“ASHES”
The following Monday morning brought an ugly scene with Gilbert, who
learned not only the tragic and sensational news from the daily paper,
but his wife’s part in it. For somehow the reporters had found out that
she was present at the performance, and “the beautiful Mrs. Currey” was
credited in one sensational rag with having “dashed forward heroically
to try and save her sister-in-law, The Girlie Girl, from the impact of
the curtain.” Claudia had not reckoned for this notoriety, and if Gilbert
had shown any human sympathy with poor Fay she would have forgiven his
ebullition of temper as excusable under the circumstances.
“You deliberately took advantage of my being in the country to frequent
low music-halls with this woman,” he flung at her, his eyes bloodshot
with anger.
Claudia controlled her rising anger. “I went on the spur of the moment,
Gilbert. Jack came in to fetch me on Saturday afternoon.”
“I suppose you’ve been planning it for some time,” he sneered. “It was a
nice thing to have to explain to my father and mother. My mother! who
has never been in a music-hall in her life.”
“Perhaps it would do her good if she had.... You talk as if I knew what
was going to happen.”
“Scandal on scandal!”
“Scandal! Is that all you can call it?” cried Claudia, a picture of Fay,
so pitifully flattened out under the curtain, rising before her eyes. “Do
you realize that she is paralysed for life—that everything is _finished_
for her?”
“It’s a pity she wasn’t killed outright,” returned Gilbert callously,
“instead of remaining a disgrace to the family. But my mother warned me
long ago,” he added injudiciously, almost beside himself with rage, for
now these paroxysms grew on him and contorted any sense of fairness or
kindness that had ever been in his composition.
“Of what did your mother warn you?” said Claudia, her nostrils dilating,
her eyes flashing. “Of marrying _me_? I insist on an answer.”
“This isn’t the first scandal in your family, is it? I’m not throwing
your mother’s sins up against you, you are not responsible for her; but
why on earth have you got the same _flair_ for the sensational? You’ve
deliberately courted this by going to see this—this woman.”
“Don’t call her ‘this woman,’ as though she were a leper,” said Claudia
passionately. “She’s earned her living by hard work ever since she was
fourteen years old. How many women can boast of that? What if she hasn’t
led a conventional life? A good many women whom you shake by the hand
are a good deal less virtuous, and certainly far less honest. Because
she hasn’t dodged behind a wedding-ring or covered up her tracks you
look upon her with contempt. And even if she were the most unscrupulous,
mercenary creature alive, you might be sorry now. Twenty-two, and life
over for her!” To Claudia, with her Grecian appreciation of youth
and life, this seemed a tragedy of tragedies. Once, as a child, when
a gambolling puppy from the stables had got under the wheels of the
brougham and been killed she had wept for days, and as she had looked
down at the little fat white body that would never frisk any more, she
had learned a lesson never to be forgotten. The puppy had taught her
early to see the inestimable boon of youth and life. To be _alive_, to
have all one’s faculties and powers of enjoyment, that is the great gift
of the gods, she had told herself then. There had always been something
of the pagan in her, and she had ever refused to believe that death is
the gate of Life.
“So you are sprouting the modern jargon, are you?” said Gilbert angrily.
“Listen, Claudia. You married me, and you must respect my name. I thought
you were different from the women in your set, or I should not have
married you. Apparently you are not different, but _I_ am different from
the husbands of those women. You’d better remember that. I allow you to
go your own way, I give you perfect liberty, but on condition that you do
not drag my name into club smoking-rooms and smart restaurants. There has
never been a breath of talk about my mother, and there shall not be about
my wife. If you want that kind of notoriety—you will not remain my wife.”
Claudia stood motionless, listening to this outburst, very erect, her
head thrown up, her neck making a beautiful but disdainful line with her
chin. A sarcastic, enigmatic smile played round her sensitive mouth,
and her eyes were cold and keenly critical. She had suddenly seen the
coarseness of his lips, the deadly, soul-destroying coldness of his
self-satisfied, sombre eyes. He was merely a male, a high-handed,
aggressive male, with the highly specialized brain of a lawyer. Heart?
