It was three o'clock now, and Penn came to tell her that the car was waiting. She looked hastily round the room, and her eye fell upon the unhappy basket which had seemed so desirable to James's clerk. As she went down the stairs she wondered why its ridiculous pink ribbons had made her angry. She would have done better if she had laughed at it. Well, she was going now! There would be no basket in her room to-night.
She told the man to drive to Victoria and there she put her luggage in the cloak-room. Then she took a taxi to the house agent's office. The house agent received her with smiles. All was well. The owner would sign the agreement, and the agent's men at that very moment were making the inventory. Mrs. Heyham could have the keys, he should say, in under an hour. With such a modern style of furnishing the inventory was not a lengthy matter.
Mary had to think carefully before she decided what she should do next. She must take her luggage away from Victoria, she decided, before she sent James's letter. He was certain to ring up the chauffeur and ask where she had gone. And she might just as well, with an hour before her, get something to eat. She had had no time for lunch.
She fetched the luggage in yet another taxi, and then entrusted the letter to a district messenger. He seemed young and irresponsible for so grave a task—she found it difficult not to tell him that he must be particularly careful. After that she drove to a rival tea-shop and ordered poached eggs on toast, with the taxi ticking extravagantly outside. When the eggs came their whites had a curious crumbling consistency, and she wished that she had ordered something else. But she ate them, for she did not like to hurt the attendant's feelings. James was proud of the eggs that appeared upon the Imperial's tables.
Mary was sorry that the rules of this company did not allow its damsels to receive tips. She would have liked, if only by a lavish scattering of such things as tips, to ensure some good results for her enterprise.
The agent's clerk, obliging man, had the keys ready for her, and with them an assurance of his best attention at all times, and particularly if Mrs. Heyham should happen to be thinking of a house in Scotland again this summer.
Mary thanked him and told him she would certainly not overlook his unrivalled selection. He smiled at that, for he had been wondering what had induced such a wealthy lady to descend to a flat in Chelsea. He supposed that she must have lent her town house to a friend for a month or two, and then found that she wanted a place where she could sleep when she came up for shopping. He thought out the matter with unusual care because if there was anything wrong his clients would blame him, he felt, for his incautious hurry. He was so far justified, at any rate, that the bank had honoured Mary's cheque.
When Mary and her cab reached Cheyne Mansions there was at first a slight difficulty over the luggage. The taxi driver was tired of being kept waiting outside shops and offices while Mary transacted business, and he did not offer to carry her things upstairs. Jenkins, his wife said timidly, was out. Finally, since he was out, though it infringed all regulations, she allowed the luggage to go up in the lift. They were not really, she explained, more than what you could easily call hand luggage. Mary's desire to be lavish was again checked. It was too bad of the taxi driver to sulk on his seat instead of offering to help with the things. He was, besides, a man with a face that did not invite generosity. She gave him an extra shilling.
Mrs. Jenkins's sister Guinivere was waiting for Mary in the flat. She was a smiling child of sixteen, and Mary was glad to see her fresh little face. They unpacked together in a friendly fashion, and then Guinivere—they called her Winny at home, she said, her name being Winifred, but Mr. Jenkins thought Guinivere more suitable for service—asked Mary what she would fancy for dinner. Mary would fancy anything that Guinivere could cook nicely, and the young lady departed in high spirits at the prospect of choosing a magnificent chicken. She had long desired to try her hand at a chicken—when such dainties graced the board of Jenkins she was never allowed to touch more than the vegetables, and the bread sauce.
When the door had closed behind Guinivere, Mary went into the sitting-room which had reminded her of Rosemary. This was the moment when, according to her arrangements, she should have sat down on the odd-looking sofa and begun to think. That was what she was here for, to think in quiet. She could not have asked for more in the way of quiet, no one seemed to be stirring in the flats, even the street beneath her windows was empty of noise.
Nevertheless she did not want to think. The calm judicial mood she had meant to evoke escaped her. Instead she felt restless, she wanted to explore her flat and see what there was behind all its doors and in all its cupboards. She wanted to examine the orange-red furniture in the sitting-room, and to decide whether she liked the extraordinary patterns that were painted in gold and silver on its hangings. She could consider nothing else, she felt, until she had considered the room. Something about it was certainly Japanese and yet it wasn't Japanese in the least. She wanted to open all the flat's windows too, and put her head out and look up and down the street. It was in vain that she rebuked herself. This was not like the other furnished houses, it was her adventure, her defence, her stronghold, where nothing mattered but her own will. It was her will now to be foolish and frivolous, to enjoy, as far as she could, the little sensations that were offered her. She could not, though she wished it, feel adequately solemn.
When Guinivere returned with the chicken, Mary was still wandering through the rooms, looking at their astonishing decorations. It was pleasant to help Guinivere lay the table under the pretext of learning where all the things were kept, it was pleasant to hang anxiously with her over the gas cooker, wondering when the moment had come for the chicken's release. It was pleasant to agree that the little bit of burn could not possibly affect the flavour.
After dinner there were the things to put away, just to see that she remembered their places, and the books on the dining-room bookshelves to look through—it was not until nine o'clock that she remembered her letter to the bank. That changed the current of her thoughts. She realised that although she was restless she was also very tired. She realised, too, that James had read her letter, that he was probably at that moment struggling with the emotions her letter had caused. A new fear occurred to her. He was probably very angry—she could not tell in the least how angry he might be. His anger seemed suddenly real to her. Even in the security of her silver walls it made her tremble. Even here he could hurt her. Supposing, to punish her, he intercepted her news of Rosemary. She did not know where to write to Rosemary. Before this fresh anxiety, slight though it was, the last of her excitement disappeared. She went into her bedroom, worried and dispirited, looking forward to a wakeful night. She was astonished when she woke next morning to remember that she had not even heard the funny clock strike ten.
JAMES received Mary's letter, by a happy chance, just as he was about to ring up his solicitors and ask them to send him some papers that he wanted to show her next day. When he had read its first few sentences, he asked for the messenger boy, but his clerk told him that the boy had already gone. As that was so, he told the man to get him a taxi—he could very well finish the letter on his way home. While he was waiting, he walked up and down his room. "This is nonsense!" he told himself. "This is nonsense—it must be stopped at once!" He got into his taxi without being aware of any other feeling than his determination that it must be stopped.
The light in the taxi was bad, and Mary's sloping writing seemed difficult. He realised that he was not understanding what he read, and when he had gathered the facts of the affair he put the crumpled sheets back into his pocket. Then he pulled up the window of the taxi—the early spring day was cold. Already the other, the emotional aspects of Mary's conduct were forcing themselves upon his mind, but again and again he wrenched his thoughts away—he must look at it now, he insisted, simply in the light of something that had to be stopped. Over a growing consciousness of disaster he kept his attention busy with the familiar spaces and buildings that he passed, and with the people in the streets.
As soon as he reached home he sent for Penn. "What train did Mrs. Heyham catch?" he asked her.
Penn did not know, Mrs. Heyham had left for Victoria at three. But she could ask Lang.
