But not so bad as her own husband. No, that would be an impossibility.
She did not want to think about it; but just now her control over her thoughts had weakened, while the thoughts themselves were growing stronger. She was subject to rapid ups and downs of health, the victim of an astounding crisis of nerves, so that one hour she experienced a queer longing for muscular fatigue, and the next hour laughed and wept in full hysteria. At other times she felt so weak that she believed she might sink fainting to the ground if she attempted to go for the shortest walk.
Generally on days when Marsden was away from Mallingbridge she crept to bed at dusk. Yates used to aid her as of old, sit by the bed-side talking to her; and then leave her in the fire-glow, to watch the dancing shadows or listen to the whispering wind.
She did not wish to think; but in spite of all efforts to forget facts and to hold firmly to delusions, her old power of logical thought was remorselessly returning to her. In defiance of her enfeebled will, the past reconstituted itself, events grouped themselves in sequence; hitherto undetected connections linked up, and made the solid chain that dragged her from vague surmise to definite conclusions. Then with the full vigour of the old penetrative faculties she thought of her mistake.
He did not care for her. He had never cared for her. It was all acting. All that she relied on was false; all thathad been real was the steadfast sordid purpose sustaining him throughout his odious dissimulation.
His marriage was a brutal male prostitution, in which he had sold his favours for her gold. And shame overwhelmed her as she thought of how easily she had been trapped. While he was coldly calculating, she was endowing him with every attribute of warm-blooded generosity; when her fine protective instincts made her yearn over him, longing to give him happiness, comfort, security, he was in truth playing with her as a cat plays with a wounded mouse—no hurry, no excitement, but steel-bright eyes watching, retracted claws waiting. And she remembered his studied phrases that rang so true to the ear, till too late she discovered their miserable falsity. With what art he had prepared the way for the final disclosure of his effrontery! He could not brook the sense of dependence, his manly spirit would not allow him to pose as the pensioner of a rich wife, and so on—and then, even at the last, how he waited until she had completely betrayed her secret, and he could be certain that her pride as a woman would infallibly prevent her from drawing back. Not till then, when she had taken the world into her confidence, when escape had become impossible, did he drive his bargain.
While the honeymoon was not yet over she imagined she could understand the pain that lay before her. But in these three months she had suffered more than she had conceived to be endurable by any living creature. If pain can kill, she should be dead.
Her punishment had been like the fabled torture of the Chinese—hundreds of small lacerations, a thousand slicing cuts of the executioner's sword, and the kind death-stroke craftily withheld. But the swordsman of the East does not laugh while he mutilates. Andhestruck at her with a smiling face.
She thought of how in every hour of their companionship he had wounded her; with what unutterable baseness he had used his power over her—the power given to him by her love. The love stripped her of every weapon of defence; she was tied, naked, with not a guarding rag to shelter her against the blows—and the pitiless blows fell upon her from her gagged mouth to her pinioned feet.
Daily he attacked her pride, her self-respect, her bodily health and her mental equipoise; but most of all she suffered in her love—that terrible flower of passion that refuses to die. Torn up by its bleeding roots, it replants itself—and will thrive on the barren rock as well as in life's richest garden. Robbed of light, air, sustenance, it will cling to the dungeon wall, and bud and burst again for the prisoner to touch its blossoms in his darkness. Its flame-petals can be seen by the glazing eyes that have lost sight of all else, and its burning poisonous fruit is still tasted in the earth of our graves.
She thought of what he had said to her when they first came back to the house that she had decorated and made luxurious for him. A laugh, a nudge of the elbow—"This is the beginning of Chapter Two, Janey. We can't be honeymooning forever, old girl;" and then some more unforgettable words, to formulate the request that they might occupy different rooms; and so, in the home-coming hour, he had struck a deadly blow at her pride by the brutally direct implication that what she most desired was that which every woman craves for least. As if the grosser manifestations could satisfy, when all the spiritual joys are denied!
But he judged her nature by his own. He was common as dirt. He was savage as a beast of the forest, a creature of fierce strong appetites that believes the appeasement of any physical craving—to drink deeply, to eat greedily, to sleep heavily—is the highest pleasure open to the animalkingdom; and that man the king is no higher than the dog, his servant.
He knew only worthless women, and he supposed that all women were alike. Undoubtedly he remembered the innumerable conquests won simply by his handsome face, the ready and absolute surrender to a sensual thraldom that had made other women his abject slaves; and he dared to think that his wife was as impotent as they to resist the viler impulses of the ungoverned flesh.
He dared to think it.—But was he wrong? And she recalled the episodic renewal of their embraces during these last months. Once after high words; once after he had found her weeping; once for no reason at all that she knew of—except a carelessly systematic desire on his part to keep her in good temper—or perhaps merely because he had the prostitute's point of honour. A bargain is a bargain. He had been paid his price without haggling, and he intended to fulfil the conditions of the contract—so far as certain limits fixed by himself.
Horrible scenes to look back at—when the cruelly bright light of reason flashes upon the decorously obscured past and shows the ignominious secrets of a life: blind instincts moving us, all that is high beaten down by all that is low, the soul held in fetters by the flesh.
Much of her slow agony had come from the stinging pricks of jealousy. He was unfaithful—he was notoriously unfaithful. Already, after three months, everyone in the shop knew that he frequently broke the marriage vow. She would have known it anyhow—even if one of his vulgar friends, turning to a more vulgar enemy, had not troubled to tell her in an ill-spelt series of anonymous letters. She remembered how he once used to look at her, and she saw how in her presence he now looked at other women. Each look was an insult to her. Each word was an outrage."There's a pert little minx;" and he would smile as he watched some passer-by. "Young hussy! Dressed up to the nines—wasn't she?" And he swelled out his chest, and swaggered more arrogantly by the side of his wife, unconscious of the swift completeness with which she could interpret the thoughts behind his bold eyes and his lazily lascivious smile.
