The compromise that led to the building of the clippers was as characteristic of her as her stubbornness. She would push obstinacy to its extreme and pay the penalty of it, and then, as if only then had the lesson been learned, she would accept correction on just those points where her judgment agreed with the correction.
She made that one compromise to the present, but she held to it even when in 1866 Smithson’s Yard, sticking entirely to sail, was at its zenith of prosperity, that steam was bound to triumph. Steam tonnage, gradually overhauling sailing tonnage, crept up and up, and when Old Smithson died in the blaze of his triumph, she bought his yard and turned it over to steam. In the new yard she built the Roxborough, of 3300 tons, for the Atlantic service. She was fitted with paddles and did the trip from London to New York in nine days.
The rivalry of sail and steam was keener during this decade than ever. The emigration trade was in the hands of the sailing ship firms. The wool trade was theirs. Only on the China route were the steamers beginning to make themselves felt, and Garton’s Yard built eight ships for this trade, two for the Line and the other six for London firms.
Mary never wavered from the course she had set herself by Mark Henry’s chart. Though she built the five clippers, she built them for love as much as because she knew that the sailing ship had still a little time to go before it was crowded off the seas by the clamorous need of the new age for size and speed and economy of working. She built no more. She was for the new age. Of that she was never for a moment in doubt. And when the Suez Canal opened a door to the East for her steamers, she knew, if Mempes and the rest of Danesacre were still hesitant, that she was justified. She was building, being too young for the past to linger with her but as beauty in a dream, for the years to come. She was one of the moderns. . . .
She needed all the justification she could get, for she had strained her resources to the utmost to pay for Thomas Prendergast’s experiments. During these years she drew for herself as little as might be out of the firm and though she felt the need of a second manager in the Yard itself, to supplement John Mempes’ lukewarm interest in steam, she put off broaching the question. Not because she was afraid to offend Mempes but because she hated to spend the money. . . .
In telling the story of the years of doubt and achievement that followed Mark Henry’s death I have got far ahead of the story of Mary’s second marriage, and what she made of that. It might have been her first, so little mark had Archie Roxby made on her, and it came about in an astonishingly short space of time, following the strike, and when she had already more than half promised to marry John Mempes.
Mempes was an adroit and careful lover. He knew a little of Mary’s first marriage and guessed that the girl might have a shrinking from the physical aspect of love that would need a gentle touch to bring her round. Moreover he himself, though her youth and the nearness of her fresh beauty could intoxicte him, was not the ardent lover he had been, to less desired women, when Mary was a very little girl. He was forty. He could not afford to wait but he could afford to go slowly and avoid alarming the young girl by an indelicate revelation of passion.
He began to flatter her, but not grossly, but so subtly that it was a mere warmth added to his speech. She missed him if a day passed without his appearance in the office, and when he made an excuse to remove himself for a whole week the transports of her greeting on his return made up to him for the pangs he had suffered in absence. It went to his head. He accepted her invitation to dinner and afterwards, with Miss Flora sleeping in a dim corner of the room, he sat beside her in the harbour window.
Mary had dressed with some ceremony for this dinner and her shoulders rose in a slender curve from the confines of a tight bodice. Mempes talked and she listened to him with the delicate air of surprise that Wagener had remarked in her. It sprang from the depth and shape of her eyes and the line of the brow above them, and Mempes, seeing it as if for the first time, was overcome with love and pity. It made him humble, and he faltered over his declaration, with a diffidence so new to him in this situation that he lost his tongue altogether and could do nothing but repeat her name, over and over again, like a man appealing for help.
It touched Mary profoundly. All her childish admiration for Mark Henry’s debonair manager joined with new affection to make her tremble at the sight of him asking humbly for her love.
She said:
“Do you really love me?”
“Mary, I do. I adore you.”
“Don’t wake Miss Flora,” Mary whispered. “I like you very much.”
Mempes groaned softly.
