The Helpmate Part 43

And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was too clever for him.

"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked.

"Yes. Has she not to you?"

"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the primeval slime."

"Poor Wallie!"

"Well, but it's pretty serious. Do you think she's going to keep it up for all eternity?"

"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all."

"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up."

"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do."

"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?"

"Well--I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the first--she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her.

Think of the shock it must have been to her."

"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at four o'clock in the morning--before I was awake. What could I do?

Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between."

"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember."

"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if she was a hard woman."

"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive.

Besides, think of her health."

"I wonder if that really accounts for it."

"I think it may."

"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay."

"What has come to stay?"

"The dislike she's taken to me."

"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time."

"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more."

"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait."

He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream.

He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at the birth of their child he looked for it to pa.s.s.

The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe.

He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull and white, and her arms were stretched out by her sides in utter exhaustion. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, but her lips moved as if she were trying to speak to him. He felt her breath upon his face, but he could hear no words.

"What is it?" he whispered to the nurse who stood beside him. She held in one arm the new-born child, hooded and folded in a piece of flannel.

The nurse touched him on the shoulder. "She's trying to tell you to look at your little daughter, sir."

He turned and saw something--something queer and red between two folds of flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave forth a cry.

And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother.

CHAPTER XIX

After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and self-possession. She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had once been. The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood her nature was fulfilled. She had given herself up to the child from the first moment that she held it to her breast. She had found again her tenderness, her gladness, and her peace.

Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father.

In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change.

Such as his wife was now, she always would be.

She had settled down.

And he had accepted the situation.

He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It had seemed to him then that something pa.s.sed between them with the small tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use for me."

Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to ignore those paternal pa.s.sages in the night-watches, and to combat the idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too.

But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but dimly understood.

Majendie was aware that she had now no att.i.tude to him but one of apathy touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him.

By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete.

As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture.

Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition, and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to the test.

She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play a pa.s.sionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child; her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her ability to keep them up.

It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction, and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice; always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his affection for the child, as well as his pa.s.sion for the mother.