And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
All that was left of a woman once,
Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
ANN had always known Old Lunt. As far back as she could remember the
mews had been her playground, and the old man coming and going had
been a part of the scene.
She seemed to connect the silence that visited her mate after his
death with him, for she filled it with reminiscence and stories about
him. He used to sing queer old songs, and sometimes he could be
persuaded to tell about the country where he came from and flowers and
birds; yarns about his father's farm and the happiness he had had on
it until it came into his brother's hands, and his brother had gone
into the manufacturing. Then there was no home for him in the old
stone house.
For all her talk Ann could not break in upon René's silence, and his
eyes would implore her to cease, yet she could not cease. She went on
and on talking, for she dreaded his silence as she dreaded his
solemnity. They made life heavy and evil for her. If a man was
unhappy, there were plenty of distractions and consolations. Everybody
was unhappy at times, but no one in his senses clung to his
unhappiness the way Renny did. It was an exasperation to her to have
him like this--"mooning and dithering to himself"--because he had been
so much more complacent and docile than she had expected. She had
looked for trouble, but he had slipped into her ways, and shared her
pleasures with an astonishing ease and grace, so much so that she had
had the mortification of hearing two women in the mews arguing about
him:
"Garn! 'E ain't no scholard."
"'Struth. 'E's a college gent."
"'Im! They might come to see a working girl, but they wouldn't take up
with 'er."
The trouble she had looked for should have been between herself and
him, and she was prepared to tackle it so soon as it showed its head,
but this trouble he kept to himself, outside her. And though she
called it unhappiness, she knew well enough that he was not unhappy.
Indeed, it was a joy to him to find himself more and more alive to the
world, the little, grubby, amusing corner of it in Mitcham Mews, and
the great roaring whirlpool outside in which lay his work. His
pleasure in London was no longer purely emotional; no longer did he,
as it were, implore London to let him be a part of it. He was working
in it, contributing to its life, to its bustle and noise; but since
his talks with Kilner and his reading of the poetical works of the old
ragamuffin, he had been able little by little to detach himself from
it and watch all that was going on. Truly there was never a more
amusing city! Everything was on show. Everybody had the air of
expecting to be looked at and admired; though everybody pretended also
that he or she had no such expectation. When provincials arrived in
London they seemed to feel all this and to wince before it, but soon
they perked up their heads and behaved as though all eyes were upon
them. And they went to the show-places, those of which there had been
talk in their homes from their earliest recollection. But everything
else also was a show to them. More and more the shops tended to become
shows. Government offices were being pulled down and rebuilt to make
more show. Exalted personages were bent on making a show of their
common humanity. Even in the city, the offices in which Londoners
worked--the counting-house behind the shop--were being razed to the
ground to give place to colossal palaces of ferro-concrete and marble
and plate-glass. Motor-cars were growing more and more garish and
glossy; the advertisements on the hoardings were more and more crudely
colored. For whom was the show? For whom was all the outpouring and
display of wealth? Hardly, thought René, for Mitcham Mews, that sink
of the submerged and those who could only just hold their heads above
water. He thought he could find the answer in the miles and miles of
little houses like the house in Hog Lane, six rooms, attics, and
cellars, constantly stretching out to the west and to the east; the
unceasing expansion of mediocrity, a flooring of concrete, warranted
fireproof, to keep the fantastic creations of wealth uncontaminated by
the sources from which wealth sprang.
These were no general speculations. As he detached himself from the
spectacle of London, and observed and brought humor and charity to
bear on his observations, it became more and more clear to him that in
this fantastic atmosphere he could not live. He was conscious of
energy within himself. Upward from Mitcham Mews led to the mediocrity
of the little houses, to those who lived in the dazzlement of the
shows, forgetting life, forgetting death. Downward? There was no
downward without sinking into the disgusting vices which repelled him.
Beyond the mediocrity was only the show where everything was
sterilized, thought castrated, art hermaphrodite. (Kilner knew too
much of that.) At the same time, he felt that his present mode of life
could not go on much longer. There would certainly be a move from
Mitcham Mews, but he wanted it also to be a decision, not a mere
change of houses.
