ON Monday, after tea, Rosemary sat in her studio and knitted. Not long
ago her studio had been the schoolroom, and its name now was little more
than an attempt to make the best of its northern aspect. There was an
easel in a corner and in a drawer somewhere various sticks of charcoal
and tubes of paint, but the room was used chiefly, when she troubled to
think of it, as a field for Rosemary's decorative instinct. Just now its
walls were cream, its paint dark purple, its furniture very subtly
purple and blue. This was an arrangement which gave many opportunities.
When Rosemary was feeling brilliant and worldly and successful with life
she could put on a rose-coloured dress and dominate the colour scheme,
or, if she were restless, she could be ultra-modern and temperamental in
orange and dark green. This afternoon she was knitting in the coat and
skirt she had worn on her walking-tour and the room, undominated, looked
a trifle gloomy. Rosemary always carried knitting on a walking-tour.
Landladies who did not think well of young girls tramping about in
couples would grow friendly when they saw the knitting-needles. And
Rosemary was anxious now to finish what she was doing before she had
forgotten all about it.
Anthony, when he came in, found her pulling out a row of stitches. His
attention was drawn to this because she would not allow him within reach
until the affair of getting them back was safely finished. Then he
received his greeting, but Rosemary's mind was with her wool. After a
question or two she went back to her knitting. "Bother the thing," she
said a minute later, "I'm getting it wrong again!"
Anthony sat down on the hearth-rug and asked her, in a tone that did not
call for an answer, why, in that case, she troubled to do it at all. He
was slightly annoyed. If it had not been for her idiotic fancy-work he
could have sat on the arm of her chair.
Rosemary did not knit with the grace that comes of skill, and now, since
she was deeply preoccupied, her air was impersonal and unreceptive. She
might have been more glad to see him, Anthony thought. Nevertheless she
was lovely, and, he reminded himself, her lack of sentimental pretence
was one of the things he most admired in her. It was so unlike Gladys.
He had been in love with Gladys before he met Rosemary, and whenever he
had said that he felt anything Gladys had always felt it too, only
rather more intensely.
At this point Rosemary, the fresh difficulty surmounted, began to
amplify her grievance. "Why are one's hands so inadequate?" she said,
clicking off a plain easy row. "Why do they go on making mistakes after
you understand exactly what to do? It's awfully annoying being beaten by
a thing like this knitting--the pattern is perfectly simple." She
reached the end of the row and looked across to him, frowning a little.
"Why should I care about knitting?" she went on, "I believe being
engaged to you is making me womanly, old Tony!"
Anthony, hands round knees, imparted a little information. "You'd have
got womanly anyhow," he told her. "It's a way women have. But I don't
see why you should waste your time knitting. An intelligent being, say a
man, wouldn't be bothering about mistakes, he'd put in the time
inventing a knitting-machine. You can prove this if you go into any big
shop. The proper department is replete with knitting-machines. And how
many men knit? They smoke their pipes and think. But you go tangling up
wool with two clumsy needles--I withdraw that if you think it's unkind!"
This row was complicated, and Rosemary did not look up. "Knit two
together," he heard her say.
"Listen to me please," he urged. "As for your hands being silly, it's
you who are silly to put them to such uses when you might be letting me
hold them. Being held is one of the things hands were made for; knitting
is not. And having your hands held is one of the things you were made
for, and you know it."
Rosemary stood up and put her knitting aside. Then she held out her
hands. "All right," she said, "here they are. Only if I don't finish
that wretched thing quickly it will just lie about and get dusty."
Anthony pulled her down on to the rug beside him and then made himself
thoroughly comfortable.
"Put your head on my shoulder," he advised her, "if you're not feeling
affectionate. And kiss my chin once or twice. I want you to feel
affectionate because I've something to say to you, and a nice woman is
swayed by her emotions."
Rosemary straightened herself at once. "What ridiculous plan have you
got," she asked, "that you can't trust to my calm judgment?"
Anthony looked straight ahead of him, at the fire. "It's a very good
plan," he said, "it's an excellent plan, and I've given a good deal of
thought to it. I think it's time we got married."
He did not turn, but her shoulder was against his, and he felt her
stiffen. "Why--particularly?" she asked.
"Oh, general reasons. As a matter of fact it's your duty to be pining to
marry me, and I think it's rather giving in to you to tell you reasons,
but I will if you like."
Rosemary believed that life is a serious thing, and she could not now
help him to be flippant. "Yes, do!" she said, and Anthony honourably
tried.
