But not so bad as her own husband. No, that would be an impossibility.
She did not want to think about it; but just now her control over her
thoughts had weakened, while the thoughts themselves were growing
stronger. She was subject to rapid ups and downs of health, the victim
of an astounding crisis of nerves, so that one hour she experienced a
queer longing for muscular fatigue, and the next hour laughed and wept
in full hysteria. At other times she felt so weak that she believed she
might sink fainting to the ground if she attempted to go for the
shortest walk.
Generally on days when Marsden was away from Mallingbridge she crept to
bed at dusk. Yates used to aid her as of old, sit by the bed-side
talking to her; and then leave her in the fire-glow, to watch the
dancing shadows or listen to the whispering wind.
She did not wish to think; but in spite of all efforts to forget facts
and to hold firmly to delusions, her old power of logical thought was
remorselessly returning to her. In defiance of her enfeebled will, the
past reconstituted itself, events grouped themselves in sequence;
hitherto undetected connections linked up, and made the solid chain that
dragged her from vague surmise to definite conclusions. Then with the
full vigour of the old penetrative faculties she thought of her mistake.
He did not care for her. He had never cared for her. It was all acting.
All that she relied on was false; all that had been real was the
steadfast sordid purpose sustaining him throughout his odious
dissimulation.
His marriage was a brutal male prostitution, in which he had sold his
favours for her gold. And shame overwhelmed her as she thought of how
easily she had been trapped. While he was coldly calculating, she was
endowing him with every attribute of warm-blooded generosity; when her
fine protective instincts made her yearn over him, longing to give him
happiness, comfort, security, he was in truth playing with her as a cat
plays with a wounded mouse--no hurry, no excitement, but steel-bright
eyes watching, retracted claws waiting. And she remembered his studied
phrases that rang so true to the ear, till too late she discovered their
miserable falsity. With what art he had prepared the way for the final
disclosure of his effrontery! He could not brook the sense of
dependence, his manly spirit would not allow him to pose as the
pensioner of a rich wife, and so on--and then, even at the last, how he
waited until she had completely betrayed her secret, and he could be
certain that her pride as a woman would infallibly prevent her from
drawing back. Not till then, when she had taken the world into her
confidence, when escape had become impossible, did he drive his bargain.
While the honeymoon was not yet over she imagined she could understand
the pain that lay before her. But in these three months she had suffered
more than she had conceived to be endurable by any living creature. If
pain can kill, she should be dead.
Her punishment had been like the fabled torture of the Chinese--hundreds
of small lacerations, a thousand slicing cuts of the executioner's
sword, and the kind death-stroke craftily withheld. But the swordsman of
the East does not laugh while he mutilates. And _he_ struck at her with
a smiling face.
She thought of how in every hour of their companionship he had wounded
her; with what unutterable baseness he had used his power over her--the
power given to him by her love. The love stripped her of every weapon of
defence; she was tied, naked, with not a guarding rag to shelter her
against the blows--and the pitiless blows fell upon her from her gagged
mouth to her pinioned feet.
Daily he attacked her pride, her self-respect, her bodily health and her
mental equipoise; but most of all she suffered in her love--that
terrible flower of passion that refuses to die. Torn up by its bleeding
roots, it replants itself--and will thrive on the barren rock as well as
in life's richest garden. Robbed of light, air, sustenance, it will
cling to the dungeon wall, and bud and burst again for the prisoner to
touch its blossoms in his darkness. Its flame-petals can be seen by the
glazing eyes that have lost sight of all else, and its burning poisonous
fruit is still tasted in the earth of our graves.
She thought of what he had said to her when they first came back to the
house that she had decorated and made luxurious for him. A laugh, a
nudge of the elbow--"This is the beginning of Chapter Two, Janey. We
can't be honeymooning forever, old girl;" and then some more
unforgettable words, to formulate the request that they might occupy
different rooms; and so, in the home-coming hour, he had struck a deadly
blow at her pride by the brutally direct implication that what she most
desired was that which every woman craves for least. As if the grosser
manifestations could satisfy, when all the spiritual joys are denied!
