other topic. As he sat silent, looking a little gloomy, he tried to make out from the front of it how many rooms the house would be likely to have. The rent was £70. With the rates that would be £95.
They were both glad when the door opened and showed them Mrs. Heyham. Mary had come, a little nervous, to find out from her daughter the names of books that she would do well to read, without, at the same time, discussing the subject or giving rise to any thoughts that were critical of James. She greeted Anthony kindly, and would have kissed Rosemary, but Rosemary's cheeks had flushed too lately under other kisses, and she did not approach her mother in a way that made this possible. Mary understood the refusal, and her own cheeks reddened. She had been hoping that these new interests of hers would bring her nearer to Rosemary.
For a moment they all waited, then Mary sat down and asked whether the walking-tour had been a success. She had forgotten, quite suddenly, the careful arrangement she had made of what she was going to say. Two days ago she had wondered whether she shouldn't tell Rosemary everything, but finally she had decided that she would not. Florrie's story was not easy to tell, and she found, besides, that she was shy of exposing her own doubtful and troubled mind. The child, with her different ideas, might dislike her mother's emotions, resent her confidences. She had clinched the matter by recalling the loyalty she herself owed to James.
So at last, when she had gathered courage, she began very carefully, "Do you remember, darling, six months ago, when we thought of my starting this little investigation, you offered to lend me some books?"
Rosemary remembered. "Oh, yes—you didn't read them, did you?"
Mary was prepared for that. "No, I didn't. Your father and I thought that as I hadn't time for studying the question seriously I had better begin with an unprejudiced mind. But now I've seen a certain amount for myself I should like to know what more competent people think." She smiled.
Rosemary knew this tone of her mother's, knew it to mean that Mary was reserving something, probably the most important thing. The tone chafed her now as it had when she first understood it, as a child. Why had her mother never spoken of what she was doing?—Rosemary supposed that she must have given some promise to her husband, or to Trent. "How stuffy it all is," she told herself, "never any honest discussion! Always secrets and hiding things in corners!" When she answered it was in the slightly stiff tone with which she always met what seemed to her a disingenuous excess of tact.
"I don't know of any books on waitresses particularly, mother, only books on women's work in general. I can get the facts for you if you like. But what is wrong with the work is long hours, too much work, consumption from going home in the cold after the hot shops, and bad wages!"
Mary was taken aback. It had not occurred to her that there was a definite body of opinion on the subject—hostile opinion. "Oh—how do you know?" she asked.
Rosemary had been too much disturbed that afternoon to feel tolerant now. "She has been six months looking at it," she said to herself, "and she doesn't see yet what a rotten life it is. Shall I get like that, shall I lose my wits and my senses when I've been married twenty years?" "Oh, I don't know," she answered. "I know a woman who works among them, and every now and then there are articles in the papers about it—"
"I've never seen any, dear!" Mary felt that in some way she was on her defence.
"You wouldn't have, they'd not be in theTimes. Of course, you can't rely on them altogether, but they're fairly accurate, and about a year ago I felt curious about it; I wanted to find out how our money was made for us, so I went to one of those bureaus where they look things out for you. I never said anything to you because you none of you take me seriously." Her voice had become softer as she realised that her mother was really distressed.
She finished, and Mary bent forward, eager with a point. She had not meant to speak of the thing, much less argue about it, but when she saw Rosemary seriously in error, she forgot that it might be imprudent to open a discussion. "Why did you say bad wages?—I have always understood that twelve shillings a week was good wages for a woman. My servants would think it good."
"So it is," said Anthony, who had left the hearth-rug and was standing behind Rosemary's chair.
"And you must remember that all these girls are provided for at home! They're not really earning their livings!" She was not defending a mere argument, she was defending James!
"That doesn't make twelve shillings fair pay for a whole week's work! Suppose their fathers are earning two pounds a week, or even four—two hundred pounds a year—couldn't they spend a little more with advantage? Whether they'll let us or not, nothing gives us a moral right to feed our girls on their fathers' money!" Rosemary's inner excitement was turned now into this congenial channel. She had never had a chance of talking about the matter with her father, and when she had turned on Trent he had refused with contempt to discuss that or anything else of importance with her. Laura had been vaguely sympathetic, with a mental reservation that father couldn't possibly be cruel to anyone. Now at last Rosemary could speak the truth. She would have said more if Anthony had not pressed his hand heavily on her shoulder.
"But why do the girls go to it," cried poor Mary, "if it's so bad? There are always girls waiting to be taken on! And how can your father pay his people more if nobody else will?"
Anthony's hand pressed even more heavily. "Twelve shillings is a good wage for women, Mrs. Heyham," he said. "I don't know what the average is since the Trade Boards, but it's far below that."
Rosemary understood that she was behaving badly. "I don't suggest that father could pay more than he does, mother darling, I haven't the least idea of what he can afford. I don't suppose he can—that's the point of a competitive system!"
Mary looked at them, young things with whom lay so much of her happiness, and knew that they were trying to console her. She saw, too, that she must stop the discussion at once. Hadn't they already dragged into it him whose very existence made all discussion wrong? "At any rate," she said, and she smiled, "you can lend me some books. Perhaps when I've read them you won't feel that I'm so ignorant!"
Rosemary jumped up and went to the bookcase where she kept the works that had inspired her own social wisdom. She pulled out a row of them, easy ones, free from technical allusions, and brought them to her mother, who took the "These aren't difficult" without wincing. As she went towards the door Rosemary jumped up and kissed her. "Mother darling," she began, and then she did not know what to say. It was her duty, the duty of every decent human being, to tell another human being the truth! But Mary was content with the affectionate gesture and went away happier.
When the door was shut Anthony was able to show his disapprobation. "Don't be detestable, Rosemary," he said, "you hurt the poor old lady! Lend her books if she asks for them, but it's not your business to tell her those particular things!"
