Whenever Peter thought of the Misses Jacobite, the picture that formed
was of four lean-breasted women, who spoke in whispers and sat forever
in a room with the blinds down. They seemed to have no passions, no
desires, no grip on reality, no sense of life's supreme earnestness.
They were waiting, always waiting for something to return--something
which had once been theirs: youth, the hope of motherhood, love, the
admiration of men. The day of their opportunity had gone by them;
they could not forget. It was odd to remember that these gentlewomen,
prematurely aged, had once been high-stepping and courted--the belles of
Topbury. One of them sang, day in, day out, of the rest to be found
on the other side of Jordan; it was all that she had to hope for now.
Directly the front door opened you could hear her. The sound of her
singing sent shivers down your back. It made you think of a mourner,
sitting beside the dead; only the dead was not in the house. It had
never come to birth. It was something once expected, that no one dared
speak about.
When Peter called next morning he was aware of a changed atmosphere.
The sense of folded hands had vanished. The singing was no longer heard;
instead, there came to his ears a number of busy, orderly sounds--doors
softly opening and shutting, feet making discreet haste upon the stairs,
the clink of dishes in the basement and the sizzling of cooking.
As he had passed through the hall, with its varnished wall-paper, to the
drawing-room in which he waited, the portrait of old Mr. Jacobite had
gazed fiercely down. Quite evidently the old gentleman disapproved of
the use being made of his night-shirt.
Peter didn't seat himself; it would have been impossible to do so
without causing havoc. Every chair had its antimacassar, spread at its
correct old-maidish angle. He stood by the window, looking out into the
cool little garden--a green, shy sanctuary for birds, across which the
July sunlight fell. Overhead was the room in which Uncle Waffles had
slept--he hoped he had behaved himself. The chandelier shook; several
people were very industrious up there. And Peter wondered. Old Mr.
Jacobite--had he always disapproved of men where his daughters were
concerned? Had he kept them from marriage? Had the tall and reserved
Miss Florence ever been kissed by a man? In the light of his own
romantic experience he pitied all people who hadn't been kissed and
married. Life was wasted if that hadn't happened; it was meant for that.
The handle turned. It was Miss Effie, the little and talkative Miss
Jacobite, who entered. She was smiling and lifted to Peter a face all
a-flutter, thanking him with her eyes, as though he had given her a
present.
“How is he?” Peter asked. “I oughtn't to have brought him here at
all--let alone at such an hour. Only you see--you see there was nowhere
else to bring him.”
She seated herself on the edge of a chair, patting out her dress. “He's
tired.” She spoke with an air of concern. “He wasn't very well. We made
him stay in bed. We're going to keep him there; he needs feeding.”
She was flustered. Her hands kept clasping and unclasping. She seemed
afraid of being accused of immodesty. She raised her eyes shyly. “It's
so nice to have a man in the house. Not since poor dear father----. I
wonder what he'd have said.”
Peter didn't wonder. He thought it was high time that he made matters
clearer. “Of course, I'm not going to leave him on your hands. I only
brought him for a night because----”
She interrupted anxiously. “Oh, please, until he's better. He's so run
down. They made him work so hard in--in there.”
So he had brought his derelict uncle to the one spot on earth where he
was regarded as a treasure! He was so amazed at Miss Effie's attitude
that he doubted whether she was in full possession of the facts.
“But--but,” he faltered, “didn't Miss Florence tell you where he's come
from--where it was that he had to work?”
She answered in a low voice. “We've all done wrong.” It seemed she could
get no further. She sank her head, gazing straight before her, tracing
out the great red roses in the carpet. Peter thought of her sister,
Leah, the shadow-woman; he knew what she meant. She raised her eyes to
his with an effort. “We've all done wrong; I think to have done wrong
makes one more gentle. It makes one willing--not to remember.”
Miss Florence opened the door and looked in on them. “He's ready to see
you now.” She hated scenes. Because she saw that one was in preparation,
she made her voice and manner perfunctory. “You'd better go alone. You'd
better go on tiptoe. I wouldn't stop too long; he's got a bad head.”
Peter couldn't help smiling as he climbed the stairs, and yet it was a
tender sort of smiling. Didn't these innocent ladies know that too much
whisky invariably left a bad head? Or, with their divine faculty for
forgetting, were they willing to forget the whisky and only to remember
to cure the bad head?
