Chapter 2

Meanwhile he spent all his holidays at Queningford, and Aggie had been twice to town. They saw so little of each other that every meeting was a divine event, a spiritual adventure. If each was not exactly an undiscovered country to the other, there was always some territory left over from last time, endlessly alluring to the pilgrim lover. Whenever Arthur found in Aggie's mind a little bare spot that needed cultivating, he planted there a picture or a poem, that instantly took root, and began to bloom as it had never (to his eyes) bloomed in any other soil. Aggie, for her part, yielded all the treasure of her little kingdom as tribute to the empire that had won her.

Many things were uncertain, the rise of Arthur's salary among them; but of one thing they were sure, that they would lead the intellectual life together. Whatever happened, they would keep it up.

They were keeping it up as late as August, when Arthur came down for the Bank Holiday. He was still enthusiastic, but uncertainty had dimmed his hope. Marriage had become a magnificent phantasm, superimposed upon a dream, a purely supposititious rise of salary. The prospect had removed itself so far in time that it had parted with its substance, like an object retired modestly into space.

They were walking together in the Queningford fields, when Arthur stopped suddenly and turned to her.

"Aggie," he said, "supposing, after all, we can never marry?"

"Well," said Aggie, calmly, "if we don't we shall still lead our real life together.

"But how, if we're separated?"

"It would go on just the same. But we sha'n't be separated. I shall get something to do in town and live there. I'll be a clerk, or go into a shop--or something."

"My darling, that would never do."

"Wouldn't it, though!"

"I couldn't let you do it."

"Why ever not? We should see each other every evening, and every Saturday and Sunday. We should always be learning something new, and learning it together. We should have a heavenly time."

But Arthur shook his head sadly. "It wouldn't work, my sweetheart. We aren't made like that."

"I am," said Aggie, stoutly, and there was silence.

"Anyhow," she said, presently, "whatever happens, we're not going to let it drop."

"Rather not," said he, with incorruptible enthusiasm.

Then, just because he had left off thinking about it, he was told that in the autumn of that year he might expect a rise.

And in the autumn they were married.

Aggie left the sweet gardens, the white roads and green fields of Queningford, to live in a side street in Camden Town, in a creaking little villa built of sulphurous yellow brick furred with soot.

They had come back from their brilliant fortnight on the south coast, and were standing together in the atrocious bow-window of their little sitting room looking out on the street. A thick gray rain was falling, and a dust-cart was in sight.

"Aggie," he said, "I'm afraid you'll miss the country."

She said nothing; she was lost in thought.

"It looks rather a brute of a place, doesn't it? But it won't be so bad when the rain clears off. And you know, dear, there are the museums and picture-galleries in town, and there'll be the concerts, and lectures on all sorts of interesting subjects, two or three times a week. Then there's our Debating Society at Hampstead--just a few of us who meet together to discuss big questions. Every month it meets, and you'll get to know all the intellectual people--"

Aggie nodded her head at each exciting item of the programme as he reeled it off. His heart smote him; he felt that he hadn't prepared her properly for Camden Town. He thought she was mourning the first perishing of her illusions.

His voice fell, humbly. "And I really think, in time, you know, you won't find it quite so bad."

She turned on him the face of one risen rosy from the embraces of her dream. She put a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked at him with shining eyes.

"Oh, Arthur, _dear_, it's all too beautiful. I couldn't say anything, because I was so happy. Come, and let's look at everything all over again."

And they went, and looked at everything all over again, reviving the delight that had gone to the furnishing of that innocent interior. She cried out with joy over the cheap art serges, the brown-paper backgrounds, the blue-and-gray drugget, the oak chairs with their rush bottoms, the Borne-Jones photogravures, the "Hope" and the "Love Leading Life," and the "Love Triumphant." Their home would be the home of a material poverty, but to Aggie's mind it was also a shrine whose austere beauty sheltered the priceless spiritual ideal.

Their wedded ardor flamed when he showed her for the tenth time his wonderful contrivance for multiplying bookshelves, as their treasures accumulated year by year. They spoke with confidence of a day when the shelves would reach from floor to ceiling, to meet the inevitable expansion of the intellectual life.

