REGINA COMES TO A CONCLUSION
Have you ever noticed how accurately women judge from small
circumstances. Men call this intuition, and men think of
intuition as being on the same level as instinct.
If Regina had ordered a plate of soup it would have been brought to her
immediately, because at one o'clock that comestible would have been
ready and awaiting the wishes of customers. But Regina, as I have said,
like most women in trouble, ordered the food and drink that were nearest
her heart, and therefore she had to wait while the tea was brewed and
the muffin toasted. The waiting did her good. She was alone, as it
happened, in the comfortable room over the shop, and thus she was able
to grasp the situation more clearly than she had done while still
talking to the jeweler's assistant, when she had had to consider the
ordinary conventions of existence. Poor Regina! She sat there by the
tall mantelshelf and stared at the paper roses which filled the summer
grate. Her Alfred, her noble Alfred, had fallen from his pedestal--he
was hers no longer! In all the years of their married life, indeed in
their knowledge of each other, she had never wronged Alfred by even so
much as a doubt of his nobility. To her he had been noble, truly noble,
kind, affectionate, dignified and a highly successful man--and now all
was over; her house of matrimony had fallen about her ears like a pack
of cards--she had been supplanted by another. Truly Regina's thoughts
were very bitter. She had been supplanted by another--what was she going
to do? It came to her memory that in times gone by, when other women had
fallen upon evil days of a like description, she had helped to bear
their sorrows with a very light heart. Well, it had not then entered her
head that their portion might one day be hers; but now the blow had
fallen upon herself, and she must perforce give herself the same advice
that she had given to others. "My dear," she had remarked once to a poor
little woman whose husband had been spoiled by over-much adoration, "you
have made one mistake in your life: you have been too good to that
husband of yours. What? Nobody could be too good to him? You have, my
dear, and it doesn't do to be too good to a man for all time whether he
behaves himself or not; it doesn't do to put all your wares in your
front window. Keep something back; let there be always some little
corner of womanly dignity which men, even husbands, must respect." "But,
Mrs. Whittaker," the little woman had replied, "I haven't any dignity
where Jack is concerned; I don't want any dignity, I only want Jack, and
he has gone away and left me." How well she remembered the words as she
sat alone in the pastry-cook's shop in Regent Street, how well she
remembered! Well, she felt very much as that little woman had felt--she
did not care about her dignity any more; she only wanted Alfred, and
if Alfred was deceiving her, if Alfred was living a double life and
sharing his heart with another, she only wanted to go back to the
blissful time of blind ignorance, when to her he had been the embodiment
of manly dignity and robust virtue.
She got up and looked at herself in the long strip of glass which was
set between the two tall windows. It was not a becoming glass, nor was
it placed in a particularly becoming light, and Regina, who had been
through a storm of tempestuous emotion, and who bore upon her strongly
marked countenance the visible signs of her mental upheaval, looked,
frankly speaking, quite hideous. At that moment the young lady who had
taken her order for tea and muffin came into the room carrying a little
tray, and Regina made a slight pretence of adjusting her hair before she
went back to the table.
"Would you prefer to sit here, or by the window?"
"I think by the window," said Regina. Her tone was admirably
careless--so careless that it almost deceived herself.
"Will you have cream also with your tea?"
"Yes, I think I will have cream. Thank you very much."
A couple of minutes later Regina was once more alone. Certainly the open
window was more comfortable than the empty fireplace with its paper
roses. The tea was freshly made, and was good of its kind, the cream was
rich, and the muffin was the perfection of a muffin, and Regina sat with
the summer wind fanning her troubled brow, and ate and drank her simple
fare and was comforted. As she sat she stole a glance at herself in
another strip of looking-glass, in which she could see herself by
turning her head an inch or two. And as she sat there and her
storm-tossed soul was soothed and comforted by her little meal, she
began to turn things over in her mind with a less tragic spirit than she
had done before. Perhaps if Alfred had been drawn away to other gods it
had been her own fault; Alfred was so handsome, so manly, had such a
presence, and she had despised all the trifling feminine womanly things.
She had given up so much of her time to the regeneration of women that
she had let the material part of Regina Whittaker take its own course,
and Nature, left to take its own course, is never very attractive. She
was too stout. There are people of the plump little partridge order who
would look frightful in a nearer approach to their bones, but Regina had
gone fat in lumps, and Regina's eyes had never been aware of the fact
until this morning. Too much chin, too much nape of the neck, too much
at the top of the arms, too much of that which, even back in Scripture
days when coupled with "a proud look," was ever a subject for derision.