It was a white room--a woman's room most emphatically. The pictures on
the walls were triumphs of sentimentality. Gallants were kissing
their ladies' hands and clutching them to their breasts in an agony of
parting, or looking meltingly at a flower which they had left. The seats
of the chairs wore linen covers to prevent their upholstery from getting
shabby. The window was wide; on the sill crumbs had been scattered.
Sparrows chattered and, grown bold from habit, flew in on to the carpet
and preened their feathers.
On the bed, the sheets drawn close up under his chin, lay Uncle Waffles.
He had the look that invalids sometimes have, of being made to appear
more ill by too much attention. He had not shaved--his cheeks were
grizzled; that help to make him look worse. The atmosphere of a sickroom
was completed by a table placed beside the counterpane, on which lay an
open Bible and some freshly plucked wall-flowers. Peter had never seen
his uncle in bed--for the moment he was embarrassed. He drew up a chair.
“How are you? Getting rested?”
Uncle Waffles hitched himself higher on the pillow, reached out and took
Peter's hand. A glint of the old love of fun-making crept into his
eyes. “I've not been treated like this since my mother--not since I
was married. They're pretending I'm ill because they want to nurse me.
Carried off my trousers, they did, to prevent me from getting dressed.
What's the matter with them? Don't they know who I am?”
“They know.”
“Then why are they doing it?”
“Because they've suffered themselves.”
Ocky tightened his grip on Peter's hand. “One of them been to--to where
I've been, you mean? Which one?” Peter shook his head. “They've all been
to prison in a sense--not the kind you speak of. They had a big tragedy,
when everything looked happy. Since then----. Well, since then people
have pitied and cut them. They've been left. They're glad you've come,
partly because life's been cruel to you, and partly----. Look here, I
don't want you to laugh!--partly because you're a man.”
Ocky pulled the late Mr. Jacobite's night-shirt tighter across his
shoulders. It was much too large for him--as voluminous as a surplice.
“Not much of a man,” he muttered; “not much of a man. Arrived here--you
know how. Before that had been hanging about street corners, watched by
the police and jostled into the gutter. My own wife won't look at me;
and yet you tell me these strangers----.”
His voice shook. “I don't understand--can't see why----.”
Peter spoke after an interval. “You--you haven't often been surprised by
too much kindness, have you? Comes almost like a blow at first?”
“Almost. It kind of hurts. But it's the right kind of hurting. It makes
me want to be good. Never thought I'd want to be that.”
“What did you think?”
For a moment a fierce look came into his eyes. “What does an animal
think of when it's trapped? It thinks of all the ways in which it can
get back at the people who put it there. But now----.” He picked up
the wall-flowers and smelt them. “She brought them this morning--the
littlest one, with the gray hair and tiny hands. They were all wet with
dew when she brought them. You need to go to prison, Peter, to know what
flowers can mean to a chap.”
There was a tap at the door. Miss Madge entered, bringing some beef-tea.
When she had gone Ocky said, “They take it in turns.”
Peter remembered how, going always into separate rooms with them, they'd
taken turns in owning himself and Kay when they were children. How
rarely life had allowed them to love anything!
Uncle Waffles' thoughts seemed to have been following the same track. He
paused, with the cup half-way to his mouth. “Those women ought to have
married.--Been in prison most of their lives, you said? But I don't
know; marriage can be a worse hell.” He turned to Peter. “D'you remember
at Sandport how she'd never let me kiss her? It was like that from the
first. She kept me hungry. I stole to make her love me. She was always
talking about her first husband and making me jealous. And yet----.”
He stopped and gazed vacantly across the room to where sparrows
fluttered on the sill and sunlight fell. Peter supposed that he had
forgotten what he was going to have said. Suddenly his face became
all purpose and pleading. He flung back the bedclothes and leant out,
gripping Peter's shoulders till they hurt. “I'd steal again to-morrow
to get one day of her bought affection. My God, how I've longed for her!
Make her come to me. You must, Peter. You shall. Don't tell her who I
am. Oh, don't refuse me.”
The sharp agony and desperate determination of a man so drifting and
careless took Peter aback. He recalled those days when he had hidden him
in the stable--it had been the same then. He had always been urging that
Je-hane should be persuaded to walk in the garden that he might catch
a glimpse of her. The one strong loyalty of his weak existence had been
the love of this woman.
