Jehane had been granted her wish and she was frightened. The river stretched before her, a lonely ghost, glimmering between soaked fields and beaten countryside. The rain-fall must have been heavy in the hills, for the river was swollen and discolored: branches, torn from overhanging trees, danced and vanished in the swiftly moving current. With evening a breeze had sprung up, which came fitfully in gusts, bowing tall rushes that waded in the stream, so that they whispered “Hush.” In the distance, above clumped tree-tops, the spires of Oxford speared the watery sky; red stains spread along white flanks of clouds—clouds that looked like chargers spurred by invisible riders.
The man of whom she knew so little and whom she desired was standing at her side. She was terrified. She had gained her wish—at last they were alone together.
Behind them, up the hill, the cosy inn nestled among its quiet arbors. Across the river the ferryman sat whistling, waiting for his next fare to come up. Moving away through misty meadows on the further bank a white speck fluttered mothlike.
“She’ll get home all right, don’t you think?”
“Why not? She always does.”
“But it’ll be late by the time she reaches Cassingland. She’s got to catch the tram into Oxford, to harness up and then to drive out to the rectory. It’ll be late by the time she arrives.”
“She’d have been later if she’d returned by river with us.—See, she’s waving at the stile.—Girls have to do these thing’s for themselves, Mr. Barrington, if they have no brothers.”
He stroked his chin. “Girls who have no brothers should be allotted brothers by the State.”
She faced him daringly. “I should like that. I might ask to have you appointed my brother.”
“You would, eh! Seems to me that’s what’s happened.—Funny what a little customer Nan is for making her friends the friends of one another: she was just the same in the old days. One might almost suspect that she’d planned this from the start—bringing us out all comfy, and leaving us to go home together.—But, I say, can you punt?”
“I can, but I’m not going to.”
He stepped back from her involuntarily and eyed her. There was a thrill of excitement in her clear voice that warned and yet left him puzzled. She filled him with discomfort—discomfort that was not entirely unpleasant. While Nan was present, she had been watchful and silent; now it was as though she slipped back the bars of her reticence and stepped out. He tingled with an unaccustomed sense of danger. He weighed his words before expressing the most trifling sentiment. Usually he was recklessly spontaneous; now he feared lest his motives might be mistaken. What did she want of him? She had gazed down from the window and beckoned him with her eyes—him, a stranger. Whatever it was, Nan knew about it, and had cried about it the moment his back was turned. He distrusted anyone who made Nan cry.
Silence between them was more awkward than words—surcharged with subtle promptings that words disguised; he took up the thread of their broken conversation.
“If you’re not going to punt, how are we going to get back? I’ll do my best, but you’ve seen what a duffer I am.”
“We’ll sit in the stern and paddle. With the current running so strongly, we could almost drift back.”
He followed her down the slope. She walked in front, her head slightly turned as though she listened to make sure that he followed. He noticed the pride of her handsome body, its erectness and its poise—how it seemed to glide across the grass without sound or motion. He summed her up as being abnormally self-conscious and wilfully undiscoverable. He wondered whether her restraint hid a glorious personality, or served simply as a disguise for shallowness of mind.—And while he analyzed her thus, she was scorning herself for the immodesty of her fear and dumbness.
Kneeling down on the landing to unfasten the rope, he pieced his words together. “I ought to apologize for what I implied just now. It must have sounded horribly ungallant to suggest that you should work while I sat idle.” She did not answer till they were seated side by side in the narrow stern. Taking a long stroke with her paddle, she shot a searching glance at him; the veil drew back from her eyes, revealing their smoldering fire. “That’s all right. I don’t trouble. You needn’t mind.”
Though she had not blamed him, she had not excused him.
Night was falling early; outlines of the country were already growing vague. Edges of things were blurred; from low-lying meadows silver mists were rising. In the great silence grasses rustled as cattle stirred them, the river complained, and a solitary belated bird swept across the dusk with a dull cry.
It was dangerous and it was tempting—he could not avoid personalities. He tried to think of other things to say, but they refused to take shape. His perturbation seemed the rumor of what her mind was enacting. Several times inquisitive inquiries were on the tip of his tongue; he checked them. Then her body lurched against him; their shoulders brushed.
“You have a beautiful name.”
“Indeed! You think so?”
“For me it has only one association.”
Again she brushed against him. He caught the scent of her hair and, in the twilight, a glimpse of the heavy drooping eyelids.
“I mean that poem by William Morris—it’s all about Jehane. You remember how it runs: ‘Had she come all the way for this’——?”
“You’re frightened to continue. Isn’t that so?” Her tones were cold and quiet. “‘Had she come all the way for this, to part at last without a kiss?’—I remember. It’s all about dripping woods and a country like this, with a river overflowing its banks, and a man and a girl who were parted forever ‘beside the haystack in the floods.’ Jehane was supposed to be a witch, wasn’t she? ‘Jehane the brown! Jehane the brown! Give us Jehane to burn or drown.’ There’s something like that in the poem—— I suppose I make you think only of tragic things?”
“Why suppose that?”
“Because I do most people.”
“In my case there’s no reason for supposing that. I oughtn’t to have mentioned it.”
