Chapter XII

MARY soon realised that she had never before made so serious a mistake as the mistake she made on the day when she fell ill. James was now armed at every point against her. Whenever she showed any sign of restlessness, he replied, with perfect honesty, that she looked tired, or that she was too thin. Until this moment James had not cavilled at his wife's lack of amplitude. She was one of the thin sort, and that was all about it. But now visions presented themselves to his mind of Mary looking really plump and fit, and he began to fed that she was not doing her duty when she did not live up to these delightful fancies. He scanned her anxiously every evening when he came home, and if she did not look fatter than she had when he kissed her good-bye in the morning, he shook his head. "This won't do, little woman," he would say, "you've been tiring yourself!" It was no use assuring him that she did not feel tired in the least. He only looked at her critically and shook his head again. If he did not make more of such a serious offence it was because he felt sorry for her. When he thought about it he could see that it must be very galling for a woman to lack an essential feminine charm, and he did not want to hurt the poor little thing's feelings. It was tiresome and obstinate of her, all the same, not to take more care of herself. He decided once, as he looked down on her from his station in front of the fire, that some motive of delicacy had made her accept her leanness, as a nice woman accepts her age, without a struggle. On the whole though he was glad that she had had this little attack of nerves. She hadn't been well, poor little thing--that explained her somewhat hysterical behaviour about the business. He understood now, and he would know if ever she mentioned the matter again that she must not be taken too seriously.

Under these circumstances the amelioration of the waitresses' lives proceeded slowly. James had suggested that when Mary was well enough to attend to it she should start a seaside home. It would receive convalescents all the year round, and in the summer those girls who for some reason or other did not wish to spend their holidays with their excellent respectable families. It was a good suggestion, there was no objection to it, but it did not, for some reason, release Mary's enthusiasm. The idea of curing convalescents was not as stimulating as the idea of improving the conditions that made them ill. Miss Percival too, usually so skilfully indefatigable, did not seem to be giving the best of herself to the new scheme.

Mary had grown, from force of being well served, to like Miss Percival, whom she identified moreover with her own impulse towards a more interesting life. She had gone so far as to say, in Miss Percival's presence, that she thought some plan might be found for giving the waitresses higher wages. And now that James's attitude forced her to switch her activities into another direction she felt that she owed her secretary some explanation of the change. It couldn't of course be a perfectly truthful explanation--one is not expected to be truthful about one's husband. But it would prevent Miss Percival from feeling that her employer regarded her as a mere hireling who obeys orders she is not expected to understand. The explanation, skirting the edge of the truth with a nervous deference, had stated that Mary had asked Mr. Heyham if it would be possible to raise the girls' wages, and had been convinced after going into the matter with him that it would not be possible. But in order to show that the firm did not grudge the money Mr. Heyham had himself suggested that they should spend it on the girls in another way--he did not bind them, but the way he thought the best would be--Mary had drawn for Miss Percival as glowing a picture of the poor convalescents recovering their rosy cheeks as her imagination and her command over words could supply.

Miss Percival, who was seated at her desk, had not answered at once. Instead she had drawn a beautiful lady with curling hair on her pad of blotting-paper. Then, in a startled tone, as if she had just awaked, she said, "Very well, Mrs. Heyham, just as you wish of course. Have you decided yet where the home is to be?"

Mary had not decided, but she thought it must be somewhere bracing with a pier and a band, and plenty of nigger minstrels. "It won't do to choose a place where they would feel lonely," she conceded.

Miss Percival pushed her chair back from the desk and sighed, then, swinging round sharply, she stared straight at Mrs. Heyham.

"She is very much disappointed," Mary thought, as Miss Percival did not speak. "It's natural of course, she is young, probably she hasn't learned how seldom one can do what one wants in this life." She started, for Miss Percival was speaking. "Just as you think right, Mrs. Heyham," she was saying slowly.

