her son before her. She had made the mistake then of sneering at Mary's
mother, and although in this case it was unlikely that Mary would take
matters into her own hand, it would be imprudent to run the risk of
her doing so. With experience of a similar situation she ought to be
able this time to have her own way. The old lady looked at Mary with
an unwonted warmth of affection: Mary was Edward's daughter. The fact
seemed to strike her for the first time. Edward's daughter ... Edward
who was drowned twenty years ago. Poor Edward, so like his mother! And
there was Mary holding her hands just as he had held them on that June
afternoon, the day before he married and tore himself forever from
the bosom of family life, as perhaps she herself might have held her
hands fifty years ago if she had had to oppose the wishes of that stern
old general who fought at Waterloo or of that dainty mother who bred
in exile had yet kept about her the remote grace and grandeur of the
_ancien régime_.
"It is not that he is of humble birth," she began to explain.
"A Frenchman can surmount that disadvantage more easily than an
Englishman, at any rate in England. But he has no money, and so far
as I can gather no immediate prospects of ever having any money. Even
if I were disposed to give you such a dowry as would enable you to
indulge yourself in the luxury of marriage with a poor man, I should
not permit myself to do so. For I should be wrong. Few men have the
moral strength to live decently upon their wives. I know you will think
that this is only the opinion of a cynical old woman, and I should be
sorry if at your age you thought differently. But at my age one is no
longer shocked by the nakedness of truth; at my age we begin to return
to the shamelessness of childhood. How your dear grandfather would have
disliked that last remark of mine. He had such a profound belief in old
age. Any religious feelings he had, all centered round his respect for
the age of God. Your poor grandfather ... dear me, I am going back into
the past instead of grappling with the present."
Mary had been listening to her grandmother in astonishment. She had
expected a fierce and bitter opposition, which she had promised herself
to defy; but it seemed that the old lady was going to argue with her,
and that would be disconcerting. Grandmother's arguments were always
so difficult to answer.
"I think perhaps I won't talk about this business any more to-day,"
Grandmamma was saying. "I have to make up my mind whether or not I will
tell you something. Meanwhile, may I ask you not to see the young man
until I have decided what to do?"
Mary promised this, and wrote to Pierre giving him a tryst by the
Serpentine three days hence. Adèle was sent to beg Daisy Harland to
come at once to talk over some important news Mary had to tell her.
Mary would have gone herself, but she could see that her grandmother
would not be able to avoid being suspicious of her meeting Pierre, and
she did not want to do anything that would prejudice the old lady still
more against him.
Daisy was much more discouraging than Grandmamma; she thought it was
madness to think of marrying a French clerk who was the son of a common
gardener, and who had at the moment neither money nor employment.
"My dearest Mary, it's the most absurd idea I ever heard! Why, you
would have to live in squalor unless you lived with Lady Flower,
which of course would be impossible. You're too old for this kind of
foolishness now. I saw no reason for your getting married in such a
hurry. But I begin to understand now why your grandmother is so anxious
to tie you up. She evidently knows you better than I do. Of course,
he's a good-looking and--if that attracts you--a romantic young man.
But there are dozens of them in England. As for being in love, you
know as well as I do that love runs its course like measles or scarlet
fever. You can recover from love, but you can't recover from marriage,
which in this case would be like a serious accident. You'd be lame for
the rest of your life."
Lady Flower remarked how much surprised she had been to find that
Mary's friend had grown so sensible.
"It must be hunting, I suppose."
"You only find her sensible because she dislikes the idea of my
marrying Pierre."
"She sees the position from the standpoint of an outsider. Listen,
Mary, I have never said anything about your father to you. I don't even
know how much you have guessed."
Mary blushed hotly. The moment that she had dreaded for years was
upon her. That dreadful secret, the consciousness of which had always
clouded her intimate thoughts, was about to be revealed. She must steel
herself to hear the proclamation of her illegitimacy. The definition in
the dictionary flamed across her memory ... _not authorized by law_ ...
_improper_ ... _not born in lawful wedlock_ ... _bastard_. _Bâtard!_
How often had she shivered over that in the French dictionary. How
sedulously had she tried to ascertain what it really meant, in the way
that no dictionary dares to reveal. And then those sickening hints
from horrid girls ... the girls who came from South America were always
the horridest....
