The Helpmate Part 53

But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him.

He minded ever so."

"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and comforted her.

She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should refuse to forgive her and kiss her.

And Anne did not refuse.

Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she began to see?

That was how Anne grew soft.

Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip, the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.

She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding charm, when the child was not with her.

And as the seasons, pa.s.sing, made her more and more a woman dear and desirable, Majendie's pa.s.sion for her became almost insane through its frustration.

Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays, and eat things that disagreed with him.

Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him.

Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the spectacle of her maternal pa.s.sion. She showered her tendernesses on the child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry, looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her fill of love.

And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing drink, and considered that she had done her duty.

A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache) a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal, burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly Light_, in a heavenly tenor.

Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.

"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."

"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses to her across the room.

Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.

Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."

Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions that brought the blood to her mother's face.

From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne stood linked together by the body of their child.

And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."

Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her soft lips touch his forehead without parting.

That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.

"Are you not well, Walter?"

"I've got a splitting headache."

"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."

"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."

"I beg your pardon."

He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his forehead.

She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.

She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad illness, and fear made her kind.

"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be very gentle with him.

"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.

She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close against his mouth, and kissed it.

She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him without a word.

He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.

CHAPTER XXV

It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died again under her repulse.

Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs.

Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the t.i.tle, who had come with Mrs. Ransome--the lady who had bought more embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie said, to take your breath away.

Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a G.o.d--in case he came.

He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the G.o.d should come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come.

The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they began to love her.

She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her.

It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who "studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen (not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went on her predestined way.

For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst--Last year Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and driven by the wind.

As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went from flame to flame; for the hours when there was n.o.body to love simply dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr.