|EFFIE and Sam knew that they ought to be happy in the weeks which
followed, because to be good is, theoretically, to be happy: but they
were not happy. Sam, indeed, was less unhappy than Effie because he had
sunk into one of those leaden, numbed moods of his which he knew of old
as the stage preliminary to his brightest inspirations, and he could
wait resignedly if not happily for the inspiration to emerge.
Decidedly, he thought, he needed inspiration, He had to discover Ada, to
search for her reality, and, having found it, to drag it out and set it
in the forefront of her being. A big task: one whose success he must not
jeopardize again by rushing at her prematurely without distinct plan. He
had only made her suspicious of him by his first impulsive attempt, and
time must undo the mischief before a return to the attack was either
discreet or opportune.
He waited, but he did not savour life. When he had quickened Ada, life
would, no doubt, be worth the living, but, meantime, it dragged. He told
himself that he was too young yet at this new business of giving to feel
the joy of it. Certainly, he was not joyful, but he was resolute. There
was a grim tightening of the lips and a dogged look in the eyes which
proclaimed that this was Samuel, the son of Anne. In this mood he could
eat Dead Sea apples and feel they were a proper diet. Politics had gone,
and with them any interest in the Council. And he did not know what to
do about his business. He wanted to ask Effie, and Effie was not there
to be asked.
It was not that she did not want to be there or that she did not suffer
for her absence. Effie was not numb, and she suffered keenly, but she
thought her absence strengthened Sam. When he came down from Hartle
Pike with his resolution formed she took it that her scheme, as she had
planned it, was complete and that she could forget her weak concession
to return to the office. She was to be there in spirit, and spirit is
strong though flesh is weak. Effie at the office in the flesh would have
wanted to hug Sam and to kiss him, things which it is unbefitting to do
in well-conducted offices. And, of course, she suffered. She had always
known that she would suffer, but not that it would be as bad as this.
The office was a temptation every day: to go there was to be with him,
it was to find alleviation for her fever, it was to be at peace: but
it was also to fling away hard-won success, and she resisted. That
resistance engrossed her. It was all that she was capable of doing; it
demanded all her strength.
The obvious, the practical thing, if she was not to go to Sam’s office,
was to go to someone else’s, to work, both as an antidote and as a means
of livelihood, and she could not rouse herself to do it. She pawned some
of the jewellery which remained to her, memorials of her father’s lavish
past, sent the weekly dole to her mother and lived upon the rest. She
had sunk to this, Effie the crusader, Effie the advocate of courage!
With Mélisande, she told herself she was not happy. She was not happy,
she was not well, and she wanted, wanted Sam. She stayed at home lest
she should go to him and ruin all that she had done. It could not last
and she knew it could not last, but neither did she see the end of it.
Then began the game of consequences: the moves of two pieces, one a
pawn, the other the knight called Dubby Stewart.
It is a frumpish world, a world where the Frumps, of one or other sex
or of neither sex, in one or other of their manifestations, have a great
deal to do with the ordering of things. That is why it is politic, for
one’s ease, never to ignore the Frumps and never, never to challenge
them by an act of gallant defiance such as shying an imitation wedding
ring into the waters of Blea Tarn.
Effie held, of course, that since she was in any case defying the Frumps
it was honest to defy them in form as well as in substance, but it is
only certain kinds of honesty which are the best policy.
The Frump who sat behind Effie at meals at the Inn (her name was
Miss Entwistle) had doubted the genuineness of that ring, and when it
disappeared her doubts went with it. The hussy, she saw, had realized
that her ring deceived nobody, and was brazening it out in the shameless
way of hussies.
Women are wicked, but men are only weak; so that, though Miss Entwistle
faced Sam at dinner from the next table, it was some days before
she could spare her attention from the back of the greater sinner and
transfer it to the face of the lesser. She could stare to her heart’s
content; it did not matter to Sam, who had only eyes for Effie: and the
stare of Miss Entwistle was very persistent indeed. It was rude, but
it was also pensive. It seemed to be looking for something it could not
find.