No wonder Grandmamma looked serious and uncomfortable. If only a small
portion of what was hinted were true, she must scarcely know how she
was to look her granddaughter in the face and tell her not merely about
herself, but about life and those mysterious beginnings of life that
seemed to involve men and women in such horrors.
"I have guessed a good deal," Mary admitted bravely.
"Naturally, you must have done so. And I dare say those people with
whom you lived. What was their name? Fox? Fawkes?"
"The Fawcuses," said Mary. From the past the vision of Mrs. Fawcus
came back to her like the page of a fairy tale. In all stories about
illegitimate children, there was a woman like Mrs. Fawcus who looked
after them, kept them hidden, and guarded their secret. Why had she not
made another effort to read _Jane Eyre_ since it was taken away from
her by Mademoiselle Lucinge only the week before she left school? In
that book she might have pierced the dreadful mystery.
"You may have guessed," Grandmamma was saying, "that your father
married beneath him, married a very beautiful girl, the daughter of one
of our own tenant farmers."
"Then I'm not illegitimate!" Mary could not help exclaiming.
"Good gracious me!" said Lady Flower crossly. "What minds modern
young women have. Is no kind of decent veil to be left over the
unpleasant side of life? Why, at your age I did not know the meaning of
illegitimate."
Mary would have liked to retort that she only knew the endless circle
of a dictionary's definitions, that she did not really know its
meaning. However, let her mother have been never so humble, she was
married to her father.
"But you cannot have guessed all the misery that your father's marriage
brought in its train. It killed him: it killed your mother: it killed
your mother's father: it might have killed you. Your father was
dependent upon his father. He defied him, and what was the result?"
Lady Flower left out nothing in the tale of the romantic marriage that
could bring home to her granddaughter what it meant to run in the face
of class tradition.
"The situation is almost the same now as when I entreated your father
twenty years ago to think what he was doing. But in this case it is
worse, because in this case it is the man who is of lower station.
Mary, I implore you to give up this good-looking but hopelessly
ineligible young Frenchman."
Lady Flower burst into tears, and Mary, who would have been less amazed
to behold tears run down the cheeks of a marble statue, promised to
give up Pierre.
This was the letter she wrote:
23 King's Gate, W.,
_May 22, 1880._
_I am afraid that I am not the wonderful being you have so often
told me that I was. I cannot meet you to-morrow on the banks of the
Serpentine, however fine the day is. I do not regret for an instant
that I let myself fall in love with you. No, not for an instant,
Pierre. I don't know why I say "let myself fall in love," because I
could not help it. It was nothing to do with me. But I have promised
my grandmother never to see you again and to give you up. I couldn't
explain why, even if I were to see you. It has nothing to do with
you, but only with me. If I married you I should have to elope, and
though I should be happy when I was with you, I should be feeling
all the while that my grandmother's old age was being made unhappy.
You must not blame her. She is convinced that we are not meant for
each other. My father and mother were drowned many years ago, because
they eloped; she has lost her husband and her eldest son also: she
is entirely alone in the world, and she was kind to me when I was a
little girl. Forget me, Pierre, and try to forgive me. Do not think
that I do not love you. Don't think that, Pierre. I believe that I
have loved you ever since I first saw you at Châteaublanc. Why do I
go on writing? I don't know; but somehow I can't bear to finish this
letter which is the last I shall ever write to you. Don't think of
me too unkindly. If you ever do think of me, think of me that morning
by the Serpentine when you first kissed my hand. Pierre, I can feel
that kiss still. I shall feel it till I'm an old woman. I've nothing
more to say, and yet I can't stop...._
Mary put down her pen for a minute, and stared in front of her.
Tick-tick! Tick-tick! Tick-tick! Tick-tick! The ormulu clock swung
Pierre out of her life. She leaned over quickly and wrote:
_Good-by, good-by,
Mary._
Adèle came into the room.
"Mr. Alison is downstairs in the drawing-room with _Miladi_,
Mademoiselle."
"I'll come down at once, Adèle. Please take this letter to the post."
Mac rose from his place on the hearthrug and waddled after his
mistress.
_Chapter Four_
THE WIFE
_Chapter Four: The Wife_
On a wet November afternoon a brougham drawn by a pair of gray
horses and coming from the direction of Kensington drove along the
Knightsbridge road and pulled up outside Lady Flower's house in King's
Gate. From it alighted a young woman who by some indefinable effect
of maturity, some sedate expression of achievement, revealed that she
was married. The age at which women decide to be matrons varies like
feminine fashions, and in the year 1890 English women still clung, if
less tightly every year, to the fashion of a middle age as long as
Queen Victoria's reign.
