THE LOSS OF A WIFE
In September Peter and Rhoda had a son, whom they called Thomas, because,
Peter said, he had a sceptical look about the eyes and nose. Peter was
pleased with him, and he with Peter. Rhoda wasn't much interested; she
looked at him and said he was rather like Peter, and might be taken away
now, please.
"Like me?" Peter wondered dubiously. "Well, I know I'm not handsome,
but..."
Peggy, a born mother, took Thomas into her large heart at once, with her
out-at-elbows infants, and was angry with Rhoda for not showing more
interest.
"You'd think, from the way of her, that it was her thirteenth instead of
her first," she complained to Hilary. "I've no patience with the silly,
mooning child. She's nothing like good enough for Peter, and that's a
fact, and she'd have a right to realise it and try to improve for very
shame, instead of moping the way she does. It's my belief, Hilary, that
her silly little heart's away after the Vyvian man, whatever haunt of
wickedness he's adorning now. I don't want to believe it of her; but
there's no end to the folly of the human heart, is there, now? I wish she
was a Catholic and had a priest to make her take shame to herself; but
there's no hold one has over her as it is, for she won't say a word to me
beyond 'Yes' and 'No,' and 'Take him away, please, he tires me.' I nearly
told her she'd a right not to be so easily tired by her own son now she's
getting her health. But there, she's a poor frail thing and one can't
speak roughly to her for fear she breaks in two."
Hilary said, "After all, there's no great cause for rejoicing in a man's
being born into the world to trouble; I suppose she feels that. It will
make it more difficult than ever for them and for us to make both ends
meet."
"Oh, meet," groaned Peggy, "that's not what there's any thought of their
doing in these days, my dear. If one can bring them within a mile of one
another, one's thankful for small mercies."
Hilary rested his head on his hand and sighed.
"Have you spoken to Peter yet about appealing to the Urquharts?" he
asked.
"Darling, I have not, and I'm not going to. Why should I annoy the poor
child to no purpose? He'll not appeal to the Urquharts, we know that
well, and I'm not going to waste my breath. I'd far rather--"
"What?" asked Hilary, as she paused.
"Oh well, I don't know. Don't you worry about ways and means; something
will surely turn up before long." Peggy was an optimist.
"And anyhow," went on Peggy, to change the subject from ways and means,
which was a depressing one, "isn't our little Peter a darling with his
baby? I love to see them together. He washes it himself as often as
not, you know; only he can't always catch it again when it slips through
his hands, and that worries him. He's dreadfully afraid of its getting
drowned or spoilt or lost or something."
"It probably will," said Hilary, who was a pessimist. "Peter is no hand
at keeping things. We are not a fortunate family."
"Never mind, darling; we've kept three; and more by token Kitty _must_
have a new pair of boots this winter; she's positively indecent the way
she goes about now. I can't help it, Hilary; you must pawn your ring
again or something."
Peggy didn't want to say anything else depressing, so she didn't mention
that Miss Matthews had that morning given notice of her departure. But in
Peggy's own mind there was a growing realisation that something drastic
must really be done soon.
October went by. When Peter knew that the Urquharts had come back to
London, he wondered why Lucy didn't come to see Thomas. So he wrote and
asked her to, and on that she came.
She came at tea-time, one day when Rhoda happened to have gone out. So
Peter and Lucy had tea alone together, and Thomas lay in his crib and
looked at them, and Algernon snored on Lucy's knee, and the November fog
shut out the outer world like a blanket, and blurred the gas-light in the
dingy room.
Peter thought Lucy was rather quiet and pale, and her chuckle was a
little subdued. Her dominant aspect, of clear luminousness, was somehow
dimmed and mystified, with all other lights, in this blurred afternoon.
Her wide clear eyes, strange always with the world's gay wonder and
mystery, had become eyes less gay, eyes that did not understand, that
even shrank a little from what they could not understand. Lucy looked a
touch puzzled, not so utterly the glad welcomer of all arriving things
that she had always been.
