To begin with, she had failed in her interview—not only in the achievement of her object but in the manner of her attempt. She had imagined herself watching James very carefully, suiting her speech and her behaviour to the mood she discerned in him. She had not done that. She had not even been able to watch herself, she did not know now what she had said or left unsaid, except that she had felt at the time that everything she said was wrong. As for James, his mood was a blank to her, it had baffled her, repulsed her, thrown her into confusion, but she had no key to it. She had hoped for a clear, close argument, for a fair interchange of opinion, for a new understanding of James's point of view, a sharing with him of that harvest of thought and emotion which she had been gathering together in her soul. Instead their intercourse had been a muddle, a hostile muddle. Then James had kissed her—how horrible it was!
She knew now that she had not expected James to accept her actual scheme. She would have been content if he had thought kindly of its spirit. Then, his sympathy engaged, she had hoped that he would bring forward a plan of his own, as much more just and wise than hers as James was greater and wiser than she. She would have received it joyfully, they would have worked at it together.
But James had not shown kindness or sympathy, except on the outside, in his manner. He had left her to struggle with her difficulties alone. He had thrown her back again on her own poor resources, her single wit, her feeble perseverance, the strength she valued so low. With these she must make shift—in spite of James.
For a moment, here, her thoughts scattered in confusion. She could not bring herself to think coolly of defying James. She got up from her chair and went over to the window. Behind the curtains, for a moment, it was dark, then her sight cleared, and she could see the branches of the trees in the square moving slowly across the lamplight.
Tired as she was she longed suddenly to change her dress, to be rid of her satin and lace and to go out into the echoing streets. She would walk quickly along in the night, a shadow passing unnoticed under the lamps, until she came to the country, to some great open space where only a passing cloud could shut her out from the black sky and the stars. The wind would blow round her, blowing clean air from the uplands and the sea. There in the cold and the loneliness her soul would be free; it would not be the soul of a rich woman, or of an ageing woman, nor the soul of James's wife. All these weary things would have slipped from it, discarded, put aside, and she would rejoice in her nakedness, a voice crying out to God.
For a moment she stood there, hands clasped and eyes straining through the darkness, then, with a shiver of fatigue, she went back to the fire. Who was she to speak with God?—she had never loved Him! She had loved James, served James, and now she knew that the love of James's life was not for her.
She set herself, angry with her own exaltation, to realise this. There was nothing monstrous about it, she told herself, nothing more strange, nothing more unbelievable, than that she had been a fool. James cared for the thing he had created, for his achievement, his title to respect in the eyes of the world. Any man can marry a wife, any man can beget children, but James had built up this business with the strength of his manhood, and now the business made James a powerful man. She kept him happy at home—he was kind and not very critical, any gentle honest woman could have done that. And now, when she was trying, with what ability she possessed, to be more, to think, to feel, to respond to the world in an individual way, James had no welcome for this new personality. He left her either to deny it or to find its scope and its place for herself. Why shouldn't he?—what right had she to expect more?—to suffer?
The poor lady found herself unable now not to cry.
Presently a footstep on the stairs made her remember that she must go to bed. She sponged her smarting eyes and rang for her maid. With the woman, coming quietly and confidently into the room, Mary discerned the spirit of everyday life. After all, she felt, while Penn was taking the little black velvet ribbon from her hair, after all she was not left to the dulness of empty sorrow. She had work to do, an object for her desires. Somehow she must get the money back to those girls. She fell asleep at last revolving her philanthropic plans.
JAMES dressed next morning in an atmosphere of doubt. As soon as he recognised this he disliked it extremely; doubt of any kind was uncongenial to his simple, impetuous mind. He could not, looking quickly back over what had happened, find any particular reason for blaming himself, but as the unhappy little mother had been upset he was ready to admit that somewhere, on some delicate point of sentiment, he had erred. It was a confounded nuisance; he didn't quite see, what was more, what line he ought to adopt to put it right. When women get ideas into their heads they are often—a wise man will recognise the fact—as obstinate as men. Mercifully this seldom happens. Most women's minds move with certainty only among the small values of social life where one can give way to them with a shrug of the shoulders. Here, however, the unusual had happened and something would have to be done. In the intervals of dressing he pictured to himself, with a smile, poor Mary perched precariously on the back of her great high horse of Utopian justice, imagining, brave little soul, that she could control such an ancient deceiver of man. It was a pathetic conception, and a trifle disquieting, for if he knew Mary she'd be thrown off before she came off of her own accord.
He sighed as he caught sight in the glass of the curious ungraceful gesture of a man who is tightening the knot of his tie.
These ideas were in the air—even one's womenfolk weren't free from them. Mary had certainly caught this excitement from Rosemary—he had been, perhaps, rather blind not to foresee it. Trent had foreseen it all right, for what that was worth. Well, Rosemary would be marrying before long, and then her influence over her mother would be interrupted—James could not conceive of Mary's defying him without somebody's sustaining influence. In another year Rosemary would be busy with her natural duties and Mary would have settled down to happy evenings for the girls or something equally harmless. His line—that quick way out of a difficulty which he always sought—was to hang the idea of a public company over Mary's head, and suggest to Rosemary that it was time she made her Hastings happy—James didn't believe in long engagements. He might, too, turn Mary on to some sort of convalescent affair by the seaside—she had suggested one herself, he remembered. He wished he had thought of referring to that last night—then she would not have found him unsympathetic.
It was Tuesday, his early day, when he went to East London, and he did not expect to find anyone down to breakfast. Mary, after an illness she had had two years before, had been forbidden to shorten her sleep. However, Rosemary, for purposes of her own, was also up early, looking as delightful as she was accustomed to look in the morning.
James kissed her with the pleasure which this act always inspired in him, and told her that he was glad to have somebody to pour out his coffee. "Though I imagine it won't be for very much longer," he added.
Rosemary did not allow this attack to ruffle her pleasing tranquillity. She considered that emotion is wasted on the ordinary commerce of life. "I wanted to speak to you about that, father," she told James. "Anthony and I think we would like to get married soon, but of course it depends upon you. Tony is making £400 a year now, and he doesn't think you will think that sufficient. I know nothing about it, I'm afraid."
James accepted this challenge. "Oh, no, you wouldn't. You modern young ladies take an interest in everything except your own business. Do you intend, may I ask, to go on knowing nothing about it after you are married?"
Rosemary turned calm eyes upon her father, who was helping himself to some kidneys in his most brisk and efficient manner. "Oh, no," she told him. "I expect when one's got to do it, it will be quite interesting, only I don't think—do you?—that it's worth giving very much time to beforehand. As a matter of fact I am having cooking lessons. I could grill your kidneys for you better than this."
James was delighted to hear it, and assured her that he would be glad to know of any definite amount that she and her Anthony would consider sufficient.
Rosemary didn't know, but in any case she would prefer not to take more than Anthony was earning.
This conflicted with James's common-sense. "If I may advise you," he told her, "take what you can get. You know that we are giving Laura £1000."
Rosemary considered a moment. "After all, Tony will soon be earning more," she conceded, "and we could always do good with it."
"Tip our waitresses with it," suggested James.
Rosemary looked up. There had been something brutal in her father's voice. She had long ago decided that he could be a brute if he liked, though he seldom was.
