May Sinclair - The Helpmate

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To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he
informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be
sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently
required to give his best attention.

The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of
his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he
was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he
claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise
to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his
reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.

For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality
had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense
surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence
of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred,
the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening.

In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon
Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and
appealed to his friend to help him out.

"I thought you _were_ out," said Majendie.

"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have
turned her off. She's down on her luck--and--well--you see, _now_ she
wants me to marry her."

"I see. Well--"

"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but--you see--I'm
not the first."

"You're sure of that?"

"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute.
I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were
sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her.
Always provided I could keep her. But you know--"

"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for
her?"

Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie.

"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned
out, till I get a berth somewhere."

Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living.
"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?"

"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him,
but she won't. That's it."

"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?"

"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of
anybody."

"And what do you want me to do?"

"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her."

"See her?"

"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad
when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I
don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces."

"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?"

"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things
you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?"

"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It
never does, you know. Where does the woman live?"

He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him.

Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many
tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat
street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It
was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie
gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with
decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be
possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.

A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of
hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room
on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress
rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.

Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent
occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.

The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely
embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see
anybody."

He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.

Then Maggie came to him.

He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her
blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on
the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she
approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her
sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him
against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little
hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to
spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable
grace.

He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in
Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's
shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under
Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost
(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor
inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed
delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her
colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face
was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure
cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a
sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little
high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and
that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her
little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest
feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him,
preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered
that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that
was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He
thought he should get tired of it in time.

Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her
eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all
over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with
her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and
disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in
the girl to help him out.

He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told
her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things
to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie
cut him short.

"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would
_marry_ me."

"Well--then--" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to
you, Mr. Mumford?"

"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I
can't--Mr. Magendy--because of Charlie."

She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr.
Mumford.

"Oh dear--" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again.

She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show
of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed.

And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined
nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out,
fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature
of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be
crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had
followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs.
Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only
felt.

"See here," he said. "Charlie _can't_ marry you. He can't marry anybody."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, he's too poor."

"I know he's poor."

"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you
happy."

"I'd be unhappy, then."

"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?"

"No--no--no! You don't understand."

"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me."

"To help him."

"You can't help him," he said softly.

"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor."

He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?"

"Well--he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd
cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd
work for him."

Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than
he had thought.

She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning
dressmaking. Look--" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching
at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a
novice in her art.

"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him."

"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let
his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's
another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you."

Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought--if he was
poor--he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes."

"I don't think you quite know what I mean."

"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very
good. But I would be--if he married me--I would--I would indeed."

"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That
wasn't what I meant by the other reason."

Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?"

He was silent, and the flame died in her face.

"Does he care for somebody else?"

"It would be better for you if you could think so."

"_I_ know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I
thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals."

She sat very still, taking it in.

"Is he going to marry her?"

"No. He isn't going to marry her."

"She's not got enough money, I suppose. _She_ can't help him."

"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can."

He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of
jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her
tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again.

Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation?
That you understand?"

"Am I never to see him again?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Nor write to him?"

"It's better not. It only worries him."

She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream.

"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?"

"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for
you, and you shall have a small allowance."

"But who's going to give it me?"

"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am."

"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you."

He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should
misunderstand him.

"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said
significantly; "if it must be."

But Maggie had not misunderstood.

"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little _now_."

"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it--keep all you earn."

"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the
bone."

"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.

Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.

"Yes," she said, "for you."

CHAPTER XXII

Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In
justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the
passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which
Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent.
Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing
and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary
taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little
vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's
honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him
to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child,
and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with
Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him."

He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal,
to have that on his conscience.

As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called
in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's
intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct.
He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do
worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was
his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only
disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that
Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford.
But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not
to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment
of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that
Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to
which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a
salutary shock of shame.

But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence.
From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her
prodigal had fallen far. That night, before his departure, he confirmed
her sad suspicions.

"It's awfully good of you," he said stiffly, "to let me come again."

"Good of me? Charlie!" Her eyes and voice reproached him for this
strained formality.

"Yes. Mrs. Majendie's perfectly right. I've justified her bad opinion of
me."

"I don't know that you've justified it. I don't know what you've done. No
more does she, my dear. And you didn't think, did you, that Walter and I
were going to give you up?"

"I'd have forgiven you if you had."

"I couldn't have forgiven myself, or Walter."

"Oh, Walter--if it hadn't been for him I should have gone to pieces this
time. He's pulled me out of the tightest place I ever was in."

"I'm sure he was very glad to do it."

