Part 8

My thoughts were not idle as I stumbled against the torrents. No aspect of the case did they neglect. I can tell only of what I know, and I have no information as to Ronnie’s hold on Rose after his return and what steps preceded her decision to run off with him. But it is not difficult to realize, at any rate, the temptation. Here was the old friend of her happiest days once more—free and I don’t doubt more than rejoiced to see her again. He had been in strange countries, and probably had carried her image with him through all his wanderings and loneliness. He had never been articulately in love with her when they were youthful together; he had not proposed after that accident—I am sure she would have told me if he had, because she knew that I liked him. When she used to talk to me about her marriage and all those nice boys who were to gallop about the nursery, I had thought naturally of Ronnie as their father. One visualizes a figure on such occasions, and Ronnie sprang into being. But, as it happened, I was wrong. Rose had not thought of Ronnie like this: she had merely liked him, automatically so to speak, and when Eustace came along there was no earlier occupant of her heart to eject. Eustace found it all too easy.

But after her marriage so much had happened. And it must never be forgotten that Ronnie compelled interest, all unconsciously maybe, by the force of personality. He was quite ordinary in everything but personality, which in his case was physical more than spiritual. His ready smile, his white teeth, his gaiety, his good humour, his general friendliness and out-for-funnishness won him an easy way into the good graces of the world. He was popular almost universally. Rose, as I have said, had never to my knowledge, or even to my suspicion, been in love with him; nor he with her in any but a superficial degree, even if that; but there was always that intimate experience in Switzerland in the background; and each had since had too much time to think about the past and to speculate upon the might-have-been: Rose in the watches of the night taking stock of her marriage and its disenchantments, and Ronnie in a foreign land sick of a fever.

Both were older too—not so much older in years, but older through what had happened: the passage of time being often almost negligible in influence compared with certain experiences. A woman grows mature so swiftly: a three weeks’ honeymoon can do it, a night can do it; the birth of her first child always does it. It may be only in compartments, but maturity is there somewhere. And Rose’s child was five years of age. As for Ronnie, I suspect that such adventures among women as had fallen to him—and a handsome young officer in India has many admirers—had chiefly thrown his thoughts back, in comparison, to Rose. When he might have won her he had not; after, when he wished he had, she was another’s. I don’t say that he had brooded on this, but he probably recurred to it when least happy; and regret, like love, never stands still: it increases or it diminishes.

And her disenchantment, her starvation! Eustace’s frigid decorum, his supervision of the housekeeping books, his morbid interest in her minutest personal expenditure, his tendency to relapse into the tutor and shape her mind wholly by his, so that instead of the home containing a rising barrister and an impulsive, warm-hearted, generous woman it should contain merely a rising barrister and his female derivative—all this had surprised her and depressed her. Marriage, she had known—being a normal creature, full of the instinct of her sex, and not only the instinct but her sex’s capacity to endure—was necessarily a matter of adjustments. Any two persons agreeing to live together have to learn each other’s ways and make allowances: even two men and two women. How much more so then when the two persons suddenly thus beginning a new and intimate co-habitation are a man and a woman, natural enemies—or, at any rate, natural censors of each other, naturally jealous of each other, naturally misunderstanding each other! Perhaps the word enemies may stand.

In the case of her own marriage Rose quickly learned that the adjustments were all to be hers. The only change that Eustace made was to add a wife to his house: he kept the same habits: he played his golf at the Old Deer Park just as he had always done; he read the books from the London Library; he took her, regardless of her taste in music, to concerts. But he had never really loved; he had been attracted by Rose’s gaiety and vividness, even if he had neglected to cherish those qualities after they had passed into his keeping; he had known that rising barristers are usually furnished with wives, and that they do not rise the less because those wives are beautiful. He had known also that marriage is a natural state; that the duty of a good citizen is to have children; that wives can be more comfortable than housekeepers; and so on. I don’t say that he had put any of these thoughts into words: they were merely the outcome of common knowledge. Nor do I want to be unfair to him or to suggest that he was not proud and affectionate. I think that he was. But again I say that he had no imagination: he took things for granted, and directly a husband does that he is doomed.

Eustace’s refined and comfortable home in Wilton Place was never disgraced by anything so unseemly as passion or even eagerness. Returning from his chambers he had never upset furniture in his desire to get to her. When he brought flowers to her and she crushed them to her bosom in an ecstasy of enjoyment, a spasmodic return to nature, he warned her that she was in danger of breaking the stalks. He had brought the flowers though. That is the trouble: he was always nice and handsome and courteous. But there it stopped. Having no imagination, no instinctive knowledge of women, no sexual shorthand, he was unaware that nice men are negligible. What women want is not niceness but devotion, not courtesy but worship.

