‘I know as much about Mrs. Pethwick as you do. Don’t you see that because she’s different from the others makes all the more reason why you should treat her the same? You’re far more likely to encourage her in her—failing if you treat her like an outcast.’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy.
‘Try and run in there during the next day or two,’ concluded Mr. Laxton.
If Dorothy had not been Dr. Pethwick’s lover she might have continued to argue the matter; but as it was she could only yield. She was morbidly anxious not to discuss Mrs. Pethwick—or Doctor Pethwick, either—with other people.
And that meant that she had to pay the call. Mr. Laxton had the memory for detail which is so necessary in a headmaster or a brigadier-general. Dorothy would not lie to him; one of her theories was that most of the troubles of this world are initiated or kept up by lies, and he would be sure to ask, later, if she had paid the call. So that at four o’clock on a hot Wednesday afternoon Dorothy set herself to carry out the distasteful task. She wore her least obtrusive costume and hat for some obscure reason or other—perhaps because she wanted to leave the minimum target for the inevitable remarks which Mrs. Pethwick would make afterwards. Mrs. Pethwick was always shabby and ill-brushed.
Dorothy came to 41, Launceton Avenue—it was the first time she had been nearer to it than the corner since Mrs. Pethwick’s ‘accident’—and knocked at the door. Naturally, inevitably, it was Pethwick who opened the door. She had been so anxious that he should be out; she hated the thought of having to talk to the two of them together, but presumably he had come home the moment afternoon school was finished. Still, she would have to go through with it now.
‘Is Mrs. Pethwick at home?’ she asked.
It was a second or two before Pethwick answered, and during that time she had to look up at his face. It was transfigured. His pleasure at this unexpected encounter was obvious. He was like a child, and the renewed realisation of this sent a pang through her despite the armour plate of indifference she had so carefully assumed.
‘Mary’s out at the moment,’ said Pethwick. ‘But I’m expecting her any time now. Won’t you come in?’
The subsequent history of the world trembled in the balance as Dorothy debated the matter within herself. If she came in she would have an excuse to cut the interview shorter after Mrs. Pethwick’s return; if she went away she would only have the whole blessed business to go through again later on. She came in. Pethwick offered her a chair in the dingy sitting-room, and fluttered round her.
For once in a way those two had nothing to say to one another save banalities. They were reduced to remarking how hot it was, and how near the end of term had come, just as if they really were an assistant schoolmaster and his headmaster’s daughter. There was awkwardness between them, and Dorothy was fully aware that this was because of the indifference to which she was pretending.
‘Mary often goes to her mother’s in the afternoon,’ said Pethwick, struggling to force formality into his voice. ‘But she’s nearly always home at tea-time. I can’t think what’s happened to her.’
That was an unfortunate remark. Both of them had ideas about what may have happened to her. Pethwick struggled on heroically.
‘Let me get you some tea,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you need it in this heat.’
Dorothy was past even the use of monosyllables by now. She could only make noises. Pethwick went out into the kitchen; through the open door she heard him fill the kettle and put it on the gas stove, and then she heard crockery rattle. For a minute or two she forced herself to sit still, but at last restlessness overcame her and she wandered out into the kitchen too. Some of the necessary tea-things were on a tray, and now Pethwick, inclining his lean length over the table, was laboriously trying to cut wafer-thin bread and butter.
‘Oh, let me do that,’ she said impulsively, and came up beside him to take the knife and loaf from him.
Their hands touched, and Pethwick was a man as well as a mathematician, and Dorothy was a woman as well as a pacifist. Something exploded within them. Pethwick’s arms went out to her just as she came into them. Dorothy reacted wildly from her previous pose. Emotion tore at both of them. He caught her against him; the pressure of her breasts set both of them throbbing with passion. Dorothy felt the strength drain out of her legs, and Pethwick swayed as her weight came upon his arms. Somehow they tottered through the two doors into the sitting-room. The big armchair was ugly, but it received the two of them with grandfatherly hospitality. They kissed and strained together. Dorothy’s hat fell unregarded to the floor. There were tears in her eyes.
