Young eyes see so clearly that we must often be very thankful that young people do not have the deciding voice in our lives.
Young eyes see so clearly that we must often be very thankful that young people do not have the deciding voice in our lives.
Regina duly received the promised card or diet sheet. I may say that she took it from its enveloping wrapper with a certain feeling of mystery akin to awe, and she studied its items carefully. Its directions were many and explicit; it not only gave the foods which she might eat, but also the foods which she might not eat, the drinks she might take and the drinks she might not take, and it gave the weights of each portion and the number of each special biscuit. Acting according to the instructions from the specialist, Regina had ordered a sufficient quantity of the specially prepared diet biscuits which were part of therégime, and it occurred to her, when the parcel arrived a little later than the diet sheet reached her, that she would have to account to her husband and family for the startling change in her diet. Now, Regina was perfectly sure of one thing: that she would be most unwise to tell Alfred the exact nature of therégimeon which she was about to start. She felt that a wife who was taking elaboratemeans, and undergoing great self-sacrifice, putting herself into prison, so to speak, for the sole and express purpose of thinning herself down, would show to great disadvantage beside a person of the plump order who was probably twenty years her junior, and able to peck greedily at the most fattening kinds of food. So Regina entered upon a course of what I may call harmless prevarication.
“I have something to tell you, dear Alfred,” she said that evening when he had well dined and had not noticed that she had passed about half the items of dinner; “I want to have a little talk with you.”
“Yes, my dear girl, about having a celebration of the home-coming? Oh yes, you would wish it, and, of course it was arranged before the wedding.”
“No, it is about myself.”
“Yourself, dearest? And what about yourself?”
“Alfred, I have not been feeling myself lately.”
“Why—how—what d’you mean? You’re not ill, are you?”
“Well, not exactly ill; I can’t truthfully say that; yet I’ve not been myself, I’ve not felt myself, I’ve not looked myself—”
“No, I’ve noticed how very much paler you have grown; you seem to have lost your nice fresh color.”
Shehadlost her nice fresh color; it had disappeared with the advent of the powder box, and Alfred had not, to use a very slang phrase, dropped down to the fact.
“Well, I don’t believe in leaving these things to mend themselves,” Regina went on, busily pleating and unpleating the deep black lace which adornedthe sleeves of her handsome tea-gown, “it’s better to stop anything of that sort at the outset.”
“Well, you’ve been to a doctor?”
“Yes, I’ve been strongly advised to go to Dr. Money-Berry in Harley Street. You see, I’ve got so very stout lately, Alfred, and he thinks my having gained in weight has put me all wrong. My heart is very feeble—compared with what it used to be.”
“My—dear! Ough! Tut, tut, tut—think of our going on and living our ordinary life and all the time you are suffering—it’s dreadful to think of.”
“Well, not exactly suffering; I’m not quite an invalid. Dr. Money-Berry advised me to live very carefully during the next few months; he thinks I shall be all right if I leave off starchy foods—they are so bad for the valves of the heart and—and I don’t want to leave you, Alfred,” she said in a pathetic little voice.
“Good heavens! Go away and leave me! What are you talking of, Queenie? If you were to go away and leave me—for another man—I should blow my brains out,” and here he began to walk about the room. “And if I didn’t, I should go to the devil.”
I am ashamed to record that there arose in Regina’s mind a picture of Alfred, her noble Alfred! going headlong to the devil with a hussy of plump proportions.
Alfred continued excitedly, “And if you were to leave me in the other sense—I don’t know what I should do.”
“Dear Alfred, you would probably marry again,” she observed quietly.
“Never—never! Put that thought out of your mind once and for all. I should live out the rest of my life as best I could—but I really can’t talk about it. You were perfectly right to go to a specialist, and you must follow out his treatment to the very letter. Now, promise me you will do everything he tells you, take all the medicine he gives you, and live by line and rule until he tells you that you are really out of danger.”
The heart of Regina was sick within her. She knew she was deceiving Alfred; she felt herself to be the basest and blackest and most ungrateful woman that had ever been born into the world, and yet, she told herself, her deception was a harmless one, that if she was sinning against him, she was sinning to a good end. And so Regina entered upon her course of penal servitude, for I can call it nothing more or less. The same explanation which was given to Alfred was given to Julia, and henceforth Regina, although she ate at the same table, ate alone. She did not in any way attempt to curtail the meals of her husband and child, but supplied the table in exactly the usual manner.
“Why do you buy salmon when you can’t touch it yourself?” Alfred asked over and over again.
“Because you work hard and want your meals. If you had the same necessity for living as I do, I should keep you up to it.”
“I don’t believe you would buy salmon for yourself,” said Alfred, almost vexedly; “it must be a temptation to you, so fond of it as you are.”
“Oh, no, because I have an object in view. Believe me, I often have sweetbreads for lunch.”
“But you do not fling them in my face at dinner; that is quite another matter.”
So the martyrdom went on, and Regina’s figure became smaller by degrees and beautifully less. When she had been dieting for about two months she had lost a couple of stones in weight. She had a couple of smart gowns from Madame d’Estelle in which she had allowed that adroit lady free play for her taste and imagination. The result was that she gradually presented to the eyes of her family a subdued and refined Regina, much more attractive to the outer world, but not the Regina to whom the inhabitants of Ye Dene had been accustomed.
