“No,” Mona answered. “I’ll find her myself and tell her the good news.”
She rose from her chair. The dreaded interview was over. Her Lois was set free from tie squalors of Glebe Villa and from the dreary soul-murdering tramp for work. She would have her chance now. She would move in a more delicate world amongst gardens and flowers. She would have companions and games and good health, and the pride of her independence. That Mona herself would lose her daughter she was well aware, but the sense of loss was all swallowed up in her joy in Lois’ prosperity.
“I hadn’t expected anything half so wonderful, Mark,” she said with a warm gratitude.
“It’s I who am going to benefit,” he returned. “Look at my table!”
A great mahogany writing-table stood in the centre of the big room. It was made for use by two people. There was a knee-hole and two pedestals of drawers on either side. Two arm-chairs and two writing-pads faced one another across the leather top. But the table to-day was in a sad litter with papers and letters, prospectuses and envelopes.
“Gregory — that’s my manager in London — hasn’t the high opinion of me that I have of myself,” he said ruefully, “and when I look at my table I wonder whether he’s right. Miss Perriton will have to put it right.”
“Oh, she’ll soon do that “ — Mona began and suddenly broke off.
Mark Thewliss had made two mistakes that morning. The first; when he had unwittingly closed and turned the knob of the French window in his study; the second, when to demonstrate his acute need of a secretary he pointed to the litter of papers on his table. Had he been content not to embroider an arrangement already made, Mona Perriton would have hurried off into the park, and the duologue would then and there have ended. As it was Mona’s eyes were attracted to the table and she saw it, holding down some papers as a weight and half hidden by others — the mallet. Mona recognised it by the big capital M burnt into the flat side, and being herself a little over-strung by the immediate success of her plan, she blurted out:
“So you have kept it, Mark,” and the recollection of her one dream-like holiday came back to her on a golden tide; so that the blood rushed into her face, her eyes grew soft, for a moment her youth was hers again.
“Kept what?” Mark asked in a perplexity.
“The mallet.”
She reached forward and picked it up.
“That?” Mark said, still wondering what the pother was about. “I suppose I have used it for a paper weight, off and on, for a very long time. Now I come to think of it, it must have lain on this big table ever since I came to Upper Theign. I have used it — yes, but I haven’t noticed it. I must have found it somewhere one day when the wind from the garden was blowing my letters all over the room. But where it came from, I can’t imagine.”
“I can tell you,” said Mona, with an odd smile. She was amused like one playing a game.
Mark fell in with her mood.
“Let me think!...No!...” He took the mallet out of her hand and turned it over. “M for Mark?...No, I can’t remember doing that!”
“You didn’t do it.”
Mark’s mind was a blank.
“Who did?”
“An old boat-builder at Salcombe.” And Mark Thewliss dropped the mallet. It fell with a heavy thud upon the leather-covered table, turned over twice, knocking loudly — knocking upon the closed doors of memory — and lay still.
“I had forgotten it altogether,” said Mark quietly; and at another time Mona would have heard in his voice an urgent appeal that she should forget it too. But she heard only the words. She was carried away by a sudden passion, born of the recollections which surged up in her at the sight of that mallet, strengthened too by Mark’s own kindness. He should have his reward for that kindness. Lois too would get her profit from it, wouldn’t she? Mona persisted.
“The old boat-builder tossed it into the punt. You had your letter offering you the partnership. We were racing back to Southampton Water. It was a Sunday morning. He threw it into the punt, as he pushed us off from the steps — with a word or two, Mark...”
“Mona!” he cried sharply, loudly, and she stopped.
He remembered the little incident now, and the words the old man had used; and he did not wish them repeated. Women looked backwards — men looked forwards — wasn’t that the rule of the world? No doubt that old mallet had come along with the rest of the Sea Flower’s furniture when she was dismantled years ago. It had lain here and lain there, in this house and that, under his nose, but never recognised, never even really perceived. It was bad luck that her eyes should notice it.