"But, Anthony—I'm sorry if I was too hard—I was excited I'm afraid—but isn't it everybody's business if she wants to know and can't see them for herself?"
"Somebody's perhaps, not yours! Look here, Rosemary, you read everything, and you've found out things in the last few years that it hurt you to know, but aren't you glad you found them out for yourself? Wouldn't you have hated your mother to tell you?"
Rosemary looked down. "But if I hadn't found out for myself I should have felt that she ought to tell me!"
"That's not the point—she probably saw that you were finding out. What I mean is, wouldn't you rather she arranged for you to know than that she told you, intimately, herself?"
Rosemary was honest. "Very much, very much rather! I couldn't bear to talk to her about—that sort of thing. I can't even talk to her honestly about you——"
"Well then"—she ought to have seen his point before—"if your mother observes the decency that should govern intercourse between different generations, so should you. These things aren't facts to her. They're deeply concerned with her emotional life!"
Rosemary left that. Possibly he was right on a basis of sentiment, though she still felt that social facts were not things you ought to be secret about. But her thoughts had gone back to their earlier occupation. "Tony," she said, "when I'm married will there be things people won't speak the truth to me about?"
He answered her frankly. "Plenty of things—but I don't know if there'll be more of them than there are now!"
Rosemary turned to him as he sat, now on the edge of the table. He looked very handsome and kind, and clever, and young, but she thought too that he looked a shade too sure of his own knowledge, too contented with his supremacy as a man.
"I'm not going to be that sort of wife, then," she warned him. "I'm not going to make a little warm deep hole for our life together, like mice making their nest in the dark. I'm going"—she pressed her hands together—"to have none of these secrecies and loyalties that grow up round people—like laurels in front of basement windows—and shut out the air and the light. I shan't pretend to everyone that you're a little god. I despise women who go on for years pretending they don't know that their husband is a drunkard. I shan't feel that just because I'm married to you I ought to admire things I should hate if I weren't. I'm not going to be loyal to you, Tony, and worship your likes and dislikes. I'm going to be loyal to what is beautiful and brave. I think marriage ought to complete one's life, and make it wider and finer, not narrow it down to mutton and dusters and one little particular set of people. It would, if only most women weren't so lazy, and such cowards. Whenever anything happens to them they make it a reason for slackening their hold and shutting their eyes. They're growing up, or they're marrying, or they're not as young as they used to be, so they leave off doing the things they like, and they leave off being interested in anything that's a trouble. Well, I'm not going to! I love you, Tony, more than I can tell you, and I love, but one's life, one's soul, is the most important!"
Anthony saw that her face showed a slight anxiety. He slipped off his table and knelt beside her, smiling. What a brave fine thing she was, how charmingly pugnacious, and what a child! He would not have dared to marry her if he had not felt sure that he could make her happy. It was when she talked like that he was most pleased with the love he felt for her. He knew then that it was not a young man's greedy passion for a creature that is beautiful and untamed, but the noble enduring love of one human being for another. His confidence showed in his eyes as he looked up at her. "Little Rosemary," he said, "don't give up anything you want to keep! You needn't be loyal to anything but yourself! You're not like your mother, remember. She married without knowing she had a mind, without wanting liberty. Marriage is different now, and if it weren't, you and I would be different."
Rosemary let her hand close on his. "I suppose so," she conceded. But in her heart she wondered whether Laura hadn't told herself the same.
Meanwhile Mary, in her room, Rosemary's books before her, was setting out to conquer an understanding of the social system. It was exciting, this search for knowledge, it was wonderful to think that there was something she desired ardently, and she had but to read a few books, to think a little, and she would find it. All her life she had been ignorant, and content to be ignorant. She had never thought that she might, herself, go seeking after truth. But now in the confusion of received opinion she had resolved, splendidly, that she would form an opinion of her own, form it not by comparing the facts that were brought to her but by thinking based on facts she had discovered for herself. She couldn't pit James against Rosemary, or Rosemary against James. If the responsibility was hers she must use such brains as she had to cope with it. After all, were not wisdom and learning there for her as well as for another?
She sat down toWomen's Work and Wageswith the enthusiasm of a girl of fifteen who is allowed, at last, to begin learning Greek.
DURING the next few months Mary renewed her youth. She had never known before that it is delightful to possess, specifically, an intellect. It was not that she had altogether neglected this faculty, but its use had generally come in the form of worrying over something. Now she found an instinctive pleasure in addressing it to the understanding of abstract problems.
She had been looking forward to this autumn for other reasons, because at the end of it she was to become a grandmother, but a little to her surprise she found that it was not the new dignity, profoundly as it stirred her, that took the chief place in her thoughts. She had expected to be carried backward by Laura's motherhood to what she had felt to be the flowering-time of her own life. This should have been a season of memories, of echoes, of a faint, pleasant sadness. She had thought therefore that she could watch the withering of her own present with resignation now that her daughter's happiness had come, she had believed that she could relinquish the future without sorrow now that a little new inheritor was waiting to enter upon it. Perhaps when she looked at Laura's child she would see again the youth of her own eyes, or her own smile.
But as the autumn went by she found that respond as she might to the past her hold on the present had never been more eager. It was a matter for relief, not for the melancholy she had imagined that the nursery of her line had passed from hers into Laura's keeping. She felt free as she had never felt free before to come into contact with life, to try experiments with it. There were no children to guard from misery, from ugliness, from dangerous ideas.
A long forgotten curiosity woke in Mary and urged her to see for herself what the world was like.
One after another, simply, she read Rosemary's books, finding in them not so much facts and arguments as symbols of new freedom and a new exultation. She realised from them, for the first time, that there are passions in life other than personal love and personal ambition. She recognised a passion for knowledge, for adventure, she experienced a passion of sympathy for the poor.
