MARY soon realised that she had never before made so serious a mistake
as the mistake she made on the day when she fell ill. James was now
armed at every point against her. Whenever she showed any sign of
restlessness, he replied, with perfect honesty, that she looked tired,
or that she was too thin. Until this moment James had not cavilled at
his wife's lack of amplitude. She was one of the thin sort, and that was
all about it. But now visions presented themselves to his mind of Mary
looking really plump and fit, and he began to fed that she was not doing
her duty when she did not live up to these delightful fancies. He scanned
her anxiously every evening when he came home, and if she did not look
fatter than she had when he kissed her good-bye in the morning, he shook
his head. "This won't do, little woman," he would say, "you've been
tiring yourself!" It was no use assuring him that she did not feel tired
in the least. He only looked at her critically and shook his head again.
If he did not make more of such a serious offence it was because he felt
sorry for her. When he thought about it he could see that it must be
very galling for a woman to lack an essential feminine charm, and he did
not want to hurt the poor little thing's feelings. It was tiresome and
obstinate of her, all the same, not to take more care of herself. He
decided once, as he looked down on her from his station in front of the
fire, that some motive of delicacy had made her accept her leanness, as
a nice woman accepts her age, without a struggle. On the whole though he
was glad that she had had this little attack of nerves. She hadn't been
well, poor little thing--that explained her somewhat hysterical
behaviour about the business. He understood now, and he would know if
ever she mentioned the matter again that she must not be taken too
seriously.
Under these circumstances the amelioration of the waitresses' lives
proceeded slowly. James had suggested that when Mary was well enough to
attend to it she should start a seaside home. It would receive
convalescents all the year round, and in the summer those girls who for
some reason or other did not wish to spend their holidays with their
excellent respectable families. It was a good suggestion, there was no
objection to it, but it did not, for some reason, release Mary's
enthusiasm. The idea of curing convalescents was not as stimulating as
the idea of improving the conditions that made them ill. Miss Percival
too, usually so skilfully indefatigable, did not seem to be giving the
best of herself to the new scheme.
Mary had grown, from force of being well served, to like Miss Percival,
whom she identified moreover with her own impulse towards a more
interesting life. She had gone so far as to say, in Miss Percival's
presence, that she thought some plan might be found for giving the
waitresses higher wages. And now that James's attitude forced her to
switch her activities into another direction she felt that she owed her
secretary some explanation of the change. It couldn't of course be a
perfectly truthful explanation--one is not expected to be truthful about
one's husband. But it would prevent Miss Percival from feeling that her
employer regarded her as a mere hireling who obeys orders she is not
expected to understand. The explanation, skirting the edge of the truth
with a nervous deference, had stated that Mary had asked Mr. Heyham if
it would be possible to raise the girls' wages, and had been convinced
after going into the matter with him that it would not be possible. But
in order to show that the firm did not grudge the money Mr. Heyham had
himself suggested that they should spend it on the girls in another
way--he did not bind them, but the way he thought the best would
be--Mary had drawn for Miss Percival as glowing a picture of the poor
convalescents recovering their rosy cheeks as her imagination and her
command over words could supply.
Miss Percival, who was seated at her desk, had not answered at once.
Instead she had drawn a beautiful lady with curling hair on her pad of
blotting-paper. Then, in a startled tone, as if she had just awaked, she
said, "Very well, Mrs. Heyham, just as you wish of course. Have you
decided yet where the home is to be?"
Mary had not decided, but she thought it must be somewhere bracing with
a pier and a band, and plenty of nigger minstrels. "It won't do to
choose a place where they would feel lonely," she conceded.
Miss Percival pushed her chair back from the desk and sighed, then,
swinging round sharply, she stared straight at Mrs. Heyham.
"She is very much disappointed," Mary thought, as Miss Percival did not
speak. "It's natural of course, she is young, probably she hasn't
learned how seldom one can do what one wants in this life." She started,
for Miss Percival was speaking. "Just as you think right, Mrs. Heyham,"
she was saying slowly.