It was about two months from the beginning of Regina’s martyrdom that Alfred Whittaker began to be aware that his wife was losing flesh. “My dear,” he said one morning, as he sat opposite his wife at the breakfast-table, “I’m not quite satisfied with that doctor of yours.”
“Why not, dear?”
“Why, I don’t think he’s doing well by you.”
“But I am so much better.”
“You don’t look it; you’re half the size you were.”
“Oh, no, Alfred! There’s still plenty of me.”
“You are much smaller, and since you have taken to wearing black and indefinable gray gowns, you seem to be wasting away to nothing. When is it going to stop?”
“When he is satisfied that I am just the rightweight. I am much stronger, Alfred; I can walk miles!”
“Can you? Well, I don’t know that it is necessary for you to walk miles; you can afford to take a cab whenever you want one.”
“Yes, dear, but I am much better.”
“I know you say so, and you’ve been awfully plucky about your diet and so on, but when is it going to end? I don’t want a wife like a thread paper.”
Julia had come into the room while he was speaking. “Dear daddy,” she said, “you’re very dense. Mother’s getting vain in her old age. She’s got a French milliner, she’s got a French dressmaker, she does her hair a new way, and she’s getting her figure back again. She’s quite a new woman, she’s given up working for womanhood generally, and she’s getting frivolous. She’s got a club—I mean a real club—in the West End, and one of these days she’s going to give a dinner party and ask you and me to it.”
“Well, well, well, if you’re quite sure you are not doing anything foolish,” said Alfred Whittaker; “I only want you to be happy in your own way. But I want you to bequitesure that you are not doing anything foolish. It’s not natural for a woman of your age to be starved down to skin and bone.”
“My dear Alfred! Think of the breakfast I have made this morning; I have had twice as much as you.”
“I rather doubt that,” said Alfred, patting himself in the region he had just filled, “I rather doubt that.But I should be more satisfied if you went to a heart specialist. Who is Dr. Money-Berry? What’s his line?”
“He is a specialist,” said Regina, with an air, “on all matters connected with the internal organs above the belt, and those bound in the chains of fatty degeneration of the heart, he sets free. To those whose food does not digest properly, he seems able to give a new digestion. I have full faith in his integrity and his skill, and I beg, dear Alfred, that you will not worry yourself. I am quite a new woman, regenerated, rejuvenated.”
“Yes, I know, but you are getting so thin.”
“And don’t you like me better thinner?”
“No, I couldn’t like you better, that’s impossible, but if you are better in health for being thinner it’s all very well. But if you are going on reducing yourself to a miserable skeleton nothing will make me believe it is good for you or make me declare I admire you, for I never shall.”
After he had gone she sat with a flushed and uneasy expression on her smooth face. As the gate clicked behind her father’s departing form Julia burst into laughter.
“Lor’, mother,” she said, “how can you bamboozle poor daddy as you do?”
“Julia!”
“Yes, I mean it. Poor daddy doesn’t see one inch before his nose, and you are a sensible woman. You let him think that Dr. Money-Berry is a specialist for fat round the heart.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Dr. Money-Berry is a specialist for fat round everywhere, whom fashionable women go to to have their figures made sylph-like. If Dr. Money-Berry depended upon cases of heart trouble he wouldn’t hang out very long in Harley Street, and nobody knows that better than you, mother.”
“Julia!”
“But,” Julia continued, “you’ve changed immensely during the last few months. I don’t know what made you throw up your societies and try to make yourself into a mere domestic woman; but you have regenerated yourself, that’s true enough.”
“I was too fat, Julia; it was not wholesome.”
“You were not more fat than you had been for the last ten years. I never remember you so thin as you are now. You have changed your milliner, you have changed your dressmaker, you do your hair a new way—you are a totally different woman, and I think daddy is quite right when he asks, ‘Where is it going to end?’”
How one admires a woman who takes an unexpected facer without making a scene!
How one admires a woman who takes an unexpected facer without making a scene!
Regina had come to the end of her period of martyrdom. Her weight was ten stones seven pounds, her waist was twenty-five inches. Her family had grown used to what both father and daughter stigmatized as “mother’s little vanities.” She was now a radiantly healthy, pleasing, well-dressed person of comely, middle-aged womanhood. It is true that she was hopelessly dependent upon Madame d’Estelle for her taste in dress and upon Madame Clementine for her choice of millinery. She was still an excellent customer at The Dressing-Room, and went there regularly to have her luxuriant hair brushed and waved in the fashion to which Alfred Whittaker and Julia no longer raised any objection. She had started a day at her club so that friends at a distance might take a cup of tea with her without journeying out to Northampton Park. She was not yet the chaperon of her daughter, for her daughter had long ago got into the habit of arranging her own life, but she was fully convinced that the new ways were a wideadvance upon the old ways, and nothing would have induced her to go back to her original state of benighted self-sufficiency. Never had Regina Whittaker known herself so thoroughly as since she had become aware of the existence of the hussy. And yet, it must be confessed that although she had absolutely remodeled her life, changed her way of being, taken a new standpoint from which to look out upon the world, she was no nearer the consummation of her dearest hopes, she was no more certain than she had been six months before that the heart of Alfred was indisputably hers and hers alone.
“You are going to dine in town again!” she said to him one dreary winter morning.
“My dear girl, you may rest assured that I should not dine in town if there were the ghost of a chance of my being able to get my dinner here, but I shall not be back till late, and I don’t know why you and the child should ruin your dinner because I can’t get back in reasonable time.”
