Chapter 15

SURRENDER

Grannie Amber was afraid--she did not know exactly why--that, the year following the second baby's arrival, Osborn would forget Marie's birthday, and she was anxious that it should not be forgotten. Though she herself had, early in her married life, grown tired and quiet, had early learned to bargain shrewishly with the merchants of the cheaper foods and, after the first three years, had always had her birthdays forgotten; though she had been perfectly willing and ready to urge her daughter into the life domestic, upon a small income, yet regrets took her and sighs, all of perfect resignation, when she saw the darkness under Marie's eyes, when she stood by in the market and heard her hard chaffering, when she noted the worried crinkles come to stay in her brow. So that, resolving that Osborn should not forget, natural as it would have been for him, in her judgment, to do so, she trailed his wife's birthday across his path a fortnight before the actual day, wishing in her thoughtfulness to give him the chance to save from two weeks' salary for some gift.

She sewed in his presence and, as she sewed, entered into a full explanation of her work: "This little skirt, Osborn, is for Marie's birthday. I hope I'll get it done in time; there's only a fortnight, as you know."

He did not know; the fact had slipped his memory in the ceaseless dream of other liabilities due; but as he looked at Grannie Amber, and the purple silk petticoat which she was finely sewing, he assumed a perfect memory of the occasion.

He answered: "I was just going to ask Marie what she'd like for it."

"There are a lot of things she'd like," Mrs. Amber began.

That same evening, when Grannie Amber had rolled up the purple petticoat into her workbag and departed, he asked Marie, as they sat together over the fire:

"What would you like for your birthday, my dear?"

A great pleasure shone in her face as she gazed at him.

"Osborn," she stammered, "can you afford to give me a present at all?"

"I should hope so," he replied.

An eagerness, which he had not seen there for a long while, invaded her face; it was an eagerness of pleasure at his remembrance, at his wish to be kind and to give her happiness. About the gift she was not so precious; she hoped it would be small, and she said, almost reverentially:

"I'd rather you chose, dear."

"I'd been thinking," said Osborn, who had thought of it during dinner, "that you might like to be taken out. How would that do for a present? Of course I'd like to do both--to take you out _and_ give you a swagger gift--but we know it can't be done, don't we?"

"Of course. Of course, my dear."

"You'd like to go out to dinner? And perhaps we could go somewhere after, too."

"The dinner will be enough, Osborn. Oh! it will be lovely!"

"Righto!" he said. "I--I do wish I could take you out oftener, but you know--"

"Of course I know, Osborn."

She thought with excitement of the charming few hours which they would snatch from routine, together, a fortnight hence. She spoke of it to Mrs. Amber, carelessly, with a high-beating heart and secret, delicious thrills: "We're dining out on my birthday, mother, if you won't mind spending the evening here in case the children wake."

"Oh, duck!" cried Mrs. Amber, "oh, my love! I'll be delighted. Mind you enjoy yourselves very much and don't hurry home. Grandmothers are made to be useful."

Nearly every spare minute of every day during those intervening weeks Marie spent in renovating a frock. She had vast ideas, but no money except a few shillings hoarded only a woman knows how, in spite of the pressing claims of the greasy books. Her wedding frock, four years old, emerged from the tissue paper where it had lain these many months, yellowed and soiled, in dire need of the cleaner's ministrations or the dyer's art. Marie could not afford the cleaner, and did not dare the wash-tub and soap, but she bought one of those fourpenny-ha'penny dyes with which impecunious women achieve amazing results, wherewith she dyed the frock, and the bath, and her own hands a shade of blue satisfactory at least by artificial light. Under it she would wear the purple petticoat, whose flounces would cause the skirt to sway and swing in the present mode, and she would evolve herself a hat. She folded a newspaper round, shaped it to her head, covered it with black velvet, borrowed a great old cameo clasp of her mother's, and had a turban, a saucy thing whose rake brought back for a while the lamp to her eyes and the rose to her cheek. The housemaid's gloves and the rubber gloves had never been renewed, and the supply of Julia's wornout suèdes could not cope with the destruction of them at No. 30, so that Marie's fine hands were fine no longer. They were reddened and roughened and thickened like the hands of other household women, but each afternoon in the slow fortnight she sat down to careful manicuring. When the result of these pains was fulfilled; when she stood before the glass in her pink bedroom gasping at her reflection, she could have sung and danced and wept in this glad renewal of her youth.