They went out that very evening to a lecture on "Appearance and Reality," an inspiring lecture. They lived in it again (sitting over their cocoa in the tiny dining-room), each kindling the other with the same sacred flame. She gazed with adoration at his thin, flushed face, as, illumined by the lecture, he developed with excitement his theory of life.

"Only think," he said, "how people wreck their lives just because they don't know the difference between appearance and reality! Now we do know. We're poor; but we don't care a rap, because we know, you and I, that that doesn't matter. It's the immaterial that matters."

Spiritually he flamed.

"I wouldn't change with my boss, though he's got five thousand a year. He's a slave--a slave to his carriage and horses, a slave to his house, a slave to the office--"

"So are you. You work hard enough."

"I work harder than he does. But I keep myself detached."

"Some more cocoa, dearie?"

"Rather. Yes, three lumps, please. Just think what we can get out of life, you and I, with our tiny income. We get what we put into it--and that's something literally priceless, and we mustn't let it go. Whatever happens we must stick to it."

"Nothing can take it away from us," said Aggie, rapt in her dream.

"No; no outside thing can. But, Aggie--we can take it from each other, if we let ourselves get slack. Whatever we do," he said, solemnly, "we mustn't get slack. We must keep it up."

"Yes," said Aggie, "we must keep it up."

They had pledged themselves to that.

IV

No fowler spreads his snares in sight of those innocent birds that perch on the tree of life in paradise. As Arthur's soul (it was a vain soul) preened its wings before her, Aggie never inquired whether the brilliance of its plumage was its own, or merely common to all feathered things in the pairing season. Young Arthur's soul was like a lark, singing in heaven its delirious nuptial hymn. Aggie sat snug in her nest and marvelled at her mate, at the mounting of his wings, the splendid and untiring ardors of his song. Nor was she alarmed at his remarkable disappearance into the empyrean. Lost to sight he might be, but she could count on his swift, inevitable descent into the nest.

The nest itself was the most wonderful nest a bird ever sat in. The two were so enthusiastic over everything that they delighted even in that dreadful, creaking, yellow villa. Its very vices entertained them. When it creaked they sat still and looked at each other, waiting for it to do it again. No other house ever possessed such ungovernable and mysterious spontaneities of sound. It was sometimes, they said, as if the villa were alive. And when all the wood-work shrank, and the winter winds streamed through their sitting-room, Aggie said nothing but put sand-bags in the window and covered them with art serge.

Her mother declared that she had never stayed in a more inconvenient house; but Aggie wouldn't hear a word against it. It was the house that Arthur had chosen. She was sorry, she said, if her mother didn't like it. Mrs. Purcell was sorry, too, because she could not honestly say that, in the circumstances, she enjoyed a visit to Aggie and her husband. They made her quite uncomfortable, the pair of them. Their ceaseless activities and enthusiasms bewildered her. She didn't care a rap about the lectures, and thought they were mad to go traipsing all the way to Hampstead to harangue about things they could have discussed just as well--now, couldn't they?--at home. Aggie, she said, would become completely undomesticated. Mrs. Purcell was never pressed to stay longer than a week. They had no further need of her, those two sublime young egoists, fused by their fervors into one egoist, sublimer still. Mrs. Purcell was a sad hinderance to the intellectual life, and they were glad when she was gone.

Heavens, how they kept it up! All through the winter evenings, when they were not going to lectures, they were reading Browning aloud to each other. For pure love of it, for its own sake, they said. But did Aggie tire on that high way, she kept it up for Arthur's sake; did Arthur flag, he kept it up for hers.

Then, in the spring, there came a time when Aggie couldn't go to lectures any more. Arthur went, and brought her back the gist of them, lest she should feel herself utterly cut off. The intellectual life had, even for him, become something of a struggle. But, tired as he sometimes was, she made him go, sending, as it were, her knight into the battle.

"Because now," she said, "we shall have to keep it up more than ever. For _them_, you know."

V

"'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea, And it was full of pretty things for Baby and for me.'"