“But Maudie and Harry are coming.”
“I can’t help that; you must explain to them. My dear girl, there’s such a lot at stake just now that I simply dare not leave it to chance. Come, come, be reasonable. One would think,” and he smiled benevolently down upon her, “that we were a young couple like our turtle doves, and that one could not dine without the other. I admit that I shall not enjoy it so much.”
“Shall you not?”
“Now, how can I? Probably there isn’t a man in London who is fonder of his home than I am, but atthe same time one wants to do the right thing by one’s home as well as to enjoy it.”
“But, Alfred, you don’t wish me to understand that the firm is in difficulties?”
“No, no, not in the sense you mean, but in another sense it is. The fact is, Queenie, I must stick to the ship now at whatever inconvenience to myself.”
“And to me,” said Regina.
“Well, dearest, and to you. But, come now, you are a strong-minded woman, you know how many beans make five as well as any woman I have ever met—better than most. I’ve got myself tied up with the biggest ass in London, whether he’s going out of his great mind, or whether he’s going to continue on, a danger to everyone with whom he comes in touch, I don’t know. The fact is, he’s not mad enough to be shut up in a lunatic asylum and he’s not sane enough to be allowed to come and go as he likes.”
“But you took in Tomkinson to relieve you.”
“And so he will in time, but he isn’t the head of the firm and I am. He’s a splendid man and I should have been furious if any other house in the same line had got hold of him; at the same time you can’t expect a man to take my place in the first six months of becoming a partner; it wouldn’t be reasonable, particularly as Chamberlain is such a difficult card to handle.”
“And where are you dining?” said Regina.
“Well, to-night I’ve got to dine possibly at the Criterion and talk over a business matter that Chamberlain has let himself in for, and which he is most anxious to get clear of with as little publicityand fuss as possible. Of course the situation with his wife is very difficult; she is a jealous, absurd, sensitive woman, and he makes her a shocking bad husband. It’s a pity he was not born to be a clerk with a pound a week, to have to keep his nose down to the grindstone to provide board and lodging; then he would have managed to keep himself straight. I shall get things straightened out in a few months if I can manage it, and then we will take that trip South that we were talking about. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I shall be happy anywhere with you.”
“We’ll take that trip South, it will do you good, and it will be a heaven-sent holiday for me, but I can’t go as things are now, and you mustn’t worry until I have got matters into something like order.”
“You are sure we are not spending too much money?”
“Oh no, no, no, it isn’t a question of money, but in one way it’s a question of business. Now I must be off.”
It happened that Julia had been listening during the entire conversation. “I say, mother,” she said, “if daddy is not coming home to dinner, why give Harry and Maudie the fag of coming out here? Let’s go and dine at the Trocadero and do a theatre afterward; it isn’t often that you and I have the chance of getting off on the loose by ourselves. We could easily send a wire or I could run over and see Maudie, and she could ’phone to Harry from their house.”
“Yes, that’s a very good idea,” said Regina, whocertainly did not want to sit at her own table in the absence of her lord and master and explain the exact circumstances of his absence. “You’d better wire, or—no—you might run over.”
“Then I’ll lunch with Maudie.”
“All right. We’ll dine at seven o’clock.”
“What theatre shall we go to?”
“You can settle that with Maudie, can’t you? Then you can ’phone from her house to any theatre you want to go to.”
“Very good. Do you know, mother, I think daddy is very worried. I wonder why everything seems to be Mr. Chamberlain; our house seems to be dominated by Mr. Chamberlain. I don’t know why daddy doesn’t get rid of him; he’s no good to anybody.”
“Ah, that’s easier said than done with a partner of any kind. Mr. Chamberlain may be a little wrong in his head, but he knows right enough when he is in for a good thing; it’s no use thinking about that, so we may as well make the best of it.”
So at seven o’clock a well-dressed and extremely happy quartette arrived in pairs at the Trocadero and took up a position at a table in the gallery. The dinner was excellent, the music was alluring, the company was abundant and well-dressed, and Regina, released from the thraldom of Dr. Money-Berry, was at liberty to eat whatever came in due course. Harry Marksby had chosen the champagne, and all was merry as a marriage bell, when suddenly Julia made a remark, “Why, there’s daddy,” she said, looking over the balustrade.
Regina looked in the opposite direction. “Really!he said he was going to dine at the Criterion or somewhere. I suppose his friend preferred to come here.”
“His friend is a lady,” said Julia.
Regina’s heart gave a sick throb, her eyes followed the direction of Julia’s gaze, and the next instant she beheld her noble Alfred sitting with his elbow on the table talking earnestly to a young and pretty woman.
“Don’t faint, darling,” said Julia in a soft undertone.
“I’m not in the least likely to faint,” said Regina, with superb dignity. “Doubtless your father will give a perfectly simple explanation of his being here with a lady. Thank you, Harry, I will have a little more champagne.”
Oh, she was a plucky woman, Regina Whittaker! It was not in her nature to show the white feather! Her suspicions had crystallized themselves into human form. There was the hussy who had haunted her for months past, there she was in the flesh! “And I must say,” said Regina to her own heart, “that Alfred does not look as if he were enjoying himself.”
As a rule, especially in the greater issues of life, little or nothing is to be gained by precipitancy.
As a rule, especially in the greater issues of life, little or nothing is to be gained by precipitancy.
