Most people detest tears at a wedding, and yet weddings give much more cause for tears than funerals.
Most people detest tears at a wedding, and yet weddings give much more cause for tears than funerals.
At last Maudie Whittaker’s wedding day dawned—a golden July day, fair and still, without being oppressively hot. I think I have already said that the houses of Marksby and Whittaker were situated in one of the main roads of that favorite residential locality which is known to Londoners as Northampton Park, and to its residents as “the Park,” without any distinguishing prefix. A stranger passing along Milton Avenue might have wondered what great function was afoot, for at both houses flags were flying, and on lines stretched across from house to house, amidst streaming pennons, was a great green and white marriage bell. From the gate to the porch of Ye Dene Alfred Whittaker had, some two years before, erected a covered glass way, almost a conservatory. This was lined with flowers and carpeted with red felt. A couple of stalwart commissionaires stood at either side of the entrance, and a crowd of the poorer denizens of the Park had gathered to watch the coming and going of the wedding guests.I must tell you at once that on this occasion Regina was truly great.
“Mother,” Maudie had said on the previous evening, when she bade her parents good-night for the last time as Maudie Whittaker. “Mother darling, there’s one thing that you must not do to-morrow.”
“What is that, my love?” said Regina.
“You will not cry when you get to church, and you will not cry when we go away, will you? Remember that in Harry you are gaining a son, not losing a daughter.”
“No,” said Regina, “no, I shall not disgrace you. At the same time, Maudie, my love, if I am not losing a daughter I am losing my little girl.”
“Not a bit of it, mother,” said Julia, chiming in to support her sister and resolutely keeping her thoughts turned from the fact that on the morrow half her life would be torn away; “you mustn’t think that, dearest. You know the old saying, ‘my son is my son till he gets him a wife, but my daughter’s my daughter all the days of my life.’”
“Then I hope,” said Regina, solemnly, to the bride-elect, “that you will never make that poor little woman across the road feel thatherson is her son till he gets him a wife. But rest assured of one thing, Maudie darling, your mother will not disgrace you on your wedding day. I was at a wedding a few years ago when the bride’s mother howled persistently all through the ceremony and till the bride departed on her honeymoon. They had not been on such terms as we have always been—in fact, if Constance Colquhoun had not fortunately found a husband, itis very certain that Mrs. Colquhoun and she would have parted company rather than have gone on living together in a continual state of wrangling. I have no regrets for the past and very few fears for the future. You will have your ups and downs, my darling, as your mother has had before you and as your children will have after you. You must look for them in this vale of tears, but anticipation of them on a joyful occasion is foolish even to criminality.”
Probably no sweeter bride had ever passed up the aisle of the fantastic little church which was alike the spiritual and material centre of Northampton Park. It was not that Maudie Whittaker was a very pretty girl—no one but her mother had ever given a second thought to personal beauty as one of her attributes—but she was soft and round and fair, with radiant eyes and a winning smile. Her bridal gown was simple and girlish, and her veil of plain tulle enveloped her like a cloud of innocence. Her only jewel was the diamond heart which her bridegroom had given her for his wedding-day present. Her bouquet was a real ornament, a loosely-arranged posy of flowers tied with broad white ribbon—not the usual over-weighted bundle of blossoms showering from the hand to the ground, conveying the idea that if the bride was sufficiently unlucky to tread upon the mass of trails, the result would be the complete downfall of bride and bouquet alike. The bridesmaids were quite reasonably attired. Maudie had been inflexible on that point. “My dear Ju,” she had said to her sister when the question was first mooted, “the bride ought to choose the bridesmaids’ dresses.I have seen bridesmaids in Charles II. dresses, in Tudor dresses, in Directoire costumes, and such close copies of Boughton’s Dutch maidens, that one felt they only wanted sabots to be entirely correct. I have seen bridesmaids with their gathers under their arms, and with pouches down to their knees. I am going to have none of these monstrosities. You and I are ordinary-looking girls, but, between ourselves, we are dreams of style compared with Rachel and Emmeline Marksby.”
“Harry seems to have monopolized all the style in the Marksby family,” said Julia, with a judicial air.
“Oh, Harry has style enough,” rejoined Maudie, with not a little pride in her tones.
“Yes, you are quite right, Rachel and Emmeline are two dear little girls, but they are dumpy and snub-nosed, and would look ridiculous in any sort of fancy dress. You could hardly find a greater contrast than the Ponsonby-Piggots.”
