FROM her very earliest teens every man she met had fallen at her feet.
Her father in paternal transports--dignified and symbolic as the
adoration of the Magi, uncles in forced unwilling tribute, cousins
according to their kind, even brothers, resentful of their chains yet
still enslaved, lovers by the score, persons disposed to marriage by the
half-dozen.
And she had smiled on them all, because it was so nice to be loved, and
if one could make those who loved happy by smiling, why, smiles were
cheap! Not cheap like inferior soap, but like the roses from a full June
garden.
To one she gave something more than smiles--herself to wit--and behold
her at twenty, married to the one among her slaves to whom she had
deigned to throw the handkerchief--real Brussels, be sure! Behold her
happy in the adoration of the one, the only one among her adorers whom
she herself could adore. His name was John, of course, and it was a
foregone conclusion that he should be a stock-broker.
All the same, he was nice, which is something: and she loved him, which
is everything.
The little new red-brick Queen Anne villa was as the Garden of Eden to
the man and the woman--but the jerry builder is a reptile more cursed
than the graceful serpent who, in his handsome suit of green and gold,
pulled out the lynch-pin from the wedding chariot of our first parents.
The new house--"Cloudesley" its name was--was damp as any cloud, and the
Paradise was shattered, not by any romantic serpent-and-apple business,
but by plain, honest, every-day rheumatism. It was, indeed, as near
rheumatic fever as one may go without tumbling over the grisly fence.
The doctor said "Buxton." John could not leave town. There was a boom or
a slump or something that required his personal supervision.
So her old nurse was called up from out of the mists of the grey past
before he and she were hers and his, and she went to Buxton in a
specially reserved invalid carriage. She went, with half her dainty
trousseau clothes--a helpless invalid.
Now I don't want to advertise Buxton waters as a cure for rheumatism,
but I know for a fact that she had to be carried down to her first bath.
It was a marble bath, and she felt like a Roman empress in it. And
before she had had ten days of marble baths she was almost her own man
again, and the youth in her danced like an imprisoned bottle-imp. But
she was dull because there was no one to adore her. She had always been
fed on adoration, and she missed her wonted food--without the shadow of
a guess that it was this she was missing. It was, perhaps, unfortunate
that her old nurse should have sprained a stout ankle in the very first
of those walks on the moors which the Doctor recommended for the
completion of the cure so magnificently inaugurated by the Marble Roman
Empress baths.
She wrote to her John every day. Long letters. But when the letter was
done, what else was there left to do with what was left of the day? She
was very, very bored.
One must obey one's doctor. Else why pay him guineas?
So she walked out, after pretty apologies to the nurse, left lonely,
across the wonder-wide moors. She learned the springy gait of the true
hill climber, and drank in health and strength from the keen hill air.
The month was March. She seemed to be the only person of her own dainty
feather in Buxton. So she walked the moors alone. All her life joy had
come to her in green elm and meadow land, and this strange grey-stone
walled rocky country made her breathless with its austere challenge. Yet
life was good; strength grew. No longer she seemed to have a body to
care for. Soul and spirit were carried by something so strong as to
delight in the burden. A month, her town doctor had said. A fortnight
taught her to wonder why he had said it. Yet she felt lonely--too small
for those great hills.
The old nurse, patient, loving, urged her lamb to "go out in the fresh
air"; and the lamb went.
It was on a grey day, when the vast hill slopes seemed more than ever
sinister and reluctant to the little figure that braved them. She wore
an old skirt and an old jacket--her husband had slipped them in when he
strapped her boxes.
"They're warm," he had said; "you may need them."
She had a rainbow-dyed neckerchief and a little fur hat, perky with a
peacock's iridescent head and crest.
She was very pretty. The paleness of her illness lent her a new charm.
And she walked the lonely road with an air. She had never been a great
walker, and she was proud of each of the steps that this clear hill air
gave her the courage to take.
And it was glorious, after all, to be alone--the only human thing on
these wide moors, where the curlews mewed as if the place belonged to
them. There was a sound behind her. The rattle of wheels.
She stopped. She turned and looked. Far below her lay the valley--all
about her was the immense quiet of the hills. On the white road, quite a
long way off, yet audible in that noble stillness, hoofs rang, wheels
whirred. She waited for the thing to pass, for its rings of sound to die
out in that wide pool of silence.