But he judged her nature by his own. He was common as dirt. He was
savage as a beast of the forest, a creature of fierce strong appetites
that believes the appeasement of any physical craving--to drink deeply,
to eat greedily, to sleep heavily--is the highest pleasure open to the
animal kingdom; and that man the king is no higher than the dog, his
servant.
He knew only worthless women, and he supposed that all women were alike.
Undoubtedly he remembered the innumerable conquests won simply by his
handsome face, the ready and absolute surrender to a sensual thraldom
that had made other women his abject slaves; and he dared to think that
his wife was as impotent as they to resist the viler impulses of the
ungoverned flesh.
He dared to think it.--But was he wrong? And she recalled the episodic
renewal of their embraces during these last months. Once after high
words; once after he had found her weeping; once for no reason at all
that she knew of--except a carelessly systematic desire on his part to
keep her in good temper--or perhaps merely because he had the
prostitute's point of honour. A bargain is a bargain. He had been paid
his price without haggling, and he intended to fulfil the conditions of
the contract--so far as certain limits fixed by himself.
Horrible scenes to look back at--when the cruelly bright light of reason
flashes upon the decorously obscured past and shows the ignominious
secrets of a life: blind instincts moving us, all that is high beaten
down by all that is low, the soul held in fetters by the flesh.
Much of her slow agony had come from the stinging pricks of jealousy. He
was unfaithful--he was notoriously unfaithful. Already, after three
months, everyone in the shop knew that he frequently broke the marriage
vow. She would have known it anyhow--even if one of his vulgar friends,
turning to a more vulgar enemy, had not troubled to tell her in an
ill-spelt series of anonymous letters. She remembered how he once used
to look at her, and she saw how in her presence he now looked at other
women. Each look was an insult to her. Each word was an outrage.
"There's a pert little minx;" and he would smile as he watched some
passer-by. "Young hussy! Dressed up to the nines--wasn't she?" And he
swelled out his chest, and swaggered more arrogantly by the side of his
wife, unconscious of the swift completeness with which she could
interpret the thoughts behind his bold eyes and his lazily lascivious
smile.
And she thought of how he harped upon the over-tightened string of
youth, making every fibre of her tired brain vibrate to the discord of
the jarring note. It was melody to him. Youth was his own paramount
merit, and he praised it as the only merit that he could admit of in
others. He had forgotten half the lies of his courtship. Age was
contemptible--the thing one should hide, or excuse, or ransom. "Only one
life! Remember, I'm young--I am not old." But her friends, the people
she trusted, were shamefully old, even a few years older than herself.
Old Prentice, Old Yates, Old Mears; and he never spoke of them without
the scornful epithet.
But the jingling coin that she had put in his pockets would procure him
the solace to be derived from youthful companions. With the money she
had paid for all the love that he could give, he bought from loose women
all the love that he cared for. Of course when he stayed in London he
was carrying on his promiscuous amours.... Perhaps, too, here in
Mallingbridge.
Yet when he came back to her, she had failed to resist him. She knew the
reflective air with which he considered her face when he proposed to
exercise his sway. She trembled when he lightly slapped her on the
shoulder, or took her chin in his hand, and spoke with caressing tones.
He was beginning to act the lover. He had made up his mind to wipe out
the past, to subjugate her afresh, to assure himself that his poor slave
was not slipping away.
"Janey--dear old Janey.... I leave you alone, don't I?" And with an arm
round her waist, he would pull her to him, and hold her closer and
closer. "Have you missed me? Eh? Have you missed your Dickybird?"
And she could not resist him. There was the abominable basis of the
tragedy--worse, infinitely worse than the imagined horrors that had
troubled her before the marriage. Love dies so slowly.
But the night spent in the same room with him was like a fatal
abandonment to some degrading habit--as if in despair she had taken a
heavy dose of laudanum,--knowing that the drug is deadly, yet seeking
once more to stupefy herself, impelled at all hazards to pass again
through the gates of delirium into the vast blank halls of
unconsciousness. Next day she felt sick, broken, shattered--like the
drug-taker after his debauch. Each relapse seemed now an immeasurably
lower fall. Each awakening brought with it a sharper pang of despair: as
when a wrecked man on a raft, who in his madness of thirst has drunk at
the salt spray, wakes from frenzied dreams to see the wide immensity of
ocean mocking him with space great enough to hold all things except
one--hope.
