by F. M. Mayor
People less continuously prosperous than Lady Meryton might not have been quite so certain.
Lady Meryton discussed the neighbourhood very freely with Dawson. Dora Redland would have said with significant nods, ‘With maids you must be so careful what you say, they might take advantage.’ But Lady Meryton was never careful, for no one ever took advantage. As the Redlands were inclined to lump all the working class together, Lady Meryton was inclined to lump all the working and middle class together. She did not realize the indescribable difference between talking to Dawson and talking to Mrs King.
Sometimes Mr Herbert was there when Mary called, but not often. She chose the times when he was most likely to be out, not on his or her account, but because Kathy wanted no one else when she had him. He almost always rose to go immediately. One day Kathy remarked on this. ‘You and Mary are so priceless, you always fly from one another like the plague. I think it’s rude. She doesn’t bite, Robert; she eats out of my hand quite nicely.’
‘Miss Jocelyn realizes, which you don’t, that there are one or two humble offices for a parson to perform in his parish.’
They laughed. Kathy said no more, but she remarked afterwards, ‘It’s rather putrid to be a burden. He’s awfully good to me, though I’m a heavy trial to him, poor boy. There he is always waiting on me; and he gets nothing for it. I think a woman ought to be good-looking, or ride well to hounds, or have tons of babies -·boys of course, otherwise she’d better drown herself – and I shall never be No. 1 again, and never hunt again, and you bet I shall have ten girls.’
On one or two occasions Mary and Mr Herbert got into some conversation, and they all talked together, or rather she and Mr Herbert talked, and Kathy dropped out and played with Bimbo. They were not personal subjects – old disappearing village words, a poem of George Herbert’s. Mary noticed it had become a tête-à–tête; it would be an affectation to make anything of what was an unimportant accident. He did not sit with them more than half an hour.
When they were alone, Kathy said wistfully, ‘I wish I was more brainy. I might have learnt more – only I had such asses of governesses.’ Willing to be generous even to governesses, she added, ‘No, it was my own fault really.’
Mary had found her brains cut her off from her neighbours. She answered quickly, ‘I shouldn’t wish that if I were you.’
Kathy did not listen to answers, she went on. ‘I wish I was more like you.’ She was feeling very depressed today, a prey to nervous doubts and desires.
‘Like me. You. You can’t mean it. Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Kathy; she never analysed. The entrance of tea and the kitten turned her thoughts elsewhere.
Mary thought over the strange compliment again in bed. Like many things in life, it came ‘like pardon after execution.’ In the compliment season – eighteen to thirty-three – few had reached her. They would have given her a fillip up, which then would have made a great deal of difference. She knew, before her aunt told her, of her bad carriage, awkward manner, sallow complexion. She did not remember that any one had ever observed anything favourable. Her father remarked before the Archdeacon’s garden party, ‘I cannot say I like that hat.’ She smiled at the recollection. She would not trouble herself whether she had been unkindly treated, but she always went out of the way to admire the Sunday School girls’ frocks. It seemed curious to think of vacillating Aunt Lottie as a critic whom she had once been very anxious to conciliate.
The compliment should have at any rate one result. She obviously need not continue to be shy of some one who wished to resemble her. She felt her tongue unloosed, and began to talk easily in her admirer’s presence. Happily she never knew that as soon as the admirer’s nerves were a little better, she was very much tickled at her aberration.
That unloosening of her tongue made them more intimate. It was perhaps a case of misery making strange bedfellows. Mary would never have been Kathy’s choice. But now they discussed a variety of things, in some of which Mary, with intellectual arrogance – her one arrogance – had never supposed Kathy could be interested.
Kathy talked freely of her own affairs also, more freely than Mary herself could have done.
‘I think Riviera people, English and American, the beastliest cads unhung. The women are only beaten by one thing – that’s the men. The women’s sympathy when I got like this – ugh.’
She told Mary about Captain Stokes. ‘He was a frightfully handsome man. I can’t quite imagine now how I could ever have agreed. I think a woman ought to run straight’ (the excellent truism she enunciated with great simplicity). ‘Robert seems so nice now, but he was awfully cutting in our second year, and I simply couldn’t bear it.’
So her detestable hope had nearly come true, only frustrated by the terrific intervention of Providence. Mary almost felt she had a share in the destruction of Kathy’s beauty.