During the rest of the dinner Regina made a valiant effort to appear as thoroughly at ease as if the portly gentleman down below was no kith or kin of hers. When she had once pulled herself together and realized the worst, she became the life and soul of the table, and Regina, mind you, was a woman of intellect, a woman of wit, when it pleased her to exert herself in that respect. She did not again allude to the fact that her husband was dining under the same roof as herself, until they made a move, intending to go to the theatre. Then Maudie, who was not endowed with much tact, demurred at leaving without making their presence known to her father.
“I must go and speak to daddy,” she said.
“Nothing of the kind,” said Regina in a fierce whisper, “nothing of the kind; I absolutely forbid it. Harry, you will back me up in this?”
Her tone was one of anxious entreaty, and Harry Marksby, who had been rather a gay dog in his very young days, although always tempered with a large amount of common-sense which had saved him fromgetting into a hole, took in his mother-in-law’s meaning at a glance.
“No, you can’t go downstairs now, my dear,” he said, giving her a vigorous nudge with his elbow, and Maudie, without in the least understanding, took the hint and said no more. “We’ll meet you at the theatre,” he added.
So presently Regina found herself sitting in a hansom with Julia beside her.
“I say, mother,” said Julia, as the cab started from the doorway, “that was a little awkward, wasn’t it? And how silly of Maudie! I really thought she had more sense.”
“Not one word of this to your father,” said Mrs. Whittaker in the same tone of fierce repression. “You children are quite mistaken, I understand it perfectly. You will not speak to your father of our having seen him? He would not be able to explain the circumstances to you.”
“Oh, certainly, not if you don’t wish it, darling. You’d better tell Harry to give Maudie warning because she’s sure to blab it out. Who is she?”
“I don’t know what her name is,” said Regina; “she is a person your father has some business with—business connected with the firm,” she added, with a dexterity of explanation which astounded even herself. “I have known of her existence for some time; your father has been almost worried out of his life about it, and it would worry him much more if he thought you children misconstrued his actions.”
“Oh, well, I suppose daddy is perfectly at liberty to do as he likes as long as he makes matters clear toyou. We have no right to dictate who he shall take to the Trocadero to dine.”
“My dear child—my precious child—” said Regina almost breaking down, but recovering herself with a snap as it were. Then she went on in the same fierce tone, “I shall not forget this, Julia, my darling; one can always rely on you in a moment of emergency, Maudie has not half your sound common-sense—she’s a feather head compared to you.”
“Oh, she’ll be all right. You tip Harry the wink—”
“What!”
“Oh! I beg your pardon, mummy, I forgot. Shall I tell Harry to stop Maudie blabbing?”
“I wish you would. You might explain to him a little. Now, here we are, here we are, now don’t let us speak of it again; it’s all much more simple than you children think.”
Now it happened that on the way down to the theatre, Harry Marksby had given Maudie a hint, or, as Julia would have put it, tipped her the wink, to say nothing whatever about what had occurred.
“I don’t understand why,” she had replied. “Why should daddy be dining with that bold-looking woman when mother thought he was dining with a friend at the Criterion?”
“Well, you can’t tell. As long as your mother doesn’t want it spoken of, it’s no business of ours. Now, hold your tongue, Maudie darling; I rely upon you not to say a word, you’ll only upset everybody’s apple-cart if you do.”
“Well, I’m not likely to say anything against myown father. All the same,” said Maudie, with the suspicion of a pout, “I do think that father ought to feel it incumbent upon him not to disgrace us in public places. If he was only dining with a friend why couldn’t I go and speak to him—I’m his own child? And if he was dining with somebody he wouldn’t like to take home—”
“And you can bet your bottom dollar he wouldn’t,” said Harry.
“Then I think he ought to give an account of himself.”
“Oh yes, I know, that’s justice, man’s justice. Come, come, come, Mrs. Harry Marksby,” said Harry in a tone of cheerful warning; “and here we are at the theatre. Now, don’t say a word to your mother, she’s upset enough, poor old lady.”
Now, as Mrs. Whittaker had dined the little party, it became Harry’s pleasing duty to give them supper, and from the theatre they went to a certain fashionable supper-room, again by means of a couple of hansoms. This time it was Julia who shared the hansom of her brother-in-law.
“Now, look here, Harry,” she said, “for goodness’ sake don’t say anything about having seen daddy to-night.”
“Why, what do you take me for? Do you think I was born yesterday—or the day after to-morrow?”
“But mother says she knows all about it, and that it’s much more simple than we think, and she thinks that Maudie will go blabbing it out.”
“Oh, that’s all right, I have given her a hint already. At the same time, I think your fatherought to—well—ought to make things a little more secure.”
“Yes, I know, but he had not the least idea that we were dining out to-night; it was quite an impromptu arrangement and daddy might be vexed if Maudie said anything to him about it—‘We saw you dining with a lady the other night’—you know, that sort of thing.”
“Is he—um—um—”
“What do you mean by um—?”
“Is he touchy?”
“Oh no, take him all round he is the most amiable person I know; but there are limits to every man’s patience, and if daddy is bothered with the firm’s business, as mother seems to imply, it might vex him; besides, mother doesn’t wish it mentioned, and that’s enough; he’sherhusband.”
“And, Julia,” said Harry Marksby, as they drove up to the door of the restaurant, “if every woman was as wise as your mother, there wouldn’t be much domestic broiling to worry the world.” And then he jumped out and held out his hand for Julia to alight.
