Part 19

He stooped and kissed her, full of premature paternal emotion. Adelaide was supposed to be not quite so well to-day. She was lying on the famous tiger-skin that he had given her, and which she had spread over a low wide couch in the hall. She chose to lie on it always, so that the brute’s savage head was close to her own. Loving and akin, the live Adelaide and the dead beast he had given her, both reeked of each other. There was all the hot suggestion of the jungle, of careless natural savagery in the juxtaposition of the tiger’s snarling teeth, Adelaide’s dusky eyes, and the spots and splashes of black that showed on each side of her spare form, like caked, dried blood upon the gold. It was his wife’s boast that her beautiful figure was hardly altered by her present condition, and the shocking cruelty to the unborn implied in this attainment of an unnatural shapeliness was lost on the simple fellow who was so soon to be a father.

“Our child,” he said, kissing her again passionately, “is the thing that matters.”

Then the recollection of that other child went through, pierced his heart like an arrow. He rose from his knees. All the blood in his body came into his face. He stood looking down on the woman, who had returned the passion of his caress with all the force of which she was at present capable. A large patch on the tiger-skin, a zebra mark bitten in, zig-zagging across the yellow fur, focussed his eyes.…

“Adelaide,” he prayed softly, “could we not take Mary back into the house again?”

“No,” Adelaide said. She spoke quite quietly too, but Ensor knew her; a storm was coming.

“Then,” he said pleadingly. “Could she not be sent away for a bit--or”--his immense struggle betrayed itself in his voice--“for good?”

“You cannot interfere with Gertrude’s business,” came plumb and sharp from Adelaide. “If Gertrude likes to leave me, she can of course take her child away with her. But I cannot do without Gertrude, and Gertrude will never leave me. Ask her.”

She turned away, and laid her cheek against the flat head of the tiger.

“And I was so happy!” she wailed, in bitter accents.

He knelt down again. Her breath came quick. He feared for her.

“It is no use,” she said. “You have spoilt it all. And all for the sake of a dirty misbegotten little wretch whose own mother can’t stand her and beats and neglects her. I don’t blame Gertrude. Don’t you understand, Wald, Mary is one of the wrecklings, one of Nature’s faults that ought to have been smothered at birth? I wish I had. I wish somebody had. My father would have put her away fast enough if I had asked him, only like a fool, I was kind to Gertrude, and saw her through with it. But I have come to hate the very sight of the child! And you--_you_ to come snivelling to me about her.… You!”

She laughed. Her passion was spent. She looked him, her husband, up and down, contemptuously.

He murmured: “Don’t, don’t excite yourself!”

“I won’t,” she said squarely, turning her face round to the wall. “I’m better now. I won’t let you hurt me. I’ll even discuss the unwholesome brat, if you like, that’ll show you I don’t care. Get on. Talk quietly and tell me what’s wrong about Mary’s upbringing.”

“You are very good,” Ensor murmured, “are you sure it won’t upset you?”

“No, I tell you.” She sat up and faced him. She pulled a basket of needle-work towards her and busied herself with it. Her hands did not shake. Ensor admired her. After all, she had no nerves, and he might as well say his say about the child, get better terms of existence for her, and be done with the subject. He made up his mind he would not say much; he would not descend to particulars of her ill treatment unless Adelaide asked for them. He began gently--

“I do think, don’t you? that when all’s said and done, Mary’s young, and even a servant’s child ought to have some joy of its life. Mary oughtn’t to be made to slave like a grown-up. Hang it all, a simple child should lightly draw its breath, not to the tune of housework and floorscrubbing. The sight of that poor kid carrying those heavy pails about makes me quite sick. I should like to tell you what I saw yesterday. Gertrude must be an unnatural mother----”

“Well, speak out, what did you see?” Adelaide asked sharply.

“You were out driving. Mary was standing by one of the high windows in the hall----”

“She’d no business to be there. Suppose a caller came?”

“No callers come. Why don’t they, by the way?”