It would be ten minutes before the chauffeur came—James went into his study and took out the letter again. But even now he could not understand it. She was angry with him about Greta, he supposed, and to revenge herself she had determined to refuse her consent to his scheme. Then she had been afraid, she had not dared face him, so she had run away. He felt the tide of his anger rising to meet the anger he imagined in her. He could not doubt for a moment which was the stronger and the more effective. It was difficult to believe that she could have been foolish enough to provoke him like this——
At that moment he heard footsteps on the marble floor of the passage and he tried, instinctively, to resume the usual calm of his expression. But the muscles of his face, stiffly contracted, would not relax. He faced Lang, coming in at the door, with a deep frown.
"What train did Mrs. Heyham take, Lang?" he asked again.
"I don't know, sir. We got to Victoria at about 3.20 and Mrs. Heyham told the porter to take her things to the cloak-room."
With a great effort James made himself smile. "That's all right," he said; "then she is probably going by the later train, as she arranged." He thought rapidly. His letter had reached him at half-past four—she had probably handed it in soon after four. It was nearly half-past five now. After what she had said in the letter, it was unlikely that her luggage would still be there, though she might, of course, have been bluffing.
He wondered for a moment whether he would go to Victoria himself, but he was too angry. He'd be damned if he'd hang around any cloak-room for her. "What's Heyham doing—looking for his wife?" She should come back without that.
He turned to Lang. "Go to Victoria at once," he said, "and find out, if you can, what train Mrs. Heyham took. The man in the cloak-room may know at what time she came for the luggage. If it is still there, wait until she comes and tell her that I have been obliged to change my plans and cannot leave London to-night. If Mrs. Heyham decides to come back, bring her home—if not, see her comfortably into her train."
Lang looked intelligently at his master, as if he were memorising these instructions. Then, with his usual, "Yes, sir," he went.
When the door had shut, James, without seeing it, looked slowly round the room. He had become aware of a curious light, giddy sensation. His mind seemed to be inactive, open, and blank. Suddenly his blood rushed to his head and he found himself trembling under a storm of rage.
For a moment he thought of Mary as an angry peasant thinks of an animal. She was his—his possession—his woman—and she had defied him. Words came to his lips that old Clarkson, years ago, had used of the factory girls, but as he stood there with his hands clenched and his red, distorted face thrust forward, he could not even speak them coherently. Presently the inhibiting pressure of his wrath grew less, and he turned to stride rapidly up and down the room. His anger, as it became clearer, had not shrunk, but only grown more vindictive and more intense. He saw Mary now as an embodiment of greed and treachery. Was she not, after all, Julius's sister?—he had been a fool to marry into such a family! All these years he had toiled at the business, working as much for her as for himself, and now, after taking all that she could get, she was angry with him, and for her revenge she ruined him. This was her answer to his years of love and care. He had loved her—he shivered with humiliation when he thought how abject he had sometimes been, how he had respected her, hung on her moods, twisted himself into ecstasies of sentimental gallantry! He had treated himself like dirt, because he had been afraid of wounding her damned delicacy—while she, in all probability, had been laughing at him! It had amused her to see him making a fool of himself over her imaginary fine feelings! She had been so sure of him that she had dared to tell him to his face that she did not love him!
He had adored her, and she, all the time, had been leading her own life, her double life, throwing him enough affection to keep him blind when he was at home. As soon as it suited her, she left him, left him to tell his son and his daughters—to tell everyone—that his wife had run away. Left him to explain why she had seen fit to do such a thing. He shuddered again with hatred and disgust.
At last, tired of walking, he threw himself into his great arm-chair. Mary imagined, no doubt, that he would forgive her. Forgive—he struck the arm of the chair with his open hand—while there was blood in his body, he would not forgive. She should come back, and she should sign the papers, and then, after that, he would live as he liked—treacherous—treacherous and cold-blooded! She had left him to explain to Trent, her prig of a son, why she had gone——
His anger mastered him again, he could not breathe properly, he bent over the side of the chair that he had gripped with shaking hands. When he tried to rise it seemed to him, for a moment, that he could not.
At this he became alarmed. "Mustn't go on like this!" he told himself, and instantly his muscles relaxed and he fell back in the chair, while rings of light seemed to shift before his eyes. When he sat up, wiping his hand across his wet forehead, he had collected himself, his anger was finally under his control. He was able to think about what he had better do, what he should say to Trent, what Lang would have found.
He left the chair and walked slowly to his desk. His desk, broad, massive, designed and equipped solely to serve his purpose, reassured him and gave him back for a moment his sense of dignity. With its smooth leather under his arms he could not doubt of his success—he had planned so many things at that desk, and compelled so much success. There were a hundred reasons why Mary should return at once, before anyone knew, if only he could get them in order. His head was full of them already—they crowded upon him. There must be a hundred ways, too, of forcing her to come back if only he could find them. He had merely to think, to set his brain to work. Unfortunately he did not want to think. He wanted to be angry, to give full scope to his indignation, and to find that the sheer force of it had brought her back. Since his childhood James had respected his anger. It was an important weapon, dreaded and deprecated by thousands of human beings. And since it was always effective he had lost the habit of calling it in question or asking himself whether it could be unjust. Now it seemed strange to him that, angry as he was, nothing happened. If Mary had been there she would have been terrified by his anger; now, simply because she had gone, because there was a little space between them, it was nothing to her. He did not understand clearly what was the matter, but he felt an odd sensation of discomfort, of discouragement, of frustration. He sought in his mind, vaguely, for some violent thing that he could do—something that would prove his power. Then he brought himself sharply back to the matter in hand. "What's wrong with me?" he thought. "Why am I doing nothing? By this time I ought to have decided what I mean to do!"
His discouragement deepened and with it grew a fear of this strange incapacity. "I'm not usually like this," he thought—if only Mary had been there, there was so much that he could have said to her! But she was gone.
He made a last effort to think of some way of finding her immediately. He could put the screw on to the manager of the bank and make him give up her address—he could set detectives to find her. But he did not care for either of these plans. The manager would not like going back on Mary, nor did he believe in any but the acquisitive powers of detectives. Sooner or later of course Mary, being a woman, would give herself away; meanwhile he must wait.
He must wait—impotent, tortured by his own useless rage—the notion appalled him. He was not a man who was accustomed to wait, to suffer—every force that was in him struggled against the idea. Then, as he could still find no immediate solution, his alarm returned. The state of affairs was wrong, unnatural, something must be the matter. "Perhaps I was too angry," he thought, "I have upset myself!" He walked to a small mirror that hung over a side table and looked at himself in the glass. He looked tired and shaken, he decided, and with the thought came a sensation of weakness and fatigue. He turned away from the mirror and went back, mechanically, to his desk. "After all," he thought, "I am getting old—I can't stand these things as I used to!" It was a moment before he grasped the significance of the words.
Then his hatred of Mary blazed out again. That was why she had done it—he was old—she had taken advantage of his age—ten years ago she would not have dared to defy him! She had left him, as he saw it now, with the callous indifference of youth. She was younger than he—she had not borne the burden of ceaseless work! She was a woman, she worshipped strength—to her he was merely an old man, whose strength was leaving him.
Then he made an effort to restore his own confidence. Mary was wrong—she would find out her mistake—only that morning he had felt as young as ever! But he could not deceive himself, he knew that ten years ago he would have taken action instead of wasting his time among ideas. "Here I sit," he thought; "I tell myself that I must do something, find something to do, and still I sit doing nothing!" He was seized again, as he had been seized the night before, with profound despondency. Something was wrong, but its causes lay outside the habitual action of his mind. He sat on, not attempting now to cope with the stream of thoughts that passed before him. He missed, though he did not know it, Mary's audience and her sympathy.