She was not aware that she was reading the books for their emotional effects. It did not occur to her that she was not approaching the sources of wisdom in the most detached, intellectual spirit possible. She was anxious to be thorough and she applied herself, like a clever child, to tomes culled from the London library on account of the correctness of the titles printed soberly across their backs, the "Principles" or "Elements of Economics." She accepted the methods of these volumes with engaging good faith and watched eagerly for their smallest lapses from a rigid consistency. She made copious notes on the theory of money, which she found evasive, for it had no bearing that she could see on the problems in which she felt genuine interest. She struggled with what seemed at first sight the needlessly complex and technical procedure of banks. She prepared herself to pounce instantly, when she found it in pamphlets and newspapers and other lax vehicles of popular thought, on the least whisking tip of the tail of the wages fund theory. But in her heart, if not consciously, her attitude towards such accumulations of learning was tinged with a kindly toleration. It was characteristic of men, she thought, to spend such an amount of energy on what were often verbal differences, to pursue their points, through a wealth of subdivided nomenclature, to a distance from concrete usefulness that would have made any practical person slacken. Men did become excited in that fashion over purely unimportant things; one knew that when once they started arguing a wise woman bowed to the storm and escaped if she could. She had realised this in early youth, on an occasion when James and her father and Julius had argued for hours about the month in which one particular fish became seasonable. They had exhausted their knowledge of geography, of biology, and of travellers' tales, they had ransacked their memories for the dates and the menus of dinners, they had discovered in the recesses of the past hitherto unproclaimed intimacies and conversations with fish merchants and with sailors. And when her mother, in a naive belief that what they required was wisdom, had laid before them the agreement of cookery books and even fresh evidence brought by the maid from the fishmonger's round the corner, they had not shown gratitude but had embarked on a fresh discussion as to the modifications, if any, imposed by these cold facts on their various previous statements and theories. Mary had felt then that her kinsfolk were dears, if a little noisy, and she felt now that the professors were wonderfully clever, if a little verbose. After all, if you are a professor, and paid for it, you must fill in your time. So she did not trammel her soul, even if she burdened her memory, with the strict rigour of their conclusions.
She tried once or twice, when some work dealing in more concrete fashion with the conditions of the poor had moved her beyond silence, to talk about her reading with Rosemary. But Rosemary shrank a little from her mother's enthusiasm, from the exhibition of her intimate emotion. Her mother—she couldn't help recognising the fact—was very crude, and though she regarded this crudity, solemnly, as a necessary stage in poor Mary's development, she did not enjoy contact with it any the more for that. It made her impatient, it disturbed the slightly romantic element in her affection for her mother. She herself had read the books a year ago, glowed over them, shuddered at the condition they revealed, and inspired herself with a definite belief in Socialism. That being so, it was useless to go on feeling idle emotion when one might be persuading one's friends to join the Fabian Society. Rosemary imagined that she disliked emotion that was not serving some definite useful end. If Mrs. Heyham had come to her and said, "I too am a Socialist, what would the committee of the Fabian Society like me to do?" Rosemary would have hidden sincere delight beneath a great show of cool common-sense, have taken her mother to meetings, and introduced people to her who would undertake her future education. But Mary had not become a Socialist, the Socialism in Rosemary's books had slipped unheeded from her mind. She had been accustomed all her life to dwell upon the importance of individual action, and she had no experience of any need for collective effort that might emerge in a world of great affairs. She had governed her family, for over twenty successful years, by such appeals as she could make to their ideals and their better natures. It did not occur to her now to criticise this attitude, and the principal conviction she gathered from her studies was a heavy sense of personal responsibility. If things were bad then employers must sacrifice themselves to make things better. She couldn't doubt that they would, if they only understood how bad things were. And then when the men saw the masters really striving for their good they would learn to co-operate with those set over them and gradually the world would improve. Everybody nowadays, professors and Socialists alike, united to praise Trade Unions, so Mary was sure that they must be excellent things though at times she felt a little anxious about them. But, after all, clever men like Trade Union officials would soon see when an employer was doing his best—Mary imagined the labour leaders of England with their eyes turned constantly to James.
Poor James, the fact was that he was so busy with his work that he hadn't time to read these books; he didn't really understand what the lives of the poor were like. He had practically admitted that when he asked her not to read for herself. He hadn't, as Mary had by now, spent day after day visiting the homes of working-people. He had heard about it, of course, but that isn't the same as seeing it for yourself. Mary pictured a quickened, a glorified James, urging on a great employers' movement for raising the standard of national life. She felt sure that even James did not know how magnificent he could be. She had not formed any clear plans of what she would say to James or even of what she wanted him to do. Those would come later, when she had read more, and when she had gathered more experience. She would like, she thought, to work for a little on one of the great organisations that study and benefit the poor. One ought to see the poor as a whole and not only in the glimpses she obtained from the visits she paid with Miss Percival. But after all the chief thing was a change of attitude. James would think of the plans—that she could safely leave to him. Her task was to lead him to realise for himself that the people really needed his help. She had no doubt that he would begin with his own workers, but it was very probable, all questions being so fearfully tangled together, that it would be more complicated than she supposed.
There were bad employers, and the fact must be faced. Mary had known people who were unkind and people who were untruthful and dishonest—though it was generally because they had been badly brought up—but everybody had good in them somewhere. She could hardly conceive an employer so bad that he wouldn't respond to James at the head of an army of enlightenment. They didn't know; if only they knew, they would be different.
It was this optimism that Rosemary found hard to bear. It did not seem credible to her that a woman of forty-five could be so simple. Naturally Mary said nothing to Rosemary about her plans for James, and it seemed to the girl that her mother was going to do nothing. She felt thwarted, because she had been forming hopes. She herself was nobody, but if Mary, the wife of a well-known employer, would join the Fabian Society, or even the Independent Labour Party, it might do some good.