“I hate people. I’ve snubbed them all, they daren’t show their noses here. Go on. What was your paragon doing in the hall?”

“She was eating something out of an enamel tin platter such as you feed dogs in, laid on the sill. The platter was not over clean, and I don’t know what the mess was, but it looked most unappetizing and she seemed to be--yes, actually picking something--something disgusting--something alive out of it.…!”

“Pah, you sicken me!” Adelaide screamed. Ensor went on relentlessly, now that he was wound up.…

“I put my hand on to her little scrubby head with that faded knot of red ribbon on the crown----”

“I wonder you can touch it. Don’t touch me.”

“And I told her not to eat the nasty stuff, and what was it? She said it was bits Gertrude cut off the toast before it went in the dining-room, the same as the dog had. It looked days old--quite mouldy. I shouldn’t like to give such a mess to my dog. I can only account for it as a morbid taste of the young growing child, and I bade her throw it away, and not eat between meals. It shows the shocking state of health she’s in, and she’s morbidly inventive, for then she said----”

“What did she say?”

“That it was her breakfast. Nonsense, I said. But she stuck to it. She seemed cowed, brutalized, but she stuck to it. I say, Adelaide--I know you aren’t very fit just now, but oughtn’t you to make some inquiries? Does Gertrude beat her or ill treat her? I hear sounds, of a morning sometimes--not so much lately since you’ve been seedy--but they freeze my blood, until I realize that it’s the dog getting a licking.… Oh, Adelaide, reassure me, don’t you see a man can’t stand the suspicion of such a thing in his house? A helpless child.…”

The drops of sweat stood on his forehead. Adelaide spoke, as it were a prepared speech, which it was now time to make.

“Your house!” she said. It was hers and the man winced.…

She continued, raising herself a little. “Look here! Mary’s a liar as well as a pig. You’ve owned it. Morbid--is that all? I say a filthy, beastly liar!… And, Wald, I’m going to bear _your_ child, and if you want to have a healthy one, born alive--you haven’t had much luck with children, so you say--you had better not worry me.… Let me have this chance. I’ll never try again. I shall kill myself if this one does not come off. Suppose you be wise in time, and leave off meddling in my domestic concerns, and go and attend to your own. You’ve a meeting of the Library Committee in Beverley at three. It’s full time.” She glanced composedly at the watch that lay on her breast, and lay down again as if it were a duty.…

He went about his business, trying to calm down in the quiet operation of the natural round, and the mild form of civic functions that filled his days. Adelaide was right, an important meeting of the Library Committee was on for to-day, at which he had announced his intention of speaking, for the subject interested him personally. It was a question of morals as applied to the feast of contemporary literature spread before the youth of Beverley and Weighton. Ensor’s contention was that as young girls formed the main contingent of the readers of books in all provincial towns it behoved far-seeing and right-minded city councillors to see that no works pernicious in quality or deleterious in tone should be delivered over to their private consumption. Their elders, with a taste for life, spiced and otherwise, should purchase outright the literature their souls loved, and leave the shelves of chance to works of limpid purity and unimpeachable if dreary moral tone.

The Library Committee was composed of enlightened men and women, for it had been founded by an exceedingly busy and fussy Mrs. Marrable, “a bit of a Socialist,” as she called herself. She was at any rate a person professedly open to all the new ideas. The Committee were a little afraid of her, and had come to look to Ensor, the shy silent embodiment of Conservative, almost retrograde feeling in their midst, to oppose her. He generally began his sentences: “I know I am a bit old-fashioned.” This was a capital counterblast to Mrs. Marrable and her “bit” of Socialism. They found him invaluable, a sort of slipper on the wheels of frenzied progress, and Mrs. Marrable was not easily gainsaid. She was a relation of the Bishop’s cousin, and had lived in Beverley for years in a big red house where she entertained Saturday to Monday parties from London. She had no daughters.

