“Yes, I think that might hang a day longer. I can finish up the
mince for my lunch, and you must do something with the turkey legs for
dinner. Let me see--and there’s fish to-day. And then--well, suppose
you make a savoury?”
“Master don’t care for savouries, Ma’am!”
“A sweet, then. I don’t care. And that’s all, I think?”
Mrs. Joe Mardell, in her neat morning shirt, coquetishly finished with
a man-like tie, and the severity of her attire much modified by the
bows and loops of waved hair that crowned her head, turned and was
about to leave the dark basement of the little house in Kirriemuir
Street, West Kensington, when a door in the upper regions banged.
“There, he’s off, and I wanted a cheque!” Mrs. Mardell observed with
mild irritation. She glanced at the kitchen clock with a degree of
confidence she did not place in the elegant time-keeper, cased in
jewels, that hung on the front of her shirt. “Why, it’s only half-past
ten?”
“Master’s early gone this morning,” said the cook. “Gladys took his
breakfast up only ten minutes ago.” She paused, then summoning her
courage, she asked--
“Ma’am, are people usually buried on Christmas Day?”
“Why, you silly woman, it depends on what day they die. Who’s been
dying?”
“I’ll swear,” said the woman eagerly, “that I saw a corpse being
carried down the steps of number thirteen just over the street
opposite nearly a week ago, and I reckon it back Christmas Day!… It’s
been worrying me ever since. Yes, I saw the mourners and hearse and
feathers and all--done quite proper. I was looking out of the front
staircase window----”
“Neglecting your work, Vance? Serves you right. You saw Whiteley’s
sale cart, perhaps? You were looking sideways through the red panes,
and glass, you know, refracts oddly.… Who lives at number thirteen?”
“Oddly enough, Ma’am, I don’t know, though I mostly could tell you the
names of everybody in the street. I might ask one of the
tradespeople--should I?”
“Yes, do if you like. Brr!” She shivered affectedly, strong in the
pride of her health and good looks. “It seems a cold time to choose to
be put into the ground! One would sooner be cremated, this weather!”
Holding up her crisp befrilled skirts, the second wife of Joseph
Mardell, the popular comic actor, who was just now drawing crowds to
his Christmas extravaganza at the “Quality,” made her way up from the
dark basement to the abodes of light above. Noiselessly, she let fall
behind her that swing door at the top of the staircase which
effectively divided the world of society from its service, and
exchanged stone and oil-cloth for soft carpets and silken curtains. It
was a very pretty little house--_her_ house. She admitted Joe into it.
Her husband-lover, Joe. She had managed to keep him her lover. All
wives should. She glanced, as she passed by, at the hat-stand in the
hall. Joe had stupidly gone without his fur coat, though it was
freezing. Or was it that it needed a stitch? How careless of Gladys!
He had left his big umbrella too, for there it bulged in the rack,
beside her own delicate silver-topped one. Careless Joe, willing
enough to ignore the mere physical claims of the self he morally bowed
to! Moreover, he forced every one else to do so likewise. He must have
his own way, and brooked no check where his mental desires were
concerned. It was perhaps the secret of his sway over men--and women.
She thought of him, Joseph Mardell, the greatly-sought-after, and
hers, with complacent affection, glancing up consciously at the branch
of mistletoe which was entwined with the square glass lamp that hung
over the front door. Joe had passionately kissed her under the mystic
bough, a week ago, for luck, on the first night of the successful
piece. And luck had come, and seemingly remained with them. The
booking was splendid. And they were rehearsing a more serious play
that was to follow the Christmas jollity. Joe was so busy he didn’t
know where to turn for a spare five minutes. She did not complain, for
if things went on like this they would be able to move out of West
Kensington, where you couldn’t get a smart parlour-maid to stop with
you. Gladys and her finger-nails was a sore trial.
She entered the dining-room, and her eyes sought the sideboard. Ah,
Joe had had some sense after all, and had remembered to refresh the
inner man before leaving, as the violated Tantalus betokened. He lay
in bed late. He rarely breakfasted, and never with her. She rose at
eight--on principle; she could not afford to keep actors’ hours and
ruin her complexion.
She stood pensively by the small piece of Sheraton furniture before
she opened a drawer and took out of it what she had come to seek. Last
night’s oranges and apples beamed there on a pretty dish. Joe’s
cigarette boxes, flung about, needed tidying up. The presentation
silver bowl given to Joe by his fellow-actors on the occasion of his
first marriage, shone in the centre with dignified lustre. They had
chosen something quite different to present to him as a memento of his
second venture. That was in her room now. The bowl had a dwarf fern in
it now, but sometimes it ran over with punch, or was packed with
roses. Another use was contemplated for it; if Joe and she were to
have a baby, which, sadly enough, did not seem likely, the bowl would
be used for the christening.
Mrs. Mardell took a pretty little checked duster out of a drawer, and
went upstairs to her drawing-room on the first floor. She carefully
picked up an iridescent bead off the carpet, the spoil of the dress
she had worn last night, and placed it on an ash-tray. She then
proceeded to rub up the several minute objects on her silver-table,
wishing heartily that she could afford to have them lacquered, and
thus dispense with her daily task. So occupied, she looked wholly
pretty and half domestic, a little soubrettish, like those
neat-aproned maids who flutter early about a stage-scene and usher in
and lay the tables for tragedy.
There was no harm in Florence Mardell. She was a smart, novel-reading,
Sandown and Ranelagh going woman, easily dressed, easily amused, a
little detached, perhaps, in her interests, and careless of the more
serious issues of life, but quite willing to simulate and assume
social crazes as they came up. She played a good game of Bridge. She
glanced at the deep Reviews as well as the _Windsor_ and _Pearson’s_,
and improved her mind on the slightest opportunity. You could always
get her for a subscription lecture of sorts, and she quite approved of
Female Suffrage, without, however, actively concerning herself in its
propaganda. She never “fagged.” She was always beautifully dressed in
a severish, strapped, mock-manly style, and could wear successfully
the very largest hats when they came in.
