mrs. elles, on arriving at newcastle, took a fly and drove straight up to her own door.
this detail was significant of the course she had undertaken to pursue, and the attitude she meant to assume with regard to her own life—what was left of it.
she was only thirty, she had presumably as many years again to live, and she had no intention of committing suicide. on the contrary, she meant to go through the process known as picking up the pieces.
her policy of life was optimism—pessimism was her pose. but her unconscious tendency was to look forward—very much forward. the past she ignored, the present she disdained, the future she brooded over. it had always been so with her, even in the old days before this cyclone of emotion had swept over her, and the trivial round of things pleasant and unpleasant had been all her care and preoccupation. it would be so again.
she had the peculiar shrewdness of the feather-brained, the perspicacity of the trivial-minded; and the practical basis of her nature, which had been overlaid and smothered for a time by her spasmodic access of passion for the artist, began to re-assert{179} itself. as the train passed easily through stations and scenes familiar, the domestic campaign of the immediate future took form and shape in her mind.
all that was now possible! she arranged it hopelessly, drearily, but as satisfactorily as might be under the gods’ dispensation. the door of paradise was closed to her, she would make purgatory endurable. she had known the poetry of life, now for its prose. but dramatic and artistic fitness demanded that there should be no loose ends, no rough edges, no interfusing and overlapping of incompatible and discordant periods of existence. her month of soul-fruition was to be a thing apart, a memory, complete, perfect, enshrined in her heart for ever and kept entirely clear of entanglement with the squalid phase of life that she was going to take up again. she was a reluctant but resolved eurydice returning to the grey neutralities of the hades from which orpheus had so nearly rescued her.
ché farò!—she knew the song. what would orpheus do without eurydice?
alas!—in her shrewd heart of hearts she knew that orpheus would do very well. orpheus loved his eurydice, but even the legend is compelled to admit that he went harping about the world; and rivers would go on painting noble pictures and would soon forget her in his work, which even in the heyday of her influence had been paramount with him.
she did not allow herself to lose sight of that fact. she knew in her humility and consequent clearness of{180} perception that the idyllic month in the brignal woods had been her epoch—his episode. propinquity and a vague sense of responsibility had led him to propose to her.
she wished he had given her a ring—a sketch—anything, as a memorial of their sojourn together. she had literally nothing of his but a stump of pencil which he had lent her the day before, and which she had forgotten to return. it was only a stump—she must never permit herself to use it; it must last her her life. she laughed at herself for thinking of this.
rivers would certainly approve of her plan. he had not allowed himself to preach at her, but he would of course wish her to make the best of mortimer and be a good wife to him henceforward. she would try—but the very thought of mortimer brought one of her headaches!
driving up grey street from the station, she caught sight of various members of her little society. miss drummond was picking her way through the perennial mud of this unromantic city, and the poet was holding an umbrella over her. this looked like love—like an engagement! had they got it settled during her absence? she was disposed to be kind to all lovers, but preferred them of the distressed variety! she would have liked something left to her to do! but there were other lovers and other people in the world. she would begin her friday “at homes” again and her friends would muster and she would give them tea, and they would wonder why she{181} looked “different.” there would be a look in her eyes which no one would remember having seen there before, a kind of “love among the ruins” look, and she would not be able to smile quite so freely.
the thought awakened her own ready sympathy for herself and there were tears in her eyes and a flush on her cheek when she stood on her own doorstep and rang the bell of her own house.
a new parlour-maid—she could not help starting—though she must have known on reflection that this would be the case—opened the door and stood looking politely receptive.
mrs. elles saw the comedy of the situation and laughed gently. then she put a florin into the girl’s hand, and, bidding her pay the cabman, brushed past her into the house and into the dining-room.
the room was empty, unchanged, a little untidier than it used to be in her day. a sour look came over her face as the accustomed horrors smote her sense, fresh and undulled by previous contact with them.
“if he has dared to touch my drawing-room!” she muttered and, opening the door of that apartment, surveyed it.
it was just as she had left it, a passably pretty and tasteful room. she went up to the wall and instinctively set the frame of a picture straight.
