Studies in Wives Part 14

Wingfield nodded his head. His heart suddenly went out to his friend--the prosperous lawyer had reason to remember that hundred pounds legacy, for ten pounds of it had gone to help him out of some foolish sc.r.a.pe. But Dering had forgotten all that; he went on speaking, but more slowly:

"And then, as you know, we came back and settled down in Gray's Inn, and though we were horribly poor, perhaps poorer than even you ever guessed, we were divinely happy." He turned his back to the room and stared out once more at the greyness opposite.

"But you're quite right, old man, it's time we did like our betters!

We'll be married at once, and I'll take her off for another and a longer honeymoon, and we'll come back and be even happier than we were before."

Then again, as abruptly as before, he was gone, shutting the door behind him, and leaving Wingfield staring thoughtfully after him.

That his friend, that the Philip Dering of ten years ago, should have done such a thing, was in no way remarkable, but that Louise--the thoughtful, well-balanced, intelligent woman, who, coming as a mere girl from Denmark, had known how to work her way up to a position of great trust and responsibility in a City house, so winning the esteem and confidence of her employers that they had again and again asked her to return to them after her marriage--that she should have consented to such--to such.... Wingfield even in his own mind hesitated for the right word ... to such an arrangement--seemed to the lawyer an astounding thing, savouring indeed of the fifth dimension.

No, no, he would certainly not tell Kate anything about it. Why should he? He knew very well how his wife would regard the matter, and how her condemnation would fall, not on Louise--Kate had become exceedingly fond of Louise--no, indeed, but on Dering. Kate had never cordially "taken"

(a favourite word of hers, that) to Wingfield's friend; she thought him affected and unpractical, and she laughed at his turned-down collars and Liberty ties. No, no, there was no reason why Kate should be told a word of this extraordinary, this amazing story.

On leaving Abingdon Street, Philip Dering swung across the broad roadway, and made his way, almost instinctively, to the garden which lay so nearly opposite his friend's office windows. He wanted to calm down, to think things over, and to recover full possession of himself before going home.

It had cost him a considerable effort to tell Wingfield this thing. Not that he was in the least ashamed of what he and Louise had done--on the contrary, he was very proud of it--but he had often felt, during all those years, that he was being treacherous to the man who was, after all, his best friend; and there was in Dering enough of the feminine element--that element which Kate Wingfield so thoroughly despised in him--to make him feel sorry and ashamed.

However, Wingfield had taken it very well, just as he would have wished him to take it, and no doubt the lawyer had given thoroughly sound advice. This unexpected, this huge legacy made all the difference.

Besides, Dering knew well enough, when he examined his own heart and conscience, that he felt very differently about all manner of things from what he had been wont to feel say ten years ago.

After all, he was following in the footsteps of men greater and wiser than he. It is impossible to be wholly consistent. If he had been consistent he would have refused to pay certain taxes--in fact, to have been wholly consistent during the last ten years would have probably landed him, England being what it is, in a lunatic asylum. He shuddered, suddenly remembering that for awhile his own mother had been insane.

Still, as he strode along the primly kept paths of the Thames-side garden, he felt a great and, as he thought, a legitimate pride in the knowledge that in this one all-important matter, so deeply affecting his own and Louise's life, he and she had triumphantly defied convention, and had come out victorious.

The young man's thoughts suddenly took a softer, a more intimate turn; he told himself, with intense secret satisfaction, that Louise was dearer, ay, far dearer and more indispensable to him now than she had been during the days when she was still the "sweet stranger whom he called his wife." He remembered once saying to Wingfield that the ideal mate should be the improbable, be able at once to clean a grate, to cook a dinner, and to discuss Ibsen! Well, Louise had more than fulfilled this early and rather absurd ideal.

From the day when they had first met and made unconventional acquaintance, with no intervening friend to form a gossip-link of introduction, Dering had found her full of ever-recurrent and enchanting surprises. Her foreign birth and upbringing gave her both original and unsuspected points of view about everything English, and he had often thought, with good-humoured pity, of all those unfortunate friends of his, Wingfield included, whose lot it had perforce been to choose their wives among their own country-women.

