May Sinclair - The Helpmate

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And now the sight of Maggie's handiwork had given him a shock. For his
sin was heavy upon him. Every day he went in fear of discovery. Anne
would ask him where he had got that frock, and he would have to lie to
her. And it would be no use; for, sooner or later, she would know that he
had lied; and she would track Maggie down by the frock.

He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment which was a
token and memorial of his sin. He wished he had thrown the damned thing
into the Humber.

But Anne had no suspicion. Her face was smooth and tranquil as she came
downstairs. She was calling Peggy her "little treasure," and her eyes
were smiling as she looked at the frail, small, white and gold creature,
stepping daintily and shyly in her delicate dress.

Peggy was buttoned into a little white coat to keep her warm; and they
set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket, and Peggy an enormous
doll.

Peggy enjoyed the journey. When she was not talking to Majendie she was
singing a little song to keep the doll quiet, so that the time passed
very quickly both for her and him. There were other people in the
carriage, and Anne was afraid they would be annoyed at Peggy's singing.
But they seemed to like it as much as she and Majendie. Nobody was ever
annoyed with Peggy.

In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf. It was green
underfoot and on the folding hills. Overhead it was limitless blue above
the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films
and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue.

Majendie felt Peggy's hand tighten on his hand. Her little body was
trembling with delight.

They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat. He looked
at her. And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she
stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she
smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile.

Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman,
smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with
the sorrow of his sin.

They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first
Majendie's hand, then Anne's hand, and held them together in her lap.

"Mummy," said she, "aren't you glad that daddy came? It wouldn't be half
so nice without him, would it?"

"No," said Anne, "it wouldn't."

"Mummy, you don't say that as if you meant it."

"Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it."

"Yes, but you didn't make it sound so."

"Peggy," said Majendie, "you're a terribly observant little person."

"She's a little person who sometimes observes all wrong."

"No, mummy, I don't. You never talk to daddy like you talk to me."

"You're a little girl, dear, and daddy's a big grown-up man."

"That's not what I mean, though. You've got a grown-up voice for me, too.
I don't mean your grown-up voice. I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as
if--as if you hadn't known him a very long time. And you talk to me as if
you'd known me--oh, ever so long. _Have_ you known me longer than you've
known daddy?"

Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill
visible through the branches of the trees.

"Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought
of."

"When was I thought of, mummy?"

"I don't know, darling."

"Do you know, daddy?"

"Yes, Peggy. _I_ know. You were thought of here, in this wood, under this
tree, on mummy's birthday, between eight and nine years ago."

"Who thought of me?"

"Ah, that's telling."

"Who thought of me, mummy?"

"Daddy and I, dear."

"And you forgot, and daddy remembered."

"Yes. I've got a rather better memory than your mother, dear."

"You forgot my old birthday, daddy."

"I haven't forgotten your mother's old birthday, though."

Peggy was thinking. Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of
her thought.

"Mummy--am I only seven?"

"Only seven, Peggy."

"Then," said Peggy, "you _did_ think of me before I was born. How did you
know me before I was born?"

Anne shook her head.

"Daddy, how did you know me before I was born?"

"Peggy, you're a little tease."

"You brought it on yourself, my dear. Peggy, if you'll leave off teasing
daddy, I'll tell you a story."

"Oh!--"

"Once upon a time" (Anne's voice was very low) "mummy had a dream. She
dreamed she was in this wood, walking along that little path--just
there--not thinking of Peggy. And when she came to this tree she saw an
angel, with big white wings. He was lying under this very tree, on this
very bit of grass, just there, where daddy's sitting. And one of his
wings was stretched out on the grass, and it was hollow like a cradle.
It was all lined with little feathers, like the inside of a swan's wing,
as soft as soft. And the other wing was stretched over it like the top of
a cradle. And inside, all among the soft little feathers, there was a
little baby girl lying, just like Peggy."

"Oh, mummy, was it me?"