She had been the widow of an officer, and had lived at Wimbledon in a
big dull house standing in its own grounds. She had first set eyes on
Joe Mardell playing a strong “Macheath” in _The Beggar’s Opera_, to
the most ineffective “Polly Peachum” of Julia Fitzgerald. Miss
Fitzgerald was his wife; had she but known it, it might have made a
difference, but very likely it would not have. Then and there she had
fallen in love with the actor across the footlights, impulsively,
violently, madly, and she had not rested, being of an acquisitive,
pugnacious, predatory habit of mind, until she had persuaded a
journalistic friend of hers and his to bring about an introduction.
With her effective crown of real golden hair, waved and curled _in
extremis_, her clean, fresh suburbanity, she had fascinated
“Macheath.” He was known to be weak, _volage_, and full of moods.
Florence was, on the contrary, strong and pertinacious, she had taken
him in a mood, and let her love profit by it. With fond
remorselessness she had driven him to drive his wife to divorce him.
All this she had compassed in her own calm detached way, as if
unconscious of the larger issues she was stirring--another woman’s
happiness, a man’s honour, and an actor’s art, for Joe was a genius,
and recognized to be one, in spite of, some people said because of,
his strange limitations. A little man, almost a dwarf, he could play
the burly Falstaff and the courtly Biron; he could write articles in
the Reviews; he could hold supper-tables in a roar. Julia Mardell’s
happiness had been sacrificed, for she adored, and was known to adore,
her husband. To oblige him she had condescended to make use of some of
the more complicated and recondite cogs of the machinery of the
English law of divorce, and had tamely surrendered, without
humiliating him, one of the most fascinating men of the day to another
woman. Yet Julia was quite as good-looking as Florence, if in a
different style. She was the full-souled, full-breasted, large-eyed
Junoesque female type, and only undertook the playing of a minx like
Polly Peachum to suit Joe. Such a majestic walk as hers, such dark
swimming eyes were of no avail to the actress who aspired to play one
of the wayward mistresses of the highwayman. It was the measure of
Julia’s love and her power of self-abnegation. Joe was prepared to
take the whole play on his own shoulders, only he must have a
sympathetic woman to act with. He did find Julia sympathetic in those
days when he loved her, and before the pretty widow from Wimbledon had
leaned out of her box and shaken her golden locks at him. Then one day
the two women met. Matters were arranged. Joe, susceptible, weak,
hustled and busy, succumbed.… Lawyers acted for him. Julia was
compliant: Florence “keen.” Joe worked on and was divorced while
rehearsing a new play. He himself never knew how it all happened!
There was a large signed photograph of Julia in Joe’s study now,
standing unframed, concave and dusty on the mantelpiece; Joe had not
dared, or cared, to give it a more polite or permanent abiding-place.
Indeed, Florence had had some thoughts of removing it from its even so
humble position; her friends wondered how she could possibly bear to
have it there for Joe to see every day! But she was capricious. One
never knew how she would take things. It was their expressed opinion
which perhaps induced her to let it stay, curled up and drooping
slavishly as time went on, and the dust and heat of the fire brought
its proud head low.
Florence bore Julia no grudge, she should think not, indeed! Julia had
been very good about it, had made no difficulties, but on the
contrary, had smoothed and made easy the path of divorce for the man
she loved.
That is, if she really did care for Joe. She had been so terribly
callous in her interviews; so full of zeal to give him his freedom. It
was hardly human, so the woman who had profited by her action thought,
and certainly not very womanly. Florence could not imagine herself
allowing a cold business-like lawyer to dictate her a letter bidding
Joe come back to her herewith; a summons intended, of course, for
ultimate publication. It disgusted Florence, this horrible business of
sueing for restitution of conjugal rights! Julia’s formal petition was
refused by Joe in another cold letter, equally intended for
publication. Florence had actually read the two inhuman missives
printed together in the daily paper. Divorce had followed in due
course.
“Oh, you tamely died!” Yes, little frivolous Florence, who had never
read Tennyson, would have taken the advice of the Egyptian and would
have “clung to Fulvia’s waist, and thrust the dagger through her
side.” She was a true woman, like Cleopatra, and knew that the
elemental passions, once raised, must have full mastery. A man all to
oneself or nothing! That was her philosophy.
The feelings of the man in question? The state of his affections? No
matter! Florence did not see herself considering them, or taking any
deadly sex insult lying down. She considered that Julia’s
poor-spiritedness did really verge on meanness. She had accepted money
from Joe--an allowance to enable her to leave the stage. Report said
that she had grown stout. Report said that she had taken to drink.
Lies probably, so generous Florence said. Nobody in Florence’s world
knew anything about Julia excepting Miss Walton, who had introduced
them. And though the two women had continued their intimacy, it was
with the tacit agreement that the name of Julia should not be
mentioned between them. There were plenty of other subjects to talk
about. Miss Walton was, like everybody else, more than half in love
with Joe.… Funny how they all were! Rather nice--for Joe’s wife, since
Joe did not bother with any of them.…
Mrs. Mardell, after having polished the silver diligently, turned her
attention to the room. She ordered the chairs, according to some
abstruse social system of her own, and flicked her duster about feebly
here and there. She did not feel very “fit.” Rather queer, on the
contrary! All-overish! She could not have told you what it was, but
she was mysteriously conscious of something excessive--something
outrageous, like severe pain in wait for her. She seemed to apprehend
its nearness instinctively, as a patient seated in the dentist’s chair
watches the eminent practitioner’s feet moving and is aware in all his
sensitive enamel of the imminent grinding of the file that has been
set going.
Perhaps it was the long-continued strain of the cold that was
affecting her. The frost had lasted since before Christmas, and had
been very severe.…
She paused. The little clock on the mantelpiece tinkled half-past
eleven. Supposing she were to give herself a slight moral fillip--go
upstairs and try on her new dress, and see how it fitted, after having
been “back” twice. She was sure in this way to obtain a sensation,
pleasurable or otherwise.