“Mona, I want you to understand,” he said gravely; and to stop a resurrection which he felt somehow to be dangerous he went beyond the truth. “That old mallet has no history for me at all. It would not be lying on my table in this house if it had. It has no meaning, no associations. The M! As you say, I didn’t burn it into the wood. It has nothing to do with me. Shall I tell you what it is? It is the initial upon a coffin which has lain forgotten, deep in the earth for five-and-twenty years.”
So he spoke and turned away. But the answer came nevertheless, very low and gently uttered but very distinct.
“Yes, Mark, but dead things which have lain coffined deep in the earth for five-and-twenty-years still have living children.”
And she waited with just a tiny sense of triumph whilst the truth so long concealed broke like the dawn upon Mark’s brain and heart.
XVIII. DIFFICULTIES — AND NATURE’S WAY OUT
LOIS!
She was his, then — actually his. Mark began to move about the room, almost stumbling like a blind man, putting out a hand and feeling the back of a chair here, the edge of a table there. There was a light upon his face which none of his success had ever kindled. He was troubled, but divinely troubled. The dream of many years, now for many years foregone, was fulfilled, the ache to be lulled only by an obsession of work was smoothed away. An overcast day had broken up and the rose had bloomed. Lois! And he had called the name fantastic! Why, it was an adorable name. Mark laughed — a quiet gurgle of delight. He was thinking:
“A crasher! Not Mr. Wyatt’s style, which was plump and ruddy. And not homey! But definitely a crasher! Well, I must see if I can’t produce some hominess without damaging the crashery.”
He was standing in the window looking out on to the park; and he recalled the afternoon when he had first been brought to this house, with his new need beginning to clamour for fulfilment. How long ago was that? Twelve years. Yes, twelve years. A sense of injustice and resentment all at once soured his high pleasure. For twelve years he had been robbed.
“You ought to have told me of this before, Mona,” he said sullenly, without turning about to her.
“When — before?” she asked in a reasonable cool voice. “Before Lois was born perhaps? That was the only time. But you wouldn’t have thanked me if I had. You didn’t want a child in those days, Mark. You didn’t even want a wife.” A faint colour tinged her pale face and her voice now sank to a whisper full with confidence. “I’d have starved rather than tell you.” She caught herself up, disdaining her own words.
“It’s curious how easily that sort of phrase gets itself spoken. Of course I shouldn’t have starved — neither I nor Lois. I was quite capable of looking after both of us.”
“Yes,” Mark agreed, turning now towards her.
He remembered her pride and her efficiency. She stood with her head erect, her form still unbent. No doubt to this day she retained them both. Yet — yet — he put his perplexity into words.
“Yet you married Perriton.”
“Yes. I wanted a name for Lois. I wanted her not to be ashamed. Henry was very good to me.” Mona Perriton began to pick her way through a drift of dangerous words. “I didn’t cheat him, of course. I told him the truth — that a child was coming, that you were its father. I made him take a little time to think it over — not too long. If we were going to marry we couldn’t afford too
long. He agreed that the child should be his. He was very good to me. We were little people as we are now, and we could live unnoticed. No one was going to worry about the date of our marriage. We used to live in a suburb where nobody knew us and there Lois was born.”
“And Lois herself knows nothing?”
“Nothing. That was the bargain,” and she repeated: “Henry has been very good to me.”
The phrase stung Mark Thewliss to three separate kinds of anger. Anger with himself first of all. Other men had reached higher place and greater power than his who had married young and far humbler wives. He stole a glance at Mona. The stress of her life had worn her beauty thin before its time, but had she been set in the easy places amongst the exquisite things, as he could so soon have set her, she would have graced his house as long ago she had graced the Sea Flower; and she would have brought Lois with her. Anger with Mona in the second place, in that she put him to the humiliation of this self-reproach; and most unjust of all a spurt of anger with Olivia, a disparagement of her because she had married him and failed where Mona had triumphed. If she had triumphed!
