"Jemmie, he's not dead? He's only wounded?"
"My poor darling Mary, our boy is dead."
"Richard! Richard! Richard!" she wailed to the roar of London, the
cruel roar of London which let young men die to keep the city roaring.
"It wasn't even in battle. He was in charge of a convoy. He was
ambushed. By God, Mary, I'd like to burn the scoundrels in Parliament
who talk about brother Boer. I'd like to throw them down into Trafalgar
Square from the top of Nelson's Column. Lloyd George and the whole
skulking crew. It's they who are encouraging the Boers to go on with
this guerilla warfare. Mary, don't look so white. Shall I ring for some
brandy? Did you do anything about Geoffrey and this marriage?"
"Geoffrey!" the mother echoed, and her voice was like the tinkling of
broken ice. "Let him do what he likes, and go where he likes, and die
where he likes. I want Richard. Do you hear? I want Richard. I want
him. I want him. He's mine. He can't really be taken away from me like
this. There must be some mistake in the name. Mistakes are made. We
must go to Africa and make sure. _We'll_ emigrate," she laughed, and
then mercifully the tears began to flow.
_Chapter Six_
THE WIDOW
_Chapter Six: The Widow_
Jemmie Alison had been buried a fortnight. The rays of the fallow
November sun lighted the table in the window of his old study at which
his widow was seated engaged upon the task of sorting out his papers.
Mary's hands frilled with snowy organdie were now the hands of her
grandmother when _she_ was fifty, fifty years ago. Otherwise she did
not resemble Lady Flower, being of a fairer complexion with roses
still fresh upon her cheeks and rich brown hair on which the gossamer
spun by age was less conspicuous than the first rime upon October
leaves. She had paused for a moment from her task and was staring out
at the drooping chrysanthemums that gave to the garden of Woodworth
Lodge such an aspect of mournfulness and decay. Why did not Markham
take them up? There was nothing so melancholy as flowers which had
outstayed their season. Winter was at hand. Of what use was it to try
to prolong the illusion of summer? Winter was not to be cajoled by such
pretenses. Besides, chrysanthemums were at best funereal blossoms.
How high they had been heaped a fortnight ago, wreath upon wreath, on
Jemmie's coffin.... She turned back to her task of sorting out the
papers; but a minute or two later she stopped to reproach herself, as
she had reproached herself many times daily since her husband's death
with having failed to be as deeply moved by it as she ought. No doubt
the protracted illness, when he lingered month by month after the
doctors had declared that he could not survive another week, was partly
responsible for the absence of emotion. She had been preparing so long
for the death that, when at last he did die, she discovered that there
was no emotion which she had not already exhausted. Yes, although while
he lay dying all those weeks she had fought against a monstrous and
wicked hope that the agony would not be too long protracted, at the end
her only definite feeling had been one of relief. Poor old Jemmie, he
had been so good throughout those weary weeks. The nurses had assured
her that they had never known such a patient. It was strange that a man
who throughout his life had allowed himself to be disconcerted by the
smallest interference with his minor comforts should be able to endure
without a murmur months of fierce pain. There must have been something
fundamentally noble about Jemmie, some bedrock of character impervious
alike to violent passions and the fretful whims of ordinary existence.
Impervious at any rate to the latter. It was verging on the ludicrous
to associate violent passions with Jemmie, for surely no man ever lived
less subject to the stress of the unattainable. Not that his exemption
should detract at all from her admiration of his suffering. On the
contrary she should yield him a greater respect, because he could never
have been tested in the whole of his life as he was tested every hour
of that last illness. But herself? Had that endlessly drawn out vigil
revealed in herself any fundamental nobility of character? Outwardly
she had been all devotion. She had accepted the flattery of the nurses,
the laudation of her friends, the pathetic gratitude of her husband
for the care she lavished, the zeal with which she waited on him, the
affection never in all their married life so freely given as when he
lay dying. Yet always at the back of her mind had lurked the question
when it would be over, the desire to be quit of her obligation, the
longing to be herself for the remainder of her life. Or was she doing
herself an injustice in thinking that? Was it not really the nervous
strain of expecting the inevitable for so long which made her sigh
for that consummation to achieve itself? It was foolish to exaggerate
one's deficiencies. It savored of a morbid self-interest. These inward
contests in which women permitted themselves to indulge, especially
in books, were nothing more than a subtle form of self-flattery. They
were another aspect of the schoolgirl's habit of talking a situation
to death. The female mind could never resist the remnants of a
conversation a whit more easily than it could resist a July sale.