“Oh, my dear, where could you find a greater contrast than the Ponsonby-Piggots themselves? One girl as tall as a lamp post, has straight features, and is definite and rather commanding; and the other is a little slip of a thing, with curly red hair, misty blue eyes, and an air of fragility which completely deceives the ordinary observer. So no monstrosities and eccentricities of bridesmaids’ dresses for me. I should like whitecrêpe de chinefrocks over turquoise blue petticoats, belts of some handsome embroidery with clasps studded with big blue stones that will look like turquoise, and big black hats with a touch of blue under the brim; Harry is going to give them blue enamelwatches. There, I think that is as smart an idea for bridesmaids’ dresses as we need trouble about.”
So it was decided, and the eight bridesmaids who followed Maudie Whittaker to the altar were all dressed alike, as I have just described. On her left breast each wore the enamel watch given by the bridegroom, while the bride’s gifts to her bridesmaids were the embroidered belts studded with blue stones.
Yes, it was a very pretty wedding, and Regina, resplendent in ruby velvet, with a white feather waving in her coronet bonnet, and over her ample shoulders a large cape arrangement of rich lace, sailed up the aisle on the arm of Mr. Marksby. She had an air of “alone I did it” about her which was at the same time touching and misleading. In her tightly-gloved hand she carried a large posy of roses, and truly there was nothing of Niobe in her expression and demeanor. The service went off without a hitch, the decorations were lavish, and the little boys, who were all that could be mustered of the regular choir, wore clean surplices. The favors were extremely choice, and the happy face of the bride was more than matched by the radiant self-satisfaction of the bridegroom. “A delightful wedding” was the general verdict. And then there was the streaming back to the house just down the road, there was the string of carriages belonging to friends from town, the Park guests having followed the simpler plan of going afoot. How shall I describe it all? The palms, the flowers, the gay dresses, the gently-murmured felicitations, the health drinking, the speech making, the cake cutting, the present inspecting, which is the usual course of the smart wedding.These things were all there, for the Alfred Whittakers had given their daughter what is generally called “a good send-off.”
Then there came the terrible moment when Regina might have been forgiven for breaking down. But Regina was equal to the occasion—Regina was a woman of her word.
“Oh, no, I am not at all inclined to break down,” she said in reply to a friend who was offering judicious sympathy. “I feel that in my girl’s husband I have gained what I have always longed for—a son. I am going to be a mother-in-law quite out of the ordinary run, and I am not going to begin by making him feel himself a cruel marauder who is taking away my most valued possession. I should not like to have children who did not marry; it is a natural thing, and Maudie’s choice is so absolutely ours that I have nothing to regret and everything to be delighted with.”
“But did not Maudie choose her own husband?” said someone who was standing by.
“Oh, of course she did, but if we had chosen her husband our choice would have been Harry Marksby.”
It chanced that Harry was just entering the house, having been across the road to change his wedding garments for traveling gear. He was in time to hear the whole of his mother-in-law’s reply to the question as to whether Maudie had chosen her own husband. He slipped his hand under her arm and twisted her round a little.
“You are not going to be a mother-in-law out ofthe common,” he said, “because you are one. Nothing you could do would be in the common. But I cannot thank you enough for saying that if you had chosen Maudie’s husband you would have chosen me. And I’m so glad,” he went on in a lower tone, “that you did not think it necessary to treat us to the usual shower of maternal tears on this occasion.”
“Perhaps I should have done,” cried Mrs. Whittaker, “if I were not so perfectly happy in Maudie’s choice. Why should I want to weep over my girl’s happiness? Why should your mother want to make herself look a silly fright because you have married the girl of your heart? We are agreed, are we not, Mrs. Marksby?”
“Oh, yes, I always did believe in young men getting married as soon as they are in a position to marry comfortably. As I said to Harry as we were having a little talk last night, ‘Remember, my boy, that you are marrying in a very different position to what pa and me did. Pa and me married to a little house with three bedrooms in the southeast district, with never a thought that we should end up west, and see our boy married as we have seen him married this day’—didn’t we pa?”
“Yes, mother, we did. And I don’t know that we’ve had any cause to regret it.”
“I don’t know about you, pa,” said Mrs. Marksby, bridling visibly.
“Oh, I don’t say but that you might have done better,” said Mr. Marksby, “but we were very happy in that little house, and I only hope that the youngpeople will be as happy in their beginning as we were in ours.”
“We shall not be less happy because we are able to afford a decent house in the West End,” said Harry, sensibly. “If we are, you may take it as certain that we should have been just as unhappy in the cottage with three bedrooms. But, I say, Mrs. Whittaker, isn’t Maudie nearly ready? We sha’n’t catch that train if we don’t look out. Ah, here she is. Come along, my dear girl, come along; we’ve got none too much time to spare.”
