“Just so! Love-sick—sick of love—savage with love—savaging her holy of
holies. A parody. Lila’s right.”
But Miss Howe shook her head.
“No, no. I didn’t mean that sort of parody. Madala may have had her
emotions, but she’d always be good-tempered about them. She’s laughing
at herself in _The Resting-place_ as well as at us.”
“But why do you cavil at it so?” said the Baxter girl slowly.
“Only at its plain meaning. Grant the parody and——”
“But why can’t you just read it as it stands? Why do you say
sentimental? I—I liked it.”
Anita took the book from her hand.
“But, my dear child, _any_body can write this sort of thing. Where’s the
passage the ladies’ papers rave about, where they have a day on the
river together?” She whipped over the pages while I said to the Baxter
girl—
“What is it? What’s it about? What’s the plot?”
“Oh, there isn’t any. That’s what they complain of. It’s just a little
artist’s model who sits to an elderly, broken-down dreamer, and thinks
him a god. The duke and door-mat touch. It’s just how two people fall in
love and find it out. It’s as simple as A, B, C. But people ate it when
it came out.”
“Treacle, I tell you,” insisted Mr. Flood.
Anita overheard him.
“Exactly! Listen to this—
... and they landed at last in a meadow of brilliant, brook-fed
grass.
She had no words in which to say a thousand times ‘How
beautiful!’ Words? She had never known a country June. She had
never seen whole hedges clotted with bloom, she had never in all
her life breathed the perfume of the may or heard a lark’s
ecstasy. She had never—and to her simplicity there was no break
in the chain of thought—she had never before been alone with
him, unpaid, not his servant but his equal and companion. How
should she have words?
She sat in the grass with the tall ox-eyes nodding at her elbow
and looked at him from under her hat with a little eased sigh.
This, after the dust of the journey, of the day, of her life,
was bliss. She prepared herself for this bliss, deliberately, as
she did everything. She was too poor and too hungry to be
wasteful of her happiness: she must have every crumb. Therefore
she had looked first at herself, critically, with her trained
eye, fingering the frill of her blouse, flinging a scatter of
skirt across her dusty city feet, lest her poverty should jar
his thoughts of her.
Then she looked at him. She saw him for a moment with undazzled
eyes, the blue sky enriched with clouds behind him. She was
saying to herself—‘I’m not a fool. I can see straight. I know
what he is. He’s just an ordinary man in a hot, black suit. He
stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out with work. He’ll never be young
again. And there’s nothing particular about him. Then what makes
me like him? But I do. I do. He has only to turn and smile at
me——’
Then he turned and smiled at her, and it seemed to her that the
glamour of the gilded day passed over and into him as he smiled,
glorifying him so that she caught her breath at his beauty. She
knew her happiness. She knew herself and him. He was the sum of
the blue sky and green, green grass, and the shining waters and
the flowers with their sweet smell, and the singing birds and
the hum of the little things of the air. All beauty was summed
up in him: he was food to her and sunshine and music: he was her
absolute good: and she thought that someone ought to see that
his socks were mended properly, for there was a great ladder
down one ankle, darned with wrong-coloured wool.
“Well?” She shut the book.
“I like it,” said the Baxter girl stubbornly.
Mr. Flood twisted uneasily in his seat.
“Oh, pretty, of course. Of course it’s pleasant enough in a way. But
Madala oughtn’t to be pretty. Think of the stuff she _can_ do.”
“But can’t you see,” Miss Howe broke in, “how it parodies the slush and
sugar school?”
Anita shook her head.
“She used another manner when she was ironical. I wish you were right.
Oh, you may be—I must consider—but I’m afraid that she is in earnest.
That phrase now—‘The green, green grass,’ (why double the adjective?)
‘the shining waters, the singing birds’—pitiful! And that
anti-climax—‘He was her absolute good: and she thought that someone
ought to see that his socks were mended properly.’ I ask you—is it art?”
“Not as serious work, of course,” said Miss Howe, “but——”
“I wish I could think so,” said Anita.
“Well, I wish I could do it,” said the Baxter girl. “What do you say,
Jenny?”
But it had brought back the country to me. It had brought back home. I
hadn’t anything to say to them.