"Wouldn't you agree," he began, "that the art of living is largely not
going on with things after you've had the best of them? When things
begin to shrink instead of expanding, you ought to change them--don't
you agree?"
Rosemary was looking down at the floor. "But why has our engagement
begun to shrink?" she asked. "I don't think it has."
Anthony put his arm round her and pulled her so close to him that she
could not see his face. "Do you really want to know--are you quite sure
you want to know--won't you just take it from me?" she heard him saying.
"No," she said, "I'd rather you told me!" She was not afraid of knowing
about life, she reminded herself, her cheek safely against his coat. She
hoped he would always tell her everything.
He was silent for a moment, and then he drew her closer still. "You
see," he said, "Rosemary darling, I want you so much. I used to be happy
just because I loved you and you loved me. I liked to be with you, and
talk to you, and argue about things and feel that we were great friends.
But now I seem to have lost all that--" He hesitated.
Rosemary did not speak, and he went on. "It isn't that I love you less,
only it's different. I love you more--I think about you all day, I can't
help it, I keep seeing you, and remembering how beautiful you are, and
how jolly your hair is--and all that sort of thing."
"The fact is, young woman," he went on, "you've become an obsession, do
you see? A poet would be delighted if he lay awake all night thinking of
your eyelids, but I'm not a poet. And if I can't do my work properly
what's to become of us?"
Rosemary still said nothing, and the lightness died out of his voice. "I
hate it," he told her, "it's perfectly beastly. Even when I'm with you
I'm wondering all the time whether you really love me, and when I'm away
from you I'm simply miserable. I know it's idiotic, but I can't help it.
And it's spoiling everything, it isn't the way you ought to be loved.
It's greedy and ugly. I suppose really you're too fine for me. But I
feel as if once we were married it would be all right again."
He turned, trying to see from her face what Rosemary thought, but the
room had grown dark, and the fire threw confusing shadows. She did not
move; he supposed she was thinking about it in her lucid, reasonable
way, when suddenly he heard her whisper, "Tony--darling--I can't! Don't
make me!"
His sense of disappointment was so immediate and so strong that he
jumped to his feet. He could not sit next her, touching her, when they
were so deeply divided. He picked up a bowl that stood on the
mantelpiece and pretended, in the dark, to examine it.
"It's all right," he reassured her, "it's quite all right, old darling.
Even if I could, I wouldn't make you do anything you didn't want to do."
But Rosemary was on her feet now, appealing to him. "Tony, let me
explain--you explained to me--of course I'll marry you if you feel we
must--it isn't that I don't love you. It's Laura. It's the change in
Laura that has made me afraid of getting married."
She put her hand gently on to his arm, but he moved in a way that was
meant to show that he had not noticed it. "Laura seems to me very
happy," he said, unable not to argue, "happier now than she was before
she married."
"Oh, I know she's happy--I'm not afraid of not being happy"--she could
not bear him to think that--"but she's grown so soft, Tony, and she used
to be so keen. It's just as if she were drunk with happiness--it has got
the better of her. She's not herself any more. I can't explain, because
I don't understand what it is has changed her, but it has made me feel
that marriage is dreadfully important. It does things to you. It alters
you. It's a terrible risk."
She paused, hoping that he would help her, that he would agree with her,
but he said nothing.
"I've always thought that however much I loved anyone I should love them
proudly, as a free person, as an equal. And I thought Laura was like
that too--and now she's horrible, she's abject--I've seen her looking up
at Harry like a dog!"
Another thought came to her, and she flushed. "That white thing I was
knitting is for Laura's baby. She was pleased when I told her I was
making it. But, Tony, if that were going to happen to me I'd die rather
than have people know, have all those women chattering about it and
fussing over me and bringing me cushions and telling me to keep my feet
up. If you didn't tell them they'd guess--it's indecent."
He looked up quickly. "We could go right away," he said, and stopped.
She had turned to the mantelpiece, and her face was hidden on her arm.
Anthony felt very much to blame. He turned up the electric light, as a
sign that the time for common-sense had come. "Darling," he told her,
"I've said so--you shall do just what you like! I oughtn't to have
bothered you--I ought to have remembered that you're so young! But it is
all right, isn't it? I mean, you do love me?" he went on, made anxious
by the heaviness of his heart.
"Aren't you sure?" he pressed, as she did not speak.
His tone had loosed a tumult of misgiving in Rosemary's mind. He was
hurt, she had hurt him--the idea brought with it a sense of intimacy.
