"Then you'll think better of it?" his mother pleaded. "You'll change your mind and come back with me to High Corner? Father will say nothing. Your mad freak shall be forgiven and forgotten."
"Steady on, Mother. I can't leave Mary like that. You see, it's a bit awkward. I thought I should have been married to-day, and so we should have been if I hadn't made a muddle about the license. I wanted to be married in a register office, but Mary stuck out for a church. She can't believe that any other kind of marriage is genuine. Besides, I don't want to give her up, if that's what you mean by coming back to High Corner."
His mother argued with him in vain. He did not attempt to answer her, but stood sulkily first on his right leg, then on his left leg until she stopped talking.
"I don't agree with you that she'll drag me down, as you say. I think it will buck me up to be married."
"But, my dear boy, look at your surroundings already. Look at this horrible hotel. How on earth did you ever come to discover such a place? It's like some dreadful place in a French novel."
"The bedrooms are all right," Geoffrey said. "And we've been eating out. I think if you'd let me bring Mary down to see you, you wouldn't be somuch upset by the prospect of my future. Anyway, you needn't think I'll disgrace the family. I've made up my mind to emigrate. It's a funny thing, but when a fellow does what he thinks is the right thing to do, he gets more blamed than if he just plays about with a girl."
"Geoffrey," said his mother, "I'm grieved that I cannot see things from your point of view; but you are too young, my dear boy, to hamper yourself like this so early in your life. I have never told you before; but I think that it is only fair that I should tell you about your grandfather. He quarreled with his father because he insisted on marrying my mother. They emigrated, and both he and my mother were drowned. I was a baby then, and I was about the only person saved from the wreck."
"Well, it's much safer traveling nowadays," argued Geoffrey obstinately. "And anyway I don't see that it did you much harm."
"But it caused infinite misery to others. My grandmother never really got over it. It brought about the extinction of the Flowers."
"I'm sorry, Mother, but I can't go back on my word. Besides, we've been living here as man and wife. It wouldn't be right."
This boy of nineteen to be talking of living here as man and wife!
Mary was suddenly chilled.
"Very well, Geoffrey, if you will not listen to me, I must see what your father can do. You must remember that you are not yet of age, and if your father sees fit to exercise his authority you willhaveto obey. I shall telegraph for him at once."
"Perhaps Father will condescend to see Mary before he does anything," Geoffrey said. "Perhaps he won't judge her as you have judged her without seeing her."
Mary turned away from her son and went quickly from the room. She felt when she walked up Buckingham Street as if she was struggling up through some horrible drain to reach the air.
In the hall of her own hotel the porter told her that Mr. Alison had arrived and was waiting for Mrs. Alison in Mrs. Alison's room. Mary went upstairs, glad that he had come, because he might do something with Geoffrey. He might remonstrate with the girl and persuade her to give him up. In books it would have been herself who would have done that; but books seemed to forget that a mother could be as proud as anybody when her deepest feelings were outraged.
"Mary, my poor little wife, prepare yourself for a dreadful shock," Jemmie cried when she entered her room.
In an instant she guessed that it was bad news about Richard.
"South Africa," she heard herself murmur with a tongue that was parched with apprehension and horror.
"A telegram from the War Office."
"Jemmie, he's not dead? He's only wounded?"
"My poor darling Mary, our boy is dead."
"Richard! Richard! Richard!" she wailed to the roar of London, the cruel roar of London which let young men die to keep the city roaring.
"It wasn't even in battle. He was in charge of a convoy. He was ambushed. By God, Mary, I'd like to burn the scoundrels in Parliament who talk about brother Boer. I'd like to throw them down into Trafalgar Square from the top of Nelson's Column. Lloyd George and the whole skulking crew. It's they who are encouraging the Boers to go on with this guerilla warfare. Mary, don't look so white. Shall I ring for some brandy? Did you do anything about Geoffrey and this marriage?"
"Geoffrey!" the mother echoed, and her voice was like the tinkling of broken ice. "Let him do what he likes, and go where he likes, and die where he likes. I want Richard. Do you hear? I want Richard. I want him. I want him. He's mine. He can't really be taken away from me like this. There must be some mistake in the name. Mistakes are made. We must go to Africa and make sure.We'llemigrate," she laughed, and then mercifully the tears began to flow.
Chapter Six
THE WIDOW
Chapter Six: The Widow
Jemmie Alison had been buried a fortnight. The rays of the fallow November sun lighted the table in the window of his old study at which his widow was seated engaged upon the task of sorting out his papers. Mary's hands frilled with snowy organdie were now the hands of her grandmother whenshewas fifty, fifty years ago. Otherwise she did not resemble Lady Flower, being of a fairer complexion with roses still fresh upon her cheeks and rich brown hair on which the gossamer spun by age was less conspicuous than the first rime upon October leaves. She had paused for a moment from her task and was staring out at the drooping chrysanthemums that gave to the garden of Woodworth Lodge such an aspect of mournfulness and decay. Why did not Markham take them up? There was nothing so melancholy as flowers which had outstayed their season. Winter was at hand. Of what use was it to try to prolong the illusion of summer? Winter was not to be cajoled by such pretenses. Besides, chrysanthemums were at best funereal blossoms. How high they had been heaped a fortnight ago, wreath upon wreath, on Jemmie's coffin.... She turned back to her task of sorting out the papers; but a minute or two later she stoppedto reproach herself, as she had reproached herself many times daily since her husband's death with having failed to be as deeply moved by it as she ought. No doubt the protracted illness, when he lingered month by month after the doctors had declared that he could not survive another week, was partly responsible for the absence of emotion. She had been preparing so long for the death that, when at last he did die, she discovered that there was no emotion which she had not already exhausted. Yes, although while he lay dying all those weeks she had fought against a monstrous and wicked hope that the agony would not be too long protracted, at the end her only definite feeling had been one of relief. Poor old Jemmie, he had been so good throughout those weary weeks. The nurses had assured her that they had never known such a patient. It was strange that a man who throughout his life had allowed himself to be disconcerted by the smallest interference with his minor comforts should be able to endure without a murmur months of fierce pain. There must have been something fundamentally noble about Jemmie, some bedrock of character impervious alike to violent passions and the fretful whims of ordinary existence. Impervious at any rate to the latter. It was verging on the ludicrous to associate violent passions with Jemmie, for surely no man ever lived less subject to the stress of the unattainable. Not that his exemption should detract at all from her admirationof his suffering. On the contrary she should yield him a greater respect, because he could never have been tested in the whole of his life as he was tested every hour of that last illness. But herself? Had that endlessly drawn out vigil revealed in herself any fundamental nobility of character? Outwardly she had been all devotion. She had accepted the flattery of the nurses, the laudation of her friends, the pathetic gratitude of her husband for the care she lavished, the zeal with which she waited on him, the affection never in all their married life so freely given as when he lay dying. Yet always at the back of her mind had lurked the question when it would be over, the desire to be quit of her obligation, the longing to be herself for the remainder of her life. Or was she doing herself an injustice in thinking that? Was it not really the nervous strain of expecting the inevitable for so long which made her sigh for that consummation to achieve itself? It was foolish to exaggerate one's deficiencies. It savored of a morbid self-interest. These inward contests in which women permitted themselves to indulge, especially in books, were nothing more than a subtle form of self-flattery. They were another aspect of the schoolgirl's habit of talking a situation to death. The female mind could never resist the remnants of a conversation a whit more easily than it could resist a July sale.
