XIII. THE PERRITON HOUSEHOLD
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER a noticeable event occurred one morning at Glebe Villa. Mr. Henry Perriton at the breakfast table lifted his head above the edge of his newspaper and addressed his wife. As a rule the meal was eaten in a grim silence, Mr. Perriton at one end of the table bending forward over his plate to read the news, Mona at the other behind the coffee pot, Lois in the middle between them and animosity brooding overhead like a thundercloud. But to-day Henry Perriton showed his face and spoke.
It was not an engaging face. The sandy hair, which had always been thin, had for the most part gone with the snows of yesteryear. Only a few sedulously cultivated wisps were drawn up from a very low side parting just above the left ear and plastered down across the scalp. The pale eyes were watery and their dog-like wistfulness of fourteen years ago had vanished with his locks. Mr. Joseph Wyatt would certainly have described his features as pinched except for the nose which, to keep in a conformity with the watering eyes, had grown a little bulbous and in hue inclined to the purple. It was on the whole rather an unpleasant insignificance than a face. Nor were his words and intonation any more agreeable.
“So he has got off at last,” he said with a sneer. “With a fine lady too! Well, well, see what money can do! Give Mr. Long-in-the-tooth a million, and, bless my soul, we’ld all swear he hadn’t cut his grinders yet. What’s a crow’s-foot in you and me, my dear, is just character in a millionaire. Such an affair as it was. Pages and bridesmaids all polished up to their toe-tips and a real live balloon-sleeved Bishop — none of your synthetic suffragans — to give the right apostolic touch to the show. You must read the account of it, my dear. Very glowing and sycophantic. But you mustn’t forget your housework, will you? There’s the neck of mutton to be heated up for dinner and the dirty linen to be listed.”
Mona never replied. To Lois the acquiescence of her adored mother was always a quite unintelligible fact. She wanted Mona to be up and doing even in advance of provocation, returning thrust for thrust until her little wizened father was pinned to the wall, his limbs jerking helplessly like a marionette’s. But Lois never enjoyed that engaging spectacle. Her mother submitted...and submitted...and submitted.
This morning perhaps? Lois looked at her mother hopefully. For just for a moment husband and wife confronted one another — frankly enemies. Lois saw the blood begin to rise, creeping upwards from the throat over her mother’s fine worn face, until it stained her forehead. Now at last the fur would fly; there would be plain speaking and a battle royal, and her father would come out of the fray thoroughly limp and quite cured of his pedantic sarcasms. But these desirable events did not happen. Mona, for the thousandth time, submitted. But none the less there was a change in that room. The dull brooding thundercloud became active. Lois was aware of wave upon wave of repugnance and actual detestation passing from each end of the table and clashing in mid-air, just where she herself sat; but not above her head. Each wave caught her into the swirl, tossed her, buffeted her, drowned her, until she sat dizzy with her wits all scattered. Her mother brought her back to her senses with a warning look at the clock upon the mantelshelf.
“Lois darling, if you don’t hurry you’ll be late for school.”
Mr. Perriton, having broken through his habit of silence, now turned his sarcasms upon Lois.
“Yes, that would never do,” he said. “If my daughter couldn’t pass her examinations in Hindustani and the higher trigonometry at the end of the term, the family would be disgraced and all the money I have paid in school-fees wasted.”
Lois rose quickly from her chair. Perriton, when he took any notice of her at all, used a form of raillery hateful above all to children and soldiers, which consists of a mocking tone and long words; and she detested her father accordingly. Her mother followed her into the hall, and found her red in the face with rage and her eyes full of tears.
“You mustn’t mind, Lois. Your father is in one of his moods,” said Mona consolingly.
“He’s in his only mood,” cried Lois, stamping her foot. “I hate him! I hate him.”
“Lois, that’s very wicked,” said her mother.