Mary, who knew that she was doing what she thought right, nevertheless felt uneasy. Miss Percival obviously considered her wrong, and Miss Percival was a clever young woman, entitled to respect. One of the suspicions to which she was prone crept into Mary's mind. Suppose the thing she wanted most was not to help the girls, but to keep on affectionate terms with James? Suppose, after all, that she were only following her inclinations--Miss Percival's voice, severe and scornful, interrupted these accusations.

"After all, the great thing is to decide on something and do it," she said.

Mary acquiesced. That was as good a way of putting the matter as any other.

"I don't suppose we shall be able to do very much for a week or two," she told her assistant, "because Mrs. Moorhouse--my married daughter, you know--will be needing me. But you might find out what you can about places not too far from London, and you might get information about other homes, and see whether it would be best to build for ourselves, or buy some houses and alter them. And we must find out, too, what accommodation we are likely to need."

She did not speak with her usual brightness, and Miss Percival did not reply with her usual alacrity. For a moment the two women looked at one another. Then Mary, rising hastily from her chair, said that she did not think she need keep Miss Percival any later that day.

After that the secretary maintained an attitude of superior kindliness. She was sorry for Mary, she seemed to say, for Mary was an amiable person, if a trifle faint of heart. She understood Mary's difficulties and she meant to stand by her. But not even her affection and her loyalty to her employer could make her play the part of a hypocrite. She did not approve of this holiday home, she thought it a base surrender and a waste of money as well. She was not going to pretend, by words or by a delighted energy, that she did approve of it.

This was not as bad as it might have been, and Mary, since Miss Percival, after all, was ignorant of her true reasons, felt grateful for even so much tolerance. But she could not, any more than Miss Percival, throw herself heart and soul into the carrying out of James's scheme. She had meant to do this; she had not planned any grudging acceptance, but she was not able, with Miss Percival there to remind her of them, to ignore her own convictions. The home was, and she knew it, a miserable compromise. She turned with relief from discussions about its site to the business of collecting Rosemary's trousseau.

Here again she was in the position of having to force her emotions. She did not, in her heart, believe that Rosemary was old enough to marry, experienced enough to know or to value the freedom she was losing. She would not need age or experience, unhappily, to make her regret it. But Mary could not very well assert herself to make Rosemary unhappy by postponing the marriage while she herself was guarding her own happiness by giving way in so cowardly a fashion to James. She told herself, therefore, that her feelings were the feelings natural to every woman who sees her youngest daughter leaving her; they were selfish feelings, and she, like every other mother, must put them aside. If they had any value it was their private value, as emotion, for her--she would not have wished at such a moment to feel nothing or only to feel what was pleasurable.

She bought Rosemary's garments then to the accompaniment of an emotional conflict that tired her, but was at least interesting, whereas the holiday home, a wearisome affair, reminded her only of her failure to convince James.

Moreover, buying Rosemary's clothes had an interest of its own. Mary had not felt really happy about Laura's trousseau. Laura, whose intelligence was always admirable, had known exactly where she wanted to go and what she wanted to buy. Laura could see at once, when clothes were displayed before her, which of them would make her look charming and which would not. This was all very well for dresses, Mary had always respected Laura's taste, but when the same principle was pushed further it had seemed to her a little alarming. That underclothes should be becoming was the last service she would have asked of them. Mary liked linen that was finely woven, voluminous, and carefully sewn. When she had bought it she took a pride in it and hoped that it would last her for years. Of lace and such transparencies she disapproved, except for the narrowest edgings. She explained to Laura that they would not wash, but however well they had washed she would not have liked them better. It seemed to her unnatural and distressing that a young woman should look, as Laura looked, more delightful without her full complement of clothes than with them. If she had not feared, by doing so, to put ideas into Laura's head, she would have protested. But it is not easy to discuss these things with a young girl, especially in front of shop-assistants. When Mary had said, in a lowered voice, "Don't you think, my dear, that that lawn is a little too fine--I shouldn't think it would wear very well, would you?" Laura had replied, calmly and frankly, "Oh, don't you, mother?--I think it will look rather nice!" Such innocence--or on the other hand, such command of one's information--intimidated Mary. On one occasion only had she protested and carried her way. It was when Laura, who must have been unaware, poor child, of what she was contemplating, praised and asked the price of a black crêpe-de-chine nightgown. Even then Mary might not have risen to a veto if the deplorable garment had not been labelled "enhancing."