Meanwhile Mary was a little worried about Laura. She had found Laura crying one Saturday about nothing at all. Harry had gone off for the day to play golf with some friends. Golf was good for Harry, who worked hard in the week; Laura herself had suggested that he should go. But Mary felt that Harry was perhaps taking things a little too much for granted. She had always been afraid that he was a selfish man. Everybody couldn't, of course, be as unselfish as James, who would have gone off with a shower of protestations that left Mary comforted. She had always considered herself lucky, erected James in her mind as a shining exception, and admitted that a certain amount of selfishness was natural to other men. Now, seeing Laura unhappy, she wondered if it was. It seemed proper that she should venerate James, but she hadn't brought up her clever, beautiful daughters merely to please ordinary men like Harry.
James, when she mentioned her fears to him, took them lightly. It was natural that Laura should cry just now, Mary didn't remember perhaps, but she used to be fanciful herself, though he didn't think he'd treated her badly—he paused for his hand to be squeezed.
Of course, Moorhouse was a man of the world, not a very sensitive fellow, perhaps it didn't occur to him to adapt himself to women's ways at these times. After all, every woman, so to speak, has children, it's nothing unusual. He didn't suppose that Moorhouse was unkind, but he wasn't the sort of person who makes a fuss. Probably he felt that he was in the way, thought it would be kinder to clear out. Mary might make a point of seeing a good deal of Laura, who, anyway, had chosen her own husband for herself and must make what she could of him. James had never, in his life, seen a young woman more in love. He preferred the old style, on the whole, Mary's style. He had thought that perhaps Laura was giving herself away. "If a woman lies down at a man's feet," he finished, "she's likely to get trodden on when he's thinking of something else. Laura can't expect Moorhouse to be ill too, whenever she can't play golf. I've been afraid sometimes that she's given to making her own unhappiness!"
It hurt Mary for a moment that James should talk of Laura like this, then she was ashamed of feeling a little secret glow. How much James loved her, how much more he loved her than he loved anybody else! Her splendid James! She let her head fall, with a sigh, to its accustomed place on his shoulder. Poor Laura, quite possibly James was right, and it was all fancy. In any case she would feel differently when she had the baby.
Meanwhile, however, it was clearly Mary's duty to see her, and if possible to cheer her up.
Laura, when seen, was not easy to cheer up, if only because she refused for some time to admit that anything of the sort was necessary. She lay on a sofa and told Mary, in careful detail, what she thought of the works of Dostoevsky. She did not blame Harry because he did not care for Russian novelists, but merely stated the fact. There was a shade more feeling, perhaps, in her subsequent declaration that he did not seem to care for babies either.
Mary chose hastily between, "He will when he has one of his own," "I expect he is too shy to admit it," and "Most men don't, they only like them when they begin to talk." The last seemed most likely to be true; she could not imagine Harry either shy or a baby-lover. So sorry did she feel for Laura that she added, "You'll be glad enough presently, you know, that he isn't always up in the nursery upsetting the nurses and trying the most appalling experiments on the poor mite. Men have no instinct about babies. Either they think that because they grew up the baby will grow up and the more it eats the faster it will grow, and want you to feed it whenever it cries, or they insist on having its toys sterilised every time they touch the floor. I always think one should be thankful when a man keeps to his own department."
Laura, who was moving restlessly, did not seem in a mood to profit by these reassurances. When she spoke it was in a grudging voice. "I gather that men think it all rather unpleasant," she said. "They're brought up, aren't they, to have rather horrid minds in some ways. It's funny—we don't find it unpleasant when they get wounded in battle. But then I suppose we're trained to sympathise with their experiences, and they're not trained to be interested in ours."
Mary, though she felt more sorry than ever for Laura, was a little shocked at this. It was bitter and it was unjust. It certainly looked as though Harry's mind might be rather horrid, but as for men—James had been extraordinarily sympathetic, and so, Mary felt sure, had been the husbands of most of her friends. Of course they were not interested in the minutiæ of these affairs. Mary herself had realised instinctively that a decent woman keeps the great experiences of her life to herself. If she feels them deeply she expresses it in her altered outlook and in her character. She does not talk about her emotions, nor exhibit their details. Unless, poor thing, she is terribly unhappy, and then one wishes she wouldn't. "That gives us the advantage," she told her daughter, "of knowing men better than they know us."
Laura did not, in her heart, wish to discuss her uneasiness with her mother. She wanted her mother to think—what was, after all, the truth—that Harry and she loved each other very much, and were perfectly happy together. She did not like Harry's attitude towards women, but then he seemed to have known so few women who were worthy of anything better. She turned the issue of the conversation. "Oh, do you think we do?" she said. "Look at the women in men's books and the men in women's!" There was no need to develop this ancient argument.
Mary thought it over. There was no doubt in her mind that most of the wives she knew understood their husbands thoroughly, thus sparing them the trouble of understanding their wives. It was obvious; one took it for granted. But one did not put one's husband in a book—not as he was. It would be treacherous. If Mary had written a book its hero would have been not James, but the glorified creature that lay hidden in James. What a hero he would make! "Of course," she said to Laura, "I suppose it is difficult for women to know what men are like when they are together."
Laura was busy accusing herself of having grumbled about Harry, and she said nothing.
"It's very nice that men are so talkative," Mary went on, to break the silence. "Their lives are exciting, and, I suppose, as they're not forced back upon subtleties, they find ours dull." Mary was not at her ease talking in this fashion about men. When she thought of them as a sex it was kindly, with a mingling of forbearance and admiration. They were not to be criticised, but gently influenced in the right direction. Nor could she be candid upon a subject that led her constantly to consideration of James.