Regina behaved admirably at this juncture; she kept it up, she made a very good supper; but then, you know, that was one of Regina’s excellent qualities; when in tribulation her appetite did not fail her. Finally Regina and Julia drove down to the nearest station on the district railway and took train for the Park. They found Mr. Whittaker already come in.
“Well, dearest,” he said, as they rustled into the dining-room where he was sitting reading, “you never told me you were going to galavant.”
“No; for, you see, we took it into our heads that we would go to a theatre, and then Harry and Maudie gave us supper at the Golden Butterfly afterwards. We have had a great time, haven’t we, Julia?”
“A great time,” said Julia. “I like a little supper after a theatre, it always seems so dull, bundling out and scrambling off to one’s train. And how long have you been home, daddy?”
“Oh, ever so long; I got home before ten. And what theatre did you go to?”
Regina explained, and Alfred mixed her a little whisky-and-soda, and Julia said she would go to bed, for she was dead beat, and so on; and still Regina said nothing beyond throwing out a feeler in order that her husband might confide anything to her if he wished to do so.
“You got through your business, Alfred?”
“Yes—yes, yes.”
“And brought it to a successful issue?”
“Well—I can’t exactly say that, but I have put things in train.” He gave a short angry sigh, as if he were vexed with himself and the world in general.
It was on the tip of Regina’s tongue to ask where he had dined. Perhaps if she had done so an explanation would have taken place between them and her mind have been set at rest; but a certain delicacy overcame her as if she, in dining at the Trocadero, without giving her husband due warning of the fact, had committed an indiscretion. So she simulated a fatigue which she was far from feeling and she went off to bed, followed two minutes later by Alfred,who declared himself to be tired out, and it was not until Regina found herself in bed in the dark, with her husband sleeping the sleep of the—shall we say?—just, beside her that she gave herself up to reviewing the situation. Well, “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” It may be so, but certain it is that Regina’s heart was very sore and sorry that night. Hope was deferred no longer, uncertainty had become certainty; she knew the worst! She had seen the hussy! It was beyond her understanding to know why Alfred could have allowed himself to be entangled by such a creature—so common, attractive only with a common attractiveness, pretty only in a common type of prettiness; young, yet not blooming. He had not looked happy; he sighed in his sleep.
“What shall I do?” said Regina to herself. “Tell him? No, no; never, never own for one instant that I have the smallest knowledge or suspicion that my husband is shared by a creature like that.”
She lay awake for hours during that night, and when the first faint streaks of morning came struggling in at the window, she had come to the conclusion that he was unhappy in that relationship, that he had been entangled and that freedom would be infinitely precious to him.
“I must work hard at my task of supplanting such a person,” she told herself, “I must be wary and wily and sweet, and must make myself attractive. Alfred has been most attentive to me since I went to Madame d’Estelle, and since Clementine made my hats for me and Florence rearranged my hair. Imust be wary and patient, always wary and patient, give him no excuse for wanting to go away from home, give him no sense of rest in any other place than under his own roof. It will not be easy—no, it will be most difficult. Poor fellow! he’s so set on keeping faith with me that he even resents any little thing that I do to change myself. I hate that woman! Yes, I have never hated anyone in my life as I hate that woman!”
I wonder is there a woman in the world who is not touched by a gift of beautiful furs?
I wonder is there a woman in the world who is not touched by a gift of beautiful furs?
It was fortunate for Regina that she had been in the past accustomed to live her life a good deal to herself. An ordinary wife and mother who started out on a scheme of rejuvenation as elaborate as that of Mrs. Whittaker’s would find it extremely difficult to account for the hours which she would have to spend outside her own house. The ordinary young girl in decent society usually has to explain to her mother what she has done with her day, sometimes what she is going to do, and must generally gain permission for any expedition which she desires to make. I have known young girls who considered surveillance to be what they indignantly termed espionage, and I have known much heart burning, much kicking against the pricks from the girls of the family because they were not, like their brothers, free as the wind, to go where they listed. But I must tell my readers that the espionage of mothers over daughters is as nothing compared to the espionage of daughters over a popular mother.
In a certain household with which I am intimatelyacquainted, these are some scraps of conversation which may frequently be heard:
“Well, darling, where are you going to-day?”
“Oh, I’m going out and about; I want to go along the High Street, and then perhaps I’ll go to tea with So-and-So, and I half promised to go to Fuller’s to tea with such and such a boy. I’m not going far away. I shall be out and about. Why—do you want me?”
“Oh no, dear. Be in by dinner time.”
On the other hand, this is a scrap or conversation from the same family:
“Are you going out to-day, mother?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, I’m going out.”
“Yes, but where?” Then follows a string of questions—“What are you going to do? What are you going to get? What time shall you be in? Do you want me to go with you? Is daddy going with you?” and so on. The simple answer, “I’m going out and about,” or “I’m going for a walk,” would in no wise serve that mother. If she managed to slip out without her family knowing the exact details of her programme she would certainly have to explain how she had spent every minute of her time when she got home again. “Well, where did you go? Who did you see? Where did you have tea? How many teas did you have? Did you have a good time? Are you tired? Why didn’t you let me know you were going? I wanted to go with you.” These are only a few of the questions that this particularmother has to answer whenever she happens to go out without attendance; and I say lucky it was for Regina that she had early inculcated the liberty of the subject into the hearts of her daughters twain.
