She stopped her brain before it could answer for her! "You wouldn't be
sitting here now stitching at that coat."
She stitched on till she could see to stitch no more; for tears came and
blinded her eyes, and fell upon the coat.
That was just after she had kissed it.
X
It was Easter, three weeks after Susie's visit; and Arthur was going away
for a fortnight, his first real holiday in seven years. For some time he
had been lengthening out his office hours, and increasing his salary, by
adding night to day. And now he had worn himself out by his own ferocious
industry. He knew, and Aggie knew, that he was in for a bad illness if he
didn't get away, and at once. He had written in his extremity to a
bachelor brother, known in the little house at Camden Town as the Mammon
of Unrighteousness. The brother had a big house down in Kent; and into
that house, though it was the house of Mammon, Arthur proposed that he
should be received for a week or two. He took care to mention, casually,
and by way of a jest after the brother's own heart, that for those weeks
he, Arthur, would be a lonely widower.
The brother was in the habit of remembering Arthur's existence once a year
at Christmas. He would have had him down often enough, he said, if the
poor beggar could have come alone. But he barred Aggie and the children.
Aggie, poor dear, was a bore; and the children, six, by Jove (or was it
seven?), were just seven (or was it six?) blanked nuisances. Though
uncertain about the number of the children, he always sent seven or eight
presents at Christmas to be on the safe side. So when Arthur announced
that he was a widower, the brother, in his bachelor home, gave a great
roar of genial laughter. He saw an opportunity of paying off all his debts
to Arthur in a comparatively easy fashion all at once.
"Take him for a fortnight, poor devil? I'd take him for ten fortnights.
Heavens, what a relief it must be to get away from 'Aggie'!"
And when Arthur got his brother's letter, he and Aggie were quite sorry
that they had ever called him the Mammon of Unrighteousness.
But the brother kept good company down in Kent. Aggie knew that, in the
old abominable Queningford phrase, he was "in with the county." She saw
her Arthur mixing in gay garden scenes, with a cruel spring sun shining on
the shabby suit that had seen so many springs. Arthur's heart failed him
at the last moment, but Aggie did not fail. Go he must, she said. If the
brother was the Mammon of Unrighteousness, all the more, she argued,
should he be propitiated--for the children's sake. (The Mammon was too
selfish ever to marry, and there were no other nieces and nephews.) She
represented the going down into Kent as a sublime act of self-sacrifice by
which Arthur, as it were, consecrated his paternity. She sustained that
lofty note till Arthur himself was struck with his own sublimity. And when
she told him to stand up and let her look at him, he stood up, tired as he
was, and let her look at him.
Many sheepfolds have delivered up their blameless flocks to Mammon. But
Aggie, when she considered the quality of the god, felt dimly that no more
innocent victim was ever yet provided than poor, jaded Arthur in his suit
of other years. The thought in her mind was that it would not do for him
to look _too_ innocent. He must go--but not like that.
So, for three days of blinding labor, Aggie applied herself to the
propitiation of Mammon, the sending forth of her sacrificial lamb properly
decked for the sacrifice. There never had been such a hauling and
overhauling of clothes, such folding and unfolding, such stitching and
darning and cleansing and pressing, such dragging out and packing of heavy
portmanteaus, such a getting up of shirts that should be irreproachable.
Aggie did it all herself; she would trust no one, least of all the
laundress. She had only faint old visions of John Hurst's collars to guide
her; but she was upheld by an immense relief, born of her will to please,
and Arthur, by a blind reliance, born of his utter weariness. At times
these preparations well-nigh exasperated him. "If going meant all that
fuss," he said, "he'd rather not go." But if he had been told that
anything would happen to prevent his going, he would have sat down and
cursed or cried. His nerves clamored for change now--any change from the
office and the horrible yellow villa in Camden Town.
All of a sudden, at the critical moment, Aggie's energy showed signs of
slowing down, and it seemed to both of them that she would never get him
off.
Then, for the first time, he woke to a dreary interest in the packing. He
began to think of things for himself. He thought of a certain suit of
flannels which he must take with him, which Aggie hadn't cleaned or
mended, either. In his weak state, it seemed to him that his very going
depended on that suit of flannels. He went about the house inquiring
irritably for them. He didn't know that his voice had grown so fierce in
its quality that it scared the children; or that he was ordering Aggie
about like a dog; or that he was putting upon her bowed and patient back
burdens heavier than it should have borne. He didn't know what he was
doing.
And he did not know why Aggie's brain was so dull and her feet so slow,
nor why her hands, that were incessantly doing, seemed now incapable of
doing any one thing right. He did not know, because he was stupefied with
his own miserable sensations, and Aggie had contrived to hide from him
what Susie's sharp eyes had discovered. Besides, he felt that, in his
officially invalid capacity, a certain license was permitted him.
So, when he found his flannels in the boot cupboard, he came and flung
them onto the table where Aggie bent over her ironing-board. A feeble fury
shook him.
"Nobody but a fool," he said, "would ram good flannels into a filthy boot
cupboard."
"I didn't," said Aggie, in a strange, uninterested voice. "You must have
put them there yourself."
He remembered.
"Well," he said, placably, for he was, after all, a just man, "do you
think they could be made a little cleaner?"