“Is that all? Is that all, Mary?”
His need of her at that moment was so great that he made a movement to take her in his arms. He wanted to feel the comfort of her breast. But when he had held her for a second he felt her stiffen in his grasp, as if the contact with his rising passion chilled her. He let her go and said:
“Forgive me. I need you so.”
Mary stood up and leaned against the window. Mempes watched the breath come and go under the hand she laid on her throat. At last she turned to him with honest friendliness.
“I like you so much. I’m honoured because you love me. Will you let me have time to think? You see, I’m not very young——”
“Twenty-three, Mary, or is it twenty-four?”
“I’ve been married.”
“You don’t know what marriage is, my dear.”
Mary shivered.
“Give me a little time. . . .”
He was afraid to press her. The fear of losing her by showing too much warmth remained with him through the long weeks when Mary hesitated, allowing him to talk to her of love and marriage but never saying: “I love you,” or even: “I will marry you.” He was too much of his century not to have been satisfied to hear the second if he could not hear the first. He was very subtle in his love-making, and never after that first avowal, did he allow himself to forget all that his experience had taught him of the way to handle women. Mary was fascinated by his sophisticated skill. He advanced in her heart. He felt it. She felt it too, and she could not have said why she hesitated, nor what in these days when the sound of Mempes’ voice in the Yard could make her pulse flutter, was missing from the happiness he gave her. She was not capricious. And still she waited on the edge of surrender and did not know for what she could be waiting.
One day she told him abruptly that she was going to London with Miss Flora for a month’s holiday. The dismay he checked before it reached his tongue prompted her to say:
“I can’t think clearly about marriage when I see you, John. You distract me. I must go away.” She knotted her brows. “I could buy some clothes, too.”
He kissed her hand to hide the triumph in his eyes. He was sure of her now. He spent the two months of her absence dreaming of the delicate kindness he would show her. She should be very happy with a husband who had learned every lesson of love merely in order to present her with the finished product. That she did not write was no surprise to him. He smiled indulgently. Let her have her last dreams of freedom before she fluttered into his hands. But he seized on her letter when it did come, with a famished eagerness. It was short.
It ran:
“DEAR JOHN, Forgive me. I am married to a Mr. Hervey I have met here. I love him utterly. We are coming home next week, and I beg that you will let my housekeeper know. I am conscious that I should have written to you sooner and I am anxious to serve you always in any way I can, and remain, Your humble servant,
Mary Hervey
My husband’s name is Hugh. He is a year older man I am, and very kind.”
John Mempes found every part of that youthful letter less cruel than the allusion to her husband’s age. He suffered horribly, and it was not only his vanity that suffered.
When Mary came home he was sufficiently master of himself to be anxious that she should feel no awkwardness in greeting him. It was the cruellest stroke of all to realise that she was too absorbed in her hap
piness to feel anything outside that. . . .
Mempes pulled himself together and never failed but on one occasion to show Mary’s husband a formal friendliness, to which Hugh responded by frank liking, calling him “sir” and treating him as a nice youngster might treat a Don for whom he had a respectful admiration. John Mempes stood if creditably well, except on the one occasion alluded to, when he suddenly lost his temper in the most outrageous and startling fashion over a question of port. “Port,” he shouted, “port, you fool, is a wine only fit for men at Oxford and aged mumpers whose palates have been ruined by years and debauchery. A vile drink, sir. A noxious, poisonous mixture.”
He caught Hugh’s amazed glance, and subsided into his protective courtesy. . . .
Book Two
Mary Hervey
Chapter One
1
Mary spent her first week in London very quietly. She visited a few shops, but for the most part she stayed in the rooms she had taken on Miss Flora’s recommendation and read, or thought of John Mempes.