Mary compelled herself to concentrate upon the task she had taken in hand, and for a while she wasable to keep her thoughts fixed upon her husband's papers. How neatly he had kept his receipted bills until January of this year. Here was a thin sheaf for 1910, the record of the last month he spent walking about before he took to his bed. There had been plenty of bills all through this year for doctors and nurses and medicine, and at last for the funeral. But it was she who had kept them, so they were lying about anyhow. How vexed Jemmie would have been with her if he had known that she had already mislaid the undertaker's receipt.
"I wish you would try to be more business-like."
She could hear his voice so plainly that she looked round the room, and noted with a pang of regret that this pallid sunshine was not so weak but that it lighted up the dust upon his empty pipes. Was it conceivable that Jemmie was regarding her at this moment from another sphere? Was there really anything in spiritualism? She had wished to experiment with it after Richard was killed; but Jemmie had been so contemptuous of the idea and so profoundly convinced of the fraud it was, that she had lacked the courage for a real investigation. There was no Jemmie now to deter her. She must have a talk with Mrs. Hippisle who so firmly believed in the possibility of communicating with the dead ... yes, it would make such a difference if one could only be sure.
1909? Nothing but bills in that file. It would be prudent to keep them. Not that it was likelyone of Jemmie's tradesmen would be dishonest. He had always patronized the oldest and most respectable firms in London. Still, there might be a clerical mistake. Better to keep 1909. 1908? She turned the leaves of that file. To one Angora coat ... to cuffs for same ... to one large bottle of Crinum ... to one large bottle of Doctor Gunter's Hair Tonic ... to one large bottle ... Jemmie had never ceased to abuse hair-restorers, but in his sixty-third year he was still the victim of their audacious promises.
If she did decide to take up spiritualism, she should not be so gullible as that. Why, Jemmie had begun to lose his hair before he was married! 1907, 1906, 1905, 1904. All receipted bills. 1904? A letter in Geoffrey's handwriting. That was queer.
Hopkinsville,Ontario,April 4th.My dear Father,Thank you very much for the check you sent me. I am hoping very much that the milk business will turn out as well as I hope. I now owe you £420. Do you want me to send you a formal I.O.U.? Or will this acknowledgment by letter be enough?Your affectionate son,Geoffrey.
Hopkinsville,Ontario,April 4th.My dear Father,
Thank you very much for the check you sent me. I am hoping very much that the milk business will turn out as well as I hope. I now owe you £420. Do you want me to send you a formal I.O.U.? Or will this acknowledgment by letter be enough?
Your affectionate son,Geoffrey.
It was strange that Jemmie should never have mentioned that he was giving Geoffrey money. And stranger still that he should keep his son's letter with the receipted bills of hatters and hosiers. Perhaps there were other letters. Mary examined again more carefully the recent files. Yes, here was another that spoke of receiving money two years later, written from Winnipeg. And here, why here in 1909 was a letter from London!
45 Almond Terrace,Wood Green,November 15.My dear Father,Thank you very much for the £100 which brings up my debt to £930. I shouldn't have bothered you again, but the expenses of getting back from Canada and the birth of our little girl have made things rather difficult. I am going in for the cinematographic business which from what I can see looks like being the business of the future. I've got a job as studio manager with a new firm who I hope will prove to have some staying power. I don't think any good purpose would be served by my coming to see you. I've kept out of your way for so long now that it's better to keep out of the family for good. It would be useless to pretend that Mary doesn't feel a certain amount of resentment, and now that we have our little girl we get on very happily. Please do not misunderstand my motive inwriting to you like this. If it was only you I might take a different course. But there is Mother to be considered. She would feel—quite rightly from her point of view—that the baby ought to be brought up in different surroundings. This would only cause bad feeling between her and Mary, which I would not like. I haven't made such a terrific success of my life, and so I am perhaps a bit oversensitive. It seems very ungrateful to write like this after your kindness, but I hope you will understand that I'm trying to act for the best. I am sorry to hear that you've not been feeling quite yourself lately. I hope it's nothing more than the effect of the beastly weather we've been having. I'm glad to be back in England again. I don't know what made me choose Canada as a country to settle in.Your affectionate son,Geoffrey.
45 Almond Terrace,Wood Green,November 15.My dear Father,
Thank you very much for the £100 which brings up my debt to £930. I shouldn't have bothered you again, but the expenses of getting back from Canada and the birth of our little girl have made things rather difficult. I am going in for the cinematographic business which from what I can see looks like being the business of the future. I've got a job as studio manager with a new firm who I hope will prove to have some staying power. I don't think any good purpose would be served by my coming to see you. I've kept out of your way for so long now that it's better to keep out of the family for good. It would be useless to pretend that Mary doesn't feel a certain amount of resentment, and now that we have our little girl we get on very happily. Please do not misunderstand my motive inwriting to you like this. If it was only you I might take a different course. But there is Mother to be considered. She would feel—quite rightly from her point of view—that the baby ought to be brought up in different surroundings. This would only cause bad feeling between her and Mary, which I would not like. I haven't made such a terrific success of my life, and so I am perhaps a bit oversensitive. It seems very ungrateful to write like this after your kindness, but I hope you will understand that I'm trying to act for the best. I am sorry to hear that you've not been feeling quite yourself lately. I hope it's nothing more than the effect of the beastly weather we've been having. I'm glad to be back in England again. I don't know what made me choose Canada as a country to settle in.
Your affectionate son,Geoffrey.
Geoffrey had written this only a year ago. Perhaps he was still at the same address. Mary felt inclined to order the car so that she could drive immediately to Wood Green, wherever Wood Green was, and find out. She had risen from the table before she remembered that Muriel had taken the car for the afternoon. But to-morrow she would go. Nothing should stop her to-morrow.
Poor old Jemmie, he must have been pining for his son. He must have had a vague presentimentof his last illness. And how extraordinary that he should have said nothing about the birth of Geoffrey's little girl. To have lain there all these months silent about that great event! It was strange too that he should not have left any money to Geoffrey. Perhaps he had known when he left in his will everything to her that she would find out from his papers about Geoffrey and the little girl, and had trusted to her to make some provision for them. It might be that all those years he had been anxious for a reconciliation and that he had waited for a word from herself to give him an excuse to make the first move. He would have been too proud of his own accord to propose the reconciliation; but if he could have salved his pride by pretending that he was receiving Geoffrey back into the family on her account, there was no doubt that he would have done so. Oh, it was clearly her duty to go to-morrow and find out if Geoffrey was still in Wood Green. It was her duty to the dead man and to her own self. Few might be the gray hairs of her head, but heavy had been the frost upon her heart all these years of middle-age. The more she thought about it, the more remarkable appeared Jemmie's secretiveness. What could have been at the back of his mind? To be sure, when first Geoffrey married, it was she who had been of all the bitterest against him. But there had been some justification then. She had not stayed implacable. Yet she had never suggested a reconciliation, whichit was her place to do. Jemmie might be pardoned for supposing that she did not want one. But what a pity! He would have died more happily if he had been friends at the last with the only son left to him. How much she hoped that he could be looking down from that mysterious hinterland of death, and that he might behold her setting out to-morrow on her mission of good-will.
