Time did nothing to soften the severity of the blow which had fallen
upon the shareholders of the Glasgow Bank; rather, with every day as it
passed did the situation become more hopeless and terrible.
Defalcations of three years' standing left a deficit so abysmal that
nothing short of the uttermost farthing could hope to fill it, and even
the enormous preliminary call spelt ruin to many small holders, of whom
Robert Gloucester was one. When every copper which he possessed had
been realised, he was still far behind the amount demanded, and a bill
of sale was issued on his household effects.
To Mr Goring the disaster came at once as a shock and a confirmation of
old fears. He found himself in the position of being able to say "I
told you so"; but there was little pleasure in the advantage when the
chief sufferer was his dearest child, and the transgressor so humble and
penitent as his son-in-law. His chief grief was that, owing to
decreasing income from his own investments, and the expenses of two big
sons at Oxford, he could not increase the allowance of two hundred a
year which he had regularly contributed towards the Gloucester _menage_.
Jean expected him to offer to buy her furniture at a valuation, but, to
her intense disappointment, he made no such proposition.
"Get rid of the things as best you can--they'll sell well, or ought to,
considering the price Robert paid. They wouldn't fit into a small
house, and you'll want a different style of thing altogether--plain,
simple furniture, that can be kept in order by less experienced maids.
All these curios and odds and ends are very well in their way, but they
mean work--work! There'll be no time for dusting old china and
polishing brasses. Get rid of them all, and I'll see what I can do
towards helping you to a fresh start. We have been looking through the
rooms at home, and there are a lot of odds and ends which we can share.
You'll have to lie low for a time, and be satisfied with usefuls; but
I'll see that you are comfortable, my dear. I'll see to that."
"Thank you, sir, thank you indeed," cried Robert warmly. "It's most
good and kind of you. You have always been most generous. You are
quite right about this furniture, it would be unsuitable under the new
conditions. It's all one to me--I don't notice these things, and Jean
has been heroic about it all--she doesn't mind either. She's quite
prepared for the change. Aren't you, dear?"
Jean assented with a small, strained smile, and Robert continued to
discuss the subject with philosophic calm. Jean had declared with her
own lips that worldly goods were of no importance in her eyes when
compared to the treasure of their love, and in simple faith he had taken
her at her word. It was beyond his powers of comprehension to realise
that the last few minutes, with their calm condemnation of her Lares and
Penates, had been one of acute agony to his wife's soul--the worst
moment she had known, since the springing of the bad news. When she was
silent and distrait for the rest of the day, he asked her tenderly if
her head ached, and enlarged enthusiastically on the goodness of Mr and
Mrs Goring in proposing to despoil their own home.
"You'll find life easier, I hope, darling, in a smaller house. They've
been a worry to you sometimes, all these collections, keeping them
cleaned and dusted, and that kind of thing. We'll go in for the simple
life, and be done with useless ornamentation," he declared cheerily.
Now that the first shock of the misfortune had spent itself, his
invincible optimism was slowly but surely beginning to make itself felt.
The worst had happened; every penny that could be scraped together had
already been confiscated; he faced the situation, and calmly and
courageously set his face towards a fresh start.
"Jean doesn't mind. Jean says she is prepared. That takes away the
sting. So long as she is happy, it doesn't matter a rap to me where we
live. After all, we ought to consider ourselves jolly lucky. It's only
the extras which we shall have to shed, while many poor wretches will be
in actual need. We ought to be thankful!"
As the weeks passed by, Robert's complacence increased, just as, in
inverse ratio, Jean's courage collapsed. It was one thing to declare
the world well lost, when her husband lay in her arms, broken-hearted,
dependent on her support; but it required a vastly more difficult effort
to maintain that attitude during the painful process of hunting for a
house at about a third of the old rent, and arranging her treasured
possessions for an auction sale. To Vanna, her invariable safety-valve,
Jean poured forth her feelings, in characteristic, highly coloured
language.
"I feel sometimes as if I could not bear it another moment--as if I must
shriek, as if I must scream, as if I must take Rob by the arms and shake
him till I drop! It's so maddening to be taken so literally at one's
word, and to be expected to sit smiling on the top of a pedestal while
the world rocks. Yesterday, going over that hateful, stuffy little
house, when he would persistently make the best of everything, even the
view of the whitewashed yard and I had to go on smiling and smiling as
if I agreed, I felt as if something in my head would snap... I believe
it will some day, and I shall lose control, and rage, and say terrible
things, and he will be broken hearted with sorrow--and surprise! He
hasn't an idea, not a glimmering ghost of an idea, what I'm suffering!
I said I didn't care, and he _believed_ it, just as simply as if I'd
told him the time. Oh, dear! the blindness of men."
"And the strangeness of women!" Vanna looked at her with her tender,
whimsical smile. "You believed it yourself at the time, dear girl. I
can imagine how eloquent you would be. No wonder poor Robert was
convinced. I was overcome with admiration for you that first week, but
being a woman, I knew that the reaction must come. That's inevitable;
but you must live up to yourself, Jean; you've created a precedent by
being magnificently brave, and you must keep it up."
"I--_can't_!" said Jean, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. "That
night I could think of nothing but Rob--his poor face! I would have cut
off my hand to make him smile, but my home--my home! To have to break
it up! My home where we came after we were married, where the babies
were born... It breaks my heart to leave it, and to give up all my
treasures that I collected with such joy... And Robert doesn't see, he
doesn't know--that seems hardest of all. If he just realised--"
"He would suffer again! Is _that_ what you want?"
Jean cast a startled glance, and sat silent, considering the problem.
Her eyes were circled by dark violet stains, as from long wakeful
nights; there were hollows at her temples which the cloudy hair could
not altogether conceal.
