Jordan found her sitting sewing by candlelight. She was alone, Tom Nando having gone to bed, and when she raised her eyes and smiled at Jordan he felt the world solid once more under his feet.
"Well, mother."
He crossed the room and kissed her.
"It is good to come home. But you are trying your eyes, you know."
"I like it, my dear," she said.
He mixed himself a glass of Strong waters and sat down by the fire, and his face seemed to smooth itself out. His mouth softened, and his eyes changed from grey to blue.
"Father gone to bed?"
"Yes, he was rather tired, my dear. He gets more tired these days than I should like."
"It is hard for a man to give up, mother. I know that I should find it hard. But when you get into the new house, he can potter about in the garden."
"Yes," said Mrs. Mary, "I'll try and make him lie in the sun."
Jordan got up and lit a long pipe and sat by the fire, smoking and sipping his drink. He was telling himself that it was a pleasant thing to sit by the fire, and that Thomas Nando must have found it so, especially with such a woman as Mrs. Mary. Surely a man might call himself fortunate and happy if he won for himself a woman who could sit happily beside life's fire?
"Any news, mother?"
Mrs. Mary raised her head and looked at him.
"No—I think not, my dear. Of course you have heard that Douce is to be married."
Jordan removed the stem of his pipe from between his lips.
"Douce? No, I had not heard it. Who to?"
"A little attorney man named Marwick. He is old enough to be her father."
"Why—is she marrying him?"
"My dear, don't ask me!" said Mrs. Mary; "Douce is old enough to know her own mind."
But Jordan was astonished, and perhaps a little shocked. Manwise he had never thought of Douce St. Croix as anything but Douce St. Croix. He had never visualized her as Douce married, the wife, belonging to some other man, and to an old man. And somehow his naïve, self-centred manhood disapproved of it.
XXX
A man's mental picture of a woman may be a very false one, and in Jordan's case his mind-pictures of the two women who were to influence his life during this very critical period were very inaccurate and incomplete.
After that fatal meeting with Sfex he drew a curtain across the portrait of Mrs. Mariana Merris, and attempted to suppress all that restlessness which she had encouraged, and to retrace his steps until he regained the old familiar path. As a self-disciplinarian he proved more successful than the ordinary mortal, largely because a man who has taught and trained himself to be an expert in the handling of mathematical problems or the blade of a sword has had to exercise more self-mastery than the man who has never forced himself to do any one thing well. Character is not flung together by chance, and when Jordan was faced with one of life's seeming disillusionments he met it as he would have met an enemy with the sword.
He put himself on guard. He parried the insinuations and the subtleties that were thrust at him, and he struck back. He fought the image of his own desire. He ran his sword through it, and prepared himself to swear that the thing was dead. He would not let himself think of Mrs. Merris. He was rigid, uncompromising, merciless. He had only to repeat to himself certain set formulæ in order to create a spell more potent than the enchantment she had thrown upon him.
Women amuse themselves with one man or another. They take us up and put us down like books. Each man may have his turn in her hands, but to a vain woman the book's value is in its binding. The plain leather is laid aside very quickly when the vellum appears. She had been angry when Sfex had caught her dipping into a common chap-book.
Jordan thought that he had effaced her picture, and he strangled the pain it had caused him with the strong hands of his pride. But there remained that other picture, the picture which had hung there in a corner of his life without his realizing that it was there. But he was aware of it now, and most strangely aware of it, now that another man was lifting it from the wall and preparing to remove it to his own house. Douce St. Croix to be married! Well, what had that to do with him?
Jordan's portrait of Douce had long been incomplete. He had seen her as a little thing, gravely and gently austere, a figure standing apart from the heat and the vigour of life. He had never realized her as the ardent, human girl, a creature whose little hands could clasp and cling, and the black velvet of whose eyes could burn with the light of desire.