“bring tea at once,” she ordered peremptorily of the astonished maid, sitting down in her own especial place at the corner of the sofa. “where is mrs. poynder?{182}”
“oh, miss, did you want mrs. poynder?” said the servant, with obvious relief. “mrs. poynder is away. she went into yorkshire yesterday. mrs. elles is away too.”
“i am mrs. elles,” said that lady calmly, judging that the comedy in the maid’s case had lasted long enough. “you are the new parlour-maid, i suppose. what is your name? when do you expect mrs. poynder back?”
“mrs. poynder only went for the night, miss—ma’am. she expects to be home for dinner.”
“what an extraordinary thing for aunt poynder to do!” said mrs. elles, speaking aloud. “now go and get tea. i am dying for it.”
the girl went. then her mistress gave one despairing look around the room and hid her face in the sofa cushion. sorrow’s crown of sorrow had come upon her suddenly—the contrast between her own drawing-room and the little ascetic room at rokeby, that spoke so clearly of its inmate, had come across her mind with cruel poignancy.
“oh, god, if it is going to be like this!” she murmured, choking with sobs. only a few hours ago, in the plain bald room that was paradise to her, and now here among all these pictures, photographs, books, symbols of the tedious domesticity she had been prepared to take up, but which struck her now as horrible, so much more horrible than she had anticipated!
“i hate you!” she said to the grandfather over the{183} mantelpiece. she kicked the early victorian embroidered footstool at her feet savagely away.
the door opened a little and she wearily raised her eyes. her little cat came wandering deviously in, having pushed the door open for itself, and, purring for joy of seeing her again, rubbed its head against the footstool and the foot. she looked down with a sudden fiendish instinct—then seized the creature and kissed it and buried her face in its soft fur and let it lick away the tears that coursed down her cheeks uncontrollably.
there was a crash of sticks in the hall—how well she knew that sound! mortimer! in spite of the comedy of the situation mrs. elles turned pale. it was the first time in her life that her husband had had that effect upon her. through the chink in the door that the cat had made for itself, she saw a vertical slice of her husband. in a moment he would enter the room and the comedy would have to begin. she put down the cat and dried her eyes on the muslin chair-cover.
very rarely did mortimer enter the drawing-room. if she had only thought of that! he did not enter it now. he walked into his study and closed the door.
now he had made her feel foolish—another rare occurrence. the only thing for her to do now was to go and “dig him out,” in pursuance of her plan of making things go smoothly. she would do it, for once. and if she could only bring herself to put her arms round his neck and kiss him, also for once,{184} domestic peace would be fully ensured, for a season at any rate.
the memory of rivers’ farewell kiss that morning assailed her and she sat heavily down again, struggling, striving, gathering up her resolution. no, she could not kiss mortimer, but she could be nice to him, and she would.
she presently rose and with an assured step went to the study door and opened it.
mortimer was standing with his back to her, in front of a case of liqueurs that he kept there, and was in the act of pouring himself out a glass of brandy. kiss him, indeed! under these conditions she could hardly be expected to go up to him and say “peep-bo!” or “guess who this is!” as she believed was done in the best bourgeois circles.
she merely said “mortimer!” as jauntily as she could.
he turned. his face expressed no emotion but surprise, and he took a gulp of brandy from the glass he held before answering.
she shuddered with disgust, but remarked in a lively tone: “well, mortimer, here i am—and so much better for my little change. i simply had to go, and quickly too, or you would have had me break down on your hands. i hope you realize that—but men never do!”
mortimer said nothing and she began to get a little nervous.
“you don’t seem to take much interest in my{185} travels, so i won’t enter into particulars; but you can imagine the sort of thing for yourself—perfect rest and quiet, and away from aunt poynder. by the way, where is aunt poynder?”
“haven’t you seen her?” the man asked, with grim intention.
“no. how should i?” she replied innocently. “jane—mary—whatever you call the new one—said she had gone into yorkshire for the night. what a funny thing for aunt poynder to do! what possessed her? perhaps she has gone away for a cure, like me.”
mortimer here made an inarticulate sound and his wife was quick to interrupt him.