And she thought of how he harped upon the over-tightened string of youth, making every fibre of her tired brain vibrate to the discord of the jarring note. It was melody to him. Youth was his own paramount merit, and he praised it as the only merit that he could admit of in others. He had forgotten half the lies of his courtship. Age was contemptible—the thing one should hide, or excuse, or ransom. "Only one life! Remember, I'm young—I am not old." But her friends, the people she trusted, were shamefully old, even a few years older than herself. Old Prentice, Old Yates, Old Mears; and he never spoke of them without the scornful epithet.
But the jingling coin that she had put in his pockets would procure him the solace to be derived from youthful companions. With the money she had paid for all the love that he could give, he bought from loose women all the love that he cared for. Of course when he stayed in London he was carrying on his promiscuous amours.... Perhaps, too, here in Mallingbridge.
Yet when he came back to her, she had failed to resist him. She knew the reflective air with which he considered her face when he proposed to exercise his sway. She trembled when he lightly slapped her on the shoulder, or took her chin in his hand, and spoke with caressing tones. He was beginning to act the lover. He had made up his mind to wipe out the past, to subjugate her afresh, to assure himself that his poor slave was not slipping away.
"Janey—dear old Janey.... I leave you alone, don't I?" And with an arm round her waist, he would pull her to him, and hold her closer and closer. "Have you missed me? Eh? Have you missed your Dickybird?"
And she could not resist him. There was the abominable basis of the tragedy—worse, infinitely worse than the imagined horrors that had troubled her before the marriage. Love dies so slowly.
But the night spent in the same room with him was like a fatal abandonment to some degrading habit—as if in despair she had taken a heavy dose of laudanum,—knowing that the drug is deadly, yet seeking once more to stupefy herself, impelled at all hazards to pass again through the gates of delirium into the vast blank halls of unconsciousness. Next day she felt sick, broken, shattered—like the drug-taker after his debauch. Each relapse seemed now an immeasurably lower fall. Each awakening brought with it a sharper pang of despair: as when a wrecked man on a raft, who in his madness of thirst has drunk at the salt spray, wakes from frenzied dreams to see the wide immensity of ocean mocking him with space great enough to hold all things except one—hope.
Such thoughts as these came sweeping upon her like waves of light, illuminating the darkest recesses of her mind, showing the innermost meaning of every cruel mystery, forcing her to see and to know herself as she was, and not as she wished to be.
Then the light would suddenly fade. The stress of emotion had relaxed, and she could consider her circumstances calmly—could try to make the best of him.
A difficult task—a poor best.
She thought of his varied meannesses. In only one direction was he ever really generous. He grudged nothing tohimself—he could be lavish when pandering to his own inclinations, reckless when gratifying the moment's whim, and retrospectively liberal when counting the cost of past amusements; but in his dealings with the rest of the world he was cautious, watchful, tenaciously close-fisted. She felt a vicarious humiliation in hearing him thank instead of tip; or seeing him, when he had failed to dodge the necessity of a gift, make the gift so small as to be ludicrous. Not since he carried her purse at the London restaurants had he ever exhibited a large-handed kindness to subordinates.
He never alluded to the household expenses—had accepted as quite natural the fact that the female partner should defray the expenses of the household. Without a Please or a Thank-you he took board and lodging free of charge; but he bought for himself cigars, liqueurs, and wine, and he always spoke of my brandy, my champagne, etc. It wasourhouse, butmywine. Nevertheless, the habitual use in the singular of the personal pronoun did not render him egotistically anxious to pay his own bills.
Once, when after delay a tobacconist addressed an account to her care, and she timidly reproached the cigar-smoker for a lapse of memory that might almost seem undignified, she was answered with chaffing, laughing, joviality.
"Well, my dear, if you're so afraid of our credit going down, there's an easy way out of the difficulty. Write a cheque yourself, and clean the slate for me."
But one must make allowances. This was a favourite phrase of hers, and it helped the drift of her calmer thoughts. As he said so often, youth has its characteristic faults. Want of thought is not necessarily want of heart.
Perhaps when he began to work, he might improve. There was no doubt that he possessed the capacity for work. Hehadworked, hard and well. Many a good horse that has not shied or swerved when kept into its collar will, ifgiven too much stable and too many beans, show unsuspected vice and kick the cart to pieces. And the cure for your horse, the medicine for your man, is work.
Of course he had many redeeming traits. One was his jollity—not often disturbed, if people would humour him. Comfort, too, in the recollection that he treated her with respect—never consciously insulted her—in public.
Sometimes when the shadows and the flickering glow drowsily slackened in their dance, and sleep with soft yet heavy fingers at last pressed upon her eyelids, she was willing to believe that all her fiery thought and shadowy dread was but morbid nonsense occasioned by the queer state of her nerves, and by nothing else.
Truly, during this period of her extreme weakness, she was physically incapable of standing up to him; there was no fight left in her. For a time at least, she could not attempt to protect herself, or anyone else who looked to her for protection.
It pained her, but she was unable to interfere, when he roughly repulsed Gordon Thompson.
They were sitting at luncheon, with the servant going in and out of the room; she heard the street door open and shut; there was a sound of hob-nailed boots, and then came the familiar whistle—like a ghostly echo from the past.
"Who the devil's that?"
"I—I think it must be my Linkfield cousin."
"Oh, is it?" And Marsden jumped up, and went out to the landing.
"Jen-ny! Jen-ny! You up there?"
The farmer stood at the bottom of the steep stairs, and Marsden was at the top, looking down at him. Mrs. Marsden heard nearly the whole of the conversation, but dared not, could not interfere.
"Any dinner for a hungry wayfarer?"
Gordon Thompson, furious at the marriage, had missed many mid-day meals; but now he came to pick up the severed thread of kindness. However, he was not confident; his whistle had been feeble, tentative, and the ascending note of his voice quavered. In order to propitiate, he had brought from Linkfield a market-gardener's basket with celery and winter cabbages. The present would surely make them glad to see him.