Aggie always sang that song the same way. When she sang "for Baby" she gave the baby a little squeeze that made him laugh; when she sang "for me" she gave Arthur a little look that made him smile.

"'There were raisins in the cabin, sugared kisses in the hold.'"

Here the baby was kissed crescendo, prestissimo, till he laughed more than ever.

"'The sails were made of silver and the masts were made of gold. The captain was a duck, and _he_ cried--'"

"Quack, quack!" said Arthur. It was Daddy's part in the great play, and it made the baby nearly choke with laughter.

Arthur was on the floor, in a posture of solemn adoration somewhat out of keeping with his utterances.

"Oh, Baby!" cried Aggie, "what times we'll have when Daddy's ship comes home!"

The intellectual life had lapsed; but only for a period. Not for a moment could they contemplate its entire extinction. It was to be resumed with imperishable energy later on; they had pledged themselves to that. Meanwhile they had got beyond the stage when Aggie would call to her husband a dozen times a day:

"Oh, Arthur, look! If you poke him in the cheek like that, he'll smile."

And Arthur would poke him in the cheek, very gently, and say: "Why, I never! What a rum little beggar he is! He's got some tremendous joke against us, you bet."

And a dialogue like this would follow: "Oh, Arthur, look, look, _look_, at his little feet!"

"I say--do you think you ought to squeeze him like that?"

"Oh, he doesn't mind. He likes it. Doesn't he? My beauty--my bird!"

"He'll have blue eyes, Aggie."

"No, they'll change; they always do. And his _nose_ is just like yours."

"I only wish I had his head of hair."

It was a terrible day for Arthur when the baby's head of hair began to come off, till Aggie told him it always did that, and it would grow again.

To-day they were celebrating the first birthday of the little son. At supper that night a solemn thought came to Aggie.

"Oh, Arthur, only think. On Arty's birthday" (they had been practising calling him "Arty" for the last fortnight) "he won't be a baby any more."

"Never mind; Arty's little sister will be having her first birthday very soon after."

Aggie blushed for pure joy, and smiled. She hadn't thought of that. But how sad it would be for poor baby not to be _the_ baby any more!

Arthur gave an anxious glance at Aggie in her evening blouse. His mind was not set so high but what he liked to see his pretty wife wearing pretty gowns. And some of the money that was to have gone to the buying of books had passed over to the gay drapers of Camden Town and Holloway.

"You know what it means, dear? We shall have to live more carefully."

"Oh yes, of course I know that."

"Do you mind?"

"Mind?" She didn't know what he was talking about, but she gave a sad, foreboding glance at the well-appointed supper-table, where coffee and mutton-chops had succeeded cocoa. For Arthur had had a rise of salary that year; and if Aggie had a weakness, it was that she loved to get him plenty of nice, nourishing things to eat.

"We sha'n't be able to have quite so many nice things for supper. Shall _you_ mind?"

"Of course I sha'n't. Do you take me for a pig?" said Arthur, gayly. He hadn't thought of it in that light. Wasn't he always saying that it was the immaterial that mattered? But it had just come over him that pretty Aggie wouldn't have so many pretty clothes to wear, because, of course, whatever money they could save must go to the buying of books and the maintenance of the intellectual life. For the home atmosphere was to be part of the children's education.

"We will have lots of nice things," said Aggie, "won't we, when Daddy's ship comes home?"

VI

Daddy's ship never did come home.

"Quack, quack!" said Aggie, and three shrill voices echoed her.

Aggie had to be the duck herself now; for Daddy had long ago given up his part in the spirited drama.

They had been married six years, and Aggie had had six children. There was Arty and Catty and Willie and Dick and Emmy (the baby of the year); and a memory like a sword in her mother's heart, which was all that was left of little Barbara, who had come after Catty.