"Sh--sh--sh! Whoever it was, the angel saw that mummy loved it, and
wanted it very much--"

"The little baby girl?"

"Yes. And so he took the baby and gave it to mummy, to be her own little
girl. That's how Peggy came to mummy."

"And did he give it to daddy, too, to be his little girl?"

"Yes," said Majendie, "I was wondering where I came in."

"Yes. He gave it to daddy to be his little girl, too."

"I'm glad he gave me to daddy. The angel brought me to you in the night,
like daddy brought me my big dolly. You did bring my big dolly, and put
her on my bed, didn't you, daddy? Last night?"

Majendie was silent.

"Daddy wasn't at home last night, Peggy."

"Oh, daddy, where were you?"

Majendie felt his forehead getting damp again.

"Daddy was away on business."

"Oh, mummy, don't you wish he'd never go away?"

"I think it's time for lunch," said Majendie.

They ate their lunch; and when it was ended, Majendie went to the cottage
to find water, for Peggy was thirsty. He returned, carrying water in a
pitcher, and followed by a red-cheeked, rosy little girl who brought milk
in a cup for Peggy.

Anne remembered the cup. It was the same cup that she had drunk from
after her husband. And the child was the same child whom he had found
sitting in the grass, whom he had shown to her and taken from her arms,
whose little body, held close to hers, had unsealed in her the first
springs of her maternal passion. It all came back to her.

The little girl beamed on Peggy with a face like a small red sun, and
Peggy conceived a sudden yearning for her companionship. It seemed that,
at the cottage, there were rabbits, and a new baby, and a litter of
puppies three days old. And all these wonders the little girl offered
to show to Peggy, if Peggy would go with her.

Peggy begged, and went through the wood, hand in hand with the little
beaming girl. Majendie and Anne watched them out of sight.

"Look at the two pairs of legs," said Majendie.

Anne sighed. Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red,
lusty-legged daughter of the woods.

"I'm not at all happy about her," said she.

"Why not?"

"She gets so terribly tired."

"All children do, don't they?"

Anne shook her head. "Not as she does. It isn't a child's healthy
tiredness. It doesn't come like that. It came on quite suddenly the other
day, after she'd been excited; and her little lips turned grey."

"Get Gardner to look at her."

"I'm going to. He says she ought to be more in the open air. I wish we
could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden."

Majendie said nothing. He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden
and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from
the sea. He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it.

"You could afford it, Walter, couldn't you, now?"

"Of course I can afford it."

He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the
farm. His business was doing better every year. But the double household
was a drain on his fresh resources. He could not very well afford to take
another house, and keep the farm too. He had thought of that before. He
had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving
him up. Poor Maggie! Well, he would have to manage somehow. If the worst
came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street. And he would
sell the yacht.

"I think I shall sell the yacht," he said.

"Oh no, you mustn't do that. You've been so well since you've had it."

"No, it isn't necessary. I shall be better if I take more exercise."

Peggy came back and the subject dropped.

Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended. She was tired, so tired
that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and
carry her all the way to the station. Anne carried the doll.

In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father's arms. She slept with her
face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast. Her
head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve.

"Look--" he whispered.

Anne looked. "The little lamb--" she said.

Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping
child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an
old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret
and long-forgotten.

CHAPTER XXX

Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs.
Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession
filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the
Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and
pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and
exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights.

But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer
and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who
now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for
thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with
her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded
the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor.

Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled
contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was
mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore
of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging
and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface.
Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it
also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the
mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much
about it.

Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took
refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a
secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no
longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's
drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club.

Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's
birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon
had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart.

"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests
arrive?"

Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she,
"we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor."

"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon, "about our dear Mrs.
Majendie."

Mrs. Eliott's eyes darkened with anxiety. She clasped her hands. "Oh why?
What is it? Do you mean about the dear little girl?"

"I know nothing about the little girl. But I hear very unpleasant things
about her husband."

"What things?"