After five minutes the wild trembling ended. They had not mastered themselves, but they could at least be to some extent purposeful. Dorothy swept the hair from her eyes and could look at him, bending her head back above his encircling arms. With the relaxation of inhibitions the question she had so wanted to ask came leaping from her lips without her volition.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘You don’t sleep with her, do you?’
‘No,’ said Pethwick. ‘Not for years.’
Even Pethwick was not quite such a fool as to misunderstand that question, and his answer was the simple truth. With that she. kissed him again, madly, but now that they had begun to talk articulately kisses would not stop Pethwick from uttering the thoughts which came surging up in his mind.
‘We must leave her,’ he said. ‘We must go away together.’
Even at that moment Dorothy noticed that his usual mild tenor was thick and hoarse; she had come across the expression ‘hoarse with passion’ in some second-class novel, but she had never expected to hear her gentle professor speak like that. It gave her an insight into the turmoil within him.
But to a woman a proposal of adultery is a matter of even more importance than a proposal of marriage. Dorothy forced herself to think clearly, and discuss the matter sanely.
‘You know what you are asking me?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Pethwick, and now, too late, he tried to return her kisses. She received them, but without the abandon of two minutes ago. And at the first opportunity she went on with her questionings.
‘Listen a moment, dear,’ she said. ‘Tell me, how much money have you got?’
Pethwick considered for a moment. There was some sort of accumulated balance at the bank; he would receive two months’ salary in a fortnight’s time. Perhaps he had two hundred pounds—but he knew in that instant that two hundred pounds was nothing in the present crisis. Two hundred pounds a year in Consols was about the least that Dorothy would consider as ‘money’ in this connection.
‘I haven’t any,’ said Pethwick.
Dorothy’s only hope faded; for a brief space she had been sustained by the thought that by some miracle Pethwick might have considerable savings. She tried to smile at him, and shook her head.
‘You say “Come away with me,”’ she said. ‘What happens to a man who runs away with his headmaster’s daughter? You’d lose your job.’
‘Yes,’ said Pethwick, sadly.
‘Perhaps Father would have to leave too—it’s quite possible, but it wouldn’t matter, as he’d never have me back again. You’d never get another teaching job, would you? And you’d have to keep us both—and—and her.’
Pethwick drooped a little with every word she said, but she went on, hopefully again, now.
‘What about other jobs?’ she said. ‘You’re a distinguished scientist. Is there any professorship open to you?’
Pethwick shook his head. He could not conceive of himself pushing into any of the possible posts; they went mostly to people who wrote books and who had a genius for self-advertisement, like Norbury.
‘Nothing?’ asked Dorothy, sadly.
‘There’s calculating,’ said Pethwick desperately. ‘At the Observatory—’
‘Hack work?’ demanded Dorothy.
Pethwick could only agree. He had heard what sort of pay was given to mathematical assistants—and he had heard, too, h
ow much competition there was for that employment nowadays.
‘That’s not the sort of work for you, dear,’ said Dorothy emphatically. She had an uncanny insight into the by-ways of making a living in the sciences.
‘You see, dear,’ went on Dorothy, ‘I have to think for the two of us. One of us must be practical-minded at least.’
Dorothy left it to be understood that she was practical-minded; she honestly thought she was.
‘But when you publish your results,’ persisted Dorothy. ‘When people get to hear about the Klein–Pethwick Effect. You’ll be famous then, won’t you? You’ll be distinguished. And then—It won’t be more than a few months.’
There is little need to follow that conversation further. Perhaps at that very moment a hundred thousand other couples were hoping for a happy consummation of their affairs ‘in a few months’ time’ when something or other should happen. Dorothy had no realisation of how many people wait in similar circumstances; and she had no knowledge of how many people wait in vain. She thought their case was unique. But they were full of hope; they had only just begun to wait, and they could make their plans hopefully. Dorothy was quite sure that her father would be reconciled to her marriage via the divorce court if only Pethwick were famous enough and rich enough—and she set her teeth and swore she would make him both; and she would not be heart-broken if her father never were reconciled.
