Two years later, the musician and his wife went down to Relton for their
Easter holiday. They stayed at the "Relton Arms," although they had a
warm invitation to the Court instead; but Digby was unusually firm in
his determination not to be the guest of Lady Joan, and Norah's
objections that there was no nursery for the baby, and that people would
"wonder," were for once overruled. She satisfied her sense of the
fitness of things by telling Mrs. Reginald Routh and her set that there
were early romantic associations in connection with the little old
country inn which induced her and her husband to go there again; and to
people who spent their lives in straining after unconventional effects
with a conventional reason for them in the background in case it was
wanted, the explanation was quite sufficient. But the fact remained that
the "Relton Arms" offered insufficient accommodation for a baby and a
growing boy and a nurse, and there were jars in that holiday in
consequence.
"This is what I like," exclaimed the musician, enthusiastically, at
breakfast, the morning after their arrival: "fresh eggs and milk
straight from the cow--the--the animal I mean, none of your cooked-up
stuff such as we've been eating in Victoria Street. I can't think why
you don't have it straight up from here, Norah, instead of--"
"Because you said the eggs at the Stores were just as good, dear, and
they are cheaper; don't you remember?" said his wife, gently. Digby
wished, not for the first time, that her memory were less reliable.
"Well, at any rate, the milk is a different thing; just look at the
cream on it. Baby ought to thrive on stuff like that, oughtn't she?"
"That is just what I am anxious about; It has only upset her so far.
Hark! is that baby crying? Precious thing! Do you mind managing Sonny's
egg and pouring out the coffee, Digby, while I run upstairs?"
"I am inclined to agree with Plato," began the musician, earnestly; but
his wife was gone, and Sonny was clamoring for food. He took up an egg,
and then almost dropped it again as the wooden door was pushed open from
without, with the same creak as of yore.
"Auntie Joan, Auntie Joan," shrieked Sonny, tumbling off his high-chair
with a clatter, and dragging the tablecloth with a medley of spoons and
knives after him. The musician was thankful for the diversion at that
moment, and forebore to swear as he set his son on his feet again, and
held out his hand with a smile to Lady Joan. She was in her
riding-habit, and he told himself that she looked like Diana, or any
other goddess that represents the woman a man admires.
"Well?" she said, with her fresh, breezy laugh, "how soon will you be
tired of picknicking and ready to come to terms? And where's Norah?"
"Upstairs. There's a draught under the bedroom door, and Mrs. Haxtell
has quarrelled violently with nurse. Baby cries perpetually--teeth. And
I can't get any breakfast. That's all so far, I think;" and he laughed
as heartily as she, and they bumped their heads together under the table
in picking up the fallen utensils, and came up again with red faces just
as Norah returned with the baby in her arms.
"Oh, is it you, Joan? So glad to see you, dear; sit down and have some
breakfast. Why haven't you poured out the coffee, Digby? How helpless
men are! Take baby a minute, will you? There, you have set her off
again, just when I had quieted her. She has taken cold in the night,
that's what it is. Hush, hush! There then, it sha'n't, that it
sha'n't!"
"After all," began the musician in a momentary lull, "I do think
Plato--"
"Will you give Digby something to eat, Joan, dear?" interposed Norah
gently; and peace presently pervaded the breakfast-table.
"The lambs _is_ fat, isn't they, daddy?" asked Sonny, from the
window-seat. "How does the lambs know, daddy, which sheep is their right
mother?"
"Confound his precocity," grumbled the musician; "what is one to do with
a son like that? Besides, I can't tell him myself; how _do_ they know?"
"They don't," said Lady Joan, promptly; "it's a fact I used to dispute
with my governess in my youth. It is only we who take it upon ourselves
to say that they do; we have no means of proving it. The sheep takes
them as they come, and looks equally bored with them all."
Digby laughed loudly, and Norah murmured something in a pained voice
about maternal instinct.
"All nonsense, my dear," persisted Lady Joan, gayly; "no amount of
maternal instinct could help a sheep to tell her own lamb from any other
sheep's lamb. Besides, why should she want to? As it is, she can have a
change without being called fickle. Happy sheep!"
Sonny was standing with his legs very wide apart and his blue eyes fixed
on her face, as she said this.