“Get her to come to you!” Peter said. “But how? She wouldn't. She----”
Ocky burried his face in the pillow. How thin he was and listless! How
spent! How----. What was the word? How smashed! It was as though in the
human quarry some chance stone of calamity had fallen on him, making him
a moral cripple. He was what he was through the sort of accident that
might happen to any man--to the Faun Man, if Eve refused to love him;
even to Peter himself.
The boy pulled the clothes back over the man. “Somehow--I don't know
how--somehow I'll do it. I promise.”
After that, whenever Peter entered the white room, he saw how his uncle
watched for someone to follow.
The Misses Jacobite had found a doctor who supported their opinion that
their guest must be kept in bed. The prison fare and long confinement
had broken down his constitution. The doctor didn't know what had done
it; he advised food and rest.
From time to time Peter brought visitors to the room overlooking the
garden. His father came and was shocked by the wasted look of the man
who, in earlier years, had been his friend. It was of those earlier
years that they chose to speak, by an instinctive courtesy; they, at
least, had been happy territory. They recalled together their schoolday
pranks--the canings they had earned, the football matches they had lost
or won, the holidays when they had broken boundaries, going on some
secret adventure. But, when Barrington rose to go, Ocky said, “Don't
come again, Billy. You used to hate to hear me call you Billy; you'll
dislike it just as much when I'm better. We've both been forgetting what
I am, and what I've done. If you come again we may remember. For years
I've worried you; well, that's ended. But--you're a man of the world,
and you understand. I'm a jail-bird--and I don't want to spoil the
memory of this hour. Good-bye, old man.”
It turned out that Mr. Grace hadn't slept on his box so soundly that
evening of Peter's return--at least, not so soundly as to keep his eyes
shut.
“All swank on my part, Mr. Peter,” he said; “she's been h'at me for
years, my darter Grice 'as, and I don't mean to get conwerted. H'I'm not
a-goin' ter come ter 'eaven, so long as 'er voice is the only voice as
calls me. 'Eaven 'ud be 'ell, livin' wiv 'er in the same 'ouse, if I wuz
ter do that. We'd be for h'everlastin' prayin' and floppin'. Not but wot
religion 'as its uses; but not for me in 'er sense. That's why I shut me
h'eyes when she was a-bellowin' at the corner. But I saw yer. 'Ow is the
old bloke nar? Your uncle, I mean, meanin' no disrespeck. I've h'often
thought that if we 'ad met under 'appier h'auspices--h'auspices is one
of my Grice's words--we might 'ave been pals.”
Peter brought about the 'appier h'auspices. One afternoon Cat's Meat
halted before the house and Mr. Grace climbed down from his box, a bag
of apples in one hand and his whip in the other. He was very red in the
face and embarrassed; he had anything but a sick-room appearance, though
he often drove in funeral processions. He was immensely careful about
the wiping of his feet. Peter tried to coax him to leave his whip in
the hall; he wouldn't. He seemed to think that it lent him dignity, and
explained his status in the world. So it was clutching a bag of apples
and clasping his whip against his chest, that he entered the white room
where the birds hopped in and out.
Ocky Waffles, shifting his position on the bed, caught sight of the
weather-beaten, alcoholic figure. Before he could say a word, in a
thick, husky voice Mr. Grace offered his apologies.
“'Ere. 'Ave 'em. I 'ear you ain't well.” He swung the bag of apples on
to the bed. “Bought 'em from a gal off a barrer” He paused awkwardly.
“That was good of you,” said Ocky. “Come and sit down.”
Mr. Grace scratched his head. “I dunno as I want to sit down. I dunno
as you and me is friends. Remember the last time we met and h'all the
trouble we 'ad? You wuz a nice old cough-drop in them days. I 'ad to 'it
yer wiv this 'ere whip--the wery same one--to make yer let go o' the top
o' the gate and fall inter the stable. Well, I 'it yer in kindness; but
it's because I 'it yer that I dunno whether you and me is friends.”
“We're friends,” said Ocky.
Mr. Grace sat down. It was most curious, all this. He hadn't got his
bearings. This chap, lying in a decent bed and waited on hand and foot
by ladies, was Mr. Waffles, if you please. But he had been an old
cock who climbed walls to avoid policemen, and rode about at night in
philanthropic cabs. He turned to him gruffly. “Eat one o' them there
apples. Bought 'em from a gal off a barrer.--Did h'I tell yer that
h'already?” It was a sign that the truce was established.