At twenty minutes past six Lang came back with the car. He had done his best, he said, to make the man at the cloak-room attend to him, and the man had admitted finally that he believed, though he wasn't sure, that Mrs. Heyham had fetched her luggage about an hour after she put it in.
James nodded, and Lang went. In another half-hour Trent would be back from the works. He took Mary's letter from his pocket and read it again to see if there was anything in it that he could not show to Trent. The boy, after all, was his partner. He would have to have an explanation of some sort. Plausible explanations of Mary's flight began to develop themselves in James's mind. He did not want Trent to know about Greta—Trent was such a prig. But as the clock struck half-past he decided, in a sudden access of impatience, that he would go out and leave the letter behind him for Trent to find. He would have dinner somewhere where there was a crowd of people. He couldn't face a tongue—tied meal with Trent staring at him across the table, and the servants coming in and out of the room. He couldn't face, either, Trent's surprise and his damn-fool questions. The boy was all right when he'd thought a thing over, but he wasn't quick.
He wrote on a sheet of paper, "I will talk this over with you after dinner, J. A. H.," and put it with the letter into a large envelope which he addressed to his son. Then, leaving it on the hall table, he went upstairs to dress. If he had dinner early he would be less likely to see anyone he knew.
Trent, when he came in, a little tired, picked up the envelope and tore it open on his way upstairs. He read James's note with a feeling of impatience. Some difficulty had arisen, he supposed, in the way of the new company. Trent did not share James's interest in the new company. The scheme was his father's. It did not afford him the pleasure of admiring his own ingenuity, and it seemed to him that the new arrangements tended to lessen his importance. He would be on the Board of the new Company, but only as one director among many, and he had not been able to follow his father's sudden delight in cinematographs and the building of cinema palaces. He had agreed to the scheme because it would make him, if it went well, a richer man, but he sometimes grew tired of discussing and praising it. He glanced, now, at the other envelope, and it was with a shock that he recognised his mother's writing. James had not spoken to him of Mary's attitude, and as the months went by he had forgotten his fears. Now they revived, and with them came a slight feeling of superiority. "I knew there would be trouble," he said to himself as he went into his room.
Trent's room was carefully furnished and tidy. Even his golf-clubs and his riding boots seemed evidence less of enjoyment than of the gentlemanly nature of his pursuits. Although he would have to dress in half an hour he changed his shoes, washed his hands, and brushed his hair before he sat down in a comfortable chair to read Mary's letter.
He read it through slowly, after his first start of surprise, and then, as he could not remember a word of it, he read it again. He was amazed—his mother had never seemed to him that sort of woman. He had always thought of her as a good, charming woman, a woman he was very fond of. Now she had done this astonishing thing—he realised, for the first time, that his mother and father were not merely parents, that they lived lives of their own, like his and his friends'. "My father can't," he even admitted, "be a very easy man to live with"—he could see that Mary had been very unhappy when she wrote her letter.
But there his sympathy ended. Mary was a wife, she had no right to behave as she was doing. Trent had always felt very strongly that upper-class Englishwomen, in a way, are sacred; sacred to the noble task of maintaining the ideals of English men and children. He had never doubted that any woman whom he might love would recognise the force of this obligation. He was very fond of his mother—it was most perplexing! He tried to think the matter over calmly. Whatever had happened it was absurd to suppose that she couldn't do all the thinking she liked while his father was at the office. If, as the letter seemed to indicate, there was some emotional difficulty between them, that only made matters worse. In such a case an open breach was not only wrong and foolish, it was indelicate. If what she really wanted was time to get used to the idea of selling the business then she had still no right to run away and take counsel of strangers instead of discussing the affair with her husband and son. She was hopelessly in the wrong, even when one looked at it, as he was doing, from her own point of view. When one thought of the consequences of her action——
He left his chair and began to walk, like his father, up and down the room. Walking, his thoughts came faster and less coherently. Why had she done it?—it was a terrible thing to do! And in what a false position it left them all!
Even he would suffer—why, more especially he! With a pang he remembered Lady Hester. If her family knew that his mother had done such a thing they would not let her marry him, however much money he made. For a moment the poor young man stopped, appalled, then he resumed his pacing. Hester had probably never heard of such a thing as a mother who ran away!
It was impossible that his mother could ruin his life, and ruin it for a mood—a whim—she must not do it, she must not be allowed to do it! She must be brought back and made to feel how unbecoming—how shameful—her behaviour was; he felt a slow, irresistible anger rise in his heart. His mother was disgracing herself, she could claim no mercy. She had rejected her duty to her husband and children, she had put herself outside the scope of man's generosity. He had a right to be angry with her, he said to himself; he did well to be angry!
For a few minutes he was exceedingly angry, then his thoughts began to move in a different direction. Trent, like his mother, took an interest in the processes of his own mind. After all it was no use his losing his head. Anger was foolish and undignified—he sat down again, deliberately, as if to prove to himself by controlling his muscles that he could also control his feelings. His mother had taken leave of her senses, but that was no reason why he should not show self-control. This was a crisis in his life; he must behave wisely, generously!
He tried hard as he sat there, unfortunate youth, to decide on a wise and generous line of conduct. But all that he could think of were his ruined hopes, his wounded feelings, the cruelty and treachery of what Mary had done. He did not feel generous, he felt deeply vindictive. He wanted to be wise and calm, but his resentment seemed to press on him, depriving him of the power of ordering his thoughts. He felt a desire to punish his mother, to make her suffer in return for the suffering she was causing him. He struggled against this feeling, but he was astonished by its strength. "It is extraordinary," he thought, "I am not a vindictive man; I have every wish to behave well, and yet when my whole desire is simply to be just I am prevented from thinking clearly by this primitive instinct of revenge! It is true then, after all, that civilisation is only a cloak for barbarism!" This, in its way, was satisfactory. To the end of his life Trent would treat himself with more respect as a person, under the surface, of untamably savage instincts. But even this interesting discovery did not remove the oppression of his annoyance. When he finally found relief it was in an outbreak of indignation against women in general. He was not worried by any need to be just towards women in general. This was what came—his thoughts ran easily—of women interfering in men's affairs. This was what came of women setting themselves up to be judges of life and conduct without balance or judgment or experience; they lost their heads and everyone else had to bear the consequences. His mother, doubtless—he felt less angry with her already—had been led away. She had talked things over, in the gabbling indecent fashion women have, with some of her friends, possibly with that ridiculous secretary. They had sympathised with her and persuaded her to behave like this. Possibly even Rosemary had known about it. All women nowadays were filled with the same spirit of presumption and ingratitude. His mother had merely been a little more rash, a little weaker, than the others. The whole thing came, he went on to explain to himself, of educating women and encouraging them to express their absurd opinions. His mother had been carried away by the feeling that half the business was hers—that, of course, was her father's fault. Now, although she knew nothing whatever of business, she was not prepared to let anything pass that did not meet with her approval. She had obviously got some idea of responsibility into her head—as if a woman would be responsible for an enormous modern business. There were women who mixed themselves up in business, of course, women who were thoroughly unsexed, and the others didn't understand that and were wild to imitate them. Look at Rosemary and her economics!—Laura, too, had been nearly as bad until she married. He was going on to conclude that early marriage and no education was what was right for women—a woman, to Trent's taste, was enough when she was healthy, pretty, affectionate, and tactful—when he remembered that no one had ever educated his mother and that she had indubitably married and married young. He was forced to admit that now these impossible ideas had got into the air there was no telling whom they would not attack.