"Auntie Joan's pertending," he said solemnly. The others laughed, which
awoke the slumbering baby again; and Norah, after complaining between
its wails that the draught under the bedroom door was answerable for
everything, carried it upstairs again by way of curing it.
"Well, what is it?" said the musician, in the peace that ensued on his
wife's departure; and he lighted his cigarette and looked across at Lady
Joan.
"How did you know there was anything?" she asked.
"I always know," he said, in a superior tone; "we haven't been chums all
these years for nothing. Tell me what's up, dear. Hasn't Jack been
writing to you, the scamp?"
"Oh, yes. He always writes. He is quite good. _I_ am the naughty one; I
always have been, I think. I am not fit to be engaged; it is true what I
told you--that day."
They were very fond of making allusions to _that day_; they told
themselves it was one of the privileges of their friendship, now that
_she_ was safely engaged and _he_ was securely married, to mention
subjects which were not always even respectable; it did not occur to
them that this constant renewal of back chapters in their lives had more
to do with their egoism than their friendship.
"And what dreadful thing have you been doing now, please?" asked Digby.
She flung back her head and laughed mockingly, as she used to do.
"Do you remember telling me that marriage was the only way out of it? I
am half inclined to agree with you now, though I wrote to Jack
yesterday to break off our engagement. That is all."
Sonny hummed his baby ditty on the window-seat, without interruption,
for a few seconds.
Then the musician laid down his cigarette.
"You--did--that?" he said, drawing a long breath; "what a wonderful
creature you are, Joan!"
"Only wonderful?" she said lightly; "are you sure you don't mean
heartless?"
"Why did you do it? Do stop laughing," he urged her. Her eyes flashed
angrily.
"What do you mean?" she cried; "do you think I _am_ heartless?"
"Surely not," said the musician, looking along his cigarette, and
avoiding her direct glance across the breakfast-table.
"Then why do you say I am?"
"I--I didn't say so, if you remember, Joan. The word entirely originated
with--"
"Oh, I know," she interrupted impatiently; "but why don't you think so?
You ought to--everybody does--Norah would."
"Norah isn't--Norah can't understand--that is, Norah does not know you
so well as I do, and she is a little prejudiced sometimes--" stumbled
the musician.
"Just so, yes," said Lady Joan, gravely, and there was a pause.
"Then you agree with me that I have done the best thing under the
circumstances, the miserable circumstances?" she began again in a few
moments.
"I always agree with you," said the musician; "but you must own
that--not knowing the circumstances which--which led to your course of
action, it--it becomes difficult--"
He yielded to a nervous desire to laugh instead of finishing his
sentence; and Lady Joan, after a desperate effort to lose her temper,
weakly followed his example.
"Tell me why you did it," he said more naturally when they were grave
again, and he walked round the table and leaned over the back of her
chair. She fell into the rôle of the penitent child.
"I couldn't help it, it came over me yesterday that I couldn't stand it
any longer. I've always said perpetual engagements would not answer,
because people could never stand the awful monotony of them. It is only
the monotony of Jack's love for me that has exhausted my patience now.
If he had really been at all wild after we were engaged, which every one
was so fond of prophesying to me, I think I might have got to love him
too much to give him up. But--oh! it is the badness in me I think,
Digby. Why don't you scold me instead of looking at me like that?"
He stroked her hair idly without speaking, and she had to laugh again to
hide the tremor in her lips.
"I always told you I wanted our engagement kept secret; it would have
been much better. It was an experiment, rather a disastrous one for
Jack--"
"And for you?"
"--and it should never have been made public. Engagements never ought to
be made public, and if they were what they claim to be they never would
be. It is because they are such miserable, heartless arrangements that
we have to take refuge in the approbation of society to make them a
success at all; if it were not for the connivance of their friends I
don't believe people would ever get to the marriage service at all. No
wonder men say such hard things about women; we simply destroy all the
sentiment that is in them by our eagerness to cash it at once, and then
we go in for a cheap cynicism and call them heartless brutes. If I were
a man I would never ask a woman to be my wife, never, never, never! At
least, not if I were in love with her."
She spoke rapidly and vehemently, and the musician framed her face in
his hands and coughed a little to steady his voice.
"Poor Jack!" he said almost inaudibly.
"Why do you say that?" she asked, in the same tone.
