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-50497The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighth Year, by Philip Gibbs
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Eighth Year
-       A Vital Problem Of Married Life
-
-Author: Philip Gibbs
-
-Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51926]
-Last Updated: November 6, 2016
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EIGHTH YEAR ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger, from page images generously
-provided by Google Books
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE EIGHTH YEAR
-
-A Vital Problem Of Married Life
-
-By Philip Gibbs
-
-New York
-
-The Devin-Adair Company 437 Fifth Avenue
-
-1913
-
-“_The Eighth Year is the most dangerous year in the adventure of
-marriage._”
-
-Sir Francis Jeune (afterwards Lord St. Helier). President of the Divorce
-Court.
-
-
-
-
-
-PART I--THE ARGUMENT
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-It was Sir Francis Jeune, afterwards Lord St. Helier, and President
-of the Divorce Court, who first called attention to the strange
-significance of the Eighth Year of married life. “The Eighth Year,” he
-said, “is the most dangerous year in the adventure of marriage.”
-
-Afterwards, in the recent Royal Commission on Divorce, this curious
-fact was again alluded to in the evidence, and it has been shown by
-statistics of domestic tragedy, by hundreds of sordid little dramas,
-that at this period in the partnership of husbands and wives there
-comes, in many cases, a great crisis, leading often to moral disaster.
-
-It is in the Eighth Year, or thereabouts, that there is the tug-of-war
-between two temperaments, mated by the law, but not mated, perhaps, in
-ideals, in ambitions, or in qualities of character. The man and woman
-pull against each other, tugging at each other’s heartstrings. The
-Eighth Year is the fatal year, when if there is no give-and-take, no
-working compromise, no new pledges of loyalty and comradeship, the
-foundations of the home are shattered, and the hopes with which it was
-first built lie in ruins like a house of cards knocked down by a gust of
-wind.
-
-But why the Eighth Year? Why not the twelfth, fourteenth, or eighteenth
-year? The answer is not to be found in any old superstition. There
-is nothing uncanny about the number eight. The problem is not to be
-shrugged off by people who despise the foolish old tradition which
-clings to thirteen, and imagine this to be in the same class of folly.
-By the law of averages and by undeniable statistics it has been proved
-that it brings many broken-hearted men and women to the Divorce Court.
-For instance, taking the annual average of divorces in England between
-1904 and 1908, one finds that there were only six divorces between
-husbands and wives who had been married less than a year, and only
-eighteen divorces between those married less than two years. Between
-the second and the fifth years the number increases to a hundred and
-seventeen. Then there is a tremendous jump, and the numbers between the
-fifth and tenth years are two hundred and ninety-two. The period of
-the Eighth Year is the most productive of divorce. The figures are more
-startling and more significant when they cover a longer period. But
-apart from statistics and apart altogether from the Divorce Court,
-which is only one house of trouble, by using one’s own eyes in one’s
-own circle of friends one may see that young married couples who started
-happily enough show signs of stress and strain as this year approaches.
-The fact is undeniable. What is the cause behind the fact?
-
-There is not one cause, there are many causes, all leading up from
-the first day of marriage, inevitably, with the unswerving, relentless
-fatality of Greek Tragedy to the Eighth Year. They are causes which lie
-deep in the social system of our modern home life; in the little order
-of things prevailing, at this time, in hundreds of thousands of small
-households and small flats, inhabited by the middle-classes. It is
-mainly a middle-class problem, because the rich and the poor are, for
-reasons which I will show later in this argument, exempt in a large
-measure from the fatality of the Eighth Year. But all the influences
-at work among the middle-classes, in this strange age of intellectual
-disturbance, and of blind gropings forward to new social and moral
-conditions, have a close hearing upon this seeming mystery. The
-economic position of this class, its social ambitions, its intellectual
-adventures, its general education, its code of morality, its religion or
-lack of religion, its little conventional cults, the pressure of outside
-influences, thrusting inwards to the hidden life in these little
-homes, bringing dangerous ideas through the front doors, or through the
-keyholes, and all the mental and moral vibrations that are “in the
-air” to-day, especially in the air breathed by the middle-classes,
-produce--the Eighth Year.
-
-Let us start with the first year of marriage so that we may see how the
-problem works out from the beginning.