"I--can't--" said Aggie, in a still stranger voice, a voice that sounded
as if it were deflected somehow by her bent body and came from another
woman rather far away. It made Arthur turn in the doorway and look at her.
She rose, straightening herself slowly, dragging herself upward from the
table with both hands. Her bleached lips parted; she drew in her breath
with a quick sound like a sob, and let it out again on a sharp note of
pain.
He rushed to her, all his sunken manhood roused by her bitter, helpless
cry.
"Aggie, darling, what is it? Are you ill?"
"No, no, I'm not ill; I'm only tired," she sobbed, clutching at him with
her two hands, and swaying where she stood.
He took her in his arms and half dragged, half carried her from the room.
On the narrow stairs they paused.
"Let me go alone," she whispered.
She tried to free herself from his grasp, failed, and laid her head back
on his shoulder again; and he lifted her and carried her to her bed.
He knelt down and took off her shoes. He sat beside her, supporting her
while he let down her long, thin braids of hair. She looked up at him, and
saw that there was still no knowledge in the frightened eyes that gazed at
her; and when he would have unfastened the bodice of her gown, she pushed
back his hands and held them.
"No, no," she whimpered. "Go away. Go away."
"Aggie--"
"Go away, I tell you."
"My God," he moaned, more smitten, more helpless than she. For, as she
turned from him, he understood the height and depth of her tender perjury.
She had meant to spare him for as long as it might be, because, afterwards
(she must have felt), his own conscience would not be so merciful.
He undressed her, handling her with his clumsy gentleness, and laid her in
her bed.
He had called the maid; she went bustling to and fro, loud-footed and
wild-eyed. From time to time a cry came from the nursery where the little
ones were left alone. Outside, down the street, Arty and Catty ran
hand-in-hand to fetch the doctor, their sobbing checked by a mastering
sense of their service and importance.
And the man, more helpless than any child, clung to the woman's hand and
waited with her for her hour.
As he waited he looked round the shabby room, and saw for the first time
how poor a place it was. Nothing seemed to have been provided for Aggie;
nothing ever was provided for her; she was always providing things for
other people. His eyes fastened on the Madonna di Gran Duca fading in her
frame. He remembered how he had bought it for Aggie seven years ago. Aggie
lay under the Madonna, with her eyes closed, making believe that she
slept. But he could see by the fluttering of her eyelids that her spirit
was awake and restless.
Presently she spoke.
"Arthur," she said, "I believe I'm going to have a nice quiet night, after
all. But when--when the time comes, you're not to worry, do you hear? Kate
and mother will come up and look after me. And you're to go away
to-morrow, just as if nothing had happened."
She paused.
"The flannels," she said, "shall be washed and sent after you. You're not
to worry."
She was providing still.
"Oh, Aggie--darling--don't."
"Why not? _You_ ought to go to bed, because you'll have to get up so early
to-morrow morning."
She closed her eyes, and he watched and waited through minutes that were
hours. It seemed to him that it was another man than he who waited and
watched. He was estranged from his former self, the virtuous, laborious
self that he had once known, moving in its dull and desolate routine.
Thoughts came to him, terrible, abominable thoughts that could never have
occurred to it.
[Illustration: "Thoughts came to him, terrible thoughts"]
"It would have been better," said this new self, "if I had been unfaithful
to her. _That_ wouldn't have killed her."
As if she had heard him through some spiritual sense, she pressed his hand
and answered him.
"Thank God," she whispered, hoarsely, "that you've always loved me."
She struggled with her voice for a moment; then it came, brave and clear.
"Listen, Arthur. I wrote to mother three weeks ago. About this. I've made
her think that it was I who wanted the children, always, from the very
first. She'll understand that I couldn't be happy without a baby in my
arms. It _is_ different. They're never quite the same after the first
year. Even Arty wasn't. Mother will understand. She won't be hard."
She had provided for everything. It was her lie that proved the extremity
of her fear, her foreboding.
If only she had not lied!
Somehow, in the seven years of his married life, he had never seen this
calamity in front of him. His dreams had always been of a time when their
children should be out in the world, when he saw himself walking with his
wife in some quiet country place, like Queningford.
If she had not lied!
He sought for calm words wherewith to support her; but no words came. He
clutched at the bedclothes. His eyes were blind with tears, his ears
deafened by the sound of his own pulses.
In a moment the seven years were unveiled. He had a sudden vision of
Aggie's incorruptible love and divine tenderness before his grief closed
over him.
Her eyes were resting upon his.
"I'm not afraid," she said; "not the least little bit. I'd rather you went
away to-morrow. I don't--mind--being left."
But when to-morrow came it was he who was left.
He was sitting in the room underneath Aggie's. He had a pen in his hand,
and his mind was unusually calm and clear. He had just telegraphed to his
brother that he couldn't go--because Aggie was dead. Now he was trying to
write to Aggie's mother to tell her to come--because Aggie was dead.
He had a great many things to see to--because Aggie was dead.
All at once he raised his head; he listened; he started up with a groan
that was a cry, and went from the room.
Up-stairs in the nursery a child's voice was singing:
"'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea.
And it was full of pretty things--for Baby--and for me.'"