TONY STRETTON MAKES A PROPOSAL
Regular as Warrisden had declared the lives of the truants to be, on
the night following the dance at Lady Millingham's there came a break
in the monotony of their habits. For once in a way they did not leave
the house in their search for light and colour as soon as they were
free. They stayed on in their own sitting-room. But it seemed that
they had nothing to speak about. Millie Stretton sat at the table,
staring at the wall in front of her, moody and despairing. Tony
Stretton leaned against the embrasure of the window, now and then
glancing remorsefully at his wife, now and then looking angrily up to
the ceiling where the heavy footsteps of a man treading up and down
the room above sounded measured and unceasing.
Tony lifted a corner of the blind and looked out.
"There's a party next door," he said, "there was another at Lady
Millingham's last night. You should have been at both, Millie, and you
were at neither. Upon my word, it's rough."
He dropped the blind and came over to her side. He knew quite well
what parties and entertainments meant to her. She loved them, and it
seemed to him natural and right that she should. Light, admiration,
laughter and gaiety, and fine frocks--these things she was born to
enjoy, and he himself had in the old days taken a great pride in
watching her enjoyment. But it was not merely the feeling that she had
been stripped of what was her due through him which troubled him
to-night. Other and deeper thoughts were vaguely stirring in his mind.
"We have quarrelled again to-night, Millie," he continued
remorsefully. "Here we are cooped up together with just ourselves to
rely upon to pull through these bad years, and we have quarrelled
again."
Millie shrugged her shoulders.
"How did it begin?" he asked. "Upon my word I don't remember. Oh yes,
I----" and Millie interrupted him.
"What does it matter, Tony, how the quarrel began? It did begin, and
another will begin to-morrow. We can't help ourselves, and you have
given the reason. Here we are cooped up by ourselves with nothing else
to do."
Tony pulled thoughtfully at his moustache.
"And we swore off quarrelling, too. When was that?"
"Yesterday."
"Yesterday!" exclaimed Tony, with a start of surprise. "By George, so
it was. Only yesterday."
Millie looked up at him, and the trouble upon his face brought a smile
to hers. She laid a hand upon his arm.
"It's no use swearing off, Tony," she said. "We are both of us living
all the time in a state of exasperation. I just--tingle with it,
there's no other word. And the least, smallest thing which goes wrong
sets us quarrelling. I don't think either of us is to blame. The house
alone gets on our nerves, doesn't it? These great empty, silent, dingy
rooms, with their tarnished furniture. Oh! they are horrible! I wander
through them sometimes and it always seems to me that, a long time
ago, people lived here who suddenly felt one morning that they
couldn't stand it for a single moment longer, and ran out and locked
the street door behind them; and I have almost done it myself. The
very sunlight comes through the windows timidly, as if it knew it had
no right here at all."
She leaned back in her chair, looking at Tony with eyes that were
hopeless and almost haggard. As Tony listened to her outburst the
remorse deepened on his face.
"If I could have foreseen all this, I would have spared you it,
Millie," he said. "I would, upon my word." He drew up a chair to the
table, and, sitting down, said in a more cheerful voice, "Let's talk
it over, and see if we can't find a remedy."
Millie shook her head.
"We talked it over yesterday."
"Yes, so we did."
"And quarrelled an hour after we had talked it over."
"We did that too," Tony agreed, despondently. His little spark of
hopefulness was put out and he sat in silence. His wife, too, did not
speak, and in a short while it occurred to him that the silence was
more complete than it had been a few minutes ago. It seemed that a
noise had ceased, and a noise which, unnoticed before, had become
noticeable by its cessation. He looked up to the ceiling. The heavy
footsteps no longer dragged upon the floor overhead. Tony sprang up.
"There! He is in bed," he exclaimed. "Shall we go out?"
"Not to-night," replied Millie.
He could make no proposal that night which was welcomed, and as he
walked over to the mantelshelf and filled his pipe, there was
something in his attitude and bearing which showed to Millie that the
quick rebuff had hurt.
"I can't pretend to-night, Tony, and that's the truth," she added in a
kinder voice. "For, after all, I do only pretend nowadays that I find
the Savoy amusing."
Tony turned slowly round with the lighted match in his hand and stared
at his wife. He was a man slow in thought, and when his thoughts
compelled expression, laborious in words. The deeper thoughts which
had begun of late to take shape in his mind stirred again at her
words.
"You have owned it," he said.
"It had been pretence with you too, then?" she asked, looking up in
surprise.