"No," she said, and waited for him to say more.
James could not easily resist a quiet concentrated attitude of attention. "That's how your mother wants to spend her income," he went on, "as I daresay you know."
Rosemary flushed with interest. "Does she?—I didn't know—how perfectly splendid of her! Do you think she really will?"
James grunted, evading the question. "Oh, then it wasn't you who suggested it?"
His daughter shook her head. "No, mother never—hardly ever—talks to me about that sort of thing. And it isn't what I should have suggested if she had. I should have advised her to give it to the Women's Trade Union League, and tell them to spend it on forming a waitresses' union. Then she would benefit all the girls in the trade. I don't think it's much good tinkering with a business here and a business there. But what is so splendid is that mother should want to give up the money, that she should have thought of it all by herself!"
"I'm not going to discuss your mother with you," said James, whose memory, in discussions, was short. "And I'm not going to give you a thousand a year to spend in fomenting discontent among my employees, if that's what you mean by doing good with it. But if you'll send Hastings to me, I'll discuss the matter with him. It seems to me, my dear daughter, that the sooner you're safely married the better."
He grunted again and went back to his breakfast. For some minutes they continued to eat their food in silence. Rosemary never argued with her father if she could help it. They were generally on excellent terms, for she found him amusing, indulgent, and on the whole much more enlightened and civilised than one had any right to expect from a father. She was fond of him, and she enjoyed his stories, his quick superficial accounts of his impressions. But he wasn't a person with whom she would ever have become intimate, she had decided, if she had met him casually in the world. He lacked, she felt, the detachment and reserve she admired in her mother. She did not mean to judge him priggishly. She sometimes reminded herself, if she thought she had been harsh, that before very long some other young person would contemplate her failures as a parent with equal detachment. But she did not realise the pitiful nakedness, the defencelessness, of a parent's position. There was no wonder in her mind even as to what poor James was thinking now. It seemed natural to her that life should present itself to her and to her mother under aspects that James could not approve. She knew that he did not like her own ideas, he never had, although he had been charming about them. There was no essential reason, that she could see, why he should like the ideas of her mother. She was busy now planning an interview with Mary. Whatever small support she could give would be at her mother's service. Rosemary admired courage, and she admired all action dictated by principle—she was stirred to find her mother so admirable.
Meanwhile James was thinking no less intently. The whole thing was a nuisance which, lest it should worry him, must be dealt with as speedily as possible. The public company idea was the thing. He would see his solicitors and he would speak to Trent. As a matter of fact a little extra capital would come in very well just now. It had seemed to him for some time that a great deal could be done with picture palaces. Trent was perfectly capable of running the present business by himself, and he, James, was getting a little bored with the monotony of it. The time had come for a new development. Why not cinema shows with your tea and a biscuit free, as that was the custom, but cakes and pastries charged for? There could be intervals when dainty little cakes would be handed round. People who were taking other people out would be certain to buy them. In the evening there could be sandwiches. He'd run the cinema part under another name, and only announce that the Imperial had the contract for the catering. The tea they gave you at most of these places, he'd been told, was undrinkable; he'd look in some afternoon and try for himself. Naturally these odd and end companies wouldn't do the thing as well as the Imperial. If he decided that this was a good idea there'd be no sort of difficulty about raising the capital. Their finances were more than sound. He could practically float the thing at any figure he liked—as long, that was, as Mary didn't land him with a strike on his hands. What an extraordinary world it was—James didn't know what was coming over women!
However, this plan would fix Mary right enough, as far as interfering with wages went. Of course he couldn't prevent her from giving away her own money, though he could discourage it. But they had always lived far below their income—to spend less than he had was for James a matter of pride—she could give away a good deal before it really mattered.
The idea of action, of taking risks, of starting something new, restored his normal good humour. He wasn't a fossil yet—they needn't think it. His picture palaces—if he decided to have them—should be as up-to-date and as characteristic as his tea-shops. They should be really dignified—to begin with—in the way of architecture—no tawdry stucco and white paint. It was worth getting in a good architect for a uniform elevation. Their own young men could fix it up for each particular site. There is something about a good architect's work that you don't get in any other way. Besides, there is patriotism. It would be pleasant to feel that his fronts were well thought of, say at the club, whose members talked a good deal about architecture. He was a poor man when he started the tea-shops, but even then his taste had been good. One secret of it—given good taste—was to see to the whole thing personally. He'd run over to Paris and choose his own films—no agents for him. And he'd look at those new American patents for coloured pictures.
He finished his breakfast and said good-bye to Rosemary without any ill-feeling. Poor child—he could afford to be good-natured. He could not seriously doubt his ability to manage a couple of women. Most men would have harangued them, lectured them, put their backs up. James preferred to preserve the amenities of life while out-manœuvring his opponents. Scolding was a woman's game, a fool's game, it never paid. If a man couldn't be the head of his own house without making a fuss about it he deserved what ignominy came his way. James went upstairs in excellent spirits to kiss Mary good-bye.
He found her still in bed, and he kissed her with the decision of an affectionate husband and the caution of a man who does not want to get fluff from the blankets on to his clothes. He was glad to see her looking better, she mustn't do too much to-day, and he hoped she felt as fond of him as he did of her. She was a vain old thing with her mob cap—personally he liked to see her hair even if it did look untidy. Nonsense—who minded if it was a little grey! He stroked her cheek with his finger and was off. The room seemed to echo with his voice after he had gone.
Mary did not get up for some time. She was feeling tired, and on Tuesdays she generally had breakfast in bed. Besides, she had still to take stock of what she was going to do. She knew that through the long hours of the night, as she lay awake, she had pondered defiant plans of incredible daring and yet so simple, so just, that only tyranny itself could refuse consent to them. But now in the morning it was different. It struck her, now, as monstrous that she should have thought of flouting James. His authority, for her, appeared as an ultimate fact. If he refused to increase the girls' wages the matter was settled. But her own perception of justice and injustice—she saw that clearly—was also an ultimate fact. The money belonged to the girls and it must be used for them. Her task was now to think of ways and means. She had even come to feel that she might do more with the money by controlling it herself than by doling it out in shillings to ignorant girls. As for James, whatever happened she must preserve her personal relation with him. It could never again perhaps be quite what it had been, its foundation of confident ignorance was gone. But what he was prepared to give her still was all that he had ever given her. He had not changed. She could still, if she chose, be as much to him as she had ever been. And she felt this sunny morning an extraordinary thirst and hunger for his love, for his tenderness and his esteem. When he had come just now into her quiet room she had realised suddenly how strong he was, how much his strength and his buoyancy meant to her; how precise, how small, how rigid her life would have been without them. She had found, too, she thought, in the pain of their recent intercourse, a new sense of the intimacy of marriage. She lay, after all, very much at James's mercy, and he at hers. It was no small thing, the affection that urged them to ease the strain for one another. As she went through the day she touched at a thousand points little whims of James's, little trivial extensions of his personality. She met them with sympathy, with tolerance at worst, because they were his. Under her care, in her hands, he moved freely, he grew as he pleased; his delicacy, his sensitiveness, were safe. This favouring atmosphere she had provided consciously—it would have been her duty to do so, even if it had not been her pride—but she understood now for the first time that James, whether consciously or not, must have performed the same offices for her. If her growth had been pruned and trained, her character disciplined, it was by her own set purpose, in accordance with her own conscience, not by any harshness or cruelty of outside pressure. She could see, she told herself, the sort of repressed little woman she might have been, the narrow, dragging, timid creature a dearth of kindness might have made of her. She had had full measure of kindness all her life, it was only this kindness, this, impunity from attack that made her able now to consult her own nature and believe in what it told her. She did believe in it, she could not but be loyal to that, but she could—she must—in addition be scrupulously loyal to James. James's wisdom, his deliberate decisions, must come first; her own little vanities and disappointments, her unrestrained longings, fell naturally into a second place. As to the practical question, she would tell Miss Percival that this money was at her disposal and they would soon think of something to do with it. It was clear that a hundred things needed doing—they had only to choose. Then she could throw herself heart and soul into whatever it was. She told herself that she would probably cease to worry when she was back at her familiar business of organising and had left this difficult region of decision behind.