Just at first, after giving up public life, she had made a feeble effort to assert the ordinaryrôleof motherhood, but she had found herself brought sharply to a realization of her own principles, that she was free as air, to do as she liked, and that Julia had the same privileges as herself. Fortunate it was for Regina that it was so, for she was able to continue her work of regeneration, carried out on the most twentieth-century lines, without being hindered by objections and comments from her husband and daughters. For Julia was accustomed to spend her days among her own friends and to follow her own inclinations, and Regina had been for many years accustomed to come and go without hindrance or comment.
Now, at this time, she became almost too busy to worry about even the existence of the hussy. Twice a week she spent an hour at The Dressing-Room, having her hair brushed and kept beautiful. Twice a week she attended thesalonsof her beauty specialist, who did all manner of quaint things to her complexion, smoothing, washing, patting, kneading, dabbing, spraying, using electricity and washes, and employing various other modes of rendering her skin beautifully smooth. Then twice a week she attended the classes of a fashionable expert in physical culture, and at her bidding Regina, clad in black satin knickers and a white blouse, innocent of corsets or any other artificialmeans of making a figure, went through a series of antics, from blowing her nose scientifically to hopping about in attitudes suggestive of a gigantic frog—only that Regina grew less and less gigantic, and more and more approached to the proportions of her daughters. And then Regina took to learning the bicycle. Her modesty suggested that she should start on a machine with three wheels, but the professor of that art, who ran a show in Regent’s Park—well removed from Regina’s own domain—assured her that it was absurd for a person of her age and generally healthy aspect to begin on a machine that he would recommend to anyone old enough to be her mother. So Regina, with many misgivings, set out to learn the bicycle. She was not an easy pupil to teach, but there is no doubt that the nose blowing, hopping, rolling over and over on the floor, and going through the many exercises which the expert in physical culture ordained for her had given her a degree of lissomeness which she had never enjoyed in the whole course of her existence.
These pursuits necessitated her lunching in town every single day in the week, and, having some time still on her hands, she devoted one hour in the week to learning fencing, and then she joined a bridge class connected with her club. And truly she proved what marvelous changes an ordinary, stout, podgy, somewhat self-indulgent woman, getting near her half century, can make in herself if she chooses.
“Regina,” said Alfred, one evening when she came down to dinner wearing a bewitching little confectionof silk and lace, which, if he had only known it, was called a coffee-coat, “my dear, are you still going to that doctor of yours?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Once a week, or so.”
“I feel very anxious about you.”
“But why, when I’m so well?”
“My dear girl, you are fading away, you are going to nothing, you are not as well covered as you were when we were married.”
“I am not skinny, Alfred!” said Regina, with dignity.
“Skinny! God forbid! But where are you going to stop?”
“In your heart, Alfred,” said Regina, looking at him very sweetly.
“But if you go on as you are at present, there won’t be anything of you left to stop!”
“Oh, you don’t understand. I had so given myself up to public life that I had let myself grow fat and ungainly, and I despised things that all women should think much of. But I have seen the error of my ways—and I feel as gay as a bird, as light as air. I only wish, dearest, that you would pay a little more attention to yourself.”
“I? Dear, dear, dear! You don’t mean to say that you want me to live on dog biscuits. I decline to do it, Regina, even to please you. I lead a busy life, although, thank God! I am able to make money. I often scamp my lunch—just taking anything thatcomes handy, but my good breakfast in the morning and my good dinner at night I insist upon having.”
“Oh, those good dinners!” said Regina, but she said it good-naturedly, and Alfred only laughed and began to serve the soup.
“Now try a little of this, Palestine soup—your favorite.”
“No, not soup, dear.”
“Why punish yourself? You are as thin as a match already.”
“Dr. Money-Berry warned me against soups.”
“Well, this once? I bought something for you to-day. Now, to please me you must have a little of this.”
“Very well.”
“Your sins shall be upon my head,” said Alfred.
“No, I will take my sins on my own shoulders,” said Regina.
It was not until the maid had left them alone that she asked him what the present was that he had bought for her that day.
“Ah, you wait till after dinner, old lady. I had the chance of buying something very nice at a quite reasonable price, and I took it, as I had to take it or leave it without any chance of consulting you. If you don’t like it you can hand it over to one of the girls.”
“I shall like it,” said Regina, and she asked no further questions.
It was after dinner, when they had retired to the pleasant drawing-room, that Alfred brought forth his purchase. It was a rather flat parcel, looking like arather large cardboard box done up in brown paper. With masculine pride Alfred snipped the string, undid the wrappings and brought to view the cardboard box that Regina had expected. Within were more wrappings of tissue paper, and these undone disclosed a large tippet or stole and a big muff of the order usually called “granny,” made of the finest dark sables.
“Alfred!” cried Regina, all in a flutter.
“Ah, I thought you’d say that. No question of handing them over to the girls, eh?”
“I should think not indeed. Why, darling boy, you must have given a fortune for them.”
He slipped the tippet over her head and kissed her at the same time. “Not too much for you, Queenie, but they did cost, well, a penny or two, but it was a bargain all the same. Now, put your hands in the muff and look at yourself.”
“Oh, Alfred—oh, Alfred, you do love me?” said Regina.
“Love you! Ever have cause to doubt it?” he asked quite sharply.