The wheels and the hoofs drew near. The rattle and jolt grew louder. She
saw the horse and cart grow bigger and plainer. In a moment it would
have passed. She waited.
It drew near. In another moment it would be gone, and she be left alone
to meet again the serious inscrutable face of the grey landscape.
But the cart--as it drew near--drew up, the driver tightened rein, and
the rough brown horse stopped--his hairy legs set at a strong angle.
"Have a lift?" asked the driver.
There was something subtly coercive in the absolute carelessness of the
tone. There was the hearer on foot--here was the speaker in a cart. She
being on foot and he on wheels, it was natural that he should offer her
a lift in his cart--it was a greengrocer's cart. She could see celery,
cabbages, a barrel or two, and the honest blue eyes of the man who drove
it--the man who, seeing a fellow creature at a disadvantage, instantly
offered to share such odds as Fate had allotted to him in life's dull
handicap.
The sudden new impossible situation appealed to her. If lifts were
offered--well--that must mean that lifts were generally accepted. In
Rome one does as Rome does. In Derbyshire, evidently, a peacock crested
toque might ride, unreproved by social criticism, in a greengrocer's
cart. A tea-tray on wheels it seemed to her.
She was a born actress; she had that gift of throwing herself at a
moment's notice into a given part which in our silly conventional jargon
we nickname tact.
"Thank you," she said, "I should like it very much."
The box on which he arranged a seat for her contained haddocks. He
cushioned it with a sack and his own shabby greatcoat, and lent her a
thick rough hand for the mounting.
"Which way were you going?" he asked, and his voice was not the soft
Peak sing-song--but something far more familiar.
"I was only going for a walk," she said, "but it's much nicer to drive.
I wasn't going anywhere. Only I want to get back to Buxton some time."
"I live there," said he. "I must be home by five. I've a goodish round
to do. Will five be soon enough for you?"
"Quite," she said, and considered within herself what role it would be
kindest, most tactful, most truly gentlewomanly to play. She sought to
find, in a word, the part to play that would best please the man who was
with her. That was what she had always tried to find. With what success
let those who love her tell.
"I mustn't seem too clever," she said to herself; "I must just be
interested in what he cares about. That's true politeness: mother always
said so."
So she talked of the price of herrings and the price of onions, and of
trade, and of the difficulty of finding customers who had at once
appreciation and a free hand.
When he drew up in some lean grey village, or at the repellent gates of
some isolated slate-roofed house, he gave her the reins to hold, while
he, with his samples of fruit and fish laid out on basket lids, wooed
custom at the doors.
She experienced a strangely crescent interest in his sales.
Between the sales they talked. She found it quite easy, having swept
back and penned in the major part of her knowledges and interests, to
leave a residuum that was quite enough to meet his needs.
As the chill dusk fell in cloudy folds over the giant hill shoulders and
the cart turned towards home, she shivered.
"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously. "The wind strikes keen down
between these beastly hills."
"Beastly?" she repeated. "Don't you think they're beautiful?"
"Yes," he said, "of course I see they're beautiful--for other folks, but
not for me. What I like is lanes an' elm trees and farm buildings with
red tiles and red walls round fruit gardens--and cherry orchards and
thorough good rich medders up for hay, and lilac bushes and bits o'
flowers in the gardens, same what I was used to at home."
She thrilled to the homely picture.
"Why, that's what I like too!" she said. "These great hills--I don't see
how they can feel like home to anyone. There's a bit of an orchard--one
end of it is just a red barn wall--and there are hedges round, and it's
all soft warm green lights and shadows--and thrushes sing like mad.
That's home!"
He looked at her.
"Yes," he said slowly, "that's home."
"And then," she went on, "the lanes with the high green hedges,
dog-roses and brambles and may bushes and traveller's joy--and the grey
wooden hurdles, and the gates with yellow lichen on them, and the white
roads and the light in the farm windows as you come home from work--and
the fire--and the smell of apples from the loft."
"Yes," he said, "that's it--I'm a Kentish man myself. You've got a lot
o' words to talk with."