She could not place him and was annoyed because she felt certain she had
seen him before. She got up early more than once to read the names on
the morning’s letters, but did not find one which she could associate
with Sam, and came home to Manchester a disappointed woman. Her failure
to identify him spoiled her holiday.
But all things come to her who waits, especially, as the world is made,
to Frumps, and Miss Entwistle came by the knowledge she craved one
afternoon when her friend Mrs. Grandage took her to Ada Branstone’s “At
Home.”
The two photographs of Sam in Ada’s drawing-room were intended to sustain
her reputation for perfect domesticity. She couldn’t live without
him; she drew her very breath from him when he was there, and from his
photographs when he was not. And since one was full-face and the other
profile, they supplied Miss Entwistle with reliable identification of
the sinner of Marbeck.
It was heavenly. Hers was the power and the glory of initiating a
scandal, of exploding a bomb--which would certainly disturb the peace
of quite a number of people, of figuring in a maelstrom of backbiting
tea-parties as the one authentic eyewitness. It was irresistible,
besides plain duty to her injured hostess.
The drop of gall in her brimming honey-pot was that she did not know
Ada well enough to tell her the secret by herself, but must share the
excitement of that first surprise with Mrs. Grandage. She whispered with
her friend for some close-packed, hectic moments, and the two ladies
stubbornly outstayed the rest of the callers.
They told Ada with a wonderful tenderness, watching her the while as
cats watch mice, and Ada did not disappoint them. She cast no doubt on
Miss Entwistle’s story; she did not tell her that she knew Sam was in
London at the time because she had had letters from him. Though she had
nothing in the world but her marriage, she made no effort to protect its
reputation. She exhibited herself to them in all the fury of her jealous
rage, so that naturally, seeing her instant belief in what they told
her, the ladies formed their own conclusion.
“It is not the first time,” is what the eyes of Mrs. Grandage said, and
the eyes of the spinster looked back at her sepulchrally and said, “It
never is.”
Ada was married. She had the title of wife, and unfaithfulness on her
part was as far removed from her imagination as from her opportunity.
She was married to Sam; she was the woman in possession, with the
title-deeds in her desk and the seal upon her finger, and this was
flagrant outrage. It struck at the roots of her complacency, and
complacency was life. Yet she hadn’t the wits to confound these
iconoclasts with one little uninventive lie. It needed only that to
abash Miss Entwistle--men’s faces are often alike, she knew perfectly
well that he was in London: anything would have done, anything would
have been better than this abject, immediate betrayal of her citadel.
She struck her flag without firing a shot, and lapsed into a slough of
inarticulate anger.
“What shall I do? What shall I do?” she wailed as soon as she was able
to speak coherently.
“That,” said Miss Entwistle, “that, you poor dear, is your business.”
She had announced the glad tidings, she had found a titillating pleasure
in watching Ada’s reception of them and now she was eager to be off,
to spread the news, to be the first that ever burst into her friends’
drawing-rooms with word of a glorious scandal. She pleaded another call
and escaped to her orgy.
“I’ll make him pay for this,” said Ada viciously.
“My dear,” advised Mrs. Grandage, who had a husband of her own, “I hope
you will be tactful.”
“Tactful:” blazed Ada. “Tactful, when--oh! oh!” She screamed her sense
of Sam’s enormity.
“Yes, but you know, men will be men.”
“It isn’t men. It’s Sam. After all I’ve done for him! Oh!” and this was
a different “oh” from the others. It made Mrs. Grandage look up sharply.
“The beast! The beast! This explains it all. Ethel, that man came home
to me and asked me to adopt his child. He had the face. Of course I
didn’t know it was his own he was speaking of, but I see it now. Ethel,
what shall I do?”
They seemed to Mrs. Grandage to be drifting into deeper waters than she
had skill to swim in. “I should take advice,” she said, meaning nothing
except that neither by advising nor anything else was she going to be
entangled in this affair.
