May Sinclair - The Helpmate

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To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of
that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious
of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that
way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it
did not appeal to her in any way at all.

"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of
mine--of yours, I mean."

"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not
jealous."

"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't
garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache."

"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.

Her calmness irritated Edith.

"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!"

Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for.

"You know, you used to think so, too."

"Of course I did," said Anne evasively.

"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?"

"I _have_ married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?"

"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that."

"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying--mere marrying--may be a
great deal--about as much as many men have a right to ask."

"Hasn't every man a right to ask for--what shall I say--a little
understanding--from the woman he cares for?"

"Edith, what has he told you?"

"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself."

"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?"

"Did he pose as _l'homme incompris_? No, he didn't."

"Still--he told you," Anne insisted.

"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to
her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand."

"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring.
I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook.

"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he
is."

"I know what he was--what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with
what he is."

"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him
something too bad for words?"

Anne broke down weakly.

"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?"

"What? That Wallie was bad?"

"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything."

"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It
wouldn't have been true."

"He says himself that everything was true."

"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know
the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell
you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left
it to me; he said I was to tell you."

"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me."

"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose
for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?"

"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible
part of it."

"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But _I_ knew all right. He never kept
anything from me, not for long."

"But, Edith--how _could_ he? How _could_ he? When the woman--Lady
Cayley--She was _bad_, wasn't she?"

"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them--worse. You know she was
divorced?"

"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know."

"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were
several others--four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a
mere drop in her ocean."

Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her.

"But," said she, "he was in it."

"Oh yes, he was in it. The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the
others. But it couldn't keep him. He couldn't live in it, like them."

"But how did she get hold of him?"

"She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry."

(His chivalry--she knew it.)

"It's what happens, over and over again. He thought her a vilely injured
woman. He may have thought her good. He certainly thought her pathetic.
It was the pathos that did it."

"That--did--it?"

"Yes. Did it. She hurled herself at his head--at his knees--at his
feet---till he _had_ to lift her. And that's how it happened."

Anne's spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening.

"I know it oughtn't to have happened. I know Walter wasn't the holy saint
he ought to have been. But oh, he was a martyr!" She paused. "And--he was
very young."

"Edith--when was it?"

"Seven years ago."

Anne pondered. The seven years helped to purify him. Every day helped
that threw the horror further back in time--separated it from her. If--if
he had not been steeped too long in it. She wanted to know _how_ long,
but she was afraid to ask; afraid lest it should be brought nearer to her
than she could bear. Edith saw her fear.

"It lasted two years. It was all my fault."

"Your fault?"

"Yes, my fault. Because of my horrid spine. You see, it kept him from
marrying."

"Well, but--"

"Well, but it couldn't have happened if he had married. How _could_ it?
How could it have happened if you had been there? You would have saved
him."

She paused on that note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was
a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the
dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of brooding,
mystic harmonies.

"You would have saved him."

Anne saw herself for one moment as his guardian angel, her mission
frustrated through a flaw of time. That vision was dashed by another,
herself as the ideal, the star he should have looked to before its dawn,
herself dishonoured by his young haste, his passion, his failure to
foresee.

"He should have waited for me."

"Did you wait for him?"

A quick flush pulsed through the whiteness of Anne's face. She looked
back seven years to her girlhood in the southern Deanery, her home. She
had another vision, a vision of a Minor Canon, whom she had loved with
the pure worship of her youth, a love of which somehow she was now
ashamed. Ashamed, though it had then seemed to her so spiritual. Her dead
parents had desired the marriage, but neither she nor they had the power
to bring it about.

Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a
venture.

"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can
say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'"

"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to
marry him."

For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased
to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a
disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed
of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one
and Lady Cayley?

"Edith," she said suddenly, "did you ever see her?"

"Never," said Edith emphatically.

"You don't know what she was like?"

"I don't. I never wanted to. I dare say there are people in Scale who
could tell you all about her, only I wouldn't inquire if I were you."

"Did it happen at Scarby?" She was determined to know the worst.

"I believe so."

"Oh--why did I ever go there?"

"He didn't want you to. That was why."

"Where is she now?"

"Nobody knows. She might be anywhere."

"Not here?"

"No, not here. My dear, you mustn't get her on your nerves."

"I'm afraid of meeting her."

"It isn't likely that you ever will. She isn't the sort one does
meet--now, poor thing."

"Who was she?"

"The wife of Sir Andrew Cayley, a tallow-chandler."

"Oh, how did Walter ever--"

"My dear, one meets all sorts of funny people in Scale. He was a very
wealthy tallow-chandler. Besides, it wasn't he that Walter did meet,
naturally."

"How can you joke about it? It makes me sick to think of it."

"It made me sick enough once, dear. But I don't think of it."

"I can't help thinking of it."