“I know. I am wicked.” Indeed she was fairly certain at this time that she was a lost soul. For on a Sunday two years before she had been greatly impressed by a verse in the Second Lesson from the fifth chapter of St. Matthew. And being baited by her father on her return home at the Sunday dinner, she had, with a quite fearful audacity, said to him under her breath, “Raca,” and having said it again was driven on by a sort of pride in her inconceivable wickedness to say it again, “Raca!” Now, to say that to your brother put you in danger of the council, whatever dreadful torment that meant. But for the little girl who said it twice on a Sunday, too, to her father, there couldn’t be much hope. But she wouldn’t take it back. Her father had driven her to it. And when after they were all dead and he saw her in danger of the council, he might be sorry for what he had done. Oh, yes, she was wicked. “How could I help being wicked, with a father who drinks himself muzzy every night?”
Her mother was horrified.
“Hush!” she said sternly. “How dare you say a thing like that!”
“It’s true, Mummy,” Lois insisted stubbornly; and indeed it was the truth. It was the explanation of the fact which had given to Mr. Wyatt so favourable an impression of the domesticity of the Perriton household. Henry Perriton came straight home from his office after the day’s work was done. Yes, no doubt that he did. He even hurried home. But it was the bottle which drew him He drank silently, sullenly, by himself, a creature of disappointment, convinced that the world was in a conspiracy to ignore his merits.
It was true that within the last two years more work had come his way than ever before. But even that was now an offence to him. His habits were formed. The work came too late, and a good deal of it he actually declined. He preferred to grumble over the wrongs the world had done to him. That was a good deal more tempting than buckling to and throwing them off.
Lois took up her attache case — the attache case was just at this time beginning to supersede the satchel amongst all self-respecting schoolgirls — and went off to her class. She was puzzled by her father’s outburst at the breakfast table, and wondered what a fashionable wedding in London could have to do with her beloved mother.
“But that mystery can wait till I get home,” she told herself firmly.
For she, too, had her own carefully-guarded secret. From her love for her mother there had sprung a fine and courageous plan, and for nothing in the world would she have missed ten minutes of her schooling.
Whilst she then toiled at her lessons, later on that morning after the orders were given and the household work done, Mona Perriton read word by word in the newspaper an account of the marriage at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, of Mark Thewliss, Esq., of Grosvenor Street and Upper Theign in the County of Berkshire, Member of Parliament for the Amworth Division, to the Lady Olivia Stanton, daughter of the late Earl of Porlock. The account was written by a lady and glowed with enthusiasm. For though Porlock and his gee-gees had eaten up the Porlock estates, there were branches of the family of wealth and high importance, and these had dutifully rallied now that the foolishly obstinate Olivia had forgotten her dead soldier and consented to marry a millionaire.
The affair was altogether very dashing and brilliant. The Duchess of Gryborough lent her mansion in Berkeley Square for the reception; Laura Viscountess Harmere provided the trousseau; one of the Royal Blood was present in the Church; a Bishop joined the happy pair, and after the ceremony all London flocked to Berkeley Square, from the Prime Minister to the actor of the moment. The dresses were described with the requisite wealth of technicalities, the bride in ivory satin and priceless lace which had come over with William of Orange, the bridesmaids in pale gold chiffon with amber shoes, and two little pages in white velvet court suits carried the bridal train. Scotland Yard watched over the presents, and at the close of the resounding event
, the bride and bridegroom left in a Rolls-Royce car to join Mr. Thewliss’ auxiliary topsail schooner which was waiting for them in Southampton Water.
“Well, he can sail past the Dean’s Elbow this time, and no wedding ring need be dropped into the water,” she said to herself, but without any bitterness, rather indeed with a tender little smile for that foolish wondrous month west of where England began. She had gambled with her eyes open and she had lost. She had no reproaches to make.
“This is the end,” she said, looking again at the account of the marriage. Had she nursed a hope unacknowledged to herself during all these years, that at some time, somehow, a miracle would transform her world? That the enormous distance between Glebe Villa, Acacia Grove, and Upper Theign in the County of Berkshire could be bridged? Or had she some quite other and deeper thought hidden away at the back of her mind, some purpose held in reserve against a final hammer-stroke of misery?