"What do you want here? No orders are given at the door. We buy our vegetables at Rogers's in High Street. Don't come cadging here. Get out."
Marsden wickedly pretended to mistake him for an itinerant greengrocer.
"Mayn't I go up?... Is it to be cuts? Am I not to call on my cousin?"
"Who's your cousin, I'd like to know."
"Jen-ny Thompson."
"No one of that name lives here."
"Jen-ny Marsden then. I say—it's all right. You're him, I suppose. Well, I'm Gordon Thompson—your wife's cousin."
"My wife never had a cousin of that name. Before she married me, she married a man called Thompson—though she didn't marry all his humbugging beggarly relations."
"Oh, I say—don't go on like that. Don't make it cuts."
"Thompson—your cousin—is in the cemetery, if you wish to call on him. He has been there a long time—waiting for you;" and Marsden laughed. "The sexton will tell you where to find him.... Go and plant your cabbages out there. We don't want 'em here."
He returned to the luncheon table in the highest good-humour.
"There, old girl, I've ridded you ofthatnuisance. You won't be bothered withhimany more."
Mrs. Marsden could not answer. She could not even raise her eyes from the table-cloth. But when her husband offered to give her a rare afternoon treat by taking her for a run in his small two-seated car, she looked up; and, meekly thanking him, accepted the invitation.
As the car carried them slowly through the market-place, neatly threading its way among laden carts and emptied stalls, she saw cousin Gordon standing, rueful and disconsolate, outside the humble tavern at which it was the custom of the lesser sort of farmers to dine together on market-day. Had Gordon dined, or had anger and resentment deprived him of appetite and spared his ill-filled purse?
She would not think of it. She turned, and watched her husband's face. It was hard as granite while with concentrated attention he manipulated the steering wheel, moved a lever, or sounded his brazen-tongued horn—the signal of danger to anyone who refused to get out of his road.
Almost immediately, they were in the open country, whirling past bare fields and leafless copses, leaping fiercely at each hill that opposed them, and swooping with a shrill, buzzing triumph down the long slopes of the valleys.
"Now we are travelling," said Marsden joyously.
She nodded her head, although she had not caught the words; and presently he shouted close to her ear.
"Moving now, aren't we? Doesn't she run smooth?"
"Yes, yes. Capital."
The wind, breaking on the glass screen, sang as it swept over them; hedge-rows, telegraph poles, and wayside cottages hurried towards them, rising and growing as they came; long stretches of straight road, along which Mr. Young's horses used to plod for half an hour, were snatchedat, conquered, and contemptuously thrown behind, almost before one could recognize them.
That pretty country-house which she had always admired passed her; and, passing, seemed like a faintly tinted picture in a book whose pages are turned too fast by careless hands. Naked branches of high trees, broad eaves and nestling windows, weak sunlight upon latticed glass, and pale smoke rising from clustered chimneys—that was all she saw. A few dead leaves pretended to be live things, scampered beside the long wall; a few dead thoughts revived in her mind, and swiftly she recalled her old fancies, the dream of the future, Enid and herself living together so quietly beneath the grey roof;—and then the pretty house with its pretty grounds had been left far behind. It had lost its brief aspect of reality as completely as a half-forgotten dream.
"There, we'll go easy now." They were approaching a village, and he reduced the speed. "You're a good plucked 'un, Jane;" and he glanced at her approvingly. "You don't funk a little bit of pace."
They stopped at an inn, thirty miles from Mallingbridge, and drank tea—that is to say, Mrs. Marsden drank tea and Mr. Marsden drank something else, for the good of the house.
Then, after a cigar, he lighted his lamps, and drove her home through the greyness, the dusk, and the dark. And for the three hours or so that she was with him, for the whole time that this outing lasted, she was almost happy.
The nervous distress had gone—with extraordinary suddenness; and a curiously unruffled calm filled her mind. Nothing matters. This is notall.
She was a deeply religious woman, but quite unorthodox in the letter of her faith. There might be as many rituals as there are social communities, a different altar for every day of the year; but, however you dressed the eternal glory and the limitless power in garments taken from the poor wardrobe of man's imagination, the veritable God was unchanged, unchanging. And her toleration of the diverse opinions of others enabled her to worship as comfortably under the high-vaulted magnificence of a Catholic cathedral as within the narrow shabbiness of a Wesleyan chapel. The perfume of swinging censers did not cloud her brain, nor the ugliness of white-washed walls grieve her eyes—any consecrated place of prayer was good enough to pray in.
But for the sake of old associations, by reason of its familiar homeliness, its air of solidity without pomp, and a simplicity that yet is not undignified, she loved this parish church of St. Saviour's; and it was here, sitting through the long undecorated service, that mental equanimity was most strangely if temporarily restored to her. Although not participating, she stayed for the celebration of the communion; and while the mystic, symbolic rites were performed, she neither prayed nor meditated. For her it was a blank pause,—no thought,—nothing; but nevertheless she became aware of a deepening perception of rest and peace, and the feeling that she had been uplifted—raised to a spiritual heightfrom which she could look down on the common pains of earth, and see their intrinsically trivial character.
Our life, be it what it may, does not end here. This is not all. Something wider, more massive, infinitely grander, is coming to us, if we will wait patiently.
She sat motionless until all the congregation had dispersed; and when she left the church, there was an expression of gravity on her face and a sense of contentment in her heart. At the sight of some children romping by the church-yard railings, she smiled. A boy pushed a girl with mirthful vigorousness, and she spoke to him gently.
"Don't be rough, little boy. Take care, and don't hurt her—even in play."
Then she gave the children "silver sixpences to buy sweeties," and went slowly down the court. She could think kindly and benignantly of all the world. There was not a tinge of bitterness remaining when she thought of her husband.