With Rosemary it was a very different matter. Rosemary's shopping was guided by principles, and so long as she was determining what these principles should be Rosemary was very much interested in it. In the first place she determined to buy none but hand-made linen, partly because weaving linen by hand provides a fuller and more fruitful life for the worker than weaving it by machine, partly because it is cheaper in the end to buy what is more expensive in the beginning. And as a poor man's wife--she reminded her mother--she must think of these things. In the second place she would buy æsthetic dresses, because what has never been in the fashion cannot easily drop behind it. This would be a great economy. In the third place she would not buy her clothes haphazard, guided merely by fancy, but would choose just one or two colours and stick to them.

All this was excellent and Mary was cheered to find Rosemary displaying such practical common-sense. It was true that the hand-woven linen was extremely expensive--but then it was stout, and Mary had the pleasure of seeing it made up into garments that would last Rosemary until she grew old. No lace, only the most charming and costly hand embroidery. It was true that there are so many occasions on which one cannot wear æsthetic dresses that Mary found herself, when Rosemary was not there, ordering a considerable number of tailor-mades. Rosemary was generally not there. When she had made a comprehensive survey of the enterprise and delivered her instructions to Mary she preferred to leave the dressmakers to fit her as best they could--she liked her clothes loose--and to wander forth, alone or with Anthony, searching in unlikely places for antique furniture. It was true, also, that the one or two colours began to multiply.

Anthony had read somewhere that a woman's clothes should match her eyes or her hair. That meant greeny-brown tweeds, and possibly liberty satins. White and cream and navy blue do not count. Then Rosemary always liked one dress of a particular green in the summer and another dress of a particular purple in the winter. And Laura thought that the child was at her best in lilac, while Mary thought that she never looked so fresh or so young as in a certain shade--rather difficult to obtain--of gentian blue. But Mary liked to think that the dear child, while she was learning the limits of her income, would not at least have to bother about clothes, and on the whole she welcomed these unexacting cares. She did not wish to contemplate, more than she could help, a situation which had already exhausted her powers of self-deception. She had struggled for some time to persuade herself that she was not a coward, that the holiday home was not a waste of her money and energy, and moreover deliberately intended by James to be such a waste. Miss Percival's eye, bent constantly on her with an expression of weary tolerance, had been too much for her. She had taken next the desperate step of avowing to herself that she was a coward, and excusing herself on that ground from the display of any vigorous qualities.

She was a coward, and it wasn't any use pretending that she could ever be anything else. She might have settled down comfortably enough to this conviction if only she could have been certain that it was true. She had undoubtedly behaved like a coward, but what disturbed her, what sent her running to shops and sempstresses, was the insistent dread that somewhere at the bottom of her heart there was still a remainder of courage. There might even be, she feared, sufficient courage to enable her to reopen the whole affair. Perhaps the future would find her brave, after all. Perhaps she was not going to settle quietly down to the base abandonment of her waitresses--the thought sent the blood to her heart and set her trembling. It could not be possible that all her long misery of decision had decided on nothing, that the travail of thinking must be begun again. She exhorted herself to stand steadfast, to harden her heart in selfish docility, and she was able to believe that she had succeeded when she found herself thrilling with the tenderness, love, and joy which are proper to a woman who finds herself a happy grandmother.

Laura's baby provided her with a real respite, a happiness that needed no analysis and provoked no doubts. He was a marvellous boy, extremely handsome and positively the very image of James. He might so easily have been like Harry--it would have been distinctly a waste, because there were already several Moorhouse grandchildren--and he had chosen to resemble James. It was clear that he meant to develop into a child of exceptional intelligence.

