Part 19

The party was very late in breaking up, and as Bennett was putting on his overcoat Annette came and helped him. He turned to her and they smiled at each other. She said:

"Serge is going to make a picture of me. I begin to-morrow, at his studio."

"I'll write to you--then, if I may."

Annette was called away by her mother, very peevish and anxious to go to bed. She caught Bennett's hand, pressed it to her bosom and ran away.

"Good night," he murmured, and when he was out in the street, walking home, he whispered to himself:

"Good night, my love."

* * *

With the two crushed roses in her hand Annette slept like a child, hardly stirring all night, smiling. She had prayed to God, as usual, for her father and mother, and had particularly begged Him to bless her love.

Bennett on the other hand had suffered from a violent reaction. He hardly slept, or, when he did so, it was to dream feverishly, seeing himself in ignominious positions with no clothes on, in church, for instance, or at his office. His thoughts flopped like frogs in a pond; his emotions whirled, rushed in a flood up to the memory of that moment of ecstasy, but were driven back by other memories, the Jew, Kraus, Annette by the river, Minna and Haslam. He wanted so terribly to understand, but he could not. He longed for nothing but to be with Annette, to give her all her desire, to rescue her, fly with her. . . . He fell asleep. In a chariot with swift horses he drove along a wild, dismal road. Clothed all in brightness he found Annette under a gallow's tree. Three bodies hung on it and swung in the wind, but she was singing a beautiful song. She mounted into the chariot, and away they sped, so fast, so fast, that presently they soared, and then down they came with the air rushing in their ears. Soon the road caught them again. There were hedges on either side of it now. They grew and grew, taller, taller, taller. It was very dark. Soon he saw that they were in a church. The chariot vanished. Annette vanished. He was alone in a dark empty church, and with a bitter cry he exclaimed . . . He awoke, shivering. He had thrown the bed-clothes off and torn his night-dress from his body. He was so unhappy that he began to cry. Utterly exhausted he fell asleep.

He was late in the morning, dull and dead. The monotonous day's work in the office soothed him. It was not until he left that he thought again of Annette and remembered that he had not written to her as he promised. He went round to Serge's studio and found him smoking and surveying the rough beginnings of a charcoal drawing of Annette.

"Hullo! sir," said Serge. "Anything wrong? You look as though you'd seen a whole car-load of ghosts."

"I didn't sleep well," answered Bennett. "Sometimes I don't."

"That's nonsense at your age. How old are you?"

"Nearly twenty."

They talked for a little, but Bennett hardly heard what Serge was saying. He went away soon and made no response to Serge's invitation to come again. When he reached home he locked himself into the dining-room--his father was out--and wrote to Annette. He made no sort of opening, but plunged directly:

"I do not know what to write. I love you. I hate myself. I cannot even tell you how much or why. Something in me is entirely changed, something of me is gone altogether Nothing exists but you. Everything else is hard and cruel and dark. I dreamed of you last night. I dreamed I had lost you. Have I? I went to look for you to-day. Oh! Annette, I can't write any more."

He did not sign it. He hurried it into an envelope when there came a knocking at the door. The letter was shuffled into his pocket and he went to the door and called:

"Who is it?"

In a very soft voice came:

"Tibby."

He opened to her. She had his night-shirt in her hand. She closed the door and said:

"You've torn your shift."

"Yes. I tore it in my sleep."

"Poor laddie," she said. "If I could do aught to help ye I would. Ye're a poor solitary body. . . . It's this house and the misery that's not of your making."

Bennett looked at her and the kindness in her eyes made him burst into tears. She patted his shoulders, went away into the kitchen and came back with a glass of milk and some biscuits. She saw that he ate and drank, and Bennett said:

"Thank you. I feel better . . . Tibby, why don't people understand what they are?"

"God knows," said she. "It's all a great mystery. There's a deal of unkindness, and a little kindness in the world. It's not given to us to understand."

"Tibby--" he paused. "Tibby, would you love me whatever I did?"

"Surely. You're one of my bairns."

Bennett kissed her. Then he went and posted his letter.

* * *

Annette came to meet him next day as he left his office. They had a long walk and were altogether happy, laughing and discovering little jokes that they could share--odd names on the shop-fronts, queer folk in the streets, strange advertisements on the placards. He left her near her home. He had so loved being alone with her that he had no wish to see her with her family. Also he was afraid of Minna. She spoiled everything.

Only one evening a week could Annette give to him, but they had Saturday afternoon and Sundays. She knew very little of the town, and, though he had little pride in it, it was a delight to him to show her such beauties as it had--the Zoological Gardens, the Art Gallery, the Reference Library, the School, the College, Humphrey Bodham's Hospital, the parks, the elegant southern suburbs. They shared it all, and sharing made everything beautiful. Always he found her more wonderful. Her simple trust in him strengthened him, dissipated the mists and dark shadows of his mind, made him, what he had never been, a boy. He could laugh with her.

All the rest of his life seemed small and unimportant. Often at home he sang aloud and talked to himself until his mother rebuked him. Then he would atone by performing all sorts of little services for her. In the office he felt that the silly day's work could be done in ten minutes--nine o'clock, work till a quarter past, send the whole world whizzing round, and then away to Annette. . . . But Annette's days were long and laborious, and the presiding powers at the office demanded his attendance from nine till five. He found his work easier and quite interesting. He began dimly to perceive a purpose in its processes. Talk with one or two of the elder men enlightened him. A great deal of what they said seemed absurd to him. The world did not exist for business. It existed for Annette. He had a trembling desire to tell them so . . . One man told him that though immense fortunes had been made in the cotton trade, they were a mere trifle compared with the misery that had been created in the making of them. "But that," said the man gloomily, "is the way of the world. It's happened so often that nobody worries when it happens again. All business is dirty business. A man must live, though I can never understand why." . . . Such pessimism seemed utterly absurd to Bennett. He did not want to understand why. He had only a general desire to be pleasant to everybody, and became so willing and busy and obliging that his superiors began to reverse their opinion of him. They had thought him conceited, reserved, and, at bottom, stupid. One of the senior clerks went out of his way to speak a few encouraging words to him. Such a thing had never happened before, and Bennett rushed away to Annette to tell her that the ball was at his feet, and he would quickly make his fortune, and then he would call for her one day, and they would be married by the bishop and for ever and ever they would live in a delicious dream. They were always making plans, and living in them, in a future that was so near the present as to be almost indistinguishable from it. There was no past. They ignored obstacles and impediments, lived in and for each other, and it seemed that it had always been so.

They hardly ever kissed each other in those young days. When they did so they set stirring in each other forces that instinctively they felt to be dangerous. What they had was so very precious, just the few hours every week of unclouded happiness. Always--wet or fine--they were out of doors, wandering blindly, oblivious of all else save each other. They would take meals in their pockets the more to be independent.

As the result of one long walk in the rain Annette fell ill and was in bed for a fortnight. She filled all Bennett's thoughts. He dared not write to her, and only once was he bold enough to go and make enquiries of Minna. The outside world began to close in upon him and to insist that he should bring his image of his beloved into some more proportionate relation with it. Much of the glamour left her, but she was not the less precious to him. Rather more; but in a new way, a simpler way, more easy to grasp. His intelligence began to play about her, to appreciate her directness--(how marvellous that was compared with everything else that he had had!)--her honesty, her confiding loyalty, her skill in bending to his mood, and discarding everything that might interfere with their happiness. . . . Days of gold and summer sun, young, green days, all warm and busy with new life. . . . Then, one evening as he sat by the window of his attic, looking across the miles of roofs in the direction where she lay, she began to appear to him in yet another way. He harked back to the night of their first kiss, and he felt again the warmth of her body in its triumphant surrender. He was half terrified by the new flood of warmth that ran through him, and he put his hands over his eyes as if to shut out what he was seeing. He became wholly afraid and ran downstairs to seek company.