“This is the end,” she repeated. “This is really the end.” Yet at that moment, on the opposite side of the street, an unnoticeable man with a dragoon’s moustache was strolling past her windows, and Lois was hurrying home from her school so that she might read the account of that wedding which had set the blood flaming in her mother’s face.
Mr. Perriton took his luncheon in a cafe near to his office, so that this one hour of the day at Glebe Villa was a treasure to both mother and daughter. It was an hour of confidences and gaiety and refreshment; and both prepared for it with a pretty foppery as though for some long-anticipated festival. No slovenliness must mar it. If a new ribbon had been bought, it was at this hour it would make its first appearance. Thus Lois hurrying home some ten minutes before her usual time, had the dining-room to herself whilst her mother was in her room upstairs.
“Mark Thewliss,” she said to herself in perplexity. She had no doubt that this was the man who had got off at last because he was a millionaire. For one thing he had married a fine lady, the Lady Olivia Stanton. For another, a Bishop had tied the knot, and no Bishop had tied any other knot on that particular day. But...Mark Thewliss? Lois had never heard of him. She was still a child. She imagined a romance. But she could not bring it into any reasonable relationship with fact.
That her father and Mark Thewliss had both been suitors for her lovely mother’s hand — yes, that was all that was intelligible. But that her father had won! No! Strange couples, no doubt, she admitted in her youthful wisdom, did pass through the gateway of roses into that unknown wilderness which was married life. Her mother was a living proof of it. But that Henry Perriton had actually triumphed over a rival, like an armoured knight in the lists — no, reason refused the contention.
For once in a way there was a restraint upon both mother and daughter, and the meal went to a sigh instead of to a laugh.
XIV. LOIS GROWS UP
LOIS FINISHED HER schooling soon after her sixteenth birthday and at the end of the summer term. She saw that morning dawn with delight, for she had tossed during the last six months in a fever of impatience to begin upon the purpose which she had nursed in secrecy. She used the very first day of her freedom in its furtherance. For at eleven o’clock she set out from Glebe Villa and walked to her father’s office at the back of the big square in the middle of the city.
It was not an easy walk for her, however, for her knees shook a little, and every now and then she drew in a breath with a great lift of the heart; and what had seemed in Acacia Grove a sensible request swelled into an enormity as she reached the busy thoroughfares. Not that the stress and apprehension were visible to any stranger. Those who turned to watch her as she passed saw only a tall slim girl, with an eager, lovely face, the radiance of whose youth awakened some tiny sense of pain that it must pass so soon, some moment of wonder what the world had in store for her. But the anxiety was there, troubling her so deeply that the sequence and the words of the little dutiful speeches she had rehearsed began to seem ridiculous, and as ineffective as copy-book rhetoric.
She climbed to the second floor and entered the small outer office in which Mona had worked when she had taken employment with Henry Perriton. Another stenographer now sat in Mona’s place. But that was the only change. The same cheap and scanty office furniture stood against dingy walls on the same worn drugget, and there was the same lack of busy clients.
“Can I see my father?” Lois asked.
“I’ll see.”
The stenographer went into the inner room and came out again.
“Will you go in, please, Miss Perriton?”
Lois, with her heart beating violently against her ribs, stepped into the small room and closed the door. Henry Perriton was standing with his back to her at the one window, and he spoke without turning.
“And to what do I owe the singular honour of a visit from you to these unromantic purlieus?” he asked.
There was no lightness in his tone. He uttered his pedantics automatically, his eyes and his attention fixed upon the pavement two floors below.
“Father,” Lois blurted out. She had prepared explanations, arguments, all justifying diplomatically the final culminating request. They went overboard now. She would have floundered over them, would probably have been dismissed to get her little speech by heart with a few phrases meant to be cutting. She rushed straight upon the aim of her visit.
“Father, I want thirty pounds.”