As she lay in bed one morning after a night of dreamless sleep, a chance word dropped by Yates set her lazily thinking of the last date on which she had suffered from those normal and not accidental fluctuations of energy that are produced by periodically recurrent causes. Beginning to count the weeks, she fancied that some error of memory was confusing her—time of late had moved with such heavy feet; what seemed long was really short in the story of her days. Then she began to count the days, trying to make fixed points, and laboriously filling the gaps that intervened. Then she stopped counting and thinking.
Yates had gone out of the room, and she lay quite still, with relaxed limbs and slackened respiration.
And her mind seemed dull and void, though wonder stirred and thrilled. It was like dawn in a hill-girt valley—blackdarkness mingling with silver mist; shadows growing thin, but not retreating; the ribbed sides of the mountains very slowly becoming more and more solidly stupendous, but refusing to disclose the details of their form or colour, although, beyond the vast ramparts with which they aid the night, the sun is surely rising. Not till the sun bursts in fire above the eastern wall does the day begin.
So, with flooding golden light, the splendid hope came to her.
She waited for a few more days. There was no mistake; she knew that she had counted correctly; but she pretended to herself that she must allow a wide margin to cover the contingency of miscalculation.
Then she spoke of the facts to Yates, after extracting a solemn vow of secrecy. Yates said they could draw only one conclusion from the facts; it was impossible to doubt—but they would know for certain next time. They must count again; and, after allowing another wide margin, settle the approaching date which would infallibly confirm their hopes or cruelly dissipate them.
For a little while longer, then, she must keep her splendid secret.
Her heart was overflowing with a joy such as she had thought she could never feel again. And with the warm stream of bliss there were gushing fountains of gratitude. She will forgive her husband everything, because he has crowned her life with this ineffable glory.
It justifies her marriage; in a manner more perfect than she had dared to imagine, it gives her back her youth. All mothers at the cradle have one age—the age of motherhood. And irresistibly it will win his respect and love—some love must come for the mother of his babe.
Although she was waiting with so much anxiety until thesecond significant epoch should be passed, she found that time glided by her now easily and swiftly. Yates—the wise old spinster—assuming in a more marked degree that air of matronly authority that she had worn before the wedding, told her of the vital importance of taking good rest, good nourishment, and good cheerful views regarding the future.
So she often lay upon the sofa in her room—resting,—smiling and dreaming. She had no real doubt now. It was miraculous, glorious, true. She thought of the many symptoms that she had noticed but never considered, so that the revelation of their meaning brought the same glad surprise as to a young and innocent bride. She might have guessed.—The dreadful instability of nerves; longings for the widest outlet of physical effort, alternating with weak horrors of the slightest task; and, above all, the facile tears always springing to her eyes—these things, in one who by habit was firm of purpose and who wept with difficulty, should have been promptly recognized as unfailing signs of her condition. Lesser signs, too, had not been wanting—the vagrant fancies, the mental ups and downs which correspond with the changed states of the body; and she groped in the dim past, comparing her recent sensations and reveries with those experienced twenty-three years ago, before the birth of Enid. She might have guessed.—But truly perhaps she had been too humble of spirit ever to prepare herself for the admission of so proud a thought. Even in the brightly coloured dreams from which realities had so rudely awakened her, she was not advancing towards so triumphant an apotheosis.
But no morning sickness! Not yet. It will begin later this time—for the second child; and it will not be so bad. That first time—when poor Enid was coming into the world—she was but a slip of a girl; depressed by heavycare; worn out by the watchings and nursings of her mother's illness. But now everything was and would be different. She possessed robust and long-established health; her husband was a magnificently strong man; their child would be a most noble gorgeous creature.
And each time that she thought thus of the child's father, the fountain springs of her intense gratitude rose and gushed higher and broader. She was only vaguely conscious of the extent of the revulsion of her feelings where he was concerned. The change seemed so natural and so little mysterious that she did not measure it. With the awakening of the new hopes, there had arisen a new love for him—a love purged of all impurities.
This was the real love—wide-reaching sympathy, infinite tenderness; the love that can understand all and forgive all; the instinct of protection blending with the instinct of submission; the maternal feeling extending beyond the unborn child to its creator—making them both her children.
One day when he said he wanted to ask her a favour, she told him, before he added another word, that she felt sure she would grant the favour. She was reading, in the drawing-room; and she slipped the book under the cushion of the sofa, and looked up at him with an expectant smile.
Then, showing some slight embarrassment, he explained that he had been "outrunning the constable."
All the arrangements of the partnership were formally settled; nothing had been overlooked by clever Mr. Prentice; everything was cut and dried; certain proportionately fixed sums were to be passed from time to time to the private credit of each partner; and then at the appointed seasons, when the true profits of the firm had been ascertained, amounts making up the balance of earned income would be paid over. All the usual precautions, and some that perhaps were rather unusual, had been adopted in order toprevent the partners from anticipating profits by premature drafts upon the funds of the firm. But now, as Marsden explained, he had exhausted his private account and was in sad need of a little ready to keep him going.
She instantly agreed to give him the money—with the pleasure a too indulgent mother might feel in giving to a spendthrift son. Extravagance—what is it? Only one of those faults of youth by which the thoughtless young culprits endear themselves to their elderly guardians.
"Yes, Dick, I'll write the cheque at once. My chequebook is over there."
She rose slowly from the sofa, and slowly moved across the room to the Sheraton desk near the window. Yates had begged her to beware of abrupt and hasty movements, and she walked about the house now with careful, well-considered footsteps.
"Of course, old girl, if you can see your way to making the amount for a littlemore?"
And she made it for a little more.
He was delighted. "Upon my word, Jane, you're a trump. No rot about you. When you see anyone in a hole, you don't badger him with a pack of questions—you just pull him out of the hole...."