Ann returned to her idea of trying a new country, and for a time he
played with the idea. It had its seductions. The long voyage: the
indolent life on board ship; the possibility as they slipped away from
existence in England of shedding those elements in themselves which
prevented the full sympathy desired by their affection; the settling
in a country where class differences were not so acute. But, he felt
rather than saw, that would mean isolation with Ann, and his feeling
was against it. When she tried to discuss it with him, to get him to
consider the respective merits of Canada or Australia, he was evasive
in his replies and soon forced her to drop it. She would show a little
disappointment, but would reassure herself by saying:
"There's no place like old England," or: "Sally Wade's in Canada, and
she does miss dear old London."
He was so absorbed in his thoughts and his growing certainty that he
did not notice how few of his evenings he spent with her. Because she
was cheerful, he imagined that she must be finding her own amusement
and satisfaction. He saw a great deal of Kilner, and when the painter
was otherwise engaged, liked to be out in the streets on duty. Without
knowing why, he had begun to desire to save money. Every shilling put
by added to his sense of independence and potential freedom. He had
commenced with a money-box, but finding Ann one day shaking coins out
of it, he opened an account with the Post Office Savings Bank. He said
nothing to her at the moment and was angry with himself for letting it
pass, but it was impossible to reopen the subject later. He told
himself that Mitcham Mews was no harbor of strict morals, that its
inhabitants did more or less what they wanted to do, and therefore
made it enjoyable for him to live among them. (That was the reason
Kilner had given him for living among the very poor. They had the same
liberty as the very rich, with none of their pretensions or false
responsibilities.) He had dismissed the matter from his mind when it
was brought home to him one night on his returning late from work.
Rita and her husband lived opposite Martin's yard. As he came out of
it, René was confronted by Ann leaving their house with a basin under
her arm.
"I've been seeing Rita," she said. "Joe's been out of work since the
coal strike, and he's going on the drink. Her time's coming, and
someone's got to do for her. It was for her I took the money."
"I--I beg your pardon, Ann. Why didn't you say so before?"
"It was the way you looked, Renny, dear. You do frighten me so."
"I'm sorry. Can I do anything to help?"
"It may be to-morrow. Anyway, soon. Would you mind keeping Joe away?
He's not your sort, I know, but he must be kept away."
"All right. He shall be kept away. Is she in for a bad time?"
"I'm afraid she is. Work's been so skeery of Joe these times that it's
been all she's been able to do to feed the children."
"That's bad. But she ought to have thought of herself."
"Sometimes," said Ann, "there isn't room for everybody to be thought
of. If you can get through a day or two it's as much as you can manage
without thinking what's going to happen in a month's time."
"Don't you ever look ahead, Ann?"
"No. What's the good? Whenever I do, it only frightens me."
"Are you frightened of anything now?"
"A little."
They had reached their room and she had begun to wriggle out of her
clothes.
"I don't like your being frightened, my dear. There's nothing can hurt
us, and being hurt is no great thing."
"All in the day's work, eh? Oh, well. Some things. But, don't you see,
I think I'm going to be like Rita."
"Ann!"
She looked at him queerly, almost maliciously.
"What did y'expect? Making me so fond of you?"
He said lamely:
"I--I hadn't thought of it."
She was stung into silence. Presently she crept into bed and lay with
her face to the wall. In a tone of almost petulant disappointment she
said at length:
"I fancied that was why you were putting by all that money. I was
pleased about that, I was."
René sat on gloomily in the outer room, listening, waiting for her to
go to sleep. He was full of resentment against he knew not what. Her
almost cynical practicality? Her acceptance without wonder of the new
fact? As with the rest of his life, so now he was able to detach
himself from her. She had been pleased with him because he had begun
to make provision, as she thought, against the probable event. She had
announced the event as one regretting the pleasantness of the past,
almost as one diffidently presenting a bill--commercialization.