"It sounded rather like it," she said slowly at last, "but _no_! indeed
I don't--I love him far too much. But just sympathetic a little,
Vanna--and _appreciative_ of my loss! Yesterday when we stood in that
little back dining-room if he had said to me: `it's awfully hard on you,
darling, but it's only for a time: put up with it for a time!' I should
have hugged him, and felt a heroine. But he looked out on that awful
backyard, and said serenely, `oh, it doesn't matter about views! You
never cared about looking out of windows,' and went on calmly planning
where we could put a sideboard. And I wanted to scream! He doesn't
_understand_, Vanna. He doesn't understand--"
"Men don't, dear! It's no use expecting more than they can give. They
pull a wry face, accept a situation, and say no more about it. It would
seem to them contemptible to go on grizzling. It's a fine attitude--
much finer than ours; and if you look upon it in the right light,
Robert's unconsciousness is a great compliment. He simply gives you
credit for being as good as your word, as he is himself."
But Jean pouted, and protruded her chin in the old pugnacious fashion.
"But--in our case, I'm not so sure that it _is_ finer! This upheaval is
not one hundredth part so great a trial to Rob as it is to me. He's
sorry, of course, and regrets that he did not sell out his shares; but
it will be no trial to him to have a small house, with a greengrocer's
shop at the corner of the road. _He_ won't mind a marble paper in the
hall; it won't cost him a thought to have a drawing-room composed of odd
hideosities, instead of my lovely Chippendale. He won't even notice if
the little girls are shabby, and I wear a hat two years. Is there much
credit in being calm and resigned over a thing you don't _feel_? I nag
at the servants, and snap at the children, and grizzle to you, and any
one looking on would say: What a saint! What a wretch! but really and
truly I'm fighting hard, and slaying dragons every hour of the day; and
if I succeed in stifling my feelings and being decently agreeable for an
hour or two in the evening, I've won a big victory; and it's I who am
the saint, not he! Vanna--do you think I am a beast?"
Vanna's laugh was very sweet and tender.
"Not I! I quite agree; but I want to help you, dear, to fight to the
end. Grumble to me as much as you like. I'm a woman, and understand;
but play the game with Robert. You are his Ideal, his Treasure. Be
pure gold! Hide the feet of clay--"
"Don't preach! Don't preach!" cried Jean; but before the words were out
of her mouth, she had rushed across the room and thrown her arms
impetuously round Vanna's neck. "Yes; I will! I will! Oh, Vanna, how
you help! Scold me! Make me ashamed! I don't want anything in the
world but to be a good wife to Rob."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A month later the removal was accomplished, and Jean struggled valiantly
to make the best of the altered conditions. She rarely complained--
never in Robert's presence; set herself diligently to the study of
economy, and put aside embroidery and painting in favour of plain sewing
and mending. In six months' time the new _menage_ was running as
smoothly as if it had been in existence for years, and neither the
master of the house nor his children had suffered any diminution of
comfort from the change. Robert's special little fads were attended to
as scrupulously as in the larger establishment; the little girls were
invariably spick-and-span, but no observant eyes could fail to notice
the change in Jean herself. She was older, graver, less ready to
sparkle with mischievous gaiety. She had hidden her trouble out of
sight, as years before she had hidden the baby clothes destined for the
little dead son, but it had left its mark. With the best will in the
world she could not change her nature, and her artistic sensibilities
met a fresh wound every time she walked up and down stairs, every time
she entered a room, every time she walked down the dull suburban street.
She was in the wrong environment, and her beauty-loving nature was
starved and hungry.
Robert was happily unconscious of the change, or if he noticed it was
content to ascribe it to a more obvious reason. He himself was ready to
welcome his fourth child with an ardour undamped by considerations of
money. He adored children, and was delighted that the three-year-old
Joyce should have a successor; but Jean's satisfaction was dependent on
a possibility--"If it is a boy!" A live son would compensate a hundred
times over for the added strain and burden involved by the addition to
the nursery. But the son was not forthcoming, and when a third little
daughter was put into her arms Jean shed weak tears of disappointment.
"She's the prettiest of all your babies, Jean," Vanna declared a week
later as she nursed the little flannel bundle on her arm, and gazed down
at the small downy head. "She has just your eyes."
"All babies' eyes are the same."
"This baby's aren't; and she has the daintiest little head! Lorna's
head was ugly at this stage. And her nose! Her nose is perfect."
"Is it?" The voice from the bed was so listless and faint that Vanna
held up the little face, insisting upon notice.
"Look at her! Look for yourself. Acknowledge that she is a duck!"
Jean's lip quivered.
"I wanted a boy, a little son to make up... It seems so hard--"
Vanna pressed the downy head to her heart.
"Poor little superfluous woman! You are not wanted, it seems. Give her
to me, Jean--she'd be worth the whole world. I mean it, you know! Say
the word and I'll take her home this moment, and adopt her for life."
But at this Jean opened wide, protesting eyes.
"As if I would! My own little child! She _isn't_ superfluous. I shall
adore her as much as the others, but just at first it _is_ a
disappointment. But I'll call her after you this time, Vanna, say what
you will, and you shall be her second mother."
"Yes! I'd like this one to have my name, and she _is_ mine, for I
wanted her, and you didn't. Remember that, if you please. No one pays
one penny piece for anything this baby wears, or wants, or learns, but
her Mother Vanna. I'm going to have a _real_ claim, not only sentiment.
She's going to mean a great, great deal in my life!"
Jean smiled, well content. For herself it would be a relief to be freed
from extra expense; and she realised that in giving her consent she was
enriching rather than impoverishing her friend's life. And so little
Vanna adopted a second mother.