|ANNE lived for Sam: and if she rarely showed it, if, for instance, it
appeared sometimes that she lived to make her house the cleanest in the
row, that was no more than a symptom of her stoicism. She lived for Sam,
and he knew it. She belonged to a race which hates ostentation like the
devil and keeps its feelings veiled behind a grim reserve. It conceals
emotion as a hidden treasure and wears a mask which strangers take to
indicate a want of sensibility. She had not the habit of caressing
Sam; she chastened whom she loved; and Sam was very well aware of the
strength of Anne’s love.
She was ready, at the proper time, to give him to the proper woman, but
she held that Ada was not the woman nor this the time. She was ready to
go her ways from Sam, and from life itself, when he made a marriage
of which she could approve, but she was not ready to leave him to Ada
Struggles of whom she disapproved. She was not ready to die for the
likes of Ada Struggles. Let Sam marry Ada, and Anne, meant to live,
because some day he would have need of her and, when the day came, she
would be there.
Now, Sam would have been pleased if he could have told Anne about the
pamphlet and the legacy. He had hoped after the Minnilie affair that his
next “stroke” would be one of which he could tell Anne, but he did
not see this as tellable. She would naturally ask what the pamphlet was
about, and if Peter could not speak of it to his daughter, Sam could
speak of it even less to his mother. And as to the legacy, what was the
use of mentioning that to a woman who would point out that security was
only to be had with two and a half per cent? Which wasn’t at all Sam’s
notion of the uses of a thousand pounds.
After all, he was grown up and a man does not tell his mother
everything. But unless he is a fool, he tells her the things which she
is bound in any case to find out, and if he had foreseen the certainty
of her finding out he would, not being a fool, have told her these.
He did not foresee, because Anne did not read newspapers, but she had
neighbours who did and who told her, with comments, of the storm which
presently broke out in the columns of the _Sunday Judge_, and of Mr.
Travers’ will, which received a small paragraph in the paper when it was
proved.
“There was a time when you and me didn’t go in for secrets,” she said to
him. “You’ve not had much to say to me of late and I’ve not seen much of
you, either, with the hours you’re keeping, but I’d put it down to love.
I know a man’s not rational when he’s courting, but it seems there’s a
lot about my son that I’ve to learn. Why didn’t you tell me about Mr.
Travers? Did you think I’d steal the money off you?”
“Of course not, mother, but I meant to come to you with a finished tale,
not one that’s only just begun. I’m engaged in a business affair of
which I was going to tell you when it was complete.”
“_Yes_,” she said, “I see. You’re risking your money. If you came out on
the right side, you’d tell me about it, and if you lost you’d forget to
tell me. Are you losing?”
“It’s early days to say.”
“Then maybe I’m still in time to nip this in the bud. What’s this about
the _Sunday Judge?_”
“I Have you seen it?” he asked.
“Aye. You’re the talk of the street.”
“That’s splendid,” he let slip before he was aware of it.
“Splendid! There’s a gentleman writing to the paper to say that you’re
trading in immorality.”
“I wrote that letter myself,” grinned Sam.
“You did what?”
“I’m afraid I shall never make you understand.”
“I doubt you won’t. Lying to me like that. Expecting me to believe you
write to the paper about yourself and call yourself hard names. And the
letter’s signed ‘Truth-teller,’ too. It’s printed in the paper that my
son has lifted the lid from the cesspool and let loose a smell to make
decent people vomit.”
“Yes. I know. Advertising is a coarse art.”
“Your name’s blackened for ever. And it’s my name, Sam, and the name
your father gave me. It’s the name of honest folk and----”
“Mother, mother, don’t I tell you that it’s all advertisement?”
“What you tell me and what I can believe are coming to be two different
things. I know what an advertisement in the paper is and I know what a
letter is. This is a letter.”
Sam felt the hopelessness of further argument.
She had a simple-minded faith in the integrity of newspapers and the
printed word, but he could at least show that the word could contradict
itself. “Very well,” he said, “it’s a letter, and so is this.” He took
a copy of the paper from his pocket. Stewart had kept his word, no great
feat since he had a good idea of what his editor supposed the Sunday
public to want, and a column of fervent correspondence flared under the
heading of “The Social Evil.--Is the Pamphlet Justified?” Sam chose a
letter which described Adams as a crusader and Branstone, his publisher,
as a high-souled social reformer courageously risking misapprehension
for principle and the right, calling the endorsement of the Rev. Peter
Struggles to witness in proof of his irreproachable motives. “Well,”
said Sam, “am I to be misapprehended after all, and by you?”
“You told me you wrote the other letter,” she said. “Don’t you mean that
you wrote this one?”
“I don’t,” he said truthfully. He wrote his, attacking himself, on one
side of Stewart’s desk, while Stewart at the other defended him. It had
been great fun.
“And what,” she asked, “is the business affair you say you’re engaged
on?”
“Why,” he said unguardedly, “it’s this.”
“Then I don’t misapprehend at all, my son. I apprehend very well. And
you’ve worked Peter Struggles into it. Was that why you got engaged to
Ada?”
“Mother!” he protested. “Doubt me if you like, but you must not doubt
Mr. Struggles. He surely is above suspicion.”
“He’s keeping bad company just now,” said Anne, “and I doubt you’ve been
too clever for him.”
Sam chose to be offended. “Is that what you think of me?” he asked.
“That you’re clever. Aye. I think that all right. I’ve known it since
the time when you tricked a parcel of schoolboys out of a house of
furniture and put George Chappie into it. You’re clever in the wrong
places, Sam. When you were at school, you were clever out of school.
You’re at business now and you ought; to be clever in honesty, and I’ve
the notion that you’re being clever in dishonesty.”
