PART IITHANK-OFFERING
CHAPTER I
By the time the Chorus had talked itself to rags and a dribbling finish, and Mrs. James had remembered her pudding and Mrs. Airey her hot irons; and Mrs. Clapham had had time to think of her knee, and how she was tired with standing, and how it would be just as easy to enjoy the news sitting down—both Emma and Martha Jane had vanished utterly from the scene. It was the charwoman who noticed their disappearance first, wiping away the last glad tears from her shining, glorified face.
“Eh, now, if Martha Jane hasn’t made off, and I never thought on to say I was sorry she’d lost! I was that taken up wi’ t’ letter I couldn’t think of nowt else. She’ll be feeling bad about it, I reckon, will poor Martha Jane. I wish I’d had a word wi’ her before she slipped away!”
“I shouldn’t worry myself.... Likely she’ll go whingeing to yon lordship of hers, and get summat instead!” Mrs. James looked back from between her pillars, anxious, in spite of her pudding, for a last slap at Martha Jane. “Anyway, I was right about Mr. Baines bringing the news,” she went on proudly; “or next best thing to Mr. Baines! A bonny little thing, that little girl, isn’t she now?—and that like him an’ all!... Ay, well, Mrs. Clapham, I’m main glad it come out right, and there’s a deal more I’d like to know if it wasn’t for yon pan....”
“Eh, and yon irons o’ mine’ll be fit to scorch!” ... Mrs. Airey bestirred herself also at the departure of Mrs. James. “I’m as throng as I can be to-day, an’ all. Folks is that put about if they don’t get their washing on the tick, you’d think they’d only a shirt and a pillow-slip to their names!... Step along in with her, Maggie, and get her a cup o’ tea,” she added to Mrs. Tanner, as she and her sister moved away. “She’s a bit upset wi’ it all, and a cup o’ tea’ll pull her together. Folks is easy put out about good news—I cried a deal more when my Teddy come back from t’ War than I ever did when he went—even if they don’t all get strokes and suchlike just by clapping an eye on poor Baines!”
There was a last burst of laughter in the street at that, the last that it was to hear that morning, the last, perhaps, that it was to hear that day.... “Ay, Emma was right creepy with her nasty tales!” Mrs. Clapham concluded meditatively, when the sisters had gone. “(I can manage right enough, Maggie. Don’t you put yourself out!) She’s cleared off again, I notice, and with never a word. She must just ha’ waited to hear the news, and then made back.”
“There was summat queer about her ever coming at all!” ... Mrs. Tanner lingered, cogitating, in the empty street. “What, she never stirred foot even for t’ Coronation, you’ll think on—(Edward was it, or George?). You and she have never been that thick, I’m sure, that she should turn out to wish you luck!”
“She talked that strange, too,” the charwoman puzzled, thinking back, “praising me up and so on, and yet wi’ a scrat in it all the time! She fair made me begin to think things was going to go all wrong.”
“It’s that way she has of making you feel she knows summat important as you don’t. It’s like as if she give you plenty o’ rope to hang yourself, and then stood about smiling, waiting for the pull. Ay, and what you’d feel right sore about when it come to it wouldn’t be as you was hung, but feeling you’d made a fool o’ yourself with yon woman a-looking on!”
“Ay, that’s summat like it,” Mrs. Clapham murmured. “That’s it, I reckon....” She threw a glance up the street at the silent, ill-omened house. “It’s no wonder she made such a wreck o’ Poor Stephen.”
The Saga of Poor Stephen who had fallen in the War began all over again, with precisely the same zest as if sung for the first time. It was a sort of duet into which they fell quite naturally whenever they happened to meet, and however often it was repeated it never palled. Conversation is almost the only form of artistic expression open to most of the poor, and on this subject at least these two had reached a high level. The Saga of Poor Stephen was, indeed, their star performance. Knowing it like their prayers, they played up to each other with mechanical ease, yet found always some shade of inflection which might possibly be bettered, some sentence introduced or eliminated which shed new light upon the whole. And always, as soon as they had parted, their minds set to work again upon the scene they had just played, half consciously rehearsing it for its next public appearance, and seeking some fresh touch which should cause it to live anew.