“Oh yes, you ought. You felt it, though you didn’t know it. It’s unfortunate for a girl always to impress people as tragic, don’t you think? Men like us to be young. You’re so young yourself—that’s your hobby, according to Nan.—But if you want to know, you yourself made me think of something not quite happy—that’s what kept me so quiet on the way up.”
“I thought I’d done something amiss—that perhaps you were offended with me for the informal way in which I introduced myself.”
She gave him no assurance that she had not been offended.
“Here’s what you made me think,” she said:
“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.”
“Rather nice, isn’t it, to find that we’ve had such a cheerful effect on one another?”
“But—but why on earth should I make you think of that?”
She left off paddling and glanced away from him; a little shiver ran through her. When she spoke, her voice was low-pitched but still penetrating.
“Let me ask you a question. Do you think that it’s much fun being a girl?”
“Never thought about it.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
“I should have supposed that, for anyone who was young and good-looking, it might be barrel-loads of fun to be a girl in Oxford.”
“Well, I tell you that it isn’t. You’re always wanting and wanting—wanting the things that men have, and that only men can give you. But they keep everything for themselves because they’re like you, Mr. Barrington—they’ve never thought about it.”
“I’m not sure that I understand.”
“Bother! Why d’you force me to be so explicit? Take the case of Nan—she’s one of thousands. She’s got nothing of her own—no freedom, no money, no anything. She’s always under orders; she’s not expected to have any plans for her future. She creeps to the windows of the world and peeps out when her father isn’t near enough to prevent her. Unless she marries, she’ll always be prying and never sharing. She’s aLady of Shalott, shut up in a tower, weaving a web of fancies. She hears life tramp beneath her window, traveling in plume and helmet to the city. Unless a man frees her, she’ll never get out.—Oh, I oughtn’t to talk like this; I never have, to anyone except to Nan. Why do you make me? Now that it’s said, I hate myself.”
“Don’t do that.” He spoke gently. “I’m glad you’ve done it. You’ve made me see further. We men always look at things from our own standpoint.—I suppose we’re selfish.”
He waited for her to deny that he was selfish.
“There’s no doubt about it,” she affirmed.
They paddled on in silence till they came to the lasher. Together they hauled the punt over the rollers—there was no one about. When it had taken the water on the other side, Jehane stepped in quickly; while his hands and thoughts were unoccupied, she was afraid to be near him. He stood on the bank, holding the rope to keep the punt from drifting; his head was flung back and he did not stir. Through the network of branches moonlight drifted, making willows, gnarled and twisted, and water, rushing foam-streaked from the lasher, eerie and fantastic. He was thinking of Nan and the meaning of her crying.
“Miss Usk, it was very brave of you to speak out.”
She laughed perversely; she was so afraid of revealing her emotion. “You must have queer notions about me. I’ve been terribly unconventional.”
They drifted down stream through Mesopotamia, pursued by the sandal-footed silence. When Barrington spoke to her now, it was as though there lay between them a secret understanding. What that understanding was she scarcely dared to conjecture. Here, alone with him in the moon-lit faery-land of shadows, she was supremely at peace with herself.
At Magdalen Bridge they tethered the punt; it was too late to return to the barges.
Outside her father’s house they halted. Through the window they could see the high-domed forehead of the Professor, as he sat with his reading-lamp at his elbow.
“You’ll come in? You had some business with father that brought you down from London?”
“But it’s late. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to see him to-morrow.”
“Are you staying for long in Oxford?”
“I hadn’t intended.”
“But you may?”
“I may. It all depends.”
“Good-by then—till to-morrow.”
Professor Usk sank his head as she entered, that he might gaze at her above his spectacles. “Home again, daughter? Been on the river with Nan, they tell me! It’s late for girls to be out by themselves.”
She answered hurriedly. “Mr. Barrington was with us.”
“Ah, Barrington! Nice fellow! Did he say anything about my book?”
She was on tenterhooks to be by herself. “He’ll call tomorrow.”
“Have you been running, daughter? You seem out of breath. I’ve a minute or two to spare; come and sit down. Tell me what you’ve been doing. Did Barrington say whether that book of mine had gone to press?”
She backed slowly to the threshold and stood with the handle in her hand.
“I’ve a headache, father.”
She opened the door and fled.
Locking herself in her room, she flung herself on the bed and lay rigid in the darkness, shaken with sobbing. Pressing her lips against the pillow to stifle the sound, she commenced in a desperate whisper, “Oh God, give him to me. Dear God, let me have him. Oh God, give——”
When Barrington called on the Professor next morning, he did not see Jehane. She had stayed in bed for breakfast, to keep out of his way. She did not trust herself to meet him before her parents because of her face—it might tell tales. She was strangely ashamed that anyone should know of her infatuation. And yet she longed to meet him that she might experience afresh the sweet tingling dread lest he should touch her. Ah, if she were sure that he returned her love, what a different Jehane he should discover....
Though she did not meet him, she espied him the moment he turned into the street. Peering stealthily from behind the curtain, she was glad to notice that he glanced up, as though conscious that her hidden eyes were watching. Listening at the head of the stairs, she heard his voice. She heard him inquire after her, and tried to estimate his disappointment and anxiety when her father answered casually, “The daughter has one of her headaches.... No, nothing much. She may not be down this morning.”