But for Thomas, the latest arrived thing, she had a glad welcome.
Like Peter, she loved all little funny weak things; and Thomas seemed
certainly that, as he lay and blinked at the blurred gas and curled his
fingers round one of Peter's. A happy, silent person, with doubts, one
fancied, as to the object of the universe, but no doubts that there were
to be found in it many desirable things.
When Lucy came in, Peter was reading aloud to him some of Traherne's
"Divine Reflections on the Native Objects of an Infant-Eye," which he
seemed rather to like.
"I that so long [Peter told him he was thinking,
Was _Nothing_ from Eternity,
Did little think such Joys as Ear and Tongue
To celebrate or see:
Such Sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet,
Such Eyes and Objects on the Ground to Meet.
"New burnisht Joys!
Which finest Gold and Pearl excell!"
"Oo," said Thomas expectantly.
"A Stranger here, [Peter told him further,
Strange things doth meet, strange Glory see;
Strange Treasures lodg'd in this fair World appear,
Strange all and New to me:
But that they _mine_ should be who Nothing was,
_That_ strangest is of all; yet brought to pass."
"Ow," said Thomas, agreeing.
Peter turned over the pages. "Do you like it? Do you think so too? Here's
another about you."
"But little did the Infant dream
That all the Treasures of the World were by,
And that himself was so the Cream
And Crown of all which round about did ly.
Yet thus it was!..."
"I don't think you'd understand the rest of that verse, Thomas; it's
rather more difficult. 'Yet thus it was!' We'll end there, and have our
tea."
Turning his head he saw that Lucy had come in and was standing behind
him, looking over his shoulder at Thomas in his crib.
"Oh, Lucy," he said, "I'm reading to Thomas. Thomas is that. Do you like
him? He is surprised at life, but quite pleased. He that was _Nothing_
from Eternity did little think such Joys to celebrate or see. Yet thus it
is. He is extraordinarily happy about it all, but he can't do anything
yet, you know--not speak or sit up or anything. He can only make noises,
and cry, and drink, and slither about in his bath like a piece of wet
soap. Wasn't there a clergyman once who thought his baby ought to be
baptised by immersion unless it was proved not well able to endure it,
as it says in the rubric or somewhere, so he put it in a tub to try if
it could endure it or not, and he let it loose by accident and couldn't
catch it again, it was so slippery, just like a horrid little fish, and
its mother only came in and got hold of it just in time to prevent its
being drowned? So after that he felt he could honestly certify that the
child couldn't well endure immersion. I'm getting better at catching
Thomas, though. He isn't supposed to slip off my hand at all, but he
kicks and slithers so I can't hold him, and swims away and gets lost.
After tea will you come and help me wash him? Rhoda's out to tea; I'm so
sorry. But there's tea, and Thomas and Algernon and me, and--and rather
thick bread and butter only, apparently; but I shall have jam now you've
come. First I must adjust Thomas's drinking-bottle; he always likes a
drink while we have our tea. He's two months old. Is he good for that,
do you think, or should he be a size larger? But I rather like them
small, don't you? They're lighter so, for one thing. Is he nice? Do you
like him?"
Lucy, kneeling by the crib, nodded.
"He's very old and wise, Peter; very old and gay. Look at his eyes. He's
much--oh very much--older than you or me. That's as it should be."
"He'll rejuvenate with years, won't he?" said Peter. "At present he's
too old to laugh when I make jokes; he thinks them silly; but he'll be
sillier than anyone himself in about six months, I expect. Now we'll have
tea."
Lucy left Thomas and came to the tea-table and poured out tea for both of
them.
"I'm trying to learn to do without three lumps," said Peter, as Lucy put
them in. "I expect it's extravagant to have three, really. But then Rhoda
and Thomas don't take any, so it's only the same as if we each had one,
isn't it. Thomas shan't be allowed more than one in each cup when he
grows young enough to want any; Rhoda and I mean him to be a refined
person."