Dering had not seen much of Denmark, but everything he had seen had won his enthusiastic approval. Where else were modern women to be found at once so practical and so cultivated, so pure-minded and so large-hearted? Perhaps he was half aware that his heaven was of his own creation, but that, in his present exalted mood, was only an added triumph; how few human beings can evolve, and preserve at will, their own stretch of blue sky!

Of course it was not always as easy as it seemed to be to-day; lately Louise had been listless and tired, utterly unlike herself--even, he had once or twice thought with dismay, slightly hysterical! But all that would disappear, utterly, during the first few days of their coming travels; and even he, so he now reminded himself, had felt quite unlike his usual sensible self--Dering was very proud of his good sense--since had come the news of this wonderful, this fairy-gift-like legacy.

The young man pa.s.sed out of the garden, his feet stepping from the soft sh.e.l.l-strewn gravel on to the wide pavement which borders the Houses of Parliament. He made his way round swiftly, each buoyant step a challenge to fate, to the Members' Entrance, and so across the road to the gate which leads into what was once the old parish churchyard of Westminster.

It was still too cold to sit out of doors, and after a momentary hesitation he turned into Westminster Abbey by the great north door.

Dering had not been in the Abbey since he was a child, and the spirit of quietude which fills the broad nave and narrow aisles on early spring days soothed his restlessness. But that, alas! only for a moment; as soon as his busy brain began to realise all that lay about him, he was filled with a sincere if half voluntarily comic indignation. It annoyed him to feel that this national heritage was still a church; why could not Westminster Abbey be treated as are the Colosseum in Rome and the Pantheon in Paris? And so, as he sat down in one of the pews which roused his resentment, he began to think over all the improvements which he would effect, were he given, if only for a few days, a free hand in Westminster Abbey!

Suddenly he saw, at right angles with himself, and moving across the choir, a group of four people, consisting of a man, a woman, and two children.

The man was Jack Hinton, the idle, ill-conditioned artist neighbour of his in Bedford Park, to whom there had been more than one reference in his talk with Wingfield; the children were Agatha and Mary Hinton, the motherless girls of the Danish woman to whom Louise had been so much devoted; and the fourth figure was that of Louise herself. His wife's back was turned to Dering, but even without the other three he would have known the tall, graceful figure, if only by the ma.s.ses of fair, almost lint-white hair, arranged in low coils below her neat hat.

Dering felt no wish to join the little party. He was still too excited, too interested in his own affairs, to care for making and hearing small talk. Still, a look of satisfaction came over his face as he watched the four familiar figures finally disappear round a pillar. How pleased Louise would be when he told her of his latest scheme, that of commissioning the unfortunate Hinton to paint her portrait! If only the man could be induced to work, he might really make something of his life after all. Dering meant to give the artist one hundred pounds, and his heart glowed at the thought of what such a sum would mean in the untidy, womanless little house in which his wife took so tender and kindly an interest.

Dering and Jack Hinton had never exactly hit it off together, though they had known each other for many years, and though they had both married Danish wives. The one felt for the other the worker's worldly contempt for the incorrigible idler. Yet, Dering had been very sorry for Hinton at the time of poor Mrs. Hinton's death, and he liked to think that now he would be able to do the artist a good turn. He had even thought very seriously of offering to adopt the youngest Hinton child, a baby now nearly a year old; but a certain belated feeling of prudence, of that common sense which often tempers the wind to the reckless enthusiast, had given him pause.

After all, he and Louise might have children of their own, and then the position of this little interloper might be an awkward one. Louise had always intensely wished to have a child--nay, children--and now, if it only depended on him, and if Nature would only be kind, she should have her wish. Perhaps that would be the most tangible good this legacy would bring them.

Dering left the Abbey by the door which gives access to the Cloisters.

There he spent half an hour in pleasant meditation before he started home, for the place which he knew to be so much dearer to his wife than to himself. Dering was a Londoner, the son of a doctor who had practised for many years in one of the City parishes, and in his heart he had much preferred the rooms in Gray's Inn which had been their first married home to the trim little villa, of which the interior had acquired an absurd and touching resemblance to that of a Danish homestead.

Those who declare that the borderlands of London lack physiognomy are strangely mistaken. Each suburban district has an individual character of its own, and of none is this more true than of Bedford Park.

Encompa.s.sed by poor and populous streets, within a stone's throw of what is still one of the great highways out of the town, this oasis, composed of villas set in gardens, has the tranquil, rather mysterious, charm of a river backwater.