“And she wouldn’t discuss it, you know. She came in after supper that
night, just as I was reading the last chapter. It had only been out a
day. There she sat, where you are now, Lila, smiling, with her hands in
her lap and her eyes fixed on her hands, waiting for me to finish.”
“Oh—” Miss Howe gave a little gushing scream, “that reminds me—d’you
know, Anita, somebody actually told me that nobody had seen _The
Resting-place_ before it was published, not even you. I was amused. I
denied it, of course.”
“Why?” said Anita coldly.
Miss Howe screamed again.
“Then you didn’t? Oh, my dear?”
“Emancipation with a vengeance,” said Mr. Flood.
“It had to come, Anita,” said Miss Howe with deadly sympathy.
“It was not that. It was only—she was so extraordinarily sensitive about
the _Resting-place_—unlike herself altogether. I think, I’ve always
thought that she herself knew how unworthy it was of her. She—what’s the
use of disguising it?—she, at least, had a value for my judgment,” her
eyes, wandering past Miss Howe, brooded upon the Baxter girl, “and she
knew what my judgment would be. She owned it. She anticipated it. I had
shut the book, you know, quietly. She sat so still that I thought she
was asleep. She had had one of those insane mornings——”
“Of course. She used to take a crowd of children into the country,
didn’t she?”
“Once a week. Slum children.”
“I know. ‘To eat buttercups,’ she told me,” said Miss Howe.
“It was ridiculous, you know. She couldn’t afford it. Look at the way
she lived! I always said to her, ‘If you can afford mad extravagances of
that sort, you can afford a decent flat in a decent neighbourhood’——”
“Oh, but I loved those rooms,” said the Baxter girl, “with the Spanish
leather screen round the wash-hand-stand.”
Anita glanced behind her.
“Ah, you’ve noticed? I happened to admire it one day and—you know what
she is—‘Would you like it? Why, of course, it would just suit the rest
of your things. Oh, you must have it. I’d like you to. It’s far too big
for this room.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘if you want it housed——’ So that’s how it
comes to be here. One couldn’t hurt her feelings. And you know, it was
quite unsuitable to lodging-house furniture.”
Miss Howe laughed.
“It disguised the wash-hand-stand. That was all Madala cared. Only then
she always took you round to show you how beautifully it did disguise
it.”
“Typical,” said Mr. Flood. “Her reserves were topsy-turvy.”
“But she had her reserves,” said Miss Howe quickly.
“I doubt that,” he answered her.
“Oh, but she had.” Anita recovered her place in the talk. “Curious
reserves. You know how she came to me over _Eden Walls_ and _Ploughed
Fields_. I saw every chapter. But as I was telling you, she wouldn’t
hear a criticism of _The Resting-place_. That evening she pounced on me.
She was as quick as light. She said—‘You don’t like it! I knew you
wouldn’t! Never mind, Anita. Forget it! Put it in the fire! You like me.
What do the books matter?’ She’d been watching me all the time.”
“She had eyes in the back of her head,” said Miss Howe.
“Kind eyes,” said the Baxter girl.
“And I assure you she wouldn’t have said another word on the subject if
I hadn’t insisted. I told her not to be ridiculous. How could I help
being disappointed? How could I separate her from her work? I was
disappointed, bitterly. I made it clear. I said to her—‘Well, Madala,
all I can say is that if your future output is to be on a level with
this—this pot-boiler——’”
“It’s not a pot-boiler,” said the Baxter girl loudly and quite rudely.
“I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s not a pot-boiler.”
Anita stared her down.
“‘—pot-boiler,’ I said, ‘then—I wash my hands of you.’ I wanted to rouse
her. I couldn’t understand her.”
“Well?” said Miss Howe.
They all laughed.
“Oh, you can guess.” Anita was petulant, but she, too, laughed a little.
“You know her way. She just sat smiling and twisting a ring that she
wore and looking like a scolded child.”
“But what did she say?” said the Baxter girl.
“Nothing to the point. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but, Anita, if I’d never written
anything, wouldn’t you be just as fond of me?’ Such a silly thing to
say! She was distressing at times. She embarrassed me. Fond of her! She
knew my interests were intellectual. Fond of her! For a woman of her
brains her standard of values was childish.”
“But you were fond of her, you know,” said Miss Howe.
