The Helpmate Part 62

Thus he brooded.

And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing the illusion.

He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now.

"And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked.

"Yes. Very well."

"And Steve--is he as good to you as ever?"

Maggie brightened and became more communicative.

"Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for the old Angora rabbit."

"Do you like going out in the boat?"

"Yes, very much."

"Do you like going out with him?"

"No," said Maggie, making a little face, half of disgust and half of derision. "No. His hands are all dirty, and he smells of fish."

Majendie laughed. "There are drawbacks, I must own, to Steve."

He looked at his watch, an action Maggie hated. It always suggested finality, departure.

"Ten o'clock, Maggie. I must be up at six to-morrow. We sail at seven."

"At seven," echoed Maggie in despair.

They were up at six. Maggie went with him to the creek, to see him sail.

In the garden she picked a chrysanthemum and stuck it in his b.u.t.tonhole, forgetting that he couldn't wear her token. There were so many things he couldn't do.

A little rain still fell through a clogging mist. They walked side by side, treading the drenched gra.s.s, for the track was too narrow for them both. Maggie's feet dragged, prolonging the moments.

A white pointed sail showed through the mist, where the little yacht lay in the river off the mouth of the creek.

Steve was in the boat close against the creek's bank, waiting to row Majendie to the yacht. He touched his cap to Majendie as they appeared on the bank, but he did not look at Maggie when her gentle voice called good-morning.

Steve's face was close-mouthed and hard set.

She put her hands on Majendie's shoulders and kissed him. Her cheek against his face was pure and cold, wet with the rain. Steve did not look at them. He never looked at them when they were together.

Majendie dropped into the boat. Steve pushed off from the bank. Maggie stood there watching them go. She stood till the boat reached the creek's mouth, and Majendie turned, and raised his cap to her; stood till the white sail moved slowly up the river and disappeared, rounding the spit of land.

Majendie, as he paced the deck and talked to his men of wind and weather, turned casually, on his heel, to look at her where she stood alone in the level immensity of the land. The world looked empty all around her.

And he was touched with a sudden poignant realisation of her life; its sadness, its incompleteness, its isolation.

That was what he had brought her to.

CHAPTER XXIX

The rain cleared off, the mist lifted, and at nine o'clock it was a fine day for Peggy's birthday. Even Scale, where it stretched its flat avenues into the country, showed golden in the warm and brilliant air.

The household in Prior Street had been up early, making preparations for the day. Peggy had waked before it was light, to feel her presents which lay beside her on her bed; and, by the time Majendie's sail had pa.s.sed Fawlness Point, she was up and dressed, waiting for him.

Anne had to break it to her gently that perhaps he would not be home in time for eight-o'clock breakfast. Then the child's mouth trembled, and Anne comforted her, half-smiling and half-afraid.

"Ah, Peggy, Peggy," she said, as she rocked her against her breast, "What shall I do with you? Your little heart is too big for your little body."

Anne's terror had not left her in three years. It was always with her now. The child was bound to suffer. She was a little ma.s.s of throbbing nerves, of trembling emotions.

Yet Anne herself was happier. The three years had pa.s.sed smoothly over her. Her motherhood had laid its fine, soft, finishing touch upon her.

Her face, her body, had rounded and ripened, year after slow year, to an abiding beauty, born of her tenderness. At thirty-five Anne Majendie had reached the perfect moment of her physical maturity.

Her mind was no longer hara.s.sed by anxiety about her husband. He seemed to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual growth begun in him at the time of his sister's death.

She desired no change in their relations, no further understanding, no closer intimacy.

To Anne's mind, her husband's att.i.tude to her was perfect. The pa.s.sion that had been her fear had left him. He waited on her hand and foot, with humble, heart-rending devotion. He let her see that he adored her with discretion, at a distance, as a divinely, incomprehensibly high and holy thing.

Her household life had simplified itself. Her days pa.s.sed in noiseless, equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening cla.s.ses for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not an hour of her day was idle. At the end of the three years Mrs. Majendie was known in Scale by her broad charities and by her saintly life.

She had fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In three years f.a.n.n.y Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her.

She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous.

She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's delight in her, of all the sweet and dangerous ministrations of their mutual vanities. Mrs. Eliott had been uplifted by Anne's preposterously grave approval. Anne had been ravished by her own distinction as the audience of f.a.n.n.y Eliott's loftier and profounder moods. There could be no criticism of these heights and depths. To have depreciated f.a.n.n.y Eliott's rarity by a shade would have been to call in question her own.

But all this had ceased long ago, when she married Walter Majendie, and his sister became her dearest friend. f.a.n.n.y Eliott had always looked on Edith Majendie as her rival; retreating a little ostentatiously before her formidable advance. There should have been no rivalry, for there had been no possible ground of comparison. Neither could Edith Majendie be said to have advanced. The charm of Edith, or rather, her pathetic claim, was that she never could have advanced at all. To Anne's mind, from the first, there had been no choice between Edith, lying motionless on her sofa by the window, and f.a.n.n.y at large in the drawing-rooms of her acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while f.a.n.n.y Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. f.a.n.n.y Eliott, poor thing, still suffered by the contrast.

Of all Anne's friends, the Gardners alone stood the test of time. She had never had a doubt of them. They had come later into her life, after the perishing of her great illusion. The shock had humbled her senses and disposed her to reverence for the things of intellect. Dr. Gardner's position, as President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, was as a high rock to which she clung. Mrs. Gardner was dear to her for many reasons.

The dearness of Mrs. Gardner was significant. It showed that, thanks to Peggy, Anne's humanisation was almost complete.

To-day, which was Peggy's birthday, Anne's heart was light and happy.

She had planned, that, if the day were fine, the festival was to be celebrated by a picnic to Westleydale.

And the day was fine. Majendie had promised to be home in time to start by the nine-fifty train. Meanwhile they waited. Peggy had helped Mary the cook to pack the luncheon basket, and now she felt time heavy on her little hands.

Anne suggested that they should go upstairs and help Nanna. Nanna was in Majendie's room, turning out his drawers. On his bed there was a pile of suits of the year before last, put aside to be given to Anne's poor people. When Peggy was tired of fetching and carrying, she watched her mother turning over the clothes and sorting them into heaps. Anne's methods were rapid and efficient.

"Oh, mummy!" cried Peggy, "don't! You touch daddy's things as if you didn't like them."