She left Laura with a feeling of misgiving. It wasn't right or natural that Laura should be thinking of such things. It must, in some way, be Harry's fault—Laura was such a fine creature. Even if she loved Harry too much, too passionately, as James seemed to think, so that she was defenceless against him, there shouldn't have been any need for her to defend herself. Perhaps she was a little undisciplined, with more discipline she might have borne it better—whatever it was. But after all one came back to this, it was not right that she should have anything to bear.
Mary was glad now of the element of serenity, of detachment, that she had sometimes regretted in her love for James. She respected love too much to lose herself in it. It had never been for her a new vision, a mystical flame, but a safe shelter and a tranquil happiness. When she thought again of Laura her heart sank.
She arrived home to find that Miss Percival was waiting for her. Miss Percival had been to see how Florrie was getting on at her new work, and she reported that Florrie was doing well and being a good girl, but that there was a man sending notes to her of whom Miss Percival's friend didn't quite like the looks. He might be all right, but then on the other hand he might be up to no good.
Miss Percival's demeanour seemed to indicate that good was the last thing any such man would be up to.
A flicker of protesting thoughts rose in Mary's mind. Why did men exist? Why couldn't they be trusted? Why couldn't they keep away from girls? Why did girls ever want to have anything to do with them? Always these troubles on account of men! She told herself, with necessary sternness, that it was all perfectly natural, and it was to be hoped that some day Florrie would marry some nice man and settle down happily. Not that a workingman's wife has much chance, after a bit, of doing anything happily. Perhaps Florrie would marry above her—but to do that the poor child must run such terrible risks. She might get fond of one of these men—Mary wouldn't have answered for Florrie if once her emotions were thoroughly roused. Not that one wanted her to marry without being fond of her husband—why was it that life was so difficult for poor girls?
She forced her thoughts back to the conversation, for she noticed suddenly that Miss Percival seemed to be waiting for her to speak. "Is there anything to be done? What can we do?" she asked.
Miss Percival shook her head. "There's nothing to be done. Of course," she went on, "it ought to be as safe for Florrie to have men friends as it is for your daughters. Only men, especially rich men, don't want it to be."
Mary looked at her with some surprise. Miss Percival did not usually produce opinions of this sort; something must have upset her. Here was this attitude of resentment again! First her daughter and then her secretary! Really, the poor puzzled lady felt, it almost looked as if men must be dreadful people.
In the meanwhile she turned her attention to Miss Percival, who was reporting on two girls whom Mary had sent to the seaside because they showed a tendency to consumption. They were getting along very nicely at the seaside, but the doctor did not think they ought to go back to the tea-shop.
"Not even if we provided them with thicker things to go home in?"
Miss Percival allowed that it might make a difference, but one would have to go on supplying the thicker things for the rest of their lives. And meanwhile more and more girls would be wanting them.
It looked a little as if Miss Percival were in a bad temper that day.
Nevertheless her argument was sound, and Mary knew it. The girls couldn't have afforded proper clothes even if they had kept all their wages for themselves, and most of them didn't. Not what Mary would call proper clothes—women's garments are apt to be so shoddy nowadays.
The truth was, they ought to have higher wages. But then it was quite possible that the business couldn't afford it. Those pretty tea-shops were expensive to decorate, and expensive to keep up. Of course, it paid to have them pretty, because customers preferred them to other tea-shops. Mary supposed that it wouldn't be possible to get the whole trade to agree not to spend so much on decoration. Probably some of the employers didn't care two pins about their girls' wages. They were men, they didn't understand. And now the big drapers were all starting tea-rooms, and taking away custom.
If James could have afforded higher wages he would probably have given them. But—she felt her way to it slowly—that didn't relieve her from the duty of finding out. James had admitted that he didn't know as much about the girls as he would have liked when he set her to make inquiries. After all, even James was a man.
EVEN when she had made up her mind to speak to James, Mary did not find it easy to do so. She believed that she had long ago put aside, estimating it at its right trivial value, James's reception of her last efforts to discuss the subject. It would be ridiculous, unkind, to store up such slight evidence. But she found now that the incident seemed to have left behind it a permanent unwillingness to run any risk of its repetition—an inclination to let sleeping dogs lie. It was as if she feared something, like a ghost, in which she did not believe.
What kept her back, she tried to persuade herself, was not this intangible fancy but the robuster growth of her own vanity. She was afraid, very much afraid, of appearing stupid, clumsy, ridiculous, before James. James had always treated her as something precious and charming and delicate, he had respected her feelings, her instincts, her intuitions, and she had always tried very hard to enable him to do so. But now she was bringing him not a quick feeling but a position laboriously built by reasoning. How could he respect it when he knew how slender, how untried its foundations were?
This thought haunted her. She tried to dismiss it by reminding herself that it was selfish. Half the business was hers, in the last resort the responsibility was hers. These girls had a right, if it was true that they weren't being justly treated, to everything of hers that might help them—her brains as well as her kind intentions, even, if necessary, her costly dignity. She believed that they were not receiving an adequate return for their work. She did not believe it simply because she had been reading books about poverty; she believed it because she had seen for herself that their wages would not secure their health and their well-being. The books had only given her the use of her mind with which to consider the facts she knew, the right words, the right outlook, the right appliances.
Nevertheless it was a fortnight before she could force herself to interview James.
He saw that she was nervous as she sat down opposite him and expressed her wish for a talk, and in his heart he was a little pleased at this proof of her admiration. But he remembered, too, that he hadn't been very kind to her the last time they talked together, and he resolved not to hurry over his answers but to give her pathetic little ideas every chance of impressing him favourably.
"Well, the old lady!" he said, in a very kind voice, "is this the great outburst?"
Mary shivered a little and smoothed out a fold in the lilac satin that lay across her knees. As a matter of fact it was the great outburst, but she wished he had not spoken of it like that.
"Yes, I suppose so," she said. "I've wondered a good deal whether I'd trouble you, but there really is something I want to know, and I felt that you would wish me, as it's serious, to ask you about it." She looked up at him. James's face was bent to hers with grave attention.
