Not another word about herself did Charmion say, but she began at once
to make preparations for going abroad, and before a week is over she
will be off. She has friends in Italy, it appears, and will probably
spend some time near them, but even I am only to have an official
address, from which letters are to be forwarded. She warns me that I
may hear very seldom, since when a "dark mood" is on, the very essence
of a cure seems to be to hide herself in utter solitude.
Well, I also am going to hide, and to shelter myself behind an official
address, so I ought not to complain; but all the same I do feel lorn and
lone. First Kathie torn away to another continent, and now Charmion,
who is so wonderfully dear! The next thing will be that Bridget will
announce, some fine morning, that she is going to marry the gardener! I
told her so, in a moment of dejection, and she petrified me by replying
calmly:--
"Indeed, and he's been after pestering me to do it since the moment we
set foot. There's a deal worse things I might do!"
"_Bridget_!" I gasped; and I lay back in my chair. I had spoken in the
most absolute unbelief. There were no illusions between Bridget and me,
each knew the other's age to an hour, and Queen Anne herself had not
seemed to me more dead to romance than my staid maid. I stared at her
broad, worn face, her broad, elderly figure in a petrified surprise.
"Bridget, do you really mean--do you honestly mean that you like him,
too?"
She simpered like any bit of a girl.
"And why wouldn't I be liking him, Miss Evelyn? Isn't he the fine
figure of a man, and as pleasant a way with him as if he'd been Irish
himself?"
"But, Bridget, you're forty-five! Do women--can women--is it possible
to--to _care_ at forty-five?"
Bridget chuckled; not a bit offended, but simply amused and superior.
"What's forty-foive, but the proime of life? _Care_--are you asking?
'Deed, it's not forty-five that's going to see a heart frozen stiff. Ye
mind me of the old dame of eighty, who was asked what was the age when a
woman stopped caring about a man. `'Deed,' says she, `I can't tell ye
that. You'll have to be asking someone older than me!'"
She laughed again, and I took my turn at looking superior.
"Then, of course, under the circumstances, you will not be inclined to
come with me to town?"
"'Deed, and I will then. I'd rather be with you than any man that
walks. And besides," added Bridget shrewdly, "won't he be all the
keener for doing without me a bit?"
I jumped up and marched out of the room, feeling jarred and irritated,
and utterly out of sympathy. That's the worst of being a spinster, you
can never count on your companions as a continuance! Kathie left me at
the invitation of a man she had known a few months; Charmion regards me
as a narcotic to distract her thoughts from another man, and flies off
the moment his memory becomes troublesome; and now even Bridget! Men
are a nuisance. They upset everything.
I've come to the vicarage. When Delphine heard of our departure from
"Pastimes" she developed a sudden and violent desire to have me for a
visitor for a short time before I left. She is nervy and depressed
("tired out after her hard work!" the dear Vicar translates it), and has
got it into her head that my society is the one and only thing that can
set her right. It is flattering, and convenient into the bargain, for
we are lending "Pastimes" to the widow of a poor clergyman, and it will
be a help to her to have me at hand until she has settled down. It
seemed a waste of good things to leave the house empty through all the
lovely autumn months. This poor soul is delighted to come; we are
delighted to have her; the cook and housemaid are--_resigned_ to the
change of mistress; more one cannot expect.
I've been here a week, and am already endorsing the theory that you can
never really know a person until you have lived together beneath the
same roof. Before I came, I thought the Vicar as nearly perfect a
husband as a man could be, and Delphine about as unsatisfactory a wife.
Now, after studying them for one short week, I have modified both
opinions. She is a lovable, warm-hearted, well-meaning, weak, vain,
dissatisfied child! He is a very fine, a very noble, a very blind, and
irritatingly inconsiderate man! On Wednesday he ordered dinner an hour
earlier for his own convenience, and he never came home at all. On
Friday he said he would be out all day, and walked in at one o'clock,
bringing three visitors in his train, demanding a hot lunch. He also,
it appears, is difficult about money, which is not in any sense meant to
imply that he is mean, but simply that he wishes to give away as much as
possible to other people, and to deny his own household in order to be
able to do it. I was in the room one day when Delphine presented the
monthly bills, and his face was a network of worry and depression. The
grocer's book was not included; he asked for it, and said it had been
missing some time. Delphine prevaricated. I knew as well as if I'd
been told that she was afraid to show it!