He thanked her and praised her so much that she melted in tenderness, and almost told him her secret. She looked at him fondly and admiringly. He seemed so strong and so brave—with his stiff close-cropped hair and his white evenly-shaped teeth,—laughing gleefully as he pocketed his present,—like a great happy schoolboy. While she looked at him, the secret was trying to escape, was burning her lips, and knocking at her breast with each quickened heartbeat.
She succeeded, however, in restraining the expansive impulse. The delay can but heighten the triumph—it is somuch grander to be able to say, not "Ithink," but "Iknow."
When he had hurried away to cash his cheque, she took out the Book that she had been reading and had shyly concealed under the cushion. It was the Bible. Reverently reopening it and musingly turning the leaves, she glanced at those chapters of Genesis that tell of the first gift of human life.... "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband; and he shall rule over thee."
The softness and the exaltation of her mood showed very plainly in the expression of her face as she read the nobly fabled origin of love and marriage. While reading she made vows to God and to herself. If all went well, she would cheerfully bear the hardest usage, at her husband's hands. She would never reproach him, she would ever be a comfort to him. And so long as their child lived, the torch-bearer carrying the fire of life kindled from their joint lives should guide her steps through the darkest places towards the distant glimmer of eternal light.
That night she was roused from her first sleep by the sound of heavily blundering footsteps. Mr. Marsden had come home in an unusually jolly state. His wife heard him stumbling about the adjacent room, knocking over a chair, laughing, and singing drunken snatches of song.
He had never before been quite so jolly. For a minute the hilarious music saddened her; but then she felt quite happy again. He was not really drunk—merely excited, elated. And besides, this sort of thing would not occur in the future: a generous fear of the questioning eyes of an innocent child would help to keep him straight.
And she fell to thinking of domestic arrangements that would be necessary before the great event. His bedroom and the dressing-room used to be the day and night nurserywhen Enid was a baby. The grandmother slept in the room at present occupied by Yates, and Yates slept in a smaller room. How would they manage now? This room should be the night nursery—she herself could sleep anywhere. Probably Yates would have to give up her nice room—but Yates would not mind. And, yes—the difficulty must be confronted—Dick must give up his dressing-room. Would he mind?
No. Every difficulty would be surmounted. All would be smoothly and easily arranged in the end. Dreamily sweeping away the difficulties, she sank again into restful sleep.
That important second date was drawing near, and Yates was becoming more and more fussily attentive. It taxed all her strength of mind to keep the secret to herself; she longed for the time when it might be made public property.
"Look here, ma'am," she said mysteriously, "don't let anyone see us opening this parcel. Let's go upstairs and open it there, quiet and comfortable."
"What is it, Yates?"
Upstairs in the bedroom, Yates, with many shrewd nods and meaning smiles, untied her parcel, and displayed to Mrs. Marsden its entrancingly fascinating contents.
"Oh, Yates!"
They were the prettiest imaginable little baby-things—woollen socks, flannel robes, etc., articles of costume suitable to the very earliest stage; together with materials for binders, wrappers, and so on, that would require cutting, stitching,making.
"The work will do you good," said Yates. "Just to amuse yourself, when you're sitting all alone up here—and to keep your mind off the strain."
"Oh, Yates, they are lovely. Where did you get them?"
"Don't you bother where I got them," said Yates, looking shame-faced all at once. "I don't intend to tell you." But then she went on defiantly: "Well, if youmustknow, I got them in the children's outfitting department—over at Bence's."
Her mistress was not in the least angry. She smiled at the sound of the rival's name;—and, of course, in this particular department there was no rivalry between the two shops.
Yates was particular that her interesting patient should enjoy a moderate amount of fresh air, and advised that in these cases gentle carriage exercise is distinctly beneficial.
Several times therefore a brougham was procured from Mr. Young's stables, and mistress and maid went for a quiet afternoon drive. Yates would have preferred to enjoy these airings earlier in the day, but she agreed with Mrs. Marsden that a morning drive might appear "conspicuous." As it was, Yates made the excursion quite sufficiently remarkable—hot-water bottle for the patient's feet, rugs for her legs, three or four shawls for her shoulders.
"And don't you drive too fast," said Yates sternly to Mr. Young's coachman. "Take us along quiet.... And if you meet any of those great engines on the road, just turn round and go the other way."
"I don't want you frightened," she told Mrs. Marsden, "if only for half a minute."
Mr. Young's horses, at an easy jog trot, took them along very, very quietly; some air, but not too much, blew in upon them pleasantly; and throughout the drive the two women talked unceasingly of the same engrossing subject.
"Which do you hope for, yourself, ma'am?"
"Yates, I scarcely know."
"Well, ma'am, I'll tell you candid, it's a girlIam hoping for."
"But whichever it is—boy or girl—you'll love it just the same, won't you, Yates?"
"Indeed I shall, ma'am."
And they discussed christian names.
"If it is a boy, of course I shall wish him to have his father's name for one."
"Yes, I suppose so, ma'am."
"Richard for his first name; and, if Mr. Marsden approves, I shall call him Martin. I should like him to bear the name of Saint Martin—for a little romantic reason of my own. And I also like the name of Roderick—if that isn't too grand."
"I like the plain names best," said Yates. "If it's a girl, I do hope and trust you'll give her your own name, ma'am. You can never get a better name than Jane. Let her be Miss Jane."
They met no ugly traction engines to upset the horses, and disturb the patient's composure. They chose the level sheltered roads, and avoided the dangerous windy hills; and Mrs. Marsden looked through the half-shut window at the featureless landscape, and thought it almost beautiful, even at this dead time of the year. It was bare and nearly colourless,—all the hedgerows of a dull brown, the far-off woods a misty grey, and here and there, seen through the black field-gates, patches of snow faintly sparkling beneath the feeble light. The tardy spring as yet showed scarce a sign of nascent energy. But the winter had no terrors for her now. There was summer in her heart.