It was a day on which Miss Percival did not come until the afternoon, and Mary, after she had dressed, spent the morning pretending to read a pamphlet on the dangers of street trading. She agreed with the pamphlet, and for the moment she found agreement a relief. Soon after twelve Rosemary came into her room. She had, she informed her mother when she had kissed her, been out with Tony trying his electric motor-bicycle. It was quite different from all other motor-bicycles and very much better, because Tony had invented a new kind of accumulator that was very small and light. If it worked it was going to revolutionise all sorts of things, not merely motor-bicycles, but it wasn't really quite finished yet, so it couldn't be a matter for wonder that something had broken down. Tony had had to come back by train in order not to be too appallingly late at the office, and she had had to get an old farmer to shelter the motor-bicycle, and then come back by herself. He had been a dear old farmer, and he had produced a charming daughter, a little person with pink cheeks and black hair. She and Rosemary had smiled at each other with the friendly pleasure young women feel in one another's beauty. Rosemary wished she knew more about engineering, it was the subject of all others that she found most difficult. She never could carry three dimensional ideas in her head.
Rosemary had thrown down her hat, and was sitting now on a stool at Mary's feet, looking up at her while she chattered. It was not often that she talked like this to her mother, freely and childishly, without any thought of effect or consequences, and Mary's heart grew light as she listened. This wise young Rosemary was a child still, a dear, happy child; love-making and lovers' vows had not checked the development of her mind or impaired its freshness. Her mother could laugh without a second thought at the old farmer's astonishment, at his scorn of a woman left in charge of a motor-bicycle, and at the sad plight of that distinguished and ingenious machine stowed away between a harrow and a dilapidated cart.
"I know all the little boys in the place will be trying to make it go," Rosemary was saying, "and Tony will be dreadfully cross, but it was the best that I could do." She did not seem afraid of Tony's crossness.
After she had finished neither of them said anything for a moment or two. Then Rosemary, overcoming a sudden unusual shyness, put her hand on Mary's arm.
"Mother, father says you think you feel we're taking too much money from the business. Tony and I think so, too; I mean, we'll willingly take less allowance than father has offered us, if it'll make things any easier for you." Her glowing face, upturned, wore a look of passionate sincerity. "It's so splendid of you, mother—don't think me horrid—you know that anyhow I couldn't love you more than I do, but it is so—so jolly to feel we're on the same side." She dropped her eyes hastily.
An impulse surged through Mary to stoop and take the child in her arms, to press her cheek against her daughter's cheek, to tell her, now that she could, what a world of unsatisfied love had been satisfied by her words. But she was afraid of Rosemary's shyness, of her own shyness, she was afraid of this Tony who might ask what "your mother" had said, and how she had taken it. The impulse was checked—she could find no words detached or restrained enough, and when she did speak she only brought out a little absurd denial.
"My darling, I'm afraid I'm still a conservative old thing, you young socialists are too revolutionary for me, but I certainly do feel that something must be done."
She paused, and Rosemary, with a gleam in the eyes her mother thought so beautiful, broke in on her. "Don't talk like father, mother, you're not an old thing, you're young and you're brave, and you're a darling!" She came closer and laid her head against her mother's knee.
Mary could say nothing, but her hand trembled with tenderness as she laid it on her daughter's hair.
Rosemary spoke first. It was pleasant to her to find herself in such intimate, such affectionate accord with her mother, but she was not accustomed to accept or enjoy an emotional state without analysis and a following out of its implications.
"I don't suppose we should agree about the exact thing that ought to be done," she began presently, "but after all it isn't that that matters. Tony says I'm hopelessly dogmatic, and I do feel that I know the best thing to do, and I can't really see why other people shouldn't agree with me. Of course I know I've got to refrain from trying to make them, but still"—she sighed, and arranged herself more comfortably on the stool—"I can't help feeling I'm right and they're wrong. But after all, I tell myself, it's the feeling that's important. If enough people want to alter a thing badly enough it will be altered in the long run." She ended on a somewhat doubtful note.
"What is it you want me to do, little daughter?" Mary smoothed back a tress of fine brown hair as she spoke.
The light touch on her forehead seemed to soften Rosemary's desire to impose her conclusions on the world. "Honestly, mother," she said after a moment's thought, "I don't want you to do anything. I want lots of people to give money for starting a waitresses' union, but I want you to do what you feel you ought to do. You see, I didn't suggest the whole thing to father simply because I wanted you to be free, to see for yourself and trust yourself—do you mind my talking like this?" She broke off suddenly.
Mary was conscious of confused emotions, but not, so far as she could tell, of minding. She laughed.
"I suppose it was partly just my curiosity," her daughter went on relentlessly, "but mostly it was because I loved you, and because I had a feeling, that day when I told you about Tony, that you were much stronger, much more important—I don't know how to put it—than anybody knew. And I think too that I wanted to prove to myself that marriage isn't a grave—that one can come up out of it." She ended, and sat quietly looking down at the carpet.
Mary did not answer her, no answer seemed necessary. She had been conscious all that morning of some queer disturbance in her mind, a check to her reasoning, a deepening and strengthening of her emotion. Now when the moment came for speaking to Rosemary she felt suddenly detached from herself, lifted above the thoughts that troubled her. Down there James's Mary, Rosemary's Mary, struggled with plans and decisions, with things that were good or bad, and kind or cruel. Here, where she was, these values fell away. She had drawn back into some state of her being too simple, too fundamental, for the labels and measurements of experience. "They are names," she thought, "love and pain, sorrow and happiness—tricks of thinking, empty, arbitrary...."
Presently she noticed Rosemary's voice, a quivering sound that came towards her from a long way off.
"Mother, it's time I told you, Tony thinks that he and I ought to get married—do you mind very much?—will it hurt you?"
Mary felt Rosemary's warm skin now against her hand. A moment later she heard herself speaking. "My dear, why should it hurt me? Be happy. If it will make you happy, why should I mind? After all—" She did not finish her thought, she had not the strength or the will, she felt, to go on speaking.
A moment later she became conscious of a confusion of noises. A bell rang—she was certain of that—then someone was touching her. She roused herself to take in what her maid was saying. "Fetch Dr. Tanner at once, I should say, Miss, and shall I telephone to the master? Her hands are like ice——"
Mary could not quite make out whether she was succeeding in speaking or not. She was perfectly all right, she wanted to tell them, there was no need to worry James. She only felt a little giddy. She must have said something, for she realised later that Rosemary was reassuring her. They would see first what the doctor said—now they were going to carry her on to the sofa. She felt a vague pleasure, after a period of extreme discomfort, at finding herself on the sofa.