Regina was almost choked by her emotion. The psychic moment had arrived for her to make her confession, to tell him all her doubts and fears, all her efforts to make herself lovely in his eyes. “My Alfred, my noble Alfred,” she exclaimed, flinging her arms round his neck and clasping the muff against his head. She was on the point of saying, “Ihavesomething to tell you,” but she hesitated, in a manner unusual with her, for a choice of words. In the rush of gratitude she almost let slip that she had somethingto confess when the door opened, and Maudie, followed by her husband, came into the room.
“Furs! Dark sables! Darling, daddyhasbeen opening his heart to you.”
“Daddy’s heart is always open to me,” said Regina.
There is a great deal of wisdom in the old saying “Truth will out.”
Somehow those sables served to put Regina further from her husband instead of drawing her nearer to him. I’m sure that Alfred Whittaker himself would have been shocked had he known the effect that his gift had upon his spouse. Every day—nay, every hour tended to confirm her belief that the hussy she had seen dining with Alfred at the Trocadero had complete ascendancy over him, and yet those sables stopped her time after time from broaching the subject to him. They were, so to speak, a sop in the pot, and whenever Regina was on the point of laying her hand on Alfred’s shoulder and saying to him, plump and straight, “Alfred, is your heart still mine?” a vision of dark sables seemed to rise up and choke the very words in her throat. Most women would love to have a danger-signal in the shape of dark sables, rich and elegant, soft and cosy, at once luxurious and comforting, but there were times when Regina almost hated her sables because they seemed to have raised an extra barrier between herself and Alfred.
“Mother,” said Julia, one morning, when Reginawas about to leave the house on one of her strictly-personal expeditions, “are you going to Dr. Money-Berry again?”
“Yes, dear, I am. Why?”
“Do you think he is doing very much good?”
“Oh, I do, indeed! I consider that he has set me free, body and soul, from the burden that I used to carry about with me.”
“Oh—you mean—fat, darling? Don’t you think it suits you to be a little fat?”
“I don’t think it suits anybody to be fat,” said Regina, with the enthusiasm of the recent convert.
“And yet I have heard you describe daddy as a man of commanding presence. How would you like it if daddy were to starve himself down until all the command of his presence disappeared into nothingness?”
“Ah, but I was gross,” said Regina.
“I never knew you when you were gross,” said Julia. “I thought at Maudie’s wedding you looked lovely, and daddy said to me—”
“What did your father say to you?”
Julia drew a step nearer to her mother, and smoothed down, with tender yet nervous fingers, the stole of soft gray fur which was around her shoulders.
“Why don’t you ever wear your sables?” she asked irrelevantly.
“My sables?” said Regina. “Oh, I don’t like to wear them every day.”
“But when you are going to town, among smart West-End physicians—that doesn’t mean every day.I don’t suggest that you should put them on to go up the village in. Don’t you like them?”
“Oh, yes, no woman in the world would dislike them.”
“That’s what I thought. You know, mother dear, you’re cooking up something about daddy.”
“No, I would rather not discuss it with you, my darling.”
“Sometimes,” said Julia, still smoothing the stole up and down, “sometimes it’s better to get it off your chest.”
“What a very vulgar remark!” said Regina.
“Yes, perhaps, but very practical. Now, I’ve been watching you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Regina.
“Yes, we all wish others wouldn’t. You see, that night at the Trocadero let us all behind the scenes a little. Yes—I must speak, it’s been trembling on the tip of my tongue for weeks past, but, somehow, you always put me off. I believe that daddy could explain it all.”
“There is no necessity for explanation.”
She looked very stern, very severe; but Julia was minded to speak, and when Julia was minded to speak she generally had her say.
“You are quite a different woman to what you were when Maudie was married. You’re not fretting after her, that’s certain—an outsider might think so, but I know better. You’ve never told daddy a word about our having seen him at the Trocadero that night. You didn’t notice him very much; you resolutely kept your eyes away from him. I had no such delicacy offeeling, I watched him very closely. That woman is nothing to him. I don’t know why he was dining with her, I don’t know why he didn’t tell you about it, but he was bored and annoyed. He was trying to pull something off, and he couldn’t get what he wanted. If she ever had any sort of hold over him, that hold has long since ceased to be an attractive one—he was bored to death with her. I don’t know that Maudie wasn’t right.”
“You have discussed it with Maudie?”
“I have, or rather she has discussed it with me. She was all for going down and tackling daddy right away, and I believe her instinct was right, and that daddy would rather you knew he was there.”
“And Maudie thinks—?”
“Maudie? Oh, Maudie’s mind works in quite a different way to mine—always did. Maudie thinks it is just an ordinary affair of that kind, and left alone she would have gone down and taxed him with it, but Harry wouldn’t hear of it. But daddy was there and she was there—and a horrid-looking brute she was—but whoever she was, and whatever she may be, I am perfectly sure there is not the slightest occasion for you to worry about her, one way or the other.”
“I don’t—” Regina began, but Julia promptly cut her short.
“Oh, yes, darling, you do. You were quite a changed woman after that night—ah, and before that night, too. I know perfectly well that you are worrying, I could burst out crying sometimes to see the look on your face, and poor old daddy is quite unconscious, he hasn’t the least idea why you are so quiet and sounlike yourself. He asked me quite anxiously the other day if I thought you were over-doing the treatment with Dr. Money-Berry.”