Another influential member, Canon St. Leger, unmarried, and living in the best house in the Close, was a friend of Ensor’s, though he had not asked him to come in so much lately.…

Indeed, looking round the green baize-covered table where all the Committee found themselves at last seated, it occurred to Ensor that he had not shaken hands with a single one of his confrères since the last meeting, and that was a month ago. For that reason, he supposed, they seemed strange to him, although they were all or nearly all, people with whom he had been desired to take pot luck on any occasion, lunch, or dinner, when he had ridden in from High Walls on his bicycle and found he had put it too late to get back. All except Mrs. Marrable, with whom for political and temperamental reasons he had always cared to have very little to do.

While the Committee dealt with some purely financial and business matters, which called for no more attention from the members of the Committee than was implied in passing a vote of confidence or holding up hands for a resolution, Ensor wrought himself up into a strange state of nervous apprehension. It might have been mere perverse fancy, but as a matter of fact not one of these people had spoken to him since they sat down, or recognized his presence except by a nod of salutation such as the barest courtesy demanded. The attitude of each several person could be accounted for separately. So-and-so had come in late, such a one had too many irons in the fire to be able to spare a word till the meeting was over, but still--there it was, the indefinable uneasiness, the disagreeable insinuating point that morbid imaginings could establish. No one had actually addressed a word to him!…

He brooded over this--he was tired, overwrought and annoyed, for the child Phillis had shown a sad racial cloven foot to-day. He was afraid she was not going to turn out so well as he could have wished. By and by other business being disposed of, the Committee were invited to deal with the question of detailed selection of books for the Library. It was a subject on which Ensor was keenly interested, and here he had so much to say that he forgot his preoccupation and did not allow his natural shyness to interfere with the expression of his opinion. He was strongly against the determination of Mrs. Marrable, to permit, nay, to encourage, the introduction of a certain novel, the work of one of her literary confrères, into the list of the Library. Ensor had had the book sent him from London, so as to acquaint himself with its supposed nature. He had carefully kept it out of the way of his womenkind, until having thoroughly digested it, he threw it into the fire. Yet this book was to be placed on the shelves of the Library to which Adelaide subscribed, and a copy of it would be sure to find its way to High Walls! He could not bear the idea of such a girl as Phillis, eager, sensuous, full of strong, exuberant, readily-awakened sex instincts, sucking in the unhealthy, unnecessary knowledge presented so cleverly by this book, and it seemed to his hypochondriacal imaginings that the tendency of the rest of the Committee was to override his objections _per se_. He grew tremendously excited, and the Committee wondered to see the usually still and discreet man, who had married the lady they called the terrible Mrs. Dibben, make such a violent exhibition of himself.

“I have a nearly grown-up daughter, as you all know,” so he ended his speech, and for the moment he felt every inch a father. “Well, let me tell you, that I had rather see her lying dead at my feet than realize that she was taking into her pure mind anything so poisonous, so pernicious, so destructive of all moral health as the work in question. I would rather see her starved, neglected, maimed even, than ruined mentally by such murderous nourishment.…”

He stopped, he felt that the sense of the meeting was not with him. The silence that swallowed up the last word was hard and disapproving. The Chairman, Canon St. Leger, drubbed on his desk with a pencil.… Mrs. Marrable, divesting herself of her feather boa with the air of one throwing down the gauntlet, and tilting forward her chair, rose.…

“Do I understand?” she said, speaking with privileged indistinctness, but Ensor heard her for all that. “Do I understand from Mr. Ensor’s eloquent speech, that he cares to throw his shield merely over a member of his own immediate family? What about the stranger within his gates? And I have yet to learn that spiritual injury and moral oppression are the only enemies worth combating? Talk of mental starvation, indeed!… Mental!… There are worse things than mental starvation. There are blows…!”

She appeared to become hysterical and quite incoherent.

“Such hypocrisy… such disgusting hypocrisy I never heard of. Let him look to his own house, I say--let him set his own house in order before we put the Society on to him!”

“Mrs. Marrable, I must beg you to observe! This language is impermissible here,” Canon St. Leger said, avoiding Ensor’s eye and the deprecating gestures he automatically made.… “I must call upon you to apologize!”

