Apples of Gold

by Warwick Deeping

  "I have been to Tom's," he said; "I had to meet Lord Lumley there."

  "I hope you have enjoyed yourself, Jordan."

  "It was a merry crowd."

  She glanced at the clock.

  "It is nearly midnight."

  "Why, so it is. You ought to have gone to bed, sweetheart."

  She gave him another look.

  "I preferred to wait for you."

  He realized that he was being reproached, and for what? For leaving her for three hours to meet men, men whom it was necessary for him to meet?

  "Douce," he said, "you know—I have to go out sometimes. Come along, I'll carry you upstairs."

  She would not let him carry her to bed, but walked austerely before him, carrying the candle, and for the first time since their marriage the thought flashed on him: "She wants so much. Would Mrs. Merris have been grave with me because I had spent an hour or two with a crowd of men?" The songs he had heard at "Tom's" were in his head. "Red Coats—Red Coats!" How they had shouted the chorus! And then had come: "Larry up, and Larry down. Chasing petticoats around the town."

  Gradually, he became aware of the fact that he was being watched, devotedly, jealously, as though he were a boy who might get into mischief. Whenever he had been out, Douce seemed to expect him to tell her what he had been doing and where he had been. If he did not tell her, she sat and looked silently hurt and austerely reproachful.

  "I do want you to tell me everything, Jordan dear."

  "Why, of course, poppet," said he; "you and I can have no secrets."

  Then he found himself excusing her to himself and saying: She is a dear little thing, and I suppose she loves me very much. She has such a sense of duty. She has a will of her own, too, judging by the way she has got those two wenches under her thumb. O well, I suppose marriage smoothes itself out.

  He did not know that when a woman had been aroused she may become mistrustful of the man she loves, and still more mistrustful of other women. Douce was possessive. Passionate and absorbed, she had not the bigness to realize that the more you give the more you keep. Moreover, she had never forgotten the memory of those days when Jordan had been held to be a wild fellow, and now that he was hers these memories rose up and filled her with fierce combativeness. She meant to keep her man. She was tending to become a little, passionate prude, ready to hate all other women who were below the age of forty, and to condemn in others as loathsome and horrible the very natural tenderness that she found so sweet. Here the St. Croix thinness showed. She had the knack of separating her moods and keeping them apart. She never forgot the night in the house of horrors, but she also remembered Miss Nancy Sweethaws. At the back of her mind was the thought that it was her sacred duty to "reform" Jordan, and reformation meant keeping him for herself.

  One day when she was abed and suffering, Jordan got on his horse and went for a ride. He arrived at the New House to find old Nando with his coat off in the garden, and Mrs. Mary pretending to pick flowers, but keeping her thrush's eyes on her beloved man.

  "Dan, I'm glad you've come."

  She got Jordan away into the paddock, the excuse being that she wanted to show him her new cow.

  "I wish you would put in a word, my dear. Did you notice how feeble he is?"

  "He is not so young as he was, mother."

  "Dan, if the dear new place—your place—should kill him! He will go out and work—and try to do the things he did ten years ago."

  Jordan looked shocked.

  "Mother! I never thought of that. I'd rather the house had never been built. I'll speak to him."

  "Do, my dear. He'll take from you what he'll take from no one else. And how is dear Douce?"

  Jordan was gazing across the paddock to the oak wood, absorbed in thinking of Tom Nando's feebleness and how too much enthusiasm could be curbed.

  "Not very well, mother. I left her resting. I ought to be back soon."

  Mrs. Mary observed him without him realizing that he was being observed.

  "Young women must learn to do without their men sometimes."

  "She misses me, mother."

  "Ah," said Mrs. Mary, "she's young. She may have more things to think of later on. Don't you spoil her, my dear. I'll tell you a secret. Men get more from a woman by taking than by giving."

  Jordan smiled at her.

  "Fancy you telling me that!"

  "Well, my dear, I had to learn it. I'm not arguing the rights and wrongs of it, but what counts in life is human nature, more than the Ten Commandments."