When had he ever shown any heart? She had never once touched his heart,
only his senses. His feeling for his mother and father was only a sort
of clannish family pride. Why, even Jack’s love for Fay, lacking as it
was in all the big qualities that make love worth while, was a much finer
thing than Gilbert’s feeling for her. For a moment a revulsion of shame,
a feeling of humiliation swept over her at the thought of what she had
given him.
“If you were not afraid of being laughed at, of being made to look small,
you wouldn’t care a jot what I did, would you?” she said with deadly
precision. “You have a profound contempt for women, haven’t you? You
married me for my looks, because I aroused your passion, because it is
the general habit of man to instal a woman in his home. I am installed
here and I have the privilege of calling myself Mrs. Currey; otherwise,
had I been a woman of lower station and more easy virtue, you would have
fired me out long ago, wouldn’t you? I am to live on the ashes of your
passion—I, a woman with no children! You are asking too much, my husband.
As for that poor, maimed child, I shall go to her as often as she wants
me.”
She was surprised, when he had gone, at the calmness with which she could
turn to her ordinary occupations. She felt anger, contempt, the sting of
her own humiliation, but he had no longer the power to wound her heart.
She remembered the time—was it ages ago or only a year or so?—when, after
an altercation or lack of response on his part, she had fled to her room
and sobbed or brooded until she had made herself ill. Then her being
had been shaken to its foundations, and she had felt the results on her
nervous system for days.
But this morning, once the fierce blaze of her anger had burned out, she
shrugged her shoulders and sat down to her escritoire. She must make her
life without Gilbert. To allow a man she neither loved nor respected to
destroy her balance would be a sign of weakness.
She was organizing, with Colin Paton, a concert in aid of a home for
Penniless Gentlewomen, a charity which had always aroused her sympathy,
and there was a good deal to be done. She was herself feeing Mrs. Milton
to sing, and she had promised to come in that morning and give her some
advice on the other artistes to be engaged.
It was not long before the maid showed her into her boudoir, but a much
smarter-looking woman than she had been at Mrs. Rivington’s party.
Claudia had contrived to make her accept one or two modish dresses
without hurting her feelings or her dignity, and she had also secured
her several lucrative engagements. It is needless to say that Margaret
Milton’s generous heart held almost an adoration for Claudia.
“I hope I’m not late,” she said, as she came into the room, “but I had
to do a little grave-digging before I could get away. Ugh! I thought the
whole neighbourhood would be poisoned, the monkeys!”
Claudia laughingly inquired whose grave she had been digging.
“You must know that a favourite cat died about a month ago, and was
gathered to—the other cats in limbo. I allowed the children to bury it
in the back garden—quite deep—and erect a tombstone. This morning, just
as I was coming out, I became aware of an awful effluvia in the house.
I wondered if the drains had suddenly gone wrong, and rushed round
distraught. I found it was worse at the back of the house. Then I looked
out of the window and saw——”
“No!”
“Yes. They had disinterred the cat to see how ‘she was getting on.’”
After they had both laughed over the children’s enterprise, they got to
work. Claudia asked her opinion about an accompanist.
“Lucy Hamilton used to accompany most sympathetically, but—no—I don’t
suppose she would have decent clothes to come up in, and I daresay she
may not have kept up her music.”
“Lucy Hamilton,” repeated Claudia, “not a sister of——?”
“Yes, Frank’s old-maid sister. Poor Lucy! She had such talent, and she
was sacrificed to him right along.”
Claudia pondered a minute. “Does she still live somewhere in the country?”
“Salisbury. Yes, she gives music-lessons at a shilling an hour! It must
be torture to her. Her old mother and she live in a tiny home together.”
“But, Mrs. Milton,” said Claudia, bewildered, “are they as poor as all
that? How can they be when——?” She stopped, and then she decided to put
the question that had been on her lips. “Will she not accept help from
her son Frank?”
“Oh, yes! he does help her—a little.” Then she continued thoughtfully:
“It does seem wrong, doesn’t it, that people won’t pay for pictures
nowadays. I suppose we shall soon have no artists.”