He dressed, at last, without having forgiven Mary, but with his good-humour towards himself restored by this proof that he could conquer his impulses and face misfortune in a philosophical spirit.
Soon after he had left the dining-room and settled himself comfortably in the study, his father returned. James had had an excellent and encouraging dinner, and he walked into the room with the brisk, bustling air of a man who is prepared at every point both with plans of action and explanations of them. He dropped into his particular chair and selected a cigar before he spoke. Then he glanced suspiciously at his son. "You've read your mother's letter, I take it," he began.
Trent replied that he had.
"Well, what do you think about it?"
Trent waited a moment before he answered. He could see that his father was uneasy—probably, then, there had been some sentimental dispute between his parents, and James was afraid that he would question him about it. He chose his words carefully. "I don't think my mother can quite realise what she is doing," he said.
James was greatly relieved. He nodded. "We must remember," he conceded, "that your mother hasn't been at all well lately, and the excitement of the wedding was probably too much for her!"
Trent agreed with him. They looked at one another, and then James turned to the ash-tray on the table by his side. There was not yet, however, any ash upon the tip of his cigar. "In a way, of course, my dear fellow," he said, "if this gets about you are the greatest sufferer."
Trent moved uncomfortably. He did not care to be reminded of his possible sufferings.
"Of course," his father was saying, "the position, if it becomes public property, makes me look very foolish. And it is extremely inconvenient to have the arrangements for the reconstruction hung up like this for want of your mother's consent. Only yesterday Mansfield and Sir Ezra Swiney agreed to be on the Board of the new Company. But in the long run that hits you as hard as it hits me, and in other ways your prospects are affected in a way that mine can't be." He leaned forward towards his son in a solicitous, fatherly manner. Trent's answering, "Yes," was stiff.
"Now just for the present," James went on, "I haven't got your mother's address. I've thought of a way by which we shall probably be able to get it in a day or two, say a week, but meanwhile there's no time to be lost. Your mother says that the bank will forward letters—I think on the whole, if you agree with me, that you'd better write at once and point out to her what she's doing. It is no good at all my writing or I would. But if she gets a letter from you explaining that this attitude of hers makes your marriage impossible, I think it's ten chances to one that she'll change her mind. She's fond of you, Trent, and when she's in her right mind she's a good mother. Besides, I expect she's feeling a bit scared now that the thing is done. If I were you I would write to-night."
Trent leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling to avoid the compelling affection of his father's eye. He rejected an impulse to refuse indignantly, and considered the matter as thoroughly as he could. Consideration did not make James's plan seem more attractive. It was undignified, it was beastly—Trent had never written such a letter in his life, and he could not imagine himself writing it. A letter is a thing that one can keep—he thought of Mary reading his entreaties over again afterwards, when the urgency of the affair had died away—perhaps showing them to Lady Hester—"This, my dear, was what brought me back!" Trent, in defence of his own dignity, was capable of a certain amount of imagination; moreover, in the depths of his heart he felt that emotional pressure of this sort was unfair. Before dinner he had been prepared, so he thought, to use any possible means of bringing Mary back. Now that he was asked to dirty his own fingers he felt a little sorry for his mother. James was talking very calmly now and in a very kind and reasonable way, but Trent had worked with his father for some years, and he would not have cared, himself, to face such a home-coming. After all, Mary had gone away because she thought she was acting right, and James had not given any clear account of what it was that he had done to make her go.
Meanwhile James stared at his son. "Damn the boy!" he thought, "I wonder what it is that makes me always rub him up the wrong way. Well—" he said, as Trent did not seem inclined to speak.
Trent sat up and looked at him. "Do you know, sir," was the most tactful way he could put his objection, "I doubt whether my writing would be very much good? My mother has gone away, as far as I can see, because she wants to think business matters over—she must have considered the effect it would have on my plans before she went. To bring her back we must persuade her that what she is doing isn't right."
"She can hardly imagine that it is right to ruin your prospects." James's tone was becoming less smooth.
"I think," his son went on, "that we ought to write a letter, either from you or from both of us, as you prefer, to say that for her own sake as well as for ours we must ask her to come back, but if she comes we will guarantee her reasonable time and opportunities for satisfying herself about the reconstruction." That seemed to Trent a very handsome offer.
To James, already in conflict with his temper, it seemed merely aggravating. "Nonsense!" he said, "you don't realise, my dear fellow, that the thing is practically arranged. I can't keep eminent business men like Sir Ezra hanging about from day to day while your mother makes up her mind!"
"I had no idea that my mother took up that point of view," Trent suggested. "It seems very sudden!"
James had no answer to this. He knew perfectly well that he had run into the affair with his eyes open. He had known that Mary might very well object, and he had disregarded this knowledge. "I'm afraid she must have been reading Socialistic stuff," he conceded. "It gets hold of women." He fidgeted a little in his chair.
Trent threw himself back again. Then his father was to blame! He had seen this coming and he had taken no steps to meet it. He had not even consulted his able son. "Arranged or not, I don't see how we can get on without my mother's concurrence," he threw out. "It seems to me that we are in a thorough mess."
James glared at him. "I have suggested a plan by which I think your mother's concurrence can be obtained!"
Trent did not answer. He did not mind issuing his commands to women, but whining to them and badgering them was another matter. It did not fulfil Trent's idea of decency. But he knew that this obscure feeling which he could not name even to himself was the last thing in the world to appeal to his father.
"Well," James urged him, in tones of growing impatience, "I should really like to know why you don't think my scheme would be very much good."
Trent's own judicial calm gave way before this insistence. All right then, his father must have it! "I don't pretend to understand the ins and outs of the affair," he said slowly; "you haven't told me, and I don't ask any questions, but it does seem dear to me that the issue lies between my mother and you. So far as it affects me as a partner, I am willing that my mother should have time to make such a serious decision, otherwise I prefer, if you don't mind, to keep out of it as far as I can; certainly I would rather not involve other people."
James, since his dinner and the birth of his ingenious plan, had forgotten the general aspect of the affair and concentrated his mind on the task of persuading Trent. At this defiance, however, the thought of his plight and his grievances broke through the surface of his immediate intentions. This was what Mary had exposed him to—this sort of snub from his son! James cared more for Trent than he let himself admit, and the young man's attitude wounded his vanity. Trent would prefer to keep himself out of his father's and mother's affairs!
"Certainly you may keep out, my dear boy," he began disagreeably, while he felt his way towards something really scathing. "Whether you'll save your skin by keeping out is another matter. You will agree," he added in default of a better phrase, "that if you don't think your own interests are worth looking after there can be no earthly reason why I should bother about them!"
Trent broke in on him, "Oh, certainly." The last thing he wanted was that James should make emotional capital out of his unfortunate affections.
