by F. M. Mayor
‘My poor, poor darling,’ he cried, seizing her in his arms.
She felt his tears against her cheek.
‘There must be something to be done,’ he said. ‘We’ll find out who the man is to go to. I’ll telephone to Lawes’ (a doctor friend of his) ‘after tea.’
‘I say,’ cried she, with a laugh, ‘wonders never cease. Crab condescending to telephone. You can’t go to Yeabsley’ (the nearest telephone) ‘in the snow, Billy.’
‘I believe I’ve been out in the snow before,’ he said, smiling.
‘It’s not so bad seeing your ugly smile again,’ said she. ‘It won’t be any good, you know,’ she went on, looking at him mournfully.
‘Yes, it will,’ he said, clasping her closer.
‘You are so comforting,’ she said at last, breaking down and bursting into tears. Then she seemed to regret speaking so warmly, and continued rather drily, gulping her sobs back resolutely. ‘It’s awfully nice of you. I’m really not worth it all. The worst of it is, it’s the only decent thing about me gone.’
He did not know what she said, but she did not mind his not answering.
‘Look here,’ she said, extricating herself. ‘I didn’t mean it to be like this. I’ve got something to tell you, I meant to tell you at once.’
‘You’re trembling,’ he said. ‘Wait and have tea, and get warm.’
‘Oh, it’s not cold, I’m not in the least cold. Have you heard from Lesbia about me?’
‘From Lesbia? No.’
‘Well, you will. No, don’t keep hold of my hand. The thing is, I wasn’t coming back. I knew you didn’t much care for me, and it was a failure. I was coming back all right first of all, of course. Then there was that letter, I saw you didn’t want me, whatever the animals did. There was a man out there, who seemed frightfully keen on me, and he asked me to go away with him. I liked him awfully, and I agreed. When I got like this, I wrote to him that it was off. But he would come to the Nursing Home. When he did see me, of course I could see in an instant how jolly lucky he felt he was to be out of it. Look here, you’ve broken great-great-grandmamma’s ring, my very best, go-to-meeting ring. It was all right. What else could you expect? Still, I’m glad I didn’t go off with him, and when I told Lesbia I was coming home she wrote to you and your mother that I was only doing it because no one else would have me. I thought you’d have got the letter. There, now you know it all. Oh, I do so wish I was dead. Nobody can want me. I know you don’t.’ It was the last thing she had meant to reveal to him, but the cry came up from her heart unawares.
He was on his knees before her, and his arms were clasped round her. When he could speak, which was not at once, he begged for her forgiveness again and again. ‘It was my fault you went away, everything has been my fault.’
When she could speak, she said, ‘Of course it was always you really, but Lesbia kept on saying how you hated me, and I thought you did. Then I thought at the back of my mind perhaps in spite of all his beastliness he does care, and you do, you do.’ She gave two sobs of joy.
Their eyes met; her sad, joyful eyes melted to tenderness he had never seen there before. He loved her as he had not loved her even in the first wonderful bliss of their engagement.
‘Crab,’ she said suddenly, ‘this isn’t all out of pity?’
At that instant any thought of Mary was blotted out, and he told her how he loved her. ‘Every part of you, and that poor sweet mouth above all.’
‘If it had been pity,’ said Kathy, ‘I don’t think I should have gone and drownded myself, that’s such a footling thing to do, but I should never have troubled you again.’
‘And if you had loved that – that – animal, Stocks,’ he began.
‘Don’t splutter,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s Stokes. He isn’t an animal, he was only like everybody else.’
‘I should never have troubled you again either.’
She laughed her jolly schoolgirl laugh. He had not heard it for many months, she laughed a different laugh with Lesbia.
Immediately on his words flashed upon him the remembrance of the kiss. How could he look Kathy in the face?