He turned to his religion and scourged himself with the most naïvely terrible thoughts of hell and damnation. This only had the effect of a bellows on hot iron: his imagination became white hot, and not Annette, but Woman obsessed him. Against that he could only set Annette and her love: the only pure threads of his life. He was sick and lean for love of her when he saw her again.

She was white and large-eyed. Her mother was present. He could only press her hand. How their two hands trembled as they touched!

Her first excursion was to Serge's studio, where the portrait had been left unfinished. Bennett met her there, and, after the sitting, they had a long silent walk, arm in arm.

"I thought of you all the time," said she.

"And I of you . . ." He was troubled. "Oh! Annette!"

He took her hand and, in the street as they were, kissed it over and over again.

* * *

She went away to the sea and Serge with her. She liked being with Serge, but even to him she could not declare herself. Under the warm sun with the strong air blowing over salt from the sea she quickly became well again, but all her longing was to get back. She was uneasy. When she had last seen Bennett she had felt that some of the glamour and delight had gone from him. He had changed. She must change with him. He had gone on. Gone deeper. She must go with him. She had never been trained to think. She never reasoned any difficulty out. All her perception of her circumstances came to her in flashes. . . . It was not long before she had caught Bennett up. She was not afraid, but only glad to be with him once more. She was proud of the new horizon that had opened to her. When health came back to her she was a woman.

One evening as she sat with Serge on the sands gazing at the moon peeping above the sea and silvering the waves she said:

"Serge, tell me, have you ever been in love?"

"Often."

"Happily?"

"Happily and unhappily. It doesn't matter much. The great thing is to love."

"What is love?"

"A great thing, but not the be-all and end-all of existence as so many people try to believe. The greatest things lie beyond it."

"Then you must go through it to get at them."

"Exactly. Most people stick in the middle, or remain shivering on the wrong side."

"Like Frederic?"

"Like Frederic."

"I used to hate Frederic, but now I'm only sorry for him."

"What's come to you?"

She shivered.

"It's very cold. Can I go home to-morrow?"

"If you like. Do you want to?"

"I must."

* * *

She returned to the house in Burdley Park next morning, but it was some days before she informed Bennett of her arrival. He came hot-foot as soon as he had her letter, and there was an air of dogged determination about him and the embarrassment of one who has a vital topic to approach. He had made a compromise between his mental torment and his religious scruples and come to the idea of marriage, and the idea had taken complete possession of him so that he saw nothing else. The vision of the future to which it led was sufficiently entrancing to make him unwilling to look elsewhere. He did try to contemplate the future without that step, but it stretched intolerably blank. He needed action. The upheaval that had taken place in him had set him growing mentally and spiritually; in his office, in his house, he was hurt at every turn, bumping into corners where none had been before. He saw in marriage perfect freedom. It was an illusion, but he was wholly deceived by it. He saw it as a summit of achievement from which he could defy all that he had suffered all his life. He said to Annette:

"Annette, I love you. I want you to marry me. We shall be very poor, but we shall have each other, and nothing else matters."

This he said to convince himself. Annette did not need convincing. She believed.

"No," she said, "nothing else matters."

He had hardly expected such instant compliance. For a moment it shook the firmness of his conviction and blurred his vision of the free future. He told himself that their present existence was intolerable and must not be suffered to continue.

Excitedly they made their plans. They believed that it was their affair and theirs only. They saw the outside world as harsh and menacing and devoid of understanding, were seared by it, and used their fears to fortify their resolve.

"Another month," said Bennett, "and we shall be man and wife."

"I love you," said Annette. It was the first time the words had passed her lips.