"I don't think he will be," said Lucy, looking thoughtfully into the
future. "I expect he'll be as vulgar as you and me. He's awfully like you
to look at, Peter."
"So I am informed. Well, I'm not vain, and I don't claim to be an Adonis,
like Denis. Is Denis flourishing? The birds were splendid; they came so
thick and fast that I gathered it was being a remarkable season. But as
you only answered my numerous letters by one, and that àpropos merely of
Thomas's arrival, I could only surmise and speculate on your doings. I
suppose you thought the grouse were instead of letters."
"They were Denis's letters. _I_ didn't shoot the grouse, dear darlings,
nor send them."
"What were your letters, then?"
"Well, I sent rowan berries, didn't I? Weren't they red?"
"Yes. Even Thomas read them. We're being rather funny, aren't we? Is
Denis going on with Parliament again this autumn, or has he begun to get
tired of it?"
"Not a bit tired of it. He doesn't bother about it particularly, you
know; not enough to tire himself; he sort of takes it for granted, like
going up to Scotland in August."
Peter nodded. "I know. He would take it just like that if he was
Prime Minister, or Archbishop of Canterbury. I daresay he will be one
day; isn't it nice the way things drop into his hands without his
bothering to get them."
He didn't see the queer, silent look Lucy turned on him as he spread his
thick bread and butter with blackberry jam.
"Thomas," she said after a moment, "has dropped into your hands, Peter."
It was as if she was protesting against something, beating herself
against some invisible, eternal barrier that divided the world into
two unequal parts.
Peter said, "Rather, he has. I do hope he'll never drop out. I'm getting
very handy about holding him, though. Oh, let's take him upstairs and tub
him now; do you mind?"
So they took him upstairs and tubbed him, and Lucy managed to hold him so
firmly that he didn't once swim away and get lost.
As they were drying him (Lucy dried him with a firmer and more effective
hand than Peter, who always wiped him very gingerly lest he should
squash) Rhoda came in. She was strange-eyed and pale in the blurred
light, and greeted Lucy in a dreamy, absent way.
"I've had tea out.... Oh, have you bathed baby? How good of you. I meant
to be in earlier, but I was late.... The fog's awful; it's getting
thicker and thicker."
She sat down by the fire and loosened her coat, and took off her hat and
rubbed the fog from her wet hair, and coughed. Rhoda had grown prettier
lately; she looked less tired and listless, and her eyes were brighter,
and the fire flushed her thin cheek to rose-colour as she bent over it.
Peter took her wet things from her and took off her shoes and put
slippers on her feet, and she gave him an absent smile. Rhoda had had
a dreamy way with her since Thomas's birth; moony, as Peggy, who didn't
approve, called it.
A little later, when Thomas was clean and warm and asleep in his bed,
they were told that Mrs. Urquhart's carriage had come.
Lucy bent over Thomas and kissed him, then over Rhoda. Rhoda whispered in
her ear, without emotion, "Baby ought to have been yours, not mine," and
Lucy whispered back:
"Oh hush, hush!"
Rhoda still held her, still whispered, "Will you love him? Will you be
good to him, always?"
And Lucy answered, opening wide eyes, "Why, of course. No one could help
it, could they?" and on that Rhoda let her go.
Peter thought that Lucy must have infected Rhoda with some of her own
appreciation of Thomas, opened her eyes to his true worth; for during the
next week she was newly tender to him. She bathed him every evening
herself, only letting Peter help a little; she held him in her arms
without wearying of his weight, and wasn't really annoyed even when he
was sick upon her shoulder, an unfortunate habit of Thomas's.
But a habit, Peter thought, that Thomas employed with some
discrimination; for the one and only one time that Guy Vyvian took him
in his arms--or rather submitted to his being put there by Rhoda--Thomas
was sicker than he had ever been before, with an immense completeness.