Mary Alison at thirty should have been in the zenith of her beauty.
That auburn hair had deepened in ten years like a gathered chestnut,
but like a chestnut it had preserved the gloss of youth. Experience
had given her blue eyes those profundities of color which inaccurate
and ambitious observers have miscalled violet. Her complexion held the
exquisite translucent hues of a September rose. And yet so much of
her young grace was destroyed by the dress, which made any woman of
the period appear like Noah's wife in a toy Ark, that she seemed less
lovely now than ten years ago when she had stood by the drawing-room
window of this house, up the steps of which she was now walking with
such slow and stately ease of movement. With her long forefinger
pressing the bell, she turned and said to the coachman:
"Burton, you had better leave Mac at home when you come back for me at
six."
At the sound of his mistress' voice, the grizzled head of the Dandie
Dinmont gazed anxiously through the closed windows of the brougham. She
raised a warning finger to bid him be good, and a moment later was lost
to sight in the darkling hall.
"How is her ladyship, Adèle?"
"_Miladi_ grows very weak, madame," the maid replied, leading the way
upstairs. Across Mary's mind floated the picture of herself as a little
girl in Paris following Adèle upstairs to bed. Even so had she led the
way in those days and from time to time had turned round with flashing,
frightening eyes to see if her charge was close behind her. How shadowy
those days in Paris now, shadowy like this flight of London stairs, on
which Adèle alone stood out clear, with her sallow face and eyebrows
like the hair of a Japanese doll. Shadows.... Shadows....
"Mrs. Alison is here, _Miladi_."
Adèle stood aside to let Mary enter the room, where under a canopy of
purple velvet, looking hardly more substantial than a lace handkerchief
left upon the pillow, Lady Flower sat huddled in her last bed. One hand
fluttered down upon the quilt like a faded white petal to greet her
granddaughter, who took it gently in her own that was still fresh and
taper as a rosebud.
"I shall die very soon now, Mary," whispered the old lady. "At any
moment. At any moment. Perhaps to-night. Perhaps this afternoon. Did
you tell Burton to wait?"
"No. I sent him back to Campden Hill. I wanted to stay with you till
you went to sleep."
"To sleep," her grandmother echoed. "I feel disinclined to sleep. I
have such a long sleep before me."
Mary could not bring herself to make the conventionally optimistic
reply. It did not seem worth while to pretend with phrases in the
presence of this old woman already seemingly discarnate for that
obscure event of death.
"A long sleep," the old lady went on in her tenuous voice. "A very long
sleep. And yet I wonder. Ah, well, it was all said by Shakespeare, was
it not? Though frankly I never cared greatly for Shakespeare. It is all
too excitable. And yet I wonder."
"What are you wondering, Grandmamma?"
"If this really is the end. There might be something else, you know.
Give me my vinaigrette."
The old lady sniffed it as if she would ward off the odors of eternity,
just as twenty years ago she had used it against the odors of a much
shorter journey to Lyons. She had been only too anxious to sleep then.
But now.... How bright her eyes were, like precious stones, like pools
of water holding out against the encroaching frost of death.
"I do not really want to die," she said. "It seems such a little
while since I began to feel younger again. Of late lying here I have
remembered so much that I had forgotten. Odd little incidents of
childhood have come back to me so sharply, so very vividly and clearly.
Earlier this afternoon, before you came, I saw my father in that corner
in his Hessian boots and cocked hat; and he said to me, 'Where's your
Mamma?' It was so vivid that I made a movement to get out of bed and
run to look for her. And then he asked me to fill his snuff-box with
maccaboy. I have often wondered why a man so particular about his
personal appearance should be a slave to snuff. But he was. Do you know
what maccaboy is?"
Mary shook her head.
"It is a snuff scented with attar of roses, of which he was
passionately fond. He acquired the habit when he was fighting in the
West Indies. Long ago. Long ago. And of course this vision of him was
nothing but an hallucination caused by weakness. Nothing but that.
There cannot be anything before us when we lie like this. And yet I
wonder. I cannot feel perfectly sure."