And Pethwick was content to listen to her. He really knew nothing about the practical details of life—he did not even know the conditions that had to be fulfilled before a divorce could be obtained—but of one thing he was sure. On one subject all his early environments made him extremely susceptible, and that was in the matter of unemployment. Everyone he had ever known had always had a haunting fear at the back of his mind lest he should lose his job. A job was a thing to be clung to like life itself, at least until a chance of a better one presented itself. Pethwick as a boy had had ample opportunity of observing the miseries of unemployment; Dorothy’s mention of the possibility touched him in a tender spot. Perhaps there was no other way at all in which she could have induced him to be methodical in his passion.
Yet it was only natural that after their lucid interval they should relapse again. The glowing future of fame and comfort and love which Dorothy painted for them seemed to be very close at hand, and they kissed again in rapture, and the kisses awoke passion once more and they strained against each other, half weeping with happiness, and they swore eternal faithfulness to each other, as if it were the first time in the history of the world that such vows had ever been exchanged.
Then in the midst of it all something happened. Dorothy went rigid in Pethwick’s arms, and tore herself free of him. Somebody was opening the street door with a key, and that somebody could only be Mary Pethwick. Fortunately she fumbled for some time before she got the key into the lock. When Mary came in, stumbling a little as usual, Dorothy had put on her hat again and was sitting self-consciously in a chair, while Pethwick was walking aimlessly and equally self-consciously about the room. Mary eyed the two of them with the endless deliberation of the person who is not quite sober. Dorothy took a grip of herself; she was not born for intrigue.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Pethwick,’ she made herself say, brightly. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come back in time for me to see you. I was just saying to your husband that I didn’t think I should be able to stop very much longer.’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Mary Pethwick.
Pethwick tried to be bright.
‘I was just getting tea ready,’ he said—and as he said it realisation came upon all three of them.
‘What a funny smell,’ said Mary Pethwick, and Dorothy went tense and a chill ran down her spine, and Pethwick strode hastily into the kitchen. The little place was full of steam; the gas still burned in the ring on the top of the oven, and on the ring lay a few twisted bits and slips of metal—all that remained of the kettle which Pethwick had set on the gas half an hour before. He tried vainly to conceal the spectacle from his wife as she came lurching after him. Dorothy knew his endeavour would be unsuccessful Still keeping herself in hand she forced herself to enter the kitchen as well, and to be material about it,
‘There!’ she said, ‘We’ve forgotten all about the kettle! I’m afraid that’s my fault, Mrs. Pethwick. The Doctor wanted to get tea, and I wanted to talk, and between the two of us we simply forgot all about it.’
Dorothy tried to laugh. She told herself as she did so that the noise she managed to produce was more like the rattling of a skeleton’s bones.
Mary rolled a wide and stupid eye upon her. She said nothing, and hope surged in Dorothy’s breast that perhaps she had drunk too much to notice anything odd about the situation. Pethwick tried his best to ease the tension.
‘I’ll have the other kettle boiling in a minute,’ he said. ‘You take Miss Laxton into the sitting-room, Mary. Tea won’t be long.’
Dorothy noticed with approval that he did not sound like a stage conspirator as he spoke. He used the same mild tenor in which he always spoke; it neither trembled nor went flat. Dorothy did not really appreciate that this excellence of acting was due to his natural simplicity. If he had a commonplace thing to say he could not help but say it in a commonplace manner, whatever the tension around him. Dorothy thought it was an undiscovered talent for diplomacy.
The approval she felt did nothing, however, to sustain her during that grim interval in the sitting-room before the reappearance of Pethwick. The room was swelteringly hot, and to her it felt hotter still. She tried to act as she would have acted if she had been paying a call and had not just been kissing Dr. Pethwick—which meant that she had to talk in a spritely manner on indifferent subjects. She tried to keep her voice from trembling and her tone normal. But Mary only regarded her with wide expressionless eyes and replied with monosyllables. Dorothy began to feel frightened, until at last the door opened, and Pethwick came blundering in with the tea-tray.