After he had left, she was angry with herself for her cowardice. She ought to have seized her opportunity. Perhaps he was returning at once to London, where he would quickly forget her. She might never see him again.
By a kind of necromancy she tried to arrive at certainty as to whether or no he would marry her. If she could count a hundred before a cart passed a particular lamppost, then he would become her husband. When the cart went too fast for her counting, she skipped numbers and cheated in order to make the test propitious. Sitting in her bedroom, partly dressed, with the brilliant summer sunshine streaming over her, she invented all kinds of similar experiments.
At last she grew impatient of her own company and came downstairs to lunch. Her dreamy mother, who usually noticed nothing, embarrassed her by remarking that her face was flushed as though she were sickening for something. She turned attention from herself by inquiring the result of her father’s interview with Mr. Barrington.
Her father was annoyed because his book had been delayed in publication—quite unwarrantably delayed, he said. She could not get him to state whether Barrington had gone back to London. The conversation developed into an indictment of the innate trickiness of publishers. Mrs. Usk had never been able to reconcile the place she occupied in the world of letters with the smallness of her royalty-statements. It almost made her doubt the financial honesty of some persons. Jehane had listened with angry eyes while these two impractical scholars, comfortably interrupting one another across the table, swelled out the sum of their grievances. Now she took up the cudgels so personally and so passionately in the defense of publishers in general, and Barrington in particular, that she was moved to tears by her eloquence.
Her parents peered at her out of their dim eyes in concerned silence. When the tears had come, they nodded at each other, bleating in chorus, “She is not well. She is flushed. She is certainly sickening for something. She must go to bed. The doctor must be summoned.”
Jehane pushed back her chair. “You’ll do nothing of the kind. I’m quite well.”
After she had made her escape, it was discovered that she had eaten nothing. In a few minutes she reappeared in her out-door attire and announced that she was going to Cassingland.
“But, my dear, you can’t,” her mother protested; “not in your state. You may give it to Nan; it may be catching. And then, think how Mr. Tudor would blame us.”
Jehane tapped with her foot impatiently. “Don’t be silly, mother. I’m going.”
And with that she departed. Only one of the witnesses of this scene conjectured its true cause—Betty, the housemaid, who on more than one occasion had watched these same symptoms develop in herself.
At the stable where her father’s horse was baited Jehane ordered out the dog-cart. She did not know why she was going to Cassingland. Certainly she did not intend to make Nan her confidant—the frenzy of love is contagious. But Nan must know many pages of Barrington’s past, the whole of which was a closed book to her. Without giving away her secret, they might discuss him together.
As she drove along the Woodstock road and turned off into the leafy Oxford lanes, she laid her plans. She would affect to have found him dull company in the journey back from Marston Ferry; she would be surprised that anyone should think him interesting. Then Nan, with her sensitive loyalty to friends, would prove the splendor of his character with facts drawn from her own experience.
Down the road ahead a man was striding in the direction in which she was driving. At the sound of wheels he turned and, standing to one side, raised his hat. Blood flooded her cheeks. Her instinct was to dash by him. She could not endure his attitude of secure comradeship. He must be everything to her at once or nothing. Her eyes fell away from his, yet she longed to return his gaze with frankness.
“I’m in luck. When I called this morning, the Professor told me you were unwell.”
“I’m better.”
“I’m glad. I’ve been blaming myself for not taking sufficient care of you.”
Had he chosen, he could have crushed her to him then; she was made so happy that she would not have protested. But how was he to judge this from the proud, almost sullen face that watched him from the dog-cart?
He looked up at her cheerfully. “Bound for the same place, aren’t we? I’m tired of pounding along by myself; if you don’t mind, I’ll jump in and let you drive me.”
She nodded ever so slightly and he swung himself up. “Going to Nan’s?”
“To Cassingland,” he assented. “I want to see for myself the lady in her tower. D’you know, I can’t get that out of my head—all that you told me about girls.”
“Really.”
She spoke indifferently and flicked the horse with the whip, so that it started forward with a jerk.
“You’re not very curious. You don’t ask me why I can’t forget.”
“Why?”
“Because, with other conditions, it’s equally true of men.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You will when I’ve told you. To get on nowadays a fellow’s got to work day and night.”
“You’re ambitious?”
“Of course I am. I want to have power. I’ve not had a real holiday for years. Of course I’ve money, which you say girls don’t have; but I’ve responsibilities. I know nothing of women—I’ve had no time to learn. That’s why I’m so grateful to you for yesterday. With me it’s just work, work, work to win a position, so that one day some woman may be happy. So you see, I have my tower as well as Nan, where I’m doomed to spin my web of fancy.”
“But men choose their own towers—build them for themselves.”
“Don’t you believe it. Some few may, but so do some few girls. I wanted to go to Oxford and to write books and to be a scholar, instead of which I publish other men’s scribblings and do my best to sell ‘em.”
“I never thought... I mean I thought all men... But you’re strong: if any man could have chosen, you would have done it. Tell me about yourself.”
