Mrs. Morton felt a lively interest in Mrs. Rolfe's musical enterprise, and would have liked to talk about it, but she suspected that the topic was not very agreeable to her guest. In writing to Morton, Harvey had just mentioned the matter, and that was all. On the second day of his visit, when he felt much better, and saw things in a less troubled light, he wished to remove the impression that he regarded Alma's proceedings with sullen disapproval; so he took the opportunity of being alone with his hostess, and talked to her of the great venture with all the good humour he could command. Mrs. Morton had seen two notices of Alma's debut; both were so favourable that she imagined them the augury of a brilliant career.
'I doubt that,' said Harvey; 'and I'm not sure that it's desirable. She has made herself miserably ill, you see. Excitement is the worst possible thing for her. And then there's the whole question of whether professional life is right and good for a married woman. How do you think about it?'
The lady instanced cases that naturally presented themselves. She seemed to have no prejudice. Mrs. Rolfe appeared to her a person of artistic temper; but health was of the first importance; and then——
Harvey waited; but only a thoughtful smile completed the remark.
'What other consideration had you in mind?'
'Only a commonplace—that a married woman would, of course, be guided by her husband's wish.'
'You think that equivalent to reason and the will of God?' said Harvey jocosely.
'If we need appeal to solemn sanction.'
Rolfe was reminded, not unpleasantly, that he spoke with a woman to whom 'the will of God' was something more than a facetious phrase.
'I beg your pardon; let us say reason alone. But is it reasonable for the artist to sacrifice herself because she happens to have married an everyday man?'
Mrs. Morton shook her head and laughed.
'If only one know what is meant by the everyday man! My private view of him is rather flattering, perhaps. I'm inclined to think him, on the whole, not inferior to the everyday woman; andshe—she isn't a bad sort of creature, if fairly treated. I don't think the everyday man will go very far wrong, as a rule, in the treatment of his wife.'
'You really believe that?' asked Harvey, with a serious smile.
'Why, is it such a heresy?'
'I should rather have thought so. One is so accustomed to hear the other view I mean, it's in the air. Don't think I'm asking your sympathy. I have always wished Alma to act on her own judgment; she has been left quite free to do so. But if the results seem worse than doubtful, then comes the difficulty.'
'To be settled, surely, like all other difficulties between sensible people.'
Mrs. Morton's faith was of enviable simplicity. She knew, as a matter of fact, that husbands and wives often found their difficulties insuperable; but why this should be so, seemed to her one of the dark and mournful enigmas of life. It implied such a lack not only of good sense, but of right feeling. In her own experience she had met with no doubt, no worry, which did not yield to tact, or generous endeavour, or, at worst, to the creed by which she lived. One solicitude, and one only, continued to affect her as wife and mother; that it could not overcome her happy temper was due to the hope perpetually inspired by her husband's love—a hope inseparable from her profoundest convictions. She and Morton differed in religious views, and there had come a grave moment when she asked whether it would be possible to educate her children in her own belief without putting a distance between them and their father. The doubt had disappeared, thanks to Morton's breadth of view, or facility of conscience; there remained the trouble in which it had originated, but she solaced herself with the fond assurance that this also would vanish as time went on. In the same mood of kindly serenity she regarded the lives of her friends, always hoping for the best, and finding it hard to understand that anyone could deliberately act with unkindness, unreasonableness, or any other quality opposed to the common good.
Rolfe had no desire of talking further about his private affairs. He had made up his mind on the points at issue, and needed no counsel, but the spirit of Mrs. Morton's conversation helped him to think tranquilly. The great danger was that he might make things worse by his way of regarding them. Most unluckily, Alma's illness had become connected in his imagination with the tragedy of the Carnabys; he could not keep the things apart. Hugh Carnaby's miserable doom, and the dark surmises attaching to his wife, doubtless had their part in bringing about a nervous crisis; why could he not recognise this as perfectly natural, and dismiss the matter? In spite of all reasoning, Alma's image ever and again appeared to him shadowed by the gloom which involved her friend—or the woman whowasher friend. He knew it (or believed it) to be the merest illusion of his perturbed mind; for no fact, how trivial soever, had suggested to him that Alma knew more of the circumstances of Redgrave's death than she seemed to know. On the one hand, he was glad that Alma and Sibyl no longer cared to meet; on the other, he could not understand what had caused this cessation of their friendship, and he puzzled over it. But these idle fancies would pass away; they were already less troublesome. A long country walk with Morton, during which they conversed only of things intellectual, did him much good. Not long ago Morton had had a visit from an old Cambridge friend, a man who had devoted himself to the study of a certain short period of English history, and hoped, some ten years hence, to produce an authoritative work on the subject.
'There's a man I envy!' cried Rolfe, when he had listened to Basil's humorous description of the enthusiast. 'It's exactly what I should like to do myself.'
'What prevents you?'