She had made her confession to him, did not he feel it incumbent on him to make a like confession to her? He did, and perhaps if he had been braver, stronger, more pitiless, he might have told her. He had never lacked courage, moral or physical – in dealing with men he had had rather more than enough, but his housekeepers and landladies had always ridden roughshod over him, because he hated to be hard on a woman. To Kathy he had been hard, because nervous irritability knows no mercy; but with her mutilated mouth before him and their arms round one another it was not in him to tell her he had kissed another woman.
‘It’s no good beginning to say I’m sorry,’ whispered Kathy, stroking his cheek, ‘so I shan’t try.’
When the tea came, there was Lesbia’s letter on the tray, it had been delayed in the post. He took it and threw it into the fire. She did not say anything, but her eyes gleamed.
After tea, as she lay against him, she became drowsier and drowsier. At length she opened her eyes, full of sleep and happiness, to smile at him, and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t be as bright and brainy as usual, but I seem to be going to roost,’ and she fell asleep. He carried her in his arms upstairs. Then he came down and sat by the fire and abhorred himself. The thought of his unfaithfulness to her – unfaithful in his heart, which she had never been – weighed on him still more, now that her presence was removed from him. Perhaps of the many heads under which he put his loathing, the principal was that he had complained of her to Mary. How was he to make it up to her? To set himself at ease with himself, to be free from the intolerable position of granting forgiveness when he should implore it, urged him to go upstairs this instant, fall on his knees before her, and tell her all; this relief was not possible for him.
Such intensity of feeling could not last. It was not long before Kathy and Mr Herbert felt ill at ease with each other. Kathy showed her embarrassment by hilarity which, to Mr Herbert’s despair, jarred on him just as it had done before. He had supposed nothing could jar again. She, too, had thought the exquisiteness of their meeting must make all easy. Hilarity was the cloak she put on to hide the bitterness of her disappointment. He did not yet understand her; it seemed to him a sort of ingrained levity. If now she had asked him was it pity, he would have found it hard to answer.
She bore the disfigurement with great courage, and went out and showed herself among the village people, rejecting with a laugh Mansfield’s tearful proffers of the thickest motor veils. Such strangeness almost shocked Mansfield; she vicariously did what should have been done, stayed indoors, and gave up the miserable satisfaction of mingling tears over Kathy in the choicest homes of Lanchester.
Kathy found the ordeal harder than at Monte Carlo. Then there had been the hope of respite – of more than respite. She felt now her hope had come and gone. It was a relief to her, and to him also, when shortly after her return she had to go to bed with a chill and could be alone with her wretchedness. The chill turned to pleurisy and she was in danger for a few weeks. The visit to the London doctor had to be postponed. She had nurses, but she was always asking for her husband, and was less restless if he sat with her.
When she was convalescent she told him that she was going to have a baby. Her delight was intense, and so was his. She said she did not mind even that the doctor ordered her to lie up for several weeks. The hours, however, were very long to fill. She asked him to read to her. The choice was difficult, for there seemed no common ground, only each was so anxious to please the other.
Her dependence on him, her feebleness and misery, made him feel he could not do enough for her. She felt the change in him. The bitterness and hostility he had shown during Lesbia’s visit had vanished. She valued his gentleness and devotion, but she knew it was more than that he had felt the evening of her return. She made up her mind it was to be expected; she had got something, she must be content with that. She did n
ot again ask him if he loved her, for as the poor, proud, humble beauty said to herself, ‘He’s tried, but of course he can’t.’ One day she took his hand and said, ‘Look here. I’m “taking notice,” as they say about babies. You know what I mean. You’re awfully good to me, and I hope I shall die, and we shall have a nice strong boy, that will be the best plan.’ Otherwise they talked of everyday matters. But Kathy was wrong, for, though weak and faithless, it never entered into his mind, consciously or unconsciously, to think less of her because she was no longer beautiful. On the contrary, the mixture of chivalry, of honour, of determination that every thought of his heart should be turned to making up to her for the cruelty of destiny, kindled his never-dead love again. In those long hours of one another’s society they drew nearer to one another, and he found out she was neither the ideal beauty to whom he had become engaged nor the smart, vulgar follower of Lesbia who had driven him to despair, but an entirely different person, his own wife Kathy.
