Part 10

"And sharp's the word.... What are you waiting for?"

"Oh, I don't mind going, sir--but I shall get wet to the skin."

"Take my umbreller," said the cook.

Yates went down the steep stairs, and the master looked in at the dining-room door.

"That woman is like some old cat--afraid of a drop of rain on her mangy old fur."

Then Mrs. Marsden heard his footsteps overhead in the dressing-room. When he reappeared he had taken off his tie and collar, and was wearing a crimson velvet smoking jacket.

The toast sandwiches were promptly placed before him, and he sat eating and drinking,--not really hungry, but avidly gulping the wine; and rapidly becoming jolly again.

"What was I talking about?"

"Bence's."

"Oh, yes. I tell you, he has just about got to the end of his tether. All the best people funk having him on their books.... I give him two years from to-day."

"I wonder."

"Mind you, he has fairly smacked us in the eye with his furniture."

And it was unfortunately but too true that there had of late been an ugly drop in the sales of Thompson's solid, well-made chairs and tables.

"But," continued Marsden, "we aren't going to take it lying down any longer. He has got a _man_ to reckon with henceforth. He'll learn what tit-for-tat means.... It was too late to attempt anything last Christmas. But let him wait till next December. Then it shall be, A very happy Christmas to you, Mr. Bence."

"What do you propose for Christmas?"

"You wait, too."

"Yes, but, Dick, you won't begin launching out without consulting me--allowing some weight to my opinion?"

"No, of course I shan't. We're partners, aren't we? I know what a partnership is. But you won't need persuading. You'll jump at my ideas when you hear them."

"Why not let me hear them now? I could be thinking over them--I like to brood upon plans."

"Well, something is going to happen in our basement next Christmas, which will be tidings of peace and great joy to everybody but Bence;" and he laughed with riotous amusement. "Get me my pipe, old woman. I can't go into business matters now. You wait, and trust your Dickybird."

She brought him his pipe and tobacco; and he explained to her that he fancied a pipe because he had been smoking cigars ever since the morning, and the tip of his tongue felt sore.

He puffed at the pipe in silence, and luxuriously stretched his slippered feet towards the warmth of the fire.

"You best go to by-by, Jane. I'm too tired to talk. I've had a heavy day--one way and another; and a longish journey before me to-morrow.... Good-night. Tell 'em I must be called at eight-thirty sharp."

This was a typical evening. There were many evenings like it.

Frequently two or three days passed without her once entering the shop. Sometimes she could not brace herself sufficiently to go down and face the staff. They all saw her subjection to her husband; and although they endeavoured not to betray their thoughts, it was obvious that to almost all of them she appeared as the once absolute princess who had, in abdicating, sunk to a state of ignominious dependence. She walked among them with downcast eyes; for too often she had surprised their glances of pity.

But she saw that in the street also--pity or contempt. One or other each citizen's face seemed to show her plainly. She knew exactly what shop and town said and thought of her new partner.

At dusk on these winter afternoons, when she had not lately used the door of communication, Miss Woolfrey or Mr. Mears would come through it and inform her of the day's affairs. Miss Woolfrey's reports consisted merely of vapid and irresponsible gossip, but Mrs. Marsden seemed to have discovered fresh merits in this sandy, freckled, commonplace chatter-box--perhaps for no other reason than because she belonged so entirely to the old régime and was intellectually incapable of absorbing unfamiliar ideas. But it was Mears who supplied any real instruction, and it was with him that Mrs. Marsden talked seriously.

One afternoon when he was about to leave her, she detained him.

"Mr. Mears--I've something to ask you."

"Yes, ma'am."

She had laid her hand upon his great fore-arm; she was gazing at him very earnestly; but she hesitated, with lips trembling nervously, and seemed for a few moments unable to say any more.

"Yes, ma'am."

Then she spoke quickly and eagerly.

"Stick to me, Mr. Mears. Whatever happens, don't give me up. I should be truly lost without you. Even if it's difficult, stick to me."

"As long as he lets me," said Mears huskily.

"He's going to talk to you. Humour him. He has a great respect for you, really."