The Canon's face was reticent and grim. He wished Mrs. Eliott to
understand that he was no unscrupulous purveyor of gossip; that if he
spoke, it was under constraint and severe necessity.

"I do not," said the Canon, "usually give heed to disagreeable reports.
But I am afraid that, where there is such a dense cloud of smoke, there
must be some fire."

"I think," said Mrs. Eliott, "perhaps they didn't get on very well
together once. But they seem to have made it up after the sister's death.
_She_ has been happier these last three years. She has been a different
woman."

"The same woman, my dear lady, the same woman. Only a better saint. For
the last three years, they say, he has been living with another woman."

"Oh--it's impossible. Impossible. He is away a great deal--but--"

"He is away a great deal too often. Running up to Scarby every week in
that yacht of his. In with the Ransomes and all that disreputable set."

"Is Lady Cayley in Scale?"

"Lady Cayley is at Scarby."

"Do you mean to say--"

"I mean," said the Canon, rising, "to say nothing."

Mrs. Eliott detained him with her eyes of anguish.

"Canon Wharton--do you think she knows?"

"I cannot tell you."

The Canon never told. He was far too clever.

Mrs. Eliott wandered to Miss Proctor.

"Do you know," said Miss Proctor, searching Mrs. Eliott's face with an
inquisitive gaze, "how our friends, the Majendies, are getting on?"

"Oh, as usual. I see very little of her now. Anne is quite taken up with
her little girl and with her good works."

"Oh! That," said Miss Proctor, "was a most unsuitable marriage."

It was five o'clock. The Canon and Miss Proctor had drunk their two
cups of tea and departed. Mrs. Pooley had arrived soon after four;
she lingered, to talk a little more about the thought-power and the
mind-control. Mrs. Pooley was convinced that she could make things
happen. That they were, in fact, happening. But Mrs. Eliott was no longer
interested.

Mrs. Pooley, too, departed, feeling that dear Fanny's Thursday had been a
disappointment. She had been quite unable to sustain the conversation at
its usual height.

Mrs. Pooley indubitably gone, Mrs. Eliott wandered down to Johnson in his
study. There, in perfect confidence, she revealed to him the Canon's
revelations.

Johnson betrayed no surprise. That story had been going the round of his
club for the last two years.

"What will Anne do?" said Mrs. Eliott, "when she finds out?"

"I don't suppose she'll do anything."

"Will she get a separation, do you think?"

"How can I tell you?"

"I wonder if she knows."

"She's not likely to tell you, if she does."

"She's bound to know, sooner or later. I wonder if one ought to prepare
her?"

"Prepare her for what?"

"The shock of it. I'm afraid of her hearing in some horrid way. It would
be so awful, if she didn't know."

"It can't be pleasant, any way, my dear."

"Do advise me, Johnson. Ought I or ought I not to tell her?"

Mr. Eliott's face told how his nature shrank from the agony of decision.
But he was touched by her distress.

"Certainly not. Much better let well alone."

"If I were only sure that it _was_ well I was letting alone."

"Can't be sure of anything. Give it the benefit of the doubt."

"Yes--but if you were I?"

"If I were you I should say nothing."

"That only means that I should say nothing if I were you. But I'm not."

"Be thankful, my dear, at any rate, for that."

He took up a book, _The Search for Stellar Parallaxes_, a book that he
understood and that his wife could not understand. That book was the sole
refuge open to him when pressed for an opinion. He knew that, when she
saw him reading it, she would realise that he was her intellectual
master.

The front doorbell announced the arrival of another caller.

She went away, wondering, as he meant she should, whether he were so very
undecided, after all. Certainly his indecisions closed a subject more
effectually than other people's verdicts.

She found Anne in the empty, half-dark drawing-room waiting for her. She
had chosen the darkest corner, and the darkest hour.

"Fanny," she said, and her voice trembled, "are you alone? Can I speak to
you a moment?"

"Yes, dear, yes. Just let me leave word with Mason that I'm not at home.
But no one will come now."