'Idleness—irresolution—the feeling that the best of my life is over. I have never been seriously a student, and it's too late to begin now. But if I were ten years younger, I would make myself master of something. What's the use of reading only to forget? In my time I have gone through no small library of historical books—and it's all a mist on the mind's horizon. That comes of reading without method, without a purpose. The time I have given to it would have made me a pundit, if I had gone to work reasonably.'
'Isn't my case the same?' exclaimed Morton. 'What do I care! I enjoyed my reading and my knowledge at the time, and that's all I ever expected.'
'Very well—though you misrepresent yourself. But for me it isn't enough. I want to know something as well as it can be known. Purely for my own satisfaction; the thought of "doing something" doesn't come in at all. I was looking at your county histories this morning, and I felt a huge longing to give the rest of my life to some little bit of England, a county, or even a town, and exhaust the possibilities of knowledge within those limits. Why, Greystone here—it has an interesting history, even in relation to England at large; and what a delight there would be in following it out, doggedly, invincibly—making it one's single subject—grubbing after it in muniment-rooms and libraries—learning by heart every stone of the old town—dying at last with the consolation that nobody could teach one anything more about it!'
'I know the mood,' said Morton, laughing.
'I'm narrowing down,' pursued Harvey. 'Once I had tremendous visions—dreamt of holding half a dozen civilisations in the hollow of my hand. I came back from the East in a fury to learn the Oriental languages—made a start, you know, with Arabic. I dropped one nation after another, always drawing nearer home. The Latin races were to suffice me. Then early France, especially in its relations with England;—Normandy, Anjou. Then early England, especially in its relations with France. The end will be a county, or a town—nay, possibly a building. Why not devote one's self to the history of a market-cross? It would be respectable, I tell you. Thoroughness is all.'
When they were alone in the library at night, Morton spoke of his eldest boy, expressing some anxiety about him.
'The rascal will have to earn his living—and how? There's time, I suppose, but it begins to fidget me. He won't handle corn—I'm clear as to that. At his age, of course, all lads talk about voyages and so on, but Harry seems cut out for a larger sphere than Greystone. I shan't balk him. I'd rather he hadn't anything to do with fighting—still, that's a weakness.'
'We think of sending Wager's lad into the navy,' said Rolfe, when he had mused awhile. 'Of course, he'll have to make his own way.'
'Best thing you can do, no doubt. And what about his little sister?'
'That's more troublesome. It's awkward that she's a relative of Mrs Abbott. Otherwise, I should have proposed to train her for a cook.'
'Do you mean it?'
'Why not? She isn't a girl of any promise. What better thing for her, and for the community, than to make her a good cook? They're rare enough, Heaven knows. What's the use of letting her grow up with ideas of gentility, which in her case would mean nothing but uselessness? She must support herself, sooner or later, and it won't be with her brains. I've seriously thought of making that suggestion to Mrs. Abbott. Ten years hence, a sensible woman cook will demand her own price, and be a good deal more respected than a dressmaker or a she-clerk. The stomach is very powerful in bringing people to common-sense. When all the bricklayers' daughters are giving piano lessons, and it's next to impossible to get any servant except a lady's-maid, we shall see women of leisure develop a surprising interest in the boiling of potatoes.'
Morton admitted the force of these arguments.
'What would you wish your own boy to be?' he asked presently.
'Anything old-fashioned, unadventurous, happily obscure; a country parson, perhaps, best of all.'
'I understand. I've had the same thoughts. But one Ii to get over that kind of thing. It won't do to be afraid of life—nor of death either.'
'And there's the difficulty of education,' said Rolfe. 'If I followed my instincts, I should make the boy unfit for anything but the quietest, obscurest life. I should make him hate a street, and love the fields. I should teach him to despise every form of ambition; to shrink from every kind of pleasure, but the simplest and purest; to think of life as a long day's ramble, and death as the quiet sleep that comes at the end of it. I should like him not to marry—never to feel the need of it; or if marry he must, to have no children. That's my real wish; and if I tried to carry it out, the chances are that I should do him an intolerable wrong. For fear of it, I must give him into the hands of other people; I must see him grow into habits and thoughts which will cause me perpetual uneasiness; I must watch him drift further and further away from my own ideal of life, till at length, perhaps, there is scarce a possibility of sympathy between us.'
'Morbid—all morbid,' remarked the listener.
'I don't know. It may only mean that one sees too clearly the root facts of existence. I have another mood (less frequent) in which I try to persuade myself that I don't care much about the child; that his future doesn't really concern me at all. Why should it? He's just one of the millions of human beings who come and go. A hundred years hence—what of him and of me? What can it matter how he lived and how he died? The best kind of education would be that which hardened his skin and blunted his sympathies. What right have I to make him sensitive? The thing is, to get through life with as little suffering as possible. What monstrous folly to teach him to wince and cry out at the sufferings of other people! Won't he have enough of his own before he has done? Yet that's what we shall aim at—to cultivate his sympathetic emotions, so that the death of a bird shall make him sad, and the sight of human distress wring his heart. Real kindness would try to make of him a healthy ruffian, with just enough conscience to keep him from crime.'