"I wish to goodness I could do the same for him."

"Why do you say that, Charlie?"

The prodigal became visibly embarrassed. He seemed to be considering the
propriety of a perfect frankness.

"I say, you don't mind my asking, do you? Has anything gone wrong with
him and Mrs. Majendie?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, you see, I've got a sort of notion that she doesn't understand
him. She's never realised in the least the stuff he's made of. He's the
finest man I know on God's earth, and somehow, it strikes me that she
doesn't see it."

"Not always, I'm afraid."

"Well--see here--you'll tell her, won't you, what he's done for me?
That ought to open her eyes a bit. You can give me away as much as
ever you like, if you want to rub it in. Only tell her that I've chucked
it--chucked it for good. He's made me loathe myself. Tell her that I'm
not as bad as she thinks me, but that I probably would be if it hadn't
been for him. And you, Edie, only I'm going to leave you out of it."

"You certainly may."

"It's because she knows all that already; and the point is to get her to
appreciate him."

Edith smiled. "I see. And I'm to make what I like of you, if I can only
get her to appreciate him?"

"Yes. Tell her that, as far as I'm concerned, I respect her attitude
profoundly."

"Very well. I'll tell her just what you've told me."

She spoke of it the next day, when Anne came to read to her in the
afternoon. Anne was as punctual as ever in her devotion, but the passion
of it had been transferred to Peggy. The child was with them, playing
feebly at her mother's knee, and Anne's mood was propitious. She listened
intently. It was the first time that she had brought any sympathy into a
discussion of the prodigal.

"Did he tell you," said she, "what Walter did for him?"

"No."

"Nor what had happened?"

"No. I didn't like to ask him. Whatever it was, it has gone very deep
with him. Something has made a tremendous difference."

"Has it made him change his ways?"

"I believe it has. You see, Nancy, that's what Walter was trying for. He
always had that sort of hold on him. That was why he was so anxious not
to have him turned away."

Anne's face was about to harden, when Peggy gave the sad little cry that
brought her mother's arms about her. Peggy had been trying vainly to
climb into Anne's lap. She was now lifted up and held there while her
feet trampled the broad maternal knees, and her hands played with Anne's
face; stroking and caressing; smoothing her tragic brow to tenderness;
tracing with soft, attentive fingers the line of her small, close mouth,
until it smiled.

Anne seized the little hands and kissed them. "My lamb," she said, "what
are you doing to your poor mother's face?" She did not see, as Edith saw,
that Peggy, a consummate little sculptor, was moulding her mother's face
into the face of love.

"I should never have dreamed," said Anne, "of turning him away, if I had
thought he was really going to reform. Besides, I was afraid he would be
bad for Walter."

"It didn't strike you that Walter might be good for him?"

"It struck me that I had to be strong for Walter."

"Ah, Walter can be strong for all of us." She paused on that, to let it
sink in. Anne's face was thoughtful.

"Anne, if you believed that all I've said to you was true, would you
still object to having Charlie here?"

"Certainly not. I would be the first to welcome him."

"Then, will you write to him of your own accord, and tell him that, if
what I've told you is true, you'll be glad to see him? He knows why you
couldn't receive him before, dear, and he respects you for it."

Anne thought better of Mr. Gorst for that respect. It was the proper
attitude; the attitude she had once vainly expected Majendie to take.

"After all, what have I to do with it? He comes to see you."

"Yes, dear; but I shan't always be here for him to see. And if I thought
that you would help Walter to look after him--will you?"

"I will do what I can. My little one!"

Anne bowed her head over the soft forehead of her little one. She had a
glad and solemn vision of herself as the protector of the penitent. It
was in keeping with all the sanctities and pieties she cherished. She had
not forgotten that Canon Wharton (a saint if ever there was one) had
enjoined on her the utmost charity to Mr. Gorst, should he turn from his
iniquity.

She was better able to admit the likelihood of that repentance because
Mr. Gorst had never stood in any close relation to her. His iniquity had
not profoundly affected her. But she found it impossible to realise that
Majendie's influence could count for anything in his redemption. Where
her husband was concerned Anne's mind was made up, and it refused to
acknowledge so fine a merit in so gross a man. She was by this time
comfortably fixed in her attitude, and any shock to it caused her
positive uneasiness. Her attitude was sacred; it had become one of the
pillars of her spiritual life. She was constrained to look for
justification lest she should put herself wrong with God.

She considered that she had found it in Majendie's habits, his silences,
his moods, the facility of his decline upon the Hannays and the Ransomes.
He was determined to deteriorate, to sink to their level.