"Because he might have married you, and he has just missed it," he
breathed in reply; and their heads drew closer together and remained so
for a few seconds. They had had enough in their two lives to make them
either sure friends or enemies. And morality is mainly a question of
circumstance, and largely dependent on the chances of detection.
"Why are you so good to me?" she asked.
"Am I?" he said with a smile, and he removed one of his hands to brush
off the ash of his cigarette. "I am only what you make me. I have always
been in your hands, you know."
"Rubbish!" she said, and laughed unnaturally, and freed herself from his
touch and walked away to the window. Norah's voice came from the
orchard, calling him, and he went out through the door. Lady Joan sat
on the window ledge and thought over what he had been saying, and then
about the words of her letter to Jack, and then that it was time to walk
back to the Court and speak about the mending of a certain fence to the
man. And finally she thought about nothing at all as she yielded to the
drowsiness of the hot spring morning, and rested her cheek against a
background of green creepers and became conscious of nothing but a
confused medley of well-known sounds,--the loud ticking of the clock in
the way trifles assert their importance after an event, the tuneless
humming of the child on the floor, the warning bell of the postman's
bicycle as he came round the corner of the street, and the splash of the
ducks he frightened into the pond as he came. Then she raised her heavy
eyelids, and saw the musician looking at her with a strange, frightened
expression on his face.
"Yes?" she said quickly, with a tight feeling at her breast.
He had a telegram in his hand.
"Joan, dear, can you bear to hear something? I--I know I am a weak fool,
but some one must tell you, and Norah won't, and I would sooner die than
give you any pain, but--Joan--"
His agitation and her own anxiety almost made her hate him.
"Tell me what there is to tell," she cried fiercely, and snatched at the
telegram, and then recoiled from it as it fluttered away on the floor.
"No, don't!" she said the instant after, "I think I know it. Jack--"
"Yes, dear. That is it. Jack will never--Jack will never have your
letter," and the musician put out his hand to her. She did not take it,
nor heed him.
"It was a railway accident--they have not cabled much," he faltered; but
she did not help him by a word or a look, and they stood silent for an
interminable minute.
Then she spoke through her dry lips with a little forced laugh.
"What a pity I did not wait for the next mail," she said; "what a
character for constancy I might have had!"
He had just time to put out his arm to catch her as she fell suddenly
forward.
* * * * *
"It is extraordinary how quietly Joan has taken it," Norah said on the
evening of the same day. "I often wonder if she does feel things as we
do, or whether Mrs. Reginald Routh is not right about her after all. You
know, she always did say that Joan's hatred of music meant a lack of
heart; of course, that is putting it rather strongly, and I shouldn't
call her heartless myself--because nobody is quite that; but still, she
has been strangely cool about poor Jack, and she has not even mentioned
the mourning. I should not be surprised if she did not wear black at
all, she is so inclined to be eccentric. I am glad I wrote to Peter
Robinson's in time for the post; I shall get the patterns to-morrow. I
don't know when I have felt so upset, though of course it does not do
to talk about it. I wish there were a piano here; it would do us both so
much good, wouldn't it, dear?"
Digby looked at his wife's gentle face as she bent it over her
needlework, and he counted the regular folds of her soft gray gown and
the coils of brown hair round her head, and he made a few mental
reflections on the marvellous nature of woman.
"I cannot conceive what it must be to live without the love of music,"
she went on unconsciously in her low tuneful voice. "Music is like
religion in that way, I think; we may try to do without it when we are
happy, but we want it terribly when the trials come. Now, what _has_
Joan to fall back upon to-night, do you suppose?"
"I don't know, but I will go and see," muttered the musician; he felt he
had had as much as he could stand just then, and he took up his straw
hat significantly. The old brown felt one had been gently but firmly
suppressed soon after his marriage.
"What was that you said, Digby?"
"I will go and make her come down here to be cheered up. You are too
tired to come, eh, childie?" said Digby; and he kissed her before he
pushed open the creaking door and went out into the moonlight.
The butler said Lady Joan was busy in her boudoir and wished to be left
undisturbed. But Digby managed to gain admittance a few minutes later,
and he found occasion to add a few more reflections to his mental
synopsis of woman.