By the time the doctor came Mary was feeling better, and the doctor himself did not think there was anything serious the matter. He had always suspected Mrs. Heyham, he told her, of being one of your nervous high-strung people who will not listen to advice. She must go to bed for the rest of the day, and she must be careful. We have all of us to be careful when we aren't as young as we were—she mustn't excite herself, and she must eat more, she was thin; he would tell Mr. Heyham, when he saw him, to keep her quiet.
"Careful—careful—careful"—with a hundred voices whispering the word in her ears, Mary, when she had been put to bed and fed on beef tea and toast, fell asleep.
She woke, later on, with a sense that something was happening in the house. She did not remember that she was ill, or stop to inquire why she found herself in bed, but rang the bell to discover what this disturbing thing could be. A moment later the door opened cautiously, and James appeared. At the sight of his face she understood at once. Of course—she hadn't been well, and James was upset about it.
"My darling," she told him, "I assure you I'm perfectly well—come and kiss me——"
James came to kiss her, guarding an unusual silence. He had so much to say, that if he had spoken at all he would have spoken too much. He had all his fears to tell her—his regrets, the remorse with which he remembered that he had had to be firm with her the night before. He did not blame himself—what he had said had been necessary, and he knew that he had not said it unkindly. Nevertheless he felt remorse. Poor little thing, wasn't it his duty to keep her well and happy, and wasn't she, on the contrary, lying here ill? Very well then—James's heart was full as he sat down on the bed by her side and took her hand in his.
Mary, whose sudden moment of lucidity had left her feeling giddy again, was nevertheless impressed by his silence. Poor James—he must be suffering! She touched his arm with her free hand and looked up at him anxiously. "James," she implored him, "please, please don't think this has anything to do with you. I'm not ill at all really. I was just feeling rather tired!"
James, who had been staring across the room, turned round to her. "You're not to talk, little thing, and you're not to think either. Hold my hand, and be still and go to sleep!" He spoke with a new, a compelling authority. Mary willingly laid aside the burden of speech and lay looking peacefully at the ceiling. The light on the ceiling was mellow, it must be late in the afternoon. She wanted to know the time, but she did not want it enough to turn her head towards the clock. With James so close to her there was really no need to know anything.
James, who had seen her face relax at his words, was prepared to sit by her all night. She could not have appealed more directly to his love and tenderness than by showing him, as she had done with her eager grasp on his fingers, that she found rest and comfort in his presence. As he waited there with his wife, debarred from talking to her, James thought her over, and among his thoughts, though he did not know it, was a new conception of her. She was a queer little thing, and brave, he recognised that there was a fine element in her obstinacy. She would do what she thought right, follow out her dreams and her foolish big ideas and not care if she suffered for them. He saw her suddenly under the type—familiar to him in obituary notices—of a lofty, restless spirit wearing through its frail envelope of flesh. James was not often mistaken in a man whom he had decided to be capable and honest, and he thought himself therefore a good judge of character. This description of Mary pleased him. He must take great care, he told himself, of his little idealist. He must see that she didn't break her bright wings over the hard facts of life. He must teach her that she wasn't just her own to wear out and throw away if she pleased.
He'd already spoken seriously to Rosemary, when he came home and found out what had happened. He'd speak to that secretary too—he never could remember the woman's name—and tell her that she wasn't to let Mrs. Heyham get tired or excited. Perhaps Mary would take the doctor's warning to heart of her own accord, take it to heart somehow she must and should. He'd think it over before he decided, and he wasn't sure that it wouldn't be better to stop this philanthropic business altogether.
At this point, before he could tell himself that he had thought it over, the maid came in with a cupful of something on a tray. Mary, roused from her comfortable indifference, regarded it with dislike. It was some sort of thick white stuff which had been carefully prepared by the cook according to the directions on the tin, and Mary felt certain, as soon as she saw it, that she would not be hungry again for several days, and that meanwhile there was nothing in the world so difficult and disagreeable as the task of swallowing this pasty, ignominious preparation. Every inch of her quivered under the impulse of resistance. "No, James, I can't," she told him as he took the cup.
James, bending towards her, was confirmed in his fears that she was really ill. As a rule she ate with indifference any dish that the rest of the household liked, though she sometimes expressed in private, as though she were ashamed of them, faint likings for muscatel grapes and for some little dry biscuits James used to bring her home from an Austrian café. He could see now that she was working herself up. "Now, my dear," he said to her, in the tone that he judged would be the most effective, "we've got to feed you up, you know. I don't know what this is, but it's what the doctor ordered, and I expect it contains as much nourishment as a pound of beef-steak. Will you drink it, or shall I feed you with the spoon?"
Mary's anxiety for her sheets reinforced her recognition that James meant to have his own way. She held out her hand for the cup, though she was nearly crying, and drank as much as she could. Then with a little sob she put the cup back again. James examined it doubtfully, the beverage was not finished, and he did not feel certain that she oughtn't to finish it. But something in her face made him merciful. "Well, I'll let you off this time," he told her, "but I'm going to see that you eat every scrap of your dinner. If you're not good I shall telegraph for a nurse. Now, shall I have my tea brought up here, or would you rather not watch me eating?"
So it was only tea time—and they had sent for him. She turned puzzled eyes towards him, the problem seemed too complicated for her single solution. Then a way out presented itself. "I think I'll go to sleep," she told him, "if you don't mind."
He said something, but she did not remember what.
Next morning, when she woke, Mary's brain had cleared. The doctor came and went, and after his visit everyone else appeared with smiling face and told her that she was all right, that she had simply been run down, and that all she had to do was to stay in bed for a day or two, and take great care of herself. "At Mrs. Heyham's age," the doctor had said to James, "she can't be too careful," and James had taken precious possession of the phrase, though he would have been the first to scout its importance if the doctor had used it of himself or of Mary's charwoman.
"Now mind, no worrying," he told his wife, "and I've wired to that secretary of yours that she's not to show her face here for a week."
He nodded cheerfully and hurried away, for he had stayed late at home in order to hear the doctor's verdict.
Mary let him go without showing him the indignation that she felt. She was forty-six, at an age when a man is considered in the prime of his life, and they wanted to treat her as though she were delicate like a child or a bent old woman. It was quite natural, a great many wealthy women let themselves be treated like that. She herself had been far too apt to talk of herself as old, to behave as though her faculties were decaying. As she lay in bed with a bell under her hand and her maid in the next room attentive to her slightest signal, Mary realised that her attitude to life had changed. A year ago she would hardly have struggled when they tried to rivet upon her these chains of infirmity. She would have given up, gracefully, what they told her to give up, she would have avoided worry and avoided excitement and remembered to be careful. She would have begun to feel the weather, and soon have found herself with a regular system of good days and bad days and indifferent days. Her friends would have pitied James, and told one another how well she bore her failing health. She could see herself, simply, without hypocrisy, slipping into such a state. She was not strong with the robust and hardy strength of some fortunate people, she was easily made to feel tired, and to look a little pale. She had only to think about that and to be alarmed about it, to get Dr. Tanner to give it a name, and mention it with an air of resignation to James, and the walls of invalid habits would build themselves round her.