Mary, who knew that she was doing what she thought right, nevertheless
felt uneasy. Miss Percival obviously considered her wrong, and Miss
Percival was a clever young woman, entitled to respect. One of the
suspicions to which she was prone crept into Mary's mind. Suppose the
thing she wanted most was not to help the girls, but to keep on
affectionate terms with James? Suppose, after all, that she were only
following her inclinations--Miss Percival's voice, severe and scornful,
interrupted these accusations.
"After all, the great thing is to decide on something and do it," she
said.
Mary acquiesced. That was as good a way of putting the matter as any
other.
"I don't suppose we shall be able to do very much for a week or two,"
she told her assistant, "because Mrs. Moorhouse--my married daughter,
you know--will be needing me. But you might find out what you can about
places not too far from London, and you might get information about
other homes, and see whether it would be best to build for ourselves, or
buy some houses and alter them. And we must find out, too, what
accommodation we are likely to need."
She did not speak with her usual brightness, and Miss Percival did not
reply with her usual alacrity. For a moment the two women looked at one
another. Then Mary, rising hastily from her chair, said that she did not
think she need keep Miss Percival any later that day.
After that the secretary maintained an attitude of superior kindliness.
She was sorry for Mary, she seemed to say, for Mary was an amiable
person, if a trifle faint of heart. She understood Mary's difficulties
and she meant to stand by her. But not even her affection and her
loyalty to her employer could make her play the part of a hypocrite. She
did not approve of this holiday home, she thought it a base surrender
and a waste of money as well. She was not going to pretend, by words or
by a delighted energy, that she did approve of it.
This was not as bad as it might have been, and Mary, since Miss
Percival, after all, was ignorant of her true reasons, felt grateful for
even so much tolerance. But she could not, any more than Miss Percival,
throw herself heart and soul into the carrying out of James's scheme.
She had meant to do this; she had not planned any grudging acceptance,
but she was not able, with Miss Percival there to remind her of them, to
ignore her own convictions. The home was, and she knew it, a miserable
compromise. She turned with relief from discussions about its site to
the business of collecting Rosemary's trousseau.
Here again she was in the position of having to force her emotions. She
did not, in her heart, believe that Rosemary was old enough to marry,
experienced enough to know or to value the freedom she was losing. She
would not need age or experience, unhappily, to make her regret it. But
Mary could not very well assert herself to make Rosemary unhappy by
postponing the marriage while she herself was guarding her own happiness
by giving way in so cowardly a fashion to James. She told herself,
therefore, that her feelings were the feelings natural to every woman
who sees her youngest daughter leaving her; they were selfish feelings,
and she, like every other mother, must put them aside. If they had any
value it was their private value, as emotion, for her--she would not
have wished at such a moment to feel nothing or only to feel what was
pleasurable.
She bought Rosemary's garments then to the accompaniment of an emotional
conflict that tired her, but was at least interesting, whereas the
holiday home, a wearisome affair, reminded her only of her failure to
convince James.
Moreover, buying Rosemary's clothes had an interest of its own. Mary had
not felt really happy about Laura's trousseau. Laura, whose intelligence
was always admirable, had known exactly where she wanted to go and what
she wanted to buy. Laura could see at once, when clothes were displayed
before her, which of them would make her look charming and which would
not. This was all very well for dresses, Mary had always respected
Laura's taste, but when the same principle was pushed further it had
seemed to her a little alarming. That underclothes should be becoming
was the last service she would have asked of them. Mary liked linen that
was finely woven, voluminous, and carefully sewn. When she had bought it
she took a pride in it and hoped that it would last her for years. Of
lace and such transparencies she disapproved, except for the narrowest
edgings. She explained to Laura that they would not wash, but however
well they had washed she would not have liked them better. It seemed to
her unnatural and distressing that a young woman should look, as Laura
looked, more delightful without her full complement of clothes than with
them. If she had not feared, by doing so, to put ideas into Laura's
head, she would have protested. But it is not easy to discuss these
things with a young girl, especially in front of shop-assistants. When
Mary had said, in a lowered voice, "Don't you think, my dear, that that
lawn is a little too fine--I shouldn't think it would wear very well,
would you?" Laura had replied, calmly and frankly, "Oh, don't you,
mother?--I think it will look rather nice!" Such innocence--or on the
other hand, such command of one's information--intimidated Mary. On one
occasion only had she protested and carried her way. It was when Laura,
who must have been unaware, poor child, of what she was contemplating,
praised and asked the price of a black crêpe-de-chine nightgown. Even
then Mary might not have risen to a veto if the deplorable garment had
not been labelled "enhancing."
