Maurice said nothing, but he watched Marwick drink as though he wished the stuff would choke him.
"I told her not to be hurried," said the little man, lowering the glass; "meanwhile I am her devoted servant. In a week or two we will play our trump card. I shall give her a proof of my devoted generosity. Her brother—a fine fellow—involved in speculations and losses! Someone comes to the rescue. Observe—a debtor's prison avoided, tears, gratitude, parental blessings! Tableau! What do you think of it, my dear sir?"
"I think, Marwick, that I am a damned coward."
"Why, no, my dear boy. If your sister says she will marry me, why worry? I shall make her a better husband than you think. You are much too sentimental, St. Croix, much too sentimental. Sentimentality is the devil."
All through these weeks Douce knew that Jordan was so near. He rode over every afternoon to watch the growth of the new house, and yet he came no farther, leaving her to draw the only conclusion that could be drawn. She had now a quite different picture of Jordan from the one she had had of him two or three years ago. The positions had been reversed. He had become a far more impressive figure, not to be thought of as a wild and adventurous fellow who broke heads and made love to actresses, but as Mr. Jordan March of Nandos, a man with a reputation and a man of property. Being very unhappy herself, she imagined Jordan to be happy, and in her heart she knew that she wished that he could find happiness only through her.
But Jordan was not happy.
Even the new house left something to be desired, not because it was failing to prove a solid and handsome house, and all that Mr. Mactavish had planned it to be, but because the finality of it rounded off something which resented such finality. Jordan had put his restlessness, his new-born ambition, into bricks and mortar, and this shell could not contain it. Instantly now the man in him was calling for something more spacious, something that neither money nor even a deified Mactavish could give him. He knew what it was. He wanted life, life of another kind, of a wider and wilder horizon, and beyond and above it stood the figure of Mrs. Merris. She was a symbol, and much more than that. He was unhappy because he had begun to realize that she could be nothing but a symbol.
For he had discovered that she had lovers, and very eminent and formidable lovers, men who would have spoken of him casually as "March," and thought him honoured with a nod and a patronizing smile. He had discovered that she was a great beauty, the "toast" in many of the fashionable coffee-houses, a star in the firmament, an heiress, a little queen. "The beautiful Virginian!" There were gentlemen who were in great haste to persuade her to marry them. She could pick and choose.
At first he had felt fierce about it. He had wished that she had been no more than an orange girl, so that he could go in and fight for her in the alleys of Drury Lane; and then he had known that he wished nothing of the kind. He wanted her to be just what she was, and he knew that in his eyes she could never be anything else. She had been kind to him—just that. Was he a puppy to sulk and squeal because there were more favoured dogs in her world?
He felt that to be peevish was to be little. Surely he could create a dignity of his own, and stand gravely aloof with a look that said, "Madam, your servant." She would respect a man, but not a sullen, whimpering, ridiculous boy. But he was not happy, and as he mounted his horse on that December afternoon he was caused to wonder whether it was a man's business to be happy. There was work to do in the world. A man set his teeth and did it, where a woman would have a fit of the "vapours."
It was a dead day, with dripping trees and wet hedges, mud in the lanes, and the sky one great greyness. She had promised to take her coach and to drive to see the new house, and he viewed this act of hers as a little piece of graciousness spared to him from the fullness of her glory, because she was kind and because he had once served her brother. What more could it be but that? It could be no more, and he compelled himself to accept it at its true value. Indeed, it was she who had suggested the visit after he had grown wise and had let the promise disappear into silence. She had a sense of what was just and gracious; she was the great lady; she stepped down for a moment from her height and was kind to him.
"I'll stand to that," he thought; "I'll show her that I am a man with a sense of what things are."
When Mrs. Mariana's coach drew up outside the new red brick gate pillars she saw him standing in front of the porch and looking towards her across a stretch of mud. It was as though he had not realized the mud until she came with her coach and her comeliness and all the atmosphere of the great lady. It offended him. She saw him glance half-fiercely at it, and then come walking towards her as though it was not there.
He took off his hat, and his eyes looked grey in the December gloom.
"Madam, will you please stay there for a moment."
She was leaning forward and in the act of stepping out, while Sambo stood to gather up and protect the silks and laces under her cloak of black fur. She smiled at him.
"I am not afraid of mud, Mr. March."
"There is no need for you to soil your shoes," he answered.
There were workmen about the house, for she could hear the sound of hammering, and a glazier was fitting glass into one of the upper window frames. Jordan's house stood there, solid and red beyond the mud-splash, but her eyes were on Jordan and not upon the house. She saw him go to a pile of planks, take one in his big hands, and lay the first span of the bridge between them, laying the last plank between the swung back leaf of the iron gate.
"Now."
He smiled, but his eyes were grey, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance. She stepped down, very conscious of this distance and of the way his eyes looked at her, as though he had put up a steel grill between himself and her.
"The English do things thoroughly," she laughed. "Your mud even is thorough."
He did not smile.
"Shall I go first?"
"Please."
She followed him across the bridge of planks, but the crossing of it did not exercise her so much as her need to explain to herself his new formalism.