But she wasn't an invalid, she told herself, she was strong, she had more force than ten of these flourishing women. She was forty-six, but her intellectual life was only beginning. She felt, as she looked at the magazines provided by James's forethought, that she could not spare an hour of it to illness. She did not shrink even from the task of making James agree with her. She was feeling very fond of James this morning—who could help it who had seen the cheer on his face after the doctor's visit?—but she was not feeling emotional about him. As a concession, to avoid fuss, she stayed in bed, but she rang for Penn, and told her to find the pamphlet on street trading. It was not until she had finished the pamphlet—without, it is true, gaining any very clear understanding of its contents—that she recalled, as one recalls what has happened in a dream, Rosemary's voice announcing that she was going to be married.
MARY soon realised that she had never before made so serious a mistake as the mistake she made on the day when she fell ill. James was now armed at every point against her. Whenever she showed any sign of restlessness, he replied, with perfect honesty, that she looked tired, or that she was too thin. Until this moment James had not cavilled at his wife's lack of amplitude. She was one of the thin sort, and that was all about it. But now visions presented themselves to his mind of Mary looking really plump and fit, and he began to fed that she was not doing her duty when she did not live up to these delightful fancies. He scanned her anxiously every evening when he came home, and if she did not look fatter than she had when he kissed her good-bye in the morning, he shook his head. "This won't do, little woman," he would say, "you've been tiring yourself!" It was no use assuring him that she did not feel tired in the least. He only looked at her critically and shook his head again. If he did not make more of such a serious offence it was because he felt sorry for her. When he thought about it he could see that it must be very galling for a woman to lack an essential feminine charm, and he did not want to hurt the poor little thing's feelings. It was tiresome and obstinate of her, all the same, not to take more care of herself. He decided once, as he looked down on her from his station in front of the fire, that some motive of delicacy had made her accept her leanness, as a nice woman accepts her age, without a struggle. On the whole though he was glad that she had had this little attack of nerves. She hadn't been well, poor little thing—that explained her somewhat hysterical behaviour about the business. He understood now, and he would know if ever she mentioned the matter again that she must not be taken too seriously.
Under these circumstances the amelioration of the waitresses' lives proceeded slowly. James had suggested that when Mary was well enough to attend to it she should start a seaside home. It would receive convalescents all the year round, and in the summer those girls who for some reason or other did not wish to spend their holidays with their excellent respectable families. It was a good suggestion, there was no objection to it, but it did not, for some reason, release Mary's enthusiasm. The idea of curing convalescents was not as stimulating as the idea of improving the conditions that made them ill. Miss Percival too, usually so skilfully indefatigable, did not seem to be giving the best of herself to the new scheme.
Mary had grown, from force of being well served, to like Miss Percival, whom she identified moreover with her own impulse towards a more interesting life. She had gone so far as to say, in Miss Percival's presence, that she thought some plan might be found for giving the waitresses higher wages. And now that James's attitude forced her to switch her activities into another direction she felt that she owed her secretary some explanation of the change. It couldn't of course be a perfectly truthful explanation—one is not expected to be truthful about one's husband. But it would prevent Miss Percival from feeling that her employer regarded her as a mere hireling who obeys orders she is not expected to understand. The explanation, skirting the edge of the truth with a nervous deference, had stated that Mary had asked Mr. Heyham if it would be possible to raise the girls' wages, and had been convinced after going into the matter with him that it would not be possible. But in order to show that the firm did not grudge the money Mr. Heyham had himself suggested that they should spend it on the girls in another way—he did not bind them, but the way he thought the best would be—Mary had drawn for Miss Percival as glowing a picture of the poor convalescents recovering their rosy cheeks as her imagination and her command over words could supply.
Miss Percival, who was seated at her desk, had not answered at once. Instead she had drawn a beautiful lady with curling hair on her pad of blotting-paper. Then, in a startled tone, as if she had just awaked, she said, "Very well, Mrs. Heyham, just as you wish of course. Have you decided yet where the home is to be?"
Mary had not decided, but she thought it must be somewhere bracing with a pier and a band, and plenty of nigger minstrels. "It won't do to choose a place where they would feel lonely," she conceded.
Miss Percival pushed her chair back from the desk and sighed, then, swinging round sharply, she stared straight at Mrs. Heyham.
"She is very much disappointed," Mary thought, as Miss Percival did not speak. "It's natural of course, she is young, probably she hasn't learned how seldom one can do what one wants in this life." She started, for Miss Percival was speaking. "Just as you think right, Mrs. Heyham," she was saying slowly.
Mary, who knew that she was doing what she thought right, nevertheless felt uneasy. Miss Percival obviously considered her wrong, and Miss Percival was a clever young woman, entitled to respect. One of the suspicions to which she was prone crept into Mary's mind. Suppose the thing she wanted most was not to help the girls, but to keep on affectionate terms with James? Suppose, after all, that she were only following her inclinations—Miss Percival's voice, severe and scornful, interrupted these accusations.
"After all, the great thing is to decide on something and do it," she said.
Mary acquiesced. That was as good a way of putting the matter as any other.
"I don't suppose we shall be able to do very much for a week or two," she told her assistant, "because Mrs. Moorhouse—my married daughter, you know—will be needing me. But you might find out what you can about places not too far from London, and you might get information about other homes, and see whether it would be best to build for ourselves, or buy some houses and alter them. And we must find out, too, what accommodation we are likely to need."
She did not speak with her usual brightness, and Miss Percival did not reply with her usual alacrity. For a moment the two women looked at one another. Then Mary, rising hastily from her chair, said that she did not think she need keep Miss Percival any later that day.
After that the secretary maintained an attitude of superior kindliness. She was sorry for Mary, she seemed to say, for Mary was an amiable person, if a trifle faint of heart. She understood Mary's difficulties and she meant to stand by her. But not even her affection and her loyalty to her employer could make her play the part of a hypocrite. She did not approve of this holiday home, she thought it a base surrender and a waste of money as well. She was not going to pretend, by words or by a delighted energy, that she did approve of it.
This was not as bad as it might have been, and Mary, since Miss Percival, after all, was ignorant of her true reasons, felt grateful for even so much tolerance. But she could not, any more than Miss Percival, throw herself heart and soul into the carrying out of James's scheme. She had meant to do this; she had not planned any grudging acceptance, but she was not able, with Miss Percival there to remind her of them, to ignore her own convictions. The home was, and she knew it, a miserable compromise. She turned with relief from discussions about its site to the business of collecting Rosemary's trousseau.
Here again she was in the position of having to force her emotions. She did not, in her heart, believe that Rosemary was old enough to marry, experienced enough to know or to value the freedom she was losing. She would not need age or experience, unhappily, to make her regret it. But Mary could not very well assert herself to make Rosemary unhappy by postponing the marriage while she herself was guarding her own happiness by giving way in so cowardly a fashion to James. She told herself, therefore, that her feelings were the feelings natural to every woman who sees her youngest daughter leaving her; they were selfish feelings, and she, like every other mother, must put them aside. If they had any value it was their private value, as emotion, for her—she would not have wished at such a moment to feel nothing or only to feel what was pleasurable.