And he told her—his dreams, anxieties, small triumphs, and incessant round of daily duties. He was very fine and gentle, speaking with touching eagerness, as though confession were a privilege which he rarely allowed himself. Yet Jehane was not content; she knew that in love the instinct for confession is coupled with the instinct for secretiveness. When she touched him, he was not disturbed as she was; his voice did not quiver—he did not change color. She told herself that men were the masters, so that even in love they showed no distrust of themselves. But the explanation was not convincing.
They were nearing Cassingland. Ambushed in trees, rising out of somnolent lowlands, the thin, tall spire of a church sunned itself. Like toys, tumbled from a sack, about which grass had grown up, cottages lay scattered throughout the meadows. As they came in sight of the triangular green, with the tidy rectory standing, high-walled, on its edge, their conversation faltered.
He offered her his hand to help her out. She held back for a second, then took it with ashamed suddenness. He raised his eyes to hers with a boy’s enthusiasm.
“Miss Usk, it’s awfully decent of you to have listened to me.”
“It’s you who’ve been decent. You make everything so easy. You seem... seem to understand.”
He was puzzled. “I’ve done nothing but talk at unpardonable length about myself. As for making things easy, it’s you—you’re so rippingly sensible.”
She winced. No man falls in love with a woman for her sanity. It was as though he had called her middle-aged or robust. She wanted to appeal to him as weak and clinging. When people are in love they are far from sensible; she knew that she was anything but sensible at present. If he had told her she was capricious and charming, she would have shown him a face exultant.
Nan came tripping to the gate. “Thisisjolly—both of you together!”
Her coming was inappropriate; for the next few months all her appearances were to prove ill-timed so far as Jehane was concerned. And yet, what was to be done? Professor Usk’s house was too subdued in its atmosphere to be congenial. Moreover, the Professor invariably monopolized a man who was his guest—especially when the man was a publisher. Then again, Jehane was painfully aware that she was awkward in the presence of her parents, and did not create her best impression. So she did not encourage Barrington to call on her in Oxford. Naturally she turned to Cassingland, where you had the wide free country, and no one suspected or watched you because you were friendly with a man. Cassingland furnished an excuse for both of them: Nan was her friend; Mr. Tudor had been his tutor. Mr. Tudor, with his honest, farmer-like appearance and frayed clericals, lent an air of propriety to proceedings. And Nan—she helped the propriety; but she never knew when she was not wanted. She spoke of Barrington as Billy. She took his arm and snuggled against him with a naive air of mischief, leading him to all the spots along the river, in the garden and scattered through the fields, which years ago had formed their playground. Jehane resented her innocent air of belonging to him. So, very frequently when Barrington came down from London and she drifted out, as if by accident, to the rectory, she wore the mask of reserve and sullenness, and did not show to best advantage.
Barrington, for his part, was always equal in his temper—too equal for Jehane. With Nan he was gay and frivolous; to her he was grave and deferential. She wished he would display more ardor and less caution. If it had been in her nature, she would have made the running; she was pained by his unvarying respect.
All summer love’s shadow had rested on her. It was September now; the harvest lay cut in the fields ready to be carried. Nan had sent Jehane a message that morning that Barrington was expected; so here she was once more at the rectory, spending the week-end.
They had gone up to bed, leaving the men to smoke; suddenly Nan put on her dress, saying that she heard her father calling. Jehane prepared for bed slowly; by the time she was ready to slip between the sheets Nan had not returned. She blew out the candle; the room was instantly suffused with liquid moonlight and velvet shadow. In the darkness, as often happens, her senses became sharpened—she heard a multitude of sounds. Somewhere near the church, probably from the tower, an owl was hooting. In the distance a dog barked. She could hear the wash of the river among its rushes, and the padding of a footstep on the lawn. Romance in her was stirred.
Going to the window, she leant out; she was greeted by the strong fragrance of roses. Sheaves, standing in rows throughout the fields, looked like a sleeping camp. Trees, save where mists thumbed them, were etched distinctly against the indigo horizon. The white disc of the moon, like a paper lantern, hung balanced between the edges of two clouds. Its light, streaming down the sky, was like milk poured across black marble. Nature seemed to have blinded her eyes and to hold her breath.
Across the lawn from the open study window, a shaft of gold slanted, making the darkness on either side intense by contrast. As Jehane listened, she heard what seemed a panting close to the wall beneath her. She leant further out and discerned a blur of white. She was about to speak when the red glow of a cigar, thrown down among the bushes, warned her.
“At last! You’ve never given me a chance to be alone with you. I’ve wanted you all summer, little Nan.”
His arms were round her. As he stooped above her, her face was blotted out... He was speaking again.
“Your father saw it. That’s why he called you.... If I’d had to wait much longer, I should have asked you before her. Why—why would you never let us be alone together?”
Nan’s voice came muffled beneath his kisses. “Because, Billy darling, I wanted to play fair.”
“Fair?”
An answer followed, so softly whispered that it did not carry—a surprised exclamation from the man.
Jehane had tiptoed from the window.
With her black hair tumbled about her, her hands pressed against her mouth, she lay sobbing. The night had lost its magic....