She had rendezvous with Osborn at the chosen restaurant at seven. Never, it seemed to her, had she felt lighter-footed and lighter-hearted. It was as if the old days were back, the old days when an unlessoned girl met an unlessoned man to dream of heaven together, in some restaurant room full of the lessons and sophistries of love. Westwards she travelled by Tube, emerged at Leicester Square, and walked on flying feet past the Haymarket, across the great stream of traffic at the top, into Shaftesbury Avenue, and into the foyer of a famous restaurant. She sat down on a velvet couch, snuggled her furs around her, and felt a lady of luxury. Osborn kept her waiting some ten minutes, but soon the damper which that put upon her spirits evaporated, leaving her all pure bliss. It was entrancing to sit here once more--where she had often kept Osborn sitting in the old days of her imperiousness and his humility--and to watch the well-dressed people come in and out, pass to and fro, and enact scenes which suggested the gaudiest stories to her receptive mind. Light and warmth, rich colour and abundant life flowed there like tides, and many servants stood about the foyer to obey her behests.

The restaurant to Marie was revel and entertainment, and when the slight blankness with which his lateness had oppressed her had been overswayed by her enjoyment, she could have wished to sit here for hours, doing nothing, saying nothing, eating nothing, but just breathing in this atmosphere of wealth and ease.

But Osborn came, hurrying, between seven and seven-fifteen, apology on his lips. A man had come in late to buy a car and they had talked ... never was there such a long-winded customer. He took Marie's arm lightly in his hand, hurried her in, and chose a table, the nearest vacant one. He dropped into his seat and passed his hand over his brow and eyes to brush away the daze of fatigue. He was tired and very, very hungry, too hungry to watch with his old appreciation the dainty movements of his wife, as she shrugged her furs from her shoulders, and drew off her white gloves, and smiled at him radiantly, with the sense of those dear, old, lost, spoiled-girl days returning momentarily to her.

Osborn's brows were knitted over the wine-list and his hand moved restlessly in his pocket. Very carefully he considered and weighed the prices and at last gave his order quickly.

"Half a bottle of '93." Leaning slightly towards his wife, he added: "I'm afraid it can't be a bottle of the one and only these days, kiddie."

"Not now that we're family people!" she cried bravely.

While he leaned back quietly, awaiting the arrival of the first course, and, could she have known it, craving the food with the keen craving of the man who has lunched too lightly, she looked at her hands, from which the white gloves were now removed. A pang, not altogether new, but of renewed sharpness, shot through her, as she looked down at the reddened, hardened fingers with the slight vegetable stains upon them, clasped together on the table edge. Where were the nails trained and kept to an exquisite filbert shape? The oval of the cuticles? The slender softness and coolness of the finger-tips? The backs of the hands were roughened and the palms seamed; there was a tiny crack at a finger-joint; it seemed to her that the spoiling of her beautiful hands had made so insidious a pace through these years that she had, day by day, been almost unaware of the havoc in progress. But looking down upon them in this place of ease and grace, she saw, surprised and sorrowful, the whole of the sad mischief. Her hands were as the hands of a scullery-maid taken out, most unsuitably, to dinner. While Osborn still awaited the first course, she drew her hands down and hid them on her lap. There was time enough to display their effect when they must emerge for the use of the table implements.

Surrounding her were women whose white hands, jewelled and unjewelled, played about their business, lovely as pale and delicate flowers. She cast her glances right and left, seeing them and envying. And she looked at their clothes, their smart and slender shoes, the richness of their cloaks hanging over chair backs, and she saw her own frock as it was, dyed and mended and _démodé_.

She knew. "It looked nice when I tried it on at home because there were no comparisons. Here, where there's competition, I--I'm hopeless. I'd better have worn a suit."

Her turban, that thing which had paraded so saucily in the pink room while the babies slept regardless, was an outsider--a _gamin_ among hats.