She bought Rosemary's garments then to the accompaniment of an emotional conflict that tired her, but was at least interesting, whereas the holiday home, a wearisome affair, reminded her only of her failure to convince James.
Moreover, buying Rosemary's clothes had an interest of its own. Mary had not felt really happy about Laura's trousseau. Laura, whose intelligence was always admirable, had known exactly where she wanted to go and what she wanted to buy. Laura could see at once, when clothes were displayed before her, which of them would make her look charming and which would not. This was all very well for dresses, Mary had always respected Laura's taste, but when the same principle was pushed further it had seemed to her a little alarming. That underclothes should be becoming was the last service she would have asked of them. Mary liked linen that was finely woven, voluminous, and carefully sewn. When she had bought it she took a pride in it and hoped that it would last her for years. Of lace and such transparencies she disapproved, except for the narrowest edgings. She explained to Laura that they would not wash, but however well they had washed she would not have liked them better. It seemed to her unnatural and distressing that a young woman should look, as Laura looked, more delightful without her full complement of clothes than with them. If she had not feared, by doing so, to put ideas into Laura's head, she would have protested. But it is not easy to discuss these things with a young girl, especially in front of shop-assistants. When Mary had said, in a lowered voice, "Don't you think, my dear, that that lawn is a little too fine—I shouldn't think it would wear very well, would you?" Laura had replied, calmly and frankly, "Oh, don't you, mother?—I think it will look rather nice!" Such innocence—or on the other hand, such command of one's information—intimidated Mary. On one occasion only had she protested and carried her way. It was when Laura, who must have been unaware, poor child, of what she was contemplating, praised and asked the price of a black crêpe-de-chine nightgown. Even then Mary might not have risen to a veto if the deplorable garment had not been labelled "enhancing."
With Rosemary it was a very different matter. Rosemary's shopping was guided by principles, and so long as she was determining what these principles should be Rosemary was very much interested in it. In the first place she determined to buy none but hand-made linen, partly because weaving linen by hand provides a fuller and more fruitful life for the worker than weaving it by machine, partly because it is cheaper in the end to buy what is more expensive in the beginning. And as a poor man's wife—she reminded her mother—she must think of these things. In the second place she would buy æsthetic dresses, because what has never been in the fashion cannot easily drop behind it. This would be a great economy. In the third place she would not buy her clothes haphazard, guided merely by fancy, but would choose just one or two colours and stick to them.
All this was excellent and Mary was cheered to find Rosemary displaying such practical common-sense. It was true that the hand-woven linen was extremely expensive—but then it was stout, and Mary had the pleasure of seeing it made up into garments that would last Rosemary until she grew old. No lace, only the most charming and costly hand embroidery. It was true that there are so many occasions on which one cannot wear æsthetic dresses that Mary found herself, when Rosemary was not there, ordering a considerable number of tailor-mades. Rosemary was generally not there. When she had made a comprehensive survey of the enterprise and delivered her instructions to Mary she preferred to leave the dressmakers to fit her as best they could—she liked her clothes loose—and to wander forth, alone or with Anthony, searching in unlikely places for antique furniture. It was true, also, that the one or two colours began to multiply.
Anthony had read somewhere that a woman's clothes should match her eyes or her hair. That meant greeny-brown tweeds, and possibly liberty satins. White and cream and navy blue do not count. Then Rosemary always liked one dress of a particular green in the summer and another dress of a particular purple in the winter. And Laura thought that the child was at her best in lilac, while Mary thought that she never looked so fresh or so young as in a certain shade—rather difficult to obtain—of gentian blue. But Mary liked to think that the dear child, while she was learning the limits of her income, would not at least have to bother about clothes, and on the whole she welcomed these unexacting cares. She did not wish to contemplate, more than she could help, a situation which had already exhausted her powers of self-deception. She had struggled for some time to persuade herself that she was not a coward, that the holiday home was not a waste of her money and energy, and moreover deliberately intended by James to be such a waste. Miss Percival's eye, bent constantly on her with an expression of weary tolerance, had been too much for her. She had taken next the desperate step of avowing to herself that she was a coward, and excusing herself on that ground from the display of any vigorous qualities.
She was a coward, and it wasn't any use pretending that she could ever be anything else. She might have settled down comfortably enough to this conviction if only she could have been certain that it was true. She had undoubtedly behaved like a coward, but what disturbed her, what sent her running to shops and sempstresses, was the insistent dread that somewhere at the bottom of her heart there was still a remainder of courage. There might even be, she feared, sufficient courage to enable her to reopen the whole affair. Perhaps the future would find her brave, after all. Perhaps she was not going to settle quietly down to the base abandonment of her waitresses—the thought sent the blood to her heart and set her trembling. It could not be possible that all her long misery of decision had decided on nothing, that the travail of thinking must be begun again. She exhorted herself to stand steadfast, to harden her heart in selfish docility, and she was able to believe that she had succeeded when she found herself thrilling with the tenderness, love, and joy which are proper to a woman who finds herself a happy grandmother.
Laura's baby provided her with a real respite, a happiness that needed no analysis and provoked no doubts. He was a marvellous boy, extremely handsome and positively the very image of James. He might so easily have been like Harry—it would have been distinctly a waste, because there were already several Moorhouse grandchildren—and he had chosen to resemble James. It was clear that he meant to develop into a child of exceptional intelligence.
James, who had cast one hasty glance at the infant's cot, said that women always see these likenesses, and was very much flattered by it. He bought his grandson—who was to be called, when Laura could decide between them, either Jakes or Giles—a collection of silverware, and told himself that an era of feminine peace and contentment would now set in. Harry, who was handsome and vain, said that he was glad the poor little beggar had the sense not to look like his father, and added that he had never pretended to feel any interest in babies. But Laura was far too ill and too happy to mind what Harry said.
For two or three weeks Mary's thoughts were completely engaged with Laura; she could give her mind to nothing away from Laura's room. It was as a matter of fact a delightful room—Laura loved beautiful fabrics and graceful furniture. Mary had thought how pretty it was when she sat waiting outside its door on the night the baby was born. She had come there, although she knew it was foolish, because she had already waited so long downstairs. She had heard the baby cry, but no one had come out of the room to tell her about it. She had tried to picture the struggle that must be going on inside, to remind herself of the tasks that were imprisoning, for hours, the doctor and the nurses. She had tried to turn her thoughts to the new love that she was to feel for Laura's child. But her tired mind had failed her. She could not keep it fastened on her future happiness, or on the busy figures that she knew to be near her on the other side of the dark, shining door. Try as she would they had slipped away, and then the room had been empty, warm and green and quiet, with its curtains moving softly in the wind. Even while dread stirred in her mind it had seemed impossible that a beautiful woman should suffer in such a room.
It was late in the night, and she had left her chair and propped herself in a corner to alter her position, when the door had opened on a long panel of light, on a wave of sound, and one of the nurses had come out. She had not looked round at Mary, but had run quickly downstairs. There was a bright stain on her apron.
The nurse had disappeared; Mary, pressed against the wall, had neither moved nor spoken. She could not see, she could not even think; her mind, her will, seemed to have dissolved in fear. The sound of the hurrying feet had died away. There was no noise now in the room.