Nan entered the room stealthily. She glanced toward the bed. Thinking Jehane was sleeping, she did not light the candle, but commenced to fumble at her fastenings, undressing in the dark. A sob refused to be stifled any longer. Nan paused in her undressing and stood tense; then ran and bent above the bed. Seizing Jehane by the shoulders, she tried to turn her face toward her.
“Oh, Janey, I did, I did play fair. I told you every time he was coming.... Say you’ll still be friends.”
But Jehane said nothing.
Next morning she greeted Barrington with her accustomed mixture of proud restraint and sullenness. “We’ve been expecting this all summer. We wondered when it would happen. I hope you’ll be very happy.”
After that she came less frequently to Cassingland. The lovers had long walks, uninterrupted, unaccompanied. Once he told Nan, “I can’t believe it, Pepperminta. I’m sure you were mistaken.”
“But I wasn’t.” She shook her curly head sadly.
They rarely mentioned Jehane. They knew that she was troubled; but they knew of no way in which to help.
At Christmas, when snow lay on the ground, they were married.
Nan, who had never feared spinsterhood greatly, had escaped from it. Jehane retired to the isolation which she sometimes called her tower, and at other times her raft. She often told herself savagely that, had it not been for her shyness in instancing Nan instead of herself on that journey down from Marston Ferry, she might have been the bride at that wedding. Secretly, she was bitter about it; outwardly, she kept up her friendship—otherwise she would have seen no more of Barrington.
Barrington did everything on a large scale—he knew he was going to be a big man. He arranged his surroundings with an eye to his expanding future. It was so when he bought his house at Topbury.
It had more rooms than he could furnish—more than a young married couple could comfortably occupy. But he intended to spend his entire life there, hanging the walls with memories and associations of affection. It would be none too large for a growing family. That was Barrington all over; he planned and looked ahead.
The house stood high in the north of London; it was one of twenty in a terrace—all with porches and areas in front, and long walled gardens at the back. To-day the octopus suburbs, throwing out tentacles of small mean dwellings, have crept across the broad views and strangled the rural aspect. But when Nan and Barrington went to live there, they looked out from their back-windows uninterrupted across the Vale of Holloway to Gospel Oak and the Heath at Hampstead. The approach to Topbury Terrace was through quiet fields where sheep were grazing. The oldest inhabitants still talked of a group of shops as Topbury Village. Many of the roads were private; traffic was kept back by gates or posts planted across them.
The house was a hundred years old, spacious and lofty. It had the sturdy look of Eighteenth Century handiwork. Though standing in a terrace, it retained its own personality and seemed to hold itself aloof from its neighbors. Once link-boys had stood before its doors and coaches had rumbled through Islington Village out from London, bringing its master home from routs and functions. Probably he was a portly merchant, accompanied by a dame who wore patches.
Adjoining its bedrooms were powder-cupboards; its lower windows were heavily grated against attack. All the entries were massively screened and bolted. It seemed to boast its privacy. In the garden were pear-trees, a mulberry and a cedar. At the bottom of the garden was a stable with stalls for three horses.
At first Nan was rather awed—she did not know what to do with it. Many of the rooms remained unfurnished. That was to be done slowly, by picking up old and rare articles—pictures and tapestries as they could afford them, a piece here and a piece there: this was to be their hobby. She was frightened by so much emptiness, and clung to her husband, puzzled and proud. Then, gradually, she began to understand: they were planning for the future greatness which they were to share. She was no longer frightened; she was glad.
There was one room in which they often sat. Sometimes they would visit it separately and surprise one another. When they entered, they became strangely bashful and childlike—it was holy ground. They left all their cruder ambitions on the threshold. They stopped talking or conversed in whispers, holding hands. It was on a halfstory, between the first floor and the second, and looked into the garden. Up the wall outside a magnolia clambered; against its window a laburnum tapped and shed its golden tassels. Everything was waiting for someone who was some day coming. A high guard stood about the hearth to prevent someone, when he began to toddle, from falling into the fire and getting burnt. A little bed was ready—a bed so tiny that you could lift it with one hand. On the floor toys lay scattered. Everything had been thought out for his reception long before he warned them of his coming. To bring home new toys and leave them there for Nan to discover was one of Barrington’s absurd ways of telling her how much he loved her.
It was in that room that they kissed after their first quarrel. It was there she told him that the little hands were being fashioned that were to be held so fast in theirs.
And he came one bright February morning, when crocuses were standing bravely above the turf and a warm spring wind was blowing. Nan hugged him to her breast, smiling and crying—she was so glad he was a man. They called him Peter—after the house his father said, because the house was Peterish and old-fashioned. William was sure to be contracted to Bill or Billy; one Billy was enough in any family——-
It was shortly after the birth of Peter that Jehane caught her man. It was said that she married him on the rebound, for she never ceased loving Barrington. She did it more to get off the raft, and to show that she could do it, than for anything.
Captain Bobbie Spashett had seen her portrait in a friend’s house. He was under orders to sail for India. He had six weeks in which to make her acquaintance, do his courting and get over the wedding. He proved himself a man of energy, managing the business with a soldier’s dash. Then he sailed for India, promising to send for her when he was settled. Unfortunately, before the year was out, he died in action.