In the interval she heard Anne struggling with the sob that had choked
her voice. She felt that the decision had been made for her. The terrible
task had been taken out of her hands. Anne knew.

She sat down beside her friend and put her hand on her shoulder. In that
moment poor Fanny's intellectual vanities dropped from her, like an
inappropriate garment, and she became pure woman. She forgot Anne's
recent disaffection and her coldness, she forgot the years that had
separated them, and remembered only the time when Anne was the girlfriend
who had loved her, and had come to her in all her griefs, and had made
her house her home.

"What is it, dear?" she murmured.

Anne felt for her hand and pressed it. She tried to speak, but no words
would come.

"Of course," thought Mrs. Eliott, "she cannot tell me. But she knows I
know."

"My dear," she said, "can I or Johnson help you?"

Anne shook her head; but she pressed her friend's hand tighter.

Wondering what she could do or say to help her, Mrs. Eliott resolved to
take Anne's knowledge for granted, and act upon it.

"If there's trouble, dear, will you come to us? We want you to look on
our house as a refuge, any hour of the day or night."

Anne stared at her friend. There was something ominous and dismaying in
her solemn tenderness, and it roused Anne to wonder, even in her grief.

"You cannot help me, dear," she said. "No one can. Yet I had to come to
you and tell you--"

"Tell me everything," said Mrs. Eliott, "if you can."

Anne tried to steady her voice to tell her, and failed. Then Fanny had an
inspiration. She felt that she must divert Anne's thoughts from the grief
that made her dumb, and get her to talk naturally of other things.

"How's Peggy?" said she. She knew it would be good to remind her that,
whatever happened, she had still the child.

But at that question, Anne released Mrs. Eliott's hand, and laid her head
back upon the cushion and cried.

"Dear," whispered Mrs. Eliott, with her inspiration full upon her, "you
will always have _her_."

Then Anne sat up in her corner, and put away her tears, and controlled
herself to speak.

"Fanny," she said, "Dr. Gardner has seen her. He says I shall not have
her very long. Perhaps--a few years--if we take the very greatest
care--"

"Oh, my dear! What is it?"

"It's her heart. I thought it was her spine, because of Edie. But it
isn't. She has valvular disease. Oh, Fanny, I didn't think a little child
could have it."

"Nor I," said Mrs. Eliott, shocked into a great calm. "But surely--if you
take care--"

"No. He gives no hope. He only says a few years, if we leave Scale and
take her into the country. She must never be overtired, never excited. We
must never vex her. He says one violent crying fit might kill her. And
she cries so easily. She cries sometimes till she's sick."

Mrs. Eliott's face had grown white; she trembled, and was dumb before the
anguish of Anne's face.

But it was Anne who rose, and put her arms about the childless woman, and
kissed and comforted her.

It was as if she had said: Thank God you never had one.

CHAPTER XXXI

The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached
Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and
conflicting emotions.

She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just
asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs.
Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good
deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands.

Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and
the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering,
vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted
to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept
feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm.

She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well
give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she
wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had
stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was
he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear.

At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since
her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to
prove that it was not so.

And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a
dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that
it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She
trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground,
the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a
creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman
of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame.

Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two
little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could
possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant
virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than
Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind,
thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of
human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and,
when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother
about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He
could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No,
she couldn't get any more out of him than that.

Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had
her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue.
She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end,
at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear
fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago.

Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that
start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's
handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little
embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of
destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long
trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the
embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and
it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion.
Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at
perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared
together.

Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself
from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face
with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down
on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation
calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the
facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage.

Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was
not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in
which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the
beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah
had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive
propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a
deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible
lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her
youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each
bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the
dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh,
that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of
exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling,
and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious
triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship,
and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering
in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still
coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure.

It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion
to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing.
He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who
saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him
conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been.

Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the
sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her
sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all
the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may
as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for
years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she
must take steps to save her reputation.

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