May Sinclair - The Helpmate

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"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think."

"And I like her. Please remember that."

"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all
that?"

"To Walter? Yes, very devoted."

"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as
I can come and see you just the same."

"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same."

He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he
could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He
lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his
innocent amusements, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth
while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused
to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible
for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated
situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making
desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high
and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the
illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the
person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In
spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the damnable
cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of
adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days.
It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his
rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the
diviner air.

And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours
had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived
her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life,
in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her
womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual
growth into something like maternal passion. There was no selfishness in
her attitude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best
and offered it to God for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed
and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had
foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped
from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed
itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own
nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover.

She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them,
laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her
unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible
for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have
married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady
Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had
to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him.

That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that
sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still.
But Edith insisted that she would make no difference.

"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's
absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter--"

He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it
turns out to my advantage."

"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll
play to me."

He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her
was the one thing he could do, and he did it well.

He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys
with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific?
Or loud and strong?"

"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud."

"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake
the dead."

That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself
loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour.
The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble
piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too,
triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It
was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the
miracle that he alone could accomplish for her.

And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the
dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of
Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It
flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous
joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing.

Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the
opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play."

He listened, glancing now and then at Anne with a smile of pride in his
friend's performance. It was as if he were asking her to own that there
must be some good in a fellow who could play like that.

Anne was considering in what words she would intimate to him that Mr.
Gorst's music was never to be heard again in that house. Some instinct
told her that she was courting danger, but the approval of her conscience
urged her on. She waited till the Polonaise was over before she spoke.

"You say," said she, "he's all right as long as he can play like that. To
me, it's the most convincing proof that he's all wrong."

"How do you make that out?"

"I don't want to go into it," said Anne. "I don't approve of Mr. Gorst;
but I should think better of him if he had only better taste."

"You're the first person who ever accused Gorst of bad taste."

"Do you call it good taste to live as he does, as I know he does, and you
know he does, and yet to come here, and sit with Edie, and behave as if
he'd never done anything to be ashamed of? It would be infinitely better
taste if he kept away."

"Not at all. There are a great many very nice things about Gorst, and his
caring to come here is one of the nicest. He has been faithful to Edith
for ten years. That sort of thing isn't so common that one can afford to
despise it."

"Faithful to her? Poor darling, does she think he is?"

"She doesn't think. She knows."

"Preserve me from such faithfulness."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"I do know. And you know that I know." In proof of her contention she
offered him the incident of the four-in-hand.

Majendie made a movement of impatience. "Oh, that's nothing," he said.
"He doesn't like her. He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any
show (I can't see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing
up beside him, he couldn't very well knock her off, you know. You don't
seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she
takes a fancy to sit on. You simply can't do it."

Anne was silent. She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable
levity.

He smoked placidly. "No," he said presently. "Gorst mayn't be a saint,
but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah."

Anne fired. "He may be a very bad man for all that."

"There again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. He
is not a 'very bad man'. You've no discrimination in these things. You
simply lump us all together as a bad lot. And so we may be, compared with
the angels and the saints. But there are degrees. If Gorst isn't as good
as--as Edie, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's bad."

"Please--I would rather not argue the point. But I am not going to have
anything to do with Mr. Gorst."

"Of course not. You disapprove of him. There's nothing more to be said."

He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he
preserved his own.

"There is a great deal more to be said, dear. And I may as well say it
now. I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in
this house if I am to remain in it."

Astonishment held him dumb.

"You have no right to expect me to," said she.

"To expect you to remain, or what?"

"To receive a man of Mr. Gorst's character."

"My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?"

"My right as your wife."

"My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that."

"I ought not to have to ask you. You should have thought of it yourself.
You should have had more care for my reputation."

At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers.

"Your reputation? Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from
poor Gorst."

"Is it not? My friends--the Eliotts--will not receive him."

"There's no reason why they should."

"Is there any reason why I should? Do you want me to be less fastidious
than they are? You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious
people. My father wouldn't have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr.
Gorst. Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my
mother's?"

