Part 11

And she could not resist him. There was the abominable basis of the tragedy--worse, infinitely worse than the imagined horrors that had troubled her before the marriage. Love dies so slowly.

But the night spent in the same room with him was like a fatal abandonment to some degrading habit--as if in despair she had taken a heavy dose of laudanum,--knowing that the drug is deadly, yet seeking once more to stupefy herself, impelled at all hazards to pass again through the gates of delirium into the vast blank halls of unconsciousness. Next day she felt sick, broken, shattered--like the drug-taker after his debauch. Each relapse seemed now an immeasurably lower fall. Each awakening brought with it a sharper pang of despair: as when a wrecked man on a raft, who in his madness of thirst has drunk at the salt spray, wakes from frenzied dreams to see the wide immensity of ocean mocking him with space great enough to hold all things except one--hope.

Such thoughts as these came sweeping upon her like waves of light, illuminating the darkest recesses of her mind, showing the innermost meaning of every cruel mystery, forcing her to see and to know herself as she was, and not as she wished to be.

Then the light would suddenly fade. The stress of emotion had relaxed, and she could consider her circumstances calmly--could try to make the best of him.

A difficult task--a poor best.

She thought of his varied meannesses. In only one direction was he ever really generous. He grudged nothing to himself--he could be lavish when pandering to his own inclinations, reckless when gratifying the moment's whim, and retrospectively liberal when counting the cost of past amusements; but in his dealings with the rest of the world he was cautious, watchful, tenaciously close-fisted. She felt a vicarious humiliation in hearing him thank instead of tip; or seeing him, when he had failed to dodge the necessity of a gift, make the gift so small as to be ludicrous. Not since he carried her purse at the London restaurants had he ever exhibited a large-handed kindness to subordinates.

He never alluded to the household expenses--had accepted as quite natural the fact that the female partner should defray the expenses of the household. Without a Please or a Thank-you he took board and lodging free of charge; but he bought for himself cigars, liqueurs, and wine, and he always spoke of my brandy, my champagne, etc. It was _our_ house, but _my_ wine. Nevertheless, the habitual use in the singular of the personal pronoun did not render him egotistically anxious to pay his own bills.

Once, when after delay a tobacconist addressed an account to her care, and she timidly reproached the cigar-smoker for a lapse of memory that might almost seem undignified, she was answered with chaffing, laughing, joviality.

"Well, my dear, if you're so afraid of our credit going down, there's an easy way out of the difficulty. Write a cheque yourself, and clean the slate for me."

But one must make allowances. This was a favourite phrase of hers, and it helped the drift of her calmer thoughts. As he said so often, youth has its characteristic faults. Want of thought is not necessarily want of heart.

Perhaps when he began to work, he might improve. There was no doubt that he possessed the capacity for work. He _had_ worked, hard and well. Many a good horse that has not shied or swerved when kept into its collar will, if given too much stable and too many beans, show unsuspected vice and kick the cart to pieces. And the cure for your horse, the medicine for your man, is work.

Of course he had many redeeming traits. One was his jollity--not often disturbed, if people would humour him. Comfort, too, in the recollection that he treated her with respect--never consciously insulted her--in public.

Sometimes when the shadows and the flickering glow drowsily slackened in their dance, and sleep with soft yet heavy fingers at last pressed upon her eyelids, she was willing to believe that all her fiery thought and shadowy dread was but morbid nonsense occasioned by the queer state of her nerves, and by nothing else.

Truly, during this period of her extreme weakness, she was physically incapable of standing up to him; there was no fight left in her. For a time at least, she could not attempt to protect herself, or anyone else who looked to her for protection.

It pained her, but she was unable to interfere, when he roughly repulsed Gordon Thompson.

They were sitting at luncheon, with the servant going in and out of the room; she heard the street door open and shut; there was a sound of hob-nailed boots, and then came the familiar whistle--like a ghostly echo from the past.

"Who the devil's that?"