How far had she got with the papers? Oh yes, 1904. 1903? Nothing from Geoffrey in 1903. Nothing from him in 1902 either. She wished that Jemmie had kept his first letters from Canada, for there must have been earlier letters. Those first hundreds of pounds must have been begged for with tales of misfortune in Canada. Or had Geoffrey written casually in the beginning as he used to write to her from Oxford for a hundred pounds? Perhaps that was the reason why his father had always spoken bitterly of him in those first years of the marriage. 1901. Mary turned pale. Here was the bill for Richard's uniform.Received with compliments and thanks... the money that equipped her boy to be killed. The paper with its royal warrants was as fresh as the day on which it was printed. But Richard! Her Richard! What was Richard now? And here in the file for 1900 was the bill for Richard's uniform as a cadet at Sandhurst. All these years going backward from this date held something of Richard. 1899? White waistcoats for Richard when he gotinto Pop at Eton. How delighted he had been! 1898? 1897? 1896? Tophats for Richard every year. 1895? The right kind of Eton jacket, "because a chap at my private school told me to be jolly careful about that, mother." And Jemmie had remembered from his own Eton days how important it was to be jolly careful about that. 1894? School fees. 1893? Richard's straw hat with the second eleven ribbon of his private school. That hot summer of 1893 when they had moved in to High Corner for the holidays. 1892? School fees, and the bill for a bicycle in which Jemmie had invested to reduce his growing stoutness. That bicycle with cushion tires of which Jemmie had been so proud, but which almost immediately became old-fashioned by the invention of pneumatic tires. How Richard and Geoffrey had scorned his offer of it to them! They would not be seen dead on such an out-of-date old boneshaker; and two years later Richard had been given £7 10s. to buy from a friend at school a second-hand one with huge pneumatic tires. His first big present. It had made both him and his mother feel so very old.
1891? The doctor's bill when Richard had diphtheria. That was the year when she might have changed the whole course of her life. Ought she to have confessed the impulse of that May evening to Jemmie before he died? From the file of bills dropped a lilac-hued and even after twenty years still faintly lilac-scented scrap of notepaper.
Frivolity Theater,May? Wednesday.Darling old Podge,I can get away to-night, so you must come. Thanks everso for the duck of a ring. My eye, won't it dazzle some of the mashers in the front row when we open next week. Lots of love.FromMaudie.
Frivolity Theater,May? Wednesday.Darling old Podge,
I can get away to-night, so you must come. Thanks everso for the duck of a ring. My eye, won't it dazzle some of the mashers in the front row when we open next week. Lots of love.
FromMaudie.
1891? May, 1891? It could not be just a coincidence that this old letter was in the file of 1891. That must have been the year when Jemmie received it. And the month was May. That was the time when Jemmie was so frequently having to be away for the night on business. But why should he have filed only this note? It surely had no more sentimental value than many others he must have received from this Maudie. It must have been put away with his papers by accident. Perhaps this was the very note that kept him from coming home to dinner that night when Pierre came and when Richard fell ill.
"If I had known of the existence of this Maudie, would anything have kept me from going away that night?" Mary asked herself.
The sere chrysanthemums were lost in the wan radiance of the November sunlight: the sodden lawn and greasy London trees vanished: the outlines of other houses no longer affronted the vision.Mighty palms cooled the fervid air with their green and glittering fans: their trunks were wreathed with odorous trumpet-flowers to steal whose honey came fluttering a myriad humming-birds with breasts of emerald and lapis-lazuli, and rubied wings, and tails of fire.
"My boys have cut a path before us through the forest. Let us ride through, my love, to the sea."
Perfume on perfume, color on color, with the forest stretching behind them and before them.
"You are tired, my love. Dismount. Here is a filanjàna in which you may travel through the forest to the sea."
A filanjàna, a filanjàna. Thus had Pierre named the palanquin in which he promised that she should travel with him in Madagascar. A filanjàna! A filanjàna! Swaying lightly in a filanjàna, she traveled on through the forest to the sea. Sun-birds and parroquets and purple kingfishers flew down the forest glade on either side of the gently swaying filanjàna; and so at last they came to the sea ... the sea ... to the nipped and withered chrysanthemums and the slimy city trees.
"If I had known that Richard would be killed ten years later, and that Geoffrey would run off with a barmaid, would I have gone away that night?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I should have known that one day I should be fifty."
"Am I really fifty?"
"Yes. I am fifty, fifty, fifty. How strange that I should have remembered that word filanjàna. It had been hidden away all these years in a secret room of memory like a bit of jewelry that one buys on a voyage."
"Yes, but if I'm fifty, Maudie can't be much less. What happened then to her and what happened then to me matters nothing, to either of us."
"Poor Maudie!"
She could not have had any illusions about Jemmie, or she would never have called him Podge. It was not a name that could share a grand passion. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Still, Podge and Juliet. No, whatever Juliet might think about roses and Montagues, she would never have called Romeo Podge.
"But I need not reproach myself with not having told him about Pierre."
How long had Maudie lasted? Probably until Jemmie took up golf, and that was soon after they bought High Corner in 1893. He must have forgotten all about her, or he surely could not have been so indignant with Geoffrey when he was first told about the girl at the White Hart. Yet if Jemmie did involve himself in a romance, it was her own fault. She had never encouraged him to be romantic with her. When they were first married she had let him think that any kind of affectionate demonstrativeness was distasteful to her. It hadbeen. She had known nothing of life. Muriel was different. Somehow girls nowadays seemed able to find out much more. One could not imagine Muriel's marrying anybody, because her mother advised it. But it was time for Muriel to think about marriage. She was twenty-five. The modern girl was inclined to cherish her independence too long and too dearly. Next season it would be well to make a point of inviting suitable young men to the house. Perhaps, with the strain of Jemmie's illness, she had allowed Muriel's interests to be neglected. And Muriel herself was discouraging. She had always been remote even at school; but Newnham had made her more than remote. She was now as unapproachable as the inhabitant of a star. Jemmie, dead though he was, seemed nearer to her than Muriel. It was not surprising that she was still unmarried. Young men must stand in awe of her. Those calm cold eyes lacked any expression that might lead even the most self-confident young man to suppose that she could be thought of in connection with marriage. No doubt, as she grew older, she would acquire the warmth of humanity; but at present she was a statue. And then there was her Socialism. That was a very unattractive side of Muriel. That continuous drip of ice-cold water upon all existing laws and institutions, upon all creeds and sentiments and political opinions, could not but be alarming to the average young man. Why should she be so hostile to established beliefs? It was not as if she hadtoo much church-going forced upon her when she was small. She had had to go to church once every Sunday; but the rest of the day, at any rate when she was at home, had been hers without Puritanical restrictions to sicken her of religion for the rest of her life. Yet the contempt with which she spoke of Christians was quite unpleasant to hear. Moreover, she had a habit of attributing the worst motives to many dull but essentially worthy people, a trick of assuming that they did not in their hearts believe what they professed. According to Muriel the world consisted of idiots and hypocrites, an opinion which was not calculated to make young men fall in love with her. Nowadays, girls were really as great a problem as boys. No wonder people were beginning to have fewer children.