Perhaps it was as well. There was a moment’s hesitation as Maudie said “good-bye” to her mother; for one instant, Julia standing by, vigilant and keen, feared that her mother was going to break down in spite of all her good resolves. But Mrs. Whittaker was a valiant soul; she pulled herself up sharply as the little bride, holding her father’s hand, went out to face the storm of rice and old slippers which was awaiting them outside the house.
“I know,” she said, her voice a little tremulous in spite of her self-control, “I know she will make a good wife, because she has been such a good daughter.”
“We can cry quits, Mrs. Whittaker,” said the mother of the bridegroom, “for a better boy to his father and mother than our Harry I don’t believe you could find from one end of the earth to the other.”
How little noise people make when they are suddenly stricken with great mental anguish.
They say that after a storm there comes a calm, and a very true saying it is. After the storm of orange blossoms that raged around Ye Dene on that July day, there came a calm which was broken only by the excitement of watching for the postman. The most valuable of the wedding presents were safely packed up on the evening of the wedding day and consigned to Alfred Whittaker’s private safe. The others were left in the girls’ sitting-room, carefully covered up, in preparation for the long trip in which the bride and bridegroom were indulging themselves, prior to regular housekeeping.
For years the Whittakers had made a point of seeking a fresh holiday resort with each summer, and this year, by a kind of instinct, they decided not to go to an English watering-place. Perhaps the feeling that the bride and groom were enjoying themselves in the Bernese Oberland, and meant to cover a good deal of ground before they turned their footsteps homewards, made them feel that the contrast of anEnglish watering-place would be too much. They therefore decided that Dieppe would be a bright and convenient change for them; but they were not due to leave home until some ten days after the wedding.
Now, it happened that Regina, instead of following the usual course of mothers, and making the little absent bride into a sort of deity, was possessed of a feeling that she would like in some way to reward her younger girl for her helpfulness at the time of the wedding, and the unselfish manner in which she had deferred in every possible way to her sister’s wishes. She therefore determined that she would give Julia a little surprise present. No, it was not a birthday, it was not any kind of commemoration, but she felt that this was an occasion on which she could appropriately spend a little money. Now Regina was amply blessed with this world’s goods—I mean in her own right. Alfred Whittaker had done extremely well in the world, and whereas Regina had once loomed in his horizon as an heiress in a modest way, she was now the wife of an exceedingly warm man, and happy in the possession of a tidy little income of her own. She breathed not a word of her purpose to a soul. She did not intend her little gift to take the form of raiment. Julia’s father gave her an ample dress allowance, and Regina was in the habit of adding to it with special offerings at such times as birthdays and the season of Christmas. It was not difficult for her to carry out her purpose, for she had but seldom gone to town in company with her girls. She was so busy a woman, she had so many excuses, so many appointments and engagements of a semi-businesskind, that her comings and goings were not often questioned.
“What are you doing to-day, Julia?” she asked, one morning at breakfast, about a week after the wedding.
“To-day, mother dear? Well, I have to go out with Emmeline Marksby this morning, and unless you want me I am going to lunch there. And then I am going to get my new white frock fitted on, and I am going to tea at the Dravens.”
“So you will be occupied all day?”
“Why, do you want me?”
“Not at all, dear child, only I feel that you must be lonely now that Maudie has gone, and I have at least a dozen things to occupy me.”
“Oh, don’t worry yourself about me; I shall be busy right up to dinner time.”
So they went their separate ways, and two hours later Mrs. Whittaker might have been seen deliberately pacing up the arcade in which was situated the shop at which Maudie’s earrings had been bought. A smooth-spoken young gentleman came forward to receive her. Regina explained her pleasure; she wanted earrings. No, not for the bride; for the young lady who was with her when she bought the bride’s earrings. Solitaire earrings? Yes. Turquoise were very nice, but she fancied that Miss Whittaker did not care much about turquoise. Did she fancy pink coral? Yes, that was a happy idea, so suitable for a young lady. So Regina was shown various solitaire earrings in that most delicate and girlish substance. But even then she was not satisfied, and the pinkcoral earrings were set in diamonds. No, it was not the expense; that was not the question, but Mrs. Whittaker thought that not even tiny diamonds should find a place in the jewel-box of a very young girl.
“Pink coral without—?”
“Just a few sparks, madam,” said the gentleman on the other side of the counter, “they will be a little—well, a little insignificant—as earrings.”
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Whittaker admitted, “you might let me see the turquoise, I could have those without diamonds.”
“Yes, or pearls. Solitaire pearls are quite young ladies’ jewelry.”
“And are they very expensive?” asked Regina.
“Oh no, madam. Let me show you the pearls.”