She mounted another flight, feeling every step to be an effort. She
lit the gas-stove in her room, and dismissed the dilatory housemaid,
whom she found on her knees examining the pattern of the carpet. Then
she dragged a tall cheval glass into position, having due regards to
unbecoming cross-lights, and undressed. Her white, handsome shoulders
appeared; she looked ten times prettier than she had done in the
severe morning shirt and tie, and she knew it. She stood for a few
minutes before the mirror, complacently admiring herself and in no
hurry to don the heavily-trimmed corsage that awaited her verdict. It
lay beside her, half in and half out of the flowered cardboard box,
interleaved with tissue-paper, and with intersecting lines of tape
winding it into its cage. Her eyes rested on it with feminine
appreciation of the elaborate building of the silk lining, with its
white bone cases crossing and recrossing the back of it, and the high
collar which was to fit in under the very lobe of the ear. Still she
deferred the pleasing moment of assumption, standing still and
preening herself; soft lappets of valenciennes lace flowering out as a
frame to the pink skin.…
Suddenly, taken by surprise, without a cry or a moan, she cowered and
was bent, bent nearly double. Agonizing pangs shot through the
framework of her body. Her eyes were glassed over with tears, and
through them she stared out on the world, bewildered, peering to see
from which point the next arrow of dolour would fall!
It came again, without fail it came again, this time no stabbing
thrust, but a sword, driving, delving laboriously through her vitals
in a lingering, painstaking manner. She was by now prepared and well
frightened, and she groaned aloud. Her breasts rose and came together,
as in some strange health exercise, under the laces and ribbons.…
My God! Was it----? Was the silver bowl downstairs going to be used at
last?
No, it could not be. The thought was dismissed as soon as formed. A
chill on the liver? The extreme cold.… What a fool she was to prance
about like a peacock in front of a glass for half-an-hour half
dressed! What else could she expect? That silly stove gave no heat.…
She gathered to her a dressing-gown that lay near and sat still,
cowering. A long pause! She could not think. But she received no
physical intimation of the recurrence of her agony.
Five minutes later she boldly rose, defying it, and tore the new dress
out of its rustling ward without stopping to untie the tapes that
controlled it. With a screech of tissue-paper it yielded itself into
her hands, and she put it on.
Then she laughed. The pain was forgotten. She wriggled about happily.
“Yes, it still catches me… just there! They must have it back. I’ll go
to Madam about it, on--let me see?--Tuesday.…”
Taking the precaution of putting her arms properly into the warm
dressing-jacket this time, she wrapped the dress up again, tied the
white tapes across it, put the lid on firmly, and with the little
stylograph Joe had given her, methodically scored out her own name
from the label, thus substituting that of the dressmaker printed all
over the box.
The exertion, slight as it was, roused again the smouldering fire of
pain. She sat down helplessly on her bed, giving herself up to it. Her
eyes were like those of a dumb animal in the death anguish, as she
stared across at her reflection of her already distorted features in
the glass. Rolling to and fro, she grasped and relaxed alternately the
fronts of her peignoir, knotted feverishly in her palm.
“What the _divil_ is it?” she murmured. “I feel as if my life was
going!”
She did not think of calling any one--Vance or Gladys the impotent
housemaid; no one could help her. She was but a poor human passage-way
for these relentless throes that passed Juggernaut-like through her
shrinking body. It was like a garden roller, when it was not like many
scythes set on one axle turning, twisting inside her. What had she
ever done to suffer so? No child of Joe’s could be so cruel and tear
its mother thus!… Nay, she had not conceived, unless it was some
monstrous impious growth that was rending her, and would not soften or
relax till it killed her.… She really thought she was going to die!…
Presently, when all was quiet again in the tortured battleground of
her body, she rose and pushed her hand through her bows of waved hair
and flung it back hideously and crossed the room. Apologetically
almost, for fear of provoking a recurrence of the horror, she dragged
herself downstairs, and to the swing door at the head of the kitchen
stairs. She now felt the need of a confidante. She must tell some one.
The housemaid was too young. Vance was fairly motherly. Pushing open
the door, she sat down on the top step, with her peignoir gathered
round her, and stretching out her legs allowed them to hang over into
the dark abyss of Vance’s domain.
By the time she felt able to raise her voice and call Vance she had
decided not to confide in her. The cook would immediately “think
things,” and she wanted no fuss. It was not “that” either, she only
wished it was.… For then there would at least be some compensation in
baby fingers to smooth pain away.
In response to her weak summons the cook appeared at the foot of the
stairs. Even in the dim penumbra of a London basement, a person
unpreoccupied by her own symptoms would have realized at once that
Vance was discomposed--agitated in some unusual way. Her cap was
hanging by one hairpin, her floury arms were nervously rubbed one
against the other. But Mrs. Mardell noticed nothing in other people
to-day. She addressed Vance slowly and deliberately.
“Vance, please I want you to make me a nice cup of tea--at once. I
shall not be able to eat any lunch. I think I’ll wait till six, and
have something with Mr. Mardell.”
“Ain’t you feeling well, Ma’am?” asked the cook spiritlessly.
“No, not very--a little all-overish. It will be nothing, only I don’t
feel like eating a solid meal.”
“Nor I can’t say I feel like cooking it!” Vance observed bitterly.
“I’m that upset! I’ve been across and asked.”
“Asked what?” inquired Mrs. Mardell wearily.
“About the funeral that I saw with my own eyes leaving that house on
Christmas Day.… It’s not natural, I said, to go getting buried on
Christmas Day----”
Mrs. Mardell interposed impatiently. “You don’t mean to say you went
and asked at the house if they’d had any one die there? Really,
Vance----”
“It’s no good saying that now, Ma’am; I had to know. And it’s only a
Nursing Home, not a private house, so I’ve done no harm. And”--the
woman’s voice grew low and hoarse--“nobody ain’t died there--not
yet--that’s all!”
She put her apron to her face.
“Good gracious, Vance!” Mrs. Mardell cried. “Tell me more about it!”
“Ma’am, they’ve only got one patient there--a lady. She was going on
all right, but she had a relapse this morning, just about half-past
eleven, their cook said it was. She had an operation three weeks ago,
and no good, and it’s got to be done all over again this afternoon at
two o’clock, and they can’t tell as it will be successful, this time.”
“Well, my good woman, don’t you worry. Let’s hope that the lady will
get over it. People do, you know, or there would be an end of nursing
homes. I really feel so poorly myself that I can’t get up much
sympathy with other people’s aches and pains. Be quick and get the
kettle on, or is it boiling already?”
“Yes, Ma’am, you shall have it in a minute. Ma’am, you may not believe
me, but I seen a proper funeral, and the hearse waiting, and the
corpse carried out and down those steps… and the bearers with crape on
their hats and so attentive, and one of them was no bigger than
Master.… I thought of Master the moment I saw him.… And she was a big
woman, for she took a big coffin.…”
“You are settling that it’s the woman who’s lying ill there now who
has got to die, I see. What’s her name?”