Perhaps she had been wrong to be afraid--he was Tony, not Harry, not
just a man. She had not meant to hurt him. Perhaps she had been giving
words to thoughts that she ought to have left in their vague confusion,
indefinite, disregarded. She had let herself be afraid, but what she
owed him was love and belief, not fear. Perhaps this fear was one of the
hard things women have to conquer. Perhaps they all felt it, but they
were braver than she was. If she let him go now, his hopes bruised, his
desires rejected, wouldn't she be guilty of treachery, wouldn't she be
throwing away her great opportunity? If you love freely, proudly, she
told herself, you don't rule your love by your fear. If she was really
Tony's equal, his mate and his comrade, why was she afraid? She had
given herself to him, and she could not, because she was a coward, take
her gift back again.
She went up to him, and put her arms round his neck. "I love you better
than anything else in the world," she said, "and I want to marry you."
Anthony looked down miserably for a moment at her flushed face. He knew
that she was excited, exalted, moved by a sudden impulse. But why was he
to pay less attention to this impulse, this mood, than to the mood that
had gone before? The main thing was that she loved him. He put his arms
round her, unable for the moment to find speech. "Little Rose," he told
her at last, "I will be good to you, honestly I will. I do want you so
badly, and if you love me I can't feel that it's wrong!"
Rosemary, trembling and clinging close to him, found that she was
crying.
She dried her tears hastily, left him, and went back to her chair. She
took the knitting on to her lap, but forgot to go on with it. She was
glad she had done what she had, but she had not, all the same, left off
being afraid. It did make a difference being married--it must. It had
made, people said, "a woman" of Laura. She didn't want to be a woman,
she thought. Most women were cowardly creatures, lazy, ridden by
feeling, immersed in their own little pools of happiness or discontent.
She liked girls, she liked being a girl, ignorant and adventurous, with
nothing in her life about which she could not speak and be honest. When
you married the most important things in the world were private, secret
things, you shared them with one other person, you lost your sense of
the freedom, the spaciousness, of life. Laura had said that once, even
Laura hadn't lost what she'd lost without regretting it. It wasn't that
she didn't love Tony, she loved him so much that she was happy to be
giving up everything for him, but she regretted herself, the self that
was soon to be changed into a wife and a mother. She liked the world,
she liked adventures; a wife is shut away from adventure, a mother shuts
the world away from her children. She consoled herself by thinking that
every woman who marries young has had these thoughts.
Meanwhile Anthony fidgeted. He was never easy under prolonged
sentimental tension, and he did not want to think now of the scene they
had just been through. He wanted, leaving that as a background of
general exultation, to talk about a house he had seen that morning. It
was to let; he wasn't sure that it mightn't do. But he realised that
while Rosemary's expression remained what it was it would be
extraordinarily tactless to talk about the house. His nerves were a
little upset, and the house obsessed him, he could think of no other
topic. As he sat silent, looking a little gloomy, he tried to make out
from the front of it how many rooms the house would be likely to have.
The rent was £70. With the rates that would be £95.
They were both glad when the door opened and showed them Mrs. Heyham.
Mary had come, a little nervous, to find out from her daughter the names
of books that she would do well to read, without, at the same time,
discussing the subject or giving rise to any thoughts that were critical
of James. She greeted Anthony kindly, and would have kissed Rosemary,
but Rosemary's cheeks had flushed too lately under other kisses, and she
did not approach her mother in a way that made this possible. Mary
understood the refusal, and her own cheeks reddened. She had been hoping
that these new interests of hers would bring her nearer to Rosemary.
For a moment they all waited, then Mary sat down and asked whether the
walking-tour had been a success. She had forgotten, quite suddenly, the
careful arrangement she had made of what she was going to say. Two days
ago she had wondered whether she shouldn't tell Rosemary everything, but
finally she had decided that she would not. Florrie's story was not easy
to tell, and she found, besides, that she was shy of exposing her own
doubtful and troubled mind. The child, with her different ideas, might
dislike her mother's emotions, resent her confidences. She had clinched
the matter by recalling the loyalty she herself owed to James.
So at last, when she had gathered courage, she began very carefully, "Do
you remember, darling, six months ago, when we thought of my starting
this little investigation, you offered to lend me some books?"
Rosemary remembered. "Oh, yes--you didn't read them, did you?"