With Rosemary it was a very different matter. Rosemary's shopping was
guided by principles, and so long as she was determining what these
principles should be Rosemary was very much interested in it. In the
first place she determined to buy none but hand-made linen, partly
because weaving linen by hand provides a fuller and more fruitful life
for the worker than weaving it by machine, partly because it is cheaper
in the end to buy what is more expensive in the beginning. And as a poor
man's wife--she reminded her mother--she must think of these things. In
the second place she would buy æsthetic dresses, because what has never
been in the fashion cannot easily drop behind it. This would be a great
economy. In the third place she would not buy her clothes haphazard,
guided merely by fancy, but would choose just one or two colours and
stick to them.
All this was excellent and Mary was cheered to find Rosemary displaying
such practical common-sense. It was true that the hand-woven linen was
extremely expensive--but then it was stout, and Mary had the pleasure of
seeing it made up into garments that would last Rosemary until she grew
old. No lace, only the most charming and costly hand embroidery. It was
true that there are so many occasions on which one cannot wear æsthetic
dresses that Mary found herself, when Rosemary was not there, ordering a
considerable number of tailor-mades. Rosemary was generally not there.
When she had made a comprehensive survey of the enterprise and delivered
her instructions to Mary she preferred to leave the dressmakers to fit
her as best they could--she liked her clothes loose--and to wander
forth, alone or with Anthony, searching in unlikely places for antique
furniture. It was true, also, that the one or two colours began to
multiply.
Anthony had read somewhere that a woman's clothes should match her eyes
or her hair. That meant greeny-brown tweeds, and possibly liberty
satins. White and cream and navy blue do not count. Then Rosemary always
liked one dress of a particular green in the summer and another dress of
a particular purple in the winter. And Laura thought that the child was
at her best in lilac, while Mary thought that she never looked so fresh
or so young as in a certain shade--rather difficult to obtain--of
gentian blue. But Mary liked to think that the dear child, while she was
learning the limits of her income, would not at least have to bother
about clothes, and on the whole she welcomed these unexacting cares. She
did not wish to contemplate, more than she could help, a situation which
had already exhausted her powers of self-deception. She had struggled
for some time to persuade herself that she was not a coward, that the
holiday home was not a waste of her money and energy, and moreover
deliberately intended by James to be such a waste. Miss Percival's eye,
bent constantly on her with an expression of weary tolerance, had been
too much for her. She had taken next the desperate step of avowing to
herself that she was a coward, and excusing herself on that ground from
the display of any vigorous qualities.
She was a coward, and it wasn't any use pretending that she could ever
be anything else. She might have settled down comfortably enough to this
conviction if only she could have been certain that it was true. She had
undoubtedly behaved like a coward, but what disturbed her, what sent her
running to shops and sempstresses, was the insistent dread that
somewhere at the bottom of her heart there was still a remainder of
courage. There might even be, she feared, sufficient courage to enable
her to reopen the whole affair. Perhaps the future would find her brave,
after all. Perhaps she was not going to settle quietly down to the base
abandonment of her waitresses--the thought sent the blood to her heart
and set her trembling. It could not be possible that all her long misery
of decision had decided on nothing, that the travail of thinking must be
begun again. She exhorted herself to stand steadfast, to harden her
heart in selfish docility, and she was able to believe that she had
succeeded when she found herself thrilling with the tenderness, love,
and joy which are proper to a woman who finds herself a happy
grandmother.
Laura's baby provided her with a real respite, a happiness that needed
no analysis and provoked no doubts. He was a marvellous boy, extremely
handsome and positively the very image of James. He might so easily have
been like Harry--it would have been distinctly a waste, because there
were already several Moorhouse grandchildren--and he had chosen to
resemble James. It was clear that he meant to develop into a child of
exceptional intelligence.