“I believe,” said Regina, who before all things was loyal to her Alfred, “I believe that all persons inclining to stoutness would be better in health, and in mind too, if they would take means to keep themselves to proper proportions. Oh, Dr. Money-Berry is quite right in saying that fat is a disease, and should be treated as such. I have been to him once or twice lately because I was not sure that my symptoms were desirable. I am really going to him to-day to say good-by for the second time. Don’t worry about me, darling child, and don’t discuss your father with Maudie. I have never entered into details of business and I never intend to. Your father distinctly told me that he was dining with somebody on business; it would be intolerable for him, placed as he is, if his wife were to worry him to death every time he spoke to another woman. Dear little girl, you’ll be marrying one of these days, and you’ll have a husband of your own; then you will realize that between husband and wife discretion is truly the better part of valor. And I wish you would put that incident right out of your head—regard it as a business matter—and not think of it every time you think I am not looking as gay as usual. You know, my darling, I have many thoughts busying to and fro in my brain. I have never been a mere machine for ordering dinner, and although I have given up public life, I have not given up all my thoughts—I still have an intellect. Your father is the best and noblest man I ever knew. Oneof these days he will explain what, so far, he has only told me in part. But I must be going, I am rather late already. Tell me, are you occupied all day?”
“Yes, that is to say, I am lunching with Maudie, and then I am going on to my club.”
“No, come and have tea at mine. I shall expect you between half-past four and five.”
“Right you are, mother.”
And then Mrs. Whittaker went out, passed down the tessellated covered way and turned her face toward the station, conscious that she had that day graduated as a first-class liar. Well, if she had lied, she had lied in a good cause. If she had succeeded in restoring the faith of her child in husband and father, she had lied to some purpose, and surely the recording angel would drop showers of tears over the spot, and it would be blotted out forever. Her thoughts had reached this point when she reached the ticket office. She had to stand and wait for some time while two ladies fumbled with their purses, and while they discussed whether they would travel first or second.
“First-class to Baker Street—oh, yes, it’s horrid on that line, I always go first to Baker Street—and, my dear, if I didn’t meet him the very next day, walking along with a creature—oh! Twopence more? Thank you, I’m so sorry to give you so much trouble—yes, I met him walking with a bold, brazen hussy, and I never saw a man looking so crestfallen as Mr. Whittaker did when he saw me.”
There was a little waiting-room hard by the ticket office and Regina turned sharply round and took refuge in this dingy little retreat.
“My dear!” said the lady who had been listening to the one who had mentioned Mr. Whittaker’s name, “you have done the most awful thing you ever did in your life. Mrs. Whittaker was standing just behind you, and she heard every word you said.”
“Poor woman! Did she, really? Iamsorry! Well, I never believe in making mischief between husband and wife, but it’s a shame, and I do think that a man who is carrying on a double game ought to be found out.”
There is a certain class of woman who loves a fracas of any kind.
The waiting-room at Northampton Park boasted of no attendant, so Regina was able to sit down by the bare mahogany table and wait until the storm which possessed her had passed by. Poor Regina! The first thought that came to her was that after all she had lied to no purpose. It was no small thing to a woman of her sturdy and open mind that she had spun a perfect tissue of lies to her own child. She knew that she had lied in a double sense, for she had not deceived Julia, and she knew now that others were on the track of Alfred’s wrongdoings. She was shaking now, shaking like a leaf, and as she sat there, her sad eyes roaming over the customary literature that one finds on the table of a suburban waiting-room, she wished she had been left in her fool’s paradise. She realized with a great shock the truth of the old saw, “If ignorance is bliss, ’twere folly to be wise.” Yes, she would rather have been left in her fool’s paradise! But there, since the outer world was already talking of Alfred’s doings, it was small wonder that she had lit upon the truth also.
Her talk with Julia, and the little incident that had caused her to take refuge in the waiting-room, had made her hopelessly late for her appointments, but that, Regina felt, could not be helped. She turned, when she left the waiting-room, and walked across the green into the Post-Office, where she sent off a couple of telegrams, and then she took the next train to London and went straight to her club, where she lunched by herself. I need not go into the details of her day. She kept her appointments, behaved herself in a perfectly rational manner, and went home, poor woman, with a heart as heavy as lead. When she got home a terrible shock was waiting for her. Mr. Whittaker had come home, inquired for her, and gone off with a portmanteau and left a note for her on the dining-room mantelshelf.
“The master was so put out,” the intelligent parlor-maid declared, looking quite reproachfully at Regina, “he came in at five o’clock; of course there wasn’t a soul at home. I knew Miss Julia had gone to Mrs. Marksby’s, and I told master so, and he went to the telephone to speak through to Miss Maudie—I mean Mrs. Marksby, but the young ladies, they were gone out somewhere or other, and Mr. Harry wasn’t in, and I’d no idea where you was. Masterwasput out! He had a cup of tea, and packed his bag and he tramped up and down the road, and then he said to me, ‘Margaret,’ said he, ‘I must go or I sha’n’t catch my train, but I’ve written a note to the mistress, and be sure you take care of her whilst I am away.’ Those were his last words, ‘be sure you take care of her whilst I am away!’”
“Well, well,” said Regina, who did not believe in giving way in the presence of servants, “well, well, your master has had to go away on business, no doubt. His letter will explain everything.”
Her exterior was calm, but her heart was beating fast as she turned into the dining-room and took the letter off the chimney-shelf. She felt that the fatal moment had come, and that Alfred was gone. Alfredwasgone, but not in the sense in which her doubting heart had feared.