It seemed as if there was not much left of Aggie, either. Her delicate individuality had shown signs of perishing as the babies came, and the faster it perished the faster they took its place. At each coming there went some part of pretty Aggie's prettiness; first the rose from her cheeks, then the gold from her hair, till none of her radiance was left but the blue light of her eyes, and that was fainter. Then, after Barbara's death, her strength went, too; and now, at the end of the day she was too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa and let the children crawl all over her, moaning sometimes when they trampled deep. Then Arthur would stir in his arm-chair and look irritably at her. He still loved Aggie and the children, but not their noises.

The evenings, once prolonged by gas-light and enthusiasm to a glorious life, had shrank to a two hours' sitting after supper. They never went anywhere now. Picture-galleries and concert-halls knew them no more. The Debating Society at Hampstead had long ago missed the faithful, inseparable pair--the pair who never spoke, who sat in the background listening with shy, earnest faces, with innocence that yearned, wide-eyed, after wisdom, while it followed, with passionate subservience, the inane. Arthur had proved himself powerless to keep it up. If an archangel's trump had announced a lecture for that evening, it would not have roused him from his apathy.

And as they never went to see anybody, nobody ever came to see them. The Hampstead ladies found Aggie dull and her conversation monotonous. It was all about Arthur and the babies; and those ladies cared little for Arthur, and for the babies less. Of Aggie's past enthusiasm they said that it was nothing but a pose. Time had revealed her, the sunken soul of patience and of pathos, the beast of burden, the sad-eyed, slow, and gray.

The spirit of the place, too, had departed, leaving a decomposing and discolored shell. The beloved yellow villa had disclosed the worst side of its nature. The brown wall-paper had peeled and blistered, like an unwholesome skin. The art serge had faded; the drugget was dropping to pieces, worn with many feet; the wood-work had shrunk more than ever, and draughts, keen as knives, cut through the rooms and passages. The "Hope" and the "Love Leading Life" and the "Love Triumphant," like imperishable frescos in a decaying sanctuary, were pitiful survivals, testifying to the death of dreams.

Saddest of all, the bookshelves, that were to have shot up to the ceiling, had remained three feet from the floor, showing the abrupt arrest of the intellectual life.

It was evident that they hadn't kept it up.

If anything, Arthur was more effaced, more obliterated, than his wife. He, whose appearance had once suggested a remarkable personality, a poet or a thinker, now looked what he had become, a depressed and harassed city clerk, no more. His face was dragged by deep downward lines that accentuated its weakness. A thin wisp of colorless mustache sheltered, without concealing, the irritability of his mouth. Under his high, sallow forehead, his eyes, once so spiritual, looked out on his surroundings with more indifference than discontent. His soul fretted him no longer; it had passed beyond strenuousness to the peace of dulness. Only the sounds made by his wife and children had power to agitate him.

He was agitated now.

"That will do," he said, looking up from the magazine he was trying to read, not because it interested him in the least, but because it helped to keep the noises out.

But the children were clamoring for an encore. "Again, again!" they cried. "Oh Mummy, _do_ do it again!"

"Hsh-sh-sh. Daddy's reading." And Aggie drew the children closer to her, and went on with the rhyme in her sad, weak whisper.

"If you must read aloud to them, for goodness' sake speak up and have done with it. I can't stand that whispering."

Aggie put down the picture-book, and Arty seized one half and Catty the other, and they tugged, till Catty let go and hit Arty, and Arty hit Catty back again, and Catty howled.

"Can't you keep those children quiet?"

"Oh, Arty, shame! to hurt your little sister!"

At that Arty howled louder than Catty.

Arthur sat up in his chair.

"Leave the room, sir! Clear out this instant!" His weak face looked weaker in its inappropriate assumption of command.

"Do you hear what I say, sir?"

Arty stopped crying, and steadied his quivering infant mouth till it expressed his invincible determination.

"I'll g-g-g-go for Mommy. But I w-w-w-won't go for Daddy. I doesh'n't 'ike him."

"Hsh-sh--poor Daddy--he's so tired. Run away to the nursery, darlings, all of you."

"I can't think why on earth you have them down here at this time," said their father, as the door slammed behind the last retreating child.

"My dear, you said yourself it's the only time you have for seeing them. I'm sure you don't get much of them."

"I get a great deal too much sometimes."