  Jordan got old Nando by the arm, and persuading him to a sheltered seat in a snug corner, he spoke to him with some of the solemnity that Tom had used on him in the old days.

  "I did not build this place for you to kill yourself in it, father. If that lazy rogue Potts cannot do the work as it should be done, you must have another man."

  "But I enjoy the work, my lad."

  "And mother enjoys the worry!"

  "O, women are always fussing."

  "Then I am an old woman, sir. You are worth more to us than a row of broad beans."

  Nando gave him a wink and a smile.

  "I'm a tiresome old man. But I'll think about it, Dan. O, damn it, it's a beastly business, growing old! I sometimes wish I had been killed with a sword in my hand."

  "Mother would rather have you alive. I suppose it is hard for the one who is left behind."

  Tom Nando winced.

  "Right, lad; I'll think of that."

  Jordan rode home another way, and his nag took him into familiar and enchanted lanes and brought him into Garter Street and past Mrs. Mariana's house. He looked up half fearfully at the sacred window, but she was not there, and instead of her indolent, sunny face with its wise and subtle eyes he saw Sambo's black countenance. Sambo grinned at him, and touched his forehead, and Jordan could see him saying: "Good day, sah."

  He rode on, remembering his promise to take Douce to see this great lady, and then he fell to wondering what these two women would think of each other. He had not entered Mrs. Mariana's house since his marriage, but he saw no reason why he should not enter it, especially if he took Douce with him. In fact, Mrs. Merris might be good for Douce. He had begun to admit that his little wife was an exacting young woman, and that the easy house in Spaniards Court suggested affectionate tyrannies.

  "I'm a beast to think of her in that way. But she ought to get out more and see the world. She does not seem to understand that a man wants his work and his play. Old Sylvester has made her—narrow. Pure and sweet, but narrow."

  He had travelled so far that he was having to confess to her narrowness.

  But women are quick. Mrs. Merris would teach her things. Douce would see how a great lady lives.

  He had begun seriously to think of taking Douce to see Mrs. Merris.

  At Spaniards Court he found Douce still abed, a little white-faced thing pinched with pain.

  "You have been away from me all day."

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and gently stroked her hair.

  "Sweetheart, a man has things to do. How are you now?"

  "O, pretty bad. I shall be better to-morrow."

  He stayed with her for an hour, and though his hands were gentle, his thoughts were not so gentle as his hands. He was troubled. The insurgent male in him was beginning to rebel against the soft life that he was living, and against the cloying exactions of her love for him. He felt that some of the male virtue had gone out of him and that he was becoming womanish. Like Delilah—Douce was cutting her Samson's hair.

  Presently he went down and brought her up supper and sat by her bedside, after he had propped her up with pillows. Her pain had passed. She began to shine again in the possession of him, and to look more sleek and pretty, for a woman's face is a screen—either dark or bright as the heart of her glows or fails.

  "Dear Jordan, how good you are to me."

  He kissed her hair, and while his lips were touching it he found himself thinking that their marriage would be
a very happy affair if only she would realize him as a man.

  He drew her head against his shoulder. A sudden impulse persuaded him to speak.

  "I want to talk to you, dear."

  "Yes, Jordan."

  "Now—you must not misunderstand what I am going to say. We have been married two months, and I think we have been happy?"

  "O, very."

  He held her close.

  "Douce, I have altered my life a great deal for your sake, but a part of it must go on as in the old days. I have to go out and about among men, see my friends. We have had hardly a soul to the house since we were married."

  He was aware of her as a little figure that had grown slightly rigid.

  "What have I done wrong, Jordan?"

  "Why, nothing, sweetheart. Don't take it in that way. I'm rather proud of my little wife. I want my friends to see her, and I want her to see my friends. We must go out and about more. If we bury ourselves too much——"

  "Of course, Jordan. My whole wish is to please you."

  She clung to him lovingly.

  "Now, where shall we begin?"

  "You dear soul," he said tenderly.

  "Dear Jordan."