In February, almost on the anniversary of Peter’s birth, his daughter came into the world. Jehane named her Glory, because of the distinguished nature of her father’s death.
When Captain Spashett’s affairs came to be settled, it was found that he had left his widow something less than a thousand pounds from all sources.
Then Jehane discovered that, in stepping off the raft, she had not reached the land. She went to live with her parents.
It was his own fault; he knew it in after years. Barrington was partly responsible for Jehane’s second marriage. It was he who suggested that, since Jehane was not happy with her parents, it would be decent to ask her up to Topbury for Christmas.
Did he like her? Well, hardly! He felt that she bore him a grudge. Whenever her name was mentioned, he and Nan had a guilty sense. They were so happy—they had everything that she coveted and lacked.
They asked her by way of atonement. When she objected that Glory would be a nuisance, they replied that Glory would be fun for Peter.—And it was he who, in the goodness of his heart, invited Waffles.
Ocky Waffles was not his sort. His very name was a handicap. A man named Waffles could scarcely command respect; but the Christian name made it worse. How could anyone called Ocky Waffles be a gentleman? He was his cousin, however, and lived alone in London lodgings. His mother was recently dead. Whatever his shortcomings, he had been an attentive son. The chap would be rottenly lonely, thought Barrington. Unadulterated Ocky he could not stand; but, if he could jumble him up in a family-party and so get him diluted, he would be very glad to do him a service. In the uncalculating days of boyhood they had been warm friends. So Mr. Tudor was persuaded to come from Cassingland and Ocky was invited.
In her twenty-eighth year, Jehane traveled to Paddingtonen routefor her second adventure in matrimony. Glory was with her, a golden-haired baby just beginning to toddle, the image of her soldier father. Jehane still wore mourning—deepest black, with white frills at her wristbands and a white ruff about her neck. Black suited her pale complexion—it lent her the touch of helpless pathos that her beauty had always wanted. Her manner was hushed and gentle, matching her costume. Her large, dark eyes had that forlorn expression of “Oh, I can never forget,” which has so often sealed the fate of an unmarried man. You felt at once that the finest deed possible would be to bring her happiness. At least, so felt Waffles.
But that Christmas there were times when she did forget. In her new surroundings, where she and Glory were no longer burdens, she grew almost merry. When memory clouded her eyes and restored the sternness of tragedy, it was not Bobbie Spashett she remembered, who had died a very gallant gentleman, fighting for his country; it was simply that, with proper care, Nan’s shoes might have been hers. When she saw Barrington slip his arm about his wife, and heard her whisper, “Oh, please, Billy, not now,” it made her wild with envy. She felt that it was more than she could bear. She was unloved, and so was Waffles; they had this in common, despite dissimilarities.
Ocky Waffles was a kind-hearted lounger. He was always late for everything—which left him plenty of time to devote to her. His best friends would never have accused him of refinement. His mind was untidy; he was lazy and ineffectual. His faculty for conversation was childish—hebabbled. He was continually making silly jokes at which he laughed himself. Because the world rarely laughed with him, he believed that his bump of humor was abnormally developed. He had met only one person as humorous as himself—his mother; she, admiring and loyal old lady, had laughed till the tears came at anything he said. But she was dead; he had lost his audience. He missed her and was extremely sorry for Ocky Waffles. No one understood his catch-phrases now, “Reaching after the mustard,” and, “Look at father’s pants.” They did not even know to what they referred; he had to explain everything. There was an element of absurdity and weak pathos about the man; when one of his jokes had missed fire he would dab his eyes, saying with a catch in his throat, “Oh dear, how mother’d have split her sides at that!”
Jehane was genuinely moved to compassion. Sinking her voice, she would lead him aside and whisper, “Tell it again, Mr. Waffles. I think I could understand.”
Before Ocky met her, the denseness of his friends had driven him to public houses, where other tales might be told without shocking anybody. With barmaids he could pass for a “nut,” a witty fellow. Grief drove him to it, he told himself. He was well aware that public houses were bad for his pocket and worse for his health. When Jehane seemed to applaud him, his thoughts naturally turned to marriage—marriage would cure every evil, and then—— Oh, then he would become like Barrington, with a loving wife, art-treasures and a fine house. It was only a matter of keeping steady and concentrating your willpower.
But to become like Barrington he would have had to be a gentleman. A top-hat never sat on his head as if it belonged to him. With his equals in birth and opportunity he could never be comfortable. He found it easy to be chatty with stable-boys and servants. This he attributed to his superior humanity. He was fond of walking down the street with a pipe in his mouth. When he sat on a chair, it was usually on the middle of his back with his feet thrust out. He slouched through life like an awkward boy, experiencing discomfort in the presence of his elders.
Since he could not cure himself of his habits, he determined some day, when he was ready for the effort, to get money; with money his habits would no longer be bad—they would become signs of democracy and independence. At the time of the Christmas party he was a clerk in a lawyer’s office—he had been other things before that. This was his worldly condition, when he met Jehane and fell in love with her.