"Have you considered what my standard would look like if I turned my best
friend out of the house--a man I've known all my life--just because my
wife doesn't happen to approve of him? I know nothing about your Eliotts;
but if Edie can stand him, I should think you might."

"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him."

He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say,
your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like
that."

"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself."

"What did I tell you?"

"That Edith cared for him."

He remembered.

"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie."

"I do care for her."

"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how
much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What
it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal
hardship of it?"

"I know it was hard."

"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them."

"It isn't I who am hard."

"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?"

"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on
himself, and he is hard on her. There's nobody else to blame."

"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come
any more?"

"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after--"

"After what?"

"After everything."

"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor
Edie was to blame for that, it's the least _she_ can do for you to give
him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to
her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?"

She was silent.

"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?"

"I cannot _help_ what you think of me," said she with the stress of
despair.

"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of
understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a
hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your
extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to
turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do
it--No, that's beyond me."

"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house,
I shall go out of it."

"Well--" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a
wise solution.

"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'."

"Well--and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst,
and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be
pleased."

Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it
seemed the very cry of his delight.

"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right."

Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He
broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit
of levity ran riot in immortal sounds.

"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on
him."

"If all good women were to reason that way--"

"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would
happen?"

"There would be more good men in the world."

"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because,
don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to."

"If you're thinking of his good--"

"Have you thought of hers?"

"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do
then?--poor Edie!"

"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear
little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to
heaven."

Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing
the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch.

Majendie rose, placid and benignant.

"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed."

CHAPTER XVI

Majendie could never be angry with any woman for more than five minutes.
And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen,
as Edith had said, "everything."

But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He
thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel."

She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward
eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the
eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of
a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her
encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral
force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be
described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She
believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral
deadness that he carried.

It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair.
But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly
impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to
understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if
he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr.
Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the
fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have known that, if
she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past,
she would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer.

She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman
and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her
own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the
sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the
burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such
presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had
married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn.

She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once
persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was
driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the
question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to
them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal.

If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew
which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender
to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at
once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was
peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had
not invited him at once.

At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and
remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress
upon the name) to dinner on Friday.

The day was Tuesday.

"And is he coming?" said Anne.

"He is," said Majendie.

When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine
with Mrs. Eliott.

"I thought you would," said Majendie.

She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't.

They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in
Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst
came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as
her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such
weather.

He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door.

"Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella
and held it over her.

"Not at all," said she significantly.

At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab.

Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished
the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's
manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her
tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as
she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep,
with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding
rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on.

Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a
pathetic spectacle.

"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry."

He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in
the cab, with Anne's boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing
hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood
in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped
with its passage from the cab to their doorstep.

"I think my feet are wet," said she.

"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he.

He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and
stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands
to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and
kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for
a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her
shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission,
to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then
magnanimously forgive.

It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the
downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing
gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head.

"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he.

"What was worth while?"

"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?"

There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in
sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she
would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and
that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne
had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her
to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual
voluptuary.

Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband's manner.
He seemed positively to pander to her curious passion, while preserving
an attitude of superior purity. He multiplied her opportunities. A week
had hardly passed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne
again took refuge in Thurston Square.

This time Majendie made no comment on her action. He seemed to take it
for granted.

But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a
sense of moving in a divine combat. Every time she dined in Thurston
Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that
Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up. Thus
unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in
him.

When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the
Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on
Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and
looked for some irritating maneuver in response. He would, of course,
proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect
a retreat to Mr. Gorst's rooms, or to his club.

But Majendie lacked her passion and her inspiration. He simply said he
was delighted to hear it, and that he would make a point of being at
home. He would have to give up an engagement which he would not have made
if he had known. But that did not greatly matter.

They came, the Eliotts and the rest, and Miss Proctor again pronounced
him charming. To be sure, he was not half so amusing as he had been on
his first appearance in Thurston Square; but it was only becoming that
he should repress himself a little at his own table and in the presence
of the Canon. _He_, the Canon, was brilliant, if you like.