He turned to her, quietly composed, his hat still in his hand. His lips looked as though they had shut and would not open again. And then she heard him thanking her for coming, as though he were making a speech. He became the guide, the cicerone, politely escorting some great personage, and yet his formalism had a touch of reverence that was fiercely sincere. They entered the house together, and she smelled the smell of the new plaster, and saw a blank white staircase littered with shavings. It was all very raw and new, and she could not help feeling its rawness.
But he gave her no time to loiter or to register impressions. He, too, might have been conscious of the newness of the place, for though he did not hurry, he had the air of a man who had no wish to linger. She knew at once that he was disappointed with the house, and that it was she who had broken the illusion. Again she could see his half-angry face across that pool of mud. She could hear him saying to himself, "Yes, this place is what I am, solid and new and raw, without a tradition, the work of a new man. Just so much money turned into bricks and mortar." It hurt her. She wanted to touch him and say, "No, this is not you. It will never be you. Men grow."
But he would not let her say this. She felt that he was afraid of her and of life, and that he had put on armour. He took her into the long room and showed her the view across the grass to the winter blackness of the oak wood. She admired it, and told him so, but Jordan said nothing. He stood looking at it for a moment with an intense and thoughtful stare, as he had once seen something of beauty there and had lost it, and was wondering why and how.
"A house mellows," she said suddenly.
"This one needs living in," he answered; "I hope the old people will like it."
"Of course."
His eyes searched hers.
"Why—of course, madam?"
"Because you have built it," she said.
She saw him stiffen himself. He made a sudden move into some of t
he other rooms, explaining them with perfunctory grimness, and when they had covered the ground floor he glanced disapprovingly at the litter on the stairs, and excused her from mounting them.
"I will not take you up there. There is nothing much to see but bare walls and shavings."
She felt that he wanted her to leave the house, and wanted it with a passion that was fierce and painful. Was she not too beautifully mature for this raw place and for the man who had built it? One great truth shatters all lesser illusions.
She humoured him. She was wise enough to know what ailed Jordan, and that one word from her might have changed it all, but she did not speak that word. "Climb, climb, climb up to my level—my window." She had many reasons for leaving things as they were, for she loved liberty, and being a woman she loved homage. It was not as though she had not experienced things, or had failed to bite deep into the rich fruits of life, and, so, hungered for it as Douce did. She knew, or thought she did, that the perfume of the flower may be pleasanter than the taste of the fruit. The haste of youth had ceased in her. She liked to watch, to sit at her window, and deep down in her she knew how great the surrender would be to a man of Jordan's make. She was not ripe for a second surrender. There were times when she felt sure that she would never involve herself in a second marriage. The human appeal would have to be very great to persuade her to step down from her pleasant freedom.
And yet she liked this man. He was strong and vital, and he was unhappy. It was pleasant to feel him near her and to know that her power was so great, for most of us love power.
As she walked back across the causeway of planks she paused and spoke to him over her shoulder.
"You know you promised me something else. Have you forgotten?"
Jordan had not forgotten.
"I am at the school every day, madam."
"Then the responsibility is mine. Let us say one day next week. The afternoon of Monday?"
"I shall not forget," he said.
He saw her into her coach, bowed over her hand, and then stood back, watching Sambo climbing up beside the coachman. His eyes avoided hers. He did not look at her again, though she knew that every fibre of him was yearning to look.
"Yes, you have strength," she thought; "weak men spoil things by too much taste."
She drove home as the dusk came down. The lights were lit in Garter Street, and later, other coaches stopped outside her house, and chairmen set their chairs against the railings. The door opened and closed, showing Sambo's black face and flashing teeth, and the figures of gentlemen and gentlewomen going in to dine with Mrs. Merris. She did not know that Jordan was out there, standing in the shadow of a garden wall, watching the coaches and the chairs, her guests, her lighted windows.
He was sad, but with a resolute sadness.
"A man such as I am may get the crumbs," he thought, "and what more can he expect? My world lies on the wrong side of her window."
XXVIII
Mr. Stephen Marwick had staged a pretty domestic play in which he was to be the good angel, but if necessary—the devil. The play opened on the Sabbath, and quite early in the morning before Mr. Sylvester went to his duty, Maurice appeared in the house with his shoes all muddy and his eyes red as to the lids and rather fiercely bright. Douce was busy in the kitchen before going to hear her father's sermon.
She had not seen Maurice come in, but she heard his voice, and she went to the door to listen. Maurice was telling her father something; his voice was emotional, and as she listened, much that had seemed baffling and strange to her became suddenly clear and plain.
"I was a ruined man, but Marwick has saved me."
She drew back a little. She put one hand to her cheek, and her eyes had a look of fear in them. Her father was speaking now, and his voice sounded thin and strange. It was not the voice she knew, but vague and tremulous, the voice of a very old man. So weak was it that she could not catch all the words he uttered, but she caught the sense of them and it amazed her.
He was excusing his son, sympathizing with him, her father—the hard man who preached Hell and the Devil.
She crept away. The suddenness of the thing had shocked her, and yet she had an instant knowledge that somehow the blow that had been turned aside from her brother would fall upon herself. Mr. Marwick had saved him? She had heard a kind of babbling praise of Marwick, Marwick the generous, the wise.