* * *

When Bennett had paid the expenses of the ceremony in an out-of-the-way church and the price of the ring and their wedding-dinner in a restaurant near his office he had exactly thirty-shillings left until the end of the month. Annette returned to her home until he should have found a lodging for her, and he engaged himself to break the news to his mother at the first fitting moment; fixed, in his own mind, at that when he should next receive his monthly salary of seven pounds.

He anticipated a storm, but, being still borne up by the excitement and the adventure of what they had done, they felt secure against all wrath. Hardly could they understand that there should be wrath. How could their love meet with anything but love?

XXIII

BENNETT TELLS HIS MOTHER

_Then would I speak, and not fear._ JOB

AFTER a week's search Bennett found lodgings as far removed as possible from his family in a little pink-brick street that was one of a network woven by a speculative builder over a tract of marshy ground that for years had been unclaimed and used by the neighbourhood for a rubbish heap. In a tiny little house he hired two rooms on the first floor for twelve shillings a week. His landlady was a large German woman who, by threateningly demanding references, inveigled him into paying two weeks' rent in advance. He had to borrow ten shillings to do that. He was terrified of the German but proud of the two rooms, the first place that he had ever been able to call his own. The wall-paper and paint were hideous, but he told himself that that could soon be altered--should be altered before Annette saw the rooms. By neglecting all other engagements he found time in the evenings to hang what he thought a pretty paper and to paint the woodwork apple-green, paint and paper being bought with more borrowed money. This manual activity soothed him greatly, and he felt very proud of himself, whistled and sang all the time as he toiled. He was so busy that for a fortnight he hardly saw Annette, and when he did snatch a moment with her he was exceedingly mysterious, and would not tell her what he was up to, except that it was for her, a beautiful surprise.

"Where is it?" asked she.

"You wouldn't know if I told you. I'll take you there."

"Next week? Is it to be next week?"

"As soon as it is ready. . . . You're not sorry?"

"Of course not."

* * *

As the end of the month drew near Bennett realised that it was not going to be so easy as he had thought to break the surprising and splendid news to his mother. He knew so little about her, and had always had great difficulty in talking to her even about the most impersonal matters. There had been differences between them before, many trifling, and one serious, over his secession to the High Church fold. All these differences now rose up and stood like a thick-set hedge between him and her. . . . As long as he remembered her she had been always sitting in the middle of the dark drawing-room waiting and watching for the landmarks of the day--dinner at one, his brothers' return from the bank, his own return from his office, tea, supper, the hour for sleep--as time bore her evenly past them. For years now his only long conversations with her had been at the end of the month when he gave her his earnings and received his dole for spending. It made him ashamed and unhappy to know that he disliked her, but he could not explain it away, and he had never made any attempt to understand why she was as she was--cold and hard and unresponding. If he took sides at all in the antagonism of drawing-room and dining-room his leaning was towards his father, but that was because the only intimacy in the house lay between Tibby and old Lawrie. There was more warmth in the dining-room than in the drawing-room, though, outwardly, it was his father who was disgraced and deposed, his father whom Bennett had been taught to contemn. . . . The only link that bound him to his mother was money. He would use the monthly conversation about money as an opening for his declaration of independence. He had not looked upon it as that: had not contemplated a rupture and open breach between himself and his mother, though he had heard muttered warnings in the depths of his soul.

When he returned home with seven pounds in his pocket, he hesitated for a long time outside the drawing-room door with every nerve in his body throbbing. His suffering was too great and he decided that he would tell his father first. After all, his father was the head of the family. . . . He walked gropingly down the dark passage to the dining-room only to find his father out and Tibby working for dear life at a column of cotton-prices. He knew what that meant. There would be no telling his father. His father was "plang" (the family euphemism), and, as she had often done before, Tibby was finishing his work.