1890 ... 1889 ... 1888 ... these early bills could all be burnt. Ah, there was Markham setting to work at last to clear the borders of the chrysanthemums.
Mary did not change her mind about her visit to Wood Green; nor did she allow herself to be deterred by Muriel's indignation at not being able to have the car in order to drive round the sights of London the Northern delegates to a conference that was being held in town.
"It's very inconvenient, Mother," she protested.
"I daresay it is, dear. But it would be still more inconvenient for me not to have the car this afternoon."
"You see I'd promised the committee...."
"I'm sorry, Muriel dear, but I am unable to let you have the car this afternoon. And your committee cannot complain. They are doing their best to make it impossible for people to keep cars. So really while they allow us to keep them, we had better make the most of them. You'll have to take your party from Sheffield in an omnibus. You can really see more of London from the top of an omnibus."
"The point is that it makes me look somewhat ridiculous," said Muriel.
"No more ridiculous than you would look tearing about London with these gentlemen in your mother's car."
Driving along to Wood Green, Mary wondered why they allowed trams on these crowded roads. They made it most dangerous for a car to drive fast; now that she was on her way to heal a breach that had endured ten years, every minute gained seemed of the utmost importance. It would be terrible to find that Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace a month ago for some unknown destination. He must have read in theMorning Postor inThe Timesthe announcement of his father's death, and if he was still in London it was strange that he had not attended the funeral. A quarrel should not be allowed to endure after death. Of course, there was a chance that Geoffrey had missed the announcement and that he was actually unaware of hisfather's death. London was so huge. One realized how large it was when one drove along roads like this, past clanging trams full of people, past side-street after side-street, each of them leading to other side-streets which led to others full of human beings who all lived in London just as one lived in London oneself. If Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace, she should never find him; and she might die without his knowing that she was dead, without his knowing that she had sought him out for a reconciliation.
"Does Mr. Geoffrey Alison live here?"
"Ye-es," grudgingly admitted what was evidently a landlady of the common vulturine type, beneath whose outspread apron lurked a fledgling. "Ye-es," she repeated. "Was you wanting to see him about anything?"
"Please."
"Well, he's out," said the landlady with a triumphant sniff. "And not likely to be back till late, what's more. Yes, he was out soon after ten this morning. Soon after ten—well, it was about five after as near as a touch—soon after ten, he was out. I suppose you're from the Pictures where he works? Any message, of course, as you care to leave with me I'll see he 'as it, and no one can't do more than that."
"But I wanted to see him myself," said Mary, pausing undecided upon the steps of the little two-storied house.
"Ah, there you are," the landlady rejoined. "Well, I can't do no more than what I've said. Leave off, do, Eric," she exclaimed, slapping her son's hand for some misdeed committed upon the apron that sheltered him from observation. "One don't know which way to turn with children sometimes, and that's a fact."
"Perhaps I could see ... Mrs. Alison?" Mary suggested.
Little did the landlady know how much it cost her to make that simple inquiry.
"Mrs. Alison?" the woman echoed with a return of that first suspicion in her manner. "Well, I'm sure I don't know what to say. Eric! If you don't give over picking at my boot-buttons, my lad, I'll give you something to remember with next time. Stand up, you naughty boy. Who should I say wants to see Mrs. Alison?"
"I'm Mr. Alison's mother."
This announcement was altogether too much for the landlady, who without another word grabbed Eric by the hand and led the way upstairs to the lodgers' sitting-room.
"Here's Mr. Alison's mother to see you, Mrs. Alison," she exclaimed in the doorway, after which thunderclap she returned to her own intimate glooms at the back of the house, admonishing Eric to ush if he didn't want to get such a slapping as would properly ush him for a week.
As Mary entered, the woman who had ruinedher son's life rose from an arm-chair by the fire and putting a finger to her lips pointed to a cot.
"Molly's asleep," she exclaimed.
"My granddaughter," said Mary.
"My little gurl," replied the other with a burr that in these sharp-set London lodgings sounded strange. There was nothing about her except the accent to proclaim that she was rural. Mary remembered that Geoffrey had said she was three years older than himself. That would make her about thirty-two. She looked nearer forty with her thin-lipped anxious mouth, her fretful eyes, and needle-like fingers. It was hard to perceive now what beauty had charmed Geoffrey into marrying her. However, she did not appear blatant, which was something to be thankful for.
The two women had been watching each other in silence, when the child in the cot gave a low restless cry. At once they both made an instinctive movement to see what was the matter; but the mother was the quicker to bend over and murmur a few soothing words.
"Her teeth are fidgeting her," she explained. "She's been late in cutting them." In that instant she seemed to think that by saying so much she was offering her visitor more than she had intended to offer, and she drew close her eyebrows in a scowl.
"Not that my little gurl's teeth can interest you," she added scornfully.
"On the contrary," said Mary. "They interestme enormously. I did not know until yesterday that I was a grandmother. As soon as I knew, I came to see my granddaughter."
"But you knew that you were a mother ten years ago. You weren't in any hurry to come then except to try and keep Geoff from marrying me. That was all your worry then."
"You must think of the situation from our point of view. Geoffrey was not even of age. It was our duty to protest against his committing himself to a marriage before he knew his own mind. But isn't it rather a mistake to argue about the past now? I am anxious to forget the past."
"Some people can forget very easily," said the younger woman, "others can't."
"You may not know that Geoffrey's father is dead."
"Geoffrey does know, so there. And he wanted to go to the funeral, but I said, 'No, you don't want them to think that as soon as your father died you was looking around for what you might pick up. You let well alone,' I said, and Geoff he took my advice. 'Your father's been dead to you,' I said, 'this many a year. There's no call for you,' I said, 'to attend his funeral all on your own. I'm not going to wear black for him,' I said. 'And I'm not going to his funeral, not if you was to ask me on your bended knees.'"
"Whatever you think about me," said Mary, "you've no right to speak like that about my husband. Why, I've just found out that all these years he has been helping Geoffrey with money whenever he asked for it."
"He wouldn't ever have been asked for it, if I'd had my way. I'd sooner have starved in the gutter,Iwould. But Geoff's got no pride, Geoff hasn't."
"You should be the best judge of that," said Mary. She regretted the sneer as soon as she had uttered it, not because she minded hurting the feeling of her son's wife, but because it might jeopardize the object she had in view, which was nothing less than to be awarded the guardianship of her granddaughter. An immense jealousy had been roused in her by the sight of the sleeping child, and she was thinking how well she should know with all her experience the way to bring her up. It was imprudent to say anything that might increase her daughter-in-law's hostility. In order to obtain what she desired Mary compelled herself to think of this woman as her daughter-in-law.
"It's no use for you to be sarcastic with me," said Geoffrey's wife. "Geoff's tried being sarcastic once or twice. But he always got the worst of it. Always."
Mary had a vision of Geoffrey's existence during these ten years. She was filled with a profound pity for him, picturing him forever in rooms like these, the prey of his wife's tongue, the victim of her determination to drag him down to her level. It never struck her that the child in the cot whom she was soeager to take for herself was probably the only thing that made his life endurable.