When he put her down at the edge of the town she went to rejoin her
nurse feeling that to one human being, at least, she had that day been
the voice of the home-ideal, and of all things sweet and fair. And, of
course, this pleased her very much.
Next morning she woke with the vague but sure sense of something
pleasant to come. She remembered almost instantly. She had met a man on
whom it was pleasant to smile, and whom her smiles and her talk
pleased. And she thought,--quite honestly,--that she was being very
philanthropic and lightening a dull life.
She wrote a long loving letter to John, did a little shopping, and
walked out along a road. It was the road by which he had told her that
he would go the next day. He overtook her and pulled up with a glad
face, that showed her the worth of her smiles and almost repaid it.
"I was wondering if I'd see you," he said; "was you tired yesterday?
It's a fine day to-day."
"Isn't it glorious!" she returned, blinking at the pale clear sun.
"It makes everything look a heap prettier, doesn't it? Even this country
that looks like as if it had had all the colour washed out of it in
strong soda and suds."
"Yes," she said. And then he spoke of yesterday's trade--he had done
well; and of the round he had to go to-day. But he did not offer her a
lift.
"Won't you give me a drive to-day?" she asked suddenly. "I enjoyed it so
much."
"_Will_ you?" he cried, his face lighting up as he moved to arrange the
sacks. "I didn't like to offer. I thought you'd think I was takin' too
much on myself. Come up--reach me your hand. Right oh!"
The cart clattered away.
"I was thinking ever since yesterday when I see you how is it you can
think o' so many words all at once. It's just as if you was seeing it
all--the way you talked about the red barns and the grey gates and all
such."
"I _do_ see it," she said, "inside my mind, you know. I can see it all
as plainly as I see these great cruel hills."
"Yes," said he, "that's just what they are--they're cruel. And the
fields and woods is kind--like folks you're friends with."
She was charmed with the phrase. She talked to him, coaxing him to make
new phrases. It was like teaching a child to walk.
He told her about his home. It was a farm in Kent--"red brick with the
glorydyjohn rose growin' all up over the front door--so that they never
opened it."
"The paint had stuck it fast," said he, "it was quite a job to get it
open to get father's coffin out. I scraped the paint off then, and oiled
the hinges, because I knew mother wouldn't last long. And she didn't
neither."
Then he told her how there had been no money to carry on the
fruit-growing, and how his sister had married a greengrocer at Buxton,
and when everything went wrong he had come to lend a hand with their
business.
"And now I takes the rounds," said he; "it's more to my mind nor mimming
in the shop and being perlite to ladies."
"You're very polite to _me_," she said.
"Oh, yes," he said, "but you're not a lady--leastways, I'm sure you are
in your 'art--but you ain't a regular tip-topper, are you, now?"
"Well, no," she said, "perhaps not that."
It piqued her that he should not have seen that she _was_ a lady--and
yet it pleased her too. It was a tribute to her power of adapting
herself to her environment.
The cart rattled gaily on--he talked with more and more confidence; she
with a more and more pleased consciousness of her perfect tact. As they
went a beautiful idea came to her. She would do the thing
thoroughly--why not? The episode might as well be complete.
"I wish you'd let me help you to sell the things," she said. "I should
like it."
"Wouldn't you be above it?" he asked.
"Not a bit," she answered gaily. "Only I must learn the prices of
things. Tell me. How much are the herrings?"
He told her--and at the first village she successfully sold seven
herrings, five haddocks, three score of potatoes, and so many separate
pounds of apples that she lost count.
He was lavish of his praises.
"You might have been brought up to it from a girl," he said, and she
wondered how old he thought she was then.
She yawned no more over dull novels now--Buxton no longer bored her. She
had suddenly discovered a new life--a new stage on which to play a part,
her own ability in mastering which filled her with the pleasure of a
clever child, or a dog who has learned a new trick. Of course, it was
not a new trick; it was the old one.
It was impossible not to go out with the greengrocer every day. What
else was there to do? How else could she exercise her most perfectly
developed talent--that of smiling on people till they loved her? We all
like to do that which we can do best. And she never felt so contented as
when she was exercising this incontestable talent of hers. She did not
know the talent for what it was. She called it "being nice to people."