So another tray was handed out, and yet another tray; one containing all manner of turquoise studs for the ears, and the other showing an assortment of pearl earrings, from modest ones at five guineas a pair to some which were far beyond Regina’s means or Julia’s necessities. Eventually a pair of pearl solitaires were chosen and paid for.
“Yes, I shall take them with me,” said Regina, opening her smart black and gold wrist bag in order that the little jewel-case might be comfortably nested in company with her small purse and her pocket-handkerchief.
“I hope, madam,” said the shopman, “that you liked Mr. Whittaker’s last present to you.”
“I like it very much,” said Regina, smoothing the back of her hand, and gazing admiringly at the bigturquoise ring that adorned it, “I think it is a very handsome ring.” Then she looked straight into the young man’s eyes, “You were not speaking of this?” she said, with a gesture of her hand to show that she was speaking of the ring.
“No, madam,” he stammered, “I remember Mr. Whittaker buying the ring and the bangle for the young lady—I—I was thinking of quite another customer.”
At that moment another figure came from the office behind the shop. It was, indeed, the assistant who had actually attended to their wants on the occasion of her previous visit.
“I hope,” said he, “that the bracelet that Mr. Whittaker bought the other day met with your approval, madam.”
For a moment Regina felt as if the earth were opening under her feet; a wild impulse seized her to catch violently hold of something, and scream in a series of sharp intermittent yelps as a locomotive does when something has gone wrong, and a wild instinct to catch the two smooth-faced young men on the other side of the counter by the ears and bang their heads together—a feeling as if heaven and earth were slipping away from her. But Regina was a remarkable woman! She had her vanities and her weaknesses, but in all the emergencies of life Regina might be counted upon for not losing her head. In spite of the sea of tempestuous emotions which surged within her at that moment, she maintained her dignity and her common-sense.
“No,” said she, “I have not yet seen it. I amafraid that you have given my husband away; as a matter of fact I have a birthday next week.”
It was the first plump and deliberate lie that Regina had ever told in her life. She did not hurry out of the shop—she even went so far as to choose a little present for her lord, going back with a curious persistence to the idea of pink coral, and bought for him what Julia would have described as a perfectly sweet tie pin, consisting of a bit of pink coral set between two small but fiery diamonds.
“Mr. Johnson,” said the younger of the two assistants, as the door closed behind Regina, “you have put your foot in it this time.”
“Why—how—what d’you mean?”
“Simply this, that Mr. Alfred Whittaker, of Ye Dene, Northampton Park, won’t thank you for letting on to that good lady that he was here last week buying a bracelet that she don’t know anything about.”
“Oh Lord! I never thought of it. She said she had a birthday next week.”
“She said, yes, shesaid, but that ain’t any proof to me; I never saw an old girl pull herself together in a neater manner; she even went so far as to buy a tie pin on the strength of it. But, mark my words, Mr. Alfred Whittaker won’t thank you for letting on to that lady that he was here last week buying that bracelet.”
“If I thought that,” said Mr. Johnson, “I’d put my head straight in a bag.”
“If it had been me,” said the other, “being a youngster I might have been excused, but an old hand like you—tittle-tattling about other customers’ purchases—you ought to know better.”
“You are quite right; I deserve anything that may come of it; I don’t think that I have ever done such an idiotic thing in my life. What can I do to make up for it?”
“Nothing,” said the other. “If anything is said, swear that Mr. Whittaker told you that the present was for his wife.”
“I think he did.”
“That’s as may be. Anyway, stick to it through thick and thin that he mentioned that it actually was for his wife.”
“Well, don’t tell any of the others, Dick.”
“I shouldn’t dream of doing that, it isn’t likely. I might make a slip myself one day, so I am not going to point out the slips of other people.” Which, considering the very near shave the young gentleman had had of making the very same slip not ten minutes before, might be considered a very feeling remark.
Meantime Regina had gone blindly along the arcade. She was dressed in summer garments, and not a few very curious glances were cast at her. Twice she stopped to look in shop windows with eyes that saw nothing. The first was a gunsmith’s, and the second was a man’s window of a distinguished bootmaker’s. Regina never knew the exact objects at which she had gazed during that painful peregrination. When she got to the end of the arcade she turned and walked back again, and all the time there beat to and fro in her brain an idea which said that Alfred, her noble Alfred, had gone after other gods—after other gods! Well, in the worst trials of life, in the griefs and shocks and sorrows of the newest andmost unaccustomed kind, a woman cannot walk up and down a fashionable arcade forever. When she again reached the entrance by which she had gone in, it occurred to her that she must sit down and think—she must go somewhere where she could be quiet, where she could face this new sensation which had come into her life. Her club? No, not her club. She would meet there women who were interested in the same work as herself. If she lunched, and she could not be there in the lunch hour without lunching, someone would join her. There was a little pastry-cook’s where she sometimes lunched when she was in a hurry; she had never seen anybody there she knew, she would go there. To eat! No—no!—not to eat! Regina Whittaker was sure that she would never eat with relish again. So she bent her steps toward this little side-street haven, and, like all women in dire trouble, ordered tea and a muffin!