"I'm sure it's a mistake to be sarcastic," Mary admitted. "I'm sorry, Mary. You know I find it quite difficult to call you Mary, because it's my own name. I really came this afternoon to try to effect a reconciliation. I'm anxious to be friends. It's useless to live in the past. We should all be miserable if we did that, for we all of us make mistakes. It struck me that it might be difficult for you and Geoffrey suddenly to re-enter the family circle—a very small circle nowadays. Only myself and Muriel. So, I didn't suggest that you and he should come and live at Woodworth Lodge or anything like that. But what I thought was that perhaps you might be glad to let me assume the responsibility for that little girl in the cot. If she was allowed to live with me, you would of course be coming to see her often, and then gradually we should get to know one another, and this gulf between us might be bridged."
"Never!" cried the mother. "I wouldn't let you have my Molly for nothing. Not if she was going to die the next minute. I'd sooner for her to die than have her go to you. I suppose you think I'm not fit to look after my own little gurl? Well, you've made a mistake, let me tell you. I'm as fit to look after her as what you are. She's mine. She's not yours. She never shall be yours, not while I'm alive anyway. I suppose you think I ought to be so proud because I've married a gentleman that I ought tosit still for the rest of my life with my hands crossed on my lap and do nothing. Only be proud. But I didn't marry Geoff because he was a gentleman. I married him because I loved him. I suppose you think a woman like me can't love? I suppose you think it's only ladies who can love? But that's just where you're wrong. I've loved him so much that I've been angry with myself for being so soft and carried on at him something cruel. You wouldn't have done that, would you? But I've nagged at him until he's been fit to jump into the lake, which is near where we were living at Hopkinsville. Only it isn't like a lake. More like a sea really. I suppose you think that I wouldn't dare to be jealous, just because I'd married a gentleman? I suppose you think I ought to have let him do just what he wanted? Not me. Why, he couldn't be half an hour late without I was ready to tear his eyes out to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing. I reckon sometimes he wished he'd never set eyes on me. But I loved him all the time. You needn't make no mistake about that. I've wished sometimes he'd beat me, but he never raised his hand to me. Not once. Though I've nagged him enough to make any man hit me, even though he might have been a gentleman. And then last year, when I'd given up all hopes of such things, my little Molly came along, and since she came I've been better with Geoff. I seemed to feel he belonged to me at last, because the kid's half him and half me, as I figure it out. And now youcome along and want to carry off my Molly. Never. That's my last word. Never! Perhaps if you'd come along before my little girl arrived and wanted to carry off Geoff, I might have let him go. I was fond enough of him to do that, I believe. Once I'd thought it was really for his good. But now him and me has never been such friends, just because we've got the baby. Our baby. His and mine. Not yours, and she never will be."
The child whose future was at stake was disturbed by the clamor of her mother's voice and woke up shrieking.
Mary waited a moment or two in embarrassment, uncertain how to get herself out of the room. In the end she went away in silence.
When she reached home, she sat down and wrote to her daughter-in-law:
Woodworth Lodge,Campden Hill, W.,November 9, 1910.Dear Mary,I am afraid that you misunderstood the spirit in which I paid you my visit to-day. I feel that you may have imagined that my proposal for you to let me assume the responsibility for Molly's future meant that the little girl would be taken away from you. What I intended was that she should be the means of bringing us all together again. Perhaps in a little time you will be able to look at the situation with less bitterness. I do so hope that you will. Please accept this check as a belated wedding present andBelieve me to be,Yours affectionately,Mary Alison.
Woodworth Lodge,Campden Hill, W.,November 9, 1910.Dear Mary,
I am afraid that you misunderstood the spirit in which I paid you my visit to-day. I feel that you may have imagined that my proposal for you to let me assume the responsibility for Molly's future meant that the little girl would be taken away from you. What I intended was that she should be the means of bringing us all together again. Perhaps in a little time you will be able to look at the situation with less bitterness. I do so hope that you will. Please accept this check as a belated wedding present and
Believe me to be,Yours affectionately,Mary Alison.
To which she received the following answer from her daughter-in-law:
Dear Mrs. Alison,Thank you for the check which I would rather not accept if you don't mind. I'm sorry I was rude when you came to see me, but I should only be rude again, and so it's better for you not to come.Yours sincerely,Mary Alison.
Dear Mrs. Alison,
Thank you for the check which I would rather not accept if you don't mind. I'm sorry I was rude when you came to see me, but I should only be rude again, and so it's better for you not to come.
Yours sincerely,Mary Alison.
And from her son:
My dear Mother,I'm afraid you will think us ungracious in the way we've received your kindness. I'm afraid that Mary allowed herself to give vent to a good deal of the resentment she has had ten years to accumulate.I feel I ought to have written to you about poor Father's death, but for various reasons I was naturally a little shy of intruding myself at such a moment, which I'm sure you will understand. I expect you know that from time to time Father very kindly helped me with loans. I should like to be in a position to repay these, but that is impossible. However, I seem to be fairly well fixed up now in a job, and I would rather not incur any more obligations. It is better, I feel, that Mary and I should continue to lead a life apart from the rest of the family. Please do not think that I am giving way to a false pride in taking up this attitude. I do feel that I owe a duty to Mary as the mother of our little girl. I wish I was a better hand at explaining myself. But she would never fit into the sort of life she would have to lead if she were to be "adopted" now. You may say that she never would have fitted in. I do not wish to give the idea that I am reproaching you for the past, but I do believe that if that day you came to the hotel where we were staying you had welcomed her as a daughter you would have found her responsive. She has become hard during these ten years, because, poor little girl, she felt that she had spoilt things for me. She was becoming really quite difficult to manage in her moods until Molly was born. But now, thank God, we are quite happy together, and so long as I can keep my job I believe that we shall go on being happy. I very much fear, however, that if she felt that she was not considered good enough to bring up her baby she would sink back into her former state of resentment, and the peace which we now enjoy would be destroyed.So please forgive me, dear Mother, for the way we have received your kind visit. I do often think about you and wish that things had gone differently.I want you to believe that it is very difficult for me not to come and see you. But I know that if I did I should be weak and try to persuade Mary to do what you want. And then there would be difficulties, and I am so tired of squabbles. I feel wretched at writing to you like this, but I've braced myself up to do it, and it's done.Your loving son,Geoffrey.
My dear Mother,
I'm afraid you will think us ungracious in the way we've received your kindness. I'm afraid that Mary allowed herself to give vent to a good deal of the resentment she has had ten years to accumulate.
I feel I ought to have written to you about poor Father's death, but for various reasons I was naturally a little shy of intruding myself at such a moment, which I'm sure you will understand. I expect you know that from time to time Father very kindly helped me with loans. I should like to be in a position to repay these, but that is impossible. However, I seem to be fairly well fixed up now in a job, and I would rather not incur any more obligations. It is better, I feel, that Mary and I should continue to lead a life apart from the rest of the family. Please do not think that I am giving way to a false pride in taking up this attitude. I do feel that I owe a duty to Mary as the mother of our little girl. I wish I was a better hand at explaining myself. But she would never fit into the sort of life she would have to lead if she were to be "adopted" now. You may say that she never would have fitted in. I do not wish to give the idea that I am reproaching you for the past, but I do believe that if that day you came to the hotel where we were staying you had welcomed her as a daughter you would have found her responsive. She has become hard during these ten years, because, poor little girl, she felt that she had spoilt things for me. She was becoming really quite difficult to manage in her moods until Molly was born. But now, thank God, we are quite happy together, and so long as I can keep my job I believe that we shall go on being happy. I very much fear, however, that if she felt that she was not considered good enough to bring up her baby she would sink back into her former state of resentment, and the peace which we now enjoy would be destroyed.