-
-Here we have, in the first year, a young man and woman who have come
-together, not through any overmastering force of passion, but as
-middle-class men and women are mostly brought together, by the accidents
-of juxtaposition, and by a pleasant sentiment. They met, before
-marriage, at tennis parties, at suburban dances, at evening At Homes. By
-the laws of natural selection, aided a little by anxious mothers, this
-young man and this young woman find out, or think they find out, that
-they are “suited” to each other. That is to say, the young man thrills
-in a pleasant way in the presence of the girl, and she sees the timidity
-in his eyes when she looks at him, and she knows that her laughter,
-the touch of her hand, the little tricks and graces she has learnt from
-girl-friends, or from actresses in musical comedy, or from instinct,
-attract him to her. She leads him on, by absurd little tiffs, artfully
-arranged, by a pretence of flirtation with other boys, by provocative
-words, by moments of tenderness changing abruptly to sham indifference,
-or followed by little shafts of satire which wound his pride, and sting
-him into desire for her. He pursues her, not knowing that he is pursued,
-so that they meet half-way. This affair makes him restless, ill at
-ease. It interrupts his work and his ambitions. Presently it becomes an
-obsession, and he knows that he has “fallen in love.” He makes his plans
-accordingly.
-
-In the middle-classes love still presupposes marriage (though the idea
-is not so fast-rooted as in the old days), but how the dickens is he to
-manage it? He is just starting his career as Something in the City, or
-as a solicitor, barrister, journalist, artist, doctor. His income is
-barely sufficient for himself, according to his way of life, which
-includes decent clothes, a club, a game of golf when he feels like it,
-a motor-cycle or a small car, a holiday abroad, theatres, a bachelor
-dinner now and again--the usual thing. He belongs to the younger
-generation, with wider interests, larger ideas, higher ambitions than
-those with which his father and mother started life.
-
-He could not start on their level. Times have changed. He remembers his
-father’s reminiscences of early struggles, of the ceaseless anxiety to
-make both ends meet, of the continual stinting and scraping to keep the
-children “decent,” to provide them with a good education, to give them
-a fair start in life. He remembers his mother in his own childhood. She
-was always mending stockings. There was always a litter of needlework on
-the dining-room table after supper.
-
-There were times when she “did” without a maid, and exhausted herself
-with domestic drudgery. There were no foreign holidays then, only a
-week or two at the seaside once a year. There was precious little pocket
-money for the boys. They were conscious of their shabby gentility, and
-hated it.
-
-The modern young man looks with a kind of horror upon all this domestic
-squalor, as he calls it. He couldn’t stand it. If marriage means that
-for him he will have none of it. But need it mean that? He and Winifred
-will scheme out their lives differently. They will leave out the baby
-side of the business--until they can afford to indulge in it. They will
-live in a little flat, and furnish it, if necessary, on the hire system.
-They will cut out the domestic drudgery. They will enjoy the fun of
-life, and shelve the responsibilities until they are able to pay for
-them. After all it will not be long before he is earning a good income.
-He has got his feet on the first rang of the ladder, and, with a little
-luck----
-
-So he proposes to the girl, and she pretends to be immensely surprised,
-though she has been eating her heart out while he hesitated, and
-delayed, and pondered. They pledge each other, “till death do us part,”
- and the girl, who has been reading a great many novels lately, is very
-happy because her own plot is working out according to the rules of
-romance.
-
-They live in a world of romance before the marriage day. The man seems
-to walk on air when he crosses London Bridge on his way to the City.
-Or if he is a barrister he sees the beauty of his girl’s face in his
-brief--and is in danger of losing his case. Or if a journalist he curses
-his irregular hours which keep him from the little house in Tulse Hill,
-or the flat in Hampstead, where there is a love-light in the windows.
-He knows the outward look of the girl, her softness, her prettiness,
-her shy glance when he greets her. He knows her teasing ways, her
-tenderness, her vivacity. Only now and then he is startled by her
-stupidity, or by her innocence, or by her ignorance, or--still more
-startling--by her superior wisdom of the ways of the world, by her
-shrewd little words, by a sudden revelation of knowledge about things
-which girls are not supposed to know.
-
-But these things do not count. Only sentiment and romance are allowed to
-count. These two people who are about to start on the long road of life
-together are utterly blind to each other’s vices or virtues. They are
-deeply ignorant of each other’s soul. They know nothing of the real man
-or the real woman hidden beneath the mask of social conventions, beneath
-the delightful, sham of romantic affection. They know nothing of their
-own souls, nor of the strength that is in them to stand the test of
-life’s realities. They know nothing of their own weakness.
-
-So they marry.
