THE next day Strange went down and told Mrs. Fellowes more or less about
it, and put his wife entirely into her hands.
People were less surprised than might have been supposed at Strange’s
suddenly-organized expedition. He had broken conventional laws now for
so long that if he had settled down into a solid every-day life, without
some characteristic protest, he would have been regarded rather as a
fraud.
The first possible companion his thoughts fell on, was Brydon.
“It would be bringing him out into the wilderness with a vengeance,” he
said, and as a matter of fact it was just what Brydon wanted at the
time, and he was overjoyed at the offer.
When Tolly heard of the proposed move, he came to a firm resolve to be
in it. At first Strange absolutely refused to take him, but at last his
persistence became so annoying that he gave in, but not till Tolly had
taken the most powerfully-expressed oaths of abstinence.
When all this was settled, Tolly looked up with a grin and remarked
deprecatingly,
“If you ’adn’t given in to take me straight, I meant to reach you
crooked at Suez, sir, I never intended, your honour, to let you face
them black varmint, without me.”
Strange looked at the hideous grinning creature, that one good puff of
wind could blow off the face of the earth.
“Do you know you are an idiot, Tolly?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tolly cheerfully.
“And that you’re very likely going to your death?”
“Not when you’re about, sir; death and you ain’t mates.”
“You’re to go with Bell to-day and get rigged out,” said Strange.
“Yes, sir, thank your honour, but I’ve took notice of them pants and
sich as were sent to your honour and ’ave hordered the same for myself
barrin’ a worser quality.”
“Well, upon my word!”
“Arrivin’ at Suez without nothin’ to suit the climate might ’ave
inconvenienced your honour,” remarked Tolly, with bland consideration.
“I have likewise perwided a breechloader and a rewolver.”
“Oh, have you? Bring me those weapons without a moment’s delay, and then
go with Bell and get your outfit; I pay for those pants, and now, don’t
go about the place crowing over the other servants.”
“Oh Lord, sir, if you were to hear them over my teeth you’d take back
that order. Seein’ likewise that the teeth came out of your honour’s own
pocket and are a credit to your establishment, as the dentist hisself
said.”
“Will you be good enough to go to the devil, Tolly, I’m busy.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tolly, and he took himself off to crow conscientiously
the rest of the day.
For the next two months Gwen comported herself to the satisfaction of no
one; she was reticent with the Fellowes, and her mother simply appalled
her.
Mrs. Waring’s nervous gentle little attempts at being a mother; the
delicate tendrils she kept constantly throwing out in her daughter’s
direction; her queer quaint experiments in the expression of the
emotions, simply worried Gwen to death. She refused to let herself see
the pathos of it all, or to be touched.
Indeed, as time went on and her weakness grew more apparent to others,
the demeanour of her mother grew into a terror to her. She would fly
from it to her own room where she would sit with her idle hands lying in
her lap, in a quiet agony of loneliness.
It was a point of honour with her to keep herself calm; she ate and
drank too, and she rested obediently whenever Mary, who had taken the
physical part of her under her charge, said she needed rest; she drove
when the old woman prescribed air, and walked when movement was supposed
to be necessary. She was a mere automaton in her absolute yielding to
orders concerning her health.
During this time Mr. Waring made a wild attempt to expand into a father.
He would issue from time to time from his library with a bundle of
random papers in his hand, and entertain Gwen with discourse, grave and
gay, mostly concerning Africa, of which continent he had rather a poor
opinion and which he painted with lurid colours.
As he reeled out anecdotes of the gruesomeness of the climate, the
impracticability of travelling, the hideous forms diseases assumed, the
congenital villany of the natives, more especially of that portion of
the land into which Strange meant to penetrate, and of which he
certainly possessed a most intimate knowledge, Gwen used to watch him
with a curious cold sort of pain, and wonder if he were human, till one
day Mrs. Fellowes found out the existence of these ghastly
entertainments and stopped them.
One morning when Mr. Waring was thus engaged, his wife sped away in a
half furtive fashion and shut herself into the children’s nursery.
Kneeling down by the drawers she began to pull out great heaps of soft
white lawn and lace and creamy flannel, then with much puzzled doubt she
set to sorting the things into little heaps, each after its kind; when
that was done she went softly out, and in a few minutes returned with
old Mary.
“Has my daughter provided herself with those little things?” she asked
nervously.
“I don’t know, ma’am, I was thinking of speaking to her on the subject.”
“These are good, are they not, the lace seems to me to be real and I do
not see any holes?”
“Lord, ma’am, they are like new, it isn’t likely that I’d have my
clothes torn after two babies, I’ve brought a set through six, ma’am!”
“Do the fashions in these things change, Mary?”
