ANOTHER WOOING
Osborn's letters told Marie very little of his doings; they almost
conveyed the impression, though he would have been uneasy to know it,
of careful epistles penned by a bad schoolboy. His letters from
Chicago might have been replicas of those from New York; from Montreal
he began on the same old note, though, in answer to her request to
teach a stay-at-home woman descriptive geography, he once launched
forth into an elaborate account of his rail journey on the Canadian
Pacific, from Montreal westwards. Marie was not disappointed in the
letters; they were what she would have expected. But sometimes, as she
read their terse and uninteresting sentences, their stodgy bits of
information, she smiled to think how marriage changed a man.
How dull it made him!
How irritating and constrained it made him! How prosaic! How it
walled-up passion, as one read how a nun who had loved too much was
walled-up, in the old fierce days, with bricks and mortar!
"MY DEAR MARIE," (or sometimes "Dear Wifie"),--
"How are you all getting along? I'm in ---- now, as you will see by
my changed address. Business has been fairly good.... It was rather
a pretty journey here; I must send George a book about the wild
flowers on the prairies.... I am glad to hear you are all so
comfortable. Are you going earlier to Littlehampton this year, or
shall you wait till the summer as usual? Of course, when I went
with you, we had to go in the summer because my turn for holidays
came then; but I should think the rooms would be cheaper earlier in
the year. I am rather glad you are having the carpet cleaned....
"With love to you and the children,
"YOUR AFFECTIONATE HUSBAND."
In the spring a sorrow came with a shock into Marie's even life.
Grannie Amber died suddenly. In the evening she had played with the
children at No. 30, and in the morning she was found in the little
old-fashioned flat on the other side of the Heath, sitting in her
easychair by a dead fire, with her bonnet and cloak on, just as she
had sat down to rest for awhile on her return.
She left her daughter a good deal of old furniture which sold for a
fair sum to dealers; and an income of two hundred and twenty pounds a
year.
For a while sorrow kept Marie much to the rut in which she had moved
since Osborn's departure; but the grief for a parent is so natural and
inevitable a grief; it is not as the grief for a husband or a child;
and when the first warm days of April came Marie took some very
definite steps forward on that road where she had, last December, set
her feet. It was Julia who roused her finally to the course.
Julia came and said: "Do you know, my dear, you're years younger?
You're your pretty self again. And what are you going to do now that
you are such a rich young woman?"
It was a week later that the capable maid was installed in the flat.
She slept in a tiny room which had hitherto been relegated to boxes,
but which now was furnished with one or two left-over pieces from Mrs.
Amber's sale, and the hall-porter, who realised that Mrs. Osborn Kerr
had inherited money, was pleased to care for the boxes. The servant
brought rest and charm into that flat; and George went half-daily to a
near-by school, taking himself to and fro with the utmost manfulness.
Marie paid at last those longed-for visits to the dentist.
* * * * *
Marie was having the first dinner-party for which she had not to cook
herself, and the party consisted of Julia and Desmond Rokeby.
Rokeby had leapt at the invitation flatteringly; but Julia had been
inscrutable in her demur, until begged in such terms as were hard to
refuse.
"You're the only two people I really know intimately," Marie said; "if
you refuse, you'll spoil it all. In fact I don't believe I can have a
man to dinner alone without exciting Mr. and Mrs. Hall Porter."
When she uttered this little vain thing, she laughed and looked in the
glass and patted her hair.
"I'll come," Julia promised.
As Marie Kerr came out of her bedroom and proceeded down the corridor
to inspect the table arrangements, she was a pretty picture of all
that a well-dressed, happy, healthy young woman should be. She paused
by the door of the erstwhile dressing-room to look in on the two elder
children, then entered the dining-room. Spotless napery and most of
the wedding-present silver equipped the table, as it used to do in the
early days of her marriage. Between the candlesticks were clusters of
violets. A bright wood fire burned upon the hearth, but the
golden-brown curtains were not yet drawn upon the evening. The
golden-brown carpet, newly cleaned, was speckless again. Marie moved
about, improving on the table arrangements, and the hands which
touched this or that into better design were little, slim and white.
The finger nails had regained their tapering prettiness. And as she
smiled with pleasure, between her lips an unblemished row of teeth
showed. She wore black, to her mother's memory, but her gown was the
last word in cut and contour; it opened in a long V to show her plump
white neck; underneath the filmy bodice a hint of mauve ribbons
gleamed. In her ears slender earrings twinkled. They were amethyst,
and had been her mother's. She had put them on for the first time that
evening as she dressed, because, regarding herself earnestly in the
glass, there had risen up over her shoulder, for no reason whatever,
the sleek pale face of the manicure girl, who wore emeralds in her
ears. And when she had clipped them on she was thrilled; they gave her
a distinctive, a resolute charm. She could smile at herself again in
that glass, at the colour and light and verve which had come back to
her. The face pictured there had all the roundness, the softness and
pinkiness of the face of the bride Marie, who had waked and looked
therein on wonderful mornings, but it held more than the face of Marie
the bride. It was strong; it had firmness and judgment and humour. It
was no fool of a face. Yet, as the wisest and strongest of women can
delight in vanities, so Marie delighted in the earrings which she wore
to-night, as an inspiration, for the first time.