She was not the first woman who has decked herself at home to her own gratification, to emerge into a wealthier world to her own despair.

While these things were borne in, with the flashlight speed of woman's impressions, upon her brain, the first course arrived and they ate. After it, Osborn roused himself to talk. He asked her several times if she were enjoying herself, and she told him with smiling lips that she was.

"It's not so often that we go out, is it?" he remarked. "We must make the best of the times we get."

"This is _lovely_."

"Poor old girl!" said Osborn, "you don't get out on the loose very much, do you? But I don't suppose you want to, though; women are different from men. A woman's interest centres in her home, and you've quite enough to do to keep your mind occupied, haven't you?"

"And my hands. Look at them!"

She spread them before him.

"Poor old girl!" said Osborn, looking.

A recollection stirred in him, too, of what those hands had been in the days of their romance. "You used to have the prettiest hands I ever saw," he said.

She snatched them petulantly under the table again.

"Don't!"

"Don't what?"

"Don't--say that! I can't bear to think how ugly I'm getting."

Her husband looked at her with a faint, bewildered smile. "Come!" he adjured her, "you mustn't get morbid. You're not ugly, you silly girl. You were one of the prettiest girls I ever saw."

"But _now_?"

"Now?" He looked at her quickly. "You're as pretty as ever you were, of course."

"I'm not," she denied, reading the lie in his eyes.

"Women are bound to change, no doubt," he conceded. "I daresay having the babies aged you a bit. But you needn't get anxious about your looks _yet_."

"I'm not thirty, but I look it."

"No, no, you don't," he said constrainedly.

She smiled, and contented herself with watching him eat the next course while she toyed with it. As a woman, food meant little to her; she was concerned more with the prettiness of its serving; but Osborn was avidly hungry and his enjoyment was palpable.

She thought: "Poor boy! How he likes the good things of life! And how few of them he gets! He oughtn't to have married."

She looked around her again, and saw, a little way across the floor, a gay woman in black. Her hair and eyes were black, her complexion was white, her lips were red. She had with her two men who worshipped. Of her Marie said to herself:

"She's older than I, but she's keeping her looks; her hands are not so nice as mine used to be, but now they're far nicer. She's keeping herself young and gay; she sees to it that she's pampered. But if she had married a poor man, and had two babies, and had been obliged to do all the chores, I wonder...."

"What interests you, my dear?" Osborn asked.

She told him in a fitful, inarticulate way. "I was looking at that woman over there, the one in black, with the diamond comb in her hair. And--and I was wondering--in a way--I can hardly explain--what is really the best thing to do with one's life. She's older than I--a good deal older--but see how smooth her face is. She looks as if she could never do anything other than laugh. And her hands--see, she uses them to show them off--aren't they lovely? But I was wondering, if she was in my shoes, how would she look? What would she do if babies woke her up half a dozen times every night, so that when the morning came she was very tired?

"Tired, and yet she must get up and cook and sweep, and take the children out, and everything. Would her face be smooth and would she laugh then? I was wondering, too, whether she'd take the same trouble over her hair at six o'clock of a cold morning. And, if she had my life, would men admire her so much? Would they look at her as they are looking now?"

Osborn stared at his wife, half-amazed, half-frowning.

"One would think," he said, "to hear you talk, that you weren't happy; that you hadn't all--all--all a woman in your position of life can have."

She flushed quickly. "Don't think that! I was just wondering about her, that's all, as I used to wonder about the people we saw when you took me out to dinner in our engaged days. Do you remember? You used to laugh at me and call me the Eternal Question, and all kinds of silly things."

"I don't remember that."

"No? Well, it was a very long while ago."

"It sounded as if you were envying her."

"I _was_ envying her."

"Haven't you all you want?" he said again in resentful surprise.

"I want to be awf'ly young again, and to have a smooth face and manicured hands, and lots of admiration."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Osborn, regaining his good temper with an effort, "this wine has gone to your head."