"Of course I wish it," he assured her. "I hope you will never shut me out from your perplexities. What is it, my dear?"
She kept her eyes on his, though it was difficult, because she wanted him to feel that she was facing him squarely. "Would it be possible, with the business as it is now, to pay the waitresses higher wages?" she asked.
James lay back in his chair and stroked his beard. He considered her question not because he was in any doubt as to the purport of his answer, but because he wished her to have a full and satisfactory explanation.
"No, I don't think it would," he told her at last. "That is to say, I should not feel justified in running the risk that such a course would entail. I don't mean that it would be actually impossible, at this moment, to raise their wages by a shilling, or even two shillings, a week. But you must remember, it would not be like parting with a capital sum, it would be a constant drain on our resources. The business is, I think, efficiently organised, and the girls already do a fair day's work. We can't do with less of them. There's no way, so far as I can see, in which we could extract a return for the extra money."
"The girls' health would be better, they would stay with you longer—be more attached to you," Mary put in, as he had paused.
He answered her with the same weighty deliberation. "I can't think so, my dear—not to any great extent. They are earning as good wages with us as they could at any other unskilled trade, better in fact. The majority of them leave us to marry. An employer of unmarried female labour cannot expect to keep his workers for long, and of course there's no possible doubt that they would spend most of the extra money on feathers and evenings out. But I want you to consider this for a minute. At any moment the price of our raw materials may go up. Or the union may get hold of our cooks and persuade them to strike. More than half our people are not waitresses you know, and I don't see how you'd explain to them why they shouldn't get more wages too! Or one of our confidential employees may embezzle a large sum of money. It's a sound business principle to be prepared for any disaster that might occur. Then when it does occur you need not exhaust your powers by worrying about it."
Mary moved uneasily in her chair. "I felt sure that this must be the case," she said presently, "because you would give as good wages as you could afford. But, James, I've been looking through my accounts, and I find that in the last twelve months you've invested for me over £10,000."
James nodded.
"And then there's the amount that goes to Laura and what you keep back for this house and Kings Leigh, and Julius's allowance."
James agreed. "Yes, of course." He did not know what she was driving at.
"Well, wouldn't that be enough, even if we didn't touch Laura's and Julius's money, to make a substantial increase in their wages? I would willingly give it for that!" She bent forward, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes fixed appealingly on him.
James succeeded in avoiding any display of emotion. "You understand, of course," he said slowly, "that this would mean a change in our way of living. I don't know that I could keep up both houses on my income alone." This was not true, but Mary hastened to assent. "Oh, yes, I quite understand that it would be as much your gift as mine, James,—more in fact, because, you know, these big houses are a nuisance to run. It would really be a holiday for me. I hope you don't mind my proposing it—I have been seeing a good deal of the girls lately, and I am certain that the money is really needed."
James still wished to gain time. "My dear," he told her, "of course I don't mind—on the contrary I'm glad to understand how much you have the matter at heart."
Mary looked at him gratefully. He was not angry. How kind he was! How easy he had made her avowal! Of course she didn't expect him to consent at once, but if he gave himself time to consider the matter fairly she knew that his generous heart would respond to her appeal. How interesting it would be, how delightful, if she and James could join together in brightening the lives of those poor girls! She looked round her in the ease of her relief at the polished surfaces of the great room—the morocco, the mahogany, the glass doors of the bookshelves, the silver and brass on James's desk—and noticed how they reflected the light of the fire. What an amount of servants' work there was in this room alone! She would be happier in some smaller place.
Meanwhile James was assuring himself in vain that it would be far the best plan to postpone his answer for a day so as to give it an added solemnity when it came. His instinct for quick speech, for decided action, overbore his unaccustomed prudence. It was James's habit to disconcert his opponent by a rush of talk while he himself made certain of his next move. Nothing flusters a man more, James considered, than to brush aside his attempts to explain himself. But now the arguments, the things he could say to Mary, were springing up, were marshalling themselves in his mind, demanding expression. His endeavour to treat her as a comrade failed before the essential need that her foolish ideas should be crushed. He fidgeted for a moment, and then broke out into words.
"My dear," he said, in a kind and soothing voice, "I hope you won't think me prejudiced or ungenerous if I don't agree to your plan straight off, without considering it." Here he looked across at his wife. The fixed, bright regard of her eyes changed, as they met his, to painful appeal. If he had given himself time to think the evident depth of her anxiety would have checked him. But his mind was not free, at the moment, to consider her point of view, and he went on. "Of course I am prepared to give the matter every possible consideration—I've the greatest respect, as you know, for any idea of yours, little mother,—but I've no doubt that it has already occurred to you that if such a very simple measure could solve modern industrial difficulties someone else would have hit on it!" He smiled indulgently.
Mary clasped her hands and her lips moved, but she did not speak, nor take her eyes from his face. She wished he would not answer now, she was afraid of his words and of their effect on him. James did not like going back from what he had said. But she knew that it would be no use trying to interrupt him.
"You see," he explained, "a business is not just a process of making money. It's more than that, it's a thing in itself, an organisation, an entity. You won't misunderstand me I'm sure, if I put it a little fancifully and say that it has a life of its own, almost an individuality. It's a thing that we shape to our own ends I'll admit, and that we make use of, but we can only do that by respecting the essential laws that govern its working. We can't interfere with it suddenly from the outside and expect it to make no difference. Now consider your plan, my dear. You want to take about ten thousand a year from the profits of the business and use it to increase wages. You say that the money is yours, and that the whole thing is purely a private affair. But it isn't,"—his hand came down heavily on the arm of his chair—"it's nothing of the sort! You understand, of course, that if you once adopted such a procedure you would have to stick to it—"
"Oh, yes, indeed—" She was so anxious to reassure him that she even broke in on his sentence.