James, who had cast one hasty glance at the infant's cot, said that
women always see these likenesses, and was very much flattered by it. He
bought his grandson--who was to be called, when Laura could decide
between them, either Jakes or Giles--a collection of silverware, and
told himself that an era of feminine peace and contentment would now set
in. Harry, who was handsome and vain, said that he was glad the poor
little beggar had the sense not to look like his father, and added that
he had never pretended to feel any interest in babies. But Laura was far
too ill and too happy to mind what Harry said.
For two or three weeks Mary's thoughts were completely engaged with
Laura; she could give her mind to nothing away from Laura's room. It was
as a matter of fact a delightful room--Laura loved beautiful fabrics and
graceful furniture. Mary had thought how pretty it was when she sat
waiting outside its door on the night the baby was born. She had come
there, although she knew it was foolish, because she had already waited
so long downstairs. She had heard the baby cry, but no one had come out
of the room to tell her about it. She had tried to picture the struggle
that must be going on inside, to remind herself of the tasks that were
imprisoning, for hours, the doctor and the nurses. She had tried to turn
her thoughts to the new love that she was to feel for Laura's child. But
her tired mind had failed her. She could not keep it fastened on her
future happiness, or on the busy figures that she knew to be near her on
the other side of the dark, shining door. Try as she would they had
slipped away, and then the room had been empty, warm and green and
quiet, with its curtains moving softly in the wind. Even while dread
stirred in her mind it had seemed impossible that a beautiful woman
should suffer in such a room.
It was late in the night, and she had left her chair and propped herself
in a corner to alter her position, when the door had opened on a long
panel of light, on a wave of sound, and one of the nurses had come out.
She had not looked round at Mary, but had run quickly downstairs. There
was a bright stain on her apron.
The nurse had disappeared; Mary, pressed against the wall, had neither
moved nor spoken. She could not see, she could not even think; her mind,
her will, seemed to have dissolved in fear. The sound of the hurrying
feet had died away. There was no noise now in the room.
Then, before thoughts had come back to her, the nurse had returned. This
time she had noticed Mary in the corner and thrown her a hasty
reassurance. "It's all right now--there's no need to be anxious--a
beautiful boy!" The door had closed behind her.
After the first confusion of her relief, the first disorder of her joy,
Mary's mind had moved swiftly. This, she had told herself, was the weft
on which women's lives were woven, moments like these of terror, of
suffering, of ecstasy! Beside what Laura was feeling now the best that
the world could give women must seem dim. What did it matter then if
they turned away from the great problems of life, if they were content
with narrow ambitions, with timid thoughts, with foolish dreams? All
that was nothing--under it there lay this savage splendour of pain, this
sacrifice that was their justification. By pain--helpless, ignorant,
idle though they might be--they paid for the joy that life had given
them.
Presently, towards morning, Mary had been called into the dressing-room
where the nurse had been tending the baby. The little creature had lain
on her knee, grave, motionless, dignified, in the clothes of his nation
and his century. Mary had lifted him with anxious care. Here in her arms
she held the strength, the desires, the ambitions, of a man. This light
burden was born a master of the world, heir of the world's experience.
He was born a master of women; all through his life women would minister
to him and obey him, and he would accept their service as his right. She
herself, as he grew to the power of his youth, would be to him a mere
waste product, a body that had outlived its usefulness. As she bent to
kiss him she had wished, for an instant, that he had been a girl.
She was not allowed to see Laura until next day, when she was told that
she might sit by her bed, but must not excite her. It was enough for
both of them; she did not want to excite her--she had never been on
exciting terms with Laura. Their attitudes to the surface of life were
too different. But here in the pretty room differences passed them by,
they were content to be near one another, to exchange insignificant
words, to see one another's faces light up when their boy was brought
into the room. Mary knew that this pleasure in her presence, this need
of her, must pass, and that then she would come no nearer than she had
come before to touching the problems and interests of Laura's life. Her
own mind, too, would answer the call of other duties. But for these few
weeks she was happy. James, watching her, felt perfectly satisfied.