Mary did not know what to say. Here was really an opportunity for
a clergyman to be useful; but she was afraid of suggesting such a
visitor. Yet her grandmother might be hoping that somebody would
suggest a clergyman; for, although she would be too proud to ask for
one herself, she might want one to be pressed upon her just as she had
wanted the doctor pressed upon her.
Mary decided to risk the proposal.
"A clergyman?" echoed the old lady, clutching at her vinaigrette.
"A clergyman?" she repeated. "Thank you, my dear, but I should find
a clergyman in my bedroom as uncomfortable as I should find a large
black retriever dog, and about as useful. I'm afraid that my wandering
conversation has given you the impression that my mind is wandering. I
thought I had made it perfectly plain that I considered the vision of
my father an hallucination."
Mary begged her grandmother's pardon, and after a short silence the old
lady inquired graciously after the children.
"What a pity," she said, "that Richard will not become Sir Richard when
I die. I am sorry now that I allowed Barton to be sold. I think, had I
known how much of a Flower I was going to have for a great-grandson, I
should not have done so. However, regrets are useless. You are happy,
are you not?"
"Why, yes, Grandmamma. What makes you ask that?"
The old lady's voice was sounding more remote every minute that she
went on talking, and the furtive November dusk which had long been
hiding in corners of the room now crept boldly forth and climbed the
velvet curtains of the canopy above the bed. Mary wanted to light the
gas, but her grandmother waved her hand to signify that she preferred
the gloom.
"I have wondered sometimes lately if you ever think of that young
Frenchman whom I dissuaded you from marrying."
"Why, no, Grandmamma," said Mary. "Or if I do, only as one might think
of anybody in the past."
"You are happy, really happy? Your marriage has brought you happiness?"
"Yes, yes, indeed, Grandmamma. Could anybody be unhappy with Richard
and Geoffrey and Muriel?"
"You are happy because of the children?" Lady Flower persisted. "Your
husband does not count?"
"But you know how fond I am of Jemmie."
"Fond, fond," the old lady murmured. "Looking back, I wonder if that
means anything. Mary, you must be prepared for your children to bring
you unhappiness. I do not say that they will. I hope that they will
not. But you must be ready for that trial." She suddenly sat forward in
the bed. "Hark! Do you hear a sound?"
"No, I hear nothing, Grandmamma."
"I hear a sound like the sea. Plainly! Yes, yes, quite plainly, the
noise of the sea. Edward, forgive me if I was wrong," she cried. "I
have tried to watch over your little girl. Pray do not light the gas,
Mary. Give me your hand instead. Put me back among my pillows. And do
not light the gas. I cannot bear the idea of your seeing me die. And
this is death. I know...."
Mary laid her grandmother gently back on the pillows, felt a swift
trembling through the frail body, and speaking to her received no
answer.
It was the first time in her life that Mary had come into the presence
of death, and she sat for some time near that silence on the bed,
wondering at her own calm. Were people always as calm as this when they
beheld death? But even as she was congratulating herself she was seized
with a panic and ran madly from the room out on the landing, the rosy
gaslight of which in response to her cries was soon populated by maids
in their black dresses and white caps.
Mary supposed that the correct thing would be to send a message for
her husband to come immediately to King's Gate and take charge of the
house, the servants, and herself. In fact, when Adèle with tear-swollen
eyes came to tell her that the carriage was at the door, she asked if
Madame would not like the coachman to drive back to Madame's house
and fetch Monsieur. By Adèle's manner Mary realized that since her
grandmother's death she was being accorded a respect almost as great as
that which had formerly been accorded to the dead woman.
But what could Jemmie do? He would be extremely bored by being
dragged out before dinner. He would not know what he ought to do,
and irritated by not knowing he would certainly do the wrong thing.
Moreover, she did not feel that she wanted Jemmie. She was anxious to
be quiet and avoid any discussion of her inheritance, any speculation
upon its exact amount, any plans of Jemmie to build this house or buy
that property. In fact, she should like to stay at King's Gate to-night
by herself and sleep in her old room upstairs. She desired to make
amends to her grandmother's memory for that unwonted display of terror
in which she had indulged herself. She sent a note by Burton to say
that she should not be back at Woodworth Lodge until the next morning.