“Oh, as for that—there was something about her—she had a certain
way——After all, if it gave her pleasure to be demonstrative, it was
easier to acquiesce. But she made a fetish of such things. I was only
trying to explain to her, as I tell you, that it was quite impossible to
separate creator and creatures, and that to me she was _Eden Walls_ and
_Ploughed Fields_, and if you believe me, she was upon me like a
whirlwind, shaking me by the shoulders, and crying out—‘No, no, stop!
You’re to stop! It’s me you like, not the books. I hate them. I hate all
that. I shall get away from all that one day.’ And I said—‘I don’t
wonder you’re ashamed of _The Resting-place_. I advise you to get to
work at once on your new book. You’ll find that if you pull yourself
together——’ And all she said was—‘Nita! Nita! _Don’t!_ And she looked at
me in such a curious way——”
“How?” somebody said.
“I don’t know—laughing—despairing. She’d no right to look at me like
that. It was I who was in despair.”
“I’d like to have seen you two,” said Miss Howe.
“I didn’t know what had got into her. Of course I blame myself. I ought
to have followed it out. I might have prevented things. But I was
annoyed and she saw it, and she——”
Miss Howe twinkled.
“She wouldn’t let you be annoyed with her long. What did she do with
you, Anita?”
“She? I don’t know what you mean. We changed the subject. And as a
matter of fact I was much occupied at the time with the _Anthology_.”
She paused. “She had excellent taste,” said Anita regretfully.
“Naturally I reserved to myself the final decision, but——”
“Just so,” said Mr. Flood.
“Be quiet, Jasper.” The blonde lady’s draperies dusted his shoulder
intimately.
“She’d brought me a delicious thing of Lady Nairn’s, I remember, that
I’d overlooked. And from talking of the _Anthology_ we came, somehow, to
talking about me. Yes—” Anita gave an embarrassed half laugh—“She began
to talk to me, turning the tables as it were—about myself. She’s never,
in all the years I’d known her, taken such a tone. Astonishing! As if—as
if I were the younger.” She stared at them, as one combating an
unuttered criticism. “I—liked it,” said Anita defiantly. “There was
nothing impertinent. It was heartening. She made me feel that one person
in the world, at least, knew me—knew my work. I realized, suddenly, that
while I had been studying her, she must have been studying me, that she
understood my capacities, my limitations, my possibilities, almost as
well as I did myself. The relief of it—indescribable! She was
extraordinarily plain-spoken. As a rule, you know, I thought her
manner——”
“Insincere?” said the Baxter girl. “Yes, I’ve heard people say that.”
“It had that effect. It didn’t seem possible that she could like
everyone as much as she made them think she did. But with me, at least,
she was always frankness itself. She believes, you know,—she believed,
that is, that all my work so far, even the _Anthology_ and the _Famous
Women_ series, not to mention the lighter work, is still preliminary:
that my——” she hesitated—“my master-piece, she called it, was still to
come. She said that, though she appreciated all my work, I hadn’t ‘found
myself.’ Yes! from that child to me it was amusing. But right, you know.
She said that my line, whether I dealt with a period or a person, would
always be critical, but that I’d never had a big success because so far
I’d been merely critical: that I’d never become identified with my
subject: that I’d always remained aloof—inhuman. Yes, she said that. A
curious theory—but it interested me. But she said that it was only the
real theme I needed, the engrossing subject. She said that my chance
would come: that ‘she felt it in her bones.’ I can hear her voice
now—‘Don’t you worry, Nita! It’ll come to you one day. A big thing.
Biography, I shouldn’t wonder. And I shall sit and say—I told you so—I
told you so!’ Yes, she talked like that. Oh, it’s nothing when I repeat
it, but if you knew how it seemed to pour new life into me. It was the
belief in her voice!”
“She always believed in you,” said Miss Howe with a certain harshness.
“Insincere! You should have heard her talk of your _Famous_ _Women_!”
And then—“Yes. She believed in you right enough.”