'Theory for theory, I prefer this,' said Morton. 'To a certain extent I try to act upon it.'
'You do?'
'Just because I know that my own tendency is to over-softness. I have sometimes surprised my wife by bidding Harry disregard things that appealed to his pity. You remember what old Hobbes says: "Homo malus, puer robustus"? There was more truth in it in his day than in ours. It's natural for a boy to be a good deal of a savage, but our civilisation is doing its best to change that. Why, not long ago the lad asked me whether fishing wasn't cruel. He evidently felt that it was, and so do I; but I couldn't say so. I laughed it off, and told him that a fish diet was excellent for the brains!'
'I hope I may have as much courage,' said Harvey.
'Life is a compromise, my dear fellow. If the world at large would suddenly come round to a cultivation of the amiable virtues—well and good. But there's no hope of it. As it is, our little crabs must grow their hard shell, or they've no chance.'
'What about progress? In educating children, we are making the new world.'
Morton assented.
'But there's no hurry. The growth must be gradual—will be, whether we intend it or not. The fact is, I try not to think overmuch about my children. It remains a doubt, you know, whether education has any influence worth speaking of.'
'To me,' said Harvey, 'the doubt seems absurd. In my own case, I know, a good system of training would have made an enormous difference. Practically, I was left to train myself, and a nice job I made of it. Do you remember how I used to talk about children before I had one? I have thought it was the talk of a fool; but, perhaps, after all, it had more sanity than my views nowadays.'
'Medio tutissimus,' murmured Basil.
'And what about your girls?' asked the other, when they had smoked in silence. 'Is the difficulty greater or less?'
'From my point of view, less. For one thing, I can leave them entirely in the hands of their mother; if they resemble her, they won't do amiss. And there's no bother about work in life; they will have enough to live upon—just enough. Of course, they may want to go out into the world. I shall neither hinder nor encourage. I had rather they stayed at home.'
'Don't lose sight of the possibility that by when they are grown up there may be no such thing as "home". The word is dying out.'
Morton's pedantry led him again to murmur Latin——
'Multa renascentur quoe jam cecidere.'
'You're the happiest man I know, or ever shall know,' said Rolfe, with more feeling than he cared to exhibit.
'Don't make me think about Croesus, King of Lydia. On the whole, happiness means health, and health comes of occupation. In one point I agree with you about yourself: it would have been better if someone had found the right kind of work for you, and made you stick to it. By-the-bye, how does your friend, the photographic man, get on?'
'Not at all badly. Did I tell you I had put money into it? I go there a good deal, and pretend to do something.'
'Why pretend? Couldn't you find a regular job there for a few hours every day?'
'I dare say I could. It'll be easier to get backwards and forwards from Gunnersbury. How would you like,' he added, with a laugh, 'to live at Gunnersbury?'
'What does it matter where one lives? I have something of a prejudice against Hoxton or Bermondsey; but I think I could get along in most other places. Gunnersbury is rather pleasant, I thought. Isn't it quite near to Kew and Richmond?'
'Do those names attract you?'
'They have a certain charm for the rustic ear.'
'It's all one to me. Hughie will go to school, and make friends with other children. You see, he's had no chance of it yet. We know a hundred people or so, but have no intimates. Is there such a thing as intimacy of families in London? I'm inclined to think not. Here, you go into each other's houses without fuss and sham; you know each other, and trust each other. In London there's no such comfort, at all events for educated people. If you have a friend, he lives miles away; before his children and yours can meet, they must travel for an hour and a half by bus and underground.'
'I suppose itmustbe London?' interrupted Morton.
'I'm afraid so,' Harvey replied absently, and his friend said no more.
He had meant this visit to be of three days at most; but time slipped by so pleasantly that a week was gone before he could resolve on departure. Most of the mornings he spent in rambles alone, rediscovering many a spot in the country round which had been familiar to him as a boy, but which he had never cared to seek in his revisitings of Greystone hitherto. One day, as he followed the windings of a sluggish stream, he saw flowers of arrowhead, white flowers with crimson centre, floating by the bank, and remembered that he had once plucked them here when on a walk with his father, who held him the while, lest he should stretch too far and fall in. To reach them now, he lay down upon the grassy brink; and in that moment there returned to him, with exquisite vividness, the mind, the senses, of childhood; once more he knew the child's pleasure in contact with earth, and his hand grasped hard at the sweet-smelling turf as though to keep hold upon the past thus fleetingly recovered. It was gone—no doubt, for ever; a last glimpse vouchsafed to him of life's beginning as he set his face towards the end. Then came a thought of joy. The keen sensations which he himself had lost were his child's inheritance. Somewhere in the fields, this summer morning, Hughie was delighting in the scent, the touch, of earth, young amid a world where all was new. The stereotyped phrase about parents living again in their children became a reality and a source of deep content. So does a man repeat the experience of the race, and with each step onward live into the meaning of some old word that he has but idly echoed.
