CHAPTER XVII

REGINA COMES TO A CONCLUSION

Have you ever noticed how accurately women judge from small circumstances. Men call this intuition, and men think of intuition as being on the same level as instinct.

If Regina had ordered a plate of soup it would have been brought to her immediately, because at one o'clock that comestible would have been ready and awaiting the wishes of customers. But Regina, as I have said, like most women in trouble, ordered the food and drink that were nearest her heart, and therefore she had to wait while the tea was brewed and the muffin toasted. The waiting did her good. She was alone, as it happened, in the comfortable room over the shop, and thus she was able to grasp the situation more clearly than she had done while still talking to the jeweler's assistant, when she had had to consider the ordinary conventions of existence. Poor Regina! She sat there by the tall mantelshelf and stared at the paper roses which filled the summer grate. Her Alfred, her noble Alfred, had fallen from his pedestal--he was hers no longer! In all the years of their married life, indeed in their knowledge of each other, she had never wronged Alfred by even so much as a doubt of his nobility. To her he had been noble, truly noble, kind, affectionate, dignified and a highly successful man--and now all was over; her house of matrimony had fallen about her ears like a pack of cards--she had been supplanted by another. Truly Regina's thoughts were very bitter. She had been supplanted by another--what was she going to do? It came to her memory that in times gone by, when other women had fallen upon evil days of a like description, she had helped to bear their sorrows with a very light heart. Well, it had not then entered her head that their portion might one day be hers; but now the blow had fallen upon herself, and she must perforce give herself the same advice that she had given to others. "My dear," she had remarked once to a poor little woman whose husband had been spoiled by over-much adoration, "you have made one mistake in your life: you have been too good to that husband of yours. What? Nobody could be too good to him? You have, my dear, and it doesn't do to be too good to a man for all time whether he behaves himself or not; it doesn't do to put all your wares in your front window. Keep something back; let there be always some little corner of womanly dignity which men, even husbands, must respect." "But, Mrs. Whittaker," the little woman had replied, "I haven't any dignity where Jack is concerned; I don't want any dignity, I only want Jack, and he has gone away and left me." How well she remembered the words as she sat alone in the pastry-cook's shop in Regent Street, how well she remembered! Well, she felt very much as that little woman had felt--she did not care about her dignity any more; she only wanted Alfred, and if Alfred was deceiving her, if Alfred was living a double life and sharing his heart with another, she only wanted to go back to the blissful time of blind ignorance, when to her he had been the embodiment of manly dignity and robust virtue.

She got up and looked at herself in the long strip of glass which was set between the two tall windows. It was not a becoming glass, nor was it placed in a particularly becoming light, and Regina, who had been through a storm of tempestuous emotion, and who bore upon her strongly marked countenance the visible signs of her mental upheaval, looked, frankly speaking, quite hideous. At that moment the young lady who had taken her order for tea and muffin came into the room carrying a little tray, and Regina made a slight pretence of adjusting her hair before she went back to the table.

"Would you prefer to sit here, or by the window?"

"I think by the window," said Regina. Her tone was admirably careless--so careless that it almost deceived herself.

"Will you have cream also with your tea?"

"Yes, I think I will have cream. Thank you very much."

A couple of minutes later Regina was once more alone. Certainly the open window was more comfortable than the empty fireplace with its paper roses. The tea was freshly made, and was good of its kind, the cream was rich, and the muffin was the perfection of a muffin, and Regina sat with the summer wind fanning her troubled brow, and ate and drank her simple fare and was comforted. As she sat she stole a glance at herself in another strip of looking-glass, in which she could see herself by turning her head an inch or two. And as she sat there and her storm-tossed soul was soothed and comforted by her little meal, she began to turn things over in her mind with a less tragic spirit than she had done before. Perhaps if Alfred had been drawn away to other gods it had been her own fault; Alfred was so handsome, so manly, had such a presence, and she had despised all the trifling feminine womanly things. She had given up so much of her time to the regeneration of women that she had let the material part of Regina Whittaker take its own course, and Nature, left to take its own course, is never very attractive. She was too stout. There are people of the plump little partridge order who would look frightful in a nearer approach to their bones, but Regina had gone fat in lumps, and Regina's eyes had never been aware of the fact until this morning. Too much chin, too much nape of the neck, too much at the top of the arms, too much of that which, even back in Scripture days when coupled with "a proud look," was ever a subject for derision.