However, they rang the curtain down at length, and drifted apart—Mrs. Tanner backing towards her door with that almost unconscious movement of street-gossips—as if she was pulled by a string—and the charwoman turning joyously home to her own dwelling. She reached it in less than a dozen strides, but even in that short distance she produced the effect of a full-rigged ship coming buoyantly into port. Crossing the step, she had a passing twinge of remorse because she had neglected to give it its second scrub; and then she was once again in the little kitchen, with the door closing behind her back.
It was a wonderful moment for Mrs. Clapham when she came back again to her home, bearing her sheaves with her. The early morning had been wonderful, too, but in a totally different way. It had been splendid, of course, full of rapture and hope, but she knew now that at the back of everything there had been a fear. That sudden bout of laughter and tears had testified to the strain. The early morning phase had been bought at its own price. But this moment was all splendour without terror, glory without pain. Steeped in wonder, it was yet perfect in satisfaction; shot with ecstasy, it was yet peace....
Presently, perhaps, when the supreme moment had passed, she would wish for that earlier phase all over again.Thatwould seem the supreme moment to her, looking back, the most poignant, the most dramatic, the most worth having because of its thrills. She would forget the scorch of the chariot of fire in which she had left the earth, and only remember the sweep of it as she ascended to heaven. Nevertheless, this was the really great hour of her beautiful day, and she recognised it while she had it. There is no moment like that in which one runs home through a shining world to hide behind a shut door with the glad fulfilment of an innocent dream.
With it, however, came the realisation of what she would have felt if things had happened the other way about, and even the thought of it was so terrible that it turned her faint. Reaching the rocking-chair, she dropped into it with a thankful sigh, and the anything but thankful chair uttered a protesting creak. But the horror soon passed and the glory returned, so that she hardly knew whether the gold motes dancing in the kitchen were made by the sun, or whether the whole world had turned golden in essence because of the splendour in her brain.
With smiling lips, and half-closed, tear-wet eyes, she sat rocking herself to and fro, while the overburdened chair uttered its almost human shrieks of protesting rage. But she was too happy to notice it, too happy to move; too happy even to get herself the cup of tea which she dearly craved. She knew vaguely that her head ached as well as her back and her bad knee, but these also were beyond notice. The most they could do was to force her to own, chuckling, that it was a good thing miracles didn’t happen every day of the week. But then she did not want them to happen every day; she did not want them ever to happen again. Once was all she had asked for in the whole of her life, and that once was proving itself most gloriously enough.
Undoubtedly her chief joy, half-conscious though it was, lay in the supreme confidence with which she was filled in the workings of fate. Human beings are never so happy, so soothed and so unafraid, as when they seem to identify themselves with the Ruling Mind. The soul, swerving blindly from fear to fear, clings thankfully to the least vestige of a plan, whether for good or ill. It was not often that Mrs. Clapham had felt afraid of life, but it seemed to her at this moment that she would never feel afraid again. It was muddle that frightened people, she thought to herself, torn edges and jagged ends, suddenly-twisted threads that on every count should have run straight, and meaningless blows from a vague dark. Mrs. Clapham was of those who prefer to be hit firmly on the head by an Absolute Will, rather than to be sent flying into space by the blind bursting of a mindless shell.
But for her, at all events, life had proved itself faithful up to the very hilt. Week after week, year after year, she had held to her great belief, and in the due moment of promise it had been fulfilled. The right thing came at the right time and in the right way—always she came back again to that. A little earlier, perhaps, or a little later, and the whole thing would have been less perfect; would not have found her so ready or left her so secure. Even a splendidly-sudden surprise would not have been really so splendid, because unable to fix in her this precious certainty of success. Sudden surprises are wonderful in their way, opening the doors of fairylands and heavens, but they do not create security or make for peace. On the contrary, they, too, suggest chaos after their own magnificent fashion. The highest pinnacle is that which is reached after earnest endeavour, patient provision, humble yet certain hope. The charwoman felt satisfied in every inch, seeing life and the justice of things fitting each other like lock and key. She felt as one feels at the end of a sunset or the close of a song. She felt as one feels when one shuts the door of a room in which a child has fallen asleep....