“oh, please don’t begin to question me! don’t you see i am still rather nervous? take me when you have got me, and be thankful. are you not one little bit glad to see me?”
“god, ph?be, what a liar you are!” he exclaimed, making a step forward.
“really, mortimer!”
“read this!” he said violently, taking a crumpled sheet of notepaper out of his breast coat pocket. “read it, and then perhaps you’ll know where your aunt is—if you don’t know already, which of course you do!”
mrs. elles took the note out of his hands. “don’t, mortimer, look at me as if you hated me!” she added deprecatingly.
the address of the letter—the rectory, greta{186} bridge—was the first crowbar levelled at the fabric of the pose she had been keeping up so valiantly. her knees shook under her.
“dear sir,” (the letter ran)
“will you excuse a perfect stranger for writing to you, but i fancy you will perhaps care to hear what i have to tell you. a young lady, who bears the address to which i write engraved on her umbrella, is staying here at the inn of this village under circumstances which impel me, as the wife of the vicar of this parish, to give you at least a hint of her whereabouts, so that you may exercise the powers of a guardian over her. the only other inmate of the ‘heather bell’ is a single gentleman of the name of rivers. the young lady calls herself frick, a name which is not borne out by the initials on her objects of personal use. i may mention that she and mr. rivers share the same sitting-room.
“yours faithfully,
“florence popham.”
mrs. elles raised her eyes, full of angry fire. the fighting instinct was aroused in her.
“silly meddlesome creature!” she said scornfully. “why may i not stay where i like, and call myself what i like, and what is it to me or to you either who happens to be staying in the same inn?”
“that’s all bluff! we’ll hear what your aunt has to say about that!”
“my aunt! what on earth has she to do with{187} it?” and again her accent was truly surprised and therefore convincing.
“you’re a damn good actress, ph?be!... by jove! here is your aunt!... stay where you are!”
he seized her wrist with some violence just as mrs. poynder flung open the door of the room and stood aghast at the sight of mrs. elles. then she banged her reticule, a strong, black, noticeably shabby one, down on the table, and mrs. elles’s eyes fastened on it.
“you got a bit start of me, fibby!” she said grimly, “but no matter. the old woman will be a match for you before she’s done!”
mrs. elles slid her wrist out of mortimer’s grasp, which tightened disagreeably when he gathered her intention of escape.
“no violence, please, mortimer,” she said stagily. “i almost think i will leave you to discuss me with aunt poynder!”
she left the room with no signs of unseemly haste, delighted to feel the grasp of her husband’s fingers literally smarting on her arm. cruelty! she had heard of that.
she went straight upstairs to her own room and locked herself in. it had been a sudden and brilliant inspiration of hers to leave them. she wanted very much to hear what it was that her aunt had to say to her husband, but still more she did want time to think. the ground had been cut beneath her feet.{188} she felt like alnaschar when his basket of eggs was rudely kicked away from him. a completely new plan of action was imperative, and how could she act when she was so dreadfully in the dark and so puzzled by her husband’s constant allusions to mrs. poynder, whom she had not seen since she left newcastle?
but stay! in her hurried glimpse of mrs. poynder she had realized that that lady was wearing a black dress, trimmed with little shining things, as rivers had called them, and that the black bag that she had slammed down on the table was the one that rivers had described as belonging to the unknown visitor at the heather bell on that summer night that seemed so long ago and was only last night. and the face seen at the window at the very moment when she had fallen into her lover’s arms, for the first and only time! all these things came crowding into her mind; a bewildering vision of what had been rose before her eyes, with the damning significance in ears inimical of all the little foolish foolhardy things she had done in the innocent audacity of her unreturned love—and she realized how she and rivers had been betrayed!
she must find out how much and what aunt poynder had seen before she committed herself by a single word. she must be clever and diplomatic to the full extent of her powers. her excitement grew as she sat there on the edge of the bed thinking out a plan—many plans, and she bounded to her feet when there came a very ordinary knock at the door.{189}
“come in!” she cried, forgetting that she had locked it.
there was a furious rattling and “how can i?” came in mrs. poynder’s angry voice.
mrs. elles had taken her line.