They drifted together from force of circumstance; Nan and Barrington were still very much of lovers; Mr. Tudor spent his time on the floor with Peter and Glory. They were thrown together; there was no escape from it. Ocky was naturally affectionate; it was part of his weak amiability to love somebody. He craved love for himself—or was it admiration? But as a rule no one was flattered by his affection—it was always on tap. Jehane did not know that. Her wounded pride was soothed because he selected her. She was hungry for a man’s appreciation and anxious for his protection. And as for Ocky, to whom no one ever listened—he was encouraged by her pleased attention.
He sought her out at first in a good-natured effort to dispel her melancholy; his method was to regale her with worn chestnuts. She heard them with a slow, sweet smile on her mouth, which narrowed and widened, but rarely broke into mirth. This showed him that all his stories were new to her. The poor fellow was stirred to his shallow depths. A gusty passion blew through him; he struggled into seeming strength; he felt he was a man.—When you’re choosing a woman who will be condemned to hear all your old anecdotes over and over to the day of her death, it is very necessary to select one to whom they will come fresh, at least before marriage. Yes, she was the wife for Waffles.
Little confidences grew up between them. She told him about Barrington, hinting that he had wobbled between her and Nan. And he told her about Barrington, how as boys they had been like brothers, spending every holiday together, but now——.
But now, in Barrington’s own words, a little of Ocky went a long way; after an hour or two in his company he felt quite fed up with him. As with many a clever man, vulgarity of mind disgusted him more than well-bred viciousness. He found it difficult to hide his feelings from his guest. In fact, he didn’t.
Nan was the first to notice what was happening. “He’s making love to Jehane, I declare!”
Her husband shook his head knowingly. “Jehane’s too proud for that.”
“But he is. They’re always sitting over the fire, oh, so closely, and whispering together.”
“It can’t be. She’s amusing herself. If I thought it were, I’d stop it. Ocky may be a bounder, but he wouldn’t do that.”
“Billy boy, he’s doing it.”
“But he’s hardly got a penny to bless himself, and her little income wouldn’t attract him.”
“You may say what you like, old obstinate; it doesn’t alter facts.”
Jehane was proud, as Barrington said; but not too proud. She realized quite well what Waffles was, but she hoped to brace him up with her strength. She was by no means blind to his shortcomings. Often, when the smile was playing about her mouth, her mind was in a ferment of derision. At night remorse pursued her—the fine, clean memory of Bobbie Spashett.—But the constant sight of Nan and Barrington, their stolen kisses and love-words, were getting on her nerves. She looked down the vista of the years—was no man ever to conquer her? Was she to grow into an old woman with that one brief memory of her soldier-man? So love-hunger drew her to Waffles, despite the warnings of her better sense. The love-hunger was continually quickened by the sight of Nan’s domestic happiness.
When, after a week’s acquaintance, he said, “Mrs. Spashett, will you marry me?” she replied, “My brave husband!—I cannot.—I must be true to the end.”
When he asked her again two days later, she was less positive. “Oh, Mr. Waffles, there’s Glory.”
“Call me Ocky,” he said.
Then he changed his tactics. He argued his loneliness, their community of grief, the loss of his mother. When he spoke of his mother, she liked him best. “Give me time,” she murmured.
The crisis came on the last day of her visit, and was hastened by two foolish happenings. She detested the thought of the return to her parents’ silent house. She had persuaded herself that she was not wanted there; her child fidgeted the old people and disarranged the household. After the glimpse of warmth and heaven she had had, she magnified her troubles through the glass of envy. Oh, to have her own fireside, and her own man!—This was how the crisis happened.
Peter, aged three, was playing with Glory. With the clumsiness of childhood he knocked her down. She commenced to scream loudly—so loudly that she might have been seriously hurt. Jehane rushed into the nursery, caught her baby to her breast and, in her anguish, smacked Peter. Peter in all his young life had never been smacked; he watched her goggle-eyed and then set up a terrified howl. When Nan arrived on the scene, he was sobbing and explaining that he had only meant tosoftyGlory, which was his word for loving her by rubbing her with his face and hands. A quarrel ensued between the mothers in which bitter things were said. How did Jehane dare to touch Peter, her little Peterkins baby, who was always so sensitive and gentle! Nan was fiercely angry that her child had been unjustly punished; Jehane was no less angry because her child had been knocked down. When it was all over, the babies were told to kiss one another; Peter, when Jehane approached him, hid his face in his mother’s skirt.
Strained relations followed, which made light words impossible. Barrington, when he heard of it, was extraordinarily annoyed. Waffles, because she was in the minority, sided with Jehane. That her quiet, madonna-like adoration of Glory should have turned into tigerish protective passion attracted him strangely.
That evening Barrington had some friends to dine with him—men and women of his world, whose good opinion he valued. During dinner and afterwards in the drawingroom, Waffles had been ousted from the conversation; their talk was all of books and travel—things he did not understand. He felt cold-shouldered—crowded out. He resented it, and was determined to show them that he also could be clever.
He waited for an opening-. A pause in the conversation occurred. He sprang into the gap. That he was irrelevant did not matter.
“Heard a good riddle the other day. Wonder if any of you can answer it.” All eyes turned in his direction. He cleared his throat and fumbled at his collar. “If a cat ate a haddock and a dog chased the cat, and the cat jumped over the wall, what relation would the dog bear to the haddock?”