And then—I was still fumbling towards an explanation of Rose’s desperate act—then there was the disappointment about the boys. Rose, as I have said, had set her heart on being a mother, and the mother of sons, and there was only one surviving child and that was a girl. I have brought enough children into the world to know something about the part that they play in married life, and I can set it down firmly as a fact that it is all to the bad when the sex of the child is not that which the parents had desired. The girl who ought to have been a boy has to suffer for it; and so, though in a less degree, does the boy who ought to have been a girl, but he is not a common figure. Has it ever been suggested, I wonder, that some of the traditional alleged untrustworthiness of women is due to the fact that they were not wanted. I don’t say that I agree as to this inferiority of the sex, but proverbial lore, which is the wisdom of many and the wit of one, has decided that they are false and fickle, unstable, coy and hard to please, and so forth: and that may be a cause. Certain it is that the nurse who announces that the little pet is a girl is rarely treated as a bringer of good news; whereas if she can say it’s the finest boy she ever had in her arms she is, for the moment, an angel. Why should an unwanted child trouble to be constant and true and without caprice? Some revenge it is entitled to.

Rose, however, does not come within the category of the unwanted, for her sex had been determined by her father and mother months before I assisted at her début, and her name had long been chosen. Why they should have desired a girl instead of another of the lords of creation, I cannot say: probably because the father was an artist, and artists are notoriously eccentric. But there it was: they wanted a girl and they had one, whereas that girl, when her own time of fulfilment came, wanted not only a boy but many boys, and could not bring up one. Rose, I am sure, had a feeling of resentment for the girl who had lived where the boy had died. With that tiny boy baby much of her joy in life was buried. He had lived long enough in the actual world for her to make a little god of him; and before that life had been there was the life he had lived under her heart.

To say that she was not fond of Rose would be to tell an absolute falsehood—she took a grave pleasure in her, although treating her perhaps more as a toy than a daughter, as a wonderful doll whose capacities she never tired of studying—but she was steeped in a deeper rapture when her breast nurtured a son. That is all.

To put it in another way, I don’t believe that when Ronnie arrived and opened the door upon whatever fair prospect he displayed to her or she imagined she saw—whatever avenue of escape—Rose would have stepped through had the child she was to leave behind her been a little boy of five instead of a little girl.

Who knows what women feel? We may guess, but they will never tell us. They won’t even tell each other. As regards Rose and Ronnie, my guess is that his pathetic collapse attracted more than his radiant vigour would have done. Had she found him triumphant, as of old, she would have remained unscathed. Strong and masterful he might have called to her in vain, for she was never a sensualist. It was his dependence that swayed her and decided her. It was the boy Ronnie needing tenderness and care.

Involved and fantastic as it may sound, I have the belief that it was the mother instinct that took Rose off with Ronnie more than love. What I mean is that she did not go with him as most women go with men, through ordinary passion, but because he was fragile and in need of protection and she thought of him as her own, or—subconsciously of course—even as one of those unborn sons which he himself would have begotten. So mystical can women be!

But of course the wild hope of escape was present too: the wish to live a little more fully while there was yet time; the feeling that to endure another moment with Eustace was impossible and wrong.

And again Theodore’s wish came back to me. Was this “beating the band”? Could anything be farther from the ordinary conception of that successful and honourable act than running off with another man and leaving husband and child? And yet, it had required courage, devotion, disregard of the world’s censure—all the things that properly-brought-up and even universally respected people need not possess. What a muddle is our civilization!

* * * * *

“You must forgive this untimely and unprofessional visit,” I said, as I was shown into Mrs. O’Gorman’s over-furnished sitting-room.

“Don’t be foolish, Doctor,” she replied. “Have done with your politeness. Don’t I know why you’re here?”

“You do?” I exclaimed.

“Of course I do,” she said. “It’s about Rose. She’s bolted.”

“But surely the villagers aren’t talking?” I said in a panic of alarm. “You don’t mean to say it’s not a secret!”

“No one knows but you and me,” said the old lady.

“And Suzanne,” I corrected:

“O, Suzanne! She doesn’t matter. She’s an ally. But no one else knows. I know because I had a letter to-day. Rose took me some way into her confidence when she was staying with you. Old people often get told things. But don’t worry; it’s all right.”

“All right?” I echoed. “What do you mean? Do you want young wives to behave like this?”

“When they’re like Rose—yes,” she said. “The poor lamb was miserable. That iceberg of hers was no good except to freeze her. She wants life, love, human emotions, and she’ll get them with the young Captain.”

“But—” I exclaimed, aghast at this Bolshevism. “You talk as if people had the right to do as they please—break laws—anything.”