“A solicitor’s?” asked Ada, catching at the phrase. “Yes. Naturally.
Sam shall be made to pay to the uttermost farthing.” Her idea of legal
obligations were, perhaps, not vaguer than other people’s.
“Not a solicitor’s,” said Mrs. Grandage in despair. “At least, my dear,
not yet. Your father’s.”
“Yes. My father made me marry Sam. He brought Sam home and threw him
at me. I will go to my father. Of course, in any case, I can’t stay
here.”
Mrs. Grandage made a last rally for wordly-wisdom. “Couldn’t you bring
yourself to see your husband first?” she asked.
“See him!” said Ada heroically. “I will never see him again as long as I
live.”
The visitor buttoned her glove. After all, if Ada chose to make a fool
of herself it was no business of hers, and she had tried her best, if a
resolutely non-committal attempt can be a best. She kissed Ada with real
sympathy.
“My dear,” she said, “I’d give a great deal to undo this.” And by “this”
she did not mean the peccadillo of Sam Branstone, but the pruriency of
Miss Entwistle. She was an experienced woman, and angry with herself for
having listened to the temptress and for aiding and abetting her.
When Mrs. Grandage referred in after years to “that woman,” it was
understood that she was thinking of Miss Entwistle.
Ada saw her to the door, and went straight to the kitchen.
“Kate,” she said to her cook, “Mr. Branstone has disgraced himself, he’s
been unfaithful. I am going to my father’s. Please tell him that I know
everything and that I shall not return.” She had no reticence.
“Very well, mum,” said the Capable cook.
The result was that when Sam went into the drawing-room that night, he
found Anne Branstone sitting there, darning his socks, and perhaps it
was because she was happy that she did not look a day older than when he
saw her last; perhaps charring suited her; or perhaps living for an idea
had kept her young. The idea was that, some day, Sam would need her.
It wasn’t a miracle: there was nothing more wonderful about it than the
fact that Anne was a very good friend of the cook, Kate Earwalker: but
Sam stood gaping helplessly. In his own house, at his age, and after all
these years he stood before his mother, the intruder, like a schoolboy
who knows himself at fault. She lacked nothing of the old ascendancy.
“Well,” she said, “you’re nobbut happy when you’ve got folks talking of
you. But you don’t look thriving on it, neither.”
“Mother,” he gasped, “what’s this?”
“It’s you that will tell me that,” said Anne.
“Where’s Ada?”
“Gone to her father’s, and none coming back, she says. Says you’re
unfaithful and told Kate she knows everything. What is it, Sam? What’s
everything?”
“Who brought you here?”
“Kate did,” said Anne calmly. “Why, Sam, did you think I’ve lived with
nothing better than what George Chappie and the papers told me of you?
I’d a fancy for the truth, and it’s not a thing to get from men. Kate’s
been a spy, like.”
“Has she!” he cried.
“She has, and you’ll bear no grudge for that. You’d have lived in a
pig-sty and fed like a pig if I’d none sent Kate to do for you, but I’ve
come myself this time. It looks summat beyond Kate.”
“But what’s happened? What is it?”
“You know better than me what it is. You’ve got folks talking of you and
they’ve talked to Ada. Unfaithful, she told Kate, and she’s gone home to
Peter’s.”
“She must come back,” said Sam.
“And why?” asked Anne. “Because folk talk? To stop their mouths?”
“No. Because I want her here. They’re talking, are they? Well, they
can.”
Anne looked at him. “You don’t care if they do?”
“Why should I?”
“And you a politician?”
“Oh, politics!” he said. “That’s gone.” It had, and, as he saw
thankfully, at the right time. He tried to imagine how differently this
would have affected him if it had come in the midst of the Sandyford
election. Electors postulate respectability in a candidate. But that
had gone, and gossip did not matter now. The real things mattered. Ada
mattered.