“Bless you, no, ma’am! Set up long-clothes babies with fashions!”
“Mary, would you be good enough to get me a pretty basket?”
“You couldn’t have a prettier one than this one, ma’am,” said Mary,
pulling out the old lace and muslin one that had held the belongings of
her own baby children.
Mrs. Waring took up the thing and examined it curiously, and thought of
the awe with which she used to regard it.
“Do babies nowadays use these things?” she asked.
“Lord, ma’am, yes, and will till the millennium.”
Mrs. Waring put the little things in delicately, one by one.
“Now, Mary, I will take them to my daughter,” she said with a little
quiver of her lips.
She knocked gently at her daughter’s door.
As it happened she could hardly have come at a worse time. Gwen had just
escaped from her father; besides, for three weeks now, there had come no
news from Strange, and in spite of herself she was all on edge with
unnamed terrors.
When Mrs. Waring’s knock came, she was sitting listlessly looking out of
the window.
“Oh, I am so sickeningly tired,” she said, “and I wish she would not
always knock in that tremulous way.” She hardened her face and threw the
door open.
Her mother gave a quick little swallow and came forward falteringly,
while Gwen still held the door open and watched her.
“Will you please close the door, dear Gwen?” she asked.
Gwen complied, and then came towards the basket and lifted one of the
white frilly things carelessly.
Suddenly the truth flashed on her and she trembled with indignation,
while her mother stood pathetically before her, like a criminal at the
bar.
Gwen was the first to speak; her mother’s face touched her in a vague
way.
“Won’t you sit down, mother?” she said, in her cold gentle voice. “Do
you wish me to have these things? I am so very much obliged to you. I
ordered some before I left London, but I believe it is always better to
have a reserve stock of everything.”
“I thought I would like to see a child of yours in the little things,”
faltered her mother.
A horrible feeling came on Gwen that her mother was about to cry. She
took out one or two of the things.
“That is lovely lace,” she said hurriedly, “better than any the woman
showed me. I had no idea you had any interest in such matters.”
Then one fervent wish took possession of her, that her mother would
complete her gift and go, but she was not to be delivered just yet.
Mrs. Waring was on her way to the door with bowed head, when suddenly
with a short smothered cry she turned and faced her daughter. She saw
the quick recoil in the girl’s face, and with a supreme effort the small
fragile creature calmed herself and sat down.
“Gwen,” she said, looking at the tall woman brooding gloomily above her,
then at the basket on the bed, “will you try to suffer my love, dear? I
cannot ask you for yours, I have not earned it, I never knew what it was
to be a mother till too late. But, dear, take the love I bear you
gently, don’t recoil from me as you did just now,”—Gwen winced—“as
you’ve done many times. I will not intrude on you, dear, I have made a
mistake to-day in asking you to accept those things.”
“No, no, mother,” interrupted the girl.
“Yes, dear, I have, I do not reproach you, but you are hard, and that
fault is mine more than yours. When you were a little child, Gwen, did
you ever wish for my love—I mean the ordinary outspoken natural love
that women give their children?”
Mrs. Waring bent forward and looked into her daughter’s face with wide
eager eyes.
Gwen looked into the upturned face and her heart stirred with pity, then
a dreary feeling came on her, that the time was too solemn for lies.
“I longed for it every day that I lived,” she said in a slow reluctant
voice, turning away.
“Ah, and now it is too late! I did cling to that last delusion, I did
hope that in the careless vigour of childhood, in the fresh joy of a
young animal, you might have forgotten to want the outward signs of
mother-love. Gwen, Gwen dear, let your child grow into your heart with
every breath, and God keep you from suffering such as mine!”
She stood up softly and was about to go, but Gwen stopped her,
“Mother,” she cried, “you couldn’t be expected to understand children,
you were meant for intellectual uses altogether! It seems to me hard and
unjust that you should now be hampered with these feelings. Why can you
not go back to your old peaceful life? You were happy in it, now your
work is interfered with, and you are not happy. I wish I could do
anything for you, I wish I could satisfy you!”
“Ah, dear, you don’t know how very little love would still my pain, but
I don’t think that even if you would, you could give it to me—I don’t
think you understand, dear, what love is.”
“Mother,” said the girl, in a low curiously soft tone, “I do not.”
Directly she had made the confession a horrible feeling of shame came on
her.
“She knows everything of me there is to know now!” she thought, with a
dull ache, “I wonder what use she will make of it.”
After a long wait she got some little idea. Her mother came and stood
beside her silently for a minute or two, then she stooped down and
kissed the girl’s hand tremulously, took up her basket with its burden,
and went out of the room and upstairs.
Gwen looked at the little dent made by the basket on the bed, and a new
rush of loneliness flooded her.