Claudia stared. “But he gets big prices now for his pictures. A couple
of years ago, I know, he was nearly starving, but he gets his own prices
now.”
It was Mrs. Milton’s turn to look startled. For the moment she had
forgotten that Claudia and he were friends. She tried to gloss over what
might have been an indiscretion.
“I’m glad to hear it; perhaps—no doubt he will be able to help them more
soon.... I think Miss Ronald would accompany splendidly, and I’ve got her
address at home.”
“Mrs. Milton,” went on Claudia, a curious expression in her eyes, “have
you heard from this Lucy Hamilton _recently_? And has—Mrs. Hamilton been
a good mother to him—them both?”
“I heard from Lucy only yesterday. I wanted her to come up for a
change—you can’t think how she revels in a few concerts, it’s a joy to
take her, and I can always get tickets—but her own words were: ‘I’m
much too shabby to come to town; such a lot of pupils owe me money, and
mother’s illness in the winter was expensive.’” She did not add that the
writer had gone on to say that her brother did not like her to come to
town unless she was decently dressed, and that though he was getting on
and acquiring reputation, he could not at the moment help them more than
he was doing.
“As for Mrs. Hamilton being a good mother,” went on Mrs. Milton, “she’s
been one of the best. Her husband was a small solicitor and left them
very badly off. It was she who screwed the money out of the housekeeping
that Frank should go to Paris and study painting. Lucy, who was just as
clever at music, had to teach herself. I do hope, now he is getting on,
that Frank will make their lives easier.”
“You don’t like him?” said Claudia abruptly. There was a subtle something
in Mrs. Milton’s tone that convinced her.
Mrs. Milton hesitated.
“You can speak quite honestly. Why not? You knew him for some years, did
you not?”
“Yes, we lived next door to them in the High Street for years.... I think
artists are always rather egotistical and selfish, don’t you? His mother
adored him, and perhaps that doesn’t do a man any good. I want my boys
to have happy memories of their youth and me, but I do try not to spoil
them. I try and remember that they will be husbands to some nice girls
later on. He always let her do all the giving ... one shouldn’t give too
much, however much one loves. One should insist on some exchange, if only
for the sake of the loved one.”
“And yet,” said Claudia, scrawling weird figures on the blotting-pad,
“they say that the ideal love means self-sacrifice, that true happiness
is to be found in giving.”
“But it isn’t an ideal world in which we live, is it?” said Mrs. Milton
gently. “Isn’t that sometimes a form of selfishness? I know by experience
with the children that it’s often the tempting path, ‘the easiest way,’
but if one really loves the little minds and hearts, one must sometimes
bear the tears and the sulks that follow when you are firm. You’ll know
that one day, when you have children of your own.”
“And with men and women?”
“Many women, I think, have made themselves and their men unhappy by
giving too much and too freely. It’s become a habit with women. We can’t
stand their frowns and their tempers. But I’m sure it’s a mistake. My
husband is the dearest of men, but at the beginning of our life together
I nearly became a doormat—just of my own accord.... Shall we fix on Miss
Ronald?”
They worked steadily for half an hour, when there was a loud commotion
on the stairs. It startled Margaret Milton, but Claudia knew the cause.
Pat had lately acquired a huge puppy sheepdog, with the result that her
arrival was always somewhat like that of a circus in full swing.
Pat and the dog, who had been christened Socrates because he was such a
fool, came tumbling in together.
“He’s chewed up half a mat downstairs while I was using your telephone,
Claudia. How do you do, Mrs. Milton. Allow me, Mrs. Milton—Socrates.
Socky, go and lie down and take a short snooze. He’s the terror of
Mayfair. He upset two children and a mail-cart this morning, and he’s
been in the Round Pond and splashed me from head to foot. How’s poor
little Fay getting on?”
“No change,” said Claudia, with a sigh. “I’m going down there after
lunch.”
Pat drew in her breath. “Heavens! if anything like that should happen to
me, I’d go mad! I should yell the house down. She must know something.