She wished that the man who had thought of her long ago could know that both his wish and hers were going to be fulfilled at last. He, too, had been one of those who find their greatest pleasure in watching the Universe work out even, so that the news that his forty-year-old plan was coming into effect would have afforded him a personal satisfaction. She felt sure that he would have nodded his head with his grim smile, saying, “Right you are, Jones! Meant you to have it. Pleased. D—d glad!” feeling that, in this one thing at least, he had been able to give the sometimes recalcitrant cosmos a shove on the right road.
She thought gratefully, too, of those who had voted her the house, trying to call up, though with a touch of shyness, the kindly things which they must have said, not only in committee but in the privacy of their homes. Some of them must have gone into the letter which they had written through Mr. Baines, but so far she had heard so little of that wonderful letter! It was still in her hand, of course, too precious to put down, and presently she would find her glasses and read it with quivering joy. But for the moment she needed no further stimulant for her happy mind. The ecstasy in her soul required no extra assistance from the elegant phrasing of Mr. Baines.
She thought also of the body of public opinion which was said to be at her back, and felt for the time being as if every soul in the place was a personal friend. It was wonderful, even for a short time, to feel the thoughts of all those well-wishers turned simultaneously towards herself. That was another thing she felt certain she would never mistrust again—the genuine joy of the many in the genuine joy of the one. There were the four women, for instance, who had stayed with her so long, swelling her triumph, when it came, by the mere fact of their kindly presence. They had, as it were, lifted her in their eager arms, ready to thrust her into the chariot before it had touched the ground. They had been like children, with a fifth who had won or was winning a coveted prize; like bridesmaids, speeding and cheering a happy but trepidant bride....
That last word made her think of Miss Marigold up in town, who would even now be getting ready for church. Her mother would be helping and watching her, no doubt, as Tibbie’s mother had once watched and helped. Miss Marigold, however, was no longer young, while Tibbie had been young as a first summer bird. Miss Marigold was to wear the uninteresting garments which so many brides wore now, but Tibbie herself had been dressed in white. Not satin, of course, or a wreath, or the overgrand ornament of a veil—both Tibbie and her mother were too sensible for that. But nobody who had seen Tibbie that day, whether in London or Timbuctoo, would have been stupid enough to take her for anything but a bride. She was the real, loving, loved bridal thing that trod actually on air, so that one seemed, as it were, to see her spurning the earth, and to hear all about her the uprush of fine wings....
The picture of Tibbie in her wedding-white was so present to her mind that she was surprised, when she opened her eyes, not to see her there in the flesh. She was so puzzled, indeed, that she stopped rocking and sat up, until presently, as her glance strayed about the room, the knowledge came to her that it was Tibbie’s photograph that she sought. She did not seem able to visualise it in its usual place, and she got to her feet, wondering whether the emotion through which she had just passed had somehow shortened her sight. The photograph was there, however, she found, when she moved across, but had slipped on the shelf and lay on its back. She set it up again and stood looking at it, and Tibbie looked, too, but it hardly seemed to her that that was Tibbie’s face. Tibbie’s real face was the one she had just seen when she was half asleep, which had hung above her and kissed her ... and laughed ... and kissed her again....
The photographs of the children were as usual stiffly erect, but she scarcely glanced at them as she turned away. It was impossible, with that vision of laughing girlhood still in her eyes, to think of them as belonging to Tibbie. Indeed, their utter unlikeness to her—always a source of grief—turned them, at this particular moment, into actual strangers. They were so tragically the counterparts of that unfortunate Poor Stephen, to whose comfort and help Tibbie had rushed like an indignant angel. There seemed little but pity and the attraction of opposites to account for the strange marriage, for the young couple had been like creatures out of two totally different spheres. Tibbie had come out of a House of Laughter and Stephen out of a House of Pain; and in spite of their love it was the image of pain that still looked out of their children’s eyes....