  "You must have a carriage and be seen abroad. People have been asking me what I have done with my little wife. I am going to take yon to see them."

  "I shall love it."

  "Very well, we will begin in a day or two. And I want you to have one or two women friends. I have one in my mind, and I shall take you to see her."

  "A friend of yours?"

  "Well, in a sense, yes, though she is in a world above me. I know she will love you, Douce."

  Again he was conscious of her rigidity.

  "What is her name?"

  "Mrs. Merris. She came from Virginia. I was a friend of her brother's. And then, there is Mrs. Mascall, a dear creature, and old Mrs. Barter, and Miss Debenham——"

  "What a lot of women you know, Jordan."

  "Well, they are all good women, sweetheart; and then there will be the men. Bliss and Cartwright, and a crowd more. They have been teasing me and telling me that I am a jealous tyrant."

  He turned her face to his and kissed her, but her little mouth was not so warm and impulsive as he would have wished it to be.

  Jordan's letter to Mariana Merris was a very short and simple epistle, and yet the writing of it kept him for an hour at the desk. He sent his groom to Garter Street on the following morning, and the same evening he had Mrs. Merris's reply:

  "Bring your little wife to see me on Friday. Let us say four o'clock. I shall be alone, and you must take tea with me."

  Her letter said even less to him than Jordan's had said to her, though each had tried to read what was behind and beneath the lines.

  "I wonder if he is happy."

  She re-read the formal and brief sentences. He asked for the honour of being permitted to present Mrs. Jordan March to her. It was quite obvious that he could have written in no other way, and yet his formalism hurt her more than she liked to allow. She was full of curiosity to see the girl whom Jordan had married, and in whose hands lay this man's destiny, for Mrs. Merris had more than a feeling that Jordan would be made or marred by a woman. Big men asked so much more of life.

  Mrs. Jordan March and her man drove in a coach to Garter Street, and Douce was dressed as she was always dressed, very simply and in black. She was nervous and determined not to show her nervousness, and this repression made her look stiff and set and quite unable to smile—the young wife going out to her first battle, for that was how Douce regarded it. She was prepared to hate Mrs. Merris, but she did not know how much she would hate her.

  Sambo preceded them up the stairs. He opened the door of a beautiful room, and Douce saw a woman rising from a chair, a woman whom she realized that she had seen before. But where? And then Douce remembered that day of anguish when she had fled for help to Spaniards Court, and Meg had taken her to watch Jordan fencing. Mrs. Merris was the Lady of the Gallery, that mysterious woman sitting alone where the sunlight made a yellow glory about her.

  Douce became stone.

  "My dear—I am very glad to see you."

  Mrs. Merris was repulsed. She saw the stiff white face, the hardness of the dark eyes, the mouth thinned to a red line. She had come forward as though to kiss Douce, drawn to her by some sudden attraction, but the little figure, rigid and hostile, warned her to keep her distance. There was one of those pauses when two people become aware of an inevitable antagonism.

  "Mr. March wished me to call on you, madam."

  She curtsied.

  "It was I who asked him to bring you to see me."

  "Madam, I quite understand."

  Jordan stood there to one side, watching them both, and realizing that something was very wrong. He felt that his intervention was needed.

  "This is the first visit we have paid."

  He looked at Douce with a troubled appeal, but she did not appear to be aware of him. Her eyes were on the enemy.

  "Please be seated, Mrs. March."

  "Thank you, madam."

  She took the edge of one of the damask-covered chairs, her hands clasped in her lap, her little figure alert yet stiff.

  "You have a very pleasant house, madam."

  "Yes—I am very fond of it."

  "It is the first time that I have seen such a house. And there you have the advantage of me."

  "I?"

  "You have seen our house, I think. Perhaps it was Mrs. Nando who told me——"

  Jordan saw Mariana Merris smile, but it was one of those smiles that blind and make mystery. Her face seemed to soften. He had a feeling that she saw something that he could not see, that some indefinable flush of emotion had spread through her and had come to the surface. He noticed that she spoke very gently to Douce.