It’s a fortnight now. She must suspect something.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” said Claudia. “Sometimes I think I see panic in
her eyes, then the next moment she’s asking me a conundrum she’s found
in some penny journal and roaring with laughter at my wild guesses. She
talks about getting up soon—she’s had the piano taken in, and yesterday
she was singing ‘to keep her voice from getting mildewy,’ but—I don’t
know. If she knows—if she’s got any suspicion, she’s the pluckiest little
soul I’ve ever known.”
After that first awful night, it had become a practice for her to go
down to the flat almost daily, each time devising some fresh forms of
amusement—Fay was like a child—and directing the domestic machinery,
which was now much smoother. The clinging helpless hands of Fay gave her
a strange feeling, and a curious bond had sprung up between them. To
Fay, Claudia, with her education and culture, was something wonderfully
clever, something she had never known, something that made her long,
in her generous, undisciplined heart, to emulate, to grow into. She
considered Claudia’s knowledge of books and pictures amazing. She told
all her fellow-professionals who flocked to see her—and they were a
strange, bizarre crowd—that her sister-in-law was the most wonderful and
splendid lady in the world, and when Jack occasionally talked carelessly
of his sister, she was roused to such volleys of wrathful words that
the nurse had to ask him not to excite her. In all her moods—sometimes
babyish, when she would play with dolls and mechanical toys; sometimes
fretful, when nothing pleased her and she wailed to get well; sometimes
optimistic and full of ideas for new turns and songs—Claudia was always
wanted and loudly welcomed. Fay did not always want Jack—perhaps she
divined something of his repugnance to sickness—she did not always want
her “pals,” but she always listened eagerly for Claudia’s step in the
hall, and if she did not come, sent the nurse to the telephone.
* * * * *
Soon after, Mrs. Milton took her departure.
Pat sat in a low chair, her long legs sprawling half across the room.
For a long time neither of them spoke. Claudia stood gazing out of the
window across the Park. The trees were gloriously green now, and like
fluttering heralds of summer, brilliant in the sunlight. The sun touched
the gilt of the Albert Memorial so that it mingled with the tender greens
and almost reconciled her to it. She was thinking of Mrs. Milton’s story
of Hamilton’s mother and sister. She knew her statement was correct. She
knew several large cheques had been despatched to him by people with whom
she had brought him in touch. Was he—she shrank from the word like a
loathsome disease—was he _mean_? He had evidently not wished to renew his
acquaintance with Mrs. Milton that night at the Rivingtons. Why? Did he
desire to forget his small beginnings—the obligations of which she must
have reminded him? It was a corroding idea, and Claudia was glad when Pat
commenced to speak in a—for her—thoughtful tone.
“I must be a throw-back. That’s the explanation always trotted out
nowadays, isn’t it?”
“A throw-back, Pat? What on earth are you talking about?” She turned and
looked at the fresh, boyish face, the slim, long limbs, the sophisticated
and yet innocent eyes of her sister.
“We’re a funny family, aren’t we? We’ve just dragged ourselves up anyhow.
I went to a lecture on heredity the other day. What do we inherit, I
asked myself? Father’s an invertebrate jellyfish, and mother—well,
mother’s Circe! Grandfather, on mother’s side, is a gay old dog still,
and father’s father was a leader of lost causes and died young. Bit
of a jumble, isn’t it? I’ve been puzzling over it for days. I heard
someone say of you the other day—of course, they were discussing you in
connection with The Girlie Girl—‘she’s Circe’s daughter.’ We’re both
Circe’s daughters, and I’m not a bit like her. I say, I’m a throw-back
somewhere. Mother always cared for men, never for women. I don’t care
a scrap for men in any sexual way—oh, yes! don’t look so wise, I’ve
experimented in a few flirtations—and I simply hate them—that way. I like
hunting with them and playing golf and wading in the water, fishing,
but directly they get sentimental and want to kiss me I curl up inside.