“To me,” Ensor said, white to his lips.

“Oh yes, I’ll apologize to the Committee,” said the lady, “and they’ll accept my apology. They all know what I mean. But in the interest of Humanity, it is time some steps were taken, and I’ll take them.…”

She folded her boa tightly round her neck and passed out. Canon St. Leger swiftly put the retention or refusal of the book in question to the vote and closed the meeting.

Ensor, dazed, his eyes blurred with unaccustomed passion, walked away like a condemned man, condemned for a crime of which he was unwitting.

He rode studiously home, meditating on these things to the point of falling off his bicycle. He was stunned with the impact of the undeserved disagreeable, and knew not what to think or whom to ask for an explanation. And when he got home he found real trouble awaiting him. Phillis, who had been ailing rather unaccountably for some time past, had shown definite symptoms of illness during his absence. The little local country doctor, (but quite “good,”) had been sent for and had been and gone. He had pronounced the child’s uneasiness to be due to a mild attack of typhoid fever, so Adelaide, afoot, her eyes alight with excitement, told the sluggish, depressed man who dismounted from his bicycle at the door where she came to meet him.

“Have something, Wald. You look pale. That meddling brute of a doctor has gone and ordered a nurse all off his own bat!” she fretfully informed him, leading the way into the drawing-room and closing the door. “I was so angry with him when I heard what he had done. Of course I should have nursed her myself. The woman is here now so we must make the best of it.”

Ensor was secretly of opinion that Dr. Hodgson was right, and that the state of Adelaide’s nerves would have made her an indifferent nurse; he, however, contented himself with remarking that neither himself nor Dr. Hodgson would approve of her sitting up at night.

“But I shall have to as it is. No nurse can do both. And, Wald, I do so detest strangers coming into the house! They go prying about, making up all sorts of absurd conclusions and telling the ass of a doctor everything.…”

An expression of indefinable apprehension crossed her peevish face, and her husband was touched, taking it, as he did, as indicating the state of nervous tension she was in. Phillis’s illness--her own condition----

He took her limp hand and kissed it.

“My poor Adelaide, what have you to fear? There’s nothing wrong for him to find out; I don’t quite approve of the status of Mary in the house, but after all that’s the cook’s affair, not ours.… By the way.…”

He was going to tell her something of Mrs. Marrable’s insinuations, but concluded he had better not mention the matter at this juncture.… He merely asked abruptly, “Where is Mary? I haven’t seen her about for the last few days.”

“Gertrude has sent her away to some friends at Cullercoats, I believe. She asked me if I could spare her!”

“And of course you did, kind girl,” said Ensor.

“Oh yes. The work she does isn’t worth thinking about. I told Gertrude we should never make a servant of her.… Good-bye. I must go to Phillis. I want to keep an eye on that nurse. I didn’t like her face. A mischief-maker if ever there was one.”

Adelaide was gone and Ensor fell a-thinking on the painful scene of to-day. He was obsessed, now that it was over, by the recollection of a fluid and retreating Committee. He saw black coats, and the grey mantelets of the country ladies melting away from him, fleeing from his contact. He could not account for the social ban under which he appeared to lie. This was the culminating incident; he remembered now other slighter acts of neglect and inattention in the past, which he had been too little self-conscious to observe or to piece together in a pattern of general avoidance and cold shouldering. The arraignment of the woman Marrable did not disturb him so much as the nervous acceptance of it by the Canon. Mrs. Marrable was a shrew, a local terror, a person of advanced views, and the author of the book in question was a friend of hers, probably?…

But Canon St. Leger, a decent, sober-minded man, a man of his own stamp!… He saw his thin hand toying with the suspended pencil, he heard again his meek milk-and-water reproof of Mrs. Marrable’s unparliamentary language.… He could not away with that.…

He wandered about the garden half the night with the puppy, now fully trained to be a perfect house-dog and companion. It followed him in an orderly manner from covert to covert under the high beetling wall with the thick beds of nettles growing luxuriantly at the base. Once, however, there was a skirmish; the dog grew quite excited at what must surely have been a not unusual sight for him, the yellow knob of a small boy’s head peering over the wall, supported presumably from behind by a human Japanese ladder of other small boys. It was a favourite game in this neighbourhood.