Tony puffed at his pipe.
"Of late, yes," he replied. "Perhaps chiefly since I saw that you were
pretending."
He came back to her side and looked for a long time steadily at her
while he thought. It was a surprise to Millie that he had noticed her
pretence, as much of a surprise as that he had been pretending too.
For she knew him to be at once slow to notice any change in others and
quick to betray it in himself. But she was not aware how wide a place
she filled in all his thoughts, partly because her own nature with its
facile emotions made her unable to conceive a devotion which was
engrossing, and partly because Tony himself had no aptitude for
expressing such a devotion, and indeed would have shrunk from its
expression had the aptitude been his. But she did fill that wide
place. Very slowly he had begun to watch her, very slowly and dimly
certain convictions were taking shape, very gradually he was drawing
nearer and nearer to a knowledge that a great risk must be taken and a
great sacrifice made partly by him, partly too by her. Some part of
his trouble he now spoke to her.
"It wasn't pretence a year ago, Millie," he said wistfully. "That's
what bothers me. We enjoyed slipping away quietly when the house was
quiet, and snatching some of the light, some of the laughter the
others have any time they want it. It made up for the days, it was fun
then, Millie, wasn't it? Upon my word, I believe we enjoyed our life,
yes, even this life, a year ago. Do you remember how we used to drive
home, laughing over what we had seen, talking about the few people we
had spoken to? It wasn't until we had turned the latch-key in the
door, and crept into the hall----"
"And passed the library door," Millie interrupted, with a little
shiver.
Tony Stretton stopped for a moment. Then he resumed in a lower voice,
"Yes, it wasn't until we had passed the library door that the gloom
settled down again. But now the fun's all over, at the latest when the
lights go down in the supper room, and often before we have got to
them at all. We were happy last year"--and he shook her affectionately
by the arm--"that's what bothers me."
His wife responded to the gentleness of his voice and action.
"Never mind, Tony," she said. "Some day we shall look back on all of
it--this house and the empty rooms and the quarrels"--she hesitated
for a second--"Yes, and the library door; we shall look back on it all
and laugh."
"Shall we?" said Tony, suddenly. His face was most serious, his voice
most doubtful.
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Millie. Then she added reassuringly,
"It must end some time. Oh yes, it can't last for ever."
"No," replied Tony; "but it can last just long enough."
"Long enough for what?"
"Long enough to spoil both our lives altogether."
He was speaking with a manner which was quite strange to her. There
was a certainty in his voice, there was a gravity too. He had ceased
to leave the remedy of their plight to time and chance, since, through
two years, time and chance had failed them. He had been seriously
thinking, and as the result of thought he had come to definite
conclusions. Millie understood that there was much more behind the
words he had spoken and that he meant to say that much more to her
to-night. She was suddenly aware that she was face to face with issues
momentous to both of them. She began to be a little afraid. She looked
at Tony almost as if he were a stranger.
"Tony," she said faintly, in deprecation.
"We must face it, Millie," he went on steadily. "This life of ours
here in this house will come to an end, of course, but how will it
leave us, you and me? Soured, embittered, quarrelsome, or no longer
quarrelsome, but just indifferent to each other, bored by each other?"
He was speaking very slowly, choosing each word with difficulty.
"Oh no," Millie protested.
"It may be even worse than that. Suppose we passed beyond indifference
to dislike--yes, active dislike. We are both of us young, we can both
reasonably look forward to long lives, long lives of active dislike.
There might too be contempt on your side."
Millie stared at her husband.
"Contempt?" she said, echoing his words in surprise.
"Yes. Here are you, most unhappy, and I take it sitting down. Contempt
might come from that."
"But what else can you do?" she said.
"Ah," said Tony, as though he had been waiting for that question,
couched in just those words. "Ask yourself that question often enough,
and contempt will come."
This idea of contempt was a new one to Millie, and very likely her
husband was indiscreet in suggesting its possibility. But he was not
thinking at all of the unwisdom of his words. His thoughts were set on
saving the cherished intimacy of their life from the ruin which he saw
was likely to overtake it. He spoke out frankly, not counting the
risk. Millie, for her part, was not in the mood to estimate the truth
of what he said, although it remained in her memory. She was rather
confused by the new aspect which her husband wore. She foresaw that he
was working towards the disclosure of a plan; and the plan would
involve changes, great changes, very likely a step altogether into the
dark. And she hesitated.
"We sha'n't alter, Tony," she said. "You can be sure of me, can't
you?"