Most girls, I’ve found out, like being kissed, even if they are not in
love. I nearly murdered Dicky Trevor the other day because he kissed
me unexpectedly on the nape of the neck. No, Circe hasn’t given me any
heritage, and I don’t think I’m so backboneless as father. I’ve got a
scheme growing in my head—I shan’t tell you about it till I’m sure of my
own mind—but it doesn’t include a husband.”
Claudia looked attentively at her sister. For the first time it flashed
across her that the baffling thing about Pat was that so far she was
quite sexless. She had been eager to come out for the fun of the dancing
and the parties, but she had never had that shy anticipation of love that
makes so many girls of eighteen eager to be presented. The books she read
as a child were always stirring adventure stories, travels and records
of real achievements. Fairy-tales with the all-conquering prince had
bored her, all except the passages that dealt with sanguinary fights and
treasure-trove. Later on she had read one or two famous French romances
out of curiosity, but they had failed to make any appeal whatever.
Her enthusiasms, her outbursts of passion, her thrills, were reserved
for golf and hockey, and she had once said that the greatest and most
satisfying moments of life to her were when she was on the back of her
favourite horse, following the hounds. She liked men. Indeed, on the
whole, she preferred them to women, but only because they were better
and more vigorous sportsmen and less liable to be petty and jealous.
As Claudia surveyed her she realized that she neither could give nor
did she wish to proffer advice. Pat must face her own problem. Before
her marriage she would have rushed in where experience fears to tread,
and talked to Pat of the joys of love, of the folly of the woman who
disdained or belittled what man could offer. Now all her landmarks were
gone. She had messed up her own life. All she could do was to listen and
reflect what an awful muddle and enigma life was for women, and wonder
why Providence had given them no chart to steer by.
“You see,” continued Pat, “I’ve thought the thing out, and it wouldn’t be
playing cricket to marry a man if you didn’t want him—that way. I tried
to tell a man the other day how I felt, and he said he’d be a chum and
wouldn’t worry me; but I saw the look in his eyes even then, and I knew
it would be hell for both of us. Men always want women that way.”
Who had said something like that recently? Ah, yes! it had been said by
Jack, apropos of Colin Paton.
“You are very wise this morning,” said Claudia, with a forced laugh. “If
you feel this way there may be men who also are celibates at heart.”
“Haven’t met any,” said Pat laconically, giving Socky a kick to stop his
stentorian dreams. “He’s chasing bunnies in the Park.”
“Oh! there are men. A good many women complain of—lack of attention on
the part of their husbands.”
“Then the attentions go to some other woman, or he’s an uninteresting
money-grabber.”
“Don’t generalize so much.... What about a man like Colin Paton?”
Pat laughed derisively, so that Socky got up and barked. “Shut up, you
fool; I’m laughing at my sister, who has the foolishness of a babe!
Have you known Paton all these years and not seen beneath the surface?
Gracious! even if he likes me—which he doesn’t expect to crack jokes
with—that would be the last man I’d experiment with. He’s full of emotion
underneath that quiet exterior. If I could return it, I’d rather like
to be loved by Colin Paton. Why, he’d make the most tender and ardent
of lovers if he gained the heart of the right woman. Have you seen him
with his widowed mother? Oh! he’s perfectly sweet to her, and she adores
him. She’s such a nice, cosy thing, too; you feel you want to sit on a
footstool at her feet and have her stroke your hair.”
“If you’re right, it’s curious he hasn’t married.”
She was looking out of the window again, and she didn’t see the curious
look her sister cast at her. Pat finished up the conversation with:
“Come on, Socks, we’re going to our happy home. Men like Colin Paton
often get left because most women are fools where love is concerned. It’s
been the study of their lives for centuries, and even now they can’t tell
a piece of glass from a diamond. Because a man doesn’t come along like
a raging whirlwind they think he’s cold, and because he loudly swears
fidelity like a tinkling cymbal they think they can put their money on
him. The metaphors are a bit mixed, but what I’m driving at is this.
Women seldom have any judgment where men are concerned, and the nicer the
woman the less sound is her judgment. Only bad women have good judgment
regarding men. I—Patricia Iverson—have spoken. Selah! Socks!”