Mr. Grace became a frequent caller. An odd friendship grew up between
these two men, both broken on the wheel of feminine perversity. They
exchanged notes on their experiences. Ocky spoke to the old cabby with
greater freedom than to anyone, save Peter. Jehane had always said of
him that he found it easy to be sociable with underlings and ostlers.
In this case he found it easy because of the wide charity of the
underling's personal laxity. Sometimes Miss Effie would steal in and
read to them of a man who chose his companions from among publicans and
sinners. Mr. Grace would pay her the closest attention and ask her
to repeat certain passages; he was picking up pointers, with which to
challenge his daughter's confident assertions concerning God's unvarying
severity.
And then Jehane! She came one afternoon to Topbury to visit Nan. She had
heard nothing; nothing was told her. Peter waited for an opportunity to
get her to himself. In the garden after dinner the others contrived to
leave them together.
“Going up to Oxford, Peter? Oh, well, it's good to have opportunities
and a father with money. My poor Eustace, he'll never have that. I
might, while you're there----.”
She paused; the thought had just occurred to her--a new plan for
marrying off her girls “I might let Glory and Riska visit my father and
mother while you're there. It would be pleasant for all of you. Would
you like that?”
“Splendid,” said Peter.
She eyed him, suspecting the sincerity of his enthusiasm.
“Of course, if you don't want your cousins---.”
“I do,” he assured her. “I'm going to Calvary College; that's just
opposite Professor Usk's house. I'll be able to see plenty of them.”
Then, knowing how she liked to be appealed to as a person with superior
knowledge, “I wish you'd tell me some of the things I mustn't do; Oxford
etiquette's so full of _mustn'ts_.”
She laughed; the hard lines softened about her mouth. Talking about
Oxford made her think of her girlhood, when to be the daughter of a don
was to be something akin to an aristocrat. Those days were sufficiently
far removed for her to have forgotten their dread of spinsterhood, and
for her to remember only their glamour. “You must never use tongs to
your sugar,” she said; “only freshers do that--you must help yourself
with your fingers. And, let me see! You must never wear your cap and
gown unless it's positively necessary. You mustn't speak to a second
or third-year man unless he speaks to you first.--Oh, there are so many
_mustn'ts_ at Oxford; it would take all evening.”
And then, “Did your mother ever tell you the story of how we first met
Billy? It had been raining, and we were waiting to go on the river. I
put my head out of the window to see if the storm was over, and there
was your father looking up at me. I used to tease your mother by
pretending that I was in love with him. I shouldn't wonder--I expect
she still believes I wanted him. You see, Nan and I were inseparable as
girls. We used to be horribly scared of not marrying--we didn't know
as much about marriage then. We used to think that girls were born on a
raft and that only a man could come to their rescue. Funny idea, wasn't
it?”
“And if the man didn't come?”
“Why, if the man didn't come, we believed girls missed
everything--believed they got blown out to sea, out of sight of land and
starved with thirst. That was what made your mother so jealous, when I
pretended to be in love with Billy. She was afraid she'd lose her one
and only chance of getting safe ashore to the land of matrimony.” That
was Jehane's public version of how love had miscarried between herself
and Barrington.
So she ran on, remembering and remembering, as they walked the garden
path from the mulberry to the pear trees, forth and back, back and
forth, while the sunset reddened the creepers on the walls and the
loft-window, from which Ocky had watched in vain for her coming, looked
down on them emptily.
When it was time for her to be getting on her way, Peter volunteered to
accompany her to the station. They chose the Lowbury Station instead of
the Topbury, because it would take longer and they could continue their
conversation about Oxford, her Promised Land of the past. “You must have
had good times as a girl.”
Good times! Hadn't she? She painted for him the joys of Eights' Week,
the excitement of the Toggers, the tremendous elations of a young and
vivid 'Varsity world. She painted them for him as romantic realities
which she had lived to the full and lost. And the odd thing was that she
believed that she had been happy then. All her life it had been _then_
that she had been happy. Her Eldorados had always been behind her--never
in the To-days or the To-morrows. When she pitied herself, her otherwise
barren nature blossomed into a tragic luxuriance that was almost noble,
and entirely picturesque.