But now he was about to see her married, and married to a man who was twice her age, and he found himself looking at her more attentively and with a vague sense of having been dispossessed. He did not like her marriage, and from such gossip as came to him he did not like the man whom she was to marry. Yet the figure of Marwick should have been very appropriate beside the figure of Jordan's Douce, a slightly severe little figure busied all its life with the orderly affairs of a house. He found himself resenting her marriage.
It was as though she had always stood at the back of his mind, without his being actively conscious of her, a little permanent figure which had not changed. And suddenly she had changed; she had come to life, and had begun to breathe in a way that disturbed him. He could not say that he loved Douce, and yet he had the most strange feeling that she belonged to him. Which piece of egotism seemed absurd, but it was not so absurd as it seemed.
For Douce, by this positive act of hers had begun to play upon the complex of a man's vanity and of a long ignored tenderness, and suddenly Jordan saw her again as Douce of the garden, a little, flitting creature with burning hair and great dark eyes in a pale face. And she was going to be given to another man, an old man, a dry stick of a fellow, and deep down in Jordan the essential maleness of him was offended. It was an impressionable moment in him; his emotions were still on the surge below the surface, though he went about with a straight, firm mouth, and steady eyes. He had drawn a veil over one picture, and in the nature of things he began to look more attentively at the other.
Confound this Marwick, what was he, and what had he done to make Douce want to marry him? But did she want to marry him? Was she happy? For a woman may most innocently challenge the whole opposite sex when she decides to choose one particular man from it. And Jordan represented the opposite sex, and also a desire that had been frustrated and made to feel futile. He did not understand half the things that were happening inside himself; few men ever do understand them, and then only when they have learnt to watch themselves and other men playing the eternal game. For in the main Jordan was a man of action, born to accomplish, perhaps to create; he felt the drive of certain impulses, but not always did he understand them. Too much understanding makes us mere watchers and recorders of other men's lives; we are so busy watching and recording that we sit on the benches while the more human and inevitable mortals take the stage.
Mrs. Mary could have told Jordan many things. It is more than likely that she could have explained to him in part why Douce had promised to marry Stephen Marwick, but Jordan did not mention the subject to her, and Mrs. Mary held her tongue. The days went by, and to his surprise Jordan found his thoughts more and more fixed on Douce. The memory of Douce as he had known her in the beginning refused to let him alone. She came to him with a new appeal, and an appeal that touched both his jealousy and his pity.
And then, one day, just as dusk was settling over the city, he fell in with Maurice St. Croix in Covent Garden Square. St. Croix was walking fast in the direction of Long Acre. He had seen Jordan, and he did not wish to see him, and Jordan understood the look. St. Croix's eyes were hard. He tried to swerve aside, but Jordan stopped him.
"Hallo, St. Croix!"
"Oh, it's you, March?"
"You looked as though I were going to dun you."
"What the devil do you mean?"
"Why—nothing."
Jordan stood in his way with an air of finality. He was smiling.
"So Douce is to be married?"
> "Yes, in three months or so."
St. Croix's eyes were insolent and unhappy.
"It is a very good match for her."
"I'm glad."
"Yes, Marwick is a very sound man, old enough to know his own mind."
"That's something," said Jordan; "and I suppose that Douce knows hers?"
St. Croix's eyes said: "And what the devil is that to do with you?"
"Because," said Jordan, answering the question, "we all of us want her to be happy."
Her brother looked as if he wanted to say something sarcastic and bitter, but he changed his mind and found a smile.
"You can include me among them, March. I suppose Stephen Marwick is worth thirty thousand pounds if he is worth a penny, and he is most deucedly fond of my sister."
"I'm glad of that," said Jordan, feeling more and more sure that something was wrong. He had come to know men rather thoroughly, and this man's cheerfulness was both brittle and thin.
They stared at each other. There was nothing more to say, unless one of the two challenged the other's silence.
"How is Mr. Nando?" said Maurice, preparing to move on. "I hear the new house is nearly finished."