"He hasn't shown it so far."

"Make allowances. It's his way. He has such notions about the new style--which we--which you and I mayn't always approve. But he knows your value. He has said so again and again."

It was not long after this secret appeal--one morning that Marsden spent in Mallingbridge--when the shop heard "the Guv'nor begin on Mr. M."

"Look here, my friend," said Mr. Marsden loudly, "it's about time that we took each other's measure. Is it you or I who is to be cock of the walk? Just step in here, please."

This was said outside the counting-house. The proprietor and the manager at once disappeared; and the news flew far and wide, downstairs and upstairs. "He has got old Mears behind the glass.... He is giving old Mears a dressing-down." All had known that the thing was infallibly coming; the encounter between the greater and the lesser force had been unaccountably delayed; every man and woman in the building now trembled for the result.

"You want to put your authority up against mine. That won't do. One boss is enough in a larger establishment than this."

But behind the glass old Mears was very firm. He made himself as big as possible, standing at his full height, seeming to imitate Marsden's trick of squaring the shoulders and throwing back the head.

"_I_ am the boss. And what I say _goes_."

"And your partner, sir? Mrs. Thompson, I should say Mrs. Marsden--are we to disregard her?"

"No. But I speak for self and partner. Please make a note of that."

"Very good, sir."

"Then that's all right. It was a case of '_Twiggez-vous?_' But I think you twig now that I don't stand nonsense--or go on paying salaries in exchange for bounce and impudence."

"May I ask if you think I am not earning my salary, sir?"

"I haven't said you aren't."

"Or do you think, sir, if you hunted the country, you'd find a man who'd give the same service for the same money?"

"Oh, if you want to blow your trumpet--"

"No, sir, I want to find my bearings--to learn where I am--if I _can_. It isn't boasting, it's only business. I've a value here, or I haven't. I've been under the impression I was valuable. You know that, don't you, sir?"

"Oh, I've no quarrel with you--if you'll go on serving me faithfully."

"I'll serve the firm faithfully, sir--with the uttermost best that's in me."

"All right then."

"Because that's _my_ way, sir--the old-fashioned style I took up as a boy--and couldn't change now, sir, if I wanted to."

When Mears came from behind the glass his face was flushed; he breathed stertorously; and he held his hands beneath the wide skirts of his frock coat to conceal the fact that they were shaking. But he kept the coat-tails swishing bravely, and he marched up and down between two counters with so grand a tramp that no one dared look at him closely.

Then, after a few minutes, Marsden came swaggering, with his hat cocked and a lighted cigar in his mouth. Before going out into the street, he ostentatiously paused; and spoke to Mr. Mears amicably, even jovially.

And the shop comprehended that the battle was over, and that there was to be a truce between the two men.

On some days when Mrs. Marsden would probably have come down from the house into the counting-house she was prevented from doing so by a grievous headache.

These headaches attacked her suddenly and with appalling force. At first the pain was like toothache; then it was like earache, and then the whole head seemed to be rent as if struck with an axe--and afterwards for several hours there was a dull numbing discomfort, with occasional neuralgic twinges and throbbings.

Resting in her bedroom after such an attack, she was surprised by receiving a visit from Enid. She was lying on a sofa that Yates had pushed before the fire, and at the sound of voices outside the door she started up and hastily scrambled to her feet.

"Mother dear, may I come in? I'm so sorry you're ill."

Since their parting last autumn they had not set eyes on each other, and for a little while they talked almost as strangers.

"Yates, bring up the tea."

"Oh, but isn't it too early for tea?"

"No. Get it as quickly as you can, Yates. Mrs. Kenion must be ready for tea--after her long drive."

"I came by train. Thank you--I own I should like a cup, if it isn't really troubling you."

"Of course not.... Do take the easy chair."

"This is very comfortable.... But won't you lie down again? I have disturbed you."

"Not in the least. I think it will do me good to sit up. Won't you take off your coat?"

Enid let the fur boa fall back from her slender neck, and undid two buttons of her long grey coat.