"Well, whenever you do, when it does come over you--it will,
sometimes--think of what Walter's life was before he knew you. Everything
was spoiled for him because of me. He was sent to a place he detested
because of me; put into an office which he loathed, shut up here in this
hateful house, because of me. And he was good to me, good and dear. Even
at the worst he hardly ever left me if he thought I wanted him--not even
to go to _her_. But he was young, and it was an awful life for him; you
don't know how awful. It would have been bad enough for a woman. It was
intolerable for a man. I was worse then than I am now. I was horribly
fretful, and I worried him. I think I drove him to her--I know I did. He
had to get away from it sometimes. Won't you think of that?"

"I'll try to think of it."

"And it won't make you not like him?"

"My dear, I liked him first for your sake, then I liked you for his, now
I suppose I must like him for yours again."

"No--for his own sake."

"Does it matter which?"

"Not much--so long as you like him. He really is angelic, though you
mayn't think it."

"I think you are."

Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew
with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that
hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her
likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature
not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne,
a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers
sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing
in her hair.

"You're a saint," said Edith.

"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery.

"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with
me."

Whereupon Anne kissed her.

"And I may tell Walter what you've said?"

It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would
shrink from telling him.

Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They
returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was
burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an
arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there.

His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that
room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together.
She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when
Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always
in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine
devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of
the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been
hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She
felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith,
it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his
goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in
Anne.

It came over her now with a fresh shock, how very little, after all, she
had known of him. It was through Edith that she really knew him. And yet
it was impossible that Edith could have absorbed him utterly. Anne had
not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that
Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least. What
remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must
partially reveal.

She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about
her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and
his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings
with the outer world. Now she rose and went round the room, searching for
its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old.
If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used
it, how little he had been able to call anything his own. The things in
it had no comfortable look of service. He could not have smoked there
much, the curtains were too innocent. He could not have sat in that
arm-chair much, the surface was too smooth. He could not have come there
much at any time, for, though the carpet was faded, there was no
well-worn passage from the threshold to the hearth. As far as she could
make out he came there for no earthly purpose but to change his boots
before going upstairs to Edith.

The bookcase told the same story. It held histories and standard works
inherited from Majendie's father; the works of Dickens, and Thackeray,
and Hardy, read over and over again in the days when he had time for
reading; several poets whom, by his own confession, he could not have
read in any circumstances. One Meredith, partly uncut, testified to an
honest effort and a baulked accomplishment. On a shelf apart stood the
books that he had loved when he was a boy, the Annuals, the tales of
travel and adventure, and one or two school prizes gorgeously bound.

As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence
appealed to her comprehension and compassion.

She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition. Instead of being
sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early
support himself. He had supported himself. And he had stuck to the
business that he might the better support Edith.

She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness.

She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she
had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day.
It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had
answered: "Because you are good. You always have been good."

And he had said (how it came back to her!), "And if I hadn't always?
Wouldn't you have cared then?"

She had answered, "I would have cared, but I couldn't marry you."

And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping
his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment. She had
wondered what had come over him.

Now she knew. He had not been good. And she had married him.

At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung
her, and again she trampled them down.

She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that
her knowledge of him had laid low. She told herself that, after all, much
remained. She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his
goodness. He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other
woman who could have borne his burden half so well. Edith was too sweet
to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed. In
marrying Walter she would lift half the weight. Anne was strong, and she
glorified in her strength. That was what she was there for.

How much more was she prepared to do? Keeping his house was nothing;
Nanna had always kept it well. Caring for Edith was nothing; she could
not help but care for her. She had promised Walter that she would be a
good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her
spiritual life apart.

Was that being a good wife to him? To divorce her soul, her best self,
from him? If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere
material tie, what would she make of herself? Of him?

It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than
that. She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never
would have appreciated _her_. That other woman didn't count; she had
thrust herself on him. When it came to choosing, he had chosen a
spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.)
And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter's choice was really
God's will. God's hand had led him to her.

It had been a blow to Anne's pride to realise that she had
married--spiritually--beneath her. Her pride now recovered wonderfully,
seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself
superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's
poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give
than to receive.

Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not
be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had
meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband
with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen
again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it
could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme.

But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring
herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual
state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some
satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the
sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with
nervous trepidation.

He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of
comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more
formidable question than, "How's your headache?"

"Better, thank you."

"That's all right."

He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable
thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had
recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne,
tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was
disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance.
She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more cause to.

"Do you mind my smoking? Say if you really do."

She really did, but she forbore to say so. Forbearance henceforth was to
be part of her discipline.

He smoked contentedly, with half-closed eyes; and when he talked, he
talked of the garden and of bulbs.

Of bulbs, after what he had discussed with Edith upstairs. She would
rather that he had asked his question, forced her to the issue. That at
least would have shown some comprehension of her state. But he had taken
the issue for granted, refused to face the immensity of it all. She had
had her first taste of sacrificial flames, and her spirit was prepared to
go through fire to reach him. And he presented himself as already folded
and protected; satisfied with some inferior and independent secret of his
own.

She felt that a little perturbation would have become him more than that
impenetrable peace.

It would make it so difficult to raise him.

CHAPTER V

The bell of St. Saviour's had ceased. Over the open market-place the air
throbbed with a thousand pulses from the dying heart of sound. The great
grey body of the Church was still; tower and couchant nave watched in
their monstrous, motionless dominion, till the music stirred in them like
a triumphant soul.