“I asked, but the girl didn’t know it, only that she was an actress.”
Mrs. Mardell gathered in her legs decisively.
“Come now, Vance, don’t stand there gossiping and unhinging yourself
with fancies; get me my cup of tea. I shall be all right, I expect,
when once I have had something warm. Bring it to my room. I shall lie
down a bit, I think.”
She rose to her feet, closed the swing door, dismissing Vance and her
dreary soothsaying vision, and passed upstairs. Her day was spoilt.
The pain did not seem to be going to recur, luckily, but the deadly
feeling of uneasiness which had succeeded it certainly increased. Her
legs were weak and could hardly carry her. People who have seen an
apparition are said to feel just so. But as she reflected it was
Vance, not she, who had seen the ghost!
She paused half-way up the stairs to look out of the window on the
first landing, whence Vance declared she had watched the lugubrious
tableau. Mrs. Mardell had never gone in for knowing her neighbours, it
was wiser not, or else she would have been aware of the industry that
was carried on at number thirteen, a red-brick sham artistic villa,
just like her own house--like every other house in the street. She
could only make it out by pressing her face against the window, and
then she only saw it aslant, and red, through the vicious stained
glass that occupied that particular pane. Eight steps led up to the
front door of it, as eight steps led up to hers. Surely it was awkward
for the incoming patients--many of them, presumably, too ill to walk?
She wondered what sort of cases they took there. It would depend.…
Julia, she had heard, had grown very fat--at thirty.… That indicated
something abnormal, in a youngish woman!… Something that had to be
removed, generally.… She laughed.… She wondered why she laughed.…
“Your tea, Ma’am!” said Vance suddenly at her elbow. “I thought I
would bring it up to you myself.”
Mrs. Mardell was a little ashamed that Vance should discover her
staring out of the window at the scene of her absurd cock-and-bull
story. She turned and coldly bade the cook precede her to her bedroom
with the tea. Vance accepted the rebuff meekly. She looked cowed and
thoroughly upset, and as if no merely domestic trifle could affect her
now, broken to tragic issues as she had been.
The tea, as Mrs. Mardell had expected, revived her, and enabled her to
lay a nice little plan for a quiet afternoon indoors. She proposed to
telephone for Miss Walton to come and sit with her for a bit. She
needed something or somebody to pick her up. Of course there was
Charlie Bligh, a nice boy whom both she and Joe liked; she might
telephone him to come and take her out to dine, as he often did.… But
no, she wasn’t looking Carlton form; it wouldn’t be fair to Charlie to
ask him to take out anything that wasn’t gay and smart. Besides, it
would be rather mean to leave Joe to eat his dinner all alone when she
had not even said good-morning to him. She had often left him for
dinner, of course, and he had never thought of objecting, verbally at
least--but just now that he was so busy and overworked she felt sure
that he would like her, sitting beside him at his dinner, even though
she could eat nothing. She saw herself delicately invalidish, in her
soft draperies, picking at some grapes.… She felt mysteriously drawn
to Joe, dear Joe, who was working for her now, who never attempted to
control her social movements, who took what she gave him and was
always as ready to flirt with her as if he were not married to her!
She had managed Joe well! No, she wouldn’t leave Joe to-night, but get
Miss Walton, who would surely stay with her till Joe returned about
half-past five, as usual.
Miss Walton, over the telephone, signified her willingness to come and
have a good chat. Mrs. Mardell made up her mind to take things easy.
She was really unwell, she had eaten nothing since breakfast, she felt
empty, shaken, swelled and sore. She could not have got her
exquisitely adjusted corsets on if she had tried, or endured the
pressure of them round her body. A tea-gown was clearly indicated. She
assumed one, and a little lace cap that went well with it. Sighing
deeply, she lay down on the rose-coloured chintz sofa in the
drawing-room, shaded by a soft standard lamp, breathing timorously,
existing furtively, unnoticed. She hoped it would pass her by, this
brooding eagle of pain waiting to tear her.
She had brought her jewel-case downstairs with her and idly toyed with
her trinkets. There were three trays, lined with velvet. They twinkled
with precious stones. She took every piece in order and examined them
slowly, seriously. All the while, her fingers seemed to know that down
at the bottom of the box lay their real objective, a thin, crumpled,
tousled letter folded small and turning up at the corners. Florence
Mardell had received it a few days after her marriage, and although it
was only a letter from a woman, had forborne to show it to her
husband.
The letter was not actually malicious or even disagreeable, but it had
dismayed her, and shocked her. She had kept it in case Julia should
ever choose to lay aside her extraordinary tolerance and become human
again. She read it over now to remind her of what it contained. Indeed
she had intended to do so when she fetched the box. The by-play with
the jewellery was only a blind--self-deceiving, a sop to her
superficial consciousness.
“_Now it is all over, my strivings have not been in vain, and Joe
passes from me to you. You must not mind my writing to you, Florence.