After he had gone out her mood changed. She lifted the little red books
from the table, flung them one after the other to the ceiling, caught
them with an agile hand, and sent them spinning into the corner of the
room. This done, she danced round the table, came to a standstill in
front of my chair, and defiantly snapped her fingers.
"I--don't--care! I don't care a snap! I've done my best, and now I
shan't worry any more. It isn't as if it were necessary. He could
allow me more if he chose. Why should a man stint his wife to give the
money away to outsiders? Charity begins at home. He expects me to
manage on a pittance, yet there must always be plenty of everything--
soup to send at a moment's notice to anyone who is ill, puddings and
jellies. And all the stupid old bores coming to meals. Could _you_
keep house for this household on--"
I was startled at the smallness of the sum she mentioned; horrified when
I contrasted it with our own bills at "Pastimes."
"My dear--no! My opinion of you has gone up by leaps and bounds if you
can keep anywhere near that. You manage wonderfully. I had no idea you
were so clever!"
"Oh, well!" she said uncomfortably. "Oh, well, perhaps not so clever as
you think. One gets tired of struggling after the impossible. In for a
penny, in for a pound! Life is too short to worry oneself over
halfpennies. I shall tell the men to send in the books quarterly after
this. I'm tired of being hectored every month. Better get it over in
one big dose."
I thought of the Vicar's pensive "Darling, isn't this very high?" and
laughed at the idea of "hectoring"; but the quarterly bills seemed a
dangerous remedy.
"Won't your husband object? Men hate bills to run on."
"Oh!" she waved a complacent hand, "I'll put him off. He'll remember
every now and then, and then it will float out of his mind. It's always
an effort to Jacky to come down to mundane things. Evelyn, be warned by
me, and never, never marry an unworldly man. It's impossible to live
with them with any peace or comfort."
"Well, if I do, I'll see to it that he is worldly enough to understand
household bills. I'll keep house for a month within his own limits, and
let him see how he likes the fare."
Delphine stared.
"Jacky wouldn't mind. So long as there was enough to give away, he'd
eat cold meat, and mashed potatoes, and contentment withal, every day of
the week, and never complain. I should punish myself, not him, Evelyn."
She subsided on the floor at my feet, laid her hands on my knee, and
lifted her flushed, childish face to mine. Such a delicate rose-leaf of
a face, more like a child's than that of a grown-up woman. "Now that
you've stayed here, and seen for yourself what it's like, truthfully,
aren't you just a little sorry for me? Week after week, month after
month, always the same routine of meeting and parish work, and keeping
house. It is Jacky's work--his vocation; but for me, a girl of
twenty-two, do you think it is quite _fair_?"
"I don't think you ought to ask me such questions. I would rather not
interfere," I said feebly. I knew it was feeble, but it is a very, very
delicate business to interfere between husband and wife, and moreover
the blame seemed fairly evenly divided. The Vicar had undoubtedly made
a mistake in marrying a young girl for her beauty and charm, without
considering if she were a true helpmeet for his life's work. Delphine
had undoubtedly made a mistake in "never thinking" of her future as a
clergyman's wife; and now he was blindly expecting a miraculous
transformation of the butterfly into a drone, while the butterfly was
poising her wings, impatient for flight. I sat silent, and Delphine
said pettishly:--
"I don't ask you to interfere. Only to sympathise. Is this a life for
a girl of my age?"
"It depends entirely upon the girl and her ideas of `life'. Some girls
would--"
"What?"
"Love what you call `parish'. Find in it her greatest interest."
She stared at me, the colour slowly mounting to her face. Her voice
dropped to a whisper.
"Yes, I know. If I were good, and really cared! Evelyn, I am going to
confess something dreadful. At home, when I had no responsibility, I
cared far more than I do now. I thought it would be the other way
about, but the feeling that I _must_ do things, _must_ go to meetings
and committees, _must_ go to church for all the services, makes me feel
that I'd rather not! I daren't say so to Jacky. He'd be so grieved.
I'm grieved myself. I daren't tell anyone but you. Do you think any
clergyman's wife ever felt the same before?"