"How nice of you to come, and what a cold creature you are! Come and sit
near the fire; I waged a war with Mrs. Binks and had a wood fire lighted
because I felt chilly, which shocked the conventional old thing very
much indeed, because there never has been a fire lighted in here between
spring-cleaning and Michaelmas, since the memory of man. But why should
I listen to Mrs. Binks or any one else if I don't choose? At all events,
it is nice and cosey, and I am going to tell you all my ideas. But tell
me first why you came. What are you laughing at?"
She looked up at him sharply from the hearthrug where she had flung
herself down to stir the fire, and he stroked his moustache hurriedly.
"I am not laughing, Joan. I came to take you back to Norah--to be
cheered up."
"Oh. It was very kind of you--both. How is the baby?" said she, turning
a log dexterously over on its side and making the sparks fly up the
chimney and send a red glow over her face.
"The baby is--ah--quiescent. Mrs. Haxtell is not. I think on the whole
you had better not go there for amusement. My family affairs are only
funny from the outside just at present. I think you had better give me
your new ideas instead. What have you been thinking about all day?"
"That is what I am going to tell you." She stood up and leaned against
the mantelshelf, and looked over his head at the bookshelves on the
wall. "First of all, I hated myself for a whole hour. I thought I had
got outside myself and was looking at myself like--oh, like another
woman would look at me, Norah for instance. And I didn't enjoy myself
for that hour at all. I almost made up my mind to go abroad again; but
it was lunchtime, and over the mayonnaise, which was particularly good
to-day, I came to the conclusion that it was like running away, and
everybody would say I had gone 'to get over it,' and I could not
tolerate that for a moment, could I?"
"Of course not, no. I know I may smoke, mayn't I? And then?"
"Then--" she made an effort not to alter her voice, and exaggerated its
pitch in the attempt, "oh, then it became very apparent from the
attitude of all the servants that they had heard the news about--Jack.
That is to say, Thomas spoke to me in a whisper at lunch, and never
handed me anything twice, and the coachman never sent up for orders at
all, and I only just stopped the maids in time from pulling down all the
blinds, and Mrs. Binks has been drinking tea in the servants' hall in
her black silk dress ever since three o'clock, and did not answer my
bell until I rang the second time, and then she appeared with a clean
handkerchief in her hand, and a face as long as a fiddle. Aren't
servants fond of a tragedy? And am I very heartless to notice all these
things, Digby?"
"Heartless? No," he said with emphasis, remembering what his wife had
said in the inn; "and after lunch, please?"
"Oh, after lunch I went to sleep. And when I woke up I felt better. I
was able to think without getting sentimental over it. Don't you see, it
is like this. There isn't anybody."
"I don't understand," said the musician.
"I could hardly expect you to," she said dryly; "there is somebody for
you. But for me there is nobody, and I am getting old, and I feel
frightened sometimes. Remember, that is an admission. I don't know why I
am telling you all this, because I want to get to the end. At all
events, I had a sort of sensation that I had tried more than most women
to gain something, and I had hopelessly missed it; so it was time to
turn round and do something, as I should have to go on living all the
same. Now, there were two courses open to me: one was to turn the
literary cynic and write a novel in which I could vent my spite against
my own particular Fate by personifying myself in an ill-used heroine,
who talks epigrams from the moment she gets out of bed in the morning,
and who loves to assure her men acquaintances that they may mention
questionable topics before her if they like. And the other was to repent
and do good works, and become the fashionable philanthropist, and tell
the poor and fatherless that they have got to be improved in their
condition whether they think they want improving or not. Guess which I
chose! Oh, I do wonder if you will guess right;" and she dropped on her
knees beside him and looked into his face.
"If you were any ordinary clever woman, I should guess the first; but--"
he paused and looked at the eager, scornful face, and smiled to himself,
"no, that wouldn't do for you, Joan. And yet, neither would the other. I
can't imagine you walking through the village in awful, hideous
garments, carrying a rice pudding and a Bible. Oh, Joan, surely _you_
are not going in for that self-indulgent bosh known as charity?"