"Yes, there is not much more to be done. Mr. Nando is not so young as he was."
"Well, you are big enough for two, March. I must be getting on. Good night. I suppose we may ask you to the wedding?"
"I suppose you may," answered Jordan; "I shall come. Good night to you."
A thin drizzle began to fall through the greyness of the dusk, and though it blotted out St. Croix's retreating figure, it could not make Jordan forget the man's fiercely miserable face. The fellow had seemed all edge, trying to polish himself till he shone with an aggressive cheerfulness, yet standing on his toes to take offence. Jordan knew very well that St. Croix had tried to avoid him, and that there was no reason why he should try to avoid him. He had cried up Douce's coming marriage, just as a shopman cries up a piece of cloth which has to be sold to the first persuadable person who enters the shop.
Jordan was troubled. It was as though he had seen in the brother's hard and unhappy eyes the unhappy eyes of the sister, nor could Jordan escape from the feeling that somehow Douce was in danger. But in danger of what? Of marrying a middle-aged man for his money? It was possible, but Jordan did not believe it, perhaps because he did not wish to believe it.
When he reached Spaniards Court he saw the firelight playing upon Mrs. Mary's window. He had a glimpse of her kneeling in front of the fire, her face and grey hair lit up by it, the tongs in one hand, poker in the other. She did not appear to be very intent upon what she was doing, for a live coal fell through the bars and lay smoking on the hearth, and Mrs. Mary did not seem to notice it. She was watching the flames as though she saw pictures in the fire.
Jordan hung his hat and cloak in the passage and went in to her. She rose from her knees as he entered, almost as though she did not wish him to see her face. She drew back a little into the shadow and sat down in her chair.
"All alone, mother?"
Her face was dim, and for the moment she did not answer him, and he knew that Mrs. Mary's silences were more significant than other women's words. He glanced at her a little uneasily. His first thought was that she was worrying about Tom Nando.
"Douce has been here."
"Douce!"
He was astonished, and he was silent. He stood looking down at her, and at her obscure and serious face. He could not help being struck by the coincidence of her coming, and also by something in Mrs. Mary's voice. It was the same voice that had softly accused and subdued him when he had played some wild and mischievous trick as a boy.
"She is very unhappy."
Again, Jordan felt himself accused, and it roused in him a vague impatience. He drew a chair close to the fire, and sat down so that Mrs. Mary could not see his face.
"About her marriage, mother?"
"Well, I suppose it must be that."
"Then she did not tell you?"
"O—no."
"Then how do you know that she is unhappy?"
Mrs. Mary gave him a look she would have given to a child.
"Women know something without asking or being told."
"Do they?" said Jordan. "Well, perhaps a man may feel the same about another man. It is queer that Douce should have been here, for I met her brother half an hour ago. He struck me as being ashamed of something, but what it was I don't know."
Mrs. Mary sighed, and stroked her cheek meditatively with one hand.
"This marriage," she began.
"Yes," said Jordan, "this marriage. I don't understand it."
"No."
"A man old enough to be her father. It's wrong. Do you think that old St. Croix has forced her into it? She cannot be in love with the man."
"She might be," said Mrs. Mary, venturing a shot at him.
She saw Jordan draw up his feet and give a quick little lift of the head.
"She might be. But suppose she is not?"
"I suppose she has reasons."
He sat considering something and staring hard at the fire.
"I can think of nothing, mother, that would justify a woman marrying a man if she does not love him."
"My dear!" said Mrs. Mary, "how little you know about it, you men!"
It was a fair hit, and he took it gravely, silently, without any resentment. He picked up the poker and began to play with it, and presently he came out of his silence.
"Yes, I dare say that is true. You mean to say, mother, that a woman might marry a man——"
"Because she was angry with herself."
"With herself? But why——?"
"Because of some other man, some other man who had made her feel a bitter fool."
Jordan frowned.
"You mean that some other fellow has made love to her and then——"
"Perhaps."
"I should like to break his neck."