She hadn't noticed where Peter was leading her. She found herself in
a broad and quiet street, through which little traffic passed. The
pavements, on either side of it, were lined with plane-trees. Houses
stood far back from the road in gardens, with stone steps climbing up to
them.
She slipped her hand into Peter's arm. Now that Nan wasn't there to be
pleased by it, she was willing to let him know that she was proud of
him. In the silver twilight, when one sees with the imagination rather
than with the eyes, she found his face like to one which had looked up
at her suddenly and held her spell-bound in the gray blur of an Oxford
street.
“Is this the right way, Peter? Is it a short-cut? Are you taking me out
of my way to lengthen our talk?”
He laughed, rather excitedly she thought. “I like to hear you telling of
the old days---- Hulloa! Why here's the Misses Jacobite's house! You
remember what you said about women being on a raft--I think that
explains them. No one came out from the land to take them off. Let's
step inside and cheer them up.”
“But Peter, my train----.”
“Oh, there are plenty of trains--we needn't stop more than a second.”
“You rascal!” She gave his arm a little hug. “I believe you had this in
mind from the start.”
“Perhaps I had.”
When they were safe inside the hall and the door had closed behind them,
his manner altered. She was conscious of it in a second. He no longer
laughed, and he was more excited.
“There's someone here who wants to meet you,” he informed her.
“But who? Why didn't you tell me?”
“I wanted to give you a surprise.”
She looked annoyed and yet curious. “You must tell me. Is it a man or a
woman?”
He didn't dare to let her know that it was her husband.
“You'll see presently.”
She was beginning to protest; Miss Florence entered. Under her attempt
at cordiality her face betrayed dismay, and something still less
comfortable--judgment. Peter employed her entrance as an excuse for his
own rapid exit. He soon returned. “They want to see you now.”
Making the best of an awkward situation, Jehane exclaimed, “They! So
there are several of them! It was only 'someone' at first.”
She followed him up the stairs, trying to catch up with and question
him; he was careful to keep sufficiently far ahead to prevent
conversation. He opened a door on the landing--the door which led into
the white room. He made as if he were going to accompany her, but, as
she crossed the threshold, stepped back and closed the door.
“You!”
The man held out his arms. When she stood rigid and did not stir, he
dragged himself across the bed, as if to come to her.
“Don't.”
Her voice was sudden like a whip cracked.
His arms fell to his side. After all these years of absence,
her stronger will lashed down his desire. He began ramblingly,
shame-facedly, hinting at what he meant, not having the audacity to
finish his sentences. “I had to----. I made Peter promise. When they let
me out, I was thinking of you. All the time in there, for four years, I
was thinking of----. Jehane, I've been punished enough. Isn't it
possible that----? Jehane, I love you. I always have. I always shall.”
He was aching to touch her. Through the mist of twilight that drifted
through the room, he fed his eyes on every detail of this woman who had
once been familiar to him. She hadn't changed much; it was he who was
altered. She also made her sternly pitiful estimate--the shrunken body,
the loose-lipped, purposeless mouth, the hair growing thin and gray
about the temples.
He stretched out his arms. “I love you.”
She shuddered; it was as though a man from the grave had called to her.
“Love me!” Her voice was so low that his ears were strained to catch
what she said. “No. You never loved me; you weren't strong enough for
that. It was all a mistake; we never belonged to each other. If you had
loved me, you wouldn't have---- But we won't talk about it. I'm not
bitter; but we must go our own ways now.”
He was lying across the edge of the bed, threatening to reach across the
gulf that spread between them. The nearer he came, the more she saw what
had happened. He was old--a senile, night-robed caricature of the man
she had married. In the half-light her fear of his claim on her made him
ghastly.
He was moving--he was getting out of bed. She opened the door, running
as she would have run from a skeleton. He was following her down the
stairs. She fancied that he touched her. It seemed that he leapt through
the air. Something fell. In the hall people tried to stay her. She was
in the street where the plane-trees rustled; how she managed to get
there she could not tell. She ran on, fearing that he still followed.
She halted for want of breath. Where was she? Lighted trams were
passing. She jumped on the first, giving no thought to its direction.
Not until she was safe aboard and moving, did she dare to look back.
Nothing was there, nothing gaunt and hungry--only saunterers and girls
with their lovers, drifting dreamlike through the shadows under lamps
against whose glare moths hurled their fragile bodies, beating their
lives out flutteringly.