-
-And for the first year they are wonderfully happy. For the first year is
-full of excitement. They thrill to the great adventure of marriage. They
-are uplifted with passionate love which seems likely to last for
-ever. They have a thousand little interests. Even the trivialities
-of domesticity are immensely important. Even the little disasters of
-domesticity are amusing. They find a lot of laughter in life. They
-laugh at the absurd mistakes of the servant-maids who follow in quick
-succession. They laugh at their own ridiculous miscalculations with
-regard to the expense of house-keeping. They laugh when visitors call
-at awkward moments and when the dinner is spoilt by an inefficient cook.
-After all, the comradeship of a young man and wife is the best thing in
-life, and nothing else seems to matter. They are such good comrades that
-the husband never leaves his wife a moment in his leisure time. He takes
-her to the theatre with him. They spend week-ends together, far from the
-madding crowd. They pluck the flowers of life, hand in hand, as lovers.
-The first year merges into the second. Not yet do they know each other.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-It is in the third and fourth year that they begin to find each other
-out. The bright fires of their passion have died down, burning with a
-fitful glow, burning low. Until then they had been lovers to each
-other, hidden from each other by the illusions of romantic love. It was
-inconceivable that the man could be anything but kind, and tender, and
-patient, and considerate. It was inconceivable that he could hold any
-but the noblest ideals, the most exalted aspirations, the most generous
-sentiments. He had been so wise, so witty, and so gay.
-
-And to the man it had seemed that the woman by his side was gifted with
-all the virtues. At least she had been eager to please him, to satisfy
-his least desire, to bend to his will. She had pandered to his vanity,
-fed his self-conceit, listened to his opinions on all the subjects of
-life as though they were inspired. If he had been kept out late at work
-he had found her waiting for him, quick to put her arms about him,
-to cry out, “Oh, my poor dear, how tired you must be?” She had been
-grateful to him for all his little gifts, for all his words of love. And
-he had seen her as a beautiful thing, without flaw or blemish. He had
-worshipped at the foot of the pedestal on which he had placed her in his
-ideals.
-
-But now both the husband and wife begin to see each other, not as
-lovers, but as man and woman. It is rather disturbing. It is distressing
-to the young wife to discover, gradually, by a series of little
-accidents, that this man with whom she has to live all her life is not
-made of different clay from other men, that he is made of the same clay.
-One by one all the little romantic illusions out of which she had built
-up the false image of him, from the heroes of sentimental fiction, from
-the dreams of girlhood, are stripped from him, until he stands bare
-before her, the natural man. She does not like the natural man at first.
-It is quite a long time before she can reconcile herself to the thought
-that she is mated to a natural man, with a touch of brutality, with
-little meannesses, with moods of irritability, with occasional bad
-tempers, when he uses bad words. She sees, too clearly for her spiritual
-comfort, that they are not “twin-souls.” They have not been made in
-the same mould. His childhood was different from her childhood, his
-upbringing from her upbringing. She sees that in little things--mere
-trifles, but monstrously annoying, such as his untidy habits, the
-carelessness with which he flicks his cigarette ash about the carpet,
-the familiarity with which he speaks to the servant-maid. She begins to
-dislike some of his personal habits--the way in which he sneezes, his
-habit of shaving after breakfast instead of before breakfast, his habit
-of reading the newspaper at the breakfast table instead of chatting with
-her as he used to do about the programme for the day. In things less
-trivial she finds out that her first ideal of him was false. They do not
-think alike on the great subjects of life. He is a Radical and she is
-Conservative, by education and upbringing. It hurts her when he argues
-with revolutionary ideas which seem to her positively wicked, and
-subversive of all morality. He has loose views about morality in
-general, and is very tolerant about lapses from the old-fashioned
-moral code. That hurts her too--horribly. It begins to undermine the
-foundations of her faith in what used to seem the essential truth of
-things. But, above all, it hurts her to realize that she and her husband
-are not one, in mind and body, but utterly different, in temperament, in
-their outlook on life, in their fundamental principles and ideas.
-
-On the other side the husband makes unpleasant discoveries. He finds
-out, with a shock, that he was utterly ignorant of the girl whom
-he asked to be his wife, and that this woman who sits at his
-breakfast-table is not the same woman as the one who dwelt in his
-imagination, even as the one who lived with him during the first and
-second year. She has lost her coyness, her little teasing ways, her
-girlish vivacity. She begins to surprise him by a hard common-sense, and
-no longer responds so easily to his old romantic moods. He can no longer
-be certain of her smiles and her tenderness when he speaks the old
-love-words. She begins to challenge his authority, not deliberately, nor
-openly, but by ignoring his hints, or by disregarding his advice.
