Part 8

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!”