Mary compelled herself to concentrate upon the task she had taken in
hand, and for a while she was able to keep her thoughts fixed upon
her husband's papers. How neatly he had kept his receipted bills until
January of this year. Here was a thin sheaf for 1910, the record of
the last month he spent walking about before he took to his bed. There
had been plenty of bills all through this year for doctors and nurses
and medicine, and at last for the funeral. But it was she who had kept
them, so they were lying about anyhow. How vexed Jemmie would have been
with her if he had known that she had already mislaid the undertaker's
receipt.
"I wish you would try to be more business-like."
She could hear his voice so plainly that she looked round the room,
and noted with a pang of regret that this pallid sunshine was not so
weak but that it lighted up the dust upon his empty pipes. Was it
conceivable that Jemmie was regarding her at this moment from another
sphere? Was there really anything in spiritualism? She had wished to
experiment with it after Richard was killed; but Jemmie had been so
contemptuous of the idea and so profoundly convinced of the fraud it
was, that she had lacked the courage for a real investigation. There
was no Jemmie now to deter her. She must have a talk with Mrs. Hippisle
who so firmly believed in the possibility of communicating with the
dead ... yes, it would make such a difference if one could only be sure.
1909? Nothing but bills in that file. It would be prudent to keep them.
Not that it was likely one of Jemmie's tradesmen would be dishonest.
He had always patronized the oldest and most respectable firms in
London. Still, there might be a clerical mistake. Better to keep 1909.
1908? She turned the leaves of that file. To one Angora coat ... to
cuffs for same ... to one large bottle of Crinum ... to one large
bottle of Doctor Gunter's Hair Tonic ... to one large bottle ... Jemmie
had never ceased to abuse hair-restorers, but in his sixty-third year
he was still the victim of their audacious promises.
If she did decide to take up spiritualism, she should not be so
gullible as that. Why, Jemmie had begun to lose his hair before he was
married! 1907, 1906, 1905, 1904. All receipted bills. 1904? A letter in
Geoffrey's handwriting. That was queer.
Hopkinsville,
Ontario,
_April 4th_.
_My dear Father_,
_Thank you very much for the check you sent me. I am hoping very much
that the milk business will turn out as well as I hope. I now owe
you £420. Do you want me to send you a formal I.O.U.? Or will this
acknowledgment by letter be enough?_
_Your affectionate son,
Geoffrey._
It was strange that Jemmie should never have mentioned that he was
giving Geoffrey money. And stranger still that he should keep his son's
letter with the receipted bills of hatters and hosiers. Perhaps there
were other letters. Mary examined again more carefully the recent
files. Yes, here was another that spoke of receiving money two years
later, written from Winnipeg. And here, why here in 1909 was a letter
from London!
45 Almond Terrace,
Wood Green,
_November 15_.
_My dear Father_,
_Thank you very much for the £100 which brings up my debt to £930. I
shouldn't have bothered you again, but the expenses of getting back
from Canada and the birth of our little girl have made things rather
difficult. I am going in for the cinematographic business which from
what I can see looks like being the business of the future. I've got
a job as studio manager with a new firm who I hope will prove to have
some staying power. I don't think any good purpose would be served by
my coming to see you. I've kept out of your way for so long now that
it's better to keep out of the family for good. It would be useless
to pretend that Mary doesn't feel a certain amount of resentment,
and now that we have our little girl we get on very happily. Please
do not misunderstand my motive in writing to you like this. If it
was only you I might take a different course. But there is Mother
to be considered. She would feel--quite rightly from her point of
view--that the baby ought to be brought up in different surroundings.