"Very well, that would mean that a business that used to make, let us say, £30,000 a year suddenly becomes a business that is only making £20,000 a year. Now you know such a change as that can't take place without its affecting more people than just you and me. We'll put aside the few shares held by your relations, and we'll put aside the girls. I've no doubt Rosemary would like nothing better than to live in a garden suburb and be a heroine to all her Socialist friends. Though of course there are Hastings's people to be considered. Still we could manage to give Rosemary enough to live on. And Laura is a comparatively wealthy woman. She could do just as well without the allowance you make her. It never did your mother any harm, my dear, having to go to your father for money, and it wouldn't do Laura any harm to go to her husband. But I want you for a moment to think of Trent. He has his faults, but all the same he is a son we can be proud of. And I don't suppose it has occurred to you that if we do as you suggest we shall make it absolutely impossible for Trent to marry the woman he's in love with."
He paused, and Mary felt that he expected her to say something.
"I don't—" she began. "Why—" but she could not frame a coherent thought.
"I'm sure you must see," her husband went on, "that it makes all the difference to Trent. He has told old Lady Iredale what his position is, and what his expectations are. Even so, she doesn't think he's a good enough match. Well, it won't increase her approval if she's suddenly told that he's worth potentially £10,000 a year less!"
Mary said nothing. She had thought of this money as their private income—hers and James's—not as so much prospective importance and eligibility for Trent. "How horrible money is," she thought, "how it crushes you!" Then with nervous quickness she turned her thoughts back to James, who had more to say.
"There's another aspect of the matter as well," he was telling her—it seemed to him that there were twenty other aspects, all equally conclusive. "I think I've seen you reading some Political Economy lately. In that case you will understand"—his glance bore down on her as though defying her to doubt that the very essence of Political Economy was distilling itself through his lips—"that there comes a period in the growth of every private company when its directors have to consider carefully the question of calling in more capital. You cannot say in modern commerce, 'we are big enough, let us stop here.' Nowadays, with the present commercial system, a business must grow or die. But if it is to grow, we who are responsible for it must be able to seize every opportunity, occupy every vacant position, leave nothing to chance or to our rivals. The fact is, my dear, I have been meaning to tell you, if ever you did speak to me on the subject, that in my judgment the moment has come when the Imperial should be turned into a public company. I am quite ready to discuss the matter with you in detail and of course the whole thing is still in the air. But sooner or later some such step will have to be taken. And then don't you see the difference it will make if we go to the public with a £20,000 profit instead of £30,000? This money that we draw is not simply profit, Mary, it's credit, it's reputation, it's success! 'Why,' people ask, 'does the Imperial show a much smaller profit than other companies with the same number of branches?' You say, 'They pay higher wages,' and people throw back at you 'bad management.' I'm not a sweating employer. I pay my hands as well as anyone. I don't give them charity, I don't give them higher wages than they're worth, because I don't believe in money doled out in that fashion. I don't mind paying higher wages if my competitors will do the same. But no man can carry on his business with a millstone of unnecessary expenditure round his neck—" He pulled himself up with an effort. "Do you see, my dear?"
Mary longed to be able to say that she saw, that she took his word for it and was satisfied. She knew that if she still stood out it would make James angry, it would make him feel that she was unreasonable. But she had not yet stated her case—it was her duty to the girls to do her best!
"Of course," she said, "I hadn't thought of all that; you see, I'm not fond of the business in the way you are, James dear. I'm afraid it has been only a process of making money to me. But there is—you will, won't you, think of the other side? I don't blame you in any way, please don't think I have any idea of that sort!" She paused for an instant—a fear born of nothing she had consciously realised was rising to the surface of her mind, breaking it, blurring its images, throwing her back on herself. Then the disturbance passed, and with an added hesitation she went on, "Those girls do need the money, James! They work very hard, and I can't feel that they are getting a proper return. They often go home exhausted, and they don't have good enough clothes to go home in, or good enough food when they get there——"
James, whose disinclination to hear Mary arguing was hardening to impatience, found it impossible not to interrupt her, for by this time his own stock of arguments had replenished itself.
"My dear," he said, "I know how good your intentions are, and believe me I feel for the girls, though perhaps not as deeply as a sympathetic woman does. It isn't really there that we differ, that is why I said nothing about it. Everyone admits, nowadays, that the condition of society is far from perfect, I'm with you there; but when it comes to a concrete remedy I can't help feeling that I understand the position better than you do. What good would it do those girls if we gave them more wages and Harris got all our trade away, by undercutting us? That is just what he'd do when he heard we had raised wages. The girls wouldn't thank you for depriving them of their livelihood. No, no, my dear,"—his voice by this time had become falsely good-humoured,—"what you're up against is not the sins of the Imperial, it's poverty in general. If those girls' fathers were better paid—and for that they'd have to be worth more wages—the girls would have happier lives. You're overlooking the fact, you know, that we don't pretend to support them entirely. And yet in spite of that we pay better wages than many other trades. You're trying to use your money the wrong way. You can't remedy poverty by stopping up little holes here and there in a sieve. You must go to the root of the matter, you must extend the principle of insurance, and then you want trade schools and that sort of thing. If these girls want better wages they should go into service, then there would be fewer of them to compete for other posts. This question of women in industry is very serious!"
He could have gone on for some time, but Mary felt that she could bear it no longer. "James!" she said, "let me speak for a moment. I can't argue with you, I can't explain, I never could, but in spite of all that you've said, I still feel that it is wicked and unjust to live as we do while we are paying these girls so badly. I'll think it over again if you like, but if I don't change my mind will you let me give the money back to them? I beg you to—I make no reserves, James, this is the most important thing I have ever asked you. If you refuse me I believe that it will make a serious difference in my feelings towards you." She ended, trembling and breathless, on a sob.