“More than I did in her that night. I couldn’t forget _The
Resting-place_. It lay on the table, and every now and then, when I felt
most comfort in her, my eyes would fall on it, and it would jar me. She
felt it too. When I saw her off at last—it had grown very late—she
stopped at the gate and turned and came running back. I thought that she
had forgotten her handbag. She nearly always forgot her handbag. But no,
it was _The Resting-place_ that was on her mind. It was—‘Nita! try it
again. Maybe you’d like it better.’ And then—‘Nita! I enjoyed writing it
so.’ ‘That’s something, at any rate,’ I said, not wanting, you know, to
be unkind. Then she said—‘I wish you liked it. Because, you know, Nita—’
and stopped as if she wanted to tell me something and couldn’t make up
her mind. ‘Well, what?’ I said. It was cold on the steps. She hesitated.
She looked at me. For an instant I had an absurd impression that she was
going to cry. Then she kissed me. She’d kissed me goodnight once
already, though, you know, we never did as a rule. And then, off she
went without another word. I was quite bewildered by her. I nearly
called her back; but it was one of those deep dark blue nights: it
seemed to swallow her up at once. But I heard her footsteps for a long
while after—dragging steps, as if she were tired. I wasn’t. It was as if
she had put something into me. I went back into the house and I worked
till daylight. And all the next day I worked—worked well. I felt, I
remember, so hopeful, so full of power. By the evening I had quite a
mass of material to show her, if she came. I half expected her to come.
But instead—” she fumbled among her papers—“I got this.”
It was a sheet of note-paper, a sheet that looked as if it had been
crushed into a ball and then smoothed out again for careful folding.
Anita’s fingers were still ironing out the crinkled edge while she read
it aloud.
“I want to tell you something. I tried to tell you yesterday,
but somehow I couldn’t. It oughtn’t to be difficult, yet all
this afternoon I’ve been writing to you in an exercise book, and
crossing out, and re-phrasing, and putting in again as carefully
and dissatisfiedly as if it were Opus 4. I wish it were, because
then you’d be very much pleased with Madala Grey and forget the
dreadful shock of Opus 3! I was always afraid you wouldn’t like
it, and sorry, because I like it more than all my other work put
together. Have you never even begun to guess why? But how should
you, when I didn’t know myself until after it was finished?
Coming events, I suppose. It’s quite true—one isn’t overtaken by
fate: one prepares one’s own fate: one carries it about inside
one, like a child. I hear you say—‘Can’t you come to the point?’
No, I can’t. Partly because I’m afraid of what you’ll say,
because I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, and partly,
selfishly, because there is a queer pleasure in beating about
the bush that bears my flower. It’s too beautiful to pick
straight away in one rough snatch of a sentence. Am I selfish?
You’ve been so kind to me. I know you will be sorry and that
troubles me. And yet—Anita, I am going to be married. You met
him once in the churchyard at home, do you remember? I’ve seen
him now and then when I took the children down there in the
summer. He——
There’s something scratched out here,” said Anita.
“I think we shall be happy. When you get accustomed to the idea
I hope you will like him.”
She paused.
“Now what do you make of that?” said Anita.
“It explains the expeditions with the children,” said Mr. Flood. “They
were always too—philanthropic, to be quite—eh?”
“Oh, but she began those outings ages ago,” said Miss Howe quickly.
“Besides,” said Anita, “she didn’t go every week that summer. That’s the
point. She told me herself that she was so busy that she had to get
help—one of those mission women. Now why was she so busy?”
“Diversions in the country _and_ attractions in town?” said Mr. Flood.
“It all takes time.”
Anita nodded.
“You think that? So do I. _And_ attractions in town! Exactly! At any
rate I shall make that the big chapter, the convincing chapter, of the
_Life_. I think I shall be able to prove that that summer was the climax
of her affairs. I grant you that she met Carey that summer, but as she
says herself, a few times only. We must look nearer home than Carey.”
“Oh, but there’s such a thing as love at first sight,” protested the
Baxter girl, and Anita dealt with her in swift parenthesis—
“I was there when they first met. Shouldn’t I have realized——?” And
then, continuing—“Well, reckon up my points. To begin with—the
difference in her that we all noticed, the restlessness, the—unhappiness
one might almost say, the aloofness—oh, don’t you know what I mean? as
if she didn’t belong to us any more.”
“As if she didn’t belong to herself any more.”