On the day before he left, a letter reached him from Alma. He had felt surprise at not hearing sooner from her; but Alma's words explained the delay.
'I have been thinking a great deal,' she wrote, 'and I want to tell you of my thoughts. Don't imagine they are mere fancies, the result of ill-health. I feel all but well again, and have a perfectly clear head. And perhaps it is better that I should write what I have to say, instead of speaking it. In this way I oblige you to hear me out. I don't mean that you are in the habit of interrupting me, but perhaps you would if I began to talk as I am going to write.
'Why can't we stay at Pinner?
'There, that shall have a line to itself. Take breath, and now listen again. I dislike the thought of removing to Gunnersbury—really and seriously I dislike it. You know I haven't given you this kind of trouble before; when we left Wales I was quite willing to have stayed on if you had wished it—wasn't I? Forgive me, then, for springing this upon you after all your arrangements are made; I could not do it if I did not feel that our happiness (not mine only) is concerned. Would it be possible to cancel your agreement with the Gunnersbury man? If not, couldn't you sublet, with little or no loss? The Pinner house isn't let yet—is it? Do let us stay where we are. I think it is the first serious request I ever made of you, and I think you will see that I have some right to make it.
'I had rather, much rather, that Hughie did not go to Mrs. Abbott's school. Don't get angry and call me foolish. What I mean is, that I would rather teach him myself. In your opinion I have neglected him, and I confess that you are right. There now! I shall give up my music; at all events, I shall not play again in public. I have shown what I could do, and that's enough. You don't like it—though you have never tried to show mewhy—and again I feel that you are right. A professional life for me would mean, I see it now, the loss of things more precious. I will give it up, and live quietly at home. I will have regular hours for teaching Hughie. If you prefer it, Pauline shall go, and I will take charge of him altogether. If I do this, what need for us to remove? The house is more comfortable than the new one at Gunnersbury; we are accustomed to it; and by being farther from London I shall have less temptation to gad about. I know exactly what I am promising, and I feel Icando it, now that my mind is made up.
'Need I fear a refusal? I can't think so. Give the matter your best thought, and see whether there are not several reasons on my side. But, please, answer as soon as you can, for I shall be in suspense till I hear from you.
Alma signed herself 'Yours ever affectionately', but Harvey could find no trace of affection in the letter. It astonished and annoyed him. Of course, it could have but one explanation; Alma might as well have saved herself trouble by writing, in a line or two, that she disliked Mrs. Abbott, and could not bear that the child should be taught by her. He read through the pages again, and grew angry. What right had she to make such a request as this, and in the tone of a demand? Twice in the letter she asserted that shehada right, asserted it as if with some mysterious reference. Had he sat down immediately to reply, Harvey would have written briefly forcibly; for, putting aside other grounds of irritation, there is nothing a man dislikes more than being called upon at last moment to upset elaborate and troublesome arrangements. But he was obliged to postpone his answer for a few hours, and in the meantime he grew more tolerant of Alma's feelings. Had her objection come earlier, accompanied by the same proposals, he would have been inclined to listen; but things had gone too far. He wrote, quite good-temperedly, but without shadow of wavering. There was nothing sudden, he pointed out, in the step he was about to take; Alma had known it for months, and had acquiesced in it. As for her music, he quite agreed with her that she would find it better in every way to abandon thoughts of a public career; and the fact of Hughie's going to school for two or three hours a day would in no wise interfere with her wish to see more of him. What her precise meaning was in saying that she had some 'right' to make this request, he declared himself unable to discover. Was it a reproach? If so, his conscience afforded him no light, and he hoped Alma would explain the words in a letter to him at Pinner.
This correspondence clouded his last evening at Greystone. He was glad that some acquaintances of Morton's came, and stayed late; sitting alone with his friend, he would have been tempted to talk of Alma, and he felt that silence was better just now.
By a train soon after breakfast next morning, he left the old town, dearer to him each time that he beheld it, and travelled slowly to the main-line junction, whence again he travelled slowly to Peterborough. There the express caught him up, and flung him into roaring London again. Before going to Pinner, he wished to see Cecil Morphew, for he had an idea to communicate—a suggestion for the extending of business by opening correspondence with out of the way towns, such as Greystone.
On reaching the shop in Westminster Bridge Road, he found that Morphew also had a communication to make, and of a more exciting nature.
Morphew was engaged upstairs with the secretary of an Amateur Photographic Society. Waiting for this person's departure, Rolfe talked with the shopman—a capable fellow, aged about thirty, whose heart was in the business; he looked at a new hand-camera, which seemed likely to have a good sale, and heard encouraging reports of things in general. Then Morphew came down, escorting his visitor. As soon as he was free, he grasped Harvey by the arm, and whispered eagerly that he had something to tell him. They went upstairs together, into a room furnished as an office, hung about with many framed photographs.