"I--I think it must be my Linkfield cousin."

"Oh, is it?" And Marsden jumped up, and went out to the landing.

"Jen-ny! Jen-ny! You up there?"

The farmer stood at the bottom of the steep stairs, and Marsden was at the top, looking down at him. Mrs. Marsden heard nearly the whole of the conversation, but dared not, could not interfere.

"Any dinner for a hungry wayfarer?"

Gordon Thompson, furious at the marriage, had missed many mid-day meals; but now he came to pick up the severed thread of kindness. However, he was not confident; his whistle had been feeble, tentative, and the ascending note of his voice quavered. In order to propitiate, he had brought from Linkfield a market-gardener's basket with celery and winter cabbages. The present would surely make them glad to see him.

"What do you want here? No orders are given at the door. We buy our vegetables at Rogers's in High Street. Don't come cadging here. Get out."

Marsden wickedly pretended to mistake him for an itinerant greengrocer.

"Mayn't I go up?... Is it to be cuts? Am I not to call on my cousin?"

"Who's your cousin, I'd like to know."

"Jen-ny Thompson."

"No one of that name lives here."

"Jen-ny Marsden then. I say--it's all right. You're him, I suppose. Well, I'm Gordon Thompson--your wife's cousin."

"My wife never had a cousin of that name. Before she married me, she married a man called Thompson--though she didn't marry all his humbugging beggarly relations."

"Oh, I say--don't go on like that. Don't make it cuts."

"Thompson--your cousin--is in the cemetery, if you wish to call on him. He has been there a long time--waiting for you;" and Marsden laughed. "The sexton will tell you where to find him.... Go and plant your cabbages out there. We don't want 'em here."

He returned to the luncheon table in the highest good-humour.

"There, old girl, I've ridded you of _that_ nuisance. You won't be bothered with _him_ any more."

Mrs. Marsden could not answer. She could not even raise her eyes from the table-cloth. But when her husband offered to give her a rare afternoon treat by taking her for a run in his small two-seated car, she looked up; and, meekly thanking him, accepted the invitation.

As the car carried them slowly through the market-place, neatly threading its way among laden carts and emptied stalls, she saw cousin Gordon standing, rueful and disconsolate, outside the humble tavern at which it was the custom of the lesser sort of farmers to dine together on market-day. Had Gordon dined, or had anger and resentment deprived him of appetite and spared his ill-filled purse?

She would not think of it. She turned, and watched her husband's face. It was hard as granite while with concentrated attention he manipulated the steering wheel, moved a lever, or sounded his brazen-tongued horn--the signal of danger to anyone who refused to get out of his road.

Almost immediately, they were in the open country, whirling past bare fields and leafless copses, leaping fiercely at each hill that opposed them, and swooping with a shrill, buzzing triumph down the long slopes of the valleys.

"Now we are travelling," said Marsden joyously.

She nodded her head, although she had not caught the words; and presently he shouted close to her ear.

"Moving now, aren't we? Doesn't she run smooth?"

"Yes, yes. Capital."

The wind, breaking on the glass screen, sang as it swept over them; hedge-rows, telegraph poles, and wayside cottages hurried towards them, rising and growing as they came; long stretches of straight road, along which Mr. Young's horses used to plod for half an hour, were snatched at, conquered, and contemptuously thrown behind, almost before one could recognize them.

That pretty country-house which she had always admired passed her; and, passing, seemed like a faintly tinted picture in a book whose pages are turned too fast by careless hands. Naked branches of high trees, broad eaves and nestling windows, weak sunlight upon latticed glass, and pale smoke rising from clustered chimneys--that was all she saw. A few dead leaves pretended to be live things, scampered beside the long wall; a few dead thoughts revived in her mind, and swiftly she recalled her old fancies, the dream of the future, Enid and herself living together so quietly beneath the grey roof;--and then the pretty house with its pretty grounds had been left far behind. It had lost its brief aspect of reality as completely as a half-forgotten dream.