"Just what I always feel myself," commented Peter in his own mind, as
Thomas was hastily removed. "I'm glad someone has shown him at last what
the best people feel about him."
Vyvian had come to call. It was the first time Peter had met him since
his marriage; he hoped it would be the last. The object of the call
was to inspect Thomas, Rhoda said. Thomas was inspected, produced the
impression indicated above, and was relegated to the region of things for
which Vyvian had no use. He detested infants; children of any sort, in
fact; and particularly Thomas, who had Peter's physiognomy and expressed
Peter's sentiments in a violently ill-bred way.
Peter, a little later, was very glad that Thomas had revealed himself
thus openly on this occasion. For it quite sealed Thomas's fate, if
anything more was needed to seal it than the fact that Thomas would be
an impossible burden, and also belonged by right to Peter. Anyhow, they
left Thomas behind them when they went.
Rhoda wrote a scrawled note for Peter one foggy Monday morning, and
hugged Thomas close and cried a little, and slipped out into the misty
city with a handbag. Peter, coming in at tea-time, found the note on
the sitting-room chimney-piece. It said:--
"Don't try to follow me, Peter, for I can't come back. I _have_ tried to
care for you more than him and be a good wife, but I can't. You know I
told you when we got engaged that I cared for him, and I tried so hard
to stop, and I thought I would be able, with you to help me, but I
couldn't do it. For the first few months I thought I could, but all the
time it was there, like a fire in me, eating me up; and later on he began
writing to me, but for a long time I wouldn't answer, and then he came to
see me, and I said he mustn't, but he's been meeting me out and I
couldn't stop him, and at last it grew that I knew I loved him so that it
was no use pretending any more. I'd better go, Peter, for what's the use
of trying to be a good wife to you when all I care for is him. I know
he's not good, and you are, but I love him, and I must go when he wants
me. It was all a mistake; you and I ought never to have married. You
meant it kindly, I know; you meant to help me and make me happy, but it
was no use. You and I never properly belonged. When I saw you and Lucy
together, I knew we didn't belong, not like that; we didn't properly
understand each other's ways and thoughts, like you two did. I love Lucy,
too. You and she are so like. And she'll be good to Baby; she said she
would. I hate to leave Baby, but Guy won't let me bring him, and anyhow
I suppose I couldn't, because he's yours. I've written a list of his
feeds, and it's on the chimney-piece behind the clock; please make
whoever sees to him go by it or he gets a pain. Please be careful when
you bath him; I think Mrs. Adams had better do it usually. She'll take
care of him for you, or Peggy will, perhaps. You'll think I never cared
for him, but I do, I love him, only I must love Guy most of all. I don't
know if I shall be happy or miserable, but I expect miserable, only I
must go with Guy. Please, dear Peter, try and understand this, and
forgive me. I think you will, because you always do understand things,
and forgive them too; I think you are the kindest person I ever knew. If
I thought you loved me really, I don't think I'd go, even for Guy; but I
know you've only felt kindly to me all along, so I think it is best for
you too that I should go, and you will be thankful in the end. Good-bye.
You promised mother to see after me, I know, for she told me before she
died; well, you've done your best, and mother'd be grateful to you if she
could know. I suppose some would say she does know, perhaps; but I don't
believe those stories; I believe it's all darkness beyond, and silence.
And if it is, we must try and get all the light and warmth here that we
can. So I'm going.
"Good-bye, Peter.
"Rhoda."
Peter read it through, sitting on the rug by the fire. When he had
finished it, he put it into the fire and watched it burn. Then he sighed,
and sat very still for a while, his hands clasped round one knee.
Presently he got up and looked behind the clock, and saw that the next
feeding-time was due now. So he rang for Mrs. Adams, the landlady, and
asked her if she would mind bringing Thomas's bottle.
When Thomas had it, Peter stood and looked down upon him as he drank with
ill-bred noises.
"Gently, Thomas: you'll choke. You'll choke and die, I know you will.