Despite all Dorothy’s strong opinions on the equality of the sexes it irked her to see him doing women’s work. She felt annoyed that he should have to make tea and cut bread and butter and set out cakes on a plate while this horrible woman sat and did nothing; but the feeling of annoyance was all the same overlaid by the intense embarrassment of the situation. No one ate very much, Mary because she habitually ate very little, and Dorothy and Pethwick because they had no appetite. Dorothy crumbled a piece of bread and butter; she drank half a cup of tea (in which Mary had put sugar although Dorothy disliked it) and then stood up and said she must go. Mary, still impassive and expressionless, bade her good-bye without attempting to detain her. Pethwick saw her to the door. She still felt awkward as she said good-bye to him; she could not meet his eyes.
Chapter Seven
There is a certain diabolical cunning which is the gift of drunkenness. Despite her mazed and muzzy state when she came in Mary had been able to draw the obvious conclusion from the data presented to her—from that melted kettle, and from Dorothy’s embarrassed manner, and from Pethwick’s unconcern. Such was her cunning that she knew on the instant that she could not trust herself to act effectively on the spot; that she would need time to make a plan and carry it through, and that until that time came she had best act stupidly.
A woman of Mary’s type does not face the possible loss of her husband with equanimity. Mary would fight tooth and nail to keep Pethwick—there is no need to debate the question as to whether or not she loved him; the factor of decisive importance was that she wanted him and was determined to keep him. Even if no other feeling entered into the matter, it was to Pethwick that she owed a social eminence among her friends which she valued, and the moderate amount of money she needed, and the prestige of being a married woman. She was not going to risk the loss of these, to face the gratified pity of her friends, without a struggle.
For thirty-six hours she brooded over the business, solitarily. Then, when self-pity overcame her, she plunged into one day’s dr
unkenness. During that day she seemed less than human. It appeared impossible that any train of thought could survive in that drink-sodden brain. But when the two bottles of whisky were finished (Mary had never acquired any degree of immunity to alcohol) she emerged from the debauch with trembling hands, sick and shaken, and yet with a plan matured and ready for use.
It is hard to say how much of it was conscious thought and how much of it blind instinct. Mary had never admitted to herself that she ever drank at all, and yet she deliberately forced herself into complete sobriety, denying herself the soothing little sips for which her jangled nerves shrieked incessantly. She knew that to carry the plan through she must be rigidly sober—it was bad for her temper, but she held to it with the obstinacy of a mad woman. After two days of complete abstinence she sallied forth to return her call upon Miss Laxton.
Dorothy’s heart sank when the parlour-maid announced ‘Mrs. Pethwick.’ The visit had taken her quite by surprise. There was no time to do anything. She was ‘at home’ that afternoon, Mrs. Pethwick was already entering the room, and it was only ten minutes past three—it might be as much as an hour before anyone else came in. She put down her book and rose to meet whatever was to come. But here, in her own house, nearly a week after she had last been kissed by Dr. Pethwick, she felt equal to anything. If Mrs. Pethwick had come to make a scene, or if she had come to be more subtly rude, or if she had merely come calling, she would stand her ground and give as good as she got.
‘What a pleasure to see you!’ she said, crossing the room to meet her. ‘You don’t come nearly often enough. Bring the tea in, please, Beatrice. Where will you sit, Mrs. Pethwick?’
They sat down, and they tried to talk politely while Beatrice jingled in with the tea-tray and while Dorothy poured out tea. Then, when the door was shut again, and they were settled down, there was a curious little pause, as if each were waiting for the other to speak. Just for a moment there fluttered through Dorothy’s mind a memory of what she had read about Fontenoy—of the French officers who called out, ‘Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers!’ as the lines closed. But the impression of hostility vanished at once. Mrs. Pethwick was obviously in a good temper, and obviously quite sober. Dorothy, with only a hearsay knowledge of the effects of drink, decided that Mrs. Pethwick must have no recollection at all of their two previous encounters—of the incidents of the black eye and the melted kettle.
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