From her dining-room Marie went to the sitting-room, rosy in the light
of another wood fire. Every day now she used her sitting-room. Tea was
brought to her there, placed at her elbow as she sat in a cosy chair
before the fire, and she drank it at leisure--while the maid gave the
children their meal in the dining-room. In that chair by the fire, all
the spring, Marie had read the new books, for she could afford to pay
a library subscription. In that chair, as she rested, the lines had
smoothed from her face, her neck had grown plump again, and the
stories of modern thought, of modern love and its ways, had stimulated
her brain once more to thoughts of its own. She loved the sitting-room
better than she had loved it even when it was first furnished; it was
now peculiarly her own. When she thought of Osborn's return, as she
did now and then with a curious mixture of feelings, she knew,
half-guiltily, that somehow she would grudge him a share in those
pleasant evenings by the fire.
Marie sat down to wait for Julia and Desmond, and, taking up her
half-finished novel, put her silk-stockinged feet on the fender,
leaned back, and opened the book at the place where she had left the
story. It was a love story, and as she read she thought: "How well I
know this phase! and that phase!... but we will just see what happens
after they're married." Her thought was not bitter, only interested
and curious, because her own hurt was over, and a wisdom, a
contentment, had come.
Julia and Desmond arrived together, much against Julia's will; and
they all sat down in the pretty pale room, while the maid drew the
curtains upon the gathering dusk and switched on the light.
They sat and talked of trivial things, waiting for the serving of
dinner to be announced; and Marie remembered how often, in the past
years, she had longed to sit there comfortably, thus till a
well-trained servant should open the door noiselessly and say: "Dinner
is served, ma'am."
Now it happened every night.
They went in to a well-ordered dinner; there was a pleasant peace and
harmony in the flat; and as Rokeby looked at Marie's face, which had
won back all its old prettiness, as well as attaining the strength of
the woman who has suffered, he did not marvel, but he was a little
sad. And he wondered slightly just what was going to happen to Osborn
when he came home. But Julia, as she looked at Marie, was triumphant;
she did not wonder what was going to happen to Osborn; she thought she
knew. And all dinner she tried to hurl tiny defiances into Rokeby's
teeth, asking with sparkling malice:
"Isn't Marie looking her own self again? Isn't it lovely to see her?
Doesn't grass-widowhood suit her? Isn't it a screaming success?"
Rokeby knew what Julia meant, but his patience was invincible.
There was a piano in the flat now; it had been Grannie Amber's, and
was old, but still it fulfilled its purpose of a musical instrument.
It stood in the sitting-room, across one of the corners by the fire,
and after dinner Marie played and Julia sang; and when she refused to
sing more, it was Desmond's turn. He looked through Marie's pile of
music, selected a song, and sat down to play his own accompaniment
with a light and beautiful touch which came as a surprise to the
listening women, who knew nothing of his drawing-room talents. He went
from song to song, and all at once Marie, transferring her gaze from
contemplative dreams, saw Julia's face. Julia leaned forward with her
elbows on her knees, her chin in her palms, looking at the man at the
piano, and in her eyes ran the old tale, and her red lips smiled and
her breast heaved. But she became conscious of Marie's look, and
sitting up sharply, drew, as it were, a blind down over the light.
"Julia?" Marie said to herself, all wonder, _"Julia!"_
She looked at Rokeby's creaseless back, at his fingers wandering over
the keys, and for the first time she noticed how sensitive, how
caressing the fingers were. Yet that two people in her intimate circle
could contemplate that through which she herself had passed painfully,
as through ordeal by fire....
It made her very kind to them both, though a small stir of queer
jealousy was in her. Before hell they would know heaven. Love and
marriage began with the celestial tour....
When they came out into the hall presently, to put on their outdoor
wraps, she beckoned them to the door of the children's room. The baby
had joined the two elder ones, and three small cots now stood in a
row, closely packed. A night-light gave enough glimmer to see the warm
faces lying peacefully on the three pillows. The women crept in and
looked down upon a scene which will always make women's hearts sing,
or ache; and Rokeby followed. To his lover's mind, never had Julia
Winter appeared so adorable as when she bent low over the fat baby,
and murmured to it the small feckless loving things that all women
always have murmured to all the babies in the world. She touched its
outflung hand delicately with a finger, and lingered there, filled
with woman's world-old want. And out of the twilight Marie sent a
whisper which reached them both.