Have you ever noticed how accurately women judge from small circumstances. Men call this intuition, and men think of intuition as being on the same level as instinct.
Have you ever noticed how accurately women judge from small circumstances. Men call this intuition, and men think of intuition as being on the same level as instinct.
If Regina had ordered a plate of soup it would have been brought to her immediately, because at one o’clock that comestible would have been ready and awaiting the wishes of customers. But Regina, as I have said, like most women in trouble, ordered the food and drink that were nearest her heart, and therefore she had to wait while the tea was brewed and the muffin toasted. The waiting did her good. She was alone, as it happened, in the comfortable room over the shop, and thus she was able to grasp the situation more clearly than she had done while still talking to the jeweler’s assistant, when she had had to consider the ordinary conventions of existence. Poor Regina! She sat there by the tall mantelshelf and stared at the paper roses which filled the summer grate. Her Alfred, her noble Alfred, had fallen from his pedestal—he was hers no longer! In all the years of their married life, indeed in their knowledge of each other, she had never wronged Alfred by even so much as a doubt of his nobility. To her he had been noble, truly noble,kind, affectionate, dignified and a highly successful man—and now all was over; her house of matrimony had fallen about her ears like a pack of cards—she had been supplanted by another. Truly Regina’s thoughts were very bitter. She had been supplanted by another—what was she going to do? It came to her memory that in times gone by, when other women had fallen upon evil days of a like description, she had helped to bear their sorrows with a very light heart. Well, it had not then entered her head that their portion might one day be hers; but now the blow had fallen upon herself, and she must perforce give herself the same advice that she had given to others. “My dear,” she had remarked once to a poor little woman whose husband had been spoiled by over-much adoration, “you have made one mistake in your life: you have been too good to that husband of yours. What? Nobody could be too good to him? You have, my dear, and it doesn’t do to be too good to a man for all time whether he behaves himself or not; it doesn’t do to put all your wares in your front window. Keep something back; let there be always some little corner of womanly dignity which men, even husbands, must respect.” “But, Mrs. Whittaker,” the little woman had replied, “I haven’t any dignity where Jack is concerned; I don’t want any dignity, I only want Jack, and he has gone away and left me.” How well she remembered the words as she sat alone in the pastry-cook’s shop in Regent Street, how well she remembered! Well, she felt very much as that little woman had felt—she did not care about her dignity any more; she only wanted Alfred, and if Alfred wasdeceiving her, if Alfred was living a double life and sharing his heart with another, she only wanted to go back to the blissful time of blind ignorance, when to her he had been the embodiment of manly dignity and robust virtue.
She got up and looked at herself in the long strip of glass which was set between the two tall windows. It was not a becoming glass, nor was it placed in a particularly becoming light, and Regina, who had been through a storm of tempestuous emotion, and who bore upon her strongly marked countenance the visible signs of her mental upheaval, looked, frankly speaking, quite hideous. At that moment the young lady who had taken her order for tea and muffin came into the room carrying a little tray, and Regina made a slight pretence of adjusting her hair before she went back to the table.
“Would you prefer to sit here, or by the window?”
“I think by the window,” said Regina. Her tone was admirably careless—so careless that it almost deceived herself.
“Will you have cream also with your tea?”
“Yes, I think I will have cream. Thank you very much.”
A couple of minutes later Regina was once more alone. Certainly the open window was more comfortable than the empty fireplace with its paper roses. The tea was freshly made, and was good of its kind, the cream was rich, and the muffin was the perfection of a muffin, and Regina sat with the summer wind fanning her troubled brow, and ate and drank her simple fare and was comforted. As she sat she stole a glanceat herself in another strip of looking-glass, in which she could see herself by turning her head an inch or two. And as she sat there and her storm-tossed soul was soothed and comforted by her little meal, she began to turn things over in her mind with a less tragic spirit than she had done before. Perhaps if Alfred had been drawn away to other gods it had been her own fault; Alfred was so handsome, so manly, had such a presence, and she had despised all the trifling feminine womanly things. She had given up so much of her time to the regeneration of women that she had let the material part of Regina Whittaker take its own course, and Nature, left to take its own course, is never very attractive. She was too stout. There are people of the plump little partridge order who would look frightful in a nearer approach to their bones, but Regina had gone fat in lumps, and Regina’s eyes had never been aware of the fact until this morning. Too much chin, too much nape of the neck, too much at the top of the arms, too much of that which, even back in Scripture days when coupled with “a proud look,” was ever a subject for derision.