This would only cause bad feeling between her and Mary, which I would
not like. I haven't made such a terrific success of my life, and so
I am perhaps a bit oversensitive. It seems very ungrateful to write
like this after your kindness, but I hope you will understand that
I'm trying to act for the best. I am sorry to hear that you've not
been feeling quite yourself lately. I hope it's nothing more than
the effect of the beastly weather we've been having. I'm glad to be
back in England again. I don't know what made me choose Canada as a
country to settle in._
_Your affectionate son,
Geoffrey._
Geoffrey had written this only a year ago. Perhaps he was still at the
same address. Mary felt inclined to order the car so that she could
drive immediately to Wood Green, wherever Wood Green was, and find out.
She had risen from the table before she remembered that Muriel had
taken the car for the afternoon. But to-morrow she would go. Nothing
should stop her to-morrow.
Poor old Jemmie, he must have been pining for his son. He must have had
a vague presentiment of his last illness. And how extraordinary that
he should have said nothing about the birth of Geoffrey's little girl.
To have lain there all these months silent about that great event! It
was strange too that he should not have left any money to Geoffrey.
Perhaps he had known when he left in his will everything to her that
she would find out from his papers about Geoffrey and the little girl,
and had trusted to her to make some provision for them. It might be
that all those years he had been anxious for a reconciliation and that
he had waited for a word from herself to give him an excuse to make the
first move. He would have been too proud of his own accord to propose
the reconciliation; but if he could have salved his pride by pretending
that he was receiving Geoffrey back into the family on her account,
there was no doubt that he would have done so. Oh, it was clearly her
duty to go to-morrow and find out if Geoffrey was still in Wood Green.
It was her duty to the dead man and to her own self. Few might be the
gray hairs of her head, but heavy had been the frost upon her heart
all these years of middle-age. The more she thought about it, the more
remarkable appeared Jemmie's secretiveness. What could have been at the
back of his mind? To be sure, when first Geoffrey married, it was she
who had been of all the bitterest against him. But there had been some
justification then. She had not stayed implacable. Yet she had never
suggested a reconciliation, which it was her place to do. Jemmie might
be pardoned for supposing that she did not want one. But what a pity!
He would have died more happily if he had been friends at the last with
the only son left to him. How much she hoped that he could be looking
down from that mysterious hinterland of death, and that he might behold
her setting out to-morrow on her mission of good-will.
How far had she got with the papers? Oh yes, 1904. 1903? Nothing from
Geoffrey in 1903. Nothing from him in 1902 either. She wished that
Jemmie had kept his first letters from Canada, for there must have
been earlier letters. Those first hundreds of pounds must have been
begged for with tales of misfortune in Canada. Or had Geoffrey written
casually in the beginning as he used to write to her from Oxford for a
hundred pounds? Perhaps that was the reason why his father had always
spoken bitterly of him in those first years of the marriage. 1901.
Mary turned pale. Here was the bill for Richard's uniform. _Received
with compliments and thanks_ ... the money that equipped her boy to be
killed. The paper with its royal warrants was as fresh as the day on
which it was printed. But Richard! Her Richard! What was Richard now?
And here in the file for 1900 was the bill for Richard's uniform as
a cadet at Sandhurst. All these years going backward from this date
held something of Richard. 1899? White waistcoats for Richard when he
got into Pop at Eton. How delighted he had been! 1898? 1897? 1896?
Tophats for Richard every year. 1895? The right kind of Eton jacket,
"because a chap at my private school told me to be jolly careful about
that, mother." And Jemmie had remembered from his own Eton days how
important it was to be jolly careful about that. 1894? School fees.
1893? Richard's straw hat with the second eleven ribbon of his private
school. That hot summer of 1893 when they had moved in to High Corner
for the holidays. 1892? School fees, and the bill for a bicycle in
which Jemmie had invested to reduce his growing stoutness. That bicycle
with cushion tires of which Jemmie had been so proud, but which almost
immediately became old-fashioned by the invention of pneumatic tires.
How Richard and Geoffrey had scorned his offer of it to them! They
would not be seen dead on such an out-of-date old boneshaker; and
two years later Richard had been given £7 10s. to buy from a friend
at school a second-hand one with huge pneumatic tires. His first big
present. It had made both him and his mother feel so very old.