Then you'll be gone too. Everything goes, Thomas. Everything I touch
breaks; everything I try to do fails. That's because I'm such an ass,
I suppose. I did think I could perhaps make one little unlucky girl
decently happy; but I couldn't, you see. So she's gone after light and
warmth, and she'll--she'll break her heart in a year, and it'll be my
fault. Follow her? No, I shan't do that. I shouldn't find her, and if I
did what would be the use? If she must go, she must; she was only eating
her heart out here; and perhaps it's better to break one's heart on
something than eat it out in emptiness. No, it isn't better in this case.
Anything in the world would have been better than this; that she should
have gone with that--that person. Yet thus it is. And they'll all set on
her and speak against her, and I shall have to bear it. You and I will
have to bear it together, Thomas.... I suppose I ought to be angry. I
ought to want to go after them, to the end of the world or wherever
they've gone and kill him and bring her back. But I can't. I should fail
in that too. I'm tired of trying to do things; simply horribly tired of
it, Thomas." He sat down on the rug with Thomas in his arms; and there,
an hour later, Peggy found them. She swung in breezily, crying, "Oh,
Peter, all alone in the dark? Where's Rhoda? Why, the silly children
haven't had their tea!" she added, looking at the unused cups on the
tea-table.
Peter looked up vaguely. "Oh, tea. I forgot. I don't think I want any
tea to-day. And Thomas has had his. And Rhoda's gone. It's no good not
telling you--is it?--because you'll find out. She's gone away. It's been
my fault entirely; I didn't make her happy, you see. And she's written
out a list of the times Thomas has to feed at. I suppose Mrs. Adams will
do that if I ask her, and generally look after him when I'm out."
Peggy stood aghast before him for a moment, staring, then collapsed,
breathless, on the sofa, crying, with even more r's than usual.
"_Peter!_... Why, she's gone and rrun off with that toad, that rreptile
man! Oh, I know it, so it's not a bit of use your trying to keep it from
me."
"Very well," said Peter; "I suppose it's not."
"Oh, the little fool, the little, silly, wicked fool! But if ever a
little fool got her rich deserts without needing to wait for purgatory,
that one'll be Rhoda.... Oh, Peter, be more excited and angry! Why
aren't you stamping up and down and vowing vengeance, instead of sitting
on the hearth saying, 'Rhoda's gone,' as if it was the kitten?"
"I'm sorry, Peggy." Peter sighed a little. "I'm nursing Thomas, you see."
Peggy at that was on her knees on the floor, taking both of them into her
large embrace.
"Oh, you two poor little darling boys, what's to become of you both? That
child has a heart of stone, to leave you to yourselves the way she's
done. Don't defend her, Peter; I won't hear a word said for her again
as long as I live; she deserves Guy Vyvian, and I couldn't say a worse
word for her than that. You poor little Tommy; come to me then, babykins.
You must come back to us now, Peter, and I'll look after you both."
She cuddled Thomas to her breast with one arm, and put the other round
Peter's shoulders as he sat huddled up, his chin resting on his knees.
At the moment it was difficult to say which of the two looked the most
forsaken, the most left to himself. Only Thomas hadn't yet learnt to
laugh, and Peter had. He laughed now, softly and not happily.
"It _has_ been rather a ghastly fiasco, hasn't it," he said. "Absurd, you
know, too, in a way. I thought it was all working out so nicely, Thomas
coming and everything. But no. It wasn't working out nicely at all.
Things don't as a rule, do they?"
There was a new note of dreariness in his voice; a note that had perhaps
been kept out of it of set purpose for a long time. Now there seemed at
the moment no particular reason to keep it out any more, though fresh
reasons would arrive, no doubt, very soon; and Thomas when waking was a
reason in himself. But in this dim hour between two roads, this hour of
relaxation of tension in the shadowy firelight, when Thomas slept and
only Peggy listened, Peter, having fallen crashing through floor after
floor of his pleasant house of life, till he was nearly at the bottom,
looked up at all the broken floors and sighed.