So every day saw her, with roses freshening in her cheeks, driving over
the moors in the wheeled tea-tray. And now she sold regularly. One day
he said--
"What a wife you'd make for a business chap!" But even that didn't warn
her, because she happened to be thinking of Jack--and she thought how
good a wife she meant to be to him. _He_ was a "business chap" too.
"What are you really--by trade, I mean?" he said on another occasion.
"Nothing in particular. What did you think I was?" she said.
"Oh--I dunno--I thought a lady's maid, as likely as not, or maybe in the
dressmaking. You aren't a common sort--anyone can see that."
Again pique and pleasure fought in her.
She never so much as thought of telling him that she was married. She
saw no reason for it. It was her role to enter into his life, not to
dazzle him with visions of hers.
At last that happened which was bound to happen. And it happened under
the shadow of a great rock, in a cleft, green-grown and sheltered, where
the road runs beside the noisy, stony, rapid, unnavigable river.
He had drawn the cart up on the grass, and she had got down and was
sitting on a stone eating sandwiches, for her nurse had persuaded her to
take her lunch with her so as to spend every possible hour on these
life-giving moors. He had eaten bread and cheese standing by the horse's
head. It was a holiday. He was not selling fish and vegetables. He was
in his best, and she had never liked him so little. As she finished her
last dainty bite he threw away the crusts and rinds of his meal and came
over to her.
"Well," he said, with an abrupt tenderness that at once thrilled and
revolted her, "don't you think it's time as we settled something betwixt
us?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said. But, quite suddenly and
terribly, she did.
"Why," he said, "I know well enough you're miles too good for a chap
like me--but if you don't think so, that's all right. And I tell you
straight, you're the only girl I ever so much as fancied."
"Oh," she breathed, "do you mean--"
"You know well enough what I mean, my pretty," he said; "but if you want
it said out like in books, I've got it all on my tongue. I love every
inch of you, and your clever ways, and your pretty talk. I haven't
touched a drop these eight months--I shall get on right enough with you
to help me--and we'll be so happy as never was. There ain't ne'er a man
in England'll set more store by his wife nor I will by you, nor be
prouder on her. You shan't do no hard work--I promise you that. Only
just drive out with me and turn the customers round your finger. I don't
ask no questions about you nor your folks. I _know_ you're an honest
girl, and I'd trust you with my head. Come, give me a kiss, love, and
call it a bargain."
She had stood up while he was speaking, but she literally could not
find words to stop the flow of his speech. Now she shrank back and said,
"No--no!"
"Don't you be so shy, my dear," he said. "Come--just one! And then I'll
take you home and interduce you to my sister. You'll like her. I've told
her all about you."
Waves of unthinkable horror seemed to be closing over her head. She
struck out bravely, and it seemed as though she were swimming for her
life.
"No," she cried, "it's impossible! You don't understand! You don't
know!"
"I know you've been keeping company with me these ten days," he said,
and his voice had changed. "What did you do it for if you didn't mean
nothing by it?"
"I didn't know," she said wretchedly. "I thought you liked being
friends."
"If it's what you call 'friends,' being all day long with a chap, I
don't so call it," he said. "But come--you're playing skittish now,
ain't you? Don't tease a chap like this. Can't you see I love you too
much to stand it? I know it sounds silly to say it--but I love you
before all the world--I do--my word I do!"
He held out his arms.
"I see--I see you do," she cried, all her tact washed away by this
mighty sea that had suddenly swept over her. "But I can't. I'm--I'm
en--I'm promised to another young man."
"I wonder what he'll say to this," he said slowly.
"I'm so--so sorry," she said; "I'd no idea--"
"I see," he said, "you was just passing the time with me--and you never
wanted me at all. And I thought you did. Get in, miss. I'll take you
back to the town. I've just about had enough holiday for one day."
"I _am_ so sorry," she kept saying. But he never answered.
"Do forgive me!" she said at last. "Indeed, I didn't mean--"
"Didn't mean," said he, lashing up the brown horse; "no--and it don't
matter to you if I think about you and want you every day and every
night so long as I live. It ain't nothing to you. You've had your fun.
And you've got your sweetheart. God, I wish him joy of you!"