“Not all of them by any means, the idiots,” she replied. “But Rose—yes. Rose ought to have all she wants. I advised her to. It’s—no don’t interrupt me—it’s your own doing very largely. You brought her up to be happy and true to herself. She saw you always at work ministering to other people—Oh! I know you were paid for it—I’ve paid you myself—money thrown away too, for I only get worse—but that doesn’t matter: you’re a soft old thing at heart. Anyway, there was Rose, the apple of your eye, with a natural sweet disposition, and the centre of your circle of friends, and the mistress of your easy-going prosperous house, and she gets into kindly humane habits. Then she marries this refrigerator K.C., or whatever he is, and begins to miss everything that she had been used to. He’s a stupid fellow—he hasn’t even the sense to be ill and touch her heart that way—he can’t lose his temper—can’t swear—only be politely rasping now and then—and he gradually wore her down, diluted her sweetness, crushed her nice impulses, made her live according to Cocker.”

Wonderful, I thought, what a lot the old lady had divined, for I’m sure Rose never told her in words.

“There was no doubt about his selfishness,” I said.

“As for selfishness,” said Mrs. O’Gorman, “I don’t mind that. That hasn’t necessarily anything to do with it. All the most attractive men are selfish, even if the most selfish men are not the most attractive.”

“I wonder if that’s true,” I said.

“Think about the unselfish men you know and you’ll soon realize its truth,” she replied. “Unselfish men don’t give us any fun at all—I’m talking as a woman, remember—they make it too easy. The selfish ones keep us thinking, and when they forget themselves it’s delicious: I mean, it used to be.” She sighed and laughed. “But it’s about Rose we’re talking,” she continued. “Having got rid for a while of her husband, she comes down here and finds that poor boy, her old friend, ill and miserable, and all the love she ought to have felt for him years ago suddenly materialized, but a million times stronger, and there you are. ‘Bolt, my lamb,’ that’s what I said to her, although she never asked for my advice. ‘Bolt, my lamb, and be happy while you can.’”

“Well, I’m—” I began.

“Say it,” she said. “Say you’re damned. Nobody minds. But you’re not so damned as that poor child would have been if she’d gone back to the Arctic Zone. I’m old enough to believe that the whole purpose of unhappy people’s lives is not endurance. I’ve seen too much of it. And so has every one, especially you doctors. Endurance? No. Let revolt and escape have a chance too. That is, if people really want them. The trouble is that really wanting things is so rare. It’s a lukewarm world!”

“Anyway,” I said, “I’m amazed that you could dare to advise anything so revolutionary to Rose. It’s a terrible responsibility.”

“We look at it differently,” she replied. “I’m twenty years older than you, and, being a woman, perhaps I feel more bitterly for Rose. Besides, I’m a rebel and you’re not. I’m a believer in cutting knots, and you—although you’re more sympathetic than most—are still in favour of ‘endurance vile.’ Let those endure that enjoy it, say I, but let the others try for a second innings and a happier. If Rose had remained it would have been for what purpose? To pander to her husband’s respectability. Do you defend that? Is that your idea of a sound motive?”

“Everything can be put up with,” I said feebly. “Ever since I began to practise I have been watching couples putting up with bad jobs.”

“And admiring them?”

“In a way—yes,” I said.

“And wanting the same kind of death-in-life for your own girl?”

“Well—” I began.

“You must answer that question, yes or no,” she insisted.

“No,” I said.

* * * * *

“And then,” I began again, “there’s the child. What about her? Left motherless.”

“Well, and what about Rose herself?” Mrs. O’Gorman retorted. “She was motherless and fatherless too, and she grew into happiness and became a beautiful woman, thanks in some degree to some one who shall be nameless.”

“But who,” I said, “might possibly be feeling not a little guilty over the way that things are turning out.”

“But who, if he did so,” Mrs. O’Gorman added, “would be a very silly old boy.”

“Do you hold me absolutely innocent then?” I asked.

“Innocent of harm—yes,” she said. “Because there’s not the harm you seem to think. There’s social shipwreck, of course, but that’s nothing, because they’ll live abroad. There’s the Iceberg’s grief, but that doesn’t matter because he was never really in love. There’s little Rose—but she’s only five and will adjust herself. No, the only real sufferers will be the Captain’s father and mother, who, like all _nouveaux riches_, were thinking of a grand match for him. They’ll be very sore, and not unnaturally. But the world isn’t for fathers and mothers: it’s for sons and daughters.”

“You are a cynical old woman,” I said, “and I’m ashamed of you. I’m almost sorry I’ve kept you alive so long.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “If I’ve survived it’s been in spite of you.”

“But what of Rose herself?” I asked. “How can this be any but harm to her?”

“Because she’s happy,” she said. “She’s happy now—to-day—and she’s going to be happier once she’s on the sea, sailing away with her boy to make a new home together. She’s got something to squander herself on, and that’s happiness, even when the something isn’t worth it.”

“But her child?” I returned to the point.

“Her child will be all right, too. You—or some one else—will bring her up.”