James, who had cast one hasty glance at the infant's cot, said that women always see these likenesses, and was very much flattered by it. He bought his grandson--who was to be called, when Laura could decide between them, either Jakes or Giles--a collection of silverware, and told himself that an era of feminine peace and contentment would now set in. Harry, who was handsome and vain, said that he was glad the poor little beggar had the sense not to look like his father, and added that he had never pretended to feel any interest in babies. But Laura was far too ill and too happy to mind what Harry said.

For two or three weeks Mary's thoughts were completely engaged with Laura; she could give her mind to nothing away from Laura's room. It was as a matter of fact a delightful room--Laura loved beautiful fabrics and graceful furniture. Mary had thought how pretty it was when she sat waiting outside its door on the night the baby was born. She had come there, although she knew it was foolish, because she had already waited so long downstairs. She had heard the baby cry, but no one had come out of the room to tell her about it. She had tried to picture the struggle that must be going on inside, to remind herself of the tasks that were imprisoning, for hours, the doctor and the nurses. She had tried to turn her thoughts to the new love that she was to feel for Laura's child. But her tired mind had failed her. She could not keep it fastened on her future happiness, or on the busy figures that she knew to be near her on the other side of the dark, shining door. Try as she would they had slipped away, and then the room had been empty, warm and green and quiet, with its curtains moving softly in the wind. Even while dread stirred in her mind it had seemed impossible that a beautiful woman should suffer in such a room.

It was late in the night, and she had left her chair and propped herself in a corner to alter her position, when the door had opened on a long panel of light, on a wave of sound, and one of the nurses had come out. She had not looked round at Mary, but had run quickly downstairs. There was a bright stain on her apron.

The nurse had disappeared; Mary, pressed against the wall, had neither moved nor spoken. She could not see, she could not even think; her mind, her will, seemed to have dissolved in fear. The sound of the hurrying feet had died away. There was no noise now in the room.

Then, before thoughts had come back to her, the nurse had returned. This time she had noticed Mary in the corner and thrown her a hasty reassurance. "It's all right now--there's no need to be anxious--a beautiful boy!" The door had closed behind her.

After the first confusion of her relief, the first disorder of her joy, Mary's mind had moved swiftly. This, she had told herself, was the weft on which women's lives were woven, moments like these of terror, of suffering, of ecstasy! Beside what Laura was feeling now the best that the world could give women must seem dim. What did it matter then if they turned away from the great problems of life, if they were content with narrow ambitions, with timid thoughts, with foolish dreams? All that was nothing--under it there lay this savage splendour of pain, this sacrifice that was their justification. By pain--helpless, ignorant, idle though they might be--they paid for the joy that life had given them.

Presently, towards morning, Mary had been called into the dressing-room where the nurse had been tending the baby. The little creature had lain on her knee, grave, motionless, dignified, in the clothes of his nation and his century. Mary had lifted him with anxious care. Here in her arms she held the strength, the desires, the ambitions, of a man. This light burden was born a master of the world, heir of the world's experience. He was born a master of women; all through his life women would minister to him and obey him, and he would accept their service as his right. She herself, as he grew to the power of his youth, would be to him a mere waste product, a body that had outlived its usefulness. As she bent to kiss him she had wished, for an instant, that he had been a girl.

She was not allowed to see Laura until next day, when she was told that she might sit by her bed, but must not excite her. It was enough for both of them; she did not want to excite her--she had never been on exciting terms with Laura. Their attitudes to the surface of life were too different. But here in the pretty room differences passed them by, they were content to be near one another, to exchange insignificant words, to see one another's faces light up when their boy was brought into the room. Mary knew that this pleasure in her presence, this need of her, must pass, and that then she would come no nearer than she had come before to touching the problems and interests of Laura's life. Her own mind, too, would answer the call of other duties. But for these few weeks she was happy. James, watching her, felt perfectly satisfied.