Horribly their relationship was stripped of their individualities;
they were just a man and a woman separated by that which they had
together created. They had known kindness and fellowship, mutual
forbearance and gratitude, and now they were despoiled of these good
things. He was left impotent while she bowed to the disagreeable fact
and was absorbed in it. And he began to see that they had long been
borne toward this separation, and to escape from the pain of it he had
turned to Kilner and the things of the mind, while she had comforted
herself with the things of the flesh, the sufferings of the
child-ridden Rita, who now seemed to him typical of the life of the
mews, a creature crushed by circumstance, by responsibilities which
she could not face, a house which she could not clean, children whom
she could neither feed nor clothe, a husband whom she was unable to
keep from deterioration. And to think that for one moment he had seen
beauty in her, when she had appeared almost as a symbol of maternity,
which must be--must it not?--always and invariably beautiful and to be
worshiped. His idealism came crumbling down as he could not away with
the knowledge that Ann had lost in beauty for him.
It was no revulsion, no withering of his feeling for her; rather it
was that the brutal fact had a burning quality to peel away the
trimmings from what he felt.
He found himself groping back in his life before Ann came into it.
Nothing quite the same had happened to him before. The perishing of
his young desire had left him in a whirling excitement which contained
less torture than this obsession of cold realization. Bereft now of
all that had made his life good and pleasant and amusing, he could
only appreciate Ann and the experience that lay before her,
appreciate, but not understand. That was too horrible. She had been so
dear to him; such a good, kind, true, brave little soul. The
resentment that he could not altogether escape he visited on Rita, as
Ann had from the first visited hers on Kilner.
Why should Kilner on the one hand, and Rita on the other, draw them
apart? Why had they created nothing that could be shared outside
themselves? Why should that which they had created destroy that which
they had valued in their life together? Why--and he came firmly back
to his real obsession--why should they have so isolated themselves
that the natural consequence of their love, if love it were, should be
an intrusion, a shock greater than they could bear?
He listened again. Ann's breathing seemed to tell that she was asleep.
He crept in to her. She was awake. After what seemed an age, she said
in a dry, weary voice:
"I keep trying to think what kind of a house you lived in."
He described Hog Lane West.
"No. The other one, I mean."
"Oh, that?" He told her it was like a little house in some Gardens not
far away.
Then in the same dry, weary voice she said:
"I have been trying to think what she felt when you left her."
"For God's sake," cried he, "for God's sake keep that out of it."
"I do try to, Renny, dear. But I can't help thinking about her
sometimes when you're like that----"
"Don't talk about it, Ann, don't talk about it. Go to sleep."
"Kiss me, then. I couldn't go to sleep till you'd kissed me. Not
to-night. It _is_ all right, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes. It's all right, bless you."
"I don't want to be a drag on you, Renny, dear. It _is_ a blessing
we're not married, isn't it?"
"That doesn't matter."
"That's what I say. If it's right it can't stop, can it? If it's
wrong, it must."
He kissed her to stop her talking. She sighed contentedly, slid her
arm into his and pressed her face against his shoulder.
"Good night. We _have_ been happy."
And in two minutes she was asleep. He too was glad of the happiness
they had. He was a little infected with her fatalism. If there were to
be calamities, there had been stores of frank pleasure and true
delight to draw upon in defense against them.
By killing off an imaginary grandmother, Ann procured a half-day off
from her work and spent the afternoon with Rita, who was weak and
dispirited by the great heat which filled the mews with stale air and
brought old fumes and stenches from the stables. There had been
thunder and storms, and the two youngest children were down with
colic. Joe had disappeared with Click and Billy, who, to Rita's great
distress, had begun to seek her husband's company and to give him
money--at least she supposed they did, for he had nowhere else to get
it. All day long Rita talked about a bed her mother had bought for the
best bedroom just before she married again, a beautiful bed with four
big brass knobs and sixteen little brass knobs, and a bit of brass
making a pattern at the head. And it had a real eiderdown, and the
springs were not like ordinary springs, but spirals. When she had
exhausted the wonder of the bed she began an endless story of the
aspidistra and Mr. 'Awkins who undertook to water it and forgot for a
whole week, when the leaves one by one went yellow and brown. Into
this story was woven all the romance that had ever crept into Rita's
life, and as a good deal had crept in through the unlikeliest corners,
it was a long story. She kept it going, as it were, by killing off the
leaves of the aspidistra to mark the chapters. Mr. 'Awkins was a
wonderful man, but he never quite said it, and Joe wouldn't take no
for an answer, and Joe really did seem to be fond of her, "and mother
could be awful." Besides Joe did promise to make a home for her, and
they did go and look at furniture on Saturdays, but always after they
had looked at furniture they used to go to music-halls, so they never
had the money to buy it. And then they got married.