"If we only had a big place for them to run about in--"

"What's the use of talking about things we haven't got, and never shall have? Is supper ready?"

She raised herself heavily from her sofa, and went to see, trailing an old shawl after her. Arthur, by way of being useful, put his foot upon the shawl as it went by.

After supper he felt decidedly better, and was inclined to talk.

"I met Davidson this morning in the city. He said his wife hadn't seen you for an age. Why don't you go and look her up?"

Aggie was silent.

"You can't expect her to be always running after you."

"I can't run after her, I assure you. I haven't the strength."

"You used," he said, reproachfully, "to be strong enough."

Aggie's mouth twisted into a blanched, unhappy smile--a smile born of wisdom and of patience and of pain.

"My dear, you don't know what it is to have had six children."

"Oh, don't I? I know enough not to want any more of them."

"Well--then--" said Aggie.

But Arthur's eyes evaded her imploring and pathetic gaze. He turned the subject back to Mrs. Davidson--a clumsy shift.

"Anyhow, it doesn't take much strength to call on Mrs. Davidson, does it?"

"It's no good. I can't think of anything to say to her."

"Oh, come, she isn't difficult to get on with."

"No, but I am. I don't know why it is I always feel so stupid now."

"That," said Arthur, "is because you haven't kept it up."

"I haven't had the time," she wailed.

"Time? Oh, rubbish, you should make time. It doesn't do to let things go like that. Think of the children."

"It's because I'm always thinking of them."

They rose from their poor repast. (Coffee and mutton-chops had vanished from the board, and another period of cocoa had set in.) He picked up her shawl, that had dropped again, and placed it about her shoulders, and they dragged themselves mournfully back into their sitting-room. She took up her place on the sofa. He dropped into the arm-chair, where he sat motionless, looking dully at the fire. His wife watched him with her faded, tender eyes.

"Arthur," she said, suddenly, "it's the first meeting of the Society to-night. Did you forget?" They had never admitted, to themselves or to each other, that they had given it up.

"Yes," said Arthur, peevishly, "of course I forgot. How on earth did you expect me to remember?"

"I think you ought to go, dear, sometimes. You never went all last winter."

"I know."

"Isn't it a pity not to try--a little--just to keep it up? If it's only for the children's sake."

"My dear Aggie, it's for the children's sake--and yours--that I fag my brain out, as it is. When you've been as hard at it as I've been, all day, you don't feel so very like turning out again--not for that sort of intellectual game. You say you feel stupid in the afternoon. What do you suppose I feel like in the evening?"

His accents cut Aggie to the heart.

"Oh, my dear, I know. I only thought it might do you good, sometimes, to get a change--if it's only from me and my stupidity."

"If there's one thing I hate more than another," said Arthur, "it is a change."

She knew it. That had been her consolation. Arthur was not as the race of dreamers to which he once seemed to have belonged. There was in him a dumb, undying fidelity to the tried and chosen. From the first, before his apathy came on him, he had hardly ever left her to an evening by herself. He had had neither eyes nor ears nor voice for any other woman. And though her face had become the face of another woman, and he hated changes, she knew that it had never changed for him. He loved her more than any of the six children she had borne him.

"After all," said Aggie, "do you think it really matters?"

"Do I think what matters?"

"What we've lost."

He looked suspiciously at her, his heavy brain stirred by some foreboding of uncomfortable suggestion; she had been thinking of Barbara, perhaps.

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't. The flame in the woman's heart was not wholly dead, because he had kindled it, and it was one with her love of him. The dream they had dreamed together had lived on for her; first, as an agony, then as a regret. But the man had passed over into the sensual darkness that is seldom pierced by pain. Of the pleasures that had once borne him, buoyant and triumphant, on the crest of the wave, none were left but such sad earthly wreckage as life flings up at the ebbing of the spiritual tide.

They had come to the dark shores, where, if the captain wavers, the ships of dream founder with all their freight.

A dull light was already kindling under his tired eyelids.

"I don't know what _you_ feel like," said he, "but I've had enough sitting-up for one night. Don't you think you'd better go to bed?"

She went, obediently.

VII