"Really," she said, with a little laugh, "it's so cold that I haven't properly thawed yet."

She was charmingly dressed, and she looked very graceful and well-bred--but not at all plump; in fact rather too thin. While they drank their tea, she told her mother of the kindness of her husband's relatives--a sister-in-law was a particular favourite; but everybody was nice and kind; there were many pleasant neighbours, and all had called and paid friendly attentions to the young couple.

"I am so glad to hear that," said Mrs. Marsden. "My only fear of the country was that you might sometimes feel yourself too much isolated."

"Oh, I'm never in the least lonely. There's so much to do--and even if there weren't people coming in and out perpetually, the house would take up all my time."

"Ah yes.... I suppose you are quite settled down by now."

"No, I wish we were. Things are still rather at sixes and sevens. Otherwise I should have begged you to come and see for yourself. We are both so anxious to get you out there."

"I shall be delighted to come, my dear. But I myself have been rather rushed of late."

"Of course you have.... Er--Mr. Marsden is away, Yates told me."

"Yes, but only for a few days. I get him back to-morrow night;" and Mrs. Marsden laughed cheerfully. "Do you know, he has taken a leaf out of Mr. Kenion's book. He is quite mad about racing."

"Is he? How amusing!"

"These violent delights have violent ends. He says it is only a passing fancy; and I suppose he'll be taking up something else directly--golf perhaps--and going mad about that."

"No doubt. Men all seem alike, don't they?" And Enid smiled and nodded her head. "Though I must say, Charles is very true to his hunting. I mean to wean him from steeple-chasing; but I like him to hunt. It keeps him in such splendid health."

"Yes, dear. It must be tremendous exercise. Do you ride to the meets with him?"

"No, I never seem to have time--and for the moment, though we've six horses in the stable, there's not one that I quite see myself on." And Enid laughed again, gaily. "Good enough for Charles, you know--but _he_ can ride anything. He wants to get me a pony-cart, and I shall be safer in that."

The constraint was wearing off. While they talked, each availed herself of any chance of investigating the other's face--a shy swift glance, instantaneously deflected to the teacups or the mantelpiece, if a head turned to meet it. At first there had been difficulty in speaking of the husbands, but now it was quite easy; and it all sounded fairly natural.

"Oh, but that is just the sort of thing Charlie says." The daughter helped the mother. "Men always think they can manage things better than we can--and they're _always_ troublesome about the servants. The only occasions on which Charles makes one _really_ angry are when he upsets the servants."

And Mrs. Marsden helped Enid.

"You must employ all your tact--men are so easily led, though they won't be driven."

"No, they must be led," said Enid, with a return to complete artificiality of manner. "How true that is!"

But there was a very subtle alteration in Enid. Beneath the artificial manner gradually there became perceptible something altogether new and strange. This was another Enid--not the old Enid. She had evidently caught the peculiar tone of bucolic gentility and covert-side fashion common to most of her new associates, and this had slightly altered her; but deeper than the surface change lay the changes slowly manifesting themselves to the instinctive penetration of her mother. Enid was softer, more gentle, a thousand times more capable of sympathy.

"Dick," Mrs. Marsden was saying, "is fearfully ambitious."

"That's a good fault, mother."

"He even talks of--of going into Parliament."

"And why not?"

"He belongs to the Conservative Club here--but he wants," and Mrs. Marsden showed embarrassment,--"he would like to join the County Club."

"Oh!"

"Do you think Mr. Charles--or his family--would be kind enough to use influence?"

"Yes, mother dear, I'll make them--if possible." Enid had leant forward; and she shyly took her mother's hand, and gently squeezed it. "But now I must go. I do hope I haven't increased your headache."

"No, my dear, you have done me good."

Enid rose, buttoned her coat, and began to pull on her grey reindeer gloves.

"Mother! My old room--is it empty, or are you using it for anything?"

"Oh, Dick uses that, dear."

"And the dressing-room?"

"He uses that, too."

"Would you mind--would he mind if I went in and looked round?"

"No.... Of course not."

"Only for a peep. Then I'll come back--and say good-bye."