They often discussed people, and naturally, therefore, people’s behaviour. Mary was really staggered, as Mrs Herbert had been, by Kathy’s universal tolerance, sincere, simple tolerance, quite different from Mr Worsley’s desire to shock. Too many things in Mary’s childhood and girlhood had been thought wrong; sometimes she found Kathy’s tolerance refreshed her. When Kathy’s nerves were troubling her, she could be bitter, but tolerance was her real condition of mind. It was combined with rather a high personal standard. She ‘ran straight,’ not apparently as the result of effort, but from a healthy spring of natural goodness. Almost anything that anybody did she condoned by ‘poor kid.’ If the sinner was elderly, she was chivalrously called ‘poor girl.’ Sometimes Kathy would throw in ‘old’ to soften the condemnation.
Jack, her unsatisfactory brother, was always ‘poor old Jack.’ Even Lesbia was ‘poor devil.’ In general she seemed to consider misbehaviour like the measles, which any one might have the ill-luck to catch. Certain sorts of cruelty, but only certain sorts, and certain sorts of swindling, but only certain sorts, roused her indignation.
She disapproved of women tempting husbands away. ‘Lesbia’s a disgusting cat, but she’s had something to put up with. Of course the reason why Jack took the job in Nigeria was because there’s a woman out there. She’s a wrong ’un, if ever there was one, and she always goes for the married men; she’s done it again and again. It’s such a blackleg thing to do. Nobody would mind if she went for the others, but when one knows what all men without exception are –’
Mary hardly knew what impulse made her say, ‘Do you think there is ever anything to be said for them, Kathy?’
‘Them? Who?’
‘The blacklegs.’
‘Oh, I don’t know; if the wives are wrong ’uns perhaps, but they’re a rotten lot. Besides, Lesbia wasn’t a wrong ’un! She was awfully gone on Jack first of all, poor kid – well, for years she was, until there wasn’t much left to be gone on.’
Kathy did not often embark on general reflections, and now she was back at Lesbia, it was not possible to divert her. Whoever talked to Kathy must follow her lead in conversation. If Mary had wanted somehow to plead for herself with Kathy, the chance was gone. Kathy had not noticed the flush, the breathless hesitation. If she had, she would never have connected Mary with blacklegs. In her eyes Mary by her plainness was as cut off from men as a nun by her cloister.
Women have perhaps been considered more spiteful than they are. Certainly Kathy thoroughly enjoyed the beauty and attainments of the girls she knew. She had not a spark of envy in her, and never grudged anybody anything, greeting success cordially with ‘lucky kid.’ Generosity of mind, which Mary had not attained after years of striving, came quite naturally to her. Generosity towards her circle, that is to say, for Kathy drew with absolute definiteness the aristocratic line of where her sympathy ended.
Not of course that it was a line dividing rich and poor, such as the middle class often draws between itself and the working class. The servants, and village, and tradespeople they dealt with, all relations, and her set of friends were warm and co
sy inside the circle. It was the foolish people trying to get into it on equal terms who were debarred from sympathy. They were employed if wanted, but Kathy had no compunction in making them feel out of it, when they were not.
He casts off his friends like a huntsman his pack,
For he knows when he likes, he can whistle them back.
Mary thought these lines well described Kathy. But Kathy never bothered about whistling people back; they came back. She sometimes seemed very lacking in the scruples of a lady. She really had not the delicacy of mind of Miss Gage. Miss Gage had of course many extra scruples and cares, such as the laying of the afternoon tea cloth diamond-wise, but she could not have hurt as Kathy hurt. Kathy had the most strange resemblance to the roughest factory girl, skipping all the grades of society one would have expected to be more like her.
They had become so intimate that one day Mary broached the subject of Kathy’s rudeness to her and Dora at the Meryton garden party. It took some time to recall the meeting to Kathy’s mind.
‘Wait a bit. I think I do remember something. It was the day we settled to try Taffy with the martingale, but it didn’t work a bit. I never knew such a brute as Taffy. Yes, you were there, and a fair woman with a bit of a lisp. I was rude, do you say? But I was never rude to you, old Towzer, was I? I should have been a beast if I was. Of course I remember now, Claudia said she always used to take her mother for Dawson’s sister, only it was rough on Dawson’s sister. But she was a bit of an outsider. One has to draw the line somewhere, and I used to draw it at parsons’ daughters; only if the kid’s a girl, I shall make an exception for the Lanchester parson’s daughter – Oh, and for you, Mary.’