The date had passed; and, passing, had left apparent certainty.
Yates was wildly excited, irrepressibly jubilant.
"You'll tell him now, won't you, ma'am?"
"Yes, I can tell him now."
"Everybody may know it now, ma'am—And, oh, won't they be glad to hear the news in the shop."
But naturally Mr. Marsden must hear the news before anybody else; and unluckily Mr. Marsden was not in Mallingbridge to hear it. He had been expected home two days ago, but something was detaining him in London.
This final useless delay, after the long unavoidable delay, seemed more than Mrs. Marsden could support.
"Oh, why is he away? Oh, Yates, I want him—I want him with me. Oh, oh!" She burst into a sobbing fit, and rung her hands piteously. "Yates, fetch him. Bring my husband back to me. Don't let him leave me now—of all times."
This was in the morning, before Mrs. Marsden had got up. After sobbing for a little while, she became suddenly faint and breathless, and sank back upon her pillow. Yates, scared by her faintness and whiteness, ran out of the room and despatched a hasty messenger.
She could not fetch the husband; so the good soul did the next best thing, and sent for the doctor.
When she returned to the bedroom Mrs. Marsden seemed all right again.
"Doctor Eldridge is coming to see you, ma'am."
"Is he?"
"It's only wise," said Yates authoritatively, "that he should take charge of the case now. It's full time we had him in. He knows your constitution—and you can trust him, and feel quite safe to go on just as he advises you."
Dr. Eldridge was a long time alone with the patient. After Yates had been told to leave them, he talked gently and gravely to his old friend. He confessed to being rather sceptical by habit of mind; in forming a diagnosis he was perhaps always disposed to err on the side of caution, andthus he often declined to accept what at first sight seemed an obvious inference until it had been corroborated by indisputable evidence;—but then again, all his experience had shown him how prudent, how necessary it is to prepare oneself for disappointment.... He thought that Mrs. Marsden should, if possible, prepare herself for disappointment.
Outside the room, he spoke to Yates with a severity that was only mitigated by contempt.
"What nonsense have you been stuffing her up with? It's too bad of you." And then the professional contempt for amateur doctors sounded in the severe tone of his voice. "You ought to know better at your time of life."
He came again next day, and told Mrs. Marsden the bitter truth. The correct interpretation of the symptoms was far, very far different from that which she had imagined. And then he pronounced the words of doom. It was not the birth of hope, but the death of hope. Somewhat earlier than one would have predicted as likely, she had passed the turning-point in the cyclic history of her existence.
A deadly, numbing apathy descended upon her. She was not ill; but in order to escape the infinitely oppressive duties of dressing, sitting at meals, walking up and down stairs, listening to voices and answering questions, she pretended illness; and, to cover the pretence, Dr. Eldridge frequently visited her.
Day after day she lay upon her sofa, watching the feeble daylight turn to dusk, staring at the red glow of the coals or the golden flicker of burning wood—feeling too sad to reproach, too weak to curse the inexorable laws of destiny.
Her husband used to enter the room noisily and jovially, with a cigar in his mouth and a shining silk hat on the back of his head.
"What the dickens is the matter with you, Jane?"
He did not guess. He could never read her thoughts.
"I believe you ought to rouse yourself, old girl. I suppose old Eldridge sees a chance of running up a nice little bill—and Yates will have her bit out of it. Between them, they'll persuade you you're going to kick the bucket."
"I feel so tired, Dick."
"Then go on taking it easy," said Marsden genially. "But here's my tip—look out for another doctor, and another maid. I wouldn't bid twopence, if both of them were put up to auction."
Another time he said, "Jane, do you twig why I am wearing my topper? That meansbusiness. Yes, I'm going to throw myself into my work now, heart and soul. Buck up as soon as you can, and come and see how I'm setting about me."
While he stood by the door, talking and smoking, she looked at him with dull but kind eyes.
Some of the glamour of that vanished hope still hung about him; and the sense of gratitude, although now meaningless, lingered for a long while. But for herself, it would have been a fact instead of an hysterical fancy. It was her fault, not his.
When he had shut the door, she thought of herself dully, without pity, in stupid wonder.
This is the end. The heats of summer gone; the mimic warmth of autumn gone, too; nothing left but the cold, dead winter—the end of all.
The state of apathetic indifference continued; the slow months dragged by, and still she could not shake off her invincible weariness and spur herself to resume activity.
Once or twice Enid invited her to pay the long-postponed visit of inspection; and, when these invitations were refused, she offered to come to see her mother. But she was put off with vague excuses. The weather seemed so doubtful this week; later in the year Mrs. Marsden would certainly make the eight-mile journey, and examine the charming home of her daughter and her son-in-law.
It was an effort even to write a letter; nothing really interested her; her highest wish was to be left alone.
She heard and occasionally saw what was happening in the shop; but the old keen delight in business had faded with all other delights. She was not wanted down there behind the glass. Her husband was master there now, and he did not require her assistance. He was pushing on with his programme of change and innovation; he brought her architects' drawings and builders' plans to sign, and she signed them without questioning; he jauntily told her about his new Japanese department, his new agency trade, his revolutionised carpet store, and she listened meekly to everything, appeared willing to concur in anything.
He was inordinately pleased with himself, and his boastful self-confidence brimmed over in noisy chatter. He had declared war against Bence; henceforth, he vowed, the tit-for-tat policy should be pursued with implacable thoroughness.
"Look out for yourself, Mr. Bence," he said vaingloriously. "It has been very nice for you up to now. Because you saw a naked face, you smacked it. But now you're smacked back—as you'll jolly well find. I expect my new fascia has opened your eyes to what's coming."
The new fascia had been erected. It was made of chestnut wood—a most artistic up-to-date piece of work, with the names Thompson & Marsden alternating in carved lozenges over all the windows, with linked festoons of flowers, with high relief and intaglio cutting—with what not decorative and grand. It ran the whole length of the street frontage and round the corner up St. Saviour's Court, and it cost £750.
