Clara outwatched him. She lay in the extraordinary stillness to which
she had trained herself, with patiently closed eyes and an untroubled
brow, but there was the pain of controlled weeping in her throat. She
had taught herself to keep her mind clear of regrets, of anger and
scorn, that there might always be room for the flooding brightness of
her love, but she had not yet learnt to keep back that hard,
constricting hurt that stretched across her throat from ear to ear, and
made a raw place in her breast.
At her side Rutherford turned, tossed, and ejaculated between his
snatches of sleep.
"Oh, damn the drink! Clara."
"Yes?"
"Did I wake you?"
"No." She smiled at the ceiling.
"I can't sleep."
"You've been to sleep, Jim."
"I tell you I haven't. Clara, are you angry with me? Look here, I hadn't
been there for a month, you know I hadn't."
"Yes, I know."
"And I've told you how it comes on me."
"Go to sleep, Jim."
"I can't. Thoughts come crowding like black imps. If you'll forgive
me----"
"Oh yes, I'll forgive; how many times does the Bible say? Let me put my
arm round you. There." In the dark room the pillars at the foot of the
uncurtained four-poster bed seemed to watch and listen.
"Did that chap know where I'd gone?"
"I didn't tell him, but he may have guessed. Very likely, I should
think."
"Couldn't you have----"
"No, I couldn't, Jim. If you're going to be proud you must have reason
for it. You can tell your own lies, or act a truth you're not ashamed
of."
He flung himself out of reach of her arm. "Oh, why can I not have peace?
Preaching at me when my nerves are in this state!"
"Did you go to Janet's?"
"No, I didn't. Clara!" She made no answer. "Clara!"
"Well?"
"I'm wretched. I'm afraid of falling out of bed. Why should I feel like
this? It makes other people sleepy."
She laughed aloud. "Oh, Jim, Jim, Jim!"
"For God's sake, don't make that noise. It's not canny in the night.
What are you laughing at?"
"At you, my dear. Oh me!"
"Will you put your arm round me again? What a devil I've been to you.
Don't desert me. I'll start again if you'll help me."
She drew him to her. "There, then. You're just a child, a little child."
As she lay with her lips against his hair, steadying her breath that he
might not be disturbed, she felt that he was more her son than Alexander
was. Only for a few years had Alexander looked to her for all his needs;
he had soon grown strong and self-reliant, and changed from baby to
friend almost before she was aware, but this poor Jim, with his head on
her breast, might never have known another resting-place, and it was his
confidence in her, the demand for the comfort she could give, that
satisfied the mother in her, and discounted all his weaknesses. It was
perhaps as well that the daughter for whom she had wished had not been
given to her, for in that house there was not room for two women, let
alone two women of Clara's make, and there would have been contests
with no Solomon to give decision, while now, denied a daughter, Clara
was both rich and supreme. She had been born to cradle men and children,
to caress them and buffet them at her wise will, and with the instinct
which makes mothers care most for their feebler children, she loved
people in proportion to their need of her. There had never been any
danger that Alexander would outstrip his father in her affections, and
if Rutherford could have understood her quality, he would have realized
that he need not be jealous of his son. But it was more than jealousy
that influenced his dealings with Alexander, for the boy had been born
in a black hour, and to the father's eyes the shadow lay on him so
persistently that at last he seemed to have created it. Of the three,
only Clara truly understood its genesis, for the circumstances had
permanently affected Rutherford's vision, inclining it to obliqueness,
and Alexander could remember no life before this one in the old white
house.
When Clara had met James Rutherford she was living as companion--that
refuge for the penniless woman of her generation--to three ladies who
were all at different stages of elderliness and all exacting, but she
had not been one of the typical companions of romance; she was not meek
and forbearing and tearful, nor of that defiant nature which, in
fiction, wins all hearts. She was her sensible and cheerful self; she
was sorry for the old ladies, and she enjoyed being kind to them, for
she had very strongly that quality of helpfulness which all women are
expected to have, and are blamed for not possessing. The old ladies in
all their experience had never before had for companion a nice-looking
young woman who considered herself their friend, chose their clothes
with as much attention as she gave to her own, and had a fund of
interesting things to tell them, including the progress of her love
affairs.
"Has he made you an offer yet?" one of them said wistfully, with one eye
on Clara as a bride, and the other on a lost companion.