"There, we'll go easy now." They were approaching a village, and he reduced the speed. "You're a good plucked 'un, Jane;" and he glanced at her approvingly. "You don't funk a little bit of pace."

They stopped at an inn, thirty miles from Mallingbridge, and drank tea--that is to say, Mrs. Marsden drank tea and Mr. Marsden drank something else, for the good of the house.

Then, after a cigar, he lighted his lamps, and drove her home through the greyness, the dusk, and the dark. And for the three hours or so that she was with him, for the whole time that this outing lasted, she was almost happy.

XV

The nervous distress had gone--with extraordinary suddenness; and a curiously unruffled calm filled her mind. Nothing matters. This is not _all_.

She was a deeply religious woman, but quite unorthodox in the letter of her faith. There might be as many rituals as there are social communities, a different altar for every day of the year; but, however you dressed the eternal glory and the limitless power in garments taken from the poor wardrobe of man's imagination, the veritable God was unchanged, unchanging. And her toleration of the diverse opinions of others enabled her to worship as comfortably under the high-vaulted magnificence of a Catholic cathedral as within the narrow shabbiness of a Wesleyan chapel. The perfume of swinging censers did not cloud her brain, nor the ugliness of white-washed walls grieve her eyes--any consecrated place of prayer was good enough to pray in.

But for the sake of old associations, by reason of its familiar homeliness, its air of solidity without pomp, and a simplicity that yet is not undignified, she loved this parish church of St. Saviour's; and it was here, sitting through the long undecorated service, that mental equanimity was most strangely if temporarily restored to her. Although not participating, she stayed for the celebration of the communion; and while the mystic, symbolic rites were performed, she neither prayed nor meditated. For her it was a blank pause,--no thought,--nothing; but nevertheless she became aware of a deepening perception of rest and peace, and the feeling that she had been uplifted--raised to a spiritual height from which she could look down on the common pains of earth, and see their intrinsically trivial character.

Our life, be it what it may, does not end here. This is not all. Something wider, more massive, infinitely grander, is coming to us, if we will wait patiently.

She sat motionless until all the congregation had dispersed; and when she left the church, there was an expression of gravity on her face and a sense of contentment in her heart. At the sight of some children romping by the church-yard railings, she smiled. A boy pushed a girl with mirthful vigorousness, and she spoke to him gently.

"Don't be rough, little boy. Take care, and don't hurt her--even in play."

Then she gave the children "silver sixpences to buy sweeties," and went slowly down the court. She could think kindly and benignantly of all the world. There was not a tinge of bitterness remaining when she thought of her husband.

As she lay in bed one morning after a night of dreamless sleep, a chance word dropped by Yates set her lazily thinking of the last date on which she had suffered from those normal and not accidental fluctuations of energy that are produced by periodically recurrent causes. Beginning to count the weeks, she fancied that some error of memory was confusing her--time of late had moved with such heavy feet; what seemed long was really short in the story of her days. Then she began to count the days, trying to make fixed points, and laboriously filling the gaps that intervened. Then she stopped counting and thinking.

Yates had gone out of the room, and she lay quite still, with relaxed limbs and slackened respiration.

And her mind seemed dull and void, though wonder stirred and thrilled. It was like dawn in a hill-girt valley--black darkness mingling with silver mist; shadows growing thin, but not retreating; the ribbed sides of the mountains very slowly becoming more and more solidly stupendous, but refusing to disclose the details of their form or colour, although, beyond the vast ramparts with which they aid the night, the sun is surely rising. Not till the sun bursts in fire above the eastern wall does the day begin.

So, with flooding golden light, the splendid hope came to her.

She waited for a few more days. There was no mistake; she knew that she had counted correctly; but she pretended to herself that she must allow a wide margin to cover the contingency of miscalculation.

Then she spoke of the facts to Yates, after extracting a solemn vow of secrecy. Yates said they could draw only one conclusion from the facts; it was impossible to doubt--but they would know for certain next time. They must count again; and, after allowing another wide margin, settle the approaching date which would infallibly confirm their hopes or cruelly dissipate them.

