The Helpmate Part 52

Autumn pa.s.sed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with them.

Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him.

He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in Thurston Square.

Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.

A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was softer.

At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie between her soul and G.o.d. But more than once lately, she had experienced difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous pet.i.tions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning the same pa.s.sionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil, opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's deterioration.

Yet Anne was softer.

Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing pa.s.sion, as Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs, and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw, wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship with earth.

She dreaded the pa.s.sing of the seasons, as they would take with them each some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superst.i.tion of the English language.

A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.

But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between right and wrong.

In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement, proved more effectual than Anne.

They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time.

It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to Majendie, shivering with delight.

"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my own self, and eated it all up."

Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very miserable day.

"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty."

"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all."

She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was naughty."

Majendie laughed.

"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?"

Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy."

Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her mother.

"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?"

"I'm sorry, daddy."

Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast.

"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now."

Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked.

"Are you happy, daddy?"

He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room.

And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?"

"I don't know, darling."

"Do you think he will come back again?"

"Darling, I don't know."

"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?"

"Of course, Peggy."

"Then I'll go and tell him."

She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head sadly.

"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy."

"Why do you say that, Peggy?"

"Because he won't come when you want him to."

"Perhaps he's busy."

"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."

And she trotted downstairs and up again.

"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to him?"

That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her mother's heart ache.

Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that, and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between right and wrong.

But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.

"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."

She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection against the pursuing vision of her sin.

"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."