"Never proud to my Alfred," said she, leaning back in her chair; "but," and here she crossed her hands just below her waist, "the other is an indisputable fact."

As she decided the question in her own mind she laid her hand upon the little bell which stood beside her on the table.

"Did I ring?" said she. "Oh, I was not conscious of it. I think I made a mistake in having this kind of meal. I am not accustomed to it, I feel as if I had taken nothing."

"Try a sandwich, madam," said the young lady.

"Sandwich? I think I am not equal to sandwich to-day. Something has happened to me; I have had a shock, and you know how we weak women fly to feminine articles of food when we are in trouble."

"I am sorry you are in trouble, madam."

"I came in here knowing I should be quiet, and it is very quiet."

"It is the end of July. In another week we shall be more quiet still, and after that, when the country people come, we shall not know where to turn. When you come back from abroad or from your sojourn by the sea we shall be as you always see us."

"I think I will have another muffin."

"I would, madam. I will tell them to put plenty of butter on it. And a pot of tea, and a little more cream?"

"Yes," said Regina, rather weakly. The girl disappeared again, and Regina sat back in her chair, a very comfortable one, and felt that it was pleasant to be ministered to, and then fell to thinking about herself again. How strange that she had never noticed any change in Alfred! He had never seemed to find her wanting in any way. More than once, even of late years, he had told her that the girls would never be a patch upon her for looks, and she had accepted his tribute to her charms in all good faith. And then she turned to the glass again and regarded herself with new eyes--critical eyes--and she saw that her dress was hideous, her bonnet a travesty, her hair, fine in quality and very decent in color, made nothing of, her gloves were too small or her hands too large. What did it matter, the result was the same; she was inelegant, unfashionable, grotesquely stout--she was all wrong, and it seemed as if all she had done by her work for the regeneration of womanhood had been to cut herself adrift from her own husband.

I have said that Regina Whittaker was a very remarkable character, and I have tried to show that she was a woman who was accustomed to judge for herself in most circumstances of life, and who, even if she took the wrong line, took it on her own, so to speak. Now, in what I may honestly say was the bitterest moment of her life, she decided, judged and determined on her own line of action just as she had done in previous times. At this moment the relay of muffin and fresh tea arrived, and Regina, with a smile of thanks, began with an excellent appetite to eat the second half of her meal, and as she ate her thoughts were working busily.

Alfred had fallen a victim to a hussy! That she was a hussy of tender years, as compared with Regina herself, was evident. There was no evidence to prove it, but once the idea had entered Regina's mind it remained there and throve apace. This ignorant, youthful, gay little hussy _must be supplanted_, her influence must be undermined, and Alfred must be lured back to his original nobility. It was curious that no shadow of blame for the noble Alfred presented itself to Regina. If he had been unfaithful it was because he had been tempted by a hussy from the allegiance which had stood the test of over twenty years. If he had left her for other divinities it was because she had not made herself sufficiently alluring to him; and Regina, as she ate the last piece of the second muffin, determined there and then that she would mend her ways.

"I will go to a beauty doctor," she told herself. "I will get rid of every blemish that has lessened my attractions for him; I will put myself in the hands of an expert dressmaker; she shall dress me like a fashion-plate; I will be young, I will be slim, I will be attractive, I will win my husband's heart back again."

Then her thoughts ran towards the Society for the Regeneration of Women--that darling project of her later years, which she now realized had cost her very dear. From that she must free herself; not publicly, not with any ostensible reason, except that she had worked sufficiently long. Others must take the reins from her hands and she must put forward the plea that new blood was necessary, even essential, in all such undertakings. When she had arrived at this point she was already quite cheerful. She took out her purse from her black and gold bag and deposited a bright new sixpence under her muffin plate as a delicate little reward to the girl whose kindly words had been her first solace, then satisfied herself with a long look at Julia's earrings, and then she opened the little case which contained the tie pin that she intended as an offering to her lord and master. This she determined she would not present to him. A curious fancy took possession of her that she would give him some little symbol of her unaltered affection for him. She had never heard that pink coral was coupled with any particular meaning; it had no place among what may be called the birthday stones. Now, Alfred's birthday was in October, so she would choose him an opal--yes, a little tie pin of opals with a single diamond like a crystallized tear-drop, and she could say to him, "This opal is to bring you luck in your later years, and the diamond has a meaning which I will tell you at some future time--not now."

Then Regina rose up, strong in her new resolve, and, having paid her money at the desk, went out into the summer sunshine.