“Never proud to my Alfred,” said she, leaning back in her chair; “but,” and here she crossed her hands just below her waist, “the other is an indisputable fact.”
As she decided the question in her own mind she laid her hand upon the little bell which stood beside her on the table.
“Did I ring?” said she. “Oh, I was not conscious of it. I think I made a mistake in having this kind ofmeal. I am not accustomed to it, I feel as if I had taken nothing.”
“Try a sandwich, madam,” said the young lady.
“Sandwich? I think I am not equal to sandwich to-day. Something has happened to me; I have had a shock, and you know how we weak women fly to feminine articles of food when we are in trouble.”
“I am sorry you are in trouble, madam.”
“I came in here knowing I should be quiet, and it is very quiet.”
“It is the end of July. In another week we shall be more quiet still, and after that, when the country people come, we shall not know where to turn. When you come back from abroad or from your sojourn by the sea we shall be as you always see us.”
“I think I will have another muffin.”
“I would, madam. I will tell them to put plenty of butter on it. And a pot of tea, and a little more cream?”
“Yes,” said Regina, rather weakly. The girl disappeared again, and Regina sat back in her chair, a very comfortable one, and felt that it was pleasant to be ministered to, and then fell to thinking about herself again. How strange that she had never noticed any change in Alfred! He had never seemed to find her wanting in any way. More than once, even of late years, he had told her that the girls would never be a patch upon her for looks, and she had accepted his tribute to her charms in all good faith. And then she turned to the glass again and regarded herself with new eyes—critical eyes—andshe saw that her dress was hideous, her bonnet a travesty, her hair, fine in quality and very decent in color, made nothing of, her gloves were too small or her hands too large. What did it matter, the result was the same; she was inelegant, unfashionable, grotesquely stout—she was all wrong, and it seemed as if all she had done by her work for the regeneration of womanhood had been to cut herself adrift from her own husband.
I have said that Regina Whittaker was a very remarkable character, and I have tried to show that she was a woman who was accustomed to judge for herself in most circumstances of life, and who, even if she took the wrong line, took it on her own, so to speak. Now, in what I may honestly say was the bitterest moment of her life, she decided, judged and determined on her own line of action just as she had done in previous times. At this moment the relay of muffin and fresh tea arrived, and Regina, with a smile of thanks, began with an excellent appetite to eat the second half of her meal, and as she ate her thoughts were working busily.
Alfred had fallen a victim to a hussy! That she was a hussy of tender years, as compared with Regina herself, was evident. There was no evidence to prove it, but once the idea had entered Regina’s mind it remained there and throve apace. This ignorant, youthful, gay little hussymust be supplanted, her influence must be undermined, and Alfred must be lured back to his original nobility. It was curious that no shadow of blame for the noble Alfred presented itself to Regina. If he had beenunfaithful it was because he had been tempted by a hussy from the allegiance which had stood the test of over twenty years. If he had left her for other divinities it was because she had not made herself sufficiently alluring to him; and Regina, as she ate the last piece of the second muffin, determined there and then that she would mend her ways.
“I will go to a beauty doctor,” she told herself. “I will get rid of every blemish that has lessened my attractions for him; I will put myself in the hands of an expert dressmaker; she shall dress me like a fashion-plate; I will be young, I will be slim, I will be attractive, I will win my husband’s heart back again.”
Then her thoughts ran towards the Society for the Regeneration of Women—that darling project of her later years, which she now realized had cost her very dear. From that she must free herself; not publicly, not with any ostensible reason, except that she had worked sufficiently long. Others must take the reins from her hands and she must put forward the plea that new blood was necessary, even essential, in all such undertakings. When she had arrived at this point she was already quite cheerful. She took out her purse from her black and gold bag and deposited a bright new sixpence under her muffin plate as a delicate little reward to the girl whose kindly words had been her first solace, then satisfied herself with a long look at Julia’s earrings, and then she opened the little case which contained the tie pin that she intended as an offering to her lord and master. This she determined she would not presentto him. A curious fancy took possession of her that she would give him some little symbol of her unaltered affection for him. She had never heard that pink coral was coupled with any particular meaning; it had no place among what may be called the birthday stones. Now, Alfred’s birthday was in October, so she would choose him an opal—yes, a little tie pin of opals with a single diamond like a crystallized tear-drop, and she could say to him, “This opal is to bring you luck in your later years, and the diamond has a meaning which I will tell you at some future time—not now.”