But she was a long time in the other rooms; and when she returned Mrs. Marsden saw and affected not to see that she had been crying.

The warmth of the fire after the cold of the street, or the sight of her old home after a few months in her new one, had properly thawed elegant, long-nosed Enid. She sank on her knees by the sofa, flung her arms round the neck of her mother, and kissed her again and again; and Mrs. Marsden felt what in vain she had waited for during so many years--her child's heart beating with expansive sympathy against her breast.

"Mother, how good you were--oh, how good you were to me!" And she clung and pressed and kissed as in all her life she had never done till now.

"Enid--my darling."

When she had gone, Mrs. Marsden lay musing by the fire. It was impossible not to divine the very simple cause of this immense alteration in Enid. Already poor Enid had learnt her lesson--she knew what it was to have a rotten bad husband.

XIV

But not so bad as her own husband. No, that would be an impossibility.

She did not want to think about it; but just now her control over her thoughts had weakened, while the thoughts themselves were growing stronger. She was subject to rapid ups and downs of health, the victim of an astounding crisis of nerves, so that one hour she experienced a queer longing for muscular fatigue, and the next hour laughed and wept in full hysteria. At other times she felt so weak that she believed she might sink fainting to the ground if she attempted to go for the shortest walk.

Generally on days when Marsden was away from Mallingbridge she crept to bed at dusk. Yates used to aid her as of old, sit by the bed-side talking to her; and then leave her in the fire-glow, to watch the dancing shadows or listen to the whispering wind.

She did not wish to think; but in spite of all efforts to forget facts and to hold firmly to delusions, her old power of logical thought was remorselessly returning to her. In defiance of her enfeebled will, the past reconstituted itself, events grouped themselves in sequence; hitherto undetected connections linked up, and made the solid chain that dragged her from vague surmise to definite conclusions. Then with the full vigour of the old penetrative faculties she thought of her mistake.

He did not care for her. He had never cared for her. It was all acting. All that she relied on was false; all that had been real was the steadfast sordid purpose sustaining him throughout his odious dissimulation.

His marriage was a brutal male prostitution, in which he had sold his favours for her gold. And shame overwhelmed her as she thought of how easily she had been trapped. While he was coldly calculating, she was endowing him with every attribute of warm-blooded generosity; when her fine protective instincts made her yearn over him, longing to give him happiness, comfort, security, he was in truth playing with her as a cat plays with a wounded mouse--no hurry, no excitement, but steel-bright eyes watching, retracted claws waiting. And she remembered his studied phrases that rang so true to the ear, till too late she discovered their miserable falsity. With what art he had prepared the way for the final disclosure of his effrontery! He could not brook the sense of dependence, his manly spirit would not allow him to pose as the pensioner of a rich wife, and so on--and then, even at the last, how he waited until she had completely betrayed her secret, and he could be certain that her pride as a woman would infallibly prevent her from drawing back. Not till then, when she had taken the world into her confidence, when escape had become impossible, did he drive his bargain.

While the honeymoon was not yet over she imagined she could understand the pain that lay before her. But in these three months she had suffered more than she had conceived to be endurable by any living creature. If pain can kill, she should be dead.

Her punishment had been like the fabled torture of the Chinese--hundreds of small lacerations, a thousand slicing cuts of the executioner's sword, and the kind death-stroke craftily withheld. But the swordsman of the East does not laugh while he mutilates. And _he_ struck at her with a smiling face.

She thought of how in every hour of their companionship he had wounded her; with what unutterable baseness he had used his power over her--the power given to him by her love. The love stripped her of every weapon of defence; she was tied, naked, with not a guarding rag to shelter her against the blows--and the pitiless blows fell upon her from her gagged mouth to her pinioned feet.

Daily he attacked her pride, her self-respect, her bodily health and her mental equipoise; but most of all she suffered in her love--that terrible flower of passion that refuses to die. Torn up by its bleeding roots, it replants itself--and will thrive on the barren rock as well as in life's richest garden. Robbed of light, air, sustenance, it will cling to the dungeon wall, and bud and burst again for the prisoner to touch its blossoms in his darkness. Its flame-petals can be seen by the glazing eyes that have lost sight of all else, and its burning poisonous fruit is still tasted in the earth of our graves.