For some time they both sat there covering their silence by activity in attending to their tobacco. James was feeling sore and disappointed. He had expected Trent in this matter at least to see eye to eye with him. He had looked to Trent for comfort and moral support—two things which he had become accustomed to finding at home in seasons of stress and confusion. He could not understand now why Trent was hostile. It wasn't that Trent approved of his mother's action—Trent, the young puppy, took a far more high and mighty line about women than James had ever done. His mind moved wearily amid the tangle of Trent's possible motives. The boy might be acting from laziness, priggishness, cowardice, mere pig-headedness. In any case he was a damned young fool who didn't care a rap for his father. James leaned heavily back in his chair and cursed the man who had sold him his cigars.
Trent, too, was puzzled and upset. He had hoped to impress his father with his courage and common-sense, he had hoped to cheer him up. Actually, on the contrary, they had got no nearer to friendly sympathy than ill-tempered bickering. "Am I in the wrong?" he asked himself. "Ought I to write the letter?" Every instinct told him that he was right. His mother was wrong to go away as she had gone, but if they were to plead with her at all it must be by reasoning with her, by pointing out her duty, not by working on her feelings. Trent didn't want her return made a favour to him that he would have to carry for the rest of his life. Nor was he going to drag Lady Hester, even by remote allusions, into such an affair. He was right, and his motives in refusing his father were of the noblest, but, even so, things were unsatisfactory. He did not want to fence with his father, using his brains to wound the old man instead of to encourage him. It occurred to Trent, dimly and for an instant, that in all probability the old man did not want to wound him either. What was it then that irritated them and made them quarrel?
At this moment the door opened and the parlour-maid announced Mr. Julius Trent.
Julius came in with a smiling face. He had come to see Mary eventually, since the evening was a time when she might be found alone in her drawing-room, but as his purpose was to borrow money—Mary had been very kind the day before, and an old creditor whom Julius had forgotten had sent in his bill that morning—he thought it more politic to say a few cheerful words to her husband first.
"Evening!" he said; "evening, Trent my boy! How are you all? Settling down again, I suppose. Any news of the young couple?" He included them both in the benevolence of his greeting.
The last person James wished to see was Mary's brother Julius. "Good evening," he said, without shaking hands. "No, we've heard nothing yet."
"And how's poor little Mary?" her tactless brother went on. "Didn't seem very well when I saw her yesterday—upsetting things, these weddings." A joke—a mild enough joke—was on his lips, but he checked himself. A dull straight-laced lot, Mary's family. Even as a boy, James had been one of the plodding sort. He helped himself to one of James's cigars.
"She wants to see me, I think," he went on, as nobody answered. "Is she in?"
James was thinking as quickly as he could, so quickly that he forgot to be annoyed with "poor little Mary." In spite of their old friendship James had never grown used to this reprobate who spoke of his wife in familiar terms. Yesterday,—Julius, annoyed at not being made a director, had been saying things to Mary about the sale! "No," he said slowly, "I'm afraid she's not in."
Julius stared at him. Mary out alone at this time of night! "Oh, I suppose she's gone round to Laura's," he suggested. "Women never grow tired of talking things over. Will she be very late?"
If it really had been Julius who had been making mischief, James was thinking, Mary's brother or not, he would smash him! He stared heavily at his guest, but did not speak, and after a minute Trent felt obliged to say that they did not know.
Julius pulled out his watch. It wasn't yet half-past nine. He was not going to waste an evening with people like James and Trent. "Oh, very well," he said. "I expect to-morrow will suit her just as well. You might tell her from me, that I'll look in to-morrow morning." He smiled brightly again as he took another cigar.
But at this smile James's fretted self-control gave way. "No, I will not!" he said. "Mary will not be here to-morrow morning. Your sister, my good Julius, acting in a manner which you probably think very natural, has run away!"
"Run away! Mary! Mary!" said Julius, putting the cigar into his pocket, and automatically helping himself to another. "Well, I'm damned!"
Neither of the others spoke. Trent was annoyed with his father, and James was annoyed with himself. "What on earth did she want to run away for?" Julius went on. "She seemed quite happy yesterday!" His indignation grew. "Well, I must say that's a pretty thing! A woman of her age running away from her husband!" Where was he to get his money from now? "It's disgraceful, a shameful way to behave, never heard of such a thing— You needn't think I approve of her, James, I can tell you I'm damned sorry for you!" All the same, he told himself, it was almost worth losing the money. James left by his wife! Jaw-your-head-off cock-a-doodle James! Not that that excused Mary. "Perfectly disgraceful!" he went on, with enthusiasm. "I wonder if she's joined the Suffragettes? There's no saying what the fair sex won't do nowadays. Mary, too, of all women. Well, I'm disappointed in her. And if I see her I shall tell her so— If I were you I should put my foot down. If once you give in to this sort of thing——"
James crossed the room and took his brother-in-law by the arm. "The best thing you can do," he said to Julius, "is to clear out and keep quiet."
Julius looked at him and then at Trent. "I'll keep quiet enough," he assured them, "for my own sake. It's not the sort of thing I should care to have Esther know." Then, rubbing his arm, he made for the door. "Of course I can quite understand you're a bit annoyed," he said when he reached it, "I should be angry myself."
James turned his back to the door's closing.
Trent returned to the chair he had left when his uncle came into the room, and James, after a minute, followed his example. There was nothing that either of them cared to say. They would have to see Julius next morning and find out how much it would cost to keep him quiet, otherwise matters were much as they had been.
For nearly an hour they sat there, busy with unprofitable thoughts.
James was wishing that he had kicked Julius. To kick Mary's only brother would, in some small measure, have relieved his feelings. It would, at any rate, have been something that he could do. Of all Mary's offences this was the worst—that she had left him with no one and nothing on which to wreak his anger. She would go, heaven knows where, carrying his name at her mercy, while he must remain at home, baffled, thwarted, pestered by busy-bodies——
This was his mood when his idea came.
To Trent's surprise a joyful light appeared on his father's face. James left his chair and went over to his desk. "I've got her," he said. "It's worth it! I don't care what it costs. It's not for nothing I've subscribed so long to the party funds! When she comes back she shall find herself Lady Heyham! She's my wife still even if she has run away! And if she makes a fuss about it I'll call myself Sir Archibald!"
Just then the maid brought in some letters, among them a picture post-card for Mary from Rosemary. Five minutes before James would have considered that Mary didn't deserve to have letters sent on; now he was so pleased with the thought that he could alter her life whether she had gone or not that he handed it over to Trent to re-address.
MARY spent the next day readingThe Shareholder's Guide to Company Law. She did not remember much of it when she had finished, but her aversion to James's proposals had increased. Once she had sold her part of the business in return for money or shares in the new company she would not be able to do anything—if she had read the book aright—without standing up at a General Meeting and delivering a speech. Of that, she felt, she was incapable. There would be not only James to fight, but the new shareholders. She pictured them as stout hard men who would laugh loudly at her. For a few moments she held this pleasant little nightmare in her mind and it decided her. Well then, she must not give way to James, she must refuse to sell.
It was easy in her queer, gaily coloured flat to feel capable of such defiance. It was less easy to think coherently about what James would say. With the thought of him and his offences her mind became confused. She could not envisage him calmly, she could not forget how different he was from the James whom she had loved. She decided that she was not prepared to consider him, and until the evening she put him, as far as she was able, out of her mind.