Peggy's arm was comfortingly about him. To her he was always a little,
brittle, unlucky boy, as she had first seen him long ago.
"Never you mind, Peterkin. There's a good time coming, I do believe.
She'll come back, perhaps; who knows? Vyvian wouldn't do for long, not
even for Rhoda. Besides, you may be sure he'll throw her off soon, and
then she'll want to come back to you and Tommy. I wouldn't say that to
any other man, because, of course, no other man would have her back; but
I do believe, Peterkin, that you would, wouldn't you now? I expect you'd
smile and say, 'Oh, come in, you're just in time for tea and to see me
bath Thomas,' and not another word about it."
"Probably," said Peter. "There wouldn't be much to say, would there?
But she won't come back; I know that. Even if she leaves him she won't.
Rhoda's horribly proud really, you know. She'd sooner sweep a crossing,
or trim hats or something, than come near us again. I don't know what to
hope about it. I suppose one must hope they'll go on together, as Rhoda
seems to like him as he is; but it's an awful thought.... She's right
that we never understood each other. I couldn't, you know, bear to think
of spending even one day alone with Vyvian. I should be sick, like
Thomas. The mere sight of his hair is enough, and his hand with that
awful ring on it. I--I simply draw the line at him. _Why_ does Rhoda
care for him? How can she?" Peter frowned over it in bewilderment.
Peggy said, "Girls are silly things. And I suppose the way one's been
brought up counts, and what one's inherited, and all that."
"Well, if Rhoda'd taken after Mrs. Johnson she wouldn't have liked
Vyvian. He used to give her the creeps, like a toad. She told me so.
She disliked him more than I did.... Well, I shall never understand. I
suppose if I could Rhoda would have found me more sympathetic, and might
have stayed."
"Now, darling, you're not to sit up and brood any more; that won't help.
You're coming straight back with me to dinner, and Tommy's coming too, to
sleep. I shall ask Mrs. Adams to help me get his things together."
"He hasn't many things," said Peter, looking vaguely round for them. "I
got him a rattle and a ball, but he doesn't seem to care about them much;
Lucy says he's not young enough yet. Here's his bottle. And his night
clothes are upstairs, and his other day clothes, and his bath. Thomas
leads the simple life, though; he really possesses very little; I think
he's probably going to be a Franciscan later on. But he can sleep with me
here all right; I should like to have him; only it would be awfully good
of you if you'd have him to-morrow, while I'm out at work. But in the
night he and I rather like each other's company."
"Rubbish," said Peggy. "You're both coming along to fifty-one this
minute. You don't suppose I'm going to leave you two infants alone
together like that. We've heaps of room at fifty-one"--she sighed a
little--"people have been fading away like the flowers of the forest,
and we should be thankful to have you back."
"Oh, we'll come then; thanks very much, Peggy." Peter's ready
sympathy was turned on again, having temporarily been available only
for himself and Rhoda and Thomas. He remembered now that Peggy and Hilary
needed it too. He and Thomas would go and be boarders in the emptying
boarding-house; it might amuse Thomas, perhaps, to see the other
boarders.
"And we'll have him baptized," went on Peggy, thinking of further
diversions for Thomas and Peter. "You'll let him be a Catholic, Peter,
won't you?"
"Thomas," said Peter, "can be anything he likes that's nice. As long as
he's not a bigot. I won't have him refusing to go into one sort of church
because he prefers another; he mustn't ever acquire the rejecting habit.
Short of that, he may enter any denomination or denominations he
prefers."
They were collecting Thomas's belongings as they talked. Thomas lay and
looked at them with the very blue slits that were like his father's eyes
grown old. And suddenly Peggy, looking from son to father, saw that
Peter's eyes had grown as old as Thomas's, looking wearily out of a pale,
pinched face.
Peggy's own eyes brimmed over as she bent over Thomas's night-shirt.