To-night, when he remarked tentatively that he thought he would dine at
the Hannays', she made an effort to stop him.

"Must you go?" said she. "You are always dining with them."

"Why?--do you mind?" said he.

"Well--when it's night after night--"

"Is it that you mind my dining with the Hannays, or my leaving you?"

"I mind both."

"Oh--if I'd thought you wanted me to stay--"

She made no answer, but rose and led the way to the dining-room.

He followed. Her arm had touched him as she passed him in the doorway,
and his heart beat thickly, as he realised the strength of her dominion
over him. She had only to say "Stay," and he stayed; or "Come," and she
could always draw him to her. He had never turned away. His very mind was
faithful to her. It had not even conceived, and it would have had
difficulty in grasping, the idea of happiness without her.

To-night he was profoundly moved by this intimation of his wife's desire
to have him with her. His surprise and satisfaction made him curiously
shy. He sat through two courses without speaking, without lifting his
eyes from his plate; brooding over their separation. He was wondering
whether, after all, it had been so inevitable; whether he had
misunderstood her; whether, if he had had the sense to understand, he
might not have kept her. It was possible she had been wounded by his
absences. He had never explained them. He could not tell her that she
had made him afraid to be alone with her.

The situation, which he had accepted so obediently, had been more than
a mere mortal man could endure. Especially in the terrible five minutes
after dinner, before they settled for the evening, when each sat waiting
to see if the other had anything to say. Sometimes Majendie would take up
his book and Anne her work. She would sew, and sew, patient, persistent,
in her tragic silence. And when he could bear it no longer, he would put
down his book and go quietly away, to relieve the intolerable constraint
that held her. Sometimes it was Anne who read, while he smoked and
brooded. Then, in the warm, consenting stillness of the summer evenings
(they were now in June), her presence seemed to fill the room; he was
possessed by the sense of it; by the sound of her breathing; by the
stirring of her body in the chair, or of her fingers on the pages of her
book; and he would get up suddenly and leave her, dragging his passion
from the sight of her.

As he considered these things, many perplexities, many tendernesses,
stirred in him and kept him still.

Anne watched him from the other end of the table, and her thoughts
debased him. He seemed to her disagreeably incommunicative, and she had
found an ignoble explanation of his mood. There had been too much salt in
the soup, and now there was something wrong with the salmon. He had not
responded to her apology for these accidents, and she supposed that they
had been enough to spoil his evening with her.

She had come to consider him a creature grossly wedded to material
things.

"It's a pity you stayed," said she. "Mrs. Hannay would have given you a
better dinner."

He had nothing to say to so preposterous a charge. His eyes were fixed
more than ever on his plate. She saw his face flush as he bowed his head
in eating; she allowed her fancy to rest in its morbid abhorrence of the
act, and in its suspicion of its grossness. She went on, lashed by her
fancy. "I cannot understand your liking to go there so much, when you
might go to the Eliotts or the Gardners. They're always asking you, and
you haven't been near them for a year."

"Well, you see, the Hannays let me do what I like. They don't bother me."

"Do the Eliotts bother you?"

"They bore me. Horribly."

"And the Gardners?"

"Sometimes--a little."

"And Canon Wharton? No. I needn't ask."

He laughed. "You needn't. _He_ bores me to extinction."

"I'm sorry it is my friends who are so unfortunate."

"It's your husband who's unfortunate. He is not an intellectual person.
Nor a spiritual one, either, I'm afraid."

He looked up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played
irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had
combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner.
She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that
veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He
had come to dread more than anything those attentive, sacrificial eyes.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "to keep you waiting."

She rang the bell. "Will you have the lamp lit in the drawing-room or the
study?"

He looked at her. There was no lamp for him in her eyes.

"Whichever you like. I think I shall go over to the Hannays', after all."

He went; and by the lamp in the drawing-room Anne sat and brooded in her
turn.

She said to herself: "It's no use my trying to keep him from them. It
only irritates him. He lets me see plainly that he prefers their society
to mine. I don't wonder. They can flatter him and kow-tow to him, and I
cannot. He can be a little god to them; and he must know what he is to
me. We haven't a thought in common--not a feeling--and he cannot bear to
feel himself inferior. As for me--if I've married beneath me, I must pay
the penalty."

But there was no penalty for her in these reflections. They satisfied
her. They were part of the curious mental process by which she justified
herself.

CHAPTER XXIII

Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne,
Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance
had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted
that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a
bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His
immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of
Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of
inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself
so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all
situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The
discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost
brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began,
and here, therefore, it shall end."

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