"Never proud to my Alfred," said she, leaning back in her chair; "but,"
and here she crossed her hands just below her waist, "the other is an
indisputable fact."
As she decided the question in her own mind she laid her hand upon the
little bell which stood beside her on the table.
"Did I ring?" said she. "Oh, I was not conscious of it. I think I made a
mistake in having this kind of meal. I am not accustomed to it, I feel
as if I had taken nothing."
"Try a sandwich, madam," said the young lady.
"Sandwich? I think I am not equal to sandwich to-day. Something has
happened to me; I have had a shock, and you know how we weak women fly
to feminine articles of food when we are in trouble."
"I am sorry you are in trouble, madam."
"I came in here knowing I should be quiet, and it is very quiet."
"It is the end of July. In another week we shall be more quiet still,
and after that, when the country people come, we shall not know where to
turn. When you come back from abroad or from your sojourn by the sea we
shall be as you always see us."
"I think I will have another muffin."
"I would, madam. I will tell them to put plenty of butter on it. And a
pot of tea, and a little more cream?"
"Yes," said Regina, rather weakly. The girl disappeared again, and
Regina sat back in her chair, a very comfortable one, and felt that it
was pleasant to be ministered to, and then fell to thinking about
herself again. How strange that she had never noticed any change in
Alfred! He had never seemed to find her wanting in any way. More than
once, even of late years, he had told her that the girls would never be
a patch upon her for looks, and she had accepted his tribute to her
charms in all good faith. And then she turned to the glass again and
regarded herself with new eyes--critical eyes--and she saw that her
dress was hideous, her bonnet a travesty, her hair, fine in quality and
very decent in color, made nothing of, her gloves were too small or her
hands too large. What did it matter, the result was the same; she was
inelegant, unfashionable, grotesquely stout--she was all wrong, and it
seemed as if all she had done by her work for the regeneration of
womanhood had been to cut herself adrift from her own husband.
I have said that Regina Whittaker was a very remarkable character, and I
have tried to show that she was a woman who was accustomed to judge for
herself in most circumstances of life, and who, even if she took the
wrong line, took it on her own, so to speak. Now, in what I may honestly
say was the bitterest moment of her life, she decided, judged and
determined on her own line of action just as she had done in previous
times. At this moment the relay of muffin and fresh tea arrived, and
Regina, with a smile of thanks, began with an excellent appetite to eat
the second half of her meal, and as she ate her thoughts were working
busily.
Alfred had fallen a victim to a hussy! That she was a hussy of tender
years, as compared with Regina herself, was evident. There was no
evidence to prove it, but once the idea had entered Regina's mind it
remained there and throve apace. This ignorant, youthful, gay little
hussy _must be supplanted_, her influence must be undermined, and Alfred
must be lured back to his original nobility. It was curious that no
shadow of blame for the noble Alfred presented itself to Regina. If he
had been unfaithful it was because he had been tempted by a hussy from
the allegiance which had stood the test of over twenty years. If he had
left her for other divinities it was because she had not made herself
sufficiently alluring to him; and Regina, as she ate the last piece of
the second muffin, determined there and then that she would mend her
ways.
"I will go to a beauty doctor," she told herself. "I will get rid of
every blemish that has lessened my attractions for him; I will put
myself in the hands of an expert dressmaker; she shall dress me like a
fashion-plate; I will be young, I will be slim, I will be attractive, I
will win my husband's heart back again."
Then her thoughts ran towards the Society for the Regeneration of
Women--that darling project of her later years, which she now realized
had cost her very dear. From that she must free herself; not publicly,
not with any ostensible reason, except that she had worked sufficiently
long. Others must take the reins from her hands and she must put forward
the plea that new blood was necessary, even essential, in all such
undertakings. When she had arrived at this point she was already quite
cheerful. She took out her purse from her black and gold bag and
deposited a bright new sixpence under her muffin plate as a delicate
little reward to the girl whose kindly words had been her first solace,
then satisfied herself with a long look at Julia's earrings, and then
she opened the little case which contained the tie pin that she intended
as an offering to her lord and master. This she determined she would not
present to him. A curious fancy took possession of her that she would
give him some little symbol of her unaltered affection for him. She had
never heard that pink coral was coupled with any particular meaning; it
had no place among what may be called the birthday stones. Now, Alfred's
birthday was in October, so she would choose him an opal--yes, a little
tie pin of opals with a single diamond like a crystallized tear-drop,
and she could say to him, "This opal is to bring you luck in your later
years, and the diamond has a meaning which I will tell you at some
future time--not now."
Then Regina rose up, strong in her new resolve, and, having paid her
money at the desk, went out into the summer sunshine.