* * * * *
Mr. Alison was displeased by his wife's message. If it would not have
involved him in what might have been the unpleasantness of a houseful
of hysterical servants, he would have driven back to King's Gate to
protest against her action. It would have been sufficiently annoying
to receive word that she might be late for dinner, or even that she
might not be back at all for dinner; but to stay the night for no
purpose except to gratify a whim of piety, that did strike Mr. Alison
as unreasonable. He hoped that Mary was not going to turn religious, to
start getting up early in the morning for Communion and all that kind
of thing. One never knew what a woman might do after thirty. Or take
up with spiritualism. He would soon put a stop to that. Table-turning
and tambourine playing ... long-haired mediums and goggle-eyed women
with skinny necks and Oriental beads ... she had the children, and they
ought to be enough.
"Did Burton say why your mistress had to stay?" he asked the parlormaid.
"No, sir; he said no more than give me Meddem's note."
Mr. Alison strode across the room in irritation, and nearly tripped
over Mac, who squealed in alarm.
"Confound the dog! Take him downstairs, Pinkney," he called to the
retreating maid. "He's getting much too old to be allowed all over the
house. And what is the matter with the gas to-night?"
"It do seem to burn a bit dim, sir. I think Mac has gone and hid under
your chair, sir."
"Come out of that, you brute," Mr. Alison shouted angrily.
There was a low growl in response.
"Did you hear him, Pinkney?"
The maid was stricken by awe.
"He deliberately growled at me."
Mr. Alison rocked the chair violently in order to frighten Mac into the
open; when at last he had succeeded in driving him out of the room and
was alone, he made up his mind to tell Mary on her return that her dog
must be put away. It was not safe to have a dog like that about with
children in the house. In any case it was too old. It was over a year
old when he gave it to Mary nearly eleven years ago. Dogs ought not
to be allowed to grow old. Mr. Alison smoothed his ruffled brow and
patted his bald head.
"That new hair-restorer is as much of a fraud as the rest of them," he
thought. "One of these days somebody will prosecute a hair-restorer
for obtaining money under false pretences. Personally I don't believe
that, when a man has lost his hair so completely as I have, anything in
the world will bring it back. That's where I take exception to their
advertisements. They're dishonest."
Pondering the inclination of humanity to grow more dishonest daily, Mr.
Alison looked at his watch and saw that there was still half an hour to
dinner-time.
"She might easily have come back," he complained to himself.
He had looked forward to telling her about that extremely satisfactory
bit of business with Moss, Doddington & Co. What was the use of slaving
all day in the City to keep a wife and family and carriage and a large
house? Women were apparently incapable of grasping what a serious
strain it put on a man to work for hours under a load of domestic
responsibility. If Mary really appreciated what he was doing for her,
she would have let nothing interfere with her being at home to-night.
He was very sorry of course about her grandmother's death. But after
all the old lady was getting on for eighty-one. At such an age her
death was to be expected at any moment. By the way, he must go to his
tailor to-morrow on the way down to Throgmorton Street. Nothing looked
worse than resuscitated mourning.
"I wonder how much money the old lady will leave after all. A decent
amount, I fancy. Odd that she never asked me to look after her affairs.
She knew I was a good man of business. Business! It was a pity that
Mary did not have to go to the City and work for a while. She would
know herself then how dreary it was to come home and find the house
deserted.
"Ah, nurse, are the children ready for their romp?" he asked as the
door opened.
"Miss Muriel and Master Geoffrey said you promised to play tigers with
them to-night, sir. I'm sure I don't know where they get hold of their
wild ideas. And Master Richard went on at me till I said I would ask
you if he might come down to dessert and have an extra quarter of an
hour when he's done his homework."
"Not to-night, nurse. Not to-night. I'm dining out. In fact, I must go
and dress at once. Tell the children I'll play with them to-morrow, and
tell cook, will you, please, that there will be no dinner to-night.
Mrs. Alison is staying at King's Gate. Her ladyship is dead."
"Oh dear, sir, I am sorry to hear that. My mistress will be very upset.
Though I suppose with such an old lady and all it was to be expected."
"Yes, yes, quite so," said Mr. Alison. "By the way, I shouldn't tell
the children to-night."
"No, sir, it might make them a bit creepy as they say."
"But I don't think I ought to play with them. I'm sure Mrs. Alison
would rather they went to bed very quietly to-night. You'd better say
that we've both had to go out to dinner. Oh, and, nurse, it would be as
well not to let Mac go into the nursery or schoolroom. He seems to be
turning savage. Poor old dog, he was my first present to your mistress
before we were married."