Then Regina rose up, strong in her new resolve, and, having paid her money at the desk, went out into the summer sunshine.
We are often blamed for not speaking out as soon as a doubt enters our mind, yet oftentimes the reticence which such a doubt begets is a saving grace which redeems and sanctifies our whole character.
We are often blamed for not speaking out as soon as a doubt enters our mind, yet oftentimes the reticence which such a doubt begets is a saving grace which redeems and sanctifies our whole character.
It was with quite a cheerful countenance that Regina went through the rest of her day’s work. Arriving home at Ye Dene in time for dinner she changed her dress for a cool and light tea-gown, in which, I am bound to confess, she looked more than anything like a gigantic perambulating baby’s bassinette. She laved her face with a little scented water, and, for the first time in her life, she dusted her countenance with a little powder. She did not herself possess such things as a powder-box and puff, but in Maudie’s deserted bedroom she found on her dressing-table the one which she had used up to the morning of her marriage, for she had naturally taken with her on her wedding-tour the smartly fitted dressing-case which had been among her husband’s wedding presents to her. It was with quite unaccustomed hands that Regina sought for the powder-box, and she used the powder too thickly. Maudie had had a pretty taste in powder, and prided herselfon never using a common kind. Being so very fair she used that of a pure white tint, and when Mrs. Whittaker had finished her application of it I must confess she looked ghastly.
“How dreadful!” her thoughts ran. “How can women ever use this stuff?”
Then she took a towel from the towel-rail and rubbed her face vigorously, shook the puff out of the window, and started again, succeeding this time in merely making herself of a delicate pallor. As she descended the stairs her husband turned in at the gate and came along the covered way to the porch. He noticed at once that there was something unusual in her appearance.
“Well, Regina, my love,” he remarked, “have you been grilling in town this hot day?”
“Yes, I have been to town, Alfred,” she replied, trying hard to make her tone quite an ordinary one.
“You must have over-tired yourself, my dear; you are as pale as a sheet,” he remarked, looking at her keenly. “Here, come with me.” He led the way into the dining-room, that large, cool, pleasant apartment in which Regina had so often sat admiring him, and, going to the sideboard, poured her out a glass of port.
“Here, drink this down at once. I am sure you have been over-doing it. Have you been to any of those beastly meetings?”
“I have not been to a meeting, though I looked in at the offices of the S.R.W.”
“I feel very much inclined to say ‘Damn the S.R.W.,’” said Alfred Whittaker, warmly. “I can’tbear to see you looking so jaded and worn-out as you do now. Here, drink this down; it will pull you together better than anything else.”
He was an old-fashioned man, who believed in a glass of port, and Regina, with unwonted meekness and the same happy feeling of being ministered to that she had felt in the pastry-cook’s shop, obediently swallowed the pleasant potion.
“I shall be very glad,” Alfred Whittaker continued, “when we are off on our holiday, for I never felt the need of one so badly as I do this year. I suppose it is the excitement of Maudie’s wedding, but I can’t bear to see you looking as you do now.”
“I am better—I feel better,” said Regina, nervously. It was hard for her to resist the inclination to fling herself upon Alfred’s broad bosom and tell him everything that was in her mind. It would have been better if she had done so, but she resisted the inclination from a desire not to give way to unusual weakness.
“Now sit down quietly by the window and rest while I run up and change my coat.”
It was his habit to make what might be called a half-toilette for dinner—to take off his frock-coat and substitute for it a sort of smoking-jacket, quite a glorified garment, in which Regina admired him as some women admire their husbands when they get drunk, with that curious admiration for the breaking off of shackles, even merely conventional ones. It was a delight to Regina, strong-minded, commanding, magnetic, almost eccentric nature that she was, to give her husband’s behests instant obedience, andshe sat down in the huge armchair by the window with a sigh of relief. Well, some hussy might have got hold of him, yes—but his heart was with her.
She owned to herself that there was a little bit of the hypocrite in her, but she forgave herself the infinitesimal sin because Alfred had noticed instantly that she was paler than usual. Ought she to have told him that she had been using powder, and that she was not really more worn-out than usual? Perhaps so, and yet, she told herself, no woman on earth could have forced herself to be so strictly just. Then there was a sound of the gong in the hall, and Alfred came down, Julia coming with him.
“I’m afraid, my bird,” he was saying, as they crossed the threshold, “that you miss Maudie more every day that goes by, and soon you’ll be marrying yourself, and there’ll only be old Darby and Joan to jog along together.”