So please forgive me, dear Mother, for the way we have received your kind visit. I do often think about you and wish that things had gone differently.I want you to believe that it is very difficult for me not to come and see you. But I know that if I did I should be weak and try to persuade Mary to do what you want. And then there would be difficulties, and I am so tired of squabbles. I feel wretched at writing to you like this, but I've braced myself up to do it, and it's done.
Your loving son,Geoffrey.
Geoffrey's letter did not have the effect upon his mother of a rebuff. At any rate she had no emotion of mortification or wounded self-esteem when she read it. She felt as if she had tried to bridge the chasm between the living and the dead and failed. Geoffrey had passed out of her life as irrevocably as Richard. She shivered for a moment in the chill of age and wondered how she should occupy herself for the remainder of her life. So long as Jemmie had been alive she had always had somebody who wanted her solicitude, but now that Jemmie was dead nobody seemed to want her. Yes, she ought to have behaved differently ten years ago. She ought not to have let the loss of Richard embitter her like that. It was her own fault that Geoffrey and his wife wanted to live their life apart from her. She could leave money to her grandchild. That was something. It was thoughtful of Jemmie not to attempt to say what was to be done with his money. Her own, of which he had always had complete control, naturally remained her own. It was to be hoped that Muriel would soon be cured of this Socialistic craze. She did not want to have her money spent upon furthering the schemes of faddists. Jemmie would have hated that. Jemmie was always so normal and sensible. If he did have that temporary infatuation, it was her own fault. Twenty years ago she had neglected him, and he had sought consolation elsewhere. Ten years ago she had neglected Geoffrey, and he too had found consolation elsewhere. Before it was too late she must make an effort to understand and sympathize with Muriel. She had perhaps been too ready to believe that the shyness and awkwardness of Muriel's youth sprang from a natural lack of affection. Not that Muriel was so very young nowadays; but the rift had begun when she was still a schoolgirl, and all rifts tended to widen with time.
"Dear child, I wish you'd tell me something about the various movements in which you're interested. I daresay I've been stupidly conservative in my attitude. You know, everything has changed very much during the last ten years. You'll have to be patient with people like me who were brought up to think that Queen Victoria always had been reigning and always would be reigning."
Muriel stared at her mother from those candid blue eyes of hers.
"It's rather difficult to explain suddenly in a fewwords the culmination of centuries of human thought," she said.
Mary laughed.
"You mustn't snub me like that, Muriel, unless you want me to remain hidebound by my own prejudices and conventions."
"But, Mother, it isn't really worth while for you to believe in what I believe. You must be young to believe it. You must believe that before you die you'll see your dreams brought to pass."
"Am I so old then?"
"You haven't forty years of activity before you. I'm not being very discouraging when I say that."
"Have you forty years before you, dear child?"
"I hope so."
"1950," her mother mused. "So you think that, when you're fifteen years older than I, you'll see the millennium? It sounds a long way off—1950. But, Muriel, you've no idea how near it really is and how little people will have changed."
"You said just now how much they had changed in the last ten years."
"I think that in these ten years they have accomplished what ordinarily would have begun long before and taken longer. You can't expect to have another reign like Queen Victoria's."
"No, thank goodness," said Muriel fervidly.
"England wouldn't be England without that reign."
"The question is, 'Is England our England?'"Muriel countered. "I should say that England belongs to a few rich people and that the reason why it does was the worship of money during the Victorian Age."
"I don't think that people worshiped money then more than they did at any other period of the world's history. People will always worship money, because people worship themselves, and they think that money gives them the opportunity to express that worship."
"It's disgusting," Muriel ejaculated.
"Yes, but have you ever thought how easy it is to be disgusted by anything to do with money when one has plenty oneself? I feel that the best that can be said for your Socialist state is that if nobody could have more than a certain amount and everybody had that amount it might end in people's despising money."
"Oh, my dear mother," Muriel burst in impatiently, "must you really trot out the old legend that Socialism means equal money for all? It doesn't really mean anything of the kind."
In a moment Muriel was embarked upon a passionate disquisition about the real aims of Socialism; and Mary felt with a thrill of pleasure that she had lured her daughter into revealing some of herself without being aware that she was doing so and in the knowledge becoming self-conscious and reserved.
After their talk, in which Muriel admitted that her mother displayed an unusual ability to understandher point of view, there seemed the likelihood of a friendship springing up between the mother and daughter. Mary talked to her about Geoffrey, and it was agreed between them that Muriel should pay a visit to Wood Green.
"For perhaps with tact Geoffrey's wife may grow less suspicious of my advances. I was too precipitate when I visited them in November. I was so much distressed by the rooms and so much upset to think about my own behavior's being the cause of it all, that I foolishly suggested bringing the little girl to live with us here. But if you were to go, dear child, you would manage better than I can to reassure his wife."
A week or two later Muriel set out to pay her first visit; but when she reached 45 Almond Terrace the vulturine landlady told her that Mr. and Mrs. Alison had gone away without an address.
"There's nothing to be done now," Mary lamented. "I left it until it was too late."
"You did all you could, mother."
"Nowwhen it's too late. By the way, dear, I want to give a few very quiet dinner-parties during May. You won't find them too much of a bore?"
"Not if you want to have dinner-parties, mother."
"Well, to be frank, I've been telling myself for some time that you ought to be thinking about getting married. You'll be twenty-six soon, you know, dear, and Ishouldlike to see you happily settled."
Muriel's face hardened to that old expression her mother knew and dreaded from her schooldays.
"Mother, I don't intend to get married. The idea is repugnant to me."
"But, Muriel dear, you'll forgive me for saying that you cannot possibly know unless you're married if marriage is repugnant. I can assure you that it's impossible to say anything about it beforehand. Now I was brought up in complete ignorance of facts that I know you consider the merest commonplace of knowledge. I did have a few qualms, I admit; but in my case those qualms were due to ignorance."
Muriel thereupon sprang her mine.
"I hadn't intended to say anything about what I'm going to tell you until next autumn; but it doesn't seem fair to let you give dinner-parties under the delusion that you're likely to make a good match for me by doing so. Mother dear, I've decided to become a sister-of-mercy, and so marriage is utterly remote from my thoughts."
Mary stared at her daughter in amazement.
"Muriel! You extraordinary girl! I thought you hated Christianity. I thought you abominated clergymen. Why, I thought you were only interested in Socialism. I'd no conception that you were giving your mind to religion. The two things seem poles asunder."
"Do they, mother dear?" said Muriel with a smile. "But now I can't imagine any socialism worthhaving unless it is based upon religion. Equally I can't imagine any religion that isn't the inspiration of a true socialism. I've been thinking about this for a long time now—ever since I went to Midnight Mass last Christmas Eve. It reached me like an inspiration. The truth of it, I mean. My mind is absolutely made up."