James stared at her, a mask of severe disapproval. "I can't think," he said, "that you realise what you are asking. You want me to give up my private judgment, to place myself entirely in your hands! I have no choice but to refuse." He got up from his chair and walked to the mantelpiece, turning his back to her. "And when you think it over more calmly," he went on after a minute, "I am sure you will see that I am only doing my duty in putting the welfare of the business before this very-suddenly-arrived-at conclusion of yours!"
Mary got up too and went to him. "You're angry with me," she said, and was about to lay her hand on his arm when she checked herself. She did not want to appeal to his instinctive affection.
James turned round at once when he heard her voice, brisk again now that she showed signs of yielding. "My dear little woman," he said, "I'm not angry with you in the least, I haven't the slightest doubt that you are perfectly sincere in your opinion. And you'll remember that when we first discussed this matter we agreed to differ. Well, I agree, and all I ask of you is that you shall agree too."
Mary felt as though she were a sheep and James a very large and efficient sheep-dog. "I can't!" she brought out at last. "I feel too deeply about it."
James turned back to his mantelpiece with a jerk. "Then we must differ without agreeing!" He wished to see the matter disposed of.
Mary moved back a step, and then, as his eyes were still turned away, she stood silently looking at him. This was James, this man in front of her, bending over an ash-tray. That face was the face that she knew best in the world. When he was younger she had often smoothed out that wrinkle on his forehead, and told him that if he frowned so deeply it would make his look cross. He had worn his hair differently then, too, in the past that they shared together. This was James—the man that she loved—the only man that she had ever loved. She loved him—she told herself again—wasn't that enough—wasn't that the only thing that mattered in spite of all this froth of disagreement and discussion? Wasn't she being a fool to endanger her love by irrelevant outside things? She longed suddenly to kiss his face again, to throw her arms round his neck as she had thrown them when she was young and beautiful, to feel, if she couldn't know it, that James loved her better than anything else in the world.
She moved forward and lifted her hands, and then she remembered that however closely she held him that would not be true. She knew now that James did not care first of all for her. He cared first for his work, for the business. It was natural that he should put first what had cost him such great and such continuing effort. He loved her, he felt certain of her, but when she interfered with the business she was a nuisance.... Here again she pulled herself up. It was not time yet to give way to such thoughts as these. She must still think not of herself but of the girls—how could James be expected to listen to a woman who pleaded her cause so badly!
"Of course," she said presently, "it must be very difficult for you to think that a woman can understand anything about such matters."
James interrupted her at once. "My dear Mary, it's just because you are a woman that your ideas interest me. I assure you that if this scheme had come from a man, I shouldn't have considered it for a moment. I should simply have said, 'My dear fellow, you're talking nonsense!'"
Mary did not feel able to determine whether this was true or not. She was feeling tired and very cold. "Then you have settled absolutely?" she asked him.
He hesitated for a moment, and decided to laugh. "Yes, my dear, I have," he told her, and then, with one finger, he stroked her cheek.
"You needn't have done that!" she said, and burst into tears.
James found himself, for the moment, very much at a loss. What had he done to make her behave like this? He had been extraordinarily patient with her, it couldn't be that. She wasn't a person who usually cried because she had made a mistake! Then light came. The fact was that like a good, dear, tender-hearted little goose she had planned a great sacrifice, and she was disappointed because she couldn't carry it out. Women were like that, and in her chagrin she didn't quite know what she was saying. Poor little mother!
Without any more ado he went up to her and drew her into his arms. "My little darling," he told her, "listen to me! Try now to put all this perplexing thing right out of your mind. Lift up your poor worried head—yes—like that—and look at me. How can you look at me when you're crying? Yes, that's better! I'm not as handsome as I was, little woman, nor as young, but I love you more then ever. I want you to forget everything else now, and just to remember that I love you. Is that all right, little silly thing? Have you remembered it yet?"
In the warm circle of his arms, too tired to resist him, Mary smiled.
"Then say after me, 'James, I love you!'" She said it, and then, defeated, let her head sink on his shoulder.
James bent over her. This unexpected uprising of hers, her daring, her provocation, seemed to have coloured and intensified his impression of her. He saw her more clearly, he thought, than he had ever seen her before—funny brave little thing. He tightened the clasp of his arms. "Twenty years ago," he said, "I would have picked you up and carried you off without mercy—but now—" He paused. A sudden regret rose in him for the brutal strength, the boldness, the imperious desires of youth. "Well," he went on, "now I'm an old man, and Mr. Trent might meet us on the stairs, so you must run along by yourself, little sweetheart." He pushed her away from him gently, and held her for a moment at arm's length.
Mary collected herself as best she could to face his glance, but when he saw her he was shocked into solicitude. "My dear, you're white—I can feel you trembling—this has been too much for you, you'd better go to bed at once!" He led her to the door. "Shall I come up with you?—No?—then kiss me first—just affectionately—and show me brighter cheeks in the morning."
He shut the door behind her with a sigh.
Mary went slowly upstairs to her room and there sat down. She did not even remember that James had told her to go to bed. She was tired and shaken, but she knew that she must do her best to think.
It would have been easy not to think but merely to feel, to be unhappy without understanding why, and to find comfort in tears. This quiet resignation, this acceptance of failure, would have been for her a natural and a familiar notion. Only by a violent contraction of her consciousness could she turn from it.
Even then long minutes passed by before the desire for mental life, for action, came back to her. She sat in a heavy stupor, unable to check or to consider the images that formed themselves in her mind. To one idea, she told herself, she was holding fast—the idea of some hard, yet undiscovered duty that lay before her. "I must," she said presently, "I must." The spoken words recalled her to a sense of the present.
She moved to put some more coal on to her sinking fire. Then, with an effort, she made herself face the question of facts. What had happened? Where was she? What had she got to do?