'He's dead!' exclaimed Cecil—'he's dead!'
A name was needless. Only one man's death could be the cause of such excitement in Morphew, and it had been so long awaited that the event had no touch of solemnity. Yet Harvey perceived that his friend's exultation was not unmixed with disquietude.
'Yesterday morning, early. I heard it by chance. Of course, she hasn't written to me, but no doubt I shall hear in a few days. I walked about near the house for hours last night—like an idiot. The thing seemed impossible; I had to keep reminding myself, by looking at the windows, that it was true. Eight years—think of that! Eight years' misery, due to that fellow's snobbishness!'
In Harvey's mind the story had a somewhat different aspect. He knew nothing personally of this Mr. Winter, who might indeed be an incarnation of snobbery; on the other hand, Cecil Morphew had his defects, and even to a liberal-minded parent might not recommend himself as a son-in-law. Then again, the young lady herself, now about six and twenty, must surely have been influenced by some other motive than respect for her parents' wishes, in thus protracting her engagement with a lover who had a secure, though modest, income. Was it not conceivable that she inherited something of the paternal spirit? or, at all events, that her feelings had not quite the warmth that Morphew imagined?
'I'm glad it's over,' he replied cordially. 'Now begins a new life for you.'
'But eight years—eight years of waiting——'
'Hang it, what is your age? Thirty! Why, you're only just old enough. No man ought to marry before thirty.'
Morphew interrupted vehemently.
'That's all rot! Excuse me; I can't help it. A man ought to marry when he's urged to it by his nature, and as soon as he finds the right woman. If I had married eight years ago——.' He broke off with an angry gesture, misery in his eyes. 'You don't believe that humbug, Rolfe; you repeat it just to console me. There's little consolation, I can assure you. I was two and twenty; she, nineteen. Mature man and woman; and we longed for each other. Nothing but harm could come of waiting year after year, wretched both of us.'
'I confess,' said Harvey, 'I don't quite see why she waited after twenty-one.'
'Because she is a good, gentle girl, and could not bear to make her father and mother unhappy. The blame is all theirs—mean, shallow, grovelling souls!'
'What about her mother now?'
'Oh, she was never so obstinate as the old jackass. She'll have little enough to live upon, and we shall soon arrange things with her somehow. Is it credible that human beings can be so senseless? For years now, their means have been growing less and less, just because the snobbish idiotwouldkeep up appearances. If he had lived a little longer, the widow would have had practically no income at all. Of course, she shared in the folly, and I'm only sorry she won't suffer more for it. They didn't enjoy their lives—never have done. They lived in miserable slavery to the opinion of their fellow-snobs. You remember that story about the flowers at their silver wedding: two hundred pounds—just because Mrs. Somebody spent as much—when they couldn't really afford two hundred shillings. And they groaned over it—he and she—like people with the stomachache. Why, the old fool died of nothing else; he was worn out by the fear of having to go into a smaller house.'
Harvey would have liked to put a question: was it possible that the daughter of such people could be endowed with virtues such as become the wife of a comparatively poor man? But he had to ask it merely in his own thoughts. Before long, no doubt, he would meet the lady herself and appease his curiosity.
Whilst they were talking, there came a knock at the door; the shopman announced two ladies, who wished to inquire about some photographic printing.
'Will you see them, Rolfe?' asked Cecil. 'I don't feel like it—indeed I don't. You'll be able to tell them all they want.'
Harvey found himself equal to the occasion, and was glad of it; he needed occupation of some kind to keep his thoughts from an unpleasant subject. After another talk with Morphew, in which they stuck to business, he set off homeward.
Here news awaited him. On his arrival all seemed well; Ruth opened the door, answered his greeting in her quiet, respectful way, and at once brought tea to the study. When he rang to have the things taken away, Ruth again appeared, and he saw now that she had something unusual to say.
'I didn't like to trouble you the first thing, sir,' she began—'but Sarah left yesterday without giving any notice; and I think it's perhaps as well she did, sir. I've heard some things about her not at all nice.'
'We must find someone else, then,' replied Harvey. 'It's lucky she didn't go at a less convenient time. Was there some unpleasantness between you?'
'I had warned her, for her own good, sir, that was all. And there's something else I had perhaps better tell you now, sir.' Her voice, with its pleasant Welsh accent, faltered ominously. 'I'm very sorry indeed to say it, sir, but I shall be obliged to leave as soon as Mrs. Rolfe can spare me.'
Harvey was overwhelmed. He looked upon Ruth as a permanent member of the household. She had made herself indispensable; to her was owing the freedom from domestic harassment which Alma had always enjoyed—a most exceptional blessing, yet regarded, after all this time, as a matter of course. The departure of Ruth meant conflict with ordinary servants, in which Alma would assuredly be worsted. At this critical moment of their life, scarcely could anything more disastrous have happened. Seeing her master's consternation, Ruth was sore troubled, and hastened to explain herself.