Mary had never been so completely astonished in her life. She herself during these last months had wished once or twice that she had thought more about religion, so that now in her loneliness she might have possessed what was evidently to many women an absolute consolation for everything. But it was too late to begin, she had decided. And now here was Muriel wrapped up in religion apparently and taking it so seriously that she intended to become a sister-of-mercy.
"But how could you become religious just by going to a service at an unusual time?" the mother asked.
"I haven't become religious now," Muriel pointed out. "I hate religious people. Though that's a silly thing to say, because I am very 'religious' in a different sense. I tell you, I suddenly believed that Christianity was true; as soon as I believed that I wanted to devote myself to the service of Christianity. I thought that the life of a sister-of-mercy was the life for a Christian woman. I realized that all my theories about human nature were worth nothing without Divine grace to achieve them."
Mary had a flash of illumination.
"Then it was from religious motives that you suddenly became so much quieter and sweeter. I was congratulating myself on effecting that change. Dear child, I wish that I could be given an assurance like yours."
"I always pray that you may receive it."
"Thank you, dear child. That is very kind and thoughtful of you. Of course, I can't argue with you about your resolve. I have really no right to argue on such a subject. I only hope that you will find as much happiness in the life you have chosen for yourself as you might have found in marriage. Which I'm sure you would have found," her mother added.
In the autumn Muriel entered the Community she had chosen, and the widow was left alone in the big house on Campden Hill.
Chapter Seven
THE GRANDMOTHER
Chapter Seven: The Grandmother
Mary's visitors had left early that December afternoon, and when François came in to turn on the light and draw the curtains, she told him that she would ring for him presently, because she had a slight headache and preferred to sit for a while quietlydans la crépuscule. The butler, who had a grave, ecclesiastical dignity, bowed and left Madame to her choice. In the door he turned for a moment and in a tone which deprecated anything that might savor of officiousness in the suggestion begged leave to ask if Madame would like her maid summoned. She shook her head, and he withdrew with another bow that sought to express his perfect comprehension of Madame's desire to be left entirely alone.
Paris was unusually still this afternoon, so still that one seemed to hear the twilight falling upon the world in blue waves of silence. Usually at this hour thesalonwas crowded with voluble women drinking tea or with men sipping port wine and nibbling ratafias. It was lucky that this afternoon when she had a headache they should all have gone so early. What was the time? Only a little after four. She ought to have told François that she would not be at home to anybody else who called. She made a movementto ring the bell; but even so slight an action was seeming a bore, and she sank back again in the arm-chair, telling herself that François, most accomplished of servants, would know instinctively that she desired to receive no more this afternoon. She hoped that the headache would vanish before dinner, because it was so difficult to have a satisfactoryséanceunless one was feeling in just the right mood to concentrate. Madame de Sarlovèze had been so emphatic about the abilities of the new crystal-gazer who with remarkable predictions of her clients' futures and even more remarkable knowledge of her clients' pasts had deeply impressed all Paris this autumn. The success of a personality like this Sicilian fortune-teller helped one to realize that the war was over. Not that fortune-tellers had not flourished during the war. Indeed, they could never have been so prosperous; but it was like old times to hear one's friends talking about the latest crystal-gazer, the latest dancer, the latest tenor, the latest nerve-doctor as if until one had fallen in with the fashion and succumbed to their performances one was hopelesslydémodée.
From some shadowy corner of the innersalona Siamese cat advanced with outwardly an air of the most supercilious indifference, which was contradicted by miaows of greeting that were to the miaows of ordinary cats as a violoncello to a violin.
"Pierrette!" Mary exclaimed gladly.
The small cat flirted her kinked tail in response,but lest she might seem to have displayed too much dependence upon a poor human being at once sat down and began to clean a slim chocolate paw.
"Pierrette! Aren't you coming to talk to me?"
The answering miaow was almost too deep for a violoncello's capacity. Indeed to call it a miaow was an insult to the jungle noise it was.
"The people have gone, Pierrette. Do come and talk to me. I'll give you all my attention."
Pierrette looked steadily at her friend from large round eyes, the pupils of which distended by the approach of night glowed in the firelight. Presently she drew near to Mary's chair, upon the brocade of which she defiantly sharpened her claws before jumping up with a trill on the black silk lap to which she had been invited. Here she settled down couchant to regard the fire.
"Dear little cat," Mary murmured.
Pierrette's ears twitched back to take in the endearment; the faintest quiver of her tail showed that she had heard, understood, and agreed with the description of herself.
"I was saying to myself that it was getting quite like old times in Paris."
The cat began to purr in approbation of European peace.
Mary stroked Pierrette's back, which was the color ofcafé-au-lait, soft and glossy as chiffon velvet. Contact with the small and shapely creature upon her knee was soothing. The grace and youthand vitality of the cat were so superabundant that the human being whom she had decided to favor by making use of was refreshed. It was impossible to feel old with this pulsating life so near to one. Mary patted her affectionately.
"Darling little cat!"
Pierrette's tail really wagged in response to such genuine admiration and love, and because her tail could not express quite all her appreciation she dug her claws into Mary's knee and pressed her warm body closer than before, purring now with a steady monotony of pleasure.
The dusk had deepened, and Mary's head drooped in meditation upon those old times. Had the move to Paris been a success? Or was not her enjoyment of life here an illusion caused by the stimulus of the war? Had her activity, her ceaseless activity during these last six years, in which her hair had grown white, been genuine or artificial? She had seen so many women pretending—not wilfully, but mesmerized into supposing that they really desired to be useful—yes, so many women pretending an activity that was only another aspect of a woman's lust for what was the fashion. Had her Red Cross work been anything more than that? Yet, after all, did the motive matter if the action was good and useful? Questions these that were unanswerable, questions that would never be asked if she were not suffering from the reaction. Thanks to the war her move to Paris had been a success, a great success.She might have found it hard otherwise to have passed these last years. When in 1913, bored with the big empty house, she decided to give up Woodworth Lodge, her imagination had seized upon Paris as the place to live, because she was already beginning to exist only in the past. That meant old age. Youth lives in the future; middle-age stagnates in the present; old age lives again, but alas, in the past, lives with only the ghost of its former life, always in the past. Her first year in Paris had been occupied in furnishing the house and preparing it to be a suitable place in which she might for the rest of her time here sit by the fire and dream of the past. Then the war had happened, and for a few years she had felt so much younger, but now, when it was finished, so much older than the years spent by the war justified her in feeling. She had made many friends. Indeed, she had never possessed so many as now. But these friendships formed late in life had little value. Friendship needed the future. There must exist in any friendship worth having a kind of physical exultation. She was fonder of this little cat than of all her Paris friends, much fonder. Pierrette was young. Youth! Youth! It was not that she longed to be young again herself. That would be foolish and indeed an undignified repining; but to be surrounded by youth, that was surely a legitimate desire.
"And it's that of which fate has robbed me," she sighed aloud.
Pierrette wagged her tail. The sound of her friend's voice was so pleasant to hear, and the silken knee was so delicate a resting-place for a royal cat. This soft-spoken human being deserved a little attention. Her hands were tactful. Not like Célestine's hands. Célestine was the maid who had taken the place of Adèle, dead before her mistress returned to Paris, a move which would have given Adèle so much pleasure. Pierrette did not care for Célestine, who was always lifting her off delightful nests of lace and silk. Célestine, in Pierrette's opinion, had the hands of a butcher rather than of a lady's maid. The thought of Célestine gave her afisson, and she yawned in disgust.