  "O yes, I remember. Perhaps—some day—you will let me come and see you."

  She seemed to be speaking to a shy and suspicious child. And then Miss Stamford came in and began to twitter, and after receiving Douce's curtsy, took Jordan to the other end of the room to be re-introduced to Poll, who had remained most unaccountably silent through all the scene.

  "I congratulate you, Mr. March—I really do congratulate you. Such a sweet little wife."

  Mrs. Mariana was holding Douce under the spell of her languid and easy voice.

  "I shall always be grateful to your husband, Mrs. March. He saved my brother from one of the most dangerous bullies in London. He is a very wonderful swordsman. Yes, to humour me he allowed me to come one day and see him fence. But—of course—you must have seen that often."

  Cleverly, kindly, she tried to put Douce into the ascendant, to grant her all these privileges for which this little thing fought.

  "Yes, madam, I have."

  "And how do you like Spaniards Court?"

  "I like it very well, madam."

  Sambo came in with the tea, and during the drinking of it Miss Julia chattered and bobbed to Douce, and Mrs. Merris was able to observe both the wife and the husband. She thought that Jordan looked more kindly at Douce than Douce looked at him; it was the bigger nature bending to the smaller one. That Douce loved her husband was too fiercely plain, but she loved him because he was hers. Her little hands were hands that clutched and held.

  But to Mrs. Merris the most significant incident was a glance that passed between herself and Jordan. She felt that he was not happy, that he was asking her to be tolerant, to help him somehow to influence Douce, to teach her without hurting her. "For she is such a little thing. She does not understand the things that you understand."

  She was sure of it, and before they left her she contrived to draw Jordan to the other end of the room and to speak to him alone. She pretended to be teasing the parrot, crooking her forefinger at the bird, and making a soft, sibilant whistling.

  "May I come and see your little wife?"

  "We shall be honoured."

  "No, please, not in that way. But do you think she w
ill see me?"

  He looked at her with surprise in his steady, deep-set eyes, and then it seemed to her that he understood.

  "I wish her to. It might be good for her. I'm not disloyal in wishing that."

  "No. And it means that you trust me."

  "I think that I trust you more than I trust myself."

  Douce had been throwing restless glances over her shoulder, and suddenly she was on her feet, and making it plain to the husband that his wife thought it time to go.

  "I am very much obliged to you, madam."

  "You will let me come and see you, my dear?"

  "I am sure, madam, that that would be too great a condescension."

  In the coach she sat very upright, looking severely out of the window, leaving to Jordan the other window and her silence. He was disappointed and hurt, and, perhaps, forewarned that this marriage of his was going to be a difficult business.

  He felt that the silence had to be broken.

  "I hope you like Mrs. Merris, sweetheart?"

  Douce took time to reply.

  "No."

  He looked very grave.

  "Tell me—why not?"

  "I think she is a bad woman, a sly woman."

  "My dear! Now, what on earth——"

  "I do not wish you to see her again. I think she is the kind of woman who would be bad for a man."

  And Jordan understood that Douce was jealous, and that she would be as obstinate in her jealousy as she was fierce in loving him.

  XXXVIII

  It was no common event for a coach to enter Spaniards Court, for the entry was narrow and cramped by the outjutting buttress of a house, but Mrs. Merris's coachman managed the trick and brought his horses into the yard. He was a big man and full of smiles. Heads were put out to see what all the noise was, and Douce's two girls ran out in time to see Sambo opening the door of the great black and red carriage, the negro's white wig uncovered, one buckled shoe drawn nicely back behind the heel of the other.

  "La, here's a fine lady!"

  Douce, too, saw what her girls saw. She had come to the parlour window, and she was standing there with her heart beating hard and fast, watching Mrs. Merris stepping down from her coach. The thing had happened! The attack was to be delivered! She saw this fine and mysterious creature in her white silks and her red velvets moving like a splendid love-chief towards her door. The brown wren looked out of her nest and believed that the hawk was upon her!