In the evening a large envelope came from the bank. It bore Trent's writing, and she opened it fearfully to find nothing inside it but some letters and the post-card from Rosemary. Rosemary, in Italy, was having lovely weather and getting on splendidly—as Mary put the post-card down she felt a kindlier feeling towards James. It was generous of him to have sent on her letters. It occurred to her suddenly that with all his faults James had always been generous to her, and often sympathetic. Whatever credit was due to him for that he still deserved—the fact that one is deceiving a person does not make it easier to sympathise with them.
Next day when she awoke in her room,—Chinese blue, sea-green, and indigo, not the colours she would herself have chosen for a bedroom, but stimulating in the early morning,—she came to the conclusion that she had been a little unjust to James. She had taken it for granted that ever since his fall his whole relation with her had been built up of fraud and hypocrisy. Now she could see that she had certainly been wrong. For a month or two James must have suffered from a waning uneasiness, after that he had probably taken his guilt for granted. If he had been kind to her it had been because he was naturally kind. She need not feel that she had been insulted by every different instance of his affection.
She was astonished with herself now for not having understood this before. She had made the discovery of his fault, she reflected, at an unfortunate moment. The more she thought of it, the more sure she felt that James had not let his adventure alter his affection for his wife. The different planes of James's being were unconnected, his mind was not logical. She reminded herself that she had not lived with him for twenty-seven years without getting a glimpse of his attitude towards his business. The business—she turned over restlessly—the business was a problem less easy of solution. For James's infidelity she had simply to forgive him, and within a week he would have forgotten it. But his business was his life.
She must, she told herself, be more energetic. She must not trust to the chance thoughts of the moment. She must sit down on the red and orange sofa, absurd as it might seem, and make herself think, or she would find herself sliding into some plausible position that had no solid reasoning to support it. And by and by she would need solid reasoning—when it came to explaining her conclusions to James. If she could not think yet, she could read, and read she must.
As she became more intimately acquainted, in the week that followed, with what the London Library could tell her of our industrial system, she found her conception of her problem alter. She could laugh now, a little drearily, at the thought of James heading a band of willing but ignorant employers. The facts she learned now were not different in kind from the facts she had known when she invented that pleasing legend, but her attitude towards them was changed. She had not to fit them into her ideal notion of James. Not that he, in this new light, appeared any more a harsh or dishonest man than the majority of the gentlemen who direct the creation of our country's wealth. In some ways, indeed, he seemed even better than they. He might treat his employees badly, but he did not cheat the public. To Mary, that seemed, on the whole, the lesser virtue, but she recognised that to James it might fairly be a cause for pride.
James did not consider himself a cruel employer, and he did not consider himself, either, a hypocrite or a man of loose morals. He seemed to himself, as he seemed to other men, a generous and honourable person. To her, and by her standards, on the contrary, he did not seem so, and the world respected her standards too. She was a good woman, with a good woman's point of view. The world does not like to see a woman uphold immorality, or starve her servants in order to make money. Nevertheless, when James did these things, she was bound, according to the world's judgment, to forgive him, or give way to him, as the case might be. Men praised her stricter standard as long as she applied it to nobody but herself.
For a moment of one darkening winter's afternoon it seemed to Mary that men stood before her, stripped of all but their wickedness, as they might have stood before Miss Percival. Men's chief demand of women was that they should be pleasing when men had time to think of them and quiet when men had not; to this end then women were to keep themselves busy practising a morality too exacting for men themselves. It would be a sad world without virtue, therefore let others be virtuous—from a business point of view an excellent argument. The poor lady paced her room in the painful agitation of one who discovers that he has played the part of a dupe.
But she could not believe, for long, that the whole fabric of her morals had been raised in obedience to a conspiracy. She was not virtuous, after all, because men imposed virtue on her. She had never wanted to be anything else. She could not bear, knowingly, to treat people cruelly, and as for sex, one husband and one family had occupied her fully. She was free now, but the life that was left to her could hardly be troubled by any such adventures. James, on the other hand, had not been so quietly content with virtue. She remembered now, though she had not attended to it at the time, a long defence that James had tried to make. She, he had said, had never attended to what he wanted, had never known or cared. She had merely assumed that his wants were like her own.
It was growing dark, and the city below her great leaded window showed black and yellow. She stopped her pacing to turn on the light, for she needed in her confusion the gay reassurance of the beautiful room. The light that collected its shining colours seemed to illumine her distress, making it less formidable, though not yet, alas, more clear.
She sat down in one of the painted chairs and smoothed the habitual grey silk that covered her knees. She was trying to remember what it was that James had said. He had said that lies—the lies he had told her—were the price he had had to pay for her comfort of mind and ignorance of evil—something to that purpose, at any rate, her memory was not exact. That, of course, when she thought it over, fitted in very well as part of the theory. Virtue and innocence are artificial, to be preserved only by ignorance of the world. Women, therefore, if they remain virtuous, must sympathise with men's temptations while carefully refusing to understand them. A man cannot help being tempted—that had been the burden of James's excuse—and there may come a point, of course, when he is but human. A woman, on the other hand, presumably can, since no temptation must be too strong for her. A good woman, obviously, is not tempted; if she felt the desires of men she would be, at heart, a wicked woman, not the sort of woman that James would have cared to marry. So he had married a good woman, and her goodness had gone to make things hard for him.
Mary, who detested cynicism, was dismayed by these thoughts.
Roughly, though, she told herself, they were true. James had certainly liked her to be the type of woman she was. He loved her for it, he preferred her even to his less ignorant though equally virtuous daughters. Mary wondered what Rosemary thought of it all. Mary, at Rosemary's age, had thought of nothing—Rosemary had probably reduced the whole thing to a theory. She had certainly horrified James on one occasion by saying that our divorce laws are scandalous; probably she believed in free love, whatever that might be—it was not a thing that Mary had ever pictured to herself. Fortunately it was not of much importance what Rosemary believed—she was a dear, good girl under all her modernity and could be trusted not to act on her convictions.
Mary had hardly had time to take comfort from this reassurance when a new possibility occurred to her. Supposing—impossible though it was—that Rosemary could not be trusted! Supposing she behaved exactly as James had done, that she became the mistress of another man after her marriage without telling Anthony. From one point of view the cases were parallel—whatever codes the world might accept for a man, Mary would never have married James if she had thought that he was free to deceive her. What would James have said to that?—her lip curled at the thought of his hypocritical horror; it was only afterwards that she asked herself what her own attitude would have been. Deceit, of course, is always terrible, there can be no doubt of it, but she couldn't doubt, either, that she would have forgiven Rosemary. She would have forgiven her and she would have thought Anthony a brute if he had not forgiven her too. She would have advised Rosemary, as a matter of course, to tell Anthony—well, James had told her. He had told her when he might have lied to her. She would not have believed him, but she could hardly have insisted against his denial. Unwillingly she faced a further question—would she have counselled Rosemary to tell Tony if she knew beforehand that he would not forgive? Might not she have said, even though she knew it was wrong, "It's all over my dear, you must think of the future now, and not of the past?" Tony, of course, might have divorced Rosemary—and she had run away from James.