'My brother's wife has just died, sir, and left him with three young children, and there's no one else can be of help to him but me. He wanted me to come at once, but, of course, I told him I couldn't do that. No one can be sorry for his wife's death; she was such a poor, silly, complaining, useless creature; he hasn't had a quiet day since he married her. She belonged to Liverpool, and there they were married, and when he brought her to Carnarvon I said to myself as soon as I saw her thatshewouldn't be much use to a working-man. She began the very first day to complain and to grumble, and she's gone on with it ever since. When I was there in my last holiday I really wondered how he bore his life. There's many women of that kind, sir, but I never knew one as bad as her—never. Everything was too much trouble for her, and she didn't know how to do a thing in the house. I didn't mean to trouble you with such things, sir. I only told you just to show why I don't feel I can refuse to go and help him, and try to give him a little peace and quiet. He's a hard-working man, and the children aren't very healthy, and I'm sure I don't know how he'd manage——'
'You have no choice, Ruth, I see. Well, we must hope to find some one in your place—but——'
Just as he shook his head, the house-bell rang, and Ruth withdrew to answer it. In a minute or two the study door opened again. Harvey looked up and saw Alma.
'I was obliged to come,' she said, approaching him, as he rose in astonishment. 'I thought at first of asking you to come on to Basingstoke, but we can talk better here.'
No sign of pleasure in their meeting passed between them. On Harvey's face lingered something of the disturbance caused by Ruth's communication, and Alma understood it as due to her unexpected arrival; the smile with which she had entered died away, and she stood like a stranger doubtful of her reception.
'Was it necessary to talk?' asked Rolfe, pushing forward a chair, and doing his best to show good humour.
'Yes—after your reply to my letter this morning,' she answered coldly.
'Well, you must have some tea first. This is cold. Won't you go and take your things off, and I'll tell Ruth. By-the-bye, we re in confusion.'
He sketched the position of things; but Alma heard without interest.
'It can't be helped,' was her absent reply. 'There are plenty of servants.'
Fresh tea was brought, and after a brief absence Alma sat down to it. Her health had improved during the past week, but she looked tired from the journey, and was glad to lean back in her chair. For some minutes neither of them spoke. Harvey had never seen an expression on Alma's features which was so like hostility; it moved him to serious resentment. It is common enough for people who have been several years wedded to feel exasperation in each other's presence, but for Rolfe the experience was quite new, and so extremely disagreeable, that his pulses throbbed with violence, and his mouth grew dry. He determined to utter not a word until Alma began conversation. This she did at length, with painful effort.
'I think your answer to me was very unkind.'
'I didn't mean it so.'
'You simply said that you wouldn't do as I wished.'
'Not that I wouldn't, but that it was impossible. And I showed you the reasons—though I should have thought it superfluous.'
Alma waited a moment, then asked——
'Is this house let?'
'I don't know. I suppose not.'
'Then there is no reason whatever why we shouldn't stay here.'
'There is every reason why we shouldn't stay here. Every arrangement has been made for our leaving—everything fully talked over. What has made you change your mind?'
'I haven't really changed my mind. I always disliked the idea of going to Gunnersbury, and you must have seen that I did; but I was so much occupied with—with other things; and, as I have told you, I didn't feel quite the same about my position as I do now.'
She expressed herself awkwardly, growing very nervous. At the first sign of distress in her, Harvey was able to change his tone.
'Things are going horribly wrong somehow, Alma. There's only one way out of it. Just say in honest words what you mean. Why do you dislike the thought of our moving?'
'I told you in my letter,' she answered, somewhat acridly.
'There was no explanation. You said something I couldn't understand, about having arightto ask me to stay here.'
She glanced at him with incredulous disdain.
'If you don't understand, I can't put it into plainer words.'
'Well now, letmeput the whole matter into plainer words than I have liked to use.' Rolfe spoke deliberately, and not unkindly, though he was tempted to give way to wrath at what he imagined a display of ignoble and groundless jealousy. 'All along I have allowed you to take your own course. No, I mustn't say "allowed", the word is inapplicable; I never claimed the right to dictate to you. We agreed that this was the way for rational husband and wife. It seemed to us that I had no more right to rule over you than you to lay down the law for me. Using your freedom, you chose to live the life of an artist—that is to say, you troubled yourself as little as possible about home and family. I am not complaining—not a bit of it. The thing was an experiment, to be sure; but I have held to the conditions, watched their working. Latterly I began to see that they didn't work well, and it appears that you agree with me. This is how matters stand; or rather, this is how they stood until, for some mysterious reason, you seemed to grow unfriendly. The reason is altogether mysterious; I leave you to explain it. From my point of view, the failure of our experiment is simple and natural enough. Though I had only myself to blame, I have felt for a long time that you were in an utterly false position. Now you begin to see things in the same light. Well and good; why can't we start afresh? The only obstacle is your unfriendly feeling. Give me an opportunity of removing it. I hate to be on ill terms with you; it seems monstrous, unaccountable. It puts us on a level with married folk in a London lodging-house. Is it necessary to sink quite so low?'