“He! He!” they crowed and chuckled. “Who lives ’ere? Old Mother Brownrigg and her girls. He! He! No one ever comes out here alive…!”

The dog barked and sprang. Fear of his ultimately reaching them at last dislodged the grotesque cohort. Ensor, his nerves a little shaken by this noisy onslaught of words only half heard, turned and made his way back to the house. It was absurd to mind. Children were always climbing up the other side of that wall; it was nice to climb, it had jutting courses of bricks half-way up, and the village curiosity was provoked and stimulated by the air of quasi-mystery which Adelaide chose to foster about High Walls, and that her rather witch-like appearance abroad, always heavily, mediævally cloaked and motor-veiled, abetted. She dressed like a toadstool in the day. And in the evening like a panther. She strode along, her step was confident, her eyes abstracted, her whole manner carelessly insulting. No wonder the children were afraid of her.

He went in, and saw the doctor coming out and questioned him about Phillis. His anxiety was easily allayed. The big girl was strong enough to resist a whole army of adverse microbes. He saw the new nurse, a tall, thin sprig of a woman with some indication of character. She was very cold and civil, especially when she spoke to Adelaide. He thought he saw plainly that she disliked the mistress of the house, already. Another! Poor Adelaide!

He knew he was right, as the days went on. The two women detested each other, skirmished every time they met, issued cross orders and confused the other servants. But the maid defeated the mistress. Dr. Hodgson, meek, little insignificant man that he was, resisted all Mrs Ensor’s hints and manœuvres, and finally, her most palpable efforts to get rid of Nurse Ferrier, who was, on her side, careful to give no positive offence, or commit any domestic crime which might lead to her dismissal on other grounds than medical ones. She was a capital nurse, even Adelaide admitted that, only Phillis no longer wanted one. Hodgson said she did. He further implied that a nurse stood between Mrs. Ensor and all fatigue or anxiety undesirable for a woman in her state, and that was the only argument Adelaide dared not, or did not care to, gainsay.

The distracted woman vented her annoyance at the doctor’s tactics on her husband, and to punish him would not let him see Phillis. As she spent most of her time in the girl’s room which opened out of her own, Ensor saw very little of her. He found himself not very much cast down by this arrangement; he was much out of sympathy with his wife, a little fretted by her irritability, and was glad to defer their meeting until the need for the nurse’s presence which so enraged her should have passed away.

He wondered, sometimes, when that would be, and thought he would like to ask the nurse. But she rather sternly, and with a sort of frigidity put on over and above her statutory nurse’s manner, passed him in the hall or on the stairs. He began to fancy that Adelaide, moved by her strange taste for regulating the movements and gestures of others, had bidden her enter as little as possible into conversation with the master of the house. Well! Well!…

He missed Mary, to whom, in the present upheaval, he could have paid a little more attention. Still, presumably she was well. Adelaide had apparently carried out his expressed wishes for once, and had insisted on Gertrude’s sending her child away for sea air. He missed the daily appeal of the dark eyes set in paleness, the weak gestures with her hands which Mary often used in lieu of speaking, as if mere movement made less stir, and drew down less attention on her from the cruel powers above. Though her face was pale it was always clean, he remembered. And a queer thing--he never remembered her sitting down. Did she ever sit down? He had seen her squat, he had seen her stand, but he had never seen her sit except that first day in the motor-car, when, the dark fur cap on her head, and the dark fur up to her chin had made her look almost a lady. She was dressed exactly like Phillis, then, he remembered! Strange monitory caprice of Adelaide’s--an instance of her sheer love of power--to raise, and then to degrade! No man could do such a thing except, perhaps, some savage Asiatic king, one in whom caprice remained the only lust left to satisfy.