Her mind went back at that to her late talk with Mrs. Tanner, conning its weak points, and preparing it once more for the next occasion when they should be called upon to “say their piece.” She was busy with it all the time she was brewing and drawing the tea, and even while, glasses at length unearthed, she pored joyously over the letter. Between her gasps of pleasure at each newly discovered tribute, such as “hard-working citizen,” “good neighbour,” “praiseworthy mother,” and “kind friend,” some door in her mind kept swinging and standing ajar, showing her the pale-faced little boy who had lived through Heaven knew what misery in the house at the top of the street.
In the confidence born of the perfect happening at the perfect moment in the perfect way, Mrs. Clapham wondered how it had been possible for anybody to be as much afraid as Poor Stephen. She was almost inclined to feel impatient with him, looking back, though she had been sorry enough, and even fiercely indignant, at the time. In common with others in the street, she had done her best to see that Stephen was fed, that his clothes were mended and brushed before he went off to school, that there was a fire for him to sit by in cold weather when he chose, and sometimes a penny slipped in his pocket for buying sweets. But Stephen had been hard to help, as are all early-abused, early-cowed young things, and it was not often that he could be decoyed into other people’s houses even for his good. It was almost as if the contrast between what he found there and what was waiting—or wasn’t waiting—for him at home, was more than his wounded spirit was able to bear. In any case, he had avoided their kindly designs whenever he could, choosing his moment to slip past when they weren’t looking, or creeping back again at night with ears deaf to their shrill calls. Often and often she had seen him stealing by in the winter dusk, resolutely turning his eyes from their open, fire-streaming doors. Even in the September sunshine Mrs. Clapham shivered at the thought of that going home, back to the dreary house in which he had been born afraid.
It was many a year now since she had set foot in Emma’s house, but, gradually feeling back, she got its atmosphere again. She could remember little, indeed, of how it had looked; she could only remember how it had felt. Going into Emma’s was not so much going into a house as letting yourself into the four walls of Emma Catterall’s mind. Everything that was in it looked as it did because of Emma, so that the tables hardly seemed tables, or the chairs chairs, or the beds beds. Even Emma’s husband had somehow had that effect, had suffered a sea-change simply because he was Emma’s. Jemmy Catterall had been weak and foolish as a young man, but he had not been the inhuman monster he appeared later. Marriage with Emma had turned him shortly into a sullen brute, subject to fits of fury which stamped him wrong in the head. That undependableness of mood had been a sorry atmosphere for Stephen, combined with that terrible sensing of something that wasn’t sane.
Yet Jemmy—or so at least Mrs. Clapham had been known to insist—would have been right enough but for Emma. He was never a star, of course, either in looks or brains, but he was right enough as men went, seeing that in most cases they didn’t go far. It was hardly credible that he should have turned into the mad skeleton of his later years, peering at people from behind the ferns, or, later still, from a room upstairs. When he wasn’t peering he was emptying water-jugs upon callers’ heads, or throwing things at the passers-by. It seemed an eternity that he had leered and peered, until finally his amusements had come to an end behind the shut door of a coffin-lid....
Well, that had been Stephen’s father—not much of a father for anybody, if it came to that, but least of all for one so inexpressibly in need of help. Yet, even at his worst (and it was a most unpleasant worst), it was unanimously agreed that he was nothing to Emma. Mrs. Clapham could remember how they had all been afraid of her, even as a girl, because of that thing in her mind which watched and hid. Tibbie, too, had complained that Emma spied on her while she slept, just as her own babies had cried themselves sick about it, later on. But the child out of the House of Laughter had not troubled herself about Emma for very long; quite early the obsession had turned into interest in Poor Stephen. Even in those days she used to talk to her mother about the little boy who was always afraid; later still, when they were going to the same school; and later again, when they were grown up and gone to work. And then suddenly the happy, chattering voice had stopped of its own accord, dumb in that last, sweet, waiting stillness before the rushing confession of love....