1891? The doctor's bill when Richard had diphtheria. That was the year
when she might have changed the whole course of her life. Ought she
to have confessed the impulse of that May evening to Jemmie before he
died? From the file of bills dropped a lilac-hued and even after twenty
years still faintly lilac-scented scrap of notepaper.
Frivolity Theater,
_May? Wednesday_.
_Darling old Podge_,
_I can get away to-night, so you must come. Thanks everso for the
duck of a ring. My eye, won't it dazzle some of the mashers in the
front row when we open next week. Lots of love._
_From
Maudie._
1891? May, 1891? It could not be just a coincidence that this old
letter was in the file of 1891. That must have been the year when
Jemmie received it. And the month was May. That was the time when
Jemmie was so frequently having to be away for the night on business.
But why should he have filed only this note? It surely had no more
sentimental value than many others he must have received from this
Maudie. It must have been put away with his papers by accident. Perhaps
this was the very note that kept him from coming home to dinner that
night when Pierre came and when Richard fell ill.
"If I had known of the existence of this Maudie, would anything have
kept me from going away that night?" Mary asked herself.
The sere chrysanthemums were lost in the wan radiance of the November
sunlight: the sodden lawn and greasy London trees vanished: the
outlines of other houses no longer affronted the vision. Mighty palms
cooled the fervid air with their green and glittering fans: their
trunks were wreathed with odorous trumpet-flowers to steal whose honey
came fluttering a myriad humming-birds with breasts of emerald and
lapis-lazuli, and rubied wings, and tails of fire.
"My boys have cut a path before us through the forest. Let us ride
through, my love, to the sea."
Perfume on perfume, color on color, with the forest stretching behind
them and before them.
"You are tired, my love. Dismount. Here is a filanjàna in which you may
travel through the forest to the sea."
A filanjàna, a filanjàna. Thus had Pierre named the palanquin in which
he promised that she should travel with him in Madagascar. A filanjàna!
A filanjàna! Swaying lightly in a filanjàna, she traveled on through
the forest to the sea. Sun-birds and parroquets and purple kingfishers
flew down the forest glade on either side of the gently swaying
filanjàna; and so at last they came to the sea ... the sea ... to the
nipped and withered chrysanthemums and the slimy city trees.
"If I had known that Richard would be killed ten years later, and that
Geoffrey would run off with a barmaid, would I have gone away that
night?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I should have known that one day I should be fifty."
"Am I really fifty?"
"Yes. I am fifty, fifty, fifty. How strange that I should have
remembered that word filanjàna. It had been hidden away all these years
in a secret room of memory like a bit of jewelry that one buys on a
voyage."
"Yes, but if I'm fifty, Maudie can't be much less. What happened then
to her and what happened then to me matters nothing, to either of us."
"Poor Maudie!"
She could not have had any illusions about Jemmie, or she would never
have called him Podge. It was not a name that could share a grand
passion. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Still, Podge
and Juliet. No, whatever Juliet might think about roses and Montagues,
she would never have called Romeo Podge.
"But I need not reproach myself with not having told him about Pierre."
How long had Maudie lasted? Probably until Jemmie took up golf, and
that was soon after they bought High Corner in 1893. He must have
forgotten all about her, or he surely could not have been so indignant
with Geoffrey when he was first told about the girl at the White Hart.
Yet if Jemmie did involve himself in a romance, it was her own fault.
She had never encouraged him to be romantic with her. When they were
first married she had let him think that any kind of affectionate
demonstrativeness was distasteful to her. It had been. She had known
nothing of life. Muriel was different. Somehow girls nowadays seemed
able to find out much more. One could not imagine Muriel's marrying
anybody, because her mother advised it. But it was time for Muriel
to think about marriage. She was twenty-five. The modern girl was
inclined to cherish her independence too long and too dearly. Next
season it would be well to make a point of inviting suitable young men
to the house. Perhaps, with the strain of Jemmie's illness, she had
allowed Muriel's interests to be neglected. And Muriel herself was
discouraging. She had always been remote even at school; but Newnham
had made her more than remote. She was now as unapproachable as the
inhabitant of a star. Jemmie, dead though he was, seemed nearer to
her than Muriel. It was not surprising that she was still unmarried.