"I dare say you would," she said with a queer look at him, "but the trouble would be to find the man. Douce would never tell."
"I suppose not. But if there is a man."
"Perhaps you may find that out," said she.
And then, most inexplicably, she got up and left him. She was half-way between laughter and tears, while Jordan, after one questioning glance at the closing door, resumed his staring at the fire.
"There may be something in all that," he thought. "Poor little Douce! That brother of hers knows something about it. By God! I feel inclined to ask him."
Mrs. Mary had run upstairs, and finding Tom Nando looking grieved over a stocking that had a hole in it, and holding it out to her with a look of accusation, she did what was for her a most unusual thing, she scolded him.
"Yes, you men always find holes in things at the wrong moment, or just when it is too late."
Nando looked at her benignantly.
"Why, mother, what has upset you?"
"Nothing," she said, "nothing. Give me the stocking. You helpless creatures, God forgive you!"
Mrs. Mary had felt Douce's unhappiness, but she had not plumbed the deeps of it or understood the violence of its moods. It had begun in a mad moment of mingled self-abasement and reckless generosity, but now it had entered upon a period of increasing repulsion and passionate inward protest. She had an elderly lover, who, after dusty years of celibacy, had become like an undisciplined boy. Mr. Marwick, grave, precise, kindly, had not seemed to her so impossible a mate, but Mr. Marwick as a lover, eager as a little dog, insidiously amorous, had shocked the clean ardour of the girl.
She lay awake at night, hating him. She hated her brother; there were moments when she felt desperate, miserable waking moments, when the whole body and soul of her were in revolt.
On leaving Mrs. Mary, Douce knew that he would be waiting for her in a hired coach, for he had promised to have it ready at five o'clock outside the entry into Spaniards Court. It was there, and Marwick came out of it hat in hand. She saw his teeth and the sort of s
meary shine in his eyes.
"Here I am, sweetheart."
She shivered. He was fumbling to help her in, but she fluttered in like a bird, and shrank away into the far corner. He climbed in after her and the coach started. She felt herself shut up in the close and oppressive darkness, with something that she loathed and feared, something which wild instinct told her was ready to attack her and would have to be resisted.
They had not gone a hundred yards before she felt his mouth at her lips and throat. He began to pour out words of violent tenderness.
She struggled.
"Don't! I hate it."
"My dear," he said, becoming the Mr. Marwick who had so impressed her father, "forgive me; I am so very much in love with you."
He tried a reassuring pat of the hand, but succeeded only in patting the stuffed seat of the coach.
Mr. Marwick had insisted on Sylvester St. Croix hiring a strong girl to relieve Douce of the heavy housework, and had even offered to pay her wages, and this girl, when she opened the door to him that night, was struck by the dead look on Douce's face. She seemed tired out, languid, exhausted by some struggle. The girl noticed more than this, something that she could laugh over and tell to other vulgar wenches. But Douce was unconscious of being watched. She felt dully that she had come to the limit of her strength, and that it would all end in some desperate surrender or some equally desperate revolt.
Marwick did not stay long. He showed himself particularly mild and ingratiating, and then took himself off to his house at Tottenham. Douce sat down by the fire, a little limp and tired figure, while her father, spectacles on nose, poked his way through some pious book. The wind made a noise in the chimney; the old clock ticked; outside, the bare branches of the elms were groping at the obscure sky.
Douce stared at the fire.
"I think I would rather die," she was thinking.
And then someone came into the house. It was her brother, and yet not her brother as she knew him. His mouth smiled, but it was a smile of tight lips and vicious teeth, and there was no laughter in his eyes. He was wearing a great black coat with bulging pockets, and when he took his hat off his forehead looked all puckered. Douce noticed that he was flushed, and that his movements were quick and jerky, as though some strong emotion was pulling at the strings. He talked a great deal, and he talked very fast. Moreover, he did not take off his coat and sit down, but kept wandering about the room.
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