For hours Ann sat listening to the woman's voice droning on. The elder
children had been taken charge of by neighbors. The others needed
constant attention. Joe came home in the evening, merrily drunk. Ann
met him at the door and told him he could not come in. He swore at her
and vowed he would. She struggled with him. He was fuddled and
uncertain on his legs, and she very quickly had him slithering down
the stairs. He sat at the bottom and roared:
"Jezebubble! That's what you are! Jezebubble! Throwing people down!"
Ann had gone to the window, and seeing René in the yard opposite, she
called to him and told him to take Joe away and make him sober. René
came running up, dragged Joe to his feet, lugged him into the yard,
and held his head under the tap. Joe spluttered and cursed, and when
he was released, stood up with the water streaming from his hair,
eyes, and mouth. He showed fight. René caught him by the neck and
threatened to turn on the tap again unless he showed himself amenable
to reason.
Ann called:
"Take him away."
René nodded, picked Joe up in his arms, and threw him on the floor of
his car and drove him out far beyond Uxbridge into the country. There
by a black pinewood they stopped. René got down and laughed, for Joe
had picked himself up and was sitting perkily with his thumbs in the
armholes of his waistcoat, with his hat on one side, pretending to be
a lord.
"Aw! Chauffah!" he said. "Dwive me to Piccadilly Circus. I want to buy
a box of matches." Changing his tone, he added: "You don't 'appen to
'ave a fag on yer, guvnor?"
René gave him a cigarette and a match, lit one himself, and sat by the
side of the road.
"Was that a joy ride?" asked Joe.
"No charge," replied René.
"I've spat in the car. Is there any charge for that?"
"I'll smack your head if you do it again."
Joe looked warily and solemnly at him, then deliberately spat on the
floor of the car.
"That," he said, "is to show I know you're a gentleman, and what I
thinks of yer."
René dragged him out of the car, smacked his head, and flung him into
the bracken.
"I'll have the law on yer," yelled Joe, trying to shout himself into a
fury.
"Then you'll have to walk home. Maybe that would sober you."
"No 'arm, me lord, no 'arm. It's looking for work, guvnor, that's what
it is. It makes you fuddled. 'Struth it does. Here am I with five
children, doing my duty by my country, and I can't get work. Five
children. 'Good!' says you, being a gentleman and well provided for.
'Who's to support 'em?' says I. 'You,' says you. 'Let me work,' says
I. 'There ain't no work,' says you. 'There's going to be work for as
few as possible in this 'ere country,' you says. 'Chuck your flaming
union,' you says, 'blackleg the bloody unionists,' you says, 'and
there'll be heaps of work at one farving per hour.' 'Five children,'
says I. 'Good,' says you. 'They've got hungry little bellies,' says I.
'Have they?' says you. 'Let 'em come and watch the blokes coming to my
dinner-party to-night.'" He had worked himself up to an excitement
which he could not contain, and he burst into tears.
"'Struth is, sir," he said presently, "I ain't getting enough to eat,
and you know how it is with my missus."
"Ann Pidduck is looking after her," said René, "and I promised to look
after you."
"Woffor did you take me out into the bloomin' country?"
"I hardly know. One doesn't worry about distance in the car. She said:
'Take him away.' So I took you away. I'm afraid I have rather a
literal mind."
"Well, it's pretty here, ain't it? I took my eldest into the country
once. When he got back he said to his mother, he said: 'There was
parrots in all the trees, and as for cows there was more than one.'
'E'd never seen any bird but sparrows and a parrot. I s'pose he
thought anything bigger than a sparrow must be a parrot. What they'll
grow up like, Gawd knows, and He don't care. It makes me sick to think
of another one coming. I'd like to know what the 'Ell Gawd's playing
at making a man so that 'e 'as a great love o' women and can't get
enough t'eat. Us workin'-men ought to be eunuchs, so we ought. If you
got a spark o' spirit in you it does you down every time. You can take
me back now, guvnor. I'll be good."
He climbed up into the car, resumed his lordly attitude, lit a
cigarette, and said:
"'Ome, and drive like 'Ell. I'll stand the bally fines."