Alma listened with trembling intensity, and seemed at first unable to reply. Her agitation provoked Harvey more than it appealed to his pity.
'If you can't do as I wish,' she said at length, with an endeavour to speak calmly, 'I see no use in making any change in my own life. There will be no need of me. I shall make arrangements to go on with my professional career.'
Harvey's features for a moment set themselves in combativeness, but as quickly they relaxed, and showed an ambiguous smile.
'No need of you—and Ruth going to leave us?'
'There oughtn't to be any difficulty in finding someone just as good.'
'Perhaps there ought not to be; but we may thank our stars if we find anyone half as trustworthy. The chances are that a dozen will come and go before we settle down again. I don't enjoy that prospect, and I shall want a good deal of help from you in bearing the discomfort.'
'What kind of help? Of course, I shall see that the house goes on as usual.'
'Then it's quite certain you will have no time left for a "professional career".'
'If I understand you, you mean that you don't wish me to have any time for it.'
Harvey still smiled, though he could not conceal his nervousness.
'I'm afraid it comes to that.'
So little had Alma expected such a declaration, that she gazed at him in frank surprise.
'Then you are going to oppose me in everything?'
'I hope not. In that case we should do much better to say good-bye.'
The new tone perplexed her, and a puzzled interest mingled with the lofty displeasure of her look.
'Please let us understand each other.' She spoke with demonstrative calmness. 'Are we talking on equal terms, or is it master and servant?'
'Husband and wife, Alma, that's all.'
'With a new meaning in the words.'
'No; a very old one. I won't say the oldest, for I believe there was a time when primitive woman had the making of man in every sense, and somehow knocked a few ideas into his head; but that was very long ago.'
'If I could be sure of your real meaning——.' She made an irritated gesture. 'How are we going to live? You speak of married people in lodging-houses. I don't know much about them, happily, but I imagine the husband talks something like this—though in more intelligible language.'
'I dare say he does—poor man. He talks more plainly, because he has never put himself in a false position—has never played foolishly with the facts of life.'
Alma sat reflecting.
'Didn't I tell you in my letter,' she said at length, 'that I was quite willing to make a change, on one condition?'
'An impossible condition.'
'You treat me very harshly. How have I deserved it? When I wrote that, I really wished to please you. Of course, I knew you were dissatisfied with me, and it made me dissatisfied with myself. I wrote in a way that ought to have brought me a very different answer. Why do you behave as if I were guilty of something—as if I had put myself at your mercy? You never found fault with me—you even encouraged me to go on——'
Her choking voice made Harvey look at her in apprehension, and the look stopped her just as she was growing hysterical.
'You are right about my letter,' he said, very gravely and quietly. 'It ought to have been in a kinder tone. It would have been, but for those words you won't explain.'
'You think it needs any explanation that I dislike the thought of Hughie going to Mrs. Abbott's?'
'Indeed I do. I can't imagine a valid ground for your objection.'
There was a word on Alma's tongue, but her lips would not utter it. She turned very pale under the mental conflict. Physical weakness, instead of overcoming her spirit, excited it to a fresh effort of resistance.
'Then,' she said, rising from the chair, 'you are not only unkind to me, but dishonest.'
Harvey flushed.
'You are making yourself ill again. We had far better not talk at all.'
'I came up for no other purpose. We have to settle everything.'
'As far as I am concerned, everything is settled.'
'Then I have no choice,' said Alma, with subdued passion. 'We shall live as we have done. I shall accept any engagement that offers, in London or the country, and regard music as my chief concern. You wished it, and so it shall be.'
Rolfe hesitated. Believing that her illness was the real cause of this commotion, he felt it his duty to use all possible forbearance; yet he knew too well the danger of once more yielding, and at such a crisis. The contest had declared itself—it was will against will; to decide it by the exertion of his sane strength against Alma's hysteria might be best even for the moment. He had wrought himself to the point of unwonted energy, a state of body and mind difficult to recover if now he suffered defeat. Alma, turning from him, seemed about to leave the room.
'One moment——'
She looked round, carelessly attentive.
'That wouldn't be living as we have done. It would be an intolerable state of things after this.'
'It's your own decision.'
'Far from it. I wouldn't put up with it for a day.'
'Then there's only one thing left: I must go and live by myself.'
'I couldn't stand that either, and wouldn't try.'
'I am no slave! I shall live where and how I choose.'
'When you have thought about it more calmly, your choice will be the same as mine.'
Trembling violently, she backed away from him. Harvey thought she would fall; he tried to hold her by the arm, but Alma shook him off, and in the same moment regained her strength. She faced him with a new defiance, which enabled her at last to speak the words hitherto unutterable.
'How do you think I can bear to see Hughie withthosechildren?'