“I’ve not gone yet, daddy,” said Julia. “Maudie had what we may call adequate temptation. I may go on for years before I meet anybody who takes my fancy as completely as Harry took hers.”
“Meantime, I think you ought to go out with your mother a little more. She looks worn-out to-day.”
“Do you, darling?” looking toward the large white figure at the window. “I declare you do. Why, you told me that you would be busy all day and wouldn’t want me.”
“Did I?” said Regina. “I do not think quite that, dearest. But it was true, I did not want youwith me to-day; I was full of business of one sort or another.”
“Well, well, come to dinner,” said Alfred, genially, “come to dinner. We needn’t live to eat, but we must eat to live, and here is a bit of salmon that would gladden the heart of a king.”
He was very full of joke that night, telling wife and daughter of one or two little incidents which had happened to him during the day, and making merry exceedingly.
“You’re very mischievous and gay to-night,” said Julia. “What have you been doing to-day?”
Regina looked across the table involuntarily.
“Oh, I have been doing the usual thing, my dear—making money for you to spend. By the way, I have had an excellent offer for the house.”
“For the house!” cried Julia. “Have you taken it?”
“I’ve not taken it; I shouldn’t think of doing so until I have consulted your mother. It is a good offer, and I have a week to think it over in. The question is, Do we really want to leave the Park?”
“Yes,” said Julia.
“What do you say, Queenie?”
“I do not know.”
“But, mother, you find it such a fag and such a drag getting to and fro to your committees.”
For a moment Regina did not speak; she put her fish knife and fork down upon her plate.
“I don’t know that we need consider my committees,” she said quietly. “I am thinking of giving them all up.”
“Your committees!” cried Julia in a tone that was almost frightened.
“My dear—!” said Alfred.
“I have worked for others during the last ten years, Alfred,” said Regina, leaning back in her chair and looking at her husband, “but I am not sure if I’ve done quite the right thing in giving up so much of my time to outside work.”
“My dear, I have never complained.”
“No, dear, you have never complained. I do not know that you might not have done.”
“My dear girl, what does it matter to me how you amuse yourself while I am at business?”
“No, there’s something in that. On the other hand, in a sense it does matter. I have worked long enough; I think I want to be a little more in my own home—I’m not so young as I was.”
“You’re worn-out, that’s about the English of it,” said Alfred Whittaker, putting his knife and fork on his plate and sitting back. “As long as it amused you it was all right; it was as good as spending your life in running from one hot, stuffy party to another. Cut it, my dear, cut it. There’s one axiom in business that never fails, ‘cut your loss’—at least, I have never known it fail yet. By-the-bye,” he said, “I have brought you a little present.”
Regina almost screamed aloud. So she had been wrong all the time; there was no hussy, his solicitude for her pale looks had been the solicitude of the old affectionate Alfred who had been ever and always herbeau idealof what a husband should be. She gasped a little. “Yes,” she said faintly.
“Something nice?” said Julia. “Jewelry?”
“Well,” said Alfred Whittaker, and his face wore a curious little smile, “yes—it’s jewelry. I came by it in an odd fashion. I had some business up west this morning, a very unexpected bit of business; it took me right out of my regular track. I was going along a little street at the back of Manchester Square and I saw something in a little shop that attracted my attention. It was a quaint little shop, half jeweler’s and half curiosity dealer’s.”
“And you stopped and bought it?”
“Not at all; I stopped and looked at it. It was a tea-service of that scale blue Worcester which fetches such tremendous prices at Christie’s, only I don’t think that particular set will ever have a show at Christie’s, handsome as it is, and while I was looking at it I noticed this. I haven’t seen such a thing for ages, and I’ve never seen anything like it at the price before, so I bought it and paid for it, and here it is.” He took a little parcel from his pocket wrapped in tissue paper, and pushed it along the table to Julia. “Give that to your mother. No, I did not buy anything for you.”
“Then you did not go to Templeton’s for it?” said Regina, as her fingers closed over the little parcel.
“Templeton’s? Oh, no, this is not modern; it is an antique. The people haven’t the faintest idea of its value; it is worth ten times what I gave for it. It happened to be one of the things in which I am interested and which I understand. No, when I want jewels, I go to Templeton’s. I don’t understand gems and I can trust them.”
“And their discretion?” said Regina.
“Yes, if it were necessary I would trust their discretion too. Now, what do you think of that?”
Regina opened the parcel with fingers which visibly trembled. He had bought her a present; his mind, at the moment of looking into that little shop, half jeweler’s, half curiosity shop, on seeing something in which he was personally interested, had instantly flown to her. He might have given a bracelet to a hussy, but his interest had remained with Regina.