What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless
attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told
upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change
and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times
when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's
lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening,
and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never
tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that
Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and
kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down
cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the
Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this
frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends.
Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and
the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was
always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming,
she contrived adroitly to be out. Her attitude to the Hannays was one of
the things she undoubtedly meant to keep up. The natural result was that
Majendie was driven to an increasing friendliness, by way of making up
for the slights the poor things had to endure from his wife. He was
always meaning to remonstrate with Anne, and always putting off the
uncomfortable moment. The subject was so mixed with painful matters that
he shrank from handling it. But, with the New Year following Peggy's
first birthday, circumstances forced him to take, once for all, a firm
stand. Certain entanglements in the affairs of Mr. Gorst had called for
his intervention. There had been important developments in his own
business; Majendie was about to enter into partnership with Mr. Hannay.
And Anne had given him an opportunity for protest by expressing her
unqualified disapprobation of Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had offended
grossly; she had passed the limits; having no instincts, Anne maintained,
to tell her where to stop. Mrs. Hannay had a passion for Peggy which she
was wholly unable to conceal. Moved by a tender impulse of vicarious
motherhood, she had sent her at Christmas a present of a little coat.
Anne had acknowledged the gift in a note so frigid that it cut Mrs.
Hannay to the heart. She had wept over it, and had been found weeping by
her husband, who mentioned the incident to Majendie.
It was more than Majendie could bear; and that night, in the drawing-room
(Anne had left off sitting in the study. She said it smelt of smoke), he
entered on an explanation, full, brief, and clear.
"I must ask you," he said, "to behave a little better to poor Mrs.
Hannay. You've never known her anything but kind, and sweet, and
forgiving; and your treatment of her has been simply barbarous."
"Indeed?"
"I think so. There are reasons why you will have to ask the Hannays to
dinner next week, and reasons why you will have to be nice to them."
"What reasons?"
"One's enough. I'm going into partnership with Lawson Hannay."
She stared. The announcement was a blow to her.
"Is that a reason why I should make a friend of Mrs. Hannay?"
"It's a reason why you should be civil to her. You will send an
invitation to Gorst at the same time."
She winced. "That I cannot do."
"You can, dear, and you will. Gorst's in a pretty bad way. I knew he
would be. He's got entangled now with some wretched girl, and I've got to
disentangle him. The only way to do it is to get him to come here again."
"And _I_ am to write to him?" Her tone proclaimed the idea preposterous.
"It will come best from you, as it's you who have kept him out of the
house. You must, please, put your own feelings aside, and simply do what
I ask you."
He rose and went to the writing-place, and prepared a place for her
there.
Anne said nothing. She was considering how far it was possible to oppose
him. It had always been his way to yield greatly in little things; to
drift and let "things" drift till he created an illusory impression of
his weakness. Then when "things" had gone too far, he would rise, as
he had risen now, and take his stand with a strength the more formidable
because it came as a complete surprise.
"Come," said he, "it's got to be done; and you may as well do it at once
and get it over."
She gave one glance at him, as if she measured his will against hers.
Then she obeyed.
She handed the notes to him in silence.
"That's all right," said he, laying down her note to Gorst. "And this
couldn't be better. I'm glad you've written so charmingly to Mrs.
Hannay."
"I'm sorry that I ever seemed ungracious to her, Walter. But the other
note I wrote under compulsion, as you know."
"I don't care how you did it, my dear, so long as it's done." He slipped
the note to Mrs. Hannay into his pocket.
"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously.
"I'm going to take this myself to Mrs. Hannay."
"What are you going to say to her?"
"The first thing that comes into my head."
She called him back as he was going. "Walter--have you paid Mr. Hannay
that money you owed him?"
He stood still, astounded at her knowledge, and inclined for one moment
to dispute her right to question him.
"I have," he said sternly. "I paid it yesterday."
She breathed freely.
Majendie found Mrs. Hannay by her fireside, alone but cheerful. She gave
him a little anxious look as she took his hand. "Wallie," said she,
"you're depressed. What is it?"
He owned to the charge, but declined to give an account of himself.
She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his
pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew
how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy.
"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't.
I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of
a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter."
"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll
be a help to her."
"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that."
"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong.
Peggy, I mean."
"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at
me now!"
He looked at her and laughed.
"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind."
"Why should I?"
"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's
happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I
suppose you know it's all come to nothing?"
"What has?"
"Her marriage."
"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?"
"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been
going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think
he really was?"
"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to
marry her?"
"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't."
"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in
for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have
troubled his bright essence."
Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings
and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that
poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and
entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in
society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?"
"I don't think I mind anything very much now."
The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to
mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off
and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented
a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in
meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a
quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women
of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead
youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the
triumph of maturity.
She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie
among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to
meet _you_ here."
She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then
ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her
success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the
glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful
illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and
other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle
and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires
urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration
was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved
respectability.
But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young
appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady
Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of
the happy past.
"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?"
Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must
approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with
time.
He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago."
"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her
memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?"
She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?"
"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night."
"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if
anything, more discreetly than before.
"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now."
"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling
she is, too."
"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was
another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?"
"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with
the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the
dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck."
Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.
"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw
how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_
could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half
an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah
had ever taken part.
When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she
turned to Mrs. Hannay.
"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful."
"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with
him."
"I knew he would. He was born to do it."
"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."
"Oh--the child!"
She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.