After he had presented this very satisfactory solution, both laughed; but while he laughed with relief at dismissing the question, she laughed only acquiescently and unconvinced, the laugh which should be called the Laugh of the Wise Wives. It appeased him and it relieved her, as a groan relieves a person in pain. She sipped her unaccustomed wine and looked around her with her wide eyes, which were far, far more widely opened now than in the days of her blind youth.

When a rather tired and preoccupied man takes his wife of four years' standing out to dinner he knows that he need not exert himself to talk, to shine, to please, as with a woman who holds the piquancy of a stranger; so while Osborn spoke spasmodically, or drifted into silence, Marie could look around her and think thoughts which chilled the ardour of her soul. It seemed to her, that evening of her twenty-ninth birthday, that a door was opened to her, revealing nakedly the fears and the trepidations and the minute cares of marriage which have creased many a woman's brow before her time. The restaurant was to her the tide of life, upon which the black-haired woman and her sisters sailed victoriously, but upon which she, and wives like her, trained for the race only in the backwaters of their homes, embarked timidly to their disgrace and peril. What wife of a husband with two hundred a year could row against the black-haired woman and keep pride of place?

As Marie wondered things which all her sisterhood have long ached over, she saw Osborn looking at the black-haired woman too, and in his eyes there was a light of admiration, a keenness, a speculation which drew the tired lines from his face and left it eager once more. It was the male look which once he had looked only for her. With a heart beating sharply she recognised and wanted it again, but she felt strangely impotent. She in her dyed gown, her _gamin_ of a hat, with her spoiled hands and thin cheeks--and that tall, rounded beauty with all her life and vivacity, undrained, throbbing in her from toes to finger-tips! What a comparison!

Vain and profitless was the unequal competition. She felt one moment as if, should it come to a struggle, she would relinquish it in sheer despair; the next, as if she would fight, teeth and nails, body and brains, for her inalienable rights over this man. All the while these emotions surged up in her, and ebbed and flowed in again, her intelligence told her the wild absurdity of such supposition. The raven woman was a stranger; and socially, to all appearance, she must always remain so. Yet Marie could not still the passionate unrest of her heart without taking her husband's eyes from the table where two obsequious men adored a goddess.

She drummed her hard finger-tips sharply on the table.

"Osborn, do you know her?"

"Know her? No." He added carelessly: "I wish I did."

Marie said in a voice which she tried hard to keep detached: "Why? Oh, yes.... I--I suppose she's the type men would admire very much."

"Well, _you_ were admiring her a few minutes ago."

"In--in a way I was. I mean, she's so smooth, so--so well-kept, and her frock is lovely, with those diamond shoulder-straps and all that black tulle. I thought--you stared as if you knew her."

"I hope I shouldn't stare at any woman because I knew her. As a matter of fact, I believe I know who she is; she's an actress; bound to succeed if she takes the right line, I should think. Just now she's got six lines to speak in that new piece of Mutro's. You know--what's it called?"

"What's her name?"

"Roselle Dates, I think."

Osborn looked at his wife solicitously.

"I'm afraid you're a bit tired, dear; you're getting pale. You had a jolly colour when I met you."

She touched her cheeks mechanically with her fingertips.

"Had I? That was because I was so excited at the prospect of our lovely evening."

"Dear old girl! So it's been a lovely evening?"

"Perfect. I wish it was beginning all over again," she answered hollowly, wishing that she meant what she said.

What was the matter with her? Why did she feel so grey, so plain, so sparkless?

"I ought to rouge a little," she said. "Everyone else does."

He protested quickly and strongly.

"But," she said, "if I'm tired? If I'm a fright? What then?"

"I shouldn't like my wife to make up."

"But, Osborn, I want you to think I'm pretty, well turned out, smart, like all the other women here."

She waved a hand vaguely around, but her look was on the raven woman, on whose face the white cosmetic, exquisitely applied, was like pale rose petals.

"I do think you're pretty. As for your turn-out--" he glanced over it quickly--"it's all right, isn't it? It's what we can afford, anyway. We can't help it, can we?"

She shook her head. "I've had no new clothes since we were married," she murmured suddenly in a voice of yearning.

"Well," said Osborn after a pause, "you had such lots; such a big trousseau, hadn't you? It's supposed to last some while."