I think that, on the whole, you will prefer to know what I feel, and
that the woman you have supplanted is not your enemy. Joe loves you,
and as the woman Joe loves, you cannot be abhorrent to me. Convention
forbids me to be your personal friend, your feeling possibly, and
perhaps my own, for I am but a woman after all, and the open wound
that was left in my life when Joe was torn from my side would be
chafed and kept raw by the sight of him merged now in your life. Yes,
it is better so. I cannot, will not, see him either--though Joe is not
conventional.…_
“_Joe is nothing that is not splendid. I did, I do love him so
passionately, that I cannot hate you, Florence, as you see. You are
the fair new temple in which he worships the spirit of Beauty and Love
and Life. The law has clanged the door to, none may dare to interrupt
the Litany he prays there, on his knees. God bless you._
“_But oh, my dear, keep him there. Never undress the altar. No more
shifting for Joe, if we women can help it. He is a great man--he must
be treated like a great man. These upheavals are bad for him, from
every point of view. So be practical as well as passionate, and
condescend to learn from me, who failed, how not to lose him. Only
approximately can you learn, for the wind of art blows its children
where it listeth. You know what an artist he is, and all artists are
nothing but divine children. But, Florence, on your life, don’t treat
him as one. Don’t let yourself ‘mother’ him as I did and be mad enough
to sink the mistress in the sister, the friend even. That was my fatal
mistake, I abstracted my sexual self till I became at last the caterer
for his mere physical welfare, the confidante of his passing
flirtations. Oh, the bitterness of those smothered confessions, those
despairing returns of him, broken, marred and dispirited, to the one
who surely loved him! Do this, my dear, as I did, and then one day
he’ll come to you, as he came to me, and put his head on your knee and
ask you to divorce him. So you’re both ruined in your several ways. He
cannot go through it a second time._
“_Now listen. You must. I know. I would have you always a little
inaccessible, puzzling, capricious even. I would ask you to dare to
appear selfish, if you can manage it. Preserve your delicate
tangibility, punish any slight infringments of your rules, close your
door to him at nights when he has been naughty or careless. What it
will cost you! But it is the right way._
“_You have an enormous pull by not acting with him, believe me! One
gets so common, so cheap to a man, when he is used to knocking one
about all over the stage, as Katherine, say, or insulting one as
Nancy. Stay away from the theatre and accept as many dinners without
him as you can. Although there isn’t the very slightest chance of his
losing you, don’t let him feel as convinced of that as you are
yourself. You see what I mean, don’t you, Florence? I heard you were
very clever, as well as a little frivolous._
“_I have thought all this out, in many sleepless nights, for your
benefit and his. Yes, it is Joe that I am thinking of, and shall think
of till I die. And so of you, too._
“_Oh, don’t for goodness’ sake be offended by this letter, or take a
dislike to me, for whether you like it or no, you will never be quite
free of me, any more. Thought, strong thought, does permeate matter
and finds itself able to overthrow its mere material resistance. I
have proved it, no matter how. I won’t weary you with attempted
explanation. I should not fancy you were psychic. But be sure that
there will be a little of me in all your relations with Joe, I shall
have a word in your ménage and you must not let the thought of it
make you uncomfortable. Do you suppose I could have let him go so
easily, if I had not this power to console me? Take it, as the slight
penalty of kidnapping a man out of the ward of a devoted woman. You
see how it is, he comes away, she offers no material or spirited
opposition, but he brings inevitably some of her atmosphere along with
him. Joe never actually ceased to love me; he only began to love you.
I never misconducted myself--funny phrase!--so I am still his true and
faithful wife, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and where he is,
henceforth, in some sort, I am. It cannot be helped._
“_It is a good thing that I am not vindictive and that I don’t hate
you, since our relation must necessarily be so close. I assure you
that it will not inconvenience you, annoy you, or trouble you at all,
at least not until the bands of the spirit are loosed in one of these
great, bare, soul-stripped, unaccounted-for moments of life, that come
to all of us sometimes. Then, you know, one can’t tell, or foresee.…
The spiritual bonds and relationships assert themselves and enforce
attention.… I can’t quite promise to shield you, then, to free you
from the circle of the charm.… But are you so frivolous, Florence?
Won’t it interest you--awe you--soothe you?_
“_Ah, don’t fear me, don’t hate me--bid your flesh comply with me.… I
am only the ghost of a wife--a power of love that can’t circumscribe
itself, even though it would. There is a physical lien between us,
undoubtedly. I won’t drag it if I can help!… I’ll try to control--I
don’t know what I am writing--something writes for me. But trust me.
Julia._”
“What a cat!” said Mrs. Mardell.
She folded up the letter again and laid it at the bottom of the box.
It was almost actionable, she thought, a threatening letter. Or else
the letter of a mad spiritualist--utter sentimental, impossible rot.
What would Charlie Bligh, or any other daylight person think of it?
Strangely enough, she had more or less taken Julia’s advice! It was
sensible, and thus she supposed germane to her own character. She had
not “mothered” Joe, what woman in her senses would? She needed no
deserted, defeated schemer to hang about her, in the spirit, to tell
her that! She knew men as Julia with all her preachments had evidently
never known them, and the result of her wise treatment of Joe was that
he was devoted to her, extraordinarily so, for a busy man. Of course
he worked hard, too hard, harder than he had done in Julia’s time. It
had happened so, success had brought its own tension and high
pressure. He was not, as Julia and her friends might like to suggest,
trying to drown the memory of her in a round of forced activities. He
was only taking fortune at the flood and making dramatic hay while the
sun of critics favour shone. Not for a moment did he regret the step
he had taken, his was an essentially light nature, he never brooded,
and he detested heroics. The writer of that letter, with its tedious
mixture of sentimentality and preoccupation with material cares, must
have bored Joe to death, in the days when she had him all to herself
and could claim consecutive opportunity for worrying him. And now, of
course, a masterpiece of supreme tactlessness, like all failures, she
turned critic and took on herself to give good advice.
Florence Mardell laughed. The reading of the letter had acted as even
a better fillip than the trying on of the dress, and had nearly made
her angry.
“I suppose”--she tossed her little gold crowned head--“that it is very
good of her to give me the straight tip, and volunteer to overlook my
ménage, generally, like a sort of superior lady housekeeper! I am not
so bad at it myself, thank you?” She worked herself up to a sneer.
“Much obliged to Julia, I’m sure, for haunting me, especially as she
appears willing to confine herself merely to bothering the sensible
mistress of the house, and doesn’t go frightening the servants and
making them give up their places. Vance wouldn’t stop a minute----”
Her brow furrowed a little as she remembered the white, frightened
face of Vance that morning.
“It’s a fairly cool thing, though,” her thought resumed, “for one
woman to tell another, flat, that she considers herself part of her
because she happens to have adored her husband and does still, I
suppose. Man and wife--no, wife and wife--are one flesh.… Ha! Ha!…”
It was two o’clock, her face changed. Arrowy tinglings, growlings as
of a chained monster inside her slender frame, punctuated her words.
The pain had come again.…
When Miss Walton came in she would ask her to ring up a doctor. She
could not have dragged herself to the instrument now.
* * * * * * *
The front door bell rang. She heard Miss Walton’s cheery voice making
inquiries about Mrs. Mardell’s health as she shook the balled snow out
of her boots on to the hall mat, and plumped her umbrella into the
rack. Mrs. Mardell sat still, physically incapable of rising, though
she had had but a short bout of pain this time.