The suspicion slipped into his mind, more because he needed to find a fault in some other as well as in himself than for any other reason. Suppose that Mona Perriton— “pinched,” that was the word — had looked about her for some warm satin-lined nest in which she could plant her darling and had chosen his house! He did not utter the suspicion, but it was in his eyes as he looked at her and Mona answered it. He had forgotten that uncomfortable gift she had of seeing the mechanism of his thoughts, when most he wanted a smoke-cloud to hide it behind.
“You can easily find out the date of my marriage and the date of Lois’ birth,” she said, and she gave him on the spot the names of the church in which she wedded and the suburban parish of Liverpool in which Lois was born.
“Besides,” she added, “you mustn’t forget that you had already promised all and more than I asked for Lois, before I told you she was your daughter. There was no reason why I should tell you at all. I didn’t mean to when I came into this room. I was probably unwise. But I saw the mallet, and it brought back dim things too vividly, and — and — I suddenly wanted you to know.” A smile gave back for a moment its beauty to her tired face. “I wanted you to be as proud of Lois as I am.”
Mark’s indignation died away altogether.
“I don’t suppose that I shall find that so very difficult,” he replied with a laugh. “I never really doubted that you were telling me the truth,” and indeed if he had so doubted, her story chimed so exactly with the discoveries of Joseph Wyatt that the doubt could not have endured. “I was trying not very successfully to find someone besides myself whom I could blame. Sit down again for a moment, Mona.”
He needed a few moments for reflection. The glittering avenues were now seen to be paved with flints. There would be delicate walking for all of them concerned in this ironic entanglement — for himself especially. He could not acknowledge Lois publicly, as he would have loved to have done, for her sake, and for Mona’s and for his wife’s Olivia’s. That way out was closed, the door slammed and bolted and barred. There was another way to be sure, but it needed time and a good deal of sacrifice on Mona’s part and a good deal of charity on Olivia’s, and even then Lois herself might say “No” — yes, might very well say “No.” He had met her but the once in the corridor of the Admiralty; but she had given him nevertheless a vivid impression of something more than a high independence and a consciousness of strong youth, of armour. Yes, that was the word he wanted. Armour damascened and gilded and daintily adorned, but armour none the less. Not homey, in a word, but a crasher.
“Still, if I go to work very carefully,” he reflected, “we might all in the end agree and I could adopt her.”
Since he and Olivia were growing old in a big and empty house, which itself, as he sometimes imagined it, was aching for the ripple and clamour of young voices, the adoption of a girl who had made her home there would be the most natural and reasonable thing. Only there was Olivia’s point of view to be considered. He had an awkward little story to tell her — full of humiliation for her. How would she take it? She was a brick, yes, but she was the corner stone of this palace of dreams which he was so busily erecting, and would she fit into her important place?
Mark rose with an uneasy jerk from his chair. He was not of the men who go to a doctor and hope that the truth will be concealed from them. He wanted to know, and at once.
“I tell you what, Mona. You go and find Lois and bring her here, whilst I break the news to my wife.”
Mona drew in her breath with a gasp.
“The news that you’ve engaged a secretary,” she said insistently.
Mark shook his head.
“The news that I’ve found my daughter.”
And a cry of fear broke with a startling sharpness from Mona’s lips.
“Mark, you can’t do that! You mustn’t!”
“Mona, I must.”
Supplications and entreaties were as unnatural in Mona Perriton’s mouth as a foreign accent, but they streamed from her now. The bridle of acquiescence was lifted from her tongue.
“Mark, you don’t understand! If you tell your wife everything she’ll hate Lois. She will! She’ll forgive you, she won’t give a thought to me, but she’ll hate Lois night and day. She’ll make her life intolerable.”
“You don’t know my wife.”