"No," Clara answered demurely, hiding the fact that she had not so much
as spoken to the dark-faced young man whom she sometimes met in her
walks, and whom in a dull hour she had once described with such vivacity
and feeling that her hearers were sure she had lost her heart to him;
consequently, that the young man must at least have hinted at his
devotion, or she could hardly have condescended to love him.
"You mustn't give up hope, my dear. There may be reasons."
"There are," Clara said darkly, and left her old friend in a flutter.
"There are reasons," she told her sisters. "It will all come right in
the end."
Clara noticed, with some amusement, that her meetings with the tall
young man were growing more and more frequent. When she set out on her
morning errands he would often chance to pass the gate, and she came to
look for his long figure on her walks, even to think that day
unprofitable on which she did not see him. At length he sat opposite to
her at church, gazing at her with unhappy eyes throughout the service,
and after that she ceased to talk about him, and the old ladies,
thinking she suffered, gave her unexpected little presents of sweetmeats
or knitted cuffs.
At last and, it may be supposed, out of her ready pity and desire to
help, she contrived as he went by to drop a little packet from her muff.
It was a very ancient trick to play, she knew, and merriment was
lighting her eyes and twitching the corners of her mouth as she stood
there in the snow and watched him pounce on the treasure with such an
eagerness of service. She was half-ashamed of herself, but wholly amused
until she saw his eyes as he returned the parcel. He looked hungry, and
the laughter ebbed from her face as, with a strange mixture of horror
and elation, she knew that if he really wanted her he could have her.
His courtship was rapid and their engagement short, but its permanence
was threatened, for when she learnt that he was idly living on the small
income left him by a father who had refused to give him a trade or a
profession, she said she would not marry him until he found one.
"But you can't pick one up by the roadside," he explained with justice.
"But how, oh how, did you ever consent to such wickedness?"
"Ah, you never saw my father," he said.
"I'd like to see him now," she answered angrily, but she wasted no
energy on regrets. She realized that the acquiring of a profession would
entail a loss of time to which neither was willing to submit, and then
one night, as she sat over the fire after the old ladies had gone to
bed, she remembered an incident which had impressed her girlhood.
Driving through a little village once, she had seen, standing back from
the road and fronted by a cobbled courtyard, a white-washed inn. There
were bay-trees in tubs before the door, and at the side of the house a
garden with clipped yews, but, better than all, just beyond the doorway
there had stood a man and a woman with a child on her arm. Something in
their attitude, something simple and content and elemental, had made the
picture unforgettable. Why should not she and Jim have a little inn like
that? He had capital, and they both had strength, and theirs should be a
model public-house, with good entertainment for man and beast, and a
welcome for every traveller. Rutherford met the proposal doubtfully.
"Well, I don't know," he said. "I don't know that it's wise." But he
went no further, and indeed her enthusiasm must have silenced him. Their
inn was to be in some beautiful part of the country where people would
like to stay, and it was not to be primarily a place for the sale of
liquor, and people should not be encouraged to spend their evenings in
hanging over the bar.
"It seems to me," he said drily, "that you'd better sell ginger beer."
"We shall, of course. But it's the visitors I'm counting on, Jim. We'll
show that England can produce a good, cheap inn."
They found the place they wanted among the hills and trout streams, and
they had not long been there when Clara learnt that her husband drank,
not violently, but with incipient ruin.
"I shouldn't do it," he protested, "if I wasn't so near the stuff."
"Why didn't you tell me?" she cried.
"I tried, but I daren't. You wouldn't have married me."
"Yes I should; but I'd never have bought the inn. It must be put up for
sale. Write to the agents to-night and swear, if you love me, you'll
never touch anything again. We'll get a man to attend to the bar and
you'd better see to the garden; it wants digging all over."
This was how she had met her tragedy, but at that time she had good hope
of frustrating it. Her husband was rarely out of her sight, and she kept
him at hard manual labour without any attempt at concealing her design.
And they were both happy. He learnt to trust her, and when desire came
heavily upon him he went to her and asked, without shame, for help. That
was their safeguard; but it was removed on the night when Alexander was
born. In a pitiable state of anxiety Rutherford found his way into the
bar and began to drink. His fear fell from him after a glass or two,
and, to encourage its departure, he drank on. The barman, who had been
drawn to Clara's service from the plough, and was himself a father,
tried to persuade him to go away.