-
-She even challenges his opinions, and that is a shock to him. It is a
-blow to his vanity.
-
-It takes down his self-conceit more than a peg or two, especially when
-he has to acknowledge, secretly, that she is in the right, as sometimes
-happens. He finds out faults in her now--a touch of selfishness, a trace
-of arrogance, an irritability of temper of which he has to be careful,
-especially when she is in a nervous state of health. They begin to
-quarrel rather frequently about absurd things, about things that do not
-matter a brass farthing. Some of these quarrels reach passionate heights
-and leave them both exhausted, wondering rather blankly what it was all
-about. Then the wife cries a little, and the husband kisses her.
-
-By the end of the fourth year they know each other pretty well.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-In the fifth and sixth years they have settled down to the jog-trot
-of the married life. Not yet do they see the shadow of the Eighth Year
-looming ahead. They have faced the reality of life, and knowing each
-other as they really are have made a working compromise. Their love has
-steadied down to a more even flame, and passion is almost extinguished.
-They have decided to play the game, according to the creed of their
-class, exactly as their neighbors are playing it.
-
-It is largely a game of bluff, as it is played in thousands of small
-households. It is a game, also, of consequences, as I shall have to
-show. It consists in keeping up appearances, in going one better than
-one’s neighbor whenever possible, and in making a claim to a higher rung
-of the social ladder than is justified by the husband’s income and rank
-in life. It is the creed of snobbishness. For this creed everything
-is sacrificed--contentment of mind, the pleasure of life, the little
-children of life.
-
-In many flats of Intellectual Mansions, and even in the small houses
-of the “well-to-do” suburbs, children do not enter into the scheme of
-things. The “babies have been left out of the business.” For people
-who are keeping up appearances to the last penny of their income cannot
-afford to be burdened by babies. Besides, they interfere seriously
-with social ladder-climbing, drag down a married couple of the younger
-generation to the domestic squalor of their parents’ early life. The
-husband cannot bear the thought that his wife should have to make
-beds in the morning and mend stockings in the evening, and wheel out a
-perambulator in the park. It is so very “low down.” The husband wants
-to save his wife from all this domestic drudgery. He wants her to look
-pretty in the frocks he buys her. He wants her to wear more expensive
-frocks than any other woman in his circle of friends. He likes to hear
-his friends say, “How charming your wife looks to-night, old man!” and
-to hear elderly ladies say to his wife, “What a beautiful gown you are
-wearing, my dear!”
-
-He is working hard now in order to furnish his wife’s wardrobe--not only
-for her pleasure, but for his pride. After the first romance of love,
-ambition comes to gild reality. He is ambitious to build up a beautiful
-little home. The furniture with which they started married life on the
-hire system has been bought and paid for, and is now replaced here and
-there by “genuine antiques.” He puts some good prints on his walls and
-buys some water-color sketches, and becomes in a small way a patron of
-the arts. It is pleasant during one of his wife’s evening At Homes to
-take a guest on one side and say “What do you think of that? Pretty
-good, eh? It’s an original, by Verdant Green, you know.”
-
-He has urged upon his wife the necessity of giving _recherché_ little
-dinners, to which he can invite friends better off than himself, and
-distinguished guests whom he wishes to impress. As he explains to his
-wife, “one has to do these things.” And he does them rather well, paying
-some attention to his wines--he keeps a good dinner claret--and to his
-cigars, which he buys at the stores. He also suggests to his wife that
-now she has an extra servant she had better establish a weekly At Home,
-an informal little affair, but pleasant and useful, because it shows the
-world, their world, that they are getting on in the social scale. Here
-again, distinguished visitors may be invited to “drop in.” It is good
-for business. A pretty, well-dressed wife makes a favourable impression
-upon solicitors who have briefs to give away or upon wealthy clients.
-One must keep up appearances, and make a good show. Besides, it is
-pleasant to put on evening clothes after a hard day’s work and to play
-the host. It gives a man some return for all his toil. It gives him a
-reason for living. And it brightens up one’s home-life. “Man does not
-live by bread alone,” he must have some cakes and ale, so to speak.
-
-But it is expensive. As every year of marriage passes, the expenses
-increase, steadily, miraculously. It is difficult to account for them,
-but there they are, facing a man in his quarterly reckoning. And the two
-ends must be made to meet, by extra work, by putting one’s nose down to
-the grindstone. The husband does not come home so soon as he used to do
-in the early days. But he has the satisfaction of knowing that while he
-is away at work his wife is keeping up his social reputation and doing
-all the things which a lady in her station of life is expected to do. He
-thanks heaven that his wife is happy.
