The Helpmate Part 45

She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy.

"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't.

I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter."

"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll be a help to her."

"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that."

"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong.

Peggy, I mean."

"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at me now!"

He looked at her and laughed.

"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind."

"Why should I?"

"Why, indeed? n.o.body need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I suppose you know it's all come to nothing?"

"What has?"

"Her marriage."

"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?"

"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think he really was?"

"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to marry her?"

"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't."

"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have troubled his bright essence."

Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?"

"I don't think I mind anything very much now."

The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-gla.s.s informed her) both gone off and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the triumph of maturity.

She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to meet _you_ here."

She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then ignored the circ.u.mstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved respectability.

But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of the happy past.

"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?"

Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with time.

He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago."

"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?"

She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?"

"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night."

"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if anything, more discreetly than before.

"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now."

"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling she is, too."

"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?"

"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck."

Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.

"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_ could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah had ever taken part.

When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she turned to Mrs. Hannay.

"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful."

"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with him."

"I knew he would. He was born to do it."

"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."

"Oh--the child!"

She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.

CHAPTER XXI

The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable master of commercial detail.

The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business.

Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.

To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently required to give his best attention.