As they hurried over the open market-place, Anne realised with some
annoyance that she was late again for the Wednesday evening service. She
dearly loved punctuality and order, and disliked to be either checked or
hastened in her superb movements. She disliked to be late for anything.
Above all she disliked standing on a mat outside a closed church door, in
the middle of a General Confession, trying to surrender her spirit to the
spirit of prayer, while Walter lingered, murmuring profane urbanities
that claimed her as his own.

He had perceived what he called her innocent design, her transparent
effort to lead him to her heavenly heights. He had lent himself to
it, tenderly, gravely, as he would have lent himself to a child's
heart-rending play. He could not profess to follow the workings of his
wife's mind, but he did understand her point of view. She had been "let
in" for something she had not expected, and he was bound to make it up
to her.

There had been a week of concessions, crowned by his appearance at St.
Saviour's.

But that was on a Sunday. This was Wednesday, and he drew the line at
Wednesdays.

Oh yes, he saw her drift. He knew that what she expected of him was
incessant penitence. But, after all, it was difficult to feel much
abasement for a fault committed quite a number of years ago and
sufficiently repented of at the time. He had settled his account, and
it was hard that he should be made to pay twice over. To-night his mood
was strangely out of harmony with Lent.

Anne slackened her pace to intimate as much to him. Whereupon he lapsed
into strange and disturbing legends of his childhood. He told her he had
early weaned himself from the love of Lenten Services, observing their
effect upon the unfortunate lady, his aunt, who had brought him up.
Punctually at twelve o'clock on Palm Sunday, he said, the poor soul,
exhausted with her endeavours after the Christian life, would fly into
a passion, and punctually would rise from it at the same hour on Easter
Day. For quite a long time he had believed that that was why they called
it Passion Week.

She moaned "Oh, Walter--don't!" as if he had hurt her, while she
repressed the play of a little, creeping, curling, mundane smile.

If he would only leave her! But, as they crossed to the curbstone, he
changed over, preserving his proper place. He leaned to her with the
indestructible attention of a lover. His whole manner was inimitably
chivalrous, protective, and polite.

Anne hardened her heart against him. At the church gate she turned and
faced him coldly.

"If you're not going in," said she, "you needn't come any further."

He glanced at the belated group of worshippers gathered before the church
door, and became more than ever polite and chivalrous and protective.

"I must see you safely in," he said, and took up his stand beside her on
the mat.

Her eyes rested on him for a second in reproach, then dropped behind the
veil of their lids. In another moment he would have to go. He had already
surrendered her prayer-book, tucking it gently under her arm.

"You'll be all right when you get in, won't you?" he said encouragingly.

"Please go," she whispered.

"Do I jar, dear?" he asked sweetly.

"You do, very much."

"I'm so sorry. I won't do it again."

But his whispered vows and promises belied him, battling with her
consecrated mood. She felt that his innermost spirit remained in its
profanity, unillumined by her rebuke.

Once more she set her face, and hardened her heart against him, and
removed herself in the silence and isolation of her prayer.

Through the closed door there came the rich, confused murmur of the
Confession. He saw her lips curl, flower-like, with emotion, as her
breath rose and fell in unison with the heaving chant. He watched her
with a certain reverence, incomprehensibly chastened, till the door
opened, and she went from him, moving down the lighted aisle with her
remote, renunciating air.

The door was shut in Majendie's face, and he turned away, intending to
kill, to murder the next hour at his club.

Anne was self-trained in the habit of detachment. She had only to kneel,
to close her eyes and cover her face, and her soul slid of its own accord
into the place of peace. Her very breathing and the beating of her heart
were stayed. Her mind, emptied in a moment, was in a moment filled,
brimming over with the thought of God. To her veiled vision that thought
was like a sheet of blank light let down behind her drooped eyelids, and
centring in a luminous whorl. It fascinated her. Her prayer shot straight
to the heart of it, a communion too swift to trouble or divide the
blessed light.

In that instant her husband, the image and the thought of him, were cast
into the secular darkness.

She remembered how difficult it had once been thus to renounce him.
Her trouble, in the days of her engagement, had been that, thrust him
from her as she would, the idea of his goodness--the goodness that
justified her through its own appeal--would call up his presence,
emerging radiant from the outermost abyss. Inferior emotions then mingled
indistinguishably with her holiest ardours. Spiritually ambitious, she
had had her young eye on a hard-won crown of glory, and she had found
that happiness made the spiritual life almost contemptibly easy. It was
no effort in those days to realise divine mysteries, when the miracle of
the Incarnation was, as it were, worked for her in her own soul; when she
heard in her own heart the beating of the heart of God; when his hand
touched her with a tenderness that warmed her place of peace. She had
hardly known this flamed and lyric creature for herself. It was as if her
soul, resting after long flight, had contemplated for the first time the
silver and fine gold of her wings.

It was the facility of the revelation that had first caused her to
suspect it. And she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon
her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She
could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in
her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost
purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine.

Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God
set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment,
oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for
light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great
mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."

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