Young men must stand in awe of her. Those calm cold eyes lacked any
expression that might lead even the most self-confident young man to
suppose that she could be thought of in connection with marriage. No
doubt, as she grew older, she would acquire the warmth of humanity; but
at present she was a statue. And then there was her Socialism. That was
a very unattractive side of Muriel. That continuous drip of ice-cold
water upon all existing laws and institutions, upon all creeds and
sentiments and political opinions, could not but be alarming to the
average young man. Why should she be so hostile to established beliefs?
It was not as if she had too much church-going forced upon her when
she was small. She had had to go to church once every Sunday; but
the rest of the day, at any rate when she was at home, had been hers
without Puritanical restrictions to sicken her of religion for the rest
of her life. Yet the contempt with which she spoke of Christians was
quite unpleasant to hear. Moreover, she had a habit of attributing the
worst motives to many dull but essentially worthy people, a trick of
assuming that they did not in their hearts believe what they professed.
According to Muriel the world consisted of idiots and hypocrites, an
opinion which was not calculated to make young men fall in love with
her. Nowadays, girls were really as great a problem as boys. No wonder
people were beginning to have fewer children.
1890 ... 1889 ... 1888 ... these early bills could all be burnt. Ah,
there was Markham setting to work at last to clear the borders of the
chrysanthemums.
Mary did not change her mind about her visit to Wood Green; nor did
she allow herself to be deterred by Muriel's indignation at not being
able to have the car in order to drive round the sights of London the
Northern delegates to a conference that was being held in town.
"It's very inconvenient, Mother," she protested.
"I daresay it is, dear. But it would be still more inconvenient for me
not to have the car this afternoon."
"You see I'd promised the committee...."
"I'm sorry, Muriel dear, but I am unable to let you have the car this
afternoon. And your committee cannot complain. They are doing their
best to make it impossible for people to keep cars. So really while
they allow us to keep them, we had better make the most of them. You'll
have to take your party from Sheffield in an omnibus. You can really
see more of London from the top of an omnibus."
"The point is that it makes me look somewhat ridiculous," said Muriel.
"No more ridiculous than you would look tearing about London with these
gentlemen in your mother's car."
Driving along to Wood Green, Mary wondered why they allowed trams on
these crowded roads. They made it most dangerous for a car to drive
fast; now that she was on her way to heal a breach that had endured ten
years, every minute gained seemed of the utmost importance. It would
be terrible to find that Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace a month ago
for some unknown destination. He must have read in the _Morning Post_
or in _The Times_ the announcement of his father's death, and if he was
still in London it was strange that he had not attended the funeral. A
quarrel should not be allowed to endure after death. Of course, there
was a chance that Geoffrey had missed the announcement and that he
was actually unaware of his father's death. London was so huge. One
realized how large it was when one drove along roads like this, past
clanging trams full of people, past side-street after side-street, each
of them leading to other side-streets which led to others full of human
beings who all lived in London just as one lived in London oneself. If
Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace, she should never find him; and she
might die without his knowing that she was dead, without his knowing
that she had sought him out for a reconciliation.
"Does Mr. Geoffrey Alison live here?"
"Ye-es," grudgingly admitted what was evidently a landlady of the
common vulturine type, beneath whose outspread apron lurked a
fledgling. "Ye-es," she repeated. "Was you wanting to see him about
anything?"
"Please."
"Well, he's out," said the landlady with a triumphant sniff. "And not
likely to be back till late, what's more. Yes, he was out soon after
ten this morning. Soon after ten--well, it was about five after as
near as a touch--soon after ten, he was out. I suppose you're from the
Pictures where he works? Any message, of course, as you care to leave
with me I'll see he 'as it, and no one can't do more than that."
"But I wanted to see him myself," said Mary, pausing undecided upon the
steps of the little two-storied house.
"Ah, there you are," the landlady rejoined. "Well, I can't do no more
than what I've said. Leave off, do, Eric," she exclaimed, slapping her
son's hand for some misdeed committed upon the apron that sheltered
him from observation. "One don't know which way to turn with children
sometimes, and that's a fact."