May Sinclair - The Helpmate

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Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged
forgiveness if she had said too much. And Anne realised that it was for
her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her
that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously
wedded heart.

In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing
for the little son. And Anne's heart grew soft over the many little
vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns.

She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom
when Majendie came in. The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and
Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small,
pure, shy smile of hers. Her soft face drew him to her. He thought it was
his hour. He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his
hand. "I'm so glad," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She shook her head.

"Nancy--"

"I can't talk about it."

"Not to me?"

"No," she said. "Not to you."

"I should have thought--"

Her face hardened. "I can't. Please understand that, Walter. I don't
think I ever can, now. You've made everything so that I can't bear it."

She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest.

And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another
sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating
in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was
too clever for him.

"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked.

"Yes. Has she not to you?"

"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She
treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the
primeval slime."

"Poor Wallie!"

"Well, but it's pretty serious. Do you think she's going to keep it up
for all eternity?"

"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all."

"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up."

"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do."

"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?"

"Well--I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the
first--she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at
Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken
that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have
killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her.
Think of the shock it must have been to her."

"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at
four o'clock in the morning--before I was awake. What could I do?
Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to
it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between."

"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember."

"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if
she was a hard woman."

"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to
be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive.
Besides, think of her health."

"I wonder if that really accounts for it."

"I think it may."

"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay."

"What has come to stay?"

"The dislike she's taken to me."

"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time."

"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more."

"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait."

He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her
child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full
and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from
the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream.

He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken
one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at
the birth of their child he looked for it to pass.

The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and
very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing
in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe.

He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull
and white, and her arms were stretched out by her sides in utter
exhaustion. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, but her lips moved
as if she were trying to speak to him. He felt her breath upon his face,
but he could hear no words.

"What is it?" he whispered to the nurse who stood beside him. She held in
one arm the new-born child, hooded and folded in a piece of flannel.

The nurse touched him on the shoulder. "She's trying to tell you to look
at your little daughter, sir."

He turned and saw something--something queer and red between two folds of
flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave
forth a cry.

And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted
when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother.

CHAPTER XIX

After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and
self-possession. She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had
once been. The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood
her nature was fulfilled. She had given herself up to the child from the
first moment that she held it to her breast. She had found again her
tenderness, her gladness, and her peace.

Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so
happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father.

In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this
hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more
certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices
for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change.
Such as his wife was now, she always would be.

She had settled down.

And he had accepted the situation.

He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and
sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It
kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came
to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell
asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It
had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small
tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had
abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said
to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use
for me."

Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from
him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to
ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the
idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too.

But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was
conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the
imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded
her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood
strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal
father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had
loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and
towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while
she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never
swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to
him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the
spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and
a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but
dimly understood.

Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy
touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he
could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him
back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She
made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him.

By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete.

As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture.
Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition,
and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on
the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to
the test.

She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to
trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play
a passionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent
drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her
strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the
Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child;
her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her
ability to keep them up.

It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for
appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction,
and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he
had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too
perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years
that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be
tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice;
always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the
thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling
politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to
interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to
return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her
duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about
to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to
feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine
with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be
read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was
how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources
of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his
affection for the child, as well as his passion for the mother.

For that was the thorn in Anne's side now. The child was content with her
only when Majendie was not there. The moment he came into the room she
would struggle from her mother's lap, and crawl frantically to his feet.
Her tiny face curled in its white, angelic smile as soon as he lifted her
in his arms. Little Peggy had an adorable way of turning her back on her
mother and tucking her face away under Majendie's chin. When she was
cross or ailing she cried for Majendie, and refused to take food or
medicine from any one but him.

He was sitting one day in the nursery with the little year-old thing on
his knees, feeding her deftly from a cup of warm milk that she had pushed
away when presented by her mother. The nurse and Nanna looked kindly on
the spectacle of Majendie's success, while his wife watched him steadily
without a word. The nurse, presuming on her privileges, made an
injudicious remark.

"She won't do anything for anybody but her daddy. I never saw such a
funny little girl."

"I never saw such a shocking little flirt," said Majendie; "she takes
after her mother."

"She's the living image of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the
other's blunder.

"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as
a sword.

Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly.

The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl.
Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was
thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more
than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain
was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little
Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed
through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said,
"I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her
mother's coldness."

He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left
them.

Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of
self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his
own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great
unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was
suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the
least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her.

CHAPTER XX

What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless
attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told
upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change
and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times
when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's
lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening,
and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never
tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that
Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and
kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down
cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the
Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this
frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends.

Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and
the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was
always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming,
she contrived adroitly to be out. Her attitude to the Hannays was one of
the things she undoubtedly meant to keep up. The natural result was that
Majendie was driven to an increasing friendliness, by way of making up
for the slights the poor things had to endure from his wife. He was
always meaning to remonstrate with Anne, and always putting off the
uncomfortable moment. The subject was so mixed with painful matters that
he shrank from handling it. But, with the New Year following Peggy's
first birthday, circumstances forced him to take, once for all, a firm
stand. Certain entanglements in the affairs of Mr. Gorst had called for
his intervention. There had been important developments in his own
business; Majendie was about to enter into partnership with Mr. Hannay.
And Anne had given him an opportunity for protest by expressing her
unqualified disapprobation of Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had offended
grossly; she had passed the limits; having no instincts, Anne maintained,
to tell her where to stop. Mrs. Hannay had a passion for Peggy which she
was wholly unable to conceal. Moved by a tender impulse of vicarious
motherhood, she had sent her at Christmas a present of a little coat.
Anne had acknowledged the gift in a note so frigid that it cut Mrs.
Hannay to the heart. She had wept over it, and had been found weeping by
her husband, who mentioned the incident to Majendie.

It was more than Majendie could bear; and that night, in the drawing-room
(Anne had left off sitting in the study. She said it smelt of smoke), he
entered on an explanation, full, brief, and clear.

"I must ask you," he said, "to behave a little better to poor Mrs.
Hannay. You've never known her anything but kind, and sweet, and
forgiving; and your treatment of her has been simply barbarous."

"Indeed?"

"I think so. There are reasons why you will have to ask the Hannays to
dinner next week, and reasons why you will have to be nice to them."

"What reasons?"

"One's enough. I'm going into partnership with Lawson Hannay."

She stared. The announcement was a blow to her.

"Is that a reason why I should make a friend of Mrs. Hannay?"

"It's a reason why you should be civil to her. You will send an
invitation to Gorst at the same time."

She winced. "That I cannot do."

"You can, dear, and you will. Gorst's in a pretty bad way. I knew he
would be. He's got entangled now with some wretched girl, and I've got to
disentangle him. The only way to do it is to get him to come here again."

"And _I_ am to write to him?" Her tone proclaimed the idea preposterous.

"It will come best from you, as it's you who have kept him out of the
house. You must, please, put your own feelings aside, and simply do what
I ask you."

He rose and went to the writing-place, and prepared a place for her
there.

Anne said nothing. She was considering how far it was possible to oppose
him. It had always been his way to yield greatly in little things; to
drift and let "things" drift till he created an illusory impression of
his weakness. Then when "things" had gone too far, he would rise, as
he had risen now, and take his stand with a strength the more formidable
because it came as a complete surprise.

"Come," said he, "it's got to be done; and you may as well do it at once
and get it over."

She gave one glance at him, as if she measured his will against hers.
Then she obeyed.

She handed the notes to him in silence.

"That's all right," said he, laying down her note to Gorst. "And this
couldn't be better. I'm glad you've written so charmingly to Mrs.
Hannay."

"I'm sorry that I ever seemed ungracious to her, Walter. But the other
note I wrote under compulsion, as you know."

"I don't care how you did it, my dear, so long as it's done." He slipped
the note to Mrs. Hannay into his pocket.

"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously.

"I'm going to take this myself to Mrs. Hannay."

"What are you going to say to her?"

"The first thing that comes into my head."

She called him back as he was going. "Walter--have you paid Mr. Hannay
that money you owed him?"

He stood still, astounded at her knowledge, and inclined for one moment
to dispute her right to question him.

"I have," he said sternly. "I paid it yesterday."

She breathed freely.

Majendie found Mrs. Hannay by her fireside, alone but cheerful. She gave
him a little anxious look as she took his hand. "Wallie," said she,
"you're depressed. What is it?"

He owned to the charge, but declined to give an account of himself.

She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his
pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew
how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy.

"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't.
I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of
a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter."

"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll
be a help to her."

"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that."

"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong.
Peggy, I mean."

"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at
me now!"

He looked at her and laughed.

"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind."

"Why should I?"

"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's
happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I
suppose you know it's all come to nothing?"

"What has?"

"Her marriage."

"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?"

"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been
going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think
he really was?"

"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to
marry her?"

"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't."

"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in
for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have
troubled his bright essence."

Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings
and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that
poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and
entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in
society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?"

"I don't think I mind anything very much now."

The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to
mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off
and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented
a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in
meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a
quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women
of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead
youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the
triumph of maturity.

She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie
among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to
meet _you_ here."

She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then
ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her
success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the
glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful
illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and
other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle
and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires
urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration
was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved
respectability.

But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young
appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady
Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of
the happy past.

"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?"

Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must
approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with
time.

He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago."

"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her
memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?"

She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?"

"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night."

"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if
anything, more discreetly than before.

"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now."

"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling
she is, too."

"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was
another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?"

"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with
the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the
dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck."

Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.

"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw
how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_
could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half
an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah
had ever taken part.

When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she
turned to Mrs. Hannay.

"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful."

"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with
him."

"I knew he would. He was born to do it."

"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."

"Oh--the child!"

She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.

CHAPTER XXI

The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a
genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration
of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its
brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable
master of commercial detail.

The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at
home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of
financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there
early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in
his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business.
Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he
applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal
satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this
devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was
older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a
wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At
thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling
down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.

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