Rolfe stood in amaze. The suddenness of this reversion to another stage of their argument enhanced his natural difficulty in understanding her. 'What children?'
'Those two—whatever their name may be.'
'Wager's boy and girl?'
'You call them so.'
'Are you going crazy? Icallthem so?—what do you mean?'
A sudden misgiving appeared in Alma's eyes; she stared at him so strangely that Harvey began to fear for her reason.
'What is it, dear? What have you been thinking? Tell me—speak like yourself——'
'Why do you take so much interest in them?' she asked faintly.
'Heavens! You have suspected——? Whathaveyou suspected?'
'They are your own. I have known it for a long time.'
Alarm notwithstanding, Rolfe was so struck by the absurdity of this charge that he burst into stentorian laughter. Whilst he laughed, Alma sank into a chair, powerless, tearful.
'I should much like to know,' exclaimed Harvey, laying a hand upon her, 'how you made that astounding discovery. Do you think they are like me?'
'The girl is—or I thought so.'
'After you had decided that she must be, no doubt.' Again he exploded in laughter. 'And this is the meaning of it all? This is what you have been fretting over? For how long?'
Alma brushed away her tears, but gave no answer.
'And if I am their father,' he pursued, with resolute mirthfulness, 'pray, who do you suppose their mother to be?'
Still Alma kept silence, her head bent.
'I'll warrant I can give you evidence against myself which you hadn't discovered,' Rolfe went on—'awful and unanswerable evidence. It is I who support those children, and pay for their education!—it is I, and no other. See your darkest suspicion confirmed. If only you had known this for certain!'
'Why, then, do you do it?' asked Alma, without raising her eyes.
'For a very foolish reason: there was no one else who could or would.'
'And why did you keep it a secret from me?'
'This is the blackest part of the whole gloomy affair,' he answered, with burlesque gravity. 'It's in the depraved nature of men to keep secrets from their wives, especially about money. To tell the truth, I'm hanged if I know why I didn't tell you before our marriage. The infamous step was taken not very long before, and I might as well have made a clean breast of it. Has Mrs. Abbott never spoken to you about her cousin, Wager's wife?'
'A word or two.'
'Which you took for artful fiction? You imagined she had plotted with me to deceive you? What, in the name of commonsense, is your estimate of Mrs. Abbott's character?'
Alma drew a deep breath, and looked up into her husband's face. 'Still—she knew you were keeping it from me, about the money.'
'She had no suspicion of it. She always wrote to me openly, acknowledging the cheques. Would it gratify you to look through her letters?'
'I believe you.'
'Not quite, I fancy. Look at me again and say it.'
He raised her head gently.
'Yes, I believe you—it was very silly.'
'It was. The only piece of downright feminine foolishness I ever knew you guilty of. But when did it begin?'
Alma had become strangely quiet. She spoke in a low, tired voice, and sat with head turned aside, resting against the back of the chair; her face was expressionless, her eyelids drooped. Rolfe had to repeat his question.
'I hardly know,' she replied. 'It must have been when my illness was coming on.'
'So I should think. It was sheer frenzy. And now that it's over, have you still any prejudice against Mrs. Abbott?'
'No.'
The syllable fell idly from her lips.
'You are tired, dear. All this sound and fury has been too much for you. Lie down on the sofa till dinner-time.'
She allowed him to lead her across the room, and lay down as he wished. To his kiss upon her forehead she made no response, but closed her eyes and was very still. Harvey seated himself at his desk, and opened two or three unimportant letters which had arrived this morning. To one of them he wrote an answer. Turning presently to glance at Alma, he saw that she had not stirred, and when he leaned towards her, the sound of her breathing told him that she was asleep.
He meditated on Woman.
A quarter of an hour before dinner-time he left the room; on his return, when the meal was ready, he found Alma still sleeping, and so soundly that it seemed wrong to wake her. As rays of sunset had begun to fall into the room, he drew the blind, then quietly went out, and had dinner by himself.
At ten o'clock Alma still slept. Using a closely-shaded lamp, Harvey sat in the room with her and read—or seemed to read; for ever and again his eyes strayed to the still figure, and his thoughts wandered over all he knew of Alma's life. He wished he knew more, that he might better understand her. Of her childhood, her early maidenhood, what conception had he? Yet he and she wereone—so said the creeds. And Harvey laughed to himself, a laugh more of melancholy than of derision.
The clock ticked on; it was near to eleven. Then Alma stirred, raised herself, and looked towards the light.
'Harvey——? Have I been asleep so long?'
'Nearly five hours.'
'Oh! That was last night——'
'You mean, you had no sleep?'
'Didn't close my eyes.'
'And you feel better now?'
'Rather hungry.'
Rolfe laughed. He had seated himself on the couch by her and held her in his arms.
'Why, then we'll have some supper—a cold fowl and a bottle of Burgundy—a profligate supper, fit for such abandoned characters; and over it you shall tell me how the world looked to you when you were ten years old.'