Mary might have been eloquent on this text, but resentment at their first meeting had worn out. She only said, ‘That parson’s daughter is my greatest friend.’
‘Is she? Oh, I daresay she’s all right, then. Good old Claudia,’ turning to something which interested her. ‘She’s the best woman at a gate I ever met. Not a ditch, mind you – Jim-jam’s better there – a gate.’
If Mary expected expressions of remorse, she did not get them.
22
Kathy asked Mary to be godmother.
‘You’re to be godmother to Hugo, won’t you. It shall be Hugo. If it’s Mary, I shan’t be able to bear it, because she might grow up like me, and that would be too beastly a fate for any one.’
‘Surely you’ll ask Mr Herbert’s mother,’ said Mary.
‘I shan’t, because it will disappoint her so terrifically, and that’s just what I want.’
This was a groundless, nervous animosity for the most part. Mrs Herbert’s letter had been mild; Kathy had answered insolently. Then had come Lesbia’s letter of accusation.
It had cut old Mrs Herbert to the quick. She had not shown her wretchedness, except by allowing her interesting book on Java to lie unread for half-hours together. She sat in a special armchair, never leaning back. She would not lean back now, but unhappiness made her huddle up into herself. She burnt Lesbia’s letter as she had burnt Kathy’s. She paid no attention to it, neither answering it nor speaking of it; she merely let fall two remarks. ‘I am afraid things are in rather an uncomfortable state,’ and ‘She seems to be mixed up with a very queer set of people.’ From these expressions of opinion, and an apathy in contradiction, her sister-in-law gathered that something was very wrong.
She felt the indignity for him who was he pride even more than her darling. She would have minded only one thing in the world more – the illicit kiss he had given to Mary.
Isabel felt it also. One night Mrs Herbert had a sore throat. She could not read a clerical biography aloud – her custom of a Sunday after Church and supper. She handed the book to Isabel; Isabel’s voice showed signs of tears.
‘I am very sorry,’ she said meekly. ‘It seems so miserable about dear Robert.’
After twenty years she had not learnt that an apology would make the snub, which was bound to come, still more severe. ‘I don’t think “blubbering”, as my dear mother used to call it when we were children, ever helped anything,’ said Mrs Herbert.
~
But to return to the godmother.
‘I shouldn’t mind old Isabel,’ said Kathy – Isabel had written no letter – ‘but she’d funk it. Mother-in-law would have her knife in her for ever.’
‘Oh, do ask Mrs Herbert,’ said Mary persuasively.
‘You’re to be godmother.’
Kathy was difficult to oppose, but Mary answered, ‘No, I’d rather not, really.’ When the request was backed by a wheedling pinch, Mary still repeated, ‘Really.’
Kathy of course laughed at Mary, she laughed at most people, with a kind of rough chaff. Her favourite subject was Mary’s spinsterhood. Her good-humoured wonder, tinged with contempt, at a woman who had reached Mary’s age, and remained unmarried because she could not help it, was much less aggravating to Mary than it would have been to any one more vain. Mary derived some amusement from it. But one day Kathy exceeded the bounds. She greeted her with ‘Cheer up. I hear you made a conquest once, after all.’
She went on, ‘My cousin, Milly Grace, motored over yesterday. I wish people wouldn’t come and bother one, but they do. She told me all about it. You met her two years ago, didn’t you? She said how Maltby was there too, and never left your side. He’s a kind of connection of her husband’s. He goes the round of hotels. They don’t keep him long, they find he’s not very fond of paying his bills. I met him at Newquay one year, and we used to call him Ba-bab, because he always came a cropper over his “b’s.” He wandered about with his tail between his legs when you were gone, and wouldn’t be comforted. He said to Milly, “I know I’ve done for myself, and it’s too late now, b-b-but that’s the woman I should like to have married. She’s not b-b-beautiful, b-b-but b-b-beauty’s only skin-deep, and I couldn’t expect everything.” Wasn’t it priceless?’
‘I didn’t know Mr Maltby got into debt,’ said Mary, interrupting Kathy’s laughter.