He had written to his mother the day after his wife’s return saying that she had told him everything. Old Mrs Herbert had burnt Lesbia’s letter unanswered. She did not speak of it to Mr Herbert till years afterwards. When she heard a baby was expected, she was very anxious to come and help entertain the invalid. But Kathy refused to have her. She would not hear of Lady Meryton either, and she was equally stout against the ministrations of all cousins or old friends.
21
‘Lady Meryton was here yesterday,’ said Canon Jocelyn as they sat at dinner on the evening of Mary’s return from Southsea, ‘inquiring when you would be back. She tells me that Mrs Herbert has been very ill – some operation, I believe. I thought you might go and inquire at Lanchester tomorrow.’
Mary thought so too. She had determined to avoid no longer a meeting with the Herberts. She was now to take up her old life again, as if there had never been that episode. It was nearly four months since she had schooled herself to restraint.
The shock at the sight of Kathy was very great. She had been Mary’s ideal of triumphant loveliness. Mary could not speak for emotion. If she had known the circumstances, she would never have intruded, but Mr Herbert said some easy words, and Kathy joined in about the bright day. Mary had called early to avoid tea; Kathy said she must stay and have coffee at any rate.
Mary met Mr Herbert’s eye as little as she could. She saw him once, when he did not see her, smile with intense tenderness at his wife; she saw Kathy’s answering smile. She was thinking so much of Kathy she did not feel embarrassed; she could not have believed it would have been so.
After a few inquiries for her father, Mr Herbert rose and said he must see the Inspector.
‘Stay here, Crab,’ said Kathy.
‘If you don’t know, Miss Jocelyn, who is familiar with the race, knows that inspectors wait for no man. I mustn’t stay.’
‘Don’t leave me longer than you can help,’ said Kathy.
‘You know I shan’t,’ he answered, smiling at her.
‘You’ll stay, Miss Jocelyn, won’t you?’ said Kathy.
‘I should like to very much,’ said Mary, pitying her.
Mr Herbert took Mary’s hand. Mary would almost have despised him if in that hour of Kathy’s misery he had had one thought of her. But when she remembered their last parting, she could not control a pang; his was the handshake of an acquaintance.
It was difficult to think of anything to say, she and Kathy had only Mr Herbert in common. Apparently the call was not a failure, for when Mary took leave Kathy said, ‘Come again soon. You’re awfully comfortable.’
In spite of her resolution to meet the Herberts, she would not come again. She made difficulties, she refused almost rudely. But Kathy, having rejected all her old friends, was very lonely when Mr Herbert had to leave her. Her nerves, which had hitherto been so well balanced she had not known she possessed them, were all tender and ajar after the strain of the operation. She wanted company to keep them at bay. When Mary refused, wretched tears she hated and could not control welled up into her eyes. She, whose society had always been courted, humbled herself to entreat.
‘I thought perhaps you would,’ she said. ‘It’s jolly lonely some times. If you have a free afternoon, you might think of me.’
Who could have resisted her?
Mary had refused because she was ashamed to meet her. She had wronged her, she had hated her. She thought Kathy did not love him, despised him, neglected him. She had been utterly mistaken. As to the kiss, had it all been a dream, a figment of the imagination? In four months he had utterly forgotten her and turned to Mrs Herbert. ‘She made a mistake, and I made a mistake,’ he had said. Now there was no mistake, but complete understanding. Thus her prayers had been answered. It was astonishing to her that it had never occurred to her that he would solve their difficulties by forgetting her. With Kathy thrown on his compassion, he would not have been the man she loved so ardently if he had not forgotten her. But she believed in a like case she could not have forgotten him.