The amazing contrast between the stir and unceasing sound of the broad High Road and the stillness of Lady Rich Road--surely the man who laid out Bedford Park must have been a Cromwell enthusiast--struck Dering with a sense of unwonted pleasure. As he put his latch-key in the front door he remembered that his wife had told him that their young Danish servant was to have that day her evening out. Well, so much the better; they would have their talk, their discussion concerning their future plans, without fear of eavesdropping or interruption.

Various little signs showed that Louise was already back from town.

Dering went straight upstairs, and, as he began taking off his boots, he called out to her, though the door between his room and hers was shut: "Do come in here, for I have so much to tell you!" But this brought no answering word, and after a moment he heard his wife's soft footsteps going down the house.

Dering dressed himself with some care; it had always been one of his theories that a man should make himself quite as formally agreeable at home as he does elsewhere, and he and Louise had ever practised, the one to the other, the minor courtesies of life. Before going downstairs he also tidied his room, as far as was possible for him to do so, and, delicately picking up his dusty boots, he took them down into the kitchen so as to save their young servant the trouble.

Then, at last, he went through into the dining-room, where he found Louise standing by the table on which lay spread their simple supper.

She gave him a quick, questioning glance, then: "I saw you in the Abbey," she said in a constrained, hesitating voice; "why did you not come up and speak to us? Mr. Hinton was on his way to some office, and I brought the children back alone."

"If I had known that was going to be the case," said Dering frankly, "I should have joined you, but I had just been spending an hour with Wingfield, and--well, I didn't feel in the mood to make small talk for Hinton!"

He waited a moment, but she made no comment.

Louise had always been a silent, listening woman, and this had made her seem, to eager, ardent Philip, a singularly restful companion.

He went on, happily at first, rather nervously towards the close of his sentence, "Well, everything is settled--even to my will. But I found Wingfield had to know--I mean about our old arrangement."

"Then you told him? I do not think you should have done that." Louise spoke very slowly, and in a low voice. "I asked you if I might do so before telling Gerda Hinton."

Dering looked at her deprecatingly. He felt both surprised and sorry. It was almost the first time in their joint lives that she had uttered to him anything savouring of a rebuke.

"Please forgive my having told Wingfield without first consulting you,"

he said at once; "but you see the absurd, the abominable state of the English law is such that in case of my sudden death you would have no right to any of this money. Besides, apart from that fact, if I trusted to my own small legal knowledge and made a will in which you were mentioned, you would probably have trouble with those odious relations of mine. So I simply had to tell him."

Dering saw that the discussion was beginning to be very painful and disagreeable; he felt a pang of impatient regret that he had spoken to his wife now, instead of waiting until she had had a thorough change and holiday.

Louise was still standing opposite to him, looking straight before her and avoiding his anxious glances. Suddenly he became aware that her lip was trembling, and that her eyes were full of tears; quickly he walked round to where she was standing, and put his hand on her shoulder.

"I am sorry, very sorry, that I had to tell Wingfield," he said; "but, darling, why should you mind so much? He was quite sympathetic; he thoroughly understood; I think I might even say that he thoroughly agrees with our point of view; but I fancy he felt rather hurt about it, and I couldn't help wishing that we had told him at the time."

Dering's hand travelled from his wife's shoulder to her waist, and he held her to him, unresisting but strangely pa.s.sive, as he added:

"You can guess, my dearest, what Wingfield, in his character of solicitor, advises us to do? Of course, in a sense it will be a fall from grace,--but, after all, we shan't love one another the less because we have been to a registry office, or spent a quarter of an hour in a church! I do think that we should follow his advice. He will let me know to-morrow what formalities have to be fulfilled to carry the thing through, and then, dear heart, we will go off for a second honeymoon.

Sometimes I wonder if you realise what this money means to us both--I mean in the way of freedom and of added joy."

But Louise still turned from him, and, as she disengaged herself from the strong encircling arm, he could see the slow, reluctant tears rolling down her cheek.

Dering felt keenly distressed. The long strain, the gallantly endured poverty, the constant anxiety, had evidently told on his wife more than he had known.

"Don't let's talk about it any more!" he exclaimed. "There's no hurry about it now, after all."