The pathos of the man's grotesque humor springing up through his
misery moved René so much that he forgot his own perplexity and
desired only to please him. He drove back full tilt, guessing that it
was late for the "controls" to be manned, and they reached the yard
just as the lamps in the mews were being lit. As they came out of the
yard they saw a policeman standing at the door opposite. Joe put René
between himself and the constable, and they went up to Ann's room.
There the electrician peeped out.
"I say," he said, "I say. They've blabbed."
"Blabbed! What do you mean? Who's blabbed?"
"It's Click and Billy I mean. They'd got stuff. I don't know where
they got it. They made me help get rid of it. I 'ad to get money
somewheres. Click's a Catholic, and he says stealing isn't stealing if
you're starving. They must have been nabbed. I ain't a thief, guvnor.
I only helped get rid of the stuff. They said I could because I was
known respectable. Respectability ain't done me no good afore."
"Keep quiet," said René. "He'll hear you. Perhaps he isn't waiting for
you."
"'E ain't moved. I know how they look when they're on the cop. Devils!
Sly devils! I seen 'em take Click afore now and old Bessie."
"Be quiet, you fool. Sit down and have something to eat."
He placed three cold sausages in front of Joe. They vanished. He
produced a piece of ham. That was soon gnawed to the bone. Half a loaf
of bread and a small tin of bloater paste soon followed, and Joe began
to caress his stomach affectionately.
"Look here," said René. "What will it mean if they get you?"
"First offender. I'd get off, all right. But the crooks 'll never let
me alone, and the police 'll have me marked down as a man to nab if
ever they want a 'spected person."
"All right. You sit here. I'll go and see how things are over there."
The policeman eyed René as he went in.
"Want anything?"
"No, sir. No."
"There's nothing going on here, nothing unusual. Confinement."
Ann heard his voice and came down to him. They walked up the mews.
Rita was in a delirium. She kept reproaching Joe over and over again
for not buying a fire-screen he had promised her. And then she seemed
to be living over again in some scene of jealousy. Joe must not come
near her. It might not be safe. René told her his news. Ann said:
"She guessed that. It's that's broken her up so. She thinks she isn't
a respectable woman any longer. I don't know that it wouldn't be best
to let him be taken."
"But doesn't that mean that he's done for? You know better than I."
"You don't get much of a chance."
"Then we'll do what we can. Tell the policeman he isn't sleeping here
to-night."
"All right. All right. I don't think I'll be back till the morning,
and then I'll have to go to work. So good night, Renny, dear. It is
good of you."
They parted. He heard her tell the policeman how things were in the
house, and that Joe would not be sleeping there that night, but at his
mother's off the Fulham Road. The policeman asked for the address, and
she gave it him pat, and after a moment or two he rolled away. René
gave him three minutes, then returned to Joe and told him what had
happened, gave him a shilling for a doss, and asked him to meet him in
the morning at the cab-rank in Lancaster Gate.
"If I pay your passage to Canada, will you go? You can get a start out
there and have your family out after you. We'll look after them."
"Will I go?" cried Joe. "I've had enough of this 'ere blasted country.
Will I go? D'you know that's been in my mind ever since that there joy
ride. I says to myself, I says, moving's that easy. You been stuck
still, Joe, my buck, that's what's been the matter with you."
René kept _cave_ while the poor devil slunk out of the mews, and then
followed him, saw him mount a bus and be borne away eastward, standing
up and waving his hand as long as he was in sight.
His passing left René stranded. He had been caught up in the eddy of
that little drama, and then flung back into his solitude, and, though
he was cheered by his activity, he was also depressed by the horrid
grubbiness of the life that had been revealed to him; nothing in the
world for Joe but the procuring of food, the bare satisfaction of
desire; an amused fondness for his children. That horrible capacity
for happiness in degradation.
He stood below the lighted window of Rita's room. A moaning came out
of it. A thin voice almost screaming:
"Oh, don't, Joe, don't!"
There were appalling silences. Then whisperings. A long silence that
chilled him to the heart. At length the cry of the new-born child, a
cry of pain. Then again silence, broken only by the sound of water and
the clink of metal against crockery.
In that moment René became almost unbearably alive to the suffering of
the woman, and to all suffering, and to his own.