Her heart felt weak within her. She went to her room and sat down upon her bed.
She knew very little of how money was lost and made, but it was plain to her that Maurice had lost money. She had caught something about a debtor's prison. So that was why he had seemed so restless and distraught! And Mr. Marwick had saved him.
As she sat there staring at the wall she realized what would be expected of her and she rebelled against it.
"I'm not grateful—I'm not grateful! Why has it happened?"
She felt that she must try to answer that question, and the answer that came to her left her fiercely resisting. Marwick had done this for her sake. He wanted her, and with this one gesture he had made them all his debtors. But it was not fair. His generosity was false and studied. She did not want him to be generous, because she did not love him, and the debt would fall on her. Yes, she saw this clearly, with the terrible clearness of a woman driven into a corner to be preached at by men. She foresaw it all. They would preach at her, put a halo about the man's head, and make her the sentimental sacrifice. It was so easy, so easy for the men.
Half an hour passed. Douce heard the thud of a closing door, and the sound stirred her to action. She had a will of her own and far more determination than these men of hers imagined, and she rose and dressed herself to go with her father to the meeting-house. She showed no signs of flurry as she put on her black cloak and hood and fastened her shoes, nor was she so wholly involved in her own affairs that she was unable to wonder whether her father was capable of taking the morning's service after the confession that her brother had made to him. She had her hand on the latch of her bedroom door when she heard the sound of a door opening below.
"Douce, it is time to go."
It was her father's voice, and the strength and the resonance of it surprised her. She went down the stairs and found him standing alone in the parlour, wrapped in his old black cloak, his hat on, and with his Bible under his arm.
"I am ready," she said.
She had half expected to find an old man whimpering in a chair, but instead of it she saw the man of her child's memories, cold, reticent, complacent, and the realization of him as the autocrat made her heart beat more strongly. She was afraid and yet not afraid. She rose to the challenge of his rejuvenation, and waited to hear what he would say to her.
But he said nothing. He opened the front door and went out, and following, she locked the door after them and hid the key among the branches of one of the old yews. Her father waited at the gate. Everything was happening just as it had happened for the last ten years; all the details were the same, even his attitude as he paused at the gate. A winter fog hung over the fields, and through the greyness of it the bare elms dripped moisture into the hedges and the puddles in the lane. She was struck by the quietness of everything, a sluggish quietness, dully familiar, in which nothing unusual ever happened.
They walked down the lane together, and Douce was aware of her father's erectness. The shuffle had gone out of his walk, and he moved as though ten years had slipped off his shoulders. He always carried a black stick with a crooked handle, and she saw his hand clenched on it. The bony knuckles were the same, with the skin drawn tightly over them. The blue veins looked like cords. He stared straight down the lane as he walked, and the fog made a dew upon his white beard.
He was silent; he said nothing, and his silence angered her. It was so familiar, so prophetic, so ominous. All these years he had given her either silence or sounds that were to be obeyed, and now when she had come to the crossroads of a woman's life she knew that he would stand like a pious finger-post,
silently pointing. She hated him. He did not understand anything, and he had never tried to understand.
They reached the meeting-house, a little red brick building standing behind a wet, black hedge. They went in. She sat in the same place, saw the same whitewashed walls and the same faces, and heard the same words, yet never before had she felt the terrible atmosphere of the place as she felt it now. The place was unheated, cold, unhuman. The breath steamed in it. There was no life here, no love as she understood it now that it had become a yearning and an anguish. She felt the grimness of everything, the hard complacency of the place and its people. She found herself wondering whether they had been children, or had ever been carried away by some hot-blooded, generous impulse. The place was an ice-house in which these people came to keep their souls from melting into the human thing called sin.
Her father preached, and he preached with a strange vigour. There were moments when he looked ferocious, snapping his jaws like an angry dog. Sometimes he seemed to snarl. He preached on Duty—and the Duty of Sacrifice, and all the while Douce felt that his eyes were upon her. She knew from that sermon what she was to expect. She, a warm, live thing, was to be put into the ice-house of Sylvester St. Croix's god.
Then, they were walking back, after some solemn patter in the graveyard. A red-faced man had kept on blowing his nose into a red handkerchief. Heavy shoes had squelched in the mud. Sylvester walked as he had come, silently, with long loose, gliding strides. He clutched his stick. His Bible made a sharp projection under his cloak. They had reached their own lane before he uttered a word.
"Mr. Marwick is coming this afternoon."
She had expected it.
"You will promise to marry Mr. Marwick. It is your duty."
She had expected that also.
Douce felt that she had nothing to say to him. All her life had been spent in an inarticulate humouring of this man's whims and prejudices. What could she say to him? "I do not love Mr. Marwick." She knew what his answer would be: "I—your father—order you to marry this good man." He would not understand, because he had always refused to understand anything that did not please him. And she felt herself smothering beneath his utter lack of understanding and of sympathy, just as though she had been pushed beneath the surface of some slimy, ice-cold pond. But what was even more hateful to her was the suspicion that while she could not utter one word to him he was horribly satisfied with her silence.
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