“I don’t have to know her to be sure of that. Here’s Lois, tall and slim and lovely, in your house, your child and not hers. An ever present reproach to her because she has never borne a child to you — a constant galling humiliation. She’ll be horrible to Lois! Any woman would — the best in the world. We can all be as venomous as rattlesnakes if we get provocation enough, and you’re giving her all the provocation in the world.”
She looked eagerly into Mark’s face for some sign of acquiescence, but though he stood moodily frowning as though he half believed her, he would not keep her secret from Olivia.
“What a fool I was ever to tell it you,” she exclaimed. “I have kept it myself for twenty-five years and now I must blurt it out like a lunatic. Mark, listen!” She took his arm and clung to it:
“I am warning you. This pleasant life of yours will all be spoilt,” and Mark gently freed himself from her grasp.
“I can’t help it,” he said quietly. “It’s the risk we must run. But to bring my daughter into my house and not tell my wife? No! I am going to use your own words, Mona. I don’t cheat, either.”
Mona wrung her hands in a little gesture of despair and was silent. Mark crossed to the door. His hand was on the knob when she spoke again but this time in a gentle, almost toneless, voice.
“Wait a moment, will you?”
As he had asked her for a space for reflection, so she made the same plea now. She stood with her eyes upon the carpet at her feet and asking herself:
“Shall I take Lois away? Shall I find her and say that I have failed? Wouldn’t that be the best way? But what if I do?”
In time, no doubt, Lois would get a job of work. She might even find one immediately, and a good one. But it was all a matter of chance. And here was this startling opportunity waiting to be seized. She couldn’t refuse it. She couldn’t go in search of Lois and see the distress cloud her face, and her lips perhaps quiver and the tears gather in her eyes. Lois must run the risk of the wife’s hostility. Mark at all events would be there to protect her.
“I’ll go and find Lois,” she said. “But remember you hold her in trust from me.”
“My dear, I’ll not fail you.”
Both of them were grave, both conscious that a vital change had taken place in the direction of their lives. As a rule one lustrum melts into the next by a gradual development, so that changes of disposition and views and obligations which may surprise and even shock the onlooker cause not so much as a start to those to whom they happen. Habit unawares smooths out a life. But twice these two had stood co
nscious of a revolution in their lives — once in Salcombe Harbour on board the Sea Flower, a second time here at Upper Theign — with a definite choice to make of which they could not foresee the consequences but knew they must be tremendous.
“You’ll do what you can, Mark, I know,” she said as he held open the door for her. She laid a hand for a second upon his sleeve and passed out into the sunlight of the garden.
Mark closed the library door. On the other side of the room a second door opened into Olivia’s sitting-room. He took a step or two towards it and suddenly drew back, his heart leaping unexpectedly. Through the window he saw two young people side by side on the river bank — Derek Crayle and his own daughter Lois.
He hid behind a window-curtain and watched. Derek was doing all the talking, pointing out some feature of interest, then again narrating some terrific reminiscence, some great fish played with infinite patience upon a pack-thread and — with a glance towards the laboratory under the trees — some proud word about his partnership. He was talking about himself with a complete concentration in the time-honoured way; and she, with a smile here and a look of admiration there and a timid little question to show at once her ignorance and her interest, was just jollying him along in the time-honoured way too. Mark Thewliss chuckled as he watched them. There were the glass panes of the french window between him and them, but he had no need to hear what they said, so evidently was the age-old story of the young man and the maid beginning to be retold.
Of course here was the solution of his troubles! Whilst he was considering clumsy processes like adoption, Nature was taking the matter into her own capable hands, flattening down that flinty road for him, telling him to stand on one side and see good work well done. Mark laughed aloud in the silent room. What a couple they would make! Both of them young and erect and sane and sweet with health. They had fallen into a thoughtful mood now, walking pensively, exchanging thoughts of an unparalleled profundity. It was all according to plan — but Nature’s plan, not his. He turned away from the window and sought Olivia in her sitting-room.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 602