"Ah--don't," she said, and her soft voice even here, even now, did not
miss its effect. "I _do_ like you very, very much--and--"
She had never failed. She did not fail now. Before they reached the town
he had formally forgiven her.
"I don't suppose you meant no harm," he said grudgingly; "though coming
from Kent you ought to know how it is about walking out with a chap. But
you say you didn't, and I'll believe you. But I shan't get over this,
this many a long day, so don't you make no mistake. Why, I ain't thought
o' nothing else but you ever since I first set eyes on you. There--don't
you cry no more. I can't abear to see you cry."
He was blinking himself.
Outside the town he stopped.
"Good-bye," he said. "I haven't got nothing agin you--but I wish to Lord
above I'd never seen you. I shan't never fancy no one else after you."
"Don't be unhappy," she said. And then she ought to have said good-bye.
But the devil we call the force of habit would not let her leave well
alone.
"I want to give you something," she said; "a keepsake, to show I shall
always be your friend. Will you call at the house where I'm staying this
evening at eight? I'll have it ready for you. Don't think too unkindly
of me! Will you come?"
He asked the address, and said "Yes." He wanted to see her--just once
again, and he would certainly like the keepsake.
She went home and looked out a beautiful book of Kentish photographs. It
was a wedding present, and she had brought it with her to solace her in
her exile by pictures of the home-land. Her unconscious thought was
something like this: "Poor fellow; poor, poor fellow! But he behaved
like a gentleman about it. I suppose there is something in the influence
of a sympathetic woman--I am glad I was a good influence."
She bathed her burning face, cooled it with soft powder, and slipped
into a tea-gown. It was a trousseau one of rich, heavy, yellow silk and
old lace and fur. She chose it because it was warm, and she was
shivering with agitation and misery. Then she went and sat with the old
nurse, and a few minutes before eight she ran out and stood by the front
door so as to open it before he should knock. She achieved this.
"Come in," she said, and led him into the lodging-house parlour and
closed the door.
"It was good of you to come," she said, taking the big, beautiful book
from the table. "This is what I want you to take, just to remind you
that we're friends."
She had forgotten the tea-gown. She was not conscious that the
accustomed suavity of line, the soft richness of texture influenced
voice, gait, smile, gesture. But they did. Her face was flushed after
her tears, and the powder, which she had forgotten to dust off, added
the last touch to her beauty.
He took the book, but he never even glanced at the silver and
tortoise-shell of its inlaid cover. He was looking at her, and his eyes
were covetous and angry.
"Are you an actress, or what?"
"No," she said, shrinking. "Why?"
"What the hell are you, then?" he snarled furiously.
"I'm--I'm--a--"
The old nurse, scared by the voice raised beyond discretion, had dragged
herself to the door of division between her room and the parlour, and
now stood clinging to the door handle.
"She's a lady, young man," said the nurse severely; "and her aunt's a
lady of title, and don't you forget it!"
"Forget it," he cried, with a laugh that Jack's wife remembers still;
"she's a lady, and she's fooled me this way? I won't forget it, nor she
shan't neither! By God, I'll give her something to forget!"
With that he caught the silken tea-gown and Jack's trembling wife in his
arms and kissed her more than once. They were horrible kisses, and the
man smelt of onions and hair-oil.
"And I loved her--curse her!" he cried, flinging her away, so that she
fell against the arm of the chair by the fire.
He went out, slamming both doors. She had softened and bewitched him to
the forgiving of the outrage that her indifference was to his love. The
outrage of her station's condescension to his was unforgivable.
* * * * *
She went back to her Jack next day. She was passionately glad to see
him. "Oh, Jack," she said, "I'll never, never go away from you again!"
* * * * *
But the greengrocer from Kent reeled down the street to the nearest
public-house. At closing time he was telling, in muffled, muddled
speech, the wondrous tale, how his girl was a real lady, awfully gone on
him, pretty as paint, and wore silk dresses every day.
"She's a real lady--she is," he said.
"Ay!" said the chucker out, "we know all about them sort o' ladies.
Time, please!"
"I tell you she is--her aunt's a lady of title, and the gal's that gone
on me I expect I'll have to marry her to keep her quiet."
"I'll have to chuck you out to keep _you_ quiet," returned the other.
"Come on--outside!"