‘Oh, rather. Leaves his little b-b-bills about all over the shop. It’s b–b–baccarat, you b-b-bet.’
‘I must be going,’ said Mary, getting up abruptly.
‘Oh, must you? I thought you were going to stay hours more. Well, come again soon.’
But Mary could not. ‘I believe the county are the vulgarest people in the world,’ she said to herself. Worthless as he was, Mr Maltby’s feeling for her made her – not exactly grateful, but sensitive. There had been times of thinking herself a failure, when the assurance of even his admiration would have cheered. She resented Kathy’s insolence, she imagined the revenge of telling her that it was she, the despised, who had been the first object of the man Kathy adored.
Kathy missed her. She wrote, ‘You are not to sulk in your hole, Towzer.’ (The joke about Towzer was so poor even its author, Kathy, could not remember its point.) ‘Come to tea tomorrow and we’ll have crumpets.’
She said when they met, ‘I don’t believe you liked my tale about your one and only. I thought you’d love it. But’ (naively) ‘you haven’t very much sense of humour, have you?’ It was true that Mary’s little rill of fun dried up immediately in Kathy’s presence. Very different things amused them.
‘I don’t think there was anything to laugh at,’ said Mary.
‘Oh, Milly and I screamed,’ said Kathy; then seeing Mary’s face, she cried, ‘I say, you don’t mean, by any chance, you’d have taken Maltby? I haven’t been putting my foot in it?’
‘Oh, most certainly not,’ said Mary.
‘Then I believe you’ve got the hump because you don’t go down with men. I shouldn’t bother about that,’ Kathy went on kindly. ‘They’re not worth a damn, the whole lot of them, except one.’
She herself would not have cared to go through life without their admiration.
When she said ‘except one,’ she gave a rapturous smile. That special smile Mary found disarmingly sweet. Both Kathy’s vulgarity and her own resentment were blot
ted out.
At first Mary constantly returned from her visits to Lanchester with the feeling that, admire Kathy as she might, the marriage was very strange. She would have been certain in those few weeks, when each knew what was in the other’s mind, that Mr Herbert’s fastidiousness would have been greater than her own. Was it pity? When Kathy had trampled on her not unduly sensitive amour-propre – that it was always unintentional aggravated the offence – Mary had a spiteful desire that the feeling might be pity. But the more she saw of Kathy – she saw her with all her failings exposed, Kathy was incapable of concealment – the more she came under her sway. There was a curious something in Kathy, impossible to describe, which, if she had sunk down into a pauper or a criminal, would have made her still able to command, not deference, nor honour, nor respect, but a sentiment akin to all three. As to the twisted mouth, Mary felt it simply made no difference at all. At her first call on Kathy she wondered how Mr Herbert could have fallen in love with her. Now she thought the wonder would be not to fall in love with her. If a man was to choose between her and Kathy – even the man who knew her as no one else would ever know her, how could he hesitate? ‘And he was right,’ she said to herself. ‘I’m so small compared to her.’
One morning Mary found Kathy tired and flushed. She remarked on it; Kathy snubbed her with ‘Oh no, I’m perfectly fit, I always am.’
She had been worrying herself three-quarters of the night. She was feeling sick and worn out, but she had not known a day’s illness before her operation, she could not get accustomed to bad health. She bent down and pulled Bimbo’s ears in silence for some time, then she said, ‘I wanted to ask you something. You’re clever, so you can tell me. You know things went wrong our first year. Once he said something about the way I talked – I don’t know what it was – about the words I used, I think, but I only talk like everybody else, don’t I? Then there was a song, the sort of song you always hear. He was sick about it. I asked him what was the matter with it, and he wouldn’t tell me. There were other things too. I asked him to tell me always, if there was anything he didn’t like – of course I’d much rather know, – but he wouldn’t I don’t know why; I think he might have. I could see his face screw up sometimes, as if he had toothache. At the end, before I went to the Riviera, it seemed to me everything –’ She hesitated; Mary could see she was panting, and could hardly get on. She knew that feeling; she thought Kathy would never have known it. It came out at last. ‘Everything I did drove him frantic.’ She went on, ‘Now, you’re the only person I can ask. I hate every one else.’ But still she did not ask; she could not bring herself to ask. ‘I told Lesbia about it. She was awfully bucked. I know you’re not that sort, you’d never crow.’