"That is where you are so like a man!" She flung herself away from him,
and began walking about the room and talking quickly. "You are right
about the novel, yes. You see, if I were to write a book it would be so
frightfully personal that I should have to take a pseudonym to begin
with. And where is the satisfaction of jeering at your friends when they
don't know you are doing it? But I don't know why you should take up
the old, played-out notion of charity as the only alternative. Who wants
to go about with Bibles and rice puddings? Nous avons changé tout cela,
mon ami! Why, there is no such thing as charity left now; haven't you
learnt that from Sir Marcus? It is philanthropy nowadays, my good sir,
equally self-indulgent, of course, but more modern and ten times more
entertaining. The Bible never need come in at all, and no one sees the
rice puddings, _they're_ all managed by committees; all you have to do
is to lend your name for the circulars of the league, and hold meetings
over afternoon tea in your drawing-room, and _talk_. That is all. _Now_
do you see what I mean?"
"I gather that you mean to take up philanthropy as a new form of
diversion; but I am afraid I do not quite recognize the full advantages
of the scheme. I don't see--"
"Of course you don't," cried Lady Joan, cheerfully, "you have no cause
to see. _I_ don't see the full advantages of married life, for
instance. But I am really going to be serious now, so don't interrupt.
In the first place, I am not going to be philanthropic in the country;
that only means being hopelessly under the thumb of one's rector, or
hopelessly at variance with him; besides, it is so mortally dull, and--I
don't mean to be dull just now. So I am going up to Pont Street in
October, and I shall organize a regular philanthropic campaign. Oh, I am
going to have a fine time! I shall sing for concerts in the East End, I
shall paint match-boxes and gridirons and send them to fancy fairs, I
shall play with the children in the hospitals, and teach the children of
Whitechapel--thank Heaven! no amount of philanthropy can ever spoil the
children--I shall even give sumptuous receptions, at which we shall
discuss the evils of the sweating-system and the possibility of
distributing certain portions of bread and soup to the deserving poor
during the cold weather. Who knows that I may not speak on a platform
before long? There is always the bearing-rein to fall back upon, if all
the others fail; or the prevention of cruelty to birds, now that wearing
feathers is out of fashion; or compulsory vaccination, or hygiene and
rational dress and other horrors which are so excellent for the poor.
Think of my reputation, Digby! It will be so assured that even Mrs.
Reginald Routh will not dare to cast a stone at me, and I shall be able
to say just what I choose about _anybody_. Why, philanthropy, properly
managed, is as telling as music! Won't it be glorious fun, Digby?
Hey-day, what a noise I am making!"
He got up and stirred the logs in the low grate with his foot. She was
lying on the sofa, looking at him.
"Well, have you nothing to say to my beautiful idea?" she asked
presently.
The musician gulped at something in his throat.
"It is surprising," he began, with an attempt at his old impressive
manner, "how difficult it is to make ourselves understood, especially
in our most intimate relations."
"What are you talking about?" said Lady Joan.
"I mean," went on the musician, desperately, "that I don't know how to
tell you all that is in my mind, dear. Perhaps it is best left unsaid. I
don't know; but--when you ask me what I think of it, I can only feel
that it is all sad, dreadfully sad. I'm afraid I have not made it very
clear, have I?"
She moved her feet, and he came and sat down on the end of the sofa.
"Tell me what it is that is sad," she asked, shading her eyes with her
hand.
"What you have been saying, that there isn't anybody," he said, and
boldly moved the hand, and held it fast, and looked into her eyes.
"No more there is,--except you," she answered recklessly, and looked
back at him for a moment.
Something surged up to his lips in the silence of the next few minutes,
and he held his breath and tightened his grasp on the cold fingers
before he said it. Then she pulled away her hand almost roughly, and
spoke quickly.
"Do you know it is nearly eleven? Norah had a bad night with the baby
last night, and you look awfully tired too. Hadn't you better be
moving?"
So he did not say it after all.
"You have not told me what you think yet. I suppose you are only
laughing at me," she said, when he bade her good-bye.
He found himself smiling in a conventional manner; he could not have
said why.
"Oh, no, why should I? I think it is very wise of you," he said, opening
the door to go out; "and when I tell Norah she will say 'Just like
Joan!' Good-night."
And she answered down the stairs after him, "Good-night, and mind you
tell Norah all about it!"
"I'll be hanged if I do," thought the musician, as he walked down the
drive; and he congratulated himself all the way back on not having made
a fool of himself.
"I'm sure I hope he won't," added Lady Joan to herself out loud, as the
front-door banged. Then she walked unsteadily into her boudoir, and made
up the fire, and sat down on the sofa, and looked dully into the flames.
And presently she turned and hid her face in the cushions, and burst
into tears.