"Of course, you're never going to marry, either of you. But if you
ever want to, and you're hanging back, wondering, just don't wonder.
Remember that the children are worth--everything."
"Thank you," Rokeby whispered fervently in her ear.
Julia said nothing, but straightened herself and passed out.
Rokeby was after her in a second to hold her coat. The way in which
she turned her back on him so that he might lift it on was peculiarly
ungracious.
Marie was in the background, wanting a lover again. When they had gone
she drew back the curtains, threw up the windows, and leaned out into
the sweet, chill spring night. She drank it and loved it, and all her
being cried out for love.
But she did not want love grown old, which came in and put on its
slippers, and grumped: "Can't those kids keep quiet?" if it heard the
voice of the children of love, and which hid itself behind a hedge of
daily paper, or flung out again from home, in the ill-tempered
senility of its second childhood.
She wanted love new-grown; with a bloom upon it, fresh and young; love
at its beginning, before it was ripe and over-ripe, and spoiling and
falling from its tree; such a love as she imagined Julia and Desmond
even then to be driving towards.
In a taxicab--for where else in all London could he be alone with
her?--Rokeby was taking Julia home. She allowed it in spite of
herself; yet was angry with them both for the circumstance which
brought them together close, which enclosed them in a privacy which
made her remember, with a vividness which disturbed her, the
sensations of that first and only kiss. He was asking her again:
"Haven't you changed your mind, Julia? Can't you relent?"
"You know what I think about marrying."
"I thought I did. But to-night when I looked at you looking at those
kids, I knew differently. You want to be married and have children of
your own. I don't know as much about me--don't know," he said in a
slight break of despair, "that I come into the picture much."
It was dark enough to hide her flush.
"When I ask 'Can't you relent'?" said Rokeby, "I ought to say instead
'Can't you confess?' That's what you don't want to do."
"If--" she began.
"Yes, dear. If?"
"If I married you--"
She paused a long while and he declared passionately: "You're afraid
to risk marriage and yet you want to. You don't know what to do. You
like being loved; you pretend you don't, but you do. You're feeling
how sweet it all is. But you will not own it even to yourself."
And she answered: "I am afraid."
"I know you are," said Rokeby; "and so am I. Haven't you thought of
that?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, look around and see the muddle and mess most people make of the
contract."
"That's what I mean."
"So do I. Why shouldn't I be afraid as much as you are? If we got
married and muddled and messed things up, wouldn't it hurt me as much
as you?"
"Not according to what I've seen. Most men--"
"I'm not most men. I'm just me. You're you. We're different. Besides,
we've seen and thought and argued it out to ourselves as well as
together. Couldn't you risk it?"
"You know what I want; complete freedom."
"Well, you should have it. And you know what I want?"
"Yes?"
"Complete freedom, too."
"Oh?" she said uncertainly, with a jealous note in her voice.
He laughed. "Couldn't I have it, then? Well, to tell you a secret, you
couldn't either. But another secret is that, probably, neither of us
would really want it."
"That's true. It's dreadful the way married people learn to cling to
each other."
"Well, what else would you cling to?"
"I don't know."
"Well; won't you risk it?"
"I think, perhaps, I dare if you dare."
The biggest moment of Rokeby's life was when he took her, for the
second time, into his arms, and felt her lips respond to his. She shut
her eyes and saw again the vision of the three cots side by side in a
dim room; and his eyes, on her face, saw the mother-ecstasy there.
"You wonder!" he exclaimed.
"Why?"
"To give me such a fright when all the while you've been feeling
this!"
It was a long drive from Hampstead, and all the time she was within
his arms, and all the time he told her of all they would be to each
other; of how he loved her. And at last she stood alone in her flat,
with her bedroom lights switched on, looking at a radiant creature in
the glass, and crying within herself:
"Is this really Julia Winter?"
Already the homelike quality of her home had vanished; the dear
possession of her things had become less dear. She could think of
another home, a bigger one, and a hearthplace with her husband's face
opposite her own. She sat down by the dressing-table, and laid her
hands idly in her lap, and thought all the rosy things that women in
love do think.
She lunched the next day with Desmond as a matter of course. He called
for her at her office, and drove her away possessively. There was no
more solitude for her, no more proud loneliness, no more boastful
independence. Already she clung and already she enjoyed it. When, over
the table, he asked: "Isn't it nice being engaged?" she nodded,
smiling, and answered: "I'm wondering why I haven't done it before."