But that expense was a fleabite when compared with the cost of the structural alterations that were now fairly in hand.
The yard was being completely covered. The carts would drive into what would be the ground floor; and above this there would be three floors of packing rooms, with every imaginable convenience of lifts, slides, and shoots, for manipulating the goods and discharging them at the public. Meanwhile, the old packing rooms had been huddled into unused cellars, and the space that they had occupied in the basement, indeed the entire basement, was being excavated to an astounding depth. Soon an immense subterranean area would be scooped out; vast halls with wide staircases would be constructed; a shop below a shop would be ready for Mr. Marsden's use.
But what he proposed to do with it he had not as yet disclosed. He was feverishly anxious to get all the work finished, but the new basement especially occupied his ambitious dreams.
"Mears, old buck," he said often, "I'm itching to get down there. And how damn slow they are, aren't they?"
Having had his fling as a gentleman at large, he seemed to enjoy for a little while the quieter but more massive importance derived from his position as the proprietor of a successful business, the employer of labour, the patron of art and manufacture. He paid handsomely for the insertion of his portrait in the local newspaper, and arranged with the editor that paragraphs about himself and his operations should appear amongst news items without the objectionable word Advertisement. On early closing day he swaggered about the town, feeling that he was one of its most prominent citizens, and proving himself always ready to stand a drink to anyone who would say so.
When his architect came down from London to go over the works with the contractor, he carried them off to the Dolphin, before anything had been done, and gave them a sumptuous luncheon—sat bragging and drinking with them for hours. When at dusk they returned to the shop, Marsden was red and noisy, the architect was in a fuddled state, and the contractor frankly hiccoughed.
"Down with you, old boy," said Marsden jovially. "And buck 'em up—the lazy bounders. Get a move on. I want this job finished; and it seems to me you're all playing with it."
After the governor had been lunching he lost that sense of decorum which from long habit should make it almost as impossible to speak loudly in a shop as in a church. All the assistants and several customers were scandalized by the noisy tongues of Mr. Marsden and his architect.
"And you jolly well remember that everything's to be done without interference to my business. It's in the contract—and don't you forget it. Start to finish—that was the bargain—business to be carried on as usual."
"Oh, we don't forget, Mist' Marsd—— No interferens. Bizniz muz go on zactly as usual."
But did it? Mears was appalled by the disturbance and confusion. Outside in the street a long line of builders' carts blocked the approach of carriage-folk; from beneath the windows, through the opened gratings, earth and gravel and lumps of broken concrete were being painfully hauled out; the pavement was covered with mud, obstructed with débris, so that foot-people could not pass in comfort, and the Borough Surveyor had sent three notices urgently requesting the abatement of what was a public as well as a private nuisance. Inside the shop one heard growling thunders from the depths below one's feet, and sudden explosions as if one were walking over a volcano, while from every entrance to the dark vaults there issued clouds of destructive lime dust. Sometimes a department was shut up for an hour while a steel girder was rolled along the floor by twenty perspiring men; processions of bucket-bearers emerged unexpectedly; and one saw in every mirror a grimy face or a plaster-stained back.
What was the use of asking ladies to step upstairs and view our Oriental novelties, when the nearest staircase was temporarily converted into a slide for roped planks?
Ladies said No, thank you; they would call again.
"This is going to hit us, sir," said Mr. Mears gloomily. "It is going to hit us hard if it continues much longer."
"But it won't continue," said Marsden irritably. "They're bound by contract to finish before the twentieth of next month. Besides, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
There could be no doubt, thought Mears, as to the broken eggs; but the question was, Would Mr. Marsden's omelette ever come to table, or would it get tossed into the fire with so much else that seemed finding an end there?
Towards the completion of the contract time, Marsden more than once forced his wife to come through the door ofcommunication, and have a look round the altered shop. She was admittedly convalescent now. She had not demurred when the master of the house gave Dr. Eldridge what he called "a straight tip" to cease paying professional visits. She had not protested when, in her presence, an almost straighter tip was given to Yates that the boring fuss about a malady of the imagination must cease. In fact she herself had said that there was nothing the matter with her.
She could not therefore refuse to show herself when he explicitly commanded her to do so.
Many changes—as she passed by Woollens and China and Glass, it was like walking in a dream, among the distorted shadows of familiar objects. Miss Woolfrey ran out of China and Glass to welcome her; but the other assistants, male and female, seemed shy of attracting her attention. Changes on all sides, which she looked at with indifferent eyes—but one change that slowly compelled a more careful observation. Perhaps downstairs this, the greatest of the changes, would not be observable? But no, it was noticed as plainly downstairs as upstairs.
There were fewer customers.
She glanced at the clock outside the counting-house. Three-twenty! In the middle of the afternoon, at this season of the year, the shop should be thronged with customers; and it appeared to be, comparatively speaking, empty.
Marsden was waiting to receive her behind the glass, in her old sanctum.
"Come in, Jane. Here I am—hard at it."
Her bureau had disappeared. Where it used to stand there was a large but compact American desk; and in front of this Mr. Marsden sat enthroned. She glanced round the room, and saw a small new writing-table in the space between the second safe and the wall.
"I thought you could sit over there, Jane," said Marsden,pointing with his patent self-feeding pen. "You'd be out of the draught—for one thing."
She was to be pushed into a corner, to be made to understand her insignificant position under the new order of things,—but she did not protest.
"Now then. Come along."
He took her first of all through the Furniture, and showed her his sub-department for the sale of desks and all other office requisites similar to those which he had purchased for his own use. This was what he called agency work.