She looked up at him and scowled. The work was never easy for her, she had to supply the gaps of her ignorance with guesses and was always in dread of guessing awry. Bennett sat down in the horsehair chair by the fireplace, under the blue-eyed portrait of his grandfather, the Scots minister, and rattled the money in his pocket. Tibby went on working. Much of Bennett's terror vanished and he broke into the scratching of her pen:

"Tibby."

"Eh?"

"You said once you'd love me whatever I did."

"Aye. What have you been doing?"

"I'm married."

"Losh!"

Tibby dropped her pen and turned sorrowful eyes of wonder upon him. Bennett jingled the money in his pocket.

"I'm married," he said. "I'm very happy."

"Och! The foolishness of men! Married! Laddie, ye'll never have a son as young as yourself."

"I'm married," said Bennett, "and I'm going to be very happy, and I don't care what . . ."

"Have you told your mother?"

"No."

"Better tell her at once. You'll break your neck over it. I'll finish this and then I'll think it out. . . . Married! Losh!"

She turned to her work again, and the pen scratched and spluttered. Bennett reached the door when she called to him:

"Laddie."

He turned.

"If ye love the lassie, ye've no call to be afeard. There's always a way. There's no way where no love is."

"I love her," said Bennett unconsciously dramatic and absurd. "I love her as my life."

"God bless ye."

* * *

Fortified by her benison and also by having once told his immense secret Bennett passed swiftly to the drawing-room. He found his mother sitting in her chair in the middle of the room with a cat in her lap. He stooped and kissed her.

"I've got some news for you!"

"Sit down. You don't come and talk to me as often as you might."

There was an unusual geniality in her voice that made it easy for him to go on.

"I've had a rise."

"That's good. They must be pleased with you. How much?"

"Five shillings a week."

"That's very good. You shall have a shilling a week more for your pocket-money. I'm glad you're doing so well. You can keep five shillings for yourself this month."

"That isn't all my news."

"What else?"

"I want to keep it all."

"Nonsense. You can't do that."

"I must. You see. I haven't told you everything. You see . . . I shall want my money now. I'm--what I wanted to tell you is that--that . . ." He gave a little nervous giggle that exasperated his mother and set her tapping with her foot on the floor. "I'm--you see--I'm married."

Her mouth dropped. Her hands waved weakly in the air. She got up and went and stood for a long time--it seemed a very long time--by the window. Without turning she said:

"Who is the woman?"

"Her name is Annette. Annette Folyat."

"I might have known it. . . Will you ask your father to come here?"

"Father's out." Bennett felt that his cause was lost. Only in the most desperate cases was his father's presence over requested in the drawing-room.

"Tibby then." She went to the door and with extraordinary power of the lungs shouted for the old servant.

Tibby came shuffling. She was dressed to go out, in bonnet and shawl, and had an envelope in her hand.

"I'm in haste," she said.

"Tibby, what's to be done? Bennett has married one of the daughters of that High Church popery priest. What am I to do?"

"What can you do?"

"It can't go on. It's miserable folly. It's ruin. It's beggary. . . . Where were you married? When?" She pounced on Bennett.

"A fortnight ago. At St. Barnabas; banns and everything. We signed the register. I forbid you to interfere."

"Silence."

"I will not be silent. I have taken my own life into my own hands. I am going to have my own money and my own house. I shall leave your house to-night, and I shall not enter it again until you ask me and my wife together."

"That's right, laddie," said Tibby quietly.

Mrs. Lawrie opened her mouth to rend Tibby, who added:

"I canna thole a man that winnot stand by his own doings."

Mrs. Lawrie turned to Bennett and said:

"May you never have a child to hurt you as you have hurt me this day."

The wild frenzy that had possessed Bennett oozed away, and weakly he asked:

"Am I to go?"

"Go. . . . As you've made your bed, so you must lie on it."

A little unsteadily Bennett walked upstairs to his attic and began to pack his belongings. He laid them all out on the bed, books, clothes, small pieces of furniture, and they seemed to him very little. In possession of his secret he had felt very large and important; now he felt very small indeed.