She thought of what he had said to her when they first came back to the house that she had decorated and made luxurious for him. A laugh, a nudge of the elbow--"This is the beginning of Chapter Two, Janey. We can't be honeymooning forever, old girl;" and then some more unforgettable words, to formulate the request that they might occupy different rooms; and so, in the home-coming hour, he had struck a deadly blow at her pride by the brutally direct implication that what she most desired was that which every woman craves for least. As if the grosser manifestations could satisfy, when all the spiritual joys are denied!

But he judged her nature by his own. He was common as dirt. He was savage as a beast of the forest, a creature of fierce strong appetites that believes the appeasement of any physical craving--to drink deeply, to eat greedily, to sleep heavily--is the highest pleasure open to the animal kingdom; and that man the king is no higher than the dog, his servant.

He knew only worthless women, and he supposed that all women were alike. Undoubtedly he remembered the innumerable conquests won simply by his handsome face, the ready and absolute surrender to a sensual thraldom that had made other women his abject slaves; and he dared to think that his wife was as impotent as they to resist the viler impulses of the ungoverned flesh.

He dared to think it.--But was he wrong? And she recalled the episodic renewal of their embraces during these last months. Once after high words; once after he had found her weeping; once for no reason at all that she knew of--except a carelessly systematic desire on his part to keep her in good temper--or perhaps merely because he had the prostitute's point of honour. A bargain is a bargain. He had been paid his price without haggling, and he intended to fulfil the conditions of the contract--so far as certain limits fixed by himself.

Horrible scenes to look back at--when the cruelly bright light of reason flashes upon the decorously obscured past and shows the ignominious secrets of a life: blind instincts moving us, all that is high beaten down by all that is low, the soul held in fetters by the flesh.

Much of her slow agony had come from the stinging pricks of jealousy. He was unfaithful--he was notoriously unfaithful. Already, after three months, everyone in the shop knew that he frequently broke the marriage vow. She would have known it anyhow--even if one of his vulgar friends, turning to a more vulgar enemy, had not troubled to tell her in an ill-spelt series of anonymous letters. She remembered how he once used to look at her, and she saw how in her presence he now looked at other women. Each look was an insult to her. Each word was an outrage. "There's a pert little minx;" and he would smile as he watched some passer-by. "Young hussy! Dressed up to the nines--wasn't she?" And he swelled out his chest, and swaggered more arrogantly by the side of his wife, unconscious of the swift completeness with which she could interpret the thoughts behind his bold eyes and his lazily lascivious smile.

And she thought of how he harped upon the over-tightened string of youth, making every fibre of her tired brain vibrate to the discord of the jarring note. It was melody to him. Youth was his own paramount merit, and he praised it as the only merit that he could admit of in others. He had forgotten half the lies of his courtship. Age was contemptible--the thing one should hide, or excuse, or ransom. "Only one life! Remember, I'm young--I am not old." But her friends, the people she trusted, were shamefully old, even a few years older than herself. Old Prentice, Old Yates, Old Mears; and he never spoke of them without the scornful epithet.

But the jingling coin that she had put in his pockets would procure him the solace to be derived from youthful companions. With the money she had paid for all the love that he could give, he bought from loose women all the love that he cared for. Of course when he stayed in London he was carrying on his promiscuous amours.... Perhaps, too, here in Mallingbridge.

Yet when he came back to her, she had failed to resist him. She knew the reflective air with which he considered her face when he proposed to exercise his sway. She trembled when he lightly slapped her on the shoulder, or took her chin in his hand, and spoke with caressing tones. He was beginning to act the lover. He had made up his mind to wipe out the past, to subjugate her afresh, to assure himself that his poor slave was not slipping away.

"Janey--dear old Janey.... I leave you alone, don't I?" And with an arm round her waist, he would pull her to him, and hold her closer and closer. "Have you missed me? Eh? Have you missed your Dickybird?"