For a little while longer, then, she must keep her splendid secret.

Her heart was overflowing with a joy such as she had thought she could never feel again. And with the warm stream of bliss there were gushing fountains of gratitude. She will forgive her husband everything, because he has crowned her life with this ineffable glory.

It justifies her marriage; in a manner more perfect than she had dared to imagine, it gives her back her youth. All mothers at the cradle have one age--the age of motherhood. And irresistibly it will win his respect and love--some love must come for the mother of his babe.

Although she was waiting with so much anxiety until the second significant epoch should be passed, she found that time glided by her now easily and swiftly. Yates--the wise old spinster--assuming in a more marked degree that air of matronly authority that she had worn before the wedding, told her of the vital importance of taking good rest, good nourishment, and good cheerful views regarding the future.

So she often lay upon the sofa in her room--resting,--smiling and dreaming. She had no real doubt now. It was miraculous, glorious, true. She thought of the many symptoms that she had noticed but never considered, so that the revelation of their meaning brought the same glad surprise as to a young and innocent bride. She might have guessed.--The dreadful instability of nerves; longings for the widest outlet of physical effort, alternating with weak horrors of the slightest task; and, above all, the facile tears always springing to her eyes--these things, in one who by habit was firm of purpose and who wept with difficulty, should have been promptly recognized as unfailing signs of her condition. Lesser signs, too, had not been wanting--the vagrant fancies, the mental ups and downs which correspond with the changed states of the body; and she groped in the dim past, comparing her recent sensations and reveries with those experienced twenty-three years ago, before the birth of Enid. She might have guessed.--But truly perhaps she had been too humble of spirit ever to prepare herself for the admission of so proud a thought. Even in the brightly coloured dreams from which realities had so rudely awakened her, she was not advancing towards so triumphant an apotheosis.

But no morning sickness! Not yet. It will begin later this time--for the second child; and it will not be so bad. That first time--when poor Enid was coming into the world--she was but a slip of a girl; depressed by heavy care; worn out by the watchings and nursings of her mother's illness. But now everything was and would be different. She possessed robust and long-established health; her husband was a magnificently strong man; their child would be a most noble gorgeous creature.

And each time that she thought thus of the child's father, the fountain springs of her intense gratitude rose and gushed higher and broader. She was only vaguely conscious of the extent of the revulsion of her feelings where he was concerned. The change seemed so natural and so little mysterious that she did not measure it. With the awakening of the new hopes, there had arisen a new love for him--a love purged of all impurities.

This was the real love--wide-reaching sympathy, infinite tenderness; the love that can understand all and forgive all; the instinct of protection blending with the instinct of submission; the maternal feeling extending beyond the unborn child to its creator--making them both her children.

One day when he said he wanted to ask her a favour, she told him, before he added another word, that she felt sure she would grant the favour. She was reading, in the drawing-room; and she slipped the book under the cushion of the sofa, and looked up at him with an expectant smile.

Then, showing some slight embarrassment, he explained that he had been "outrunning the constable."

All the arrangements of the partnership were formally settled; nothing had been overlooked by clever Mr. Prentice; everything was cut and dried; certain proportionately fixed sums were to be passed from time to time to the private credit of each partner; and then at the appointed seasons, when the true profits of the firm had been ascertained, amounts making up the balance of earned income would be paid over. All the usual precautions, and some that perhaps were rather unusual, had been adopted in order to prevent the partners from anticipating profits by premature drafts upon the funds of the firm. But now, as Marsden explained, he had exhausted his private account and was in sad need of a little ready to keep him going.

She instantly agreed to give him the money--with the pleasure a too indulgent mother might feel in giving to a spendthrift son. Extravagance--what is it? Only one of those faults of youth by which the thoughtless young culprits endear themselves to their elderly guardians.

"Yes, Dick, I'll write the cheque at once. My chequebook is over there."