“Yes, yes, that’s even more what I mean. Then comes the fact that we saw
so little of her. What did she do with her time? Writing _The
Resting-place_, was her explanation, but—is that gospel? Do you really
believe that she sat at home writing and dreaming all those long summer
days and nights, except when she was—eating buttercups—with Carey and
her chaperons? And then comes _The Resting-place_ with its appalling
falling-off, and following on that, this letter, this sudden engagement.
Now doesn’t it look—I ask you, doesn’t it look as if something had been
going on behind all our backs and had at last come to a head?”
“Oh, that she was in love is certain,” said Mr. Flood. “Was there ever a
woman of genius who wasn’t?”
“Exactly. It’s a moral certainty. And this letter to me proves that,
whoever it was, it wasn’t Carey. ‘I think we shall be happy.’ ‘I hope
you will like him.’ Is that the way a woman writes of her first love or
her first lover?”
“Oh, but that sentence just before——” the Baxter girl stretched out her
hand for the letter—“‘The bush that bears my flower——’” She spoke
sympathetically; but it jarred me. I wondered how I should feel if I
thought that the Baxter girl would ever read my letters aloud.
“Ah, that’s the literary touch. Madala could never resist embroideries.
Besides—she wants to confuse me. That means nothing. But here, you,
see——” she took the letter out of the Baxter girl’s hand—“as soon as she
comes to the point, the real point, the confession, the apologia—then
the baldest sentences. Try to remember that Madala Grey has written one
of the strongest love scenes of the decade, and all she can say of the
man she is to marry is—‘I hope you will like him.’”
“H’m! It’s curious!” Miss Howe was frowning.
“Isn’t it? And then you know, the whole manner of the engagement was so
unlike her usual triumphant way. She always swept one along, didn’t she?
But in the matter of the marriage she seems, as far as I can make out,
to have been perfectly passive. She left everything to the
man—arrangements—furniture—I imagine she even bought her clothes to
please him. And the wedding itself—no reception, no presents, no notice
to anyone, so sudden, so private. Not a word even to her oldest
friends——”
Great-aunt stirred in her corner.
“—there was something so furtive about it all: as if she were running
away from something.”
Miss Howe sat up.
“D’you mean?—what do you mean, Anita? Are you hinting——?”
Anita looked at her in a puzzled way that relieved me, I hardly knew
why.
“Why, only that it carries out my theory—of Carey as a refuge.”
“From what?”
“Life—frustration—what did you think I meant?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. It was my evil mind, I suppose.” She flushed.
“How she harps on the child!” the Baxter girl carried it on.
“That’s a mere simile——” said Miss Howe swiftly.
“But a queer simile!”
“The marriage _was_ sudden,” said Mr. Flood from the floor in his silky
voice. “Anita’s theory has its points.”
“A seven months’ child!” It was the first word that the blonde lady had
said for some time. There was something sluggishly cold, slimily cold,
in her abstracted voice.
Anita started.
“I never suggested that,” she said sharply. But there was a quiver in
her voice that was more excitement than anger.
“My dear lady, nobody suggests anything. We are only remarking that the
union of our Madala and her ‘refuge’—the soubriquet is yours, by the
way—was as surprising as it was—er—sudden. That was your idea?” He
turned to the shadows and from them the blonde lady nodded, smiling.
At the time, you know, I didn’t understand them. They were so quick and
allusive. They said more in jerks and nods and pauses than in actual
speech. But I saw the smile on that woman’s face, and heard the way he
said ‘our Madala.’ I felt myself growing angry and panic-stricken, and I
was quite helpless. I just went across the room to that big man sitting
dully in his corner, in his dream, and I caught his arm and cried to him
under my breath—
“You must come. You must come and stop them. They’re talking about her.
Come quickly. They—they’re saying beastly things.”
He gave me one look. Then he got up and went swiftly from one room to
the other. But swiftly as he moved and I followed, someone else was
there before us to fight that battle.
It was Great-aunt Serle.
She was a heavy old woman and feeble. She never stirred as a rule
without a helping arm; but somehow she had got herself out of her seat
and across the floor to the table, and there she stood, her knitting
gripped as if it were a weapon, the long thread of it stretched and taut
from the ball that had rolled round the chair-leg, her free hand and her
tremulous head jerking and snapping and poking at that amazed assembly
as she rated them—
“I won’t allow such talk. Anita, I won’t have it. If I let you bring
home friends—ought to know better! And you——” the blonde lady was
spitted, as it were, on that unerring finger, “you’re a wicked woman.
