As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne
became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her
evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer
needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no
worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The
prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He
was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer
loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept
the invading darkness from her door.
Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with
them.
Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had
been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put
to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It
was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he
left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she
moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her
circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only
meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and
undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its
approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in
Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber
was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her
constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her
husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a
horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him
by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton,
no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long
ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now
aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him.
He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and
made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in
Thurston Square.
Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business
men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.
A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she
saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to
his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when
she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was
touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up
in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to
be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to
be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal
memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably
mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so
familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing
goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great
longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even
for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the
growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile
sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was
softer.
At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed
to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other
measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its
divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could
not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let
him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie
between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced
difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something
threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual
life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and
winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous
petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning
the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for
her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense
of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil,
opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She
thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's
deterioration.
Yet Anne was softer.
Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as
Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had
seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take
Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs,
and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender
body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as
if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw,
wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship
with earth.
She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each
some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing
of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now
the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its
puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was
Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language.
A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and
Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would
have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking
backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.
But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood
and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted
for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You
couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word
she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told
her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne
was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between
right and wrong.
In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement,
proved more effectual than Anne.
They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time.
It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her
parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to
Majendie, shivering with delight.
"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my
own self, and eated it all up."
Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very
miserable day.
"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty."
"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all."
She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was
naughty."
Majendie laughed.
"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?"
Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy."
Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her
mother.
"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if
you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?"
"I'm sorry, daddy."
Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast.
"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now."
Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked.
"Are you happy, daddy?"
He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room.
And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?"
"I don't know, darling."
"Do you think he will come back again?"
"Darling, I don't know."
"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?"
"Of course, Peggy."
"Then I'll go and tell him."
She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head
sadly.
"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy."
"Why do you say that, Peggy?"
"Because he won't come when you want him to."
"Perhaps he's busy."
"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on
a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and
tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."
And she trotted downstairs and up again.
"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to
him?"
That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her
mother's heart ache.
Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that,
and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between
right and wrong.
But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.
"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."
She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection
against the pursuing vision of her sin.
"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."
But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him.
He minded ever so."
"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and
comforted her.
She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against
love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should
refuse to forgive her and kiss her.
And Anne did not refuse.
Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge
of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she
began to see?
That was how Anne grew soft.
Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The
sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and
flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there
came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip,
the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that
Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.
She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband
in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and
transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding
charm, when the child was not with her.
And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and
desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its
frustration.
Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided
her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew
his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from
her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of
stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that
frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays,
and eat things that disagreed with him.
Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always
running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions
concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she
would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him.
Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable
innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the
spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the
child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She
did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry,
looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her
fill of love.
And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing
drink, and considered that she had done her duty.
A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in
August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache)
a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy
trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal,
burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly
Light_, in a heavenly tenor.
Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.
"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."
"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at
Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses
to her across the room.
Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round
Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The
child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs
struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.
Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for
all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."
Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable
revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At
first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions
that brought the blood to her mother's face.
From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say
good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne
stood linked together by the body of their child.
And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."
Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her
soft lips touch his forehead without parting.
That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.
"Are you not well, Walter?"
"I've got a splitting headache."
"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."
"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."
"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."
"I beg your pardon."
He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his
forehead.
She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the
sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid
her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.
She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under
his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed
eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft
breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that
seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer
burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad
illness, and fear made her kind.
"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be
very gentle with him.
"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.
She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the
low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his
arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close
against his mouth, and kissed it.
She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to
withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him
without a word.
He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.