"No risk, don't you see, old girl! Doing the trick with other people's capital." And he explained how the German firm that supplied England with these American goods had given him most advantageous terms. "A splendid agreement forus! If the things don't go off quick, we just shovel the lot back at them—and try something else. That'strade. Keep a move on—don't go to sleep."
Then presently he took her upstairs, to what he called his Japan Exhibition.
The Cretonne Department had been compressed and curtailed to make room for this new feature, and she passed through the archway of an ornate partition in order to admire and wonder at the Oriental novelties.
"Now, Jane, this is what I'm really proud of."
There was plenty to see and to think about—Marsden made her handle carved and tinted ivory warriors with glittering swords and tiny burnished helmets, dragons with jewelled eyes and enamelled jaws, exquisite little cloisonne boxes; made her stoop to look at the malachite plinths of huge squat vases; and made her stretch her neck to look at gold-embossed friezes of great tall screens.
All these goods were very expensive; and she asked if any of them had been introduced, like the Yankee furniture, on sale or return.
"No, these are our own racket—and tip-top stuff, the best of its kind, never brought to Europe till last summer.... The stock stands us in close on four thousand pounds. You wouldn't think it, would you? But it'sart. It's an education to possess such things."
She hazarded another question. Did he think Mallingbridge would consent to pay for such high-class education?
"It'll be a great disappointment to me if they don't clear us out in three months from now. Of course they haven't discovered yet what we're offering them. But theywill. I go on the double policy—play down to your public in one department, but try to lift your public in another. That's the way to keep alive."
And, as they left the Japanese treasures and strolled about the upper floor, he rattled off his glib catch-words.
"These are hustling times. Get a move on somehow. That's what I tell them—They'll soon tumble to it."
He parted from her near the door of communication.
"Ta-ta, old girl.... Oh, by the way, I shan't be in to dinner to-night—or to-morrow either. I'm off to London. I'm wanted there about my Christmas Baz——" And he checked himself. "But I'll ask old Mears to tell you all about that."
Then he ran downstairs, two steps at a time, and swaggered here and there between the counters to impress the assistants with his hustlingly Napoleonic air.
Occasionally he loved to step forward, wave aside the assistant, and himself serve a customer. He thoroughly enjoyed the awe-struck admiration of the shop when he thus granted it a display of his skill. It was his only real gift—the salesman art; and it never failed him.
But it was something that he could not impart. Assistants who imitated his method—trying to catch the smiling, almost chaffing manner that could immediately convert agrumpy lethargic critic into a prompt and cheerful buyer—were merely familiar and impudent, and ended by huffing the customer.
And the governor, when he happened to detect want of success in one of his young gentlemen or young ladies, came down like a hundred of bricks.
He treated the two sexes quite impartially, and the women could not say that he bullied the men worse than he bullied them. But he had a deadly sort of satire that the younger girls dreaded more than the angriest storm of abuse. Thus if he saw one of them sitting down, he would address her with apparently amiable solicitude.
"Is that ledge hard, Miss Vincent? Couldn't someone get her a cushion? Make yourself at home. Why don't you come round the counter and sit on the customers' laps?... We must find you a comfortable seatsomewhere—and change of air, too. Mallingbridge isn't agreeing with your constitution, if you feel as slack as all this."
Like the people of his house, these people of his shop feared him, and, perhaps without putting the thoughts into words, or troubling to quote adages, understood that beggars on horseback always ride with reckless disregard of the safety and comfort of the humble companions with whom they were recently tramping along the hard road, and that no master is so tyrannical as a promoted servant. In the opinion of the shop-assistants, he could not go to London too often or stay there too long.
While he was away this time, Mears came to Mrs. Marsden with a long face and a gloomy voice, and gave her the delayed information as to her husband's Christmas programme.
The new underground floor was to be used for a grand Bazaar, and Mears had been told to win her round to the idea.
Mears himself hated the idea. He thought the bazaar a brainless plagiarism of Bence's, and altogether unworthy of Thompson's. It would be exactly like Bence's, but on a much larger scale—beneath the good respectable shop, a cheap and nasty shop, in which catchpenny travesties of decent articles would be the only wares; fancy stationery, sham jewellery, spurious metals; horrid little clocks that won't go, knives and scissors that won't cut, collar-boxes more flimsy than the collars they are intended to hold—everything beastly that crumples, bends, or breaks before you can get home with it.
"But he won't abandon the idea," said Mears. "That's a certainty. He's mad keen on it. The only thing is for you to use your influence—and I'll back you up solid—to persuade him to modify it."
And Mears strongly advocated modification on these lines: make the bazaar a fitting annex,—substitute boots and shoes for the sixpenny toys, good leather trunks for the paper boxes, nice engravings for the coloured photographs,—offer the public genuine stuff and not trash.
Accordingly, Mr. Marsden, as soon as he returned, was begged by his partner and his manager to grant their joint petition for a slightly modified Christmas carnival. But he said it was too late. They ought to have gone into the matter earlier.
He had bought the trash,—had engaged his London girls,—was ready; and like a general on the eve of campaign, he could not be bothered with advice from subordinate officers.
When discussing this horrible innovation, Mears had extracted from Mrs. Marsden a distinct show of interest; several times afterwards he had endeavoured to stimulate and increase the interest; and now, just before Christmas, he earnestly implored her to rouse herself.
"We miss you, ma'am, worse every day. It isn'tsafeto let things drift. We can't get on without you."
Then one morning she had an early breakfast, dressed herself in her shop black, came down behind the glass, took her seat at the little corner table of her old room, and unobtrusively began working.
Marsden, when he came in two or three hours later, was surprised to see her.
"Hullo, Jane, what do you think you are doing?"
"Well, Dick," she said submissively, "I should like to help in the shop—as I used to, you know."
"Bravo. Excellent! I want all the help that anyone can give me;" and he seated himself in the chair of honour. "But look here. Don't mess about with the papers on this desk. I work after a system—and if my papers are muddled, it simply upsets me and wastes my time."