Upon that desolate Poor Stephen, sunk in his misery and mental murk, Tibbie’s choice had had the effect of a silver clarion in the dark. The conferring of her love was like the conferring of a kingly robe and crown. The change in him was so startling that it was almost as if one saw the gold and the jewels shimmer about him as he moved. Tibbie was a strength-giver, just as Emma was a strength-stealer, but she did a great deal more for Stephen than that. She drew out of him by degrees the courage that was in himself, as well as the graces and charm which make a man loved wherever he goes. The long-latent strength, crushed and shrivelled in youth, had gathered itself at last into that splendid battle-deed; but when the time came for her to lose him, as she had known it would have to come, it was the fact that he had been loved by his fellows that Tibbie had valued most.
Taken altogether, it was a strange tale of the breeding of pluck, especially such pluck as had set Stephen’s name in newspapers without end, on Rolls of Honour and brasses, memorial crosses and shrines; even on the rough little wooden cross which the Germans had raised to him themselves. Only on rare occasions had Tibbie tried to tell her mother what Stephen had suffered in the past, and then it was always by request. It had been hard enough, even, for Stephen to tell his wife, and it was harder still for Tibbie to pass it on. Then, too, it seemed like sending him back to the house of bondage again, to keep even a hint of it in their thoughts. And it was all such a story of patches when it was told, a dreary and mean muddle like streaks on a sordid pane. They were such queer, quiet, sinister things that Emma had chosen to do—things that were yet as demoralising in their effect as any of Jemmy’s wild water-jug-throwing moods. What the other children had suffered only in imagination had really happened to Poor Stephen, for his mother had actually spied upon him while he slept. Night after night he had started awake to find her in the room, a motionless dark figure set at the foot of his bed. She had said nothing; she had done nothing; she had just stood in the shadow and smiled; and he, gasping with fear in the bed, had yet managed to keep silence, too. Quite early he had known her for his enemy, both by night and day, but in the shadow at the foot of the bed she was something worse. The whole sinister powers of darkness seemed to be concentrated in her form, coming to brood above him while he was sound in his first sleep....
This horrible travesty of motherly tenderness had frightened Tibbie Clapham as nothing else had frightened her in life, turning her, even in its recital, into a bitter, white-faced woman whom her mother hardly knew. Evil is never so sinister as when it touches the beautiful natural things and makes them strange. The story of those nights had impressed Tibbie with such cruel force that there was a time when she was almost afraid to approach her own children as they lay and slept....
The nights had been hardest to bear, so Stephen had said, but Emma had watched him everywhere else as well. Indeed, after a while, he had grown to feel that even distance could make no difference; that, no matter where he went, he would never be free of her eyes. The whole circumstances of his life, with their lack of comfort and food, contributed to the obsession, doing their share in keeping his nerves unnourished and his bodily strength low. Then, too, there was the miserable meanness which hid whatever he needed and watched his face while he sought it; that murmured alike whether he was at home or abroad; that crept upon him or made sudden noises; that hinted at evil in connection with every name that he knew, sliding back, in the final event, to hint at it also with his own....
But it was always the watching that he minded most, and that would have finished him in the end, sending him, but for Tibbie and marriage, either to suicide or drink. Even when he had left the place and was happily settled somewhere else, Emma’s eyes had seemed to go with him. Not until long after he was married, Tibbie had said, had he ceased to feel that he was being watched.
“But he never felt it in France,” she said to her mother, after Stephen was dead. “He told me—he even wrote about it—that he never felt it there. It was as if there was some big angel between them, making her keep away. Oh, mother, it was harder than words can say to let him go, but I used to feel so glad for him when he was in France!...”