“I don’t say that it is so in Rose’s case,” the ruthless old commentator added, “but lots of girls are better away from their mothers than with them, and lots of mothers better away from their girls. Children often enough would be the better if they were brought up by other people and not their parents. I’m sure I should have been. My mother and I were like Kilkenny cats most of the time.”

* * * * *

To my intense surprise, who should arrive the next day but Eustace, leading his little girl by the hand. I had expected to hear from him; but I had never thought to have him again under my roof. Vaguely I had guessed that he might associate me in some way with his wife’s action; unjustly, of course, but people are oftener unjust than not, and he was wounded to the quick and in no position to be too fair and reasonable. Besides, it was while Rose was visiting me that she had met Ronnie again, and it was the news of his return and illness in one of my letters to her that (I now saw) had determined her to come just at that time on a visit to her early home. I had touched an old chord and set it vibrating. All this Eustace, I thought, knew, and I was taking his resentfulness, however ill-founded, for granted.

But how often we are in error in our notion of what other people are feeling! And how difficult it is to learn not to continue to make such mistakes! Eustace was harbouring no such grudge; he held me innocent; he even went so far as to wonder, when we were alone, if he himself might not somehow have been to blame. He could lay nothing specific to his charge; and yet. . . . But no, it could not be through fault of his own. Try as he might—and he had passed sleepless nights in reviewing the past—he could not recall ever having failed in any direction whatever in his duty as an affectionate and solicitous husband.

The letter that Rose had left for him, he averred, when it came to essentials, said nothing. He did not show it to me but gave me the sense. It expressed sorrow at her failure to make him a worthy wife, regret at the collapse of their dream, and then said that she was sure that when he thought it all over he would understand, and, understanding, forgive. But if he could not forgive he would forget.

“Forget!” Eustace exclaimed. How could he forget? How could he ever forget? The shame of it too.

But he must not inflict his misery on me. That would be unfair, and I naturally had my own disappointment and grief to dispel.

We were sitting over our tobacco, late—too late for me, for I was very tired and the contemplation of spilt milk has never much attracted me. Would I tell him, he asked, of my own affairs? What was the health of the neighbourhood? Good? All the same, I must agree that it was extraordinary, incredible even, that his wife, the mother of his child, should find it possible to do this—this—he hated to be hard on her—but he was bound to call it, this scandalous thing? To leave her home in Wilton Place, one of the most charming and convenient houses in London, every one said: to leave her circle of friends, hers and his—was not that all amazing and beyond credence? As for himself, he would say nothing, except that barristers, by the very nature of their calling, are peculiarly in a position to be protected by their wives rather than made by them to look foolish if not despicable. How thankful he was that when he was called to the Bar he had decided to specialize and not take up advocacy. The spectacle of a leading divorce court counsel himself unable to retain his wife’s affections would be too ludicrous; his career would be finished. As it was—but his mind was in a whirl on the whole question of his future.

That I felt sorry for him as he laid bare his wounded ego, I need not say. No one could have failed to pity him. But to see him so blind to any but his own misfortune, so incapable of putting himself for an instant into Rose’s place, or to realize that such a woman must have suffered much and long before she could take such a step, was to withhold a certain measure of sympathy.

He would not, he began again, inflict any more of his perplexities on me. It was not that that he had come for. Would I mind if he took the key and went for a walk? He had no desire for bed and I must be weary.

I was rising to comply with this exceedingly welcome suggestion when he began again. What was not the least extraordinary part of the whole mystery, he said, was the circumstance—mark this!—that Rose had never given the faintest indication of unrest, dissatisfaction. How could one account for it? It was not as if he had been cool or careless or in the slightest respect neglectful. He taxed his memory in vain in the attempt to collect a single instance. As to his having given any of the ordinary causes for jealousy that was laughably out of the question.

He laughed now, to illustrate the impossibility, and his hollow travesty of mirth gave me deeper knowledge of the poor fellow than all his words. If he had only known that such complete failure to provide a wife with cause for jealousy is no surety of married bliss.

None the less, he went on, guiltless as he held himself to be, he could not keep at bay the suspicion, the reflection, that a man is not deserted by his wife without some reason. What it could be passed his comprehension, but he had the gnawing fear that it existed. Could I offer any suggestion? I had known Rose longer than anyone else, even though she was an immature girl when she left me.

I said that there must of course be some reason. Was it not possible—women are strange creatures—that Rose needed something more than a good home, a circle of London friends none of whom had she known before marriage, unintermittent courtesy from her husband?

“Women are not like us,” I went on: “women are capricious—it is a commonplace of the dramatists and novelists, who are supposed to know—look at Shakespeare, Browning, Hardy, every one—they are capricious, incalculable, they have odd whimsies, desires—every doctor can tell you about them—they take sudden dislikes. In short,” I said, “they are women.”

He agreed heartily.