Mary was prepared for that. "No, I didn't. Your father and I thought
that as I hadn't time for studying the question seriously I had better
begin with an unprejudiced mind. But now I've seen a certain amount for
myself I should like to know what more competent people think." She
smiled.
Rosemary knew this tone of her mother's, knew it to mean that Mary was
reserving something, probably the most important thing. The tone chafed
her now as it had when she first understood it, as a child. Why had her
mother never spoken of what she was doing?--Rosemary supposed that she
must have given some promise to her husband, or to Trent. "How stuffy it
all is," she told herself, "never any honest discussion! Always secrets
and hiding things in corners!" When she answered it was in the slightly
stiff tone with which she always met what seemed to her a disingenuous
excess of tact.
"I don't know of any books on waitresses particularly, mother, only
books on women's work in general. I can get the facts for you if you
like. But what is wrong with the work is long hours, too much work,
consumption from going home in the cold after the hot shops, and bad
wages!"
Mary was taken aback. It had not occurred to her that there was a
definite body of opinion on the subject--hostile opinion. "Oh--how do
you know?" she asked.
Rosemary had been too much disturbed that afternoon to feel tolerant
now. "She has been six months looking at it," she said to herself, "and
she doesn't see yet what a rotten life it is. Shall I get like that,
shall I lose my wits and my senses when I've been married twenty years?"
"Oh, I don't know," she answered. "I know a woman who works among them,
and every now and then there are articles in the papers about it--"
"I've never seen any, dear!" Mary felt that in some way she was on her
defence.
"You wouldn't have, they'd not be in the _Times_. Of course, you can't
rely on them altogether, but they're fairly accurate, and about a year
ago I felt curious about it; I wanted to find out how our money was made
for us, so I went to one of those bureaus where they look things out for
you. I never said anything to you because you none of you take me
seriously." Her voice had become softer as she realised that her mother
was really distressed.
She finished, and Mary bent forward, eager with a point. She had not
meant to speak of the thing, much less argue about it, but when she saw
Rosemary seriously in error, she forgot that it might be imprudent to
open a discussion. "Why did you say bad wages?--I have always understood
that twelve shillings a week was good wages for a woman. My servants
would think it good."
"So it is," said Anthony, who had left the hearth-rug and was standing
behind Rosemary's chair.
"And you must remember that all these girls are provided for at home!
They're not really earning their livings!" She was not defending a mere
argument, she was defending James!
"That doesn't make twelve shillings fair pay for a whole week's work!
Suppose their fathers are earning two pounds a week, or even four--two
hundred pounds a year--couldn't they spend a little more with advantage?
Whether they'll let us or not, nothing gives us a moral right to feed
our girls on their fathers' money!" Rosemary's inner excitement was
turned now into this congenial channel. She had never had a chance of
talking about the matter with her father, and when she had turned on
Trent he had refused with contempt to discuss that or anything else of
importance with her. Laura had been vaguely sympathetic, with a mental
reservation that father couldn't possibly be cruel to anyone. Now at
last Rosemary could speak the truth. She would have said more if Anthony
had not pressed his hand heavily on her shoulder.
"But why do the girls go to it," cried poor Mary, "if it's so bad? There
are always girls waiting to be taken on! And how can your father pay his
people more if nobody else will?"
Anthony's hand pressed even more heavily. "Twelve shillings is a good
wage for women, Mrs. Heyham," he said. "I don't know what the average is
since the Trade Boards, but it's far below that."
Rosemary understood that she was behaving badly. "I don't suggest that
father could pay more than he does, mother darling, I haven't the least
idea of what he can afford. I don't suppose he can--that's the point of
a competitive system!"
Mary looked at them, young things with whom lay so much of her
happiness, and knew that they were trying to console her. She saw, too,
that she must stop the discussion at once. Hadn't they already dragged
into it him whose very existence made all discussion wrong? "At any
rate," she said, and she smiled, "you can lend me some books. Perhaps
when I've read them you won't feel that I'm so ignorant!"
Rosemary jumped up and went to the bookcase where she kept the works
that had inspired her own social wisdom. She pulled out a row of them,
easy ones, free from technical allusions, and brought them to her
mother, who took the "These aren't difficult" without wincing. As she
went towards the door Rosemary jumped up and kissed her. "Mother
darling," she began, and then she did not know what to say. It was her
duty, the duty of every decent human being, to tell another human being
the truth! But Mary was content with the affectionate gesture and went
away happier.
When the door was shut Anthony was able to show his disapprobation.
"Don't be detestable, Rosemary," he said, "you hurt the poor old lady!