She had made up her mind to question Miss Walton about Julia. Julia’s
affairs seemed for the moment essentially her concern. She felt no
malevolence towards her in spite of the re-reading of the letter. Miss
Walton, the confidante, had never been allowed to see that letter. She
should see it now, if she was good and satisfactorily confidential?
“Well, dear, how are you?” Miss Walton had come in, her work-a-day
nose reddened with exposure, and her hands thickened with chilblains.
“I suppose you are feeling the continuous cold, like the rest of us.
And you know, you little minx, that you look best in a tea gown.”
“Do I look well?”
“Well, a bit bleached, perhaps, and your eyes rather funny and starey,
as if you’d been seeing ghosts?”
“Vance has, she says.”
“A ghost in West Kensington! Nonsense!”
“It was a mock funeral, Vance says,” Mrs. Mardell remarked in an even
voice. “Coming out of a house in this street on Christmas Day, when
there was nobody died in it, as they told her.” She looked closely at
Miss Walton’s face. “Do you know any one at number thirteen? An
actress, Vance says----”
“Bless her. Christmas pudding, I should say. No, I don’t know a soul
in this street besides yourself----”
Mrs. Mardell, with a sigh of relief, leant back again.
“But, I say, Florence, you do look dicky,” Miss Walton continued.
“What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Perhaps you’ll say it is Christmas pudding with me too,” replied Mrs.
Mardell, laughing feebly. “But I don’t know--somehow, I’ve had a
horrid day. I seem to have got a sudden attack of lumbago, or sciatica
or something.”
“It doesn’t sound likely, at your age.”
“No, does it? But it’s pains right through me at intervals all through
the day. I had a fearful bout, just before you came. I daresay it’s
nothing----”
“Rheumatism, probably,” said the other. “Nothing so absurdly painful
when it gets hold of one. Here’s tea--nice hot tea. It will do you
good.”
“I’ve had two goes already.”
“Oh, have a third! Nothing like tea for us women! Here, let me pour it
out. Your poor little hands are trembling.”
“No, I’ll manage. Sugar? I forget if you take it? And lots of milk?…
Alice, how long is it since you saw Julia?”
Mrs. Mardell was surprised at the coolness of Miss Walton’s reception
of the seldom pronounced name. She might have reflected that the other
woman had no particular reason to be shy of it, for she had been
Florence’s and Julia’s confidante during the stormy times of the
divorce and had managed to be loyal and friendly to both. She now
replied offhandedly to Mrs. Mardell’s question--
“Not for six months. Lost sight of the poor dear, rather.”
“And when you last saw her, how did she look?”
“Handsome, but rather too fat. I can’t say I much liked the look of
that, for she’s still quite young. I always fancy it means morbid
growths, and that kind of thing. Poor old Juley! One never even sees
her name in the bills now, does one?”
“Retired on the allowance Joe makes her, I suppose,” said Florence
Mardell bitterly. “I can’t think how she could bring herself to take
his money?”
“Only that she’s poor, of course.”
“How poor?”
“One can’t tell,” replied Alice Walton, “with people like Julia. She’s
Irish. She’s the kind of woman who pays a man from Douglas’s to come
and wave her hair, and dry it on towels that you can’t see for the
holes! You understand. She’s the sweetest, cleverest, untidiest soul
alive! She took a flat in Paris with a friend, and the state of that
flat, I’m told, after a week of Julia, beat even the _femme de
ménage_ they got in to do for them! They never dressed or ate, but
lay about all day in peignoirs and smoked cigarettes. They got in a
hypnotist to talk to them about Joe, I believe. Julia makes no secret
of her devotion to Joe, as I suppose you are aware?… Now, Florence,
keep your feet up--there’s a good girl! You look ghastly.”
“Yes, I know. So she’s still mad on Joe? Tell me more about her. She
isn’t a woman of much taste, I fancy--can’t dress a bit?”
“No, but a generous creature, full of impulses and never a mean one
among them. I do admire her character, I confess.”
“So do I,” said Florence Mardell. “And so did Joe, I believe.”
“Does. He can’t help seeing her qualities, and being flattered by her
immense devotion to him. Though, of course, he’s used to it--he can’t
help being faskynating! He’s such a sprite and yet so strong. Julia
was as big again as he was, pretty nearly. He admired her awfully, as
little men do always admire big women.”
“I’m not very big, yet Joe admires me.”
“Oh--I know he does and long may he continue. He may, for Julia,
that’s one thing, she’s strictly ‘hands off,’ I know. She’s never made
the slightest attempt to get him ever to go and see her.”
“He wouldn’t go if she did.”
“I shouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Miss Walton, carried, by love
of her subject, beyond the limits of tactfulness. “And what would it
matter? Joe was truly fond of her till you came along, you little
witch! And she’s never done anything to set him against her or hurt
his self-love. That’s what a man minds. I don’t see how he could have
refused her a thing like that, nor could you. No, give her credit for
her generosity, I believe he proposed it and that she refused to see
him, steadily. Nobody in theatrical circles thought for one moment
you’d keep him against her. The betting was all that, if she had
tried, she’d have got him back in a month.”
“No, not if she’d tried, she wouldn’t,” said Florence Mardell
earnestly. “She loved him too much!”
Her lips sketched a grimace as she spoke; her hand moved to her side
and her eyes filled with tears.
“What is it, dear? The pain again?”
“I was afraid of it--my body was, I mean. But it luckily doesn’t seem
to mean business, this time. And I don’t believe I could feel any
more,--I don’t seem to have any organs left. It’s the peace of
emptiness--exhaustion! Do, dear, let me go on talking and thrashing
out things. What I meant when I said that Julia loved him too much,
was this, that it is a mistake to love so openly and make such a noise
about it. Men don’t value affection that’s cried from the house tops.
It just disgusts them. Love at breakfast, love at luncheon, love all
day; it’s sure to pall. Love shouldn’t be mixed up with daily
bread-getting. It should be a speciality, not a sort of smoking
mixture, advertised on every passing omnibus.”
“Go on, child, you interest me. Why, you yourself simply adore Joe!”