Such thoughts as these came sweeping upon her like waves of light,
illuminating the darkest recesses of her mind, showing the innermost
meaning of every cruel mystery, forcing her to see and to know herself
as she was, and not as she wished to be.
Then the light would suddenly fade. The stress of emotion had relaxed,
and she could consider her circumstances calmly--could try to make the
best of him.
A difficult task--a poor best.
She thought of his varied meannesses. In only one direction was he ever
really generous. He grudged nothing to himself--he could be lavish when
pandering to his own inclinations, reckless when gratifying the moment's
whim, and retrospectively liberal when counting the cost of past
amusements; but in his dealings with the rest of the world he was
cautious, watchful, tenaciously close-fisted. She felt a vicarious
humiliation in hearing him thank instead of tip; or seeing him, when he
had failed to dodge the necessity of a gift, make the gift so small as
to be ludicrous. Not since he carried her purse at the London
restaurants had he ever exhibited a large-handed kindness to
subordinates.
He never alluded to the household expenses--had accepted as quite
natural the fact that the female partner should defray the expenses of
the household. Without a Please or a Thank-you he took board and lodging
free of charge; but he bought for himself cigars, liqueurs, and wine,
and he always spoke of my brandy, my champagne, etc. It was _our_ house,
but _my_ wine. Nevertheless, the habitual use in the singular of the
personal pronoun did not render him egotistically anxious to pay his own
bills.
Once, when after delay a tobacconist addressed an account to her care,
and she timidly reproached the cigar-smoker for a lapse of memory that
might almost seem undignified, she was answered with chaffing, laughing,
joviality.
"Well, my dear, if you're so afraid of our credit going down, there's an
easy way out of the difficulty. Write a cheque yourself, and clean the
slate for me."
But one must make allowances. This was a favourite phrase of hers, and
it helped the drift of her calmer thoughts. As he said so often, youth
has its characteristic faults. Want of thought is not necessarily want
of heart.
Perhaps when he began to work, he might improve. There was no doubt that
he possessed the capacity for work. He _had_ worked, hard and well. Many
a good horse that has not shied or swerved when kept into its collar
will, if given too much stable and too many beans, show unsuspected
vice and kick the cart to pieces. And the cure for your horse, the
medicine for your man, is work.
Of course he had many redeeming traits. One was his jollity--not often
disturbed, if people would humour him. Comfort, too, in the recollection
that he treated her with respect--never consciously insulted her--in
public.
Sometimes when the shadows and the flickering glow drowsily slackened in
their dance, and sleep with soft yet heavy fingers at last pressed upon
her eyelids, she was willing to believe that all her fiery thought and
shadowy dread was but morbid nonsense occasioned by the queer state of
her nerves, and by nothing else.
Truly, during this period of her extreme weakness, she was physically
incapable of standing up to him; there was no fight left in her. For a
time at least, she could not attempt to protect herself, or anyone else
who looked to her for protection.
It pained her, but she was unable to interfere, when he roughly repulsed
Gordon Thompson.
They were sitting at luncheon, with the servant going in and out of the
room; she heard the street door open and shut; there was a sound of
hob-nailed boots, and then came the familiar whistle--like a ghostly
echo from the past.
"Who the devil's that?"
"I--I think it must be my Linkfield cousin."
"Oh, is it?" And Marsden jumped up, and went out to the landing.
"Jen-ny! Jen-ny! You up there?"
The farmer stood at the bottom of the steep stairs, and Marsden was at
the top, looking down at him. Mrs. Marsden heard nearly the whole of the
conversation, but dared not, could not interfere.
"Any dinner for a hungry wayfarer?"