Lend her books if she asks for them, but it's not your business to tell
her those particular things!"
"But, Anthony--I'm sorry if I was too hard--I was excited I'm
afraid--but isn't it everybody's business if she wants to know and can't
see them for herself?"
"Somebody's perhaps, not yours! Look here, Rosemary, you read
everything, and you've found out things in the last few years that it
hurt you to know, but aren't you glad you found them out for yourself?
Wouldn't you have hated your mother to tell you?"
Rosemary looked down. "But if I hadn't found out for myself I should
have felt that she ought to tell me!"
"That's not the point--she probably saw that you were finding out. What
I mean is, wouldn't you rather she arranged for you to know than that
she told you, intimately, herself?"
Rosemary was honest. "Very much, very much rather! I couldn't bear to
talk to her about--that sort of thing. I can't even talk to her honestly
about you----"
"Well then"--she ought to have seen his point before--"if your mother
observes the decency that should govern intercourse between different
generations, so should you. These things aren't facts to her. They're
deeply concerned with her emotional life!"
Rosemary left that. Possibly he was right on a basis of sentiment,
though she still felt that social facts were not things you ought to be
secret about. But her thoughts had gone back to their earlier
occupation. "Tony," she said, "when I'm married will there be things
people won't speak the truth to me about?"
He answered her frankly. "Plenty of things--but I don't know if there'll
be more of them than there are now!"
Rosemary turned to him as he sat, now on the edge of the table. He
looked very handsome and kind, and clever, and young, but she thought
too that he looked a shade too sure of his own knowledge, too contented
with his supremacy as a man.
"I'm not going to be that sort of wife, then," she warned him. "I'm not
going to make a little warm deep hole for our life together, like mice
making their nest in the dark. I'm going"--she pressed her hands
together--"to have none of these secrecies and loyalties that grow up
round people--like laurels in front of basement windows--and shut out
the air and the light. I shan't pretend to everyone that you're a little
god. I despise women who go on for years pretending they don't know that
their husband is a drunkard. I shan't feel that just because I'm married
to you I ought to admire things I should hate if I weren't. I'm not
going to be loyal to you, Tony, and worship your likes and dislikes. I'm
going to be loyal to what is beautiful and brave. I think marriage ought
to complete one's life, and make it wider and finer, not narrow it down
to mutton and dusters and one little particular set of people. It would,
if only most women weren't so lazy, and such cowards. Whenever anything
happens to them they make it a reason for slackening their hold and
shutting their eyes. They're growing up, or they're marrying, or they're
not as young as they used to be, so they leave off doing the things they
like, and they leave off being interested in anything that's a trouble.
Well, I'm not going to! I love you, Tony, more than I can tell you, and
I love, but one's life, one's soul, is the most important!"
Anthony saw that her face showed a slight anxiety. He slipped off his
table and knelt beside her, smiling. What a brave fine thing she was,
how charmingly pugnacious, and what a child! He would not have dared to
marry her if he had not felt sure that he could make her happy. It was
when she talked like that he was most pleased with the love he felt for
her. He knew then that it was not a young man's greedy passion for a
creature that is beautiful and untamed, but the noble enduring love of
one human being for another. His confidence showed in his eyes as he
looked up at her. "Little Rosemary," he said, "don't give up anything
you want to keep! You needn't be loyal to anything but yourself! You're
not like your mother, remember. She married without knowing she had a
mind, without wanting liberty. Marriage is different now, and if it
weren't, you and I would be different."
Rosemary let her hand close on his. "I suppose so," she conceded. But in
her heart she wondered whether Laura hadn't told herself the same.
Meanwhile Mary, in her room, Rosemary's books before her, was setting
out to conquer an understanding of the social system. It was exciting,
this search for knowledge, it was wonderful to think that there was
something she desired ardently, and she had but to read a few books, to
think a little, and she would find it. All her life she had been
ignorant, and content to be ignorant. She had never thought that she
might, herself, go seeking after truth. But now in the confusion of
received opinion she had resolved, splendidly, that she would form an
opinion of her own, form it not by comparing the facts that were brought
to her but by thinking based on facts she had discovered for herself.
She couldn't pit James against Rosemary, or Rosemary against James. If
the responsibility was hers she must use such brains as she had to cope
with it. After all, were not wisdom and learning there for her as well
as for another?
She sat down to _Women's Work and Wages_ with the enthusiasm of a girl
of fifteen who is allowed, at last, to begin learning Greek.