“oh, i forgot,” she said, insolently. “well, you can say what you want to through the keyhole. i shall hear you well enough.”
“do you want all the servants to hear what i have to say?”
“i haven’t the slightest objection, if you haven’t,” said mrs. elles, airily.
“you’re quite shameless, then?”
“perhaps, aunt, you had better take care what you say, for your own sake.”
“for my own sake, says she! jane poynder has nought to be ashamed of. but i should have thought, after what i saw last night with my own eyes——”
“through the keyhole?” interrupted her niece impertinently.
“through the window, woman!—the window of the hotel where you were living with——”
“hush, aunt,” mrs. elles interrupted again—this time really for the sake of the servants and common decency. and then there was nothing fine, dramatic or romantic about this discussion; it sickened her. not so should a husband accuse his wife of infidelity: through the mouth of a vulgar, foul-mouthed beldam. how different from hero’s “let me but{190} know of what man i am accused”! still it behooved her to listen and learn, if she could, from aunt poynder the precise terms of the indictment against her.
“and i saw you in his arms,” continued the old lady, “and the girl jane anne saw you walking hand in hand out in the public street! don’t attempt to deny it!”
in point of fact mrs. elles said nothing, but mrs. poynder thought she did, and her fury rose.
“you have the face——! well, it’s more than your man has. he turned as white as a leaf when i was giving him a piece of my mind this morning. he’d nothing to say for himself except that your room was the common room.”
“so it was!”
“tell that to me! i know what’s what. it’s i that made him promise to marry you, when all’s said and done. but, lord!—trust him! he’ll not touch you with a pair of tongs! men aren’t so fond of marrying the women they have disgraced. mercy, what’s that?” she added in extreme perturbation.
“only the dinner gong, aunt,” said mrs. elles, spitefully smiling on the other side of the door. she had learned what she wanted. “i can’t come down,” she said decidedly. “tell mortimer to come up here and speak to me after he has dined.”
“you give your orders, my lady!” grumbled the older woman. “what’s to say that mortimer’s going to condescend to even speak to you?{191}”
“give him my message,” said mrs. elles peremptorily.
mrs. poynder’s footsteps creaked on the stairs as she withdrew, and her angry mutterings were like a heavy ground swell at sea as she went downstairs. how her niece loathed her! and the man whose comfort and well-being she placed before every other earthly consideration had been exposed for at least half an hour to that malign influence. she realized the full horrors of the scene at the heather bell which her aunt had only faintly adumbrated, and most of her thought was for him.
“i must get him out of this,” she said to herself, “at all costs! i used to think myself clever—i shall be clever if i manage this. i don’t care a pin for myself, but for him! if i only knew something about it all—how they set about these things. what can be done? what is possible? if only i could look it up somewhere.”
a vain glance at the little bookcase stocked with ibsens and merediths did not help her.
“what is the good of you?” she said, apostrophising them violently. “you are no good when it comes to the serious crises of life. even a common old ‘enquire within’ would be better. i don’t know what it is i am in for—what it all means. can mortimer divorce me straight away? what is the formula?” she wrung her hands. “if only i could keep his name out of it?”
she unlocked the door of her room and went out{192} upon the landing and looked down over the banisters. mortimer was dining! “though empires crumble,” she murmured to herself. she heard the clatter of knives and forks; through the long well-like slip between the banisters she could see the parlour-maid carrying dishes. mortimer was dining well, and intending to divorce his wife!
she was too frightened to properly enjoy the antithesis. she went back into her own room and lay down upon the bed, shaking in every limb. she had eaten hardly anything that day.
she must have dozed a little. she woke with a start, to see a broad shaft of light coming in from the doorway, and her husband, a stout undignified sort of avenging angel, standing on the threshold. she sprang into a sitting posture.