Then, before thoughts had come back to her, the nurse had returned. This time she had noticed Mary in the corner and thrown her a hasty reassurance. "It's all right now—there's no need to be anxious—a beautiful boy!" The door had closed behind her.
After the first confusion of her relief, the first disorder of her joy, Mary's mind had moved swiftly. This, she had told herself, was the weft on which women's lives were woven, moments like these of terror, of suffering, of ecstasy! Beside what Laura was feeling now the best that the world could give women must seem dim. What did it matter then if they turned away from the great problems of life, if they were content with narrow ambitions, with timid thoughts, with foolish dreams? All that was nothing—under it there lay this savage splendour of pain, this sacrifice that was their justification. By pain—helpless, ignorant, idle though they might be—they paid for the joy that life had given them.
Presently, towards morning, Mary had been called into the dressing-room where the nurse had been tending the baby. The little creature had lain on her knee, grave, motionless, dignified, in the clothes of his nation and his century. Mary had lifted him with anxious care. Here in her arms she held the strength, the desires, the ambitions, of a man. This light burden was born a master of the world, heir of the world's experience. He was born a master of women; all through his life women would minister to him and obey him, and he would accept their service as his right. She herself, as he grew to the power of his youth, would be to him a mere waste product, a body that had outlived its usefulness. As she bent to kiss him she had wished, for an instant, that he had been a girl.
She was not allowed to see Laura until next day, when she was told that she might sit by her bed, but must not excite her. It was enough for both of them; she did not want to excite her—she had never been on exciting terms with Laura. Their attitudes to the surface of life were too different. But here in the pretty room differences passed them by, they were content to be near one another, to exchange insignificant words, to see one another's faces light up when their boy was brought into the room. Mary knew that this pleasure in her presence, this need of her, must pass, and that then she would come no nearer than she had come before to touching the problems and interests of Laura's life. Her own mind, too, would answer the call of other duties. But for these few weeks she was happy. James, watching her, felt perfectly satisfied.
TIME drew on towards the wedding, and James's contentment increased. He felt very well that autumn—his summer holiday had agreed with him—and he was vain of his vigour at an age when many men are already a little wearied by life. Fate, too, was treating him kindly. Mary had settled down, Laura's child was a boy, and a very fine boy, and here was Rosemary marrying an exceedingly decent young fellow who was bound to get on. Moreover business was booming. James went down to his office every morning in an excellent temper. He had made up his mind now that he would carry his cinema project through. He had consulted the various people in whose advice he had confidence and matters seemed to be shaping very well. He was not looking to the new company for enormous profits—if it succeeded he would make his money through its effect on the Imperial. He meant to keep all the Imperial's ordinary shares in the family. If he was excited about the new company it was because he had always had a liking for neat and amusing inventions, and he saw himself now with two or three interesting years ahead of him, years during which he could complain that he was being worked to death, and astonish his admirers by the unclouded brilliance of his business capacity. Of course the changes he proposed would bring him in two or three thousand a year, but this did not mean so much to James—who, at bottom, had a sense of the values of life—as the fact of success itself, the fact that his influence would be extended, that his name and the name of his business would be spoken and heard with more respect.
As for Mary, he would distribute her money between various classes of shares in the two undertakings, and once she had grasped the powerlessness of a shareholder he could rearrange her holdings if he wished. Not that he anticipated any more trouble from Mary. The last few weeks had shown her where her heart lay, dear little thing—as if anybody who knew her could have doubted which she would choose when it came to an issue between babies and Socialism—and James saw happy years ahead for Mary as well, with two daughters to counsel and two families of grandchildren to adore. She would need, of course, to be petted for a week or so after the wedding. It might be a good thing, if he could manage it, to take her away for a little trip somewhere. Why not? Why shouldn't the old people have their honeymoon as well as the youngsters?
The days passed pleasantly and rapidly—he felt too good-natured even to make a fuss about Rosemary's absurd arrangements for the wedding. Rosemary said that she was going to be married by a registrar, and that she did not wish to have anybody there when it happened. She regarded the marriage ceremony, she informed her father, as the ratifying by the State of a private contract. One did not invite all one's friends to come and cry when one had a document stamped at Somerset House. But if she and Anthony were allowed to go out in the morning by themselves and be married with crossing-sweepers for witnesses, she did not object to a party in the afternoon to say good-bye to her friends.
"Very kind of you!" said James, but he refrained from saying more.
To this programme Mary wanted to add a family lunch—she did not feel that she could sit idle in the house all day, waiting for afternoon tea, and as James would be at home she would be debarred from tiring herself by helping with the preparations or the packing. But the idea of the lunch pleased no one but Mary's aunts. Even James said that if they were not to have the regulation affair they might as well get off as lightly as possible.
As a matter of fact, when the morning came, James did not care to sit idle about the house either. Rosemary had slipped away after an early breakfast, and there seemed no reason why he should not run up to the office for an hour or two. Mary took advantage of his absence to tire herself a good deal altering the arrangement of the wedding presents. She had insisted on displaying the presents because when people have been kind it is only right that they should have the pleasure of seeing what they have given.
In the middle of her unnecessary alterations a dreadful idea occurred to her. Suppose Rosemary and Anthony had refused to have witnesses because they did not mean to get married at all! Suppose they had decided that marriage was contrary to their principles, and were only pretending to marry in order to save their parents' feelings? It was the sort of thing, she had heard, that Socialists did. She tried to dismiss the idea from her mind, and for a time she succeeded, but when neither Rosemary, Anthony, nor James appeared for lunch, her fears returned. It seemed incredible that she actually did not know whether Rosemary was Mrs. Hastings or not. She could not eat, and she returned to the presents, where she made herself miserable for another hour. She had already imagined Anthony lured away from the unhappy girl who was not his wife by a tall dark woman with green eyes when, to her joy, she heard James's voice in the hall.
"Hullo, you two, married?"
Rosemary's voice answered him, clear and excited, "Yes, I suppose so—but I don't feel married a bit! The old man was perfectly charming. He shook our hands and told us he always tried to give the young people a good send-off. Here are my marriage lines—Tony said that as you weren't there he must have a certificate to protect his reputation."
Mary sat down suddenly, overcome by ridiculous relief. They were still talking and laughing outside, but she did not hear what they said. A moment later James came into the library. He saw at once that she was looking pale.
"Really, Mary," he scolded, almost vexed, "you are not to be trusted, are you? You promised that you would not do anything to tire yourself, and here you are as white as a sheet. Come upstairs at once, little mother, and rest on the sofa, and I'll sit by you and keep you amused until it's time to dress."
"But, Rosemary—" said Mary.
"She's gone out to give Giles a kiss from his married aunt. I hoped you were lying down, and I told her not to disturb you."
He took her hand to lead her from the room, but Mary, moved by a sudden impulse, threw her arms round his neck. "James—my dear—I do love you so!" she told him.
James, surprised and pleased, stroked back her soft hair very tenderly. "Little thing," he said, "we've not done badly, have we, to love one another like this for so many years? If the young people are as happy as we are they won't have much to complain of." He would have liked to say more, but he never felt in the mood for making love so soon after lunch.
Mary, quite satisfied, let him take her upstairs and put her on the sofa. She made him sit down on it too, where she could play with his fingers, telling him that he ought to be glad, really, that she wasn't a fine big strapping wife who would want all the room on the sofa for herself.