She jumped up and went over to the window—"Very well then, very well then," her thoughts ran, "but where is your standard? Where is the basis of your judgments? How can you say, in the face of this, that you have not been cruel? What would you think if Anthony treated your daughter as you have treated James!"
Mary sat down again on the low window-ledge and looked out into the darkness. Far below her lights were moving in the cleft of the narrow street. She did not see them, or London that lay spread out towards the east. Where was her standard then, how could she decide? It had seemed easy enough to judge men and women, their virtues and their sins, but in the narrow circle of her own life justice eluded her. She had been angry with James; she had only thought of shielding Rosemary from an irresponsible and cruel world. James, after all, she told herself in excuse, was a man, a master of life. Men had made the world to please themselves, James should not have needed her protection from it. But this argument was not very convincing. James had not created modern morals: in such a sphere he was decidedly a person who took things as he found them, and if that was a sin, she, until now, had sinned as well as James.
She tried, for a short time, to reconcile her opposing points of view by the discovery of some subtler, loftier moral rule into which they might be harmoniously absorbed. She could not believe that she, a good woman, a fair-minded woman, could ultimately treat so differently a husband who sinned against her and a daughter who sinned against another person. It was only reasonable, she told herself, to assume that some reconciling system existed. This is not, after all, the first century of man's sojourn on the earth, nor his first attempt at building a civilisation. Somewhere the wisdom of the ages must have evolved a rational and merciful attitude towards human sin.
Mary searched her experience for this attitude but she did not find it. Her acquaintances, on the whole, went no nearer to discussion of the matter than scandal, and Mary was not able, looking back, to find any ethical system beneath their judgments. They forgave the people they pitied and the people they feared—anyone, in fact, whom they wanted to forgive—and they condemned the unfortunates whose affairs were mentioned when they were in a mood for condemnation. The more she thought of them, the more sure Mary felt that she could not have exposed her daughter to their comments. She must find, she decided, some more stable body of opinion, less tainted by laxity and recklessness of thought.
She sought in all seriousness, only to be shocked by the perversity and frivolity of her own mind. She knew very little about the ethics of mankind, and the first really definite system that occurred to her was that of the Mahommedans, who believe—she did not really know much about the Mahommedans—that a man may do as he pleases, but a woman who sins should be shut up in a sack and thrown into the Bosphorus. That came pretty near on the whole, she concluded, thinking it over, to our own English practice, though perhaps, since it was more drastic, it might be more effective in securing womanly virtue, but she did find herself able to accept it on that account. Then there were the Puritans—she could fairly take them as representing the theory of good people to-day. Anyone who disobeys the moral precepts of the English churches should, if not executed at once, be punished and made miserable for the rest of his life. There was something to be said for such a stringency, if only it could be enforced—Mary wished she knew more of the state of morals under the Ironsides and Oliver Cromwell. If we all really believed that, she wondered, so that all virtuous or cowardly or prudent people acted upon it, would the world be the richer for the triumph of their hatred and contempt? Would the groans of its backsliders be truly edifying? Then she stopped herself. She was being unfair again. The churches were always ready to rejoice over the sinner who repented—was it repentance, then, that she must ask alike of James and Rosemary before she forgave them and hid their wickedness from the eyes of the world?
For a moment she thought that she had found what she was seeking, then her spirits sank. How could anybody possibly tell whether James had repented or not? He would say that he had repented—he would even believe it—but what would he mean more than that he could not bear to see his Mary unhappy and did not intend, if he could help it, to hurt her again? James was not a man who ever repented, he merely put provoking matters out of his mind. And she could not imagine him comforted, either, by the rejoicings of the Churches.
For the first time she felt fully the deficiencies of her early education. She did not even know what her parents had learned from their lives—her mother, of course, had been a really nice woman, but her father must have held views of some sort upon so important a question. She had always thought of him as ennobled and distinguished by the breadth and the abundance of his views.... It was not long before, from the dim confusion of the past, a memory of her father came back to her. It had been an accepted fact that Mary never understood any sentences that she might overhear as she passed the half-open door of Mr. Trent's study, and since she was a modest and loyal girl she had not understood them, but now she remembered clearly her father's thin, amiable voice explaining to some friend whom she could not see that Christian morals were the invention of astute and envious monks. Monks had no use for a happy and virtuous people: they needed a race of sinners cowed by the fear of hell. Otherwise what place was there for the Church's ministrations?
She did not believe that this could be true, she deplored the accident that had presented her with such an example of her dear father's thoughts, but that a good clever man like him could believe such terrible things seemed to show that the whole question must be in confusion. She did not suppose, in that case, that she was likely to solve it. If everyone were alike, to begin with, and everyone could marry, and marry young, and all marriages turned out happily, then there would be something to go upon. But as it was she did not find in her own thoughts the least germ of a solution.
She did find, however, a growing shame at her own harshness, a realisation of her own ignorance. It was not only Cromwell and the Turks about whom she knew nothing. She knew nothing of modern men, or modern life, she did not know the force or the nature of love, or what place there is left for it in a driven and burdened world. She did not even know why her own husband had deceived her. And she did not believe that she would ever know. Now that she was released from the strain of her wrath against James, from the rigidity of her injured virtue, she decided, with an immense relief, that she might put the whole matter from her mind. Rosemary and her friends might study things of this sort, might draw their conclusions from evidence that to Mary was unimaginable. Rosemary was a modern woman, fearless of truth. To Mary truth was less than reticence. She could not, she realised, discuss such subjects frankly, even with herself. It was her duty, therefore, since she shrank from the knowledge without which judgment is only prejudice, to admit her own ignorance and be merciful. She saw now that James, even while he deceived her, had not been a monster but a human being, acting as human beings act—because they are kind, because they are afraid, because the small words and deeds of everyday life have made a chain for them. There was no need for her to be angry with James. The existing state of affairs might permit him, though he was her husband, to sin, but it had also enabled James to give his wife twenty-seven years of happiness and freedom from care. In all those years she had not bought her right to be angry with him by a single sacrifice, or a single protest. To keep her happiness intact James had disabled his clerks from marrying and driven his girls on to the streets. She had not even cared to find out that this was so. And when, at last, she had known, she had not acted. She had argued a little with James, and then given way. When her ignorance had disappeared she had found another method, wifely obedience, of shutting out the thought of suffering. In the beginning, she remembered, she had not wished to follow James's suggestion because she had been afraid that he and Trent might come to think badly of her. They had thought badly—and she had been terrified. The girls might be crippled by standing or die of consumption, but she, whose profits they made, must keep James's good opinion. Let James deceive her, however, let him give another woman a little of the love and the money he had promised her, and virtue gave her strength. She hated him, she was furious with him, though she tried she could not forgive him—it had been simple to forgive him his sins against others!
Her thoughts ran easily down the familiar channels of self-reproach. About James's sin she had not been able to think either justly or coherently—she had struggled in vain against the repulsion she felt for such a subject. But now, when she had only to blame herself, the power of her mind came quickly back to her.
She could not doubt, she decided now, that in the matter of the girls she was more to blame than James. His attitude, that had seemed to her so callous, was due she thought now to a fact beyond his control, the fact of his being a man. For men, after all, are not like women. They have different ideals and different standards of value. They do not think as women do in terms of health and happiness, but in terms of knowledge, of riches, of power. She checked herself and went through that again—she must build up her argument carefully for she was dealing now with unfamiliar notions. A clever man is more, she told herself, than a person, a husband, a father, the centre of various personal relations. He is the guardian, the vehicle, of an idea. He wants to impose this idea of his on his environment, to work it out, to see it take form; and for a man success in his career, in his chosen enterprise, is justification. If he has no career and no ideas at all he deceives himself, and makes himself hot and happy playing games.