There was embarrassed silence. Every face wore a puzzled expression. Barrington pulled his cigar from his mouth and gazed sternly at the glowing ash.
At last a lady, who wrote poetry, took compassion on him. She tapped him on the arm. “I can’t think of any answer. Put me out of my suspense. I’m so anxious to learn.”
Waffles beamed his acknowledgments. “That’s the answer,” he said eagerly; “there isn’t any answer.”
Barrington ceased to be vexed with his cigar and laughed coldly.
“You mustn’t mind my cousin. He’s a genial ass. Sometimes it takes him like that.—Let’s see, what were we discussing when we were interrupted?”
So there were two people with wounded feelings in that company. Ocky saw Jehane slip out of the room, and he followed. On the stairs she halted.
“Why are you following?”
“I’m not wanted. Confound their stupidity.”
“But why should you follow me?”
“Because you’re the same as I am. That’s why you left; you’re not at home here. Look how they behaved about Glory. I say, it’s our last evening together. Won’t you give me—”
But, ridiculous as it appeared to her, an almost maidenly fear took hold of her; she fled. He found her in the dark, at the top of the tall house; she was leaning over her child’s cot sobbing. He grew out of himself, stronger, better; against her will, he folded her to him.
“Won’t you give me your answer, darling?”
Silence.
“I’ll be very good to Glory.”
Still silence.
“Oh, Jehane, I’m so foolish—such a weak, foolish fellow; I need your strength. With you I could be a man.” Then all that was maternal awoke in her. She remembered how she had seen him looking empty-handed, while those clever men and women had stared. “You musn’t mind my cousin. He’s a genial ass. Sometimes it takes him like that.”—Cruel! Cruel! She took his head and pressed it to her bosom, kissing him on the forehead.
Nan, disturbed by their disappearance, found them kneeling, hand-in-hand, beside Glory.
That night as she sat before her mirror undressing, she let her hands fall to her side, listless. Barrington stole up behind her and kissed her on the neck, rubbing his face against hers.
“That’s what Peter calls softying.”
“But you weren’t thinking of Peter, little woman.”
“How did you know that?”
“You looked sad. What’s the trouble?”
She bent back her head, so that their eyes met and their lips were near to touching. “If I hadn’t been there that day, would you have loved Jehane instead?”
“Pepperminta, I was in love with you when we played together at Cassingland. Why ask foolish questions?”
“Because it’s happened.”
“You don’t mean—?”
“Yes. She’s taken him, and I’m sure she doesn’t want him.”
Barrington drew himself upright, then stooped over her; he was realizing the perfect joy of his own union with a startled sense of thankfulness.
“Poor people,” he murmured.
Three months later Jehane was married. The wedding was quiet; there were none but family-guests. No one felt that it was an affair to boast about. It took place from the Professor’s house at Oxford; Mr. Tudor performed the ceremony. Glory was being left with Nan till the honeymoon was ended. All morning Jehane’s face had been gloomy; perhaps she already had her doubts. Certainly Mr. Waffles did not show to advantage in art Oxford atmosphere. He was too boisterous. His shoes were too shiny. The colors of his tie and button-hole clashed. His clothes looked ready-made. At parting with her mother, Jehane did the unexpected—she wept.
On their drive to the station through austere streets, with bright glimpses of college quadrangles and young bloods in shooting-jackets and dancing-slippers, sauntering bareheaded, Waffles grew more exuberant and irrepressible; his ill-timed gaiety grated on her nerves. Having taken their seats in the carriage, the train was delayed in starting. He hung his head out of the window, jerking jocular remarks to her across his shoulder. She did not answer him, but sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes cast down. He could not make her out; up to now she had responded so readily to his merriment. At all costs he must make her laugh.
The station-master was passing down the platform, his hands clasped beneath his flapping coat-tails. Not every station-master guards the gate-way to a seat of learning. This particular station-master felt the full importance of his position and carried himself with his stomach thrust forward and his head thrown back.
Waffles leant from the window and beckoned frantically. When the official came up, he commenced to jabber in invented gibberish, desperately gesticulating with his hands.
“Don’t understand you,” the official said tartly; “don’t talk no foreign langwidge.”
Waffles paused in his torrent of palaver and winked solemnly at a group of undergraduates who stood watching. They happened to be pupils of the Professor. Then, as though an inspiration had burst upon him, he inquired, “Parlez-vous FranÃÆçais?”
“Nong. I do not,” snapped the station-master, annoyed that his lack of scholarship should be exposed in this manner.
He was moving away, when Waffles produced his crowning witticism, to which all the rest had been preface. Jehane would certainly laugh now. “Hi! Station-master! Does this train go to Oxford?”
He had one glimpse of the insulted official’s countenance, then he felt himself grabbed by the arm and drawn violently back into the carriage.
“Do you want to make me ashamed of you already. Sit down and behave yourself.”
“But darling—”
“Oh, be quiet. Aren’t you ever solemn? Is nothing sacred?”
Exceedingly puzzled and utterly extinguished, he did as he was bade, waiting like a small boy expecting to be spanked.
That was how they began life together.