The rooms were in Kensington, in a small house with an apple orchard at the bottom of the tiny walled garden. They belonged to a widowed friend of Miss Flora’s youth and the two old ladies talked in their thin wavering voices, while Mary dreamed over her book. It was late Spring and she could sit in the garden. The relief from the long strain of Garton’s gave her a sense of irresponsible freedom that she was reluctant to lose. She thought of John Mempes less and less. He did not seem to belong to this world where youth sat under blossoming trees and dwelt deliciously on another long interrupted day.
At the end of a week she wanted action. She ordered herself a plum-coloured habit and hired a horse and a groom to ride with her in the Park. The morning of her first ride was cold with a light cold wind, that whipped her cheeks. She made the groom ride well behind her and as the riders thinned she ventured on a gallop that left him out of sight. A top-hat, scudding before the wind, rolled across the track, almost under the horse’s feet. He behaved as badly as an over-conditioned horse can and she was forced to punish him severely before he quieted down. The owner of the hat came up in time to see the end of her exertions. He was profoundly shocked at his hat’s conduct and overwhelmed her with apologies. Mary was so pleased to have someone to talk to that she answered him with frank friendliness. It encouraged him to make good use of his time; when the groom came up he found his morning’s mistress halted by the rails and talking to a clean-shaven young man whom she apparently knew well. He reined in his horse and drew back to wait.
What Mary was saying with every mark of intimate friendship was:
“That man alarms me. I am sure he knows we’ve just met.”
“My name,” said the young man, “is Hervey. Hugh Hervey. My sister would like to call on you.”
Mary laughed. “How do you know she would? She doesn’t know me.”
“She will when I tell her about you,” he said anxiously.
A sudden shyness deepened the crimson of Mary’s cheeks. She contrived to irritate her horse into plunging wildly, and left the forward young man standing hat in hand at the side of the track. He was still there when she came round again. She drew up almost unconsciously, as if she had not meant to leave him. This time he learned her name and where she stayed before she rode away and did not return.
Mary’s mind was distracted by an echo that eluded her until she was sitting, languidly happy after her ride, in the tiny sitting-room facing the orchard. Then she remembered, and the memory brought her to her feet in a wild longing to hide herself from the two nodding old ladies. The young man of the Park reminded her of Gerry Hardman. As if she had seen them yesterday, the boy’s form and features, that at any time in the past few years she could not have recalled but in a vague blurred image, rose in front of her. She heard his voice. She almost felt the touch of his hand, and trembled at it.
She thought of Hugh again. There were differences, not only of age. Hugh’s hair, like Gerry’s, was dark, parted almost in the middle, and worn shorter than the fashion. His eyes were grey under dark brows, more level than Gerry’s. His face was narrower across the cheekbones, but he had Gerry’s slightly aquiline nose and Gerry’s small mouth. The resemblance was disturbing enough. It disturbed Mary. She thought: “I’ve never dared to wonder why he didn’t come back. I suppose he thought of it as a foolish impulse. I waited for him. Would it have made any difference if he had? I might have married him; Richard might have been his son. Ah!. . .we might have quarrelled. Perhaps our marriage would have ended like my mother’s did. Oh, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t. Why didn’t you come back? I’d have loved you and helped you and we should have been happy working for each other.” The sense of irretrievable loss drove her upstairs to her own room and she thought of Gerry and Hugh until her mind began to play her tricks and it was Hugh Hervey she had lost and found again after nine years of bitter lessons and barren toil. It occurred to her that she was still only twenty-four and looked younger. The thought cheered her greatly.
Hugh’s sister called on her the next afternoon. Louise Hervey was a small dark woman, very well read, with pretences to scholarship, and a witty and malicious tongue. She thought Mary rather stupid, but she was civil to her for Hugh’s sake, and made Mary free of their circle of friends. Hugh had fallen in love at first sight. In less than a week he told Mary so, standing in the Kensington orchard. The friendly dusk hid them from the windows of the little house and Mary was lying in his arms for a long time before either of them said anything more.
She stirred first:
“Is it true?” she asked softly. “Has it really happened?”