“You’ve had a move on, then,” she said, and neither her look nor tone
suggested that she found the move displeasing.
“I daresay,” he said carelessly. “But Ada must come back. I’ve got to
get her back.”
“Happen she’ll come and happen she won’t, and I’d have a better chance
of knowing which if you’d told me what’s upset her.”
“What did she say?” he asked. “Unfaithful? Yes, it’s true. I’ve been
unfaithful for ten years. I’ve never been faithful and I’ve never been
fair. I’ve thought of the business and politics when I ought to have
been thinking of her. I worked at them and I didn’t work at Ada. Don’t
blame Ada, mother. I’ll not have that. You never liked her, and you
prophesied a failure. It’s been a failure, but I made it one; I let
it drift when I ought to have taken hold. But it isn’t going to be a
failure now. I’ve given up the other things and I’ve come back to
my job, the job I neglected, the job I did not see was there at all
until----” He paused.
“Till what?” she asked.
“Till Effie showed it me.”
“Effie?” she asked. “Oh! Then there’s something in their talk.”
“Something? There’s everything, and everything that’s wrong-headed and
abominable. That’s where this hurts me, mother. They’ll be saying wrong
things of her, of Effie.” He began to see that gossip mattered.
“What would be the right things to say?” asked Anne dryly. “Who’s Effie?
And do you mean her when you say you’ve been unfaithful for ten years?”
“I meant what I said. That I’ve put other things in front of Ada.”
“Including Effie?”
“Effie’s a ray from heaven,” he said.
“Oh, aye,” said Anne sceptically.
“Look here, mother, you’re not going to misunderstand?”
“Not if you can make me understand.”
“I can try,” he said, “and the chances are that I shall fail. The only
thing that will make you understand Effie is to see her.”
“Try the-other ways first,” said Anne grimly.
“She made me see. She gave me everything. She gave me herself. I found
myself because of her and I’m only living in the light she gave me.”
It was difficult to find words for what Effie was and meant to him. “I
don’t know if I can ever explain,” he faltered.
“Go on. You’re doing very well.” He was--Anne’s insight helping her.
“It’s like rebirth. It’s as if I’d lived till I met her six months ago
with crooked eyesight. I didn’t see straight, and then, mother----” He
hesitated as a man will hesitate before voicing a profound conviction,
afraid lest he be thought absurd. “Then I found salvation, I’ve been a
taker and we’re here to give. I took from you------”
“Leave that,” said Anne curtly. “I know it.”
“And I didn’t,” he replied. “It seems to me that I knew nothing till
Effie come.”
“Why do you want Ada back?”
“It’s time I gave to her.”
“Did Effie show you that?”
“Yes.”
Anne was silent for a minute. Then: “I’ll have a look at Effie,” she
said. “You can take me to her.”
“I can’t do that,” said Sam. “We’re not to meet.”
She pondered it, and him. “Kate told me you were looking ill,” she said
with apparent inconsequence. “Well, if you can’t take me to Effie, I
must go alone. I’m going, either road. Give me her address and I’ll go
to-morrow.”
He wrote it down. “Effie Mannering,” she read. “Aye,” she said grimly,
“I’ll give that young woman a piece of my mind.”
“Mother,” he said, alarmed, “you’ll not be rude to her! You’ve not
misunderstood?”
“Maybe,” said Anne, “but I don’t think so. I think I understand that
you’ve got your silly heads up in the clouds and it’ll do the pair of
you a lot of good to have them brought to earth. I’ll know for sure when
I’ve set eyes on her.”
“You’ll see the glory of her, then,” he said defiantly.
“Shall I?” she asked. “If you ask me, Sam, there’s been a sight too
much glorification about this business. It shapes to me,” she went on,
thwarting the protest which was leaping to his lips. “It shapes to me
like a plain case of love. Aye, and love’s too rare a thing in this
world to be thrown away. I was never one to waste.”
So Anne Branstone took control, and Sam sat staring at her helplessly
like a man who dreams.