For that night the Canon was, as usual, all things to all men, and
especially to all women. He was the man of the world for Miss Proctor;
the fine epicure of books for Mrs. Eliott; for Mr. Eliott and Dr.
Gardner, the broad-minded searcher and enthusiast, the humble
camp-follower of the conquering sciences. "You are the pioneers,"
said he; "you go before us on the march. But we keep up, we keep up.
We can step out--cassock and all."

But he spread out all his spiritual lures for Mrs. Majendie. His eyes
seemed more than ever to pursue her, to search her, to be gazing
discreetly at the secret of her soul. They drew her with the clear and
candid flattery of their understanding. She could feel the clever little
Canon taking her in and making notes on her. "Sensitive. Unhappy.
Intensely spiritual nature. Too fine and pure for _him_." And over the
unhallowed, half-abandoned table, flushed slightly with Majendie's good
wine, the Canon drew up his chair to his host, and stretched his little
legs, and let his spirit expand in a rosy, broad humanity. As he had
charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to
flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in
his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the
versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous
eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his
after-dinner moments, made him sick.)

Anne heard nothing more of Mr. Gorst for over a fortnight. It was on a
Saturday, and Majendie asked her suddenly, during luncheon, if she
thought the Eliotts would be disengaged that evening.

"Why?"

"Because I've asked Gorst" (again that disagreeable emphasis) "to dine
to-night."

"Very well. I will ask Mrs. Eliott if she can have me."

"Can you?"

"Perfectly."

"Oh--and I must prepare you for something quite horrible. Some time, you
know" (he smiled provokingly), "I shall have to ask the Hannays. Do you
think you can arrange that?"

"I shall have to," said she.

This time (it was the third) she was obliged to take Mrs. Eliott into her
confidence. She fairly flung herself on her friend's mercy.

"I feel as if I were making use of you," said she.

"My dear, make any use of me you please. I'm always here. You can come to
me any time you want to escape."

"To escape?" Anne's face flew a colour that was a flag of defiance to
any reflection on her husband. She would be loyal to him as long as she
lived. Not one of her friends should know of her trouble and her fear.

"From your Gorsts and Hannays and people."

"Oh, from them." Anne felt that she was shielding him.

Mrs. Eliott marked the flag of defiance and the attitude of defence. If
Anne had meant to "give him away," she could not have given him more
lavishly. Mrs. Elliott's sad inward comment was that there was more in
all this than met the eye.

And Anne's life now continued on this rather uncomfortable footing. The
Hannays came to dinner, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. The Ransomes
came, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. Mr. Gorst came (for the fourth
time in as many weeks), and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. She began to
wonder whether the Eliotts' hospitality would stand the strain. She also
wondered whether her other friends in Thurston Square were wondering; and
what Canon Wharton must think of it. It had not occurred to her to wonder
what Mr. Gorst would think.

At first he thought nothing of it. When he found that he had not to
encounter the terrible eyes of Mrs. Majendie, Mr. Gorst's relief was so
great that it robbed him of reflection. And when he began to think, he
merely thought that Majendie had asked him because his wife was absent,
rather than that Majendie's wife was absent because he had been asked.
Majendie had calculated on this. He was not in the least distressed by
Anne's absences. He believed that she was thoroughly enjoying both her
own protest and Mrs. Eliott's society. And the arrangement really solved
the problem nicely. Otherwise the whole thing was trivial to him. He
remained unaware of the tremendous spiritual conflict that was being
waged round the person of the unhappy Gorst.

But Christmas was now at hand and Christmas brought the problem back
again in a terrific form. For ten years poor Gorst had dined with his
friends in Prior Street on Christmas Day. His presence was considered
by Edith to borrow a peculiar significance and sanctity from the
festival. Did they not celebrate on that day the birth of the Divine
Humanity, the solemn advent of redeeming love? Punctually on Christmas
Day the prodigal returned from his farthest wanderings, and made for
Prior Street as for his home. He had never missed a Christmas. And how
could they expel him now? His coming was such a sacred and established
thing, that he had spoken of it to Edith as a certainty. And it was as
a certainty that Edith spoke of it to Majendie.

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