“Don’t move,” Hugh said urgently. “My love, my love. Don’t move. I like you here.”
But she sat up in his arms and kissed him, giving him her love in a surrender that made him a little dizzy. He held her to him with triumphant strength. “You are mine?” he said. “Mine, all mine? Mary, we’ve got to be married soon, at once.”
“I didn’t care for marriage before,” Mary observed.
“Don’t think about it,” Hugh said fiercely. “I—I can’t bear it. I’ve never touched another woman.”
Mary thought grimly: “It was I who had to bear it,” but she set herself to erase the unpleasant thought from her lover’s mind and succeeded so well that a moment later he was teasing her with mischievous tenderness on her reluctance to marry. He teased her until they both lost their heads a little and clung together with a passion that shook them and drove them apart.
“You see—we must get married soon,” Hugh stammered. “We—oh, I love you so.”
Mary drew herself out of his reach.
“It will be all right, won’t it?” she asked desperately.
“You’re not afraid? Not of me, Mary,” Hugh said sternly. His voice softened. “You adorable little girl. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
They were married by special licence. Louise Hervey told all her friends that Hugh had done far better for himself than his foolish ideas had led them to expect. “Of course, he has his own money,” she said. “But he’s been taken up with these socialists as they’re called, and anything might have come of that. The girl’s as stupid as an old boot, but ravishing to look at and has twice Hugh’s money. I wonder how she’ll take to London.”
2
Long after Hugh had fallen asleep, with his head in the curve of her arm, Mary lay awake. The weight of his thin young body against hers was a joy she was reluctant to forget in sleep. When at last she slept, it was to wake very early in a quiet dawn. She raised herself on one arm to look at her husband. For long moments she studied him as if she were trying to get his features by heart, adding together flushed cheeks, curving lashes, mouth softened by sleep, and every dear attraction that he had. He stirred and she thought: “Oh, don’t wake yet. You’re all mine when you’re asleep. Don’t wake for ages yet. My love. My dearest dear.”
He woke, g
azed at her for a moment with a dark quiet look, and then turning, buried his face against her shoulder, and lay for a long time, his arm across her breast. Mary held him with triumphant gentleness. This then was marriage, this exquisite sense of completion and power. This was life. She was really living at last. In a passion of gratitude she pressed her lips to Hugh’s smooth hair and murmured foolish phrases of tenderness and pride.
3
Her young husband was an increasing joy to Mary. Part of her joy was for his very youth. A year her senior, he seemed immensely less experienced and less mature. He had done nothing since he left Oxford but play with the idea of a book on mediaeval guilds for which he had collected a quantity of notes and made a dozen separate skeletons, each one more articulated than the last. He had indeed the makings of a scholar, as distinct from his witty sister’s show of it, but a settled income and his own natural indolence combined to leave him at twenty-five pretty much where he was when he left Oxford with more ambitions than honours to his account. He had lately drifted into friendship with some eager and charming young social rebels, and while they pricked his ambition into fresh life they took up so much of his time that the book got very little further. And now here was Mary, and the days were not long enough to share with her, to take her to Oxford and watch her surrender to the bewitched city, to show her Richmond and the river, to teach her to dance and talk to her of music, and study and socialism and love, and love, and again love.
And Mary listened. Hugh talked with a freedom that shocked her, so much more startling was the language he used than the limited profanity of Mark Henry and the Yard. She liked to be shocked by Hugh. It gave her a delicious sense of having been gathered into a new intimacy. Here for the first time was someone who teased her and laughed at her, said what he pleased in the language of his generation, was familiar and tender, disregarded all the half-unconscious pruderies she had drawn round her since her first marriage, and made her feel befriended and secure. It was a happy feeling. She gave herself up to it with an almost voluptuous joy, trying, under Louise Hervey’s bright cruel glances, to keep the worshipper from looking out of her eyes when she and Hugh were together in company.
The Lovely Ship Page 14