James looked down on her affectionately. "I'm glad," he said, "that you're just exactly what you are! I wouldn't change a scrap of you." They both laughed.
Then Mary told him how silly she had been before he came in, how she had pictured Anthony led to destruction by sinuous ladies with raven locks. "They would have to be red-haired to tempt you, James," she added. "I don't believe you'd look at a temptress unless she had red hair!"
James bent towards her, his handsome face bright with affection. "Since I met you, little mother," he said, "I don't believe I've looked at another woman. Your hair is the only hair in the world for me!"
Then, as he gazed at her, Mary saw a change come over his face. His mouth fell open a little, his eyes left hers, he lifted his head. She could see that in that moment James had remembered something.
Tired and overstrung as she was she could not control the fantastic terror that shook her. "James," she cried, "tell me quickly—why did you look like that?"
James turned back to her. His face expressed nothing now but surprise. "Look like what? I don't understand you, my dear." Then he got up from the sofa and walked across to the window. "They've got a fine day for their wedding-day," he added.
As he left her Mary's bodily strength seemed to go with him. She sank backwards against her cushions trembling. "Don't speak! don't speak!" she whispered to herself, but she had lost control over the forces of her mind. Fear, too strong for her, spoke through her lips. She called him, "James!"
James swung round sharply at the unfamiliar ring of her voice. "My dear, what is the matter? I——"
She interrupted him. "If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?"
James came back to the sofa and stood beside it, strong and authoritative. "Listen to me," he said, "you are working yourself up, about nothing at all, into a state of hysteria. You must remember that in another hour your guests will be here. Shut your eyes and try to calm yourself. I am not going to answer any questions at all."
But Mary still stared at him, his words had not reached her. "James," she said, "you must tell me! Have you ever been unfaithful to me?"
Her question, though he had been expecting it, came to James as a shock. But he answered her steadily, "I have never loved anyone but you."
Mary clasped her hands. "No," she said, "I don't— James, you haven't answered my question!"
James, standing by her, thought rapidly. He had been a fool to give any answer at all. He had not meant to, but the words had come to his lips, and for an instant he had thought they would fulfil his purpose. Now he must tell her a lie. But he knew in his heart that a lie would be no use—his folly had answered her. He looked at Mary. Her terrified eyes, wide open, were searching his face. After all, she had a right to ask her question—he turned away from her without speaking.
Then it was true—Mary pressed her hands over her mouth as if she were preventing herself from screaming. For a moment her mind seemed a mere confusion of struggling passions, then, from life-long habit, she made an effort to command it. "I must be brave," she told herself, "and just—it must not be more dreadful than it need——"
But she could not find any courage or any justice in her heart, she could find nothing but horror. It was impossible—it was unbearable. She tried to think calmly, but James's tread as he walked about the room seemed to break down her attempts to reason, to excuse, to lift herself above mere bitterness and suffering. She closed her eyes, but a moment later she opened them again, because the sound of his feet had stopped.
James, as he walked, could only abuse himself. Fool!—he'd been worse than a fool! He could not imagine now what had kept him from speaking, what had made him drag out all this. It was only a chance that he had remembered it—red hair. Now he would have to explain, to tell her about it, or God knows what infamy she would be imagining! But what good would his explanation be—how could he make her understand? When a woman knows as little of evil as Mary....
His heart sank, he felt a sudden fear of the unknown. By his minutes of hesitation, of silence, he asked himself, what had he done? He turned suddenly, and glanced across at the sofa. As he saw Mary lying there, her eyes shut and her face contorted, he was shaken by a wave of nervous anger. Why was she carrying on like that? he thought, in the phrase of his boyhood—she had insisted on asking her question, why couldn't she take the answer like a man? An instant later he was horrified with himself for his brutality. How could he be thinking of anything now but of how to make it easier for her? What had he better do? He went to the sofa, and as he looked down on her, she opened her eyes. For a moment they faced one another, but their gaze meant nothing—each was too tormented to find access to the other's thought. Then James spoke. "I think, if you don't mind, it would be better if I told you," he said; "I don't want you to imagine——"
Mary still looked at him without knowing why. "Yes, I think so," she agreed.
James did not find it possible to stand there, staring like that. He started again on his restless walk. "It was a woman I'd known—before I knew you—she wasn't a bad sort, I always felt kindly towards her. She came to me years afterwards because she was in trouble, hadn't any money, and asked me to help her. She was very unhappy because she felt that she was getting old, and that she wasn't as beautiful as before, and I—really—she seemed to expect it—I didn't want to hurt her feelings—" He had been going to add, "It seemed so natural," but he pulled himself up. A sudden horror had seized him of himself, of what he was saying, of the conversation. It was appalling that he should be speaking to Mary of things like this! It was indecent.
The story, the simple facts, restored some of Mary's self-control. She could realise, as a definite event, what in the abstract had seemed incredible. She drew a deep breath and tried to face the position. "Then you never cared for her?" she asked him. James turned round again. "Of course I never cared for her, I never dreamed of caring. Didn't I tell you that I have never cared for anyone but you!" It seemed to him just then that his not having cared for her was of vital importance. Whatever else Mary did not realise she must realise that. "I'd forgotten all about her, until you reminded me." Good God! that he should be standing there, in front of Mary, justifying himself!
Mary shivered. She did not disbelieve James, but what he said seemed to her incredible. How was it possible to do what James had done and not care? It did not occur to her to feel sorry for James, for his discomfort and his humiliation, but she found herself for a moment pitying the woman who dwelt in so monstrous a world. To be a woman of whom a man could say, "I never dreamed of caring!"
Then a new doubt assailed her. "When was it?" she cried. "Oh, James, was it anybody I know?"
But James could bear it no longer. Every instinct of self-preservation urged him to stop her questions. And he did not want her to know when it had happened. She would not understand. "I don't think I need tell you," he said. "She wasn't much of a woman, but who she is, is her affair, and the other is mine."
Mary did not understand him. "How do you mean, yours?"
James did not answer at once. The whole discussion still seemed to him unnatural and disgusting. But since she insisted on probing into the thing he might just as well, he told himself, state his case. "Look here, Mary," he said, "I don't think we shall do any good by talking about this just now. I don't think it will help either of us. But the reason I won't tell you more about it, is this. That whole side of my life is a side that you have never wished to think of or to know anything about. You have had your own standards, and you have simply taken it for granted that I should live up to them. You have never even doubted, I imagine, that I found it easy to live up to them. Well, I respected your delicacy, I never obtruded anything on you that you did not care to know. Don't you see, Mary, you can't, now, simply because I am at a disadvantage, expect me to break down a barrier which we have chosen to keep up all our lives. You may say that I deceived you, and that you have a right to know the truth. Well, I did conceal it from you, but my concealment was the price I paid for your immunity from contact with evil." As he spoke, the theme developed in his rapid mind. He went on—"Those untroubled ideals of yours, your moral sensitiveness, they're not things that survive a knowledge of the ugly, cruel side of life. Well, we agreed, it seemed to me, that you should enjoy them, that I should prevent them from being taken from you. In some ways they are a luxury, luxuries have to be paid for—" He stopped, because he could see that Mary was not following what he said.