And in a second she was no longer nervous, she was terribly frightened. Perriton swung round from the window with a strangled cry of sheer ungovernable rage. His face had gone white, his eyes glared at her. She had never seen hatred before except in the mimicry of stage and screen. She saw the real thing now — naked, appalling, devouring her from head to foot. The simple daintiness of her dress was an offence, her look of distinction an outrage.
“Come here!” he said in a whisper from a dry throat.
Lois shrank away.
“I’ll pay it back,” she answered, her voice shaking. “I meant to promise that before I asked for the money. But I was nervous and...”
Mr. Perriton interrupted her savagely.
“Pay it back! You! Dolls cost money, but they don’t pay. Come here!”
He advanced towards her, and Lois’ fear sharpened into a panic. She fumbled for the door-handle behind her, not daring to take her eyes from his face.
“Father!” she stammered. She clasped her hands over her throat, thinking in the extremity of her terror that he meant to kill her.
“Father!” And the name set him laughing mirthlessly, hideously, for whilst his mouth grinned and his teeth chattered with laughter his eyes were the eyes of a creature spitting venom.
“Father That’s a good one,” he cried. “Come here — before it’s too late.”
If he had taken a step nearer to her she would have screamed. But he turned back to the window and again peered out of it.
“Quick—” he whispered urgently, making room for her at his side — so urgently that Lois left the protection of the door and crossed the room. Then he seized her wrist and pressed her closer to the pane.
“Look down! Do you see that man on the opposite side of the street? The small man with the moustache as big as himself? Watch how carelessly he strolls by — the rotten idiot! He’ll turn in a second and have a look at our windows. Doesn’t he do it well, the ass? Ah, he has seen you! Yes! He’s crossing the road. He’ll stroll back to the door of this building. You’ll see him when you go out. Sure to! For he has got to see you.”
Lois wondered whether her father’s anger had not upset his reason.
“Why has he got to see me?”
“To make his report, of course.”
“Report!”
Lois was losing her fear now. Henry Perriton was dwindling before her eyes. From being grand in the terror which he had inspired he was becoming little again, the purveyor of unpolished sarcasms which missed their mark, which simply rubbed on an old wound rather than pierced with an arrow-pang.
“Yes, my dear, it’s sur
ely obvious. You are growing up. Mr. Wyatt there is in duty bound to make his report. He must say how pretty you are and how smart you look and what little trouble you are likely to give, and how everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Of course he must report.”
“To whom?”
For a moment Mr. Perriton hesitated, jerking his head backwards in a kind of spasm as though dumbness took him at the very moment of speech. But the temptation was too strong. He was boiling with his wrongs and his failures, not one of which he attributed to himself.
“To your father, of course.”
The words were out now. Mr. Perriton was very glad that he had spoken them. He was getting a bit of his own back, what? He seemed to hear some imaginary man of the world winking at him over a glass of beer and using just those words. “Getting a bit of your own back, what? Stout fellow!”
“Your father, Mark Thewliss, the millionaire. Ah, he’s the wise man,” Perriton continued. “None of your early marriages for him. He knows better. He’s going to run, so he strips for the race. Millionaire at forty and caterwauling in the House of Commons a couple of years later. Marriage? To be sure. But marriage with Her Ladyship of the County Families, and a bishop to do the trick. Whilst up there in Liverpool — by God, he must laugh when he thinks of it — a little overworked accountant carries on his shoulders his mistress and his bastard.”
The ugly, abominable word was spoken. Perriton heard a stifled moan, but he was still on the flood tide of his rancours. There was no stopping him now. He could not have stopped himself. Mona Lightfoot had told him the truth before she consented to marry him. Her month upon the Sea Flower with Mark Thewliss, her knowledge that a child would be born — everything. But in his desire for her he had accepted the position. He had married with his eyes open and no longer a young man. But his passion had withered. The dreams of a future broadening out into the ease of a successful professional man in a huge business community had not been realised. There was a fatal obstacle somewhere, and he found it not at all in himself, but in the burden of a wife and a daughter who was another man’s child. He was not of the fibre which endures. Success must come to him quickly if at all. He could not build.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 597