Mary held Pierrette so that the cat's equilibrium should not be disturbed while she leaned over to ring the bell. It was morbid to sit here in the twilight thinking about youth. But when François had arranged to his satisfaction the folds of the brocaded curtains and when he had turned on the lights and left the room in a radiancy of rose, Mary could not think about what she called practical things, which meant theséanceshe had arranged for to-night. Her headache was gone; but the shadows of the past which had crept out of their lurking-places in the twilight were still in thesalon, not visible indeed, but all the more hauntingly insistent because they were not visible. The room seemed vaster and lonelier now that every corner of it was illuminated. Mary felt infinitely small and utterly deserted. It wasonly the company of the small cat which kept her from getting up and hurrying away in panic. "Le demon du midi," she found herself repeating. What specter begotten of gloom and shadow could outlive the horror that existed in a desert of light? Her nerves were upset. Perhaps she was indulging too frequently in these spiritualistic experiments. But what else was there to do? If she were to renounce all activity, she would just sit shriveling slowly before the fire. After all, sixty was not such a great age. One would have to be at least seventy before one really considered oneself old. And probably even at seventy one would find that seventy was by no means the great age it had formerly seemed. Even eighty? Grandmamma had been eighty when she died. She had looked very old; but had she really felt old? Did anybody ever really feel old? What seemed so bad about the arrangement of human life was the amount of time wasted at the beginning and the end. The first ten years, for example, what were they worth? Mary was watering her nasturtiums in that abandoned room of the warehouse in Paternoster Row. "Old stock!" She could hear the very tones of Mr. Fawcus' voice. And the sunlight on the golden cross of St. Paul's. It flashed upon her inner eye more vividly than all the sunlight of the last twenty years put together. A sudden pity seized her for the two old people who had fostered her and from whom she had been so abruptly snatched. She saw Mr. Fawcus with hisbig bandana handkerchief wiping away the tears and waving his farewell from Dover Quay. How little she had understood what it cost them to lose her! How gayly she had set out for Paris! She ought when she was older to have visited them. It was wrong of her grandmother to forbid all intercourse. Suppose she should be given the guardianship of Geoffrey's little daughter, should she try to keep her away from her mother? Mary tried to think that she would not, although it was hard to be charitable about Geoffrey's wife. When he was killed early in 1915, it surely ought not to have been impossible for his wife to forgive. She had written to her so anxiously. Perhaps it had been a mistake to inclose another check. A woman like that might have supposed that she was trying to buy her. Still, to send back the check torn in half, that surely was not justifiable after so many years. She had not suggested that the little girl should be handed over to herself entirely. She had only asked for a few months every year. Would Geoffrey really have wished that his mother should be debarred from helping her granddaughter? Had it really been Geoffrey replying the other evening through the medium ofla planchette?Mary must go to her grandmother.Nobody except herself knew anything about Geoffrey's little girl, and she herself had certainly not guided the pencil. It was all very well for skeptics to say that one guided the pencil unconsciously. Anything could be explained by auto-suggestion; but it was not reasonable to explain the inexplicable by something every bit as inexplicable. If it was auto-suggestion, why had she never succeeded in getting a communication from Richard's spirit. If ever anybody desired with all her heart and soul to speak with one dead, she desired to speak with Richard. Yet he was silent. With all the will she had to believe that he would come to her out of that immense world of death, she had never received any message that could possibly be ascribed to him. How hard she had often tried to twist those unintelligible scrawls into words of hope and assurance from Richard! If auto-suggestion could have done it, surely auto-suggestion would have done it. All theories about the world of spirits were no doubt inadequate; but it seemed natural to suppose that year by year the dead moved farther and farther away from the earth, and therefore that Richard was already beyond her reach. Geoffrey, on the other hand, died comparatively a short time ago. Moreover, without being ridiculous one might imagine that the number of people killed every day during the war would produce—— Mary paused. She could not help feeling that the picture of a crowded railway junction which her ideas of the confines of eternity implied was rather absurd. Perhaps the Sicilian crystal-gazer would throw some light upon the problem this evening. She would make a great effort to put out of her mind the notion of being given the guardianship of Geoffrey's little girl. Shewould concentrate upon something entirely different. Pierre for instance. He too had been killed out in West Africa early in the war. It was the end he would have chosen for himself. It was a fine death for a man over sixty to be killed in action, a fine death for the boy who fifty years ago had followed the drum-taps along that white road of France. It had given her a thrill of pride to read of his career since he and she parted forty years ago. He was one of those who had helped to prepare his country for the effort she had to make to save herself from the ancient enemy. Thus had they written of him who had loved herself as well as his country forty years ago. Such a little time ago really. If she shut her eyes and thought for a moment, she could reconjure every moment of that last meeting in the drawing-room of the King's Gate house.
"I wonder what you would have thought of Mac?" she asked, stroking Pierrette, who accepted the caress with a purr that showed how far she was from grasping the insult of such a question.
"Mac was a dog, you know. And you don't much care for dogs, do you, my dear?"
Pierrette continued to purr when Mary patted her, laughing.
"Conceited little cat!"
And then once more her consciousness was flooded with the apprehension of how much Pierrette meant to her. Those fragile paws soft as flower-buds with thorns for the unwary, that foolish tail not muchbigger than a small cigar and of the same color, and most of all those big blue eyes indifferent as chalcedony, supercilious as a prince of Siam, and for a ball of wool sent rolling across the floor wild as a leopard that waits to spring upon a sheep, how much they represented in her lonely existence.
"Pierrette, would you like to be married?"
The little cat put out her claws with the air of an affronted virgin.
"Wouldn't you like to have a nice husband to play with when I'm too busy to play with you? Wouldn't you like to have dear little snow-white kittens? Because your kittens would be snow-white when they were born, you know. Would you be a good mother?"
Notwithstanding Pierrette's lack of interest in the suggestion, Mary was much taken up by the notion of obtaining a mate for her. It came to seem of the utmost importance that Pierrette should hand on her charm to kittens like herself. The search for a Siamese male as well-bred, as beautiful, and as intelligent as herself occupied Mary's time more successfully than spiritualism. It happened that the crystal-gazer recommended by Madame de Sarlovèze was, at any rate so far as Mary'sséancewas concerned, a complete failure and unable to perceive anything except various indeterminate shapes which she most dubiously likened to pigeons. When nobody present could muster up the faintest interest in pigeons, the charlatan (thus already Mary characterized her entertainer) suggested even more dubiously that they might be swans.
"Or geese," Mary had muttered sharply, whereupon Madame Diana had turned sulky and complained that she could not hope to have any success with the crystal when scoffers were present.
"The woman's an obvious fraud with her pigeons," Mary declared; and she turned her attention to a husband for Pierrette, a commodity which was unprocurable in Paris. A friend assured her that the best European strain of Siamese cats was to be found in Vienna, and in spite of the difficulties of traveling Mary would have set out for Vienna if another friend had not suggested that the famous strain would by now probably have succumbed to the effects of the war. In the end, she went to England, accompanied by Pierrette, for by now nothing else mattered except that Pierrette should have kittens.