"The mistress will be wanting you soon; you'd better be within call."
"You mind your own business, Potts. Potts! Were you always called Potts
or did we change your name to match the bar? Potts! Good name that! I'll
have some whisky, Potts."
"No, now, really I shouldn't." But for themselves, the place was empty
and the good man remonstrated. "Think of the mistress up there, now. You
know she wouldn't like it. 'Potts,' she said, 'look after the master for
me. Now I trust you,' she said."
"Get out of my way, you fool! I'll help myself."
"For God's sake, hush, man! She'll hear you. Just you go out quietly and
sit down in the parlour and cool yourself. Come along, now. We don't
want to have trouble to-night."
"Who's having trouble? All quite happy an' lively. Never felt better;
and if you don't get out of my way and let me have that drink,
I'll--I'll fell you, Potts."
Nothing of this he remembered afterwards, and it seemed to him that he
only began to live when he heard the thud of the man's body as it
dropped to the floor, the tinkle of a broken glass and the gentle
dripping of the liquor that had been in it. He thought it was the blood
of Potts that he had spilt, and then from upstairs he heard the voice of
Clara crying out from the midst of her pain, "Jim, Jim, what are you
doing? Come up here, I want you."
And before he could remember anything but his own distress he had obeyed
her and fallen to his knees beside the bed, telling her that Potts was
lying on the floor, he believed he had killed Potts.
The nurse, who was both blunt and burly, seized him by the shoulders.
"Get out of it this minute," she said, "or you'll be killing someone
else."
"No, let him stay," said Clara faintly. "Go and see what's the matter.
He'll be quiet."
Rutherford saw with amazement and then with the dreadful beginnings of
understanding and remembrance, that there was a new crease in her
forehead and her lips were white and thin.
"Clara--Clara," he began.
But she said: "Hush! Don't talk. Just let me hold your hand."
It was strange and terribly revealing to hear her ask for help, and he
was more than sobered by the time the nurse returned from bawling over
the banisters, "Potts, are you all right?" and getting answer, "Ay, I'm
that," in a tone of menace.
"Now, out you go!" she said, and locked the door upon him.
He went, staggering, to the bar, and stared at Potts, who was wiping
down the counter. He put a hand to his forehead, for thought was growing
dim again.
"I'm not sure," he said, "what happened. Did I--did I----"
"Yes, you did," said Potts, "and if it wasn't for the mistress I'd give
you another. You're not fit to live."
"That's true," said Rutherford; "that's perfectly true. I'll go out and
think about it."
When he returned, after long wanderings in the dark, he was told he had
a son, but he would not look at what he considered the cause of that
night's work, and later, when reason had more force with him, he still
refused to concern himself with the child, for, at the sight of his
small, solemn face and thick, black hair there always arose a mist
through which there moved pictures of Potts lying on the floor amidst
the broken glass and Clara with that changed, white face. He suffered
from an unspeakable shame which was the greater that Clara never
reproached him; but, as time wore on, and, following her wishes as well
as his, they left the place for this little house among the lonelier
hills, his shame became absorbed into a sense of grievance against the
child.
"You see," he would say to Clara, almost in triumph, when, in answer to
a scowl, Alexander set up a cry, "he hates me!"
"He'd hate me if I looked like you," she replied, with rare sharpness.
"If you'd only learn to be honest with yourself, my man, things would be
better for us all."
Instead of honesty, he developed a fractious gloom which seldom changed
to anything but despair, and if Clara did not lose her courage at this
time, it may be that her buoyancy drooped a little. Yet she made him
work. There was waste ground behind the house, and, after constant
urging and encouragement from Clara, who also found time to ask Heaven
to mete adequate punishment on his father, he made it into a garden of
which he was proud, and when she saw him working there, with a cleared
brow, she felt that, after all, they had not made such a bad thing of
their lives.
There remained the problem of Alexander, for the attitude of the menfolk
towards each other grew bitterer with the years, and she passed her days
in dread of ultimate violence; but it did not do, she found, to live too
much in the future, experiencing troubles which a wise optimism might
frustrate, and so, following the creatures of the wilds, she had
developed those characteristics which were most likely to preserve
herself and hers, until, like the willingness of her neighbours, her
heroic effort had become a habit.