She had determined, as she drove yesterday from the station, to have a kind of renaissance in her mind, and start again. She was surprised to find on the whole how little effort was required. There was some. At times she, who had no right, grudged him to Kathy, who had every right, and considered herself doubly ill-treated because, from reverence for Kathy’s misfortune, she could not indulge herself in hating her. But the absolute end of suspense – it was not hope, it never had been hope – was a great help. Her father’s pleasure at her return – she had never known him show his dependence on her so much – an accumulation of village duties, her restored health, all helped too. The struggle in the spring now bore fruit, self-command had become a habit. A very, very slight tendency to think herself attractive to the opposite sex, which had refreshed her for a few months, dried up from henceforth. She had felt herself more confident in society, she returned to what she was before.
She looked back on that experience of her life as bliss, and as a nightmare. She repented much in herself, but not that she had loved him. She was very thankful to have had his love, she was contented, she was glad it was over. While it was burning her up, she had been fit for nothing else. As to blaming him, who was at least as much to blame as she was, she never thought of it. Her love was blind. If she had married him, how she would have spoilt him. She imagined that every one’s love affairs went as deep as her own. When she saw the village boys and girls together, she thought of the nerve-racking rapture they were experiencing. She did not realize that perhaps one in a thousand feels as strongly as she did.
She found herself often going to the Rectory. Each time when she left, Kathy begged her to come again.
‘It’s an awful fag for you, I know,’ said Kathy, ‘just talking to me. It’s jolly decent of you. I’ve always liked you, and wanted to know you since we met at Mr Sykes’. Do you remember talking about hearing a fox bark? You said you thought it beastly digging foxes out. So it is – beastly unsporting – and they’re such jolly beasts; only, of course, it’s always done. I meant to ask you to come over years ago, but then Aunt Edith bored so about you.’
Mary read stories to her of the Redland level, only more vulgar, and rather improper; Kathy did not really care for anything else. Out of gratitude she had tried to string herself up to something high-class to please her husband. Generally she and Mary talked: Mary attracted confidences, particularly sad ones. Kathy in weakness, lying day after day, worn-out in mind and body, turned to her with eagerness.
Mary, however, nearly dried up the possibility of confidence by referring pitifully to Kathy’s affliction. She had some of the simplicity of cottage people; it had more than once put her into difficulties with her own class. Every villager would have felt Miss Mary unkind and ‘queer’ if, in a similar case, nothing had been said. She would have felt it herself. If she had been afflicted, she would rather have been wept over than ignored. In mental anguish she wanted to hide from sight. She did not, and could not, imagine what it was to a gr
eat beauty to lose her charms.
Kathy had introduced the subject, calling herself the freak.
Mary with ready-springing tears took her hand, and said, ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’
‘But you are telling me, unluckily,’ said Kathy. ‘Not much “can’t” about it.’
‘I’m so very –’ began Mary. ‘I beg your pardon.’
‘All right,’ said Kathy. ‘Do what you like. Kick me down the stairs, or trample me in the dust, only, for God’s sake, don’t pity me.’
In their confusion their eyes happened to meet. Mary saw tears rolling down Kathy’s cheeks, and her eyes showed the wretchedness she would not speak of. She turned away, but she resolutely faced Mary a second afterwards, and said cheerfully, ‘Give the freak some cake, it’s hungry.’
If Mrs Herbert had heard Kathy speak about pity, she might have understood her better. The things money buys, though essential in a way, Kathy thought so unimportant that one might take them from an inferior without obligation, paying for them with smiles, but in the spirit one paid a tradesman. Pity, which touched her pride, she could hardly bear from any one. It was the greatest tribute to Mary, and a sign of highly disordered nerves, that in the end she accepted hers.
‘Mary,’ said Lady Meryton, ‘I’m so glad you are seeing Kathy. You know my old Dawson, her niece – such a pretty little thing – is Kathy’s maid, and so devoted to her. She tells Dawson you have been several times; it’s exactly what I was wanting. Dear Kathy shrinks from all of us. I understood it so well. I felt just like that in my long illness after the children died. I didn’t want to see even my sister Eleanor. I had been worrying about Kathy so. But it’s wonderful how right everything has come between her and Robert. Mansfield said to Dawson, “It’s lovely to see them together,” but of course I knew it would.’