Gordon Thompson, furious at the marriage, had missed many mid-day meals;
but now he came to pick up the severed thread of kindness. However, he
was not confident; his whistle had been feeble, tentative, and the
ascending note of his voice quavered. In order to propitiate, he had
brought from Linkfield a market-gardener's basket with celery and winter
cabbages. The present would surely make them glad to see him.
"What do you want here? No orders are given at the door. We buy our
vegetables at Rogers's in High Street. Don't come cadging here. Get
out."
Marsden wickedly pretended to mistake him for an itinerant greengrocer.
"Mayn't I go up?... Is it to be cuts? Am I not to call on my cousin?"
"Who's your cousin, I'd like to know."
"Jen-ny Thompson."
"No one of that name lives here."
"Jen-ny Marsden then. I say--it's all right. You're him, I suppose.
Well, I'm Gordon Thompson--your wife's cousin."
"My wife never had a cousin of that name. Before she married me, she
married a man called Thompson--though she didn't marry all his
humbugging beggarly relations."
"Oh, I say--don't go on like that. Don't make it cuts."
"Thompson--your cousin--is in the cemetery, if you wish to call on him.
He has been there a long time--waiting for you;" and Marsden laughed.
"The sexton will tell you where to find him.... Go and plant your
cabbages out there. We don't want 'em here."
He returned to the luncheon table in the highest good-humour.
"There, old girl, I've ridded you of _that_ nuisance. You won't be
bothered with _him_ any more."
Mrs. Marsden could not answer. She could not even raise her eyes from
the table-cloth. But when her husband offered to give her a rare
afternoon treat by taking her for a run in his small two-seated car, she
looked up; and, meekly thanking him, accepted the invitation.
As the car carried them slowly through the market-place, neatly
threading its way among laden carts and emptied stalls, she saw cousin
Gordon standing, rueful and disconsolate, outside the humble tavern at
which it was the custom of the lesser sort of farmers to dine together
on market-day. Had Gordon dined, or had anger and resentment deprived
him of appetite and spared his ill-filled purse?
She would not think of it. She turned, and watched her husband's face.
It was hard as granite while with concentrated attention he manipulated
the steering wheel, moved a lever, or sounded his brazen-tongued
horn--the signal of danger to anyone who refused to get out of his road.
Almost immediately, they were in the open country, whirling past bare
fields and leafless copses, leaping fiercely at each hill that opposed
them, and swooping with a shrill, buzzing triumph down the long slopes
of the valleys.
"Now we are travelling," said Marsden joyously.
She nodded her head, although she had not caught the words; and
presently he shouted close to her ear.
"Moving now, aren't we? Doesn't she run smooth?"
"Yes, yes. Capital."
The wind, breaking on the glass screen, sang as it swept over them;
hedge-rows, telegraph poles, and wayside cottages hurried towards them,
rising and growing as they came; long stretches of straight road, along
which Mr. Young's horses used to plod for half an hour, were snatched
at, conquered, and contemptuously thrown behind, almost before one could
recognize them.
That pretty country-house which she had always admired passed her; and,
passing, seemed like a faintly tinted picture in a book whose pages are
turned too fast by careless hands. Naked branches of high trees, broad
eaves and nestling windows, weak sunlight upon latticed glass, and pale
smoke rising from clustered chimneys--that was all she saw. A few dead
leaves pretended to be live things, scampered beside the long wall; a
few dead thoughts revived in her mind, and swiftly she recalled her old
fancies, the dream of the future, Enid and herself living together so
quietly beneath the grey roof;--and then the pretty house with its
pretty grounds had been left far behind. It had lost its brief aspect of
reality as completely as a half-forgotten dream.
"There, we'll go easy now." They were approaching a village, and he
reduced the speed. "You're a good plucked 'un, Jane;" and he glanced at
her approvingly. "You don't funk a little bit of pace."
They stopped at an inn, thirty miles from Mallingbridge, and drank
tea--that is to say, Mrs. Marsden drank tea and Mr. Marsden drank
something else, for the good of the house.
Then, after a cigar, he lighted his lamps, and drove her home through
the greyness, the dusk, and the dark. And for the three hours or so that
she was with him, for the whole time that this outing lasted, she was
almost happy.