“Of course,” he said, “this only shows how right I was not to tell you.
It’s the old story. Women don’t understand business.”
“I know. Business is a pair of spectacles that makes black into white,
but I don’t wear spectacles myself. Are you going to tell me what you’re
doing with that thousand pounds?”
“I told you it isn’t decided yet. But if the sales of that pamphlet go
up this week as they did last, I’m going into the publishing business
with it.”
“So that you can publish more of the same sort?”
“If I can get them. There’s a lot of money in it.”
“Sam,” she said earnestly, “is that all you’re caring about?”
“You told me yourself that Ada was not the wife for a poor man.” He
considered that a very neat score, to seem to make Anne responsible, but
Anne was not to be deceived by any such seeming. As she saw it, Ada had
corrupted Sam, Ada was the motive of this misuse of his cleverness; and
the bitterness for Anne was doubly poignant. She believed in Sam, with
a faith which had never swerved in spite of her disappointment in his
school career; but she realized now that he had been marking time in
Travers’ office, that it was Ada and not she who had quickened his
energies to rapid action. Ada had quickened them, where under Anne they
had lain dormant but the quickening had been corrupt. It came from Ada,
poisoned at the source, and took to poisonous ways.
They had touched bottom now and reached essentials. “Sam,” she said, “I
was joking like when I said a man’s not rational when he’s in love. But
it was a true word spoken in jest. You’re not rational or you wouldn’t
be doing these things and making a byword of the name of Branstone, and
the reason you’re not rational is Ada. If you were in love with a good
woman, you could no more do dishonourable things than fly. But you’re in
love with a bad woman and it leads to bad results. Sam, do you think I
like to tell you that you’ve made a mistake? And do you think I don’t
know? Lad, lad, I love you, and I’ve never reckoned myself a fool.
Choose now, I’m not the sort of fool to be jealous just because you
get wed. I’d none be jealous of the right lass, Sam. I’d take her and
welcome her and know she had a better right to you than me. But Ada
Struggles has no right: she’s mean and grasping and she’s small in every
way there is. She’s----”
“Stop, mother. Don’t forget that I am marrying Ada.”
“And nothing that I say will alter you? Sam, she’ll go on as she’s begun
by sending you to this.” She put her hand on the lurid polemics of the
_Sunday Judge_. “She’ll drive you down and down. You may make money and
you may be rich, but there’ll be a curse on your riches and on all you
do, and Ada Struggles is the name of the curse.”
Sam attempted a small levity. “That will be all right,” he said. “She’s
going to change her name.” Anne shook her head. “A change of name’ull
none change Ada’s nature. It’s the best part of your life that’s before
you, and life with Ada spells ruin. I’m not telling you what I think.
It’s what I know, and I ask you, Sam, to heed my words.”
“I’m heeding them,” he said, “but I know you’re wrong.”
“That’s the last you’ve got to say?”
“I’m sorry we don’t agree, mother.”
“Agreeing’s nowt,” she said, “and I’m nowt against your happiness. See,
Sam, I’ll prove it. There’s a thought at the back of your mind that I’ve
nothing against Ada but a grudge because she’s come between you and me.
I say that girl’s no good for you, and I say I’ll do anything to force
you to see it. There’s nowt of myself in this and maybe this will make
you believe it.”
There was a good fire in the room and she put her hand into it. Sam was
alert enough to drag her away before much damage was done, and he had
oil on the hand in a moment.
“Don’t fuss,” said Anne, “but tell me what you think.”
“I think,” he said, “that you’re plumb crazy--with jealousy.”
It was not craziness, but fanatic devotion to an idea: and the idea
was Sam, Sam’s happiness, Sam’s future. She put her hand into the
fire hoping to convince, and she would have sat on the fire if she had
thought the larger act would carry a fuller conviction. But he did not
need to be convinced that she objected to Ada; the point was that
her objections were unfounded, and, in the face of Ada’s sublime and
stunning merits, idiotic.
One cannot put a hand into the fire without suffering for it, and Anne
was suffering acutely. Her face was drawn with pain and her lips were
trembling uncontrollably, but her voice was firm.
“I’ve done my best to save you, Sam. If you’ve nothing better to say
than that, you and me have come to a parting.”
“Then,” said Sam, “we’ve come,” and turned his back on her. He thought
she would come round, that she would get over her attack of frenzied
jealousy. It was idle threat to talk of a parting. Why, she was
dependent on him, and in more ways than one. He housed and kept her,
but, more than that, she needed him. His presence was the breath of life
to her. He knew that, and he let her go!
Of course, he thought she would come back, with a sharp lesson well
learnt. She had to learn that he was grown-up, of an age to act for
himself and choose and think without her tutelage. Only, she did not
come back. She went to Madge and stayed with Madge; and the terms on
which she stayed were her terms. “I furnish the room,” she said, “and I
pay you a rent for it. Also, I pay for what I eat.”
She paid. At the age of fifty-two the mother of Sara Branstone, of
Branstone and Carter, and the mother-in-law of George Chappie, of the
Chappie Window-Cleaning and Bill Posting Company (a smaller affair
than its name, but the source of a regular five pounds a week), was a
charwoman on three days out of the seven, and it was not lack of offers
which limited her to three days, but the fact that she paid her way on
three days’ result. She kept other people’s houses as clean as she had
kept her own.
It was suggested to George Chappie that it was hardly decent in him to
allow his mother-in-law to go out charring at her age--a prosperous man
like him. “I know,” he was reported to have replied, “and we’ve tried
all ways we can. But you can’t argue with Mrs. Branstone.”
“She’s one of the old sort, isn’t she?” said his gossip, who, perhaps,
endured a mother-in-law of another kind.
“All that,” said George succinctly.