That’s what you are—a wicked, scandalous woman. And you, Anita, ought to
be ashamed of yourself, to let her talk so of my girl. Such a woman!
Paint and powder! Envy, hatred, malice! And in my house too! Tell her to
wash her face!” She glowered at them.
There was a blank pause and then a sound somewhere, like the end of a
spurting giggle. It must have been the Baxter girl. There was a most
uncomfortable moment, before Anita cried out “Mother!” in a horrified
voice, and Miss Howe said “Beryl!” in a voice not quite as horrified.
But the blonde lady sat through it all quite calmly, smiling and
moistening her lips. At last she drawled out—
“Nita! Your dear mother’s quite upset. So sorry, Nita!” Then, a very
little lower, but we could all hear it—“Poor dear Nita! Quite a trial
for poor dear Nita!”
But Anita had jumped up. She was very much flustered and annoyed. I
think, too, that she was startled. I know that I was startled.
Great-aunt didn’t look like herself. She was like a witch in a
picture-book, and her voice had been quite strong and commanding.
Anita tried to quiet her and get her away.
“Mother! You must be quiet! D’you hear me, Mother? You don’t know what
you’re saying. You’ve been up too long. You’re overdone. It’s time you
went to bed.”
She took her firmly by the arm. But Great-aunt struggled with her.
“I won’t. Leave me alone. It’s your fault, Anita. You sat and listened.
You let them talk that way about my girl.”
“Now, Mother, what nonsense! Your girl! Madala’s not your daughter.” And
then, in apology—“She’s always confusing us. She gets these ideas.”
“Not mine? Ah! That’s all you know! ‘Anita upstairs?’ That’s how she’d
come running in to me. ‘Are you busy, Mrs. Serle?’ Always looked in to
my room first. Brought me violets. Talked. Told me all her troubles.
_You_ never knew. Not mine, eh? Didn’t I see her married, my pretty
girl? ‘Hole-and-corner business!’ That’s what you tell them? ‘Nobody
knew.’ But I knew.”
Anita’s hand dropped from her mother’s arm. She stared at her.
“You, Mother? You there?” And then, angrily, “Oh, I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t believe it, eh? But it’s true, for all I’m lumber in my own
house. I’m to go to bed before the company comes, before she comes.
Don’t she want to see me then? Who pinned her veil for her and kissed
her and blessed her, and took her to church, and gave her to him? Not
you, my daughter. She didn’t come to you for that.” And then, with a
slacking and a wail, “Eh, but we were never to tell!”
“Mother, you’d better come to bed. I——” there was the faintest
suggestion of menace in her voice—“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The old woman shrank away.
“I won’t come. I know. You want me out of the way. You don’t want me to
see her. What are you going to say about me? You’ll say things to her
about me. I’ve heard you.”
Quite obviously Anita restrained herself.
“Now, Mother, you know you don’t mean that.”
“Hush!” Great-aunt pulled away her hand. “Quiet, child, quiet! Wasn’t
that the cab? I’ve listened all the evening, all the long evening.” Her
old voice thinned and sharpened to a chirp. “Soft, soft, the wheels go
by. The wheels never stop. Wait till the wheels stop. It’s the fog
that’s keeping her. There’s fog everywhere. Maybe she’s lost in the
fog.” Then she chuckled to herself. “Naughty girl to be so late. But
she’s always late. Why should I go to bed? I’ve got to finish my
knitting, Nita. Only two rows, Nita. They’ll just last me till she
comes.” And then, “Anita, she will come?”
Anita turned to the others.
“Don’t be alarmed. It’s nothing. I’m afraid she hasn’t realized——” She
began again—“Now, Mother! It’s bed-time, Mother dear.”
“‘Dear’—‘dear’—why do you speak kindly? Madala’s not here to listen.”
And then—“Nita, Nita child, let me stay till she comes.”
Anita was quite patient with her, and quite unyielding.
“Now listen, Mother! It’s no use waiting. Come upstairs with me. She
won’t——” her voice altered, “she can’t come tonight.”