“make some light!” he said impatiently.
“why bother?” she said languidly. “you can see to scold me quite well enough in the dark!”
“scold!” he said, in an accent of contemptuous reproach, coming nearer. he was flushed, but quite sober. she wondered if he really had had the heart to dine.
he enlightened her. “you don’t seem to realize,” he said, “the position of affairs. i have been quite unable to eat any dinner.”
“what about me? but, however, that is neither here nor there. the point is”—assuming as viragoish an air as she could—“will you please tell me what you can have meant by allowing aunt poynder{193} to come up here as your emissary and abuse me, your wife, and say awful things out loud for all the house to hear?”
“you are begging the question, ph?be,” her husband said, and in his earnestness and sincerity he was almost dignified. “you must know how serious all this is! what have you to say in explanation of the charges which aunt poynder brings against you, and that woman’s letter to me which i showed you?”
“what are the charges?” she asked valiantly and without the flippancy with which she had thought fit to characterize all her previous remarks.
“wait!” he said, and she gave a little frightened cry, and clutched his arm.
“what are you going to do, mortimer?”
“i am going to look at your face while you sit there and lie to me!” he said, striking a match, and lighting the gas. it showed her countenance frightened and pale, his reddish and set. even in her agitation she was struck by the expression he had used. it was the second time she had been taxed with the mendacious habit. she began to think there was something in it. it was, however, the first time mortimer had permitted himself to allude to it so roundly. she was nonplussed by his attitude; she had expected him to bluster and be ridiculous. he was dignified even to a tragedy. the thought crossed her mind that he still loved her, which would make it difficult for him to adopt the point of view she was intending to put before him.{194}
“mortimer,” she said, raising her eyes to his with an intentional effect of extreme and businesslike candour, “what aunt poynder tells you she saw she did see, but the inferences she draws are false.”
“explain yourself more clearly.”
“i mean”—she strictly persevered in her steadfast gaze—“that it is not true that i have been unfaithful to you.”
“not——!”
“i swear it,” she said simply, “but i do not expect you to believe me. are you going to divorce me?”
“what—and leave you free to run off and join your lover!” roared mortimer in a spasm of jealous rage. “i’m——”
“i have no lover—i wish i had!” she interrupted. her sad sincerity had a convincingness her husband was too angry to apprehend.
“mortimer,” she went on, clasping her hands, “could you possibly divorce me—i know nothing of these things—without having a co-respondent at all? i do so hate having him dragged in!”
the solicitor stared at her.
“mortimer, isn’t it possible? you are a man of business, you ought to know about these things. we do get on so badly together, don’t we? it is quite hopeless our trying to get on. isn’t there—there must be—some sort of arrangement by which husband and wife can agree to live apart because they are unsuited to each other, without dragging in a third{195} person? there isn’t a third person, i do assure you, and i know how he would hate it. this poor man aunt poynder saw is a painter—a hater of women. i bored him really, only i laid myself out to please him and plagued his life out! i interfered terribly with his work. you would not understand how. he wanted to be left alone. artists are like that. he did not know i was married, and when he found i had compromised myself against him—that’s the only honest way to put it—he proposed to me because he was a gentleman and thought he ought. it is i who am to blame, for trying to make him like me. i kissed him, not he me!... i am a wretch, i know, but if only you knew how miserable my life is here with you! we ought never to have married. let me go! i am sure you will be happier without me, believe me! let me go quietly—let it be between you and me! don’t let all the world in! don’t ruin an innocent man’s life over it—for it would! he is a royal academician and might be president some day, and if he is forced to marry me he will lose that and his position in the world, and it is such a good one. besides, he is engaged to be married to another woman—he really is!”
she paused breathless, and caught hold of his hand. he shook her off.
“lies! lies! lies!” he said. “i don’t believe a single word you have been saying, ph?be. and as for a judicial separation between us, which is what you seem to want, i say ‘no, thank you.’ the laws{196} are made to enable a man to get completely rid of such a woman as you!”
he left her and she heard him leave the house. it was exactly nine o’clock.