"But we are altering," he replied. "Already the alteration has begun.
Did we quarrel a year ago as we do now? We enjoyed those evenings when
we played truant, a year ago"; and then he indulged in a yet greater
indiscretion than any which he had yet allowed himself to utter. But
he was by nature simple and completely honest. Whatever occurred to
him, that he spoke without reserve, and the larger it loomed in his
thoughts the more strenuous was its utterance upon his lips. He took a
seat at the table by her side.
"I know we are changing. I take myself, and I expect it is the same
with you. I am--it is difficult to express it--I am deadening. I am
getting insensible to the things which not very long ago moved me very
much. I once had a friend who fell ill of a slow paralysis, which
crept up his limbs little by little and he hardly noticed its advance.
I think that's happening with me. I am losing the associations--that's
the word I want--the associations which made one's recollections
valuable, and gave a colour to one's life. For instance, you sang a
song last night, Millie, one of those coon songs of yours--do you
remember? You sang it once in Scotland on a summer's night. I was
outside on the lawn, and past the islands across the water, which was
dark and still, I saw the lights in Oban bay. I thought I would never
hear that song again without seeing those lights in my mind far away
across the water, clustered together like the lights of a distant
town. Well, last night all those associations were somehow dead. I
remembered all right, but without any sort of feeling, that that song
was a landmark in one's life. It was merely you singing a song, or
rather it was merely some one singing a song."
It was a laboured speech, and Tony was very glad to have got it over.
"I am very sorry," replied Millie in a low voice. She did not show him
her face, and he had no notion whatever that his words could hardly
have failed to hurt. He was too intent upon convincing her, and too
anxious to put his belief before her with unmistakable clearness to
reflect in what spirit she might receive the words. That her first
thought would be "He no longer cares" never occurred to him at all,
and cheerfully misunderstanding her acquiescence, he went on--
"You see that's bad. It mustn't go on, Millie. Let's keep what we've
got. At all costs let us keep that!"
"You mean we must go away?" said Millie, and Tony Stretton did not
answer. He rose from his chair and walked back to the fireplace and
knocked the ashes from his pipe. Millie was accustomed to long
intervals between her questions and his replies, but she was on the
alert now. Something in his movements and his attitude showed her that
he was not thinking of what answer he should make. He was already sure
upon that point. Only the particular answer he found difficult to
speak. She guessed it on the instant and stood up erect, in alarm.
"You mean that you must go away, and that I must remain?"
Tony turned round to her and nodded his head.
"Alone! Here?" she exclaimed, looking round her with a shiver.
"For a little while. Until I have made a home for you to come to. Only
till then, Millie. It needn't be so very long."
"It will seem ages!" she cried, "however short it is. Tony, it's
impossible."
The tedious days stretched before her in an endless and monotonous
succession. The great rooms would be yet more silent, and more empty
than they were; there would be a chill throughout all the house; the
old man's exactions would become yet more oppressive, since there
would be only one to bear them. She thought of the long dull evenings,
in the faded drawing-room. They were bad enough now, those long
evenings during which she read the evening paper aloud, and Sir John
slept, yet not so soundly but that he woke the instant her voice
stopped, and bade her continue. What would they be if Tony were gone,
if there were no hour or so at the end when they were free to play
truant if they willed? What she had said was true. She had been merely
pretending to enjoy their hour of truancy, but she would miss it none
the less. And in the midst of these thoughts she heard Tony's voice.
"It sounds selfish, I know, but it isn't really. You see, I sha'n't
enjoy myself. I have not been brought up to know anything well or to
do anything well--anything, I mean, really useful--I'll have a pretty
hard time too." And then he described to her what he thought of doing.
He proposed to go out to one of the colonies, spend some months on a
farm as a hand, and when he had learned enough of the methods, and had
saved a little money, to get hold of a small farm to which he could
ask her to come. It was a pretty and a simple scheme, and it ignored
the great difficulties in the way, such as his ignorance and his lack
of capital. But he believed in it sincerely, and every word in his
short and broken sentences proved his belief. He had his way that
night with Millicent. She was capable of a quick fervour, though the
fervour might as quickly flicker out. She saw that the sacrifice was
really upon his side, for upon him would be the unaccustomed burden of
labour, and the labour would be strange and difficult. She rose to his
height since he was with her and speaking to her with all the
conviction of his soul.
"Well, then, go," she cried. "I'll wait here, Tony, till you send for
me."
And when she passed the library door that night she did not even
shrink.