He does not trouble to think—it is not his business to think whether what he is doing serves the race or not. He wants to do something, and do it better than other people, and have his friends congratulate him and his womenfolk make a fuss about it. No—Mary pulled herself up—no, that was unjust, she was letting herself lose touch with her real thought! A man likes success, who doesn't?—and he likes a little petting, particularly if one allows him to pretend that he despises it. But in the end it is not petting that sways him. He has a need to impress himself on the world that he finds outside him, an impulse that drives him to achieve his ends recklessly, ruthlessly, through any depth of suffering and conflict. She must be very just, she told herself, she must be serious, and not assume that little air of half-amused toleration with which middle-aged women are apt to dismiss the turbulence of men. She had often assumed it, in order perhaps, she thought now, to save her temper, but this was not an occasion for its use. For it is just by means of the qualities that are often so irritating, their tiresome restlessness, their curiosity, their disregard for security, for seemliness, even for life itself, that men have mastered the world and filled it with the wealth of civilisation. It is after this foolish, disorganised fashion of theirs, each of them—difficult, touchy creatures—busy with his personal ambitions, that they have armed the race with science, dignified it with art—one can take men lightly, she told herself solemnly, to protect oneself from annoyance, but one cannot take lightly the things that men have done.
Women, however—this was the thought that had stirred her to begin her thinking—women are not divided by all these different aims. Their single end, poor hampered things, is the service and the care of human beings. Amid the magnificent confusion of man's conquests, in a world whose riches and beauties man has turned to plunder, they do what they can to love people, to feed them, to keep them healthy and happy.
It was exactly plunder that she meant—she told herself after a minute's consideration—for what are women, after all, but mere camp-followers, dragged up and down the world, allowed to exist and to carry out their work in the interstices of man's enterprises, even permitted to enrich themselves, if they can, by stealing a little here and there from the vast accumulations of his loot, but without power to influence the campaign, to choose the enemy, to choose the issue, even to decide the order of the day's journey? It is no wonder, poor things, she thought, forgiving them in advance, that with their children to rear and their men to humour they have not been able to heal the wounds of these preposterous battles, that in a land littered up with bricks, with iron, with food, with stuffs, with books, with pictures, with tools and machinery, with all the wealth that men—brilliant acquisitive creatures—so love to produce, most of the people who live among these riches are denied an access to knowledge and lack the simple necessities of health. It is no wonder, but the point that she wanted—she made very sure of it—is that this business that has not been done, this task of distributing and administering, is not men's but women's work. Men care for things, for their splendid complicated expensive things, women care for the happiness that can be got from them. There are women, of course, who don't, women like magpies, who have absorbed men's ideals without doing the work that makes them honourable—she made the concession hastily, for it suddenly occurred to her that hers would hardly be a man's view of women—but after all one can put such people aside. In her own life Mary had always put them aside, regarding them as the affair of men and not of decent women. They were spoiled, poor things, and doubtless not mainly by their own fault. There are men who prey on the world, one can match the two sets of them against one another. To protect the poor and the helpless is women's work, and if they neglect the task there seems no reason—the London Library had not been reassuring—to suppose that it will ever be properly done.
She turned back to her concrete example. James, for instance, had conceived his business and brought it into being like a man. It was not his fault that he had to build it according to the conditions of modern commerce. It was not his fault that he had not a natural tenderness for the girls' weak lungs, their flat feet, for the varicose veins in their legs. A man like James was impatient of weakness and stupidity,—impatient, therefore, of poverty and helplessness. His workers were his material—his instruments—his troops; all men's games have, after all, she supposed, an analogy to their great game of war. Men enjoy a fight, they had rather get things by fighting, and when one fights someone is sure to be hurt. No, these poor girls in the restaurants were not James's charge, but hers, and she had neglected her charge as idle women neglect it everywhere.
Mary reached this point in her thoughts with a certain satisfaction. The matter was now quite settled in her mind. She did not so much believe the conclusions she had come to as feel that this was her way of looking at things. Others might look at them in a different way, but for her, henceforth, that part of government that consists in helping the weak and protecting them from the strong was to seem part of woman's general task of clearing up after men. She understood now why James had not been pleased when she tried to undertake her neglected duty. Man never is pleased by the sight of woman's work. He hates having his study tidied, he hates meeting the housemaid on the stairs, the primitive routine of infant life makes no appeal to him. He does not like to think that his wife could possibly clean a rabbit. It is not logical of him, but there it is—in future she would not expect from James any glow of enthusiasm over the details of her work, she would be content with his general pat of appreciation when he found it properly done. Many a woman has been content with less.
Nor was she dismayed, as well she might have been, by the inadequacy of which she convicted her sex. We are all inadequate, and what she needed was a reason for being inadequate no longer. She had found it, she was delivered now, once and for all, from her doubt and her cowardice, from her ridiculous dilemma of a virtuous person helpless in an evil world. She had been, in her passive way, as evil as the world. She found the reflection bracing.
It was not until the next afternoon, when she was taking her walk by the river, that she began to wonder why she had been wicked and what were her excuses. It was a sunny day, the people on the Embankment walked cheerfully and the seagulls seemed to be enjoying themselves as they screamed over her head. The cold bright air made her thoughts—she imagined—unnaturally clear. She herself, of course, had been trustful and ignorant, so had her mother been, her grandmother, and in her grandmother's generation all really nice women. But women had not always been ignorant—in the days when they gnawed bones and lived in caves they must have possessed at least a rough practical knowledge of everyday life. In the Middle Ages, too—that was the next period of English history that came at all easily to her mind—James, a good burgher, or perhaps a farmer, would have expected her to look after his workers, after the maids, in any case, and the apprentices. She would, she thought a little wistfully, have liked doing that! It would have pleased her to plan and arrange for the big household, and have all these girls and boys growing up round her and all their careers and love affairs to watch over. And she would have liked to be a skilful woman with half a dozen crafts at her finger-ends, a woman with legitimate prides, with a reputation for this or that,—spinning, weaving, preserving, baking,—all the things that James and his friends were doing in factories. Even if her children had left her there would have been her trades to carry on. And it would, too, she told herself, have been very much more amusing for the children to grow up in such a community than in an elegant and empty modern home. There were now no interesting domestic crafts to watch, no apprentices to play with, no population of maids or clerks or journeymen to distract the eye of the mistress of the house. Instead, a strip of one side of a straight street, servants one hardly spoke to tucked away in the dark, and dear mother in the drawing-room never too busy to realise that the children were not where they ought to be and were making too much noise. Of course that was an advantage—Mary's loyalty stirred—a busy mother cannot devote herself all day to her children. But memory was too strong for loyalty—a busy mother has at least a certain intelligence at her disposed. Mary's own dear mother had not been intelligent.
She left that part of the subject hastily—she did not wish to think ill of her mother but she certainly had not succeeded with poor Julius. Mary was fond of Julius, but nobody could admire his character.