"It's lasted!" Her laugh rang out with a curious merriment; her eyes were downcast so that he could not see the tears in them, but something about his wife touched him profoundly.

He exclaimed, with rejuvenated sentiment: "You know I'd always give you everything I could! You know it isn't because I _won't_ that I don't give you the most wonderful clothes in town, so that you could beat every other woman hollow."

His sentiment flushed her cheeks and cleared the mist from her eyes. She asked, half shyly and coquettishly:

"Do you think I should?"

"Of course you would, little girl. You're charming; anything more unlike the mother of two great kids I never saw."

"Ah," she said slowly, "but you forget to tell me."

"What?"

"All those--dear little--things."

"Women are rum," he declared. "I believe they're always wanting their husbands to propose to them."

"It would be nice," she said seriously.

Osborn laughed a good deal. "A woman's never tired of love-making."

"A married woman doesn't often get the chance."

"A married man doesn't often get the time."

She looked yet again at the actress across the room, and strange echoes of questions stirred in her. Such a woman, she thought, would always make a man find time. How did they do it? What was the real secret of feminine victory, triumphant and deathless? Was it not to keep burning always, night and day, winter and summer, autumn and spring, throughout the seasons, the clear-flamed lamp of romance?

Behind the wife there stood shades, sturdy, greedy, disagreeable shades, and the two-hundred-pound husband always saw them; they were the butcher, the grocer, the milkman, the doctor, the landlord and the tax-collector.

How could she trim her lamp brightly to burn?

In the restaurant many diners had gone; many, lingering, thought of going; waiters hovered near ready to hand bills, and empty liqueur glasses and coffee cups, and ash trays, and the dead ends of cigarettes lay under the rose lights on all the tables. Osborn had drunk a benedictine and smoked a cigar appreciatively; Marie had begun to think, reluctantly, yet clingingly, maternally, of her babies in the pink room at home. She lifted her furs from the chair back, and a waiter hurried to adjust the stole over her shoulders.

"Sorry," said Osborn, going through the slight motion of attempting to rise from his chair; "I should have done that."

"Never mind, dear," she answered.

Then he paid the bill, got into his own coat, and they walked out. As they went, he asked: "Well, old girl, have you really enjoyed it?"

"It was lovely. Thank you so much!"

"Sure it was the sort of birthday present you wanted?"

"Absolutely the one and only thing, Osborn."

"Happy young woman!" He took her arm and squeezed it.

"Cab, sir?" the commissionaire asked.

"We're walking, thanks."

They walked to the nearest Tube station, took train to Hampstead, and arrived home at eleven, to release the sleepy grandmother on duty.

"Had a lovely time, duck?" asked Mrs. Amber, trotting out into the hall.

"Tophole, Grannie," said Osborn. "Marie's thoroughly enjoyed herself."

"Simply lovely, mother," said Marie. "We went to the Royal Red, and Osborn gave me a scrumptious dinner. Babies been good?"

"Not a sound--the little angels."

Marie kissed her mother good night, waved her out, and went quietly along the corridor to the bedroom; she switched up the light, bent over the cots of the sleeping children, and assured herself of their well-being. They slumbered on, placid and dreamless. Then she went to her dressing-table, and planting her palms flat upon it, leaned forward upon them, and gazed at herself mercilessly. She tore off her hat, rumpled her hair, rubbed her cheeks and gazed again. There were some little fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and as she looked and looked under the strong light, there stood out, silvery around her temples, amid the fairness, the first half-dozen grey hairs. The sight of them petrified her; she had not known she had so many.

"_Oh!_" she breathed.

Her fingers travelled down her neck. It had lost its roundness and, as she turned it this way and that, examining, two muscles stood out; her collar-bones showed faintly. The crude abundance of colour of the dyed dress enhanced her lack of colour.

"Well ..." she began to judge slowly. Then "I suppose there's no help for it."

Two tears dropped down her face. She sobbed and checked herself. She heard her husband moving about quickly in his dressing-room, and she hurried off her own garments, let down her hair, and brushed and plaited it hastily. He came in and kissed her.

"She's had a good time!" he exclaimed, well pleased.