A faun-like, tormenting expression Miss Walton had never seen there,
came over Florence Mardell’s face, as, in the weak exhausted voice of
a privileged invalid, she proceeded--
“I adore Joe as smart women permit themselves to adore the thing they
value and mean to keep. I believe I prize Joe, not for what he is,
though I’m aware he’s a genius, but for what he means to me--light and
kisses and frocks and champagne. There isn’t so much of that as there
would be if Julia and her allowance didn’t stop the way! I love Joe
because he’s the fount of life to me, because I feel good when he is
in the room, and dull when he is out of it. I happen to know that I
shouldn’t feel that about him if he came to me ill and hipped and
unsuccessful. Sounds mean, but it’s true. I perfectly enjoy the
placards telling me that he can make a cat laugh, and critics saying
he is like what Garrick used to be. An ‘abridgement’--what is it? I am
quite cross with him when the notices are poor, and I don’t in the
least long, then, to take his head on my shoulder and comfort him.
It’s he who has to comfort me.”
“Julia had a rather different theory!”
“Yes, and Julia lost him and I got him. She called him her boy and her
baby! He even told me so, saying how nice it was of her. Quite
sincere! He thought so, I daresay. I knew better, as if any man liked
to be made to feel small! She’d have handed the moon down to him if
she’d had it in her power, and when he cried for such a little easy
thing as a divorce, of course she gave it him. A fool, I call her.”
“I don’t know about that,” the friend replied, combatively. “Greater
love hath no woman, than she lay down her marriage lines for her
husband.”
“Well, I love him, but I couldn’t have done that! I should simply have
had to stick to him just the same. And then--if he had thrown me over,
nothing would ever have induced me to take money from him!”
“But if you were extravagant and nearly starving?”
“I’d have found a man to support me and buy me frills!”
“Then you couldn’t have loved him, to degrade the thing he had once
set store by.”
“If Joe had left me, anything could have become of me for all I
cared!… I see what you are driving at, Alice, you think I can’t feel
love as Julia does, because I haven’t got beetle brows meeting over my
forehead and a big contralto chest to sigh with. My way with Joe,
whether I do it from self-control or inclination, comes out best. A
man like Joe needs a lot of spoiling, but not from the woman he cares
for. I let outsiders do it for me. I don’t cosset him, or make a point
of being home every afternoon from my calls at an unearthly hour to
dine with him. If a boy offers me a dinner, I accept and Joe gives me
my taxi fare, and looks me over, and sees that my dress, for the other
man, mind you, is all right. Nor do I wait up for him when he comes
back, I just see supper’s laid out all right and the fire kept up and
go to bed. I don’t make him look ridiculous by fetching him at the
theatre, as some actors’ wives do. Julia, I hear, used to take parts
that didn’t suit her, so as to ensure her being on the spot with him,
every night. I never know where he is and I don’t go getting his pals
to play detective and tell me. I may be conceited, but I do flatter
myself, that wherever Joe is, he is thinking of me, and of how soon he
can get back to me.”
“I think you are perfectly right,” Miss Walton replied rather
sardonically. “It’s the best view to take of marriage, and for a woman
married to a popular actor, the only one. Do you happen to know where
Joe is, now?”
“Yes, I happen to be able to tell you. He is at the theatre,
rehearsing the new play. They must be through by now, though! He’ll be
here in a minute. I haven’t seen him since yesterday. We dine together
at six o’clock!”
“And it’s half-past five now. Well, I must be off. Good-bye, old girl,
and I wouldn’t neglect those pains if I were you. I expect it’s only
rheumatism, but as a general rule internal pains should not be
ignored. You look rather flushed----”
“I must go and put on some powder before Joe comes. Good-bye. Tell
Gladys to come and clear away the tea as you go out.”
Mrs. Mardell was left alone, with two imperfectly drained tea-cups and
some broken crumbs of cake on a Japanese tray. The spirit lamp under
the kettle had gone out--she missed its cheerful flame. She was hemmed
in, her knees were imprisoned by the flaps of the tea-table so that
she could not lie back.… She felt disinclined to move and go upstairs
for that dust of powder that was to impress Joe.… Everything was a
bother… she felt very stupid, but she had no more pain, thank God!…
So she sat on, waiting for the maid to clear away the tea things and
set her free, bolt upright in her hostess-corner of the
flower-begarlanded sofa, with the pink-shaded lamp behind her,
convenient for reading, only she did not want to read. Her head
drooped, till her face was in shadow. Her eyes were fixed on a Liberty
cosy corner that adequately filled an ugly bare place in the room but
that no one ever sat in--and then and there she had a vision.
It seemed to her that her sight pierced through the faint scaffolding
of white wood pillars that bore up the inane piece of furniture. She
had a view of a cold, bare room distempered in pale green, and nearly
empty of furniture, excepting for a bed and an arm-chair. Presently,
she distinguished a table made of slabs of glass, covered with bits of
shining steel and physic bottles. She smelt a strong odour of ether.
Then sundry persons surged into her field of vision, though they had
been there all the time; two white-capped nurses, bending solicitously
over a bed where a third person lay with long black hair spread over
the pillow. A woman, who was speaking so faintly that Florence felt
rather than heard what she said.
“You are sure you have sent for him?” the image seemed to say
urgently. “Nurse! Nurse! It’s the ‘Quality Theatre’!”
“Yes, Madam, we have telephoned through--‘Quality Theatre.’ It would
have been as well----! Can you not give us your husband’s home
address, Madam?”
“I don’t know it,” the patient replied wearily. “But he will be at the
theatre. He is always at the theatre. It’s his life now. He’ll come…
he’ll come!”
“Surely, Madam----”
The nurse turned away to speak to a colleague who had apparently only
recently left the room and now returned. Florence then saw the
features of the woman on the bed, features never seen by her except
across the footlights, charged with bright white and rose. They were
grey and unrecognizable now, yet Florence knew whose they were.
She heard the conversation of the two whispering women the while.
“She’s sinking fast,” said the elder nurse.
“She’ll last till he comes, I think,” replied the younger. “He’s just
telephoned through that he’s on his way here!”
With her words the whole house and its ramifications were now revealed
to Florence Mardell--as it were the open front of a doll’s house. She
saw the steps leading up to the door--there were eight of them--the
hall, the staircase and the room where the patient lay, at one and the
same time. She heard a jingling of bells and the prod of a swift
hansom suddenly pulled up at the behest of the urgently waved umbrella
of a man within--her husband. She saw him leap out and dash up the
steps to the door that was flung open as soon as he touched the bell.