She rose slowly from the sofa, and slowly moved across the room to the Sheraton desk near the window. Yates had begged her to beware of abrupt and hasty movements, and she walked about the house now with careful, well-considered footsteps.

"Of course, old girl, if you can see your way to making the amount for a little _more_?"

And she made it for a little more.

He was delighted. "Upon my word, Jane, you're a trump. No rot about you. When you see anyone in a hole, you don't badger him with a pack of questions--you just pull him out of the hole...."

He thanked her and praised her so much that she melted in tenderness, and almost told him her secret. She looked at him fondly and admiringly. He seemed so strong and so brave--with his stiff close-cropped hair and his white evenly-shaped teeth,--laughing gleefully as he pocketed his present,--like a great happy schoolboy. While she looked at him, the secret was trying to escape, was burning her lips, and knocking at her breast with each quickened heartbeat.

She succeeded, however, in restraining the expansive impulse. The delay can but heighten the triumph--it is so much grander to be able to say, not "I _think_," but "I _know_."

When he had hurried away to cash his cheque, she took out the Book that she had been reading and had shyly concealed under the cushion. It was the Bible. Reverently reopening it and musingly turning the leaves, she glanced at those chapters of Genesis that tell of the first gift of human life.... "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband; and he shall rule over thee."

The softness and the exaltation of her mood showed very plainly in the expression of her face as she read the nobly fabled origin of love and marriage. While reading she made vows to God and to herself. If all went well, she would cheerfully bear the hardest usage, at her husband's hands. She would never reproach him, she would ever be a comfort to him. And so long as their child lived, the torch-bearer carrying the fire of life kindled from their joint lives should guide her steps through the darkest places towards the distant glimmer of eternal light.

That night she was roused from her first sleep by the sound of heavily blundering footsteps. Mr. Marsden had come home in an unusually jolly state. His wife heard him stumbling about the adjacent room, knocking over a chair, laughing, and singing drunken snatches of song.

He had never before been quite so jolly. For a minute the hilarious music saddened her; but then she felt quite happy again. He was not really drunk--merely excited, elated. And besides, this sort of thing would not occur in the future: a generous fear of the questioning eyes of an innocent child would help to keep him straight.

And she fell to thinking of domestic arrangements that would be necessary before the great event. His bedroom and the dressing-room used to be the day and night nursery when Enid was a baby. The grandmother slept in the room at present occupied by Yates, and Yates slept in a smaller room. How would they manage now? This room should be the night nursery--she herself could sleep anywhere. Probably Yates would have to give up her nice room--but Yates would not mind. And, yes--the difficulty must be confronted--Dick must give up his dressing-room. Would he mind?

No. Every difficulty would be surmounted. All would be smoothly and easily arranged in the end. Dreamily sweeping away the difficulties, she sank again into restful sleep.

That important second date was drawing near, and Yates was becoming more and more fussily attentive. It taxed all her strength of mind to keep the secret to herself; she longed for the time when it might be made public property.

"Look here, ma'am," she said mysteriously, "don't let anyone see us opening this parcel. Let's go upstairs and open it there, quiet and comfortable."

"What is it, Yates?"

Upstairs in the bedroom, Yates, with many shrewd nods and meaning smiles, untied her parcel, and displayed to Mrs. Marsden its entrancingly fascinating contents.

"Oh, Yates!"

They were the prettiest imaginable little baby-things--woollen socks, flannel robes, etc., articles of costume suitable to the very earliest stage; together with materials for binders, wrappers, and so on, that would require cutting, stitching, _making_.

"The work will do you good," said Yates. "Just to amuse yourself, when you're sitting all alone up here--and to keep your mind off the strain."

"Oh, Yates, they are lovely. Where did you get them?"

"Don't you bother where I got them," said Yates, looking shame-faced all at once. "I don't intend to tell you." But then she went on defiantly: "Well, if you _must_ know, I got them in the children's outfitting department--over at Bence's."