She missed no single stage of his progress upstairs to Julia’s room.
The nurse opened the door of it, admitted him, and passed out herself.
Florence recognized Joe’s familiar gesture--the overcoat hastily flung
off and thrown aside, disclosing the dapper little ordinary man, with
the long lock of hair, that was his mark of genius, lifting on his
forehead as usual, as he impetuously advanced towards the bed. She
realized the weak complaisance that stood for paradisaical joy on the
face of the woman lying there, whose light of life was too nearly
extinguished to permit of a finer demonstration. But the actor’s face
was a marvel. This expression, evoked for the beloved dying woman
only, was of such a tragic madness as no mime could ever hope to
originate or imitate. Florence had never seen that look on his face,
and sharp knowledge shot through her that even if she in her turn lay
dying she would not see it then. A sob shook, but did not interrupt
her steady absorption in the sight spread before her.
Her hungry eyes watched the discreet nurse left in charge retire to
the mantelpiece and thoughtfully examine her sleeve links, as the
lover, with passionate solicitude and a cunning born of intimate
usage, sat down and laying his arms round his mistress’s neck, raised
her a little, so as to gain her ear for the last whispers of love.
As a ghost to earth returned, the second wife apprehended the dreadful
sense of the words those two exchanged together. Joe spoke with no
sense of renewal, but as if Julia and he had parted but a few hours,
or it may be days, ago. Florence could not resent, but she suffered
the first pangs of a lifelong sorrow as she listened to Julia’s faint
sighs of content, her weak rejoinders to Joe’s protestations of
undying fidelity, his vows that turned to old, wise, baby talk, and
the promises she wrung from him so easily.…
The nurse still fumbled with her sleeve links, blinded by unusual
tears.
“You will see me buried?” Julia exacted, her hands twisting in Joe’s
hair, playing with the long lock.… “You will make all the arrangements
for me, Joe, won’t you? I want _you_--I want you to manage it!…”
Vance was right. Joe was the puny ghost mourner.… And Florence looked
on eagerly again.
“It shall be our wedding… our re-marriage!” He soothed her. “We meet
again--to part no more… you and I, Julia, my Julia.…”
What did he mean to do when Julia died, as die she must? It was very
near now. Florence listened and looked, their voices seemed fainter,
more furtive; the scene in the bedchamber was growing evanescent,
ragged, as if there were rents in the film. She sometimes feared, so
eager was she to see the whole of her own tragedy, that she was
beginning to distinguish the wooden lines of the supports of the cosy
corner that framed and crossed her view. She realized that Julia’s
hour was approaching and that the vision would fade with its
instigator. The doctor had come in and the other nurse. She could
detect on all three faces the professional discouragement painted
there by their foreknowledge of the event. They would look cheerful,
normal again, after what must be, was over. But Joe’s face surely
could never be set in comic lines again, those muscles, so deeply
inured to tragedy, might never relax or unbend.…
She knew it when Julia died, though at the precise moment no one
spoke, no one moved in the room for a while. Julia died, where she
listed, where Joe would have her--in his arms. The shape of Julia
would never go out of them. There would never be room there any more
for Florence, whom he had not loved!…
* * * * * * *
She raised her head with a jerk. The pink cushions and hangings of the
Liberty cosy corner filled up the lines of the woodwork again. The
pillars framed triviality as usual.
She was sitting in her own drawing-room, and Gladys the stupid maid,
was there--just come in to take away the tea things.
Mrs. Mardell spoke.
“Dinner will be late to-night.”
“Yes, Ma’am, I see it’s just gone half-past six now.”
“Your master is kept.… He has things to see to.…”
Gladys, eager to show she understood, interrupted. “Yes, Ma’am, Vance
will keep dinner back.”
She folded up the table and set her mistress free. Mrs. Mardell had no
more pain and knew she would not have any more, but she sat on in her
place until seven, the hour at which her husband usually left for the
theatre during this piece, in which his part entailed a somewhat
lengthy and careful make up.…
She heard the twist of the latch key in the door below, and for the
first time in her life, shrank from meeting the eyes of the man she
adored with a new and passionate love. But it was the lover of Julia
who would come in to her and say something kind, as usual.
Kind--merely kind was all he had ever been, in all these years of her
blindness. She put out her hands as if to push him from her, and her
lips almost framed the words, “Stay, oh, stay away!”
No use, no use! Her observation, tensely quickened, told her that he
paused in the hall, for there was an abrupt cessation of all movement.
He was hesitating?… Then he made up his mind to the disagreeable duty.
So Florence read the gesture. His sturdy dutiful footsteps could be
heard ascending… a wild whiff of ether seemed to precede him!…
Her eyes dropped uncontrollably, as he touched and turned the handle
of the door gently.… It was done. He was in the room.
How did he look? She must know. She raised her sad eyes, and
contemplated the dwarf-actor standing there on the threshold of the
pretty cheap drawing-room, oppressing, appalling her with his
overpowering dignity. His hair was disordered, and clung, matted, to
his damp forehead; the long lock fell over it in the style of one of
the good-natured roysterers he excelled in portraying. But his face
had the make-up of a clown; the dark features stood out in a mask of
putty-coloured whiteness, all but the lips, which had no red. Those
eyes which had just looked on death, stared down on her, not unkindly,
but unseeing.…
She spoke at last, to break the awful spell which was winding itself
round and round her, more than for any other reason.
“Julia is dead,” she said.
“I know.” He took a step forward into the room, and made a cold
gesture of menace. She recoiled--then rose and faced him.
“She died in my arms. I loved her.”
He turned away. It was as if he had laid a book aside and a leaf had
been folded down. He muttered, with a semblance of forced
preoccupation with the business of life--
“I just looked in to tell you that I am going straight back to the
theatre.”
“Without any dinner?” she shrieked. Then, more calmly--
“Well, you will have something to eat when you come home, won’t you?
What time will that be?”
It was the first time in her life she had asked such a question, and
his answer to it, delivered over his shoulder as he went downstairs,
cut her to the heart.
“Perhaps never!”
* * * * * * *
Scant consolation! She knew that he did not mean to kill himself--at
least not yet, for he had promised to make the arrangements for and
attend Julia’s funeral.