-
-She is not unhappy, this wife, in the fifth and sixth year of marriage.
-After the first romantic illusions failed her she settled down quietly
-enough to play the game. It is quite interesting, quite amusing. Now and
-again queer doubts assail her, and she has strange flutterings at the
-heart, and little pinpricks of conscience. It is about the question of
-motherhood. Perhaps it would be better for her to have a baby. However,
-she has threshed out the question a hundred times with her husband, and
-he has decided that he cannot afford a family yet, and after all the
-flat _is_ very small. Besides, she shirks the idea herself--all the pain
-of it, and the trouble of it.... She thrusts down these queer doubts,
-does not listen to the flutterings at the heart, ignores the little
-pinpricks of conscience. She turns quickly to the interests of her
-social life and falls easily into the habit of pleasant laziness,
-filling her day with little futile things, which seem to satisfy her
-heart and brain. When her husband has gone to business she dresses
-herself rather elaborately for a morning stroll, manicures her nails,
-tries a new preparation for the complexion, alters a feather, or a
-flower, in one of her hats, studies herself in the glass, and is pleased
-with herself. It passes the time. Then she saunters forth, and goes
-to the shops, peering in through the great plate-glass windows at the
-latest display of lingerie, of evening gowns, of millinery. She fancies
-herself in some of the new hats from Paris. One or two of them attract
-her especially. She makes a mental note of them. She will ask her
-husband to let her buy one of them. After all Mrs. Fitzmaurice had a new
-hat only last week--the second in one month. She will tell him that.
-It will pique him, for there is a rather amusing rivalry between the
-Fitzmaurices and them.
-
-So the morning passes until luncheon, when she props the morning
-newspaper against the water-jug, reading the titbits of news and the
-fashion page while she eats her meal, rather nicely cooked by the new
-servant, and daintily served by the little housemaid. Another hour of
-the day passes, and it is the afternoon.
-
-She lies down for half an hour with the latest novel from Mudie’s. It
-has a good plot, and is a rather exciting love-story. It brings back
-romance to her. For a little while she forgets the reality which she
-has learnt since her own romantic days. Here love is exactly what
-she imagined it to he, thrilling, joyous, never-changing. The hero
-is exactly what she imagined her husband to be--before he was her
-husband--strong, gentle, noble, high-souled, immensely patient. And
-after many little troubles, misadventures, cross-purposes, and strange
-happenings, marriage is the great reward, the splendid compensation.
-After this the hero and heroine live happily ever afterwards, till death
-does them part, and--there is nothing more to be said. The novel ends
-with the marriage bells.
-
-She knows that her novel has not ended with the marriage hells, that,
-in fact, the plot is only just beginning as far as she is concerned.
-But she does not allow herself to think of that. She revels in romantic
-fiction, and reads novel after novel at the rate of three a week.
-Occasionally one of these novels gives her a nasty shock, for it deals
-with realism rather than romance, and reveals the hearts of women rather
-like herself, and the tragedies of women rather like herself, and the
-truth of things, in a cold, white light. She reads the book with burning
-eyes. It makes her pulse beat. It seems rather a wicked book, it is
-so horribly truthful, not covering even the nakedness of facts with a
-decent layer of sentiment, but exposing them brutally, with a terrible
-candor. She hates the book. It makes her think of things she has tried
-to forget. It revives those queer doubts, and makes her conscience prick
-again. She is glad when she has sent it back to the library and taken
-out another novel, of the harmless kind, in the old style. She lulls
-her conscience to sleep by the dear old love-stories, or by the musical
-comedies and the costume-plays to which she goes with one of her
-girl-friends on Wednesday or Saturday matinées.
-
-She goes to the theatre a good deal now, because she is living more
-independently of her husband. That is to say she no longer waits for his
-home-coming, as in her first days of marriage, with an impatient desire.
-She has long seen that they cannot be all in all to each other, sharing
-all pleasures, or having none. He has realized that, too, and goes
-to his club at least once a week--sometimes more often, to enjoy the
-society of men, to get a little “Bohemianism,” as he calls it.
-
-She has made her own circle of friends now, the young wives of men like
-her husband, and many of her afternoons are taken up with little rounds
-of visits, when she is amused by the tittle-tattle of these wives, by
-their little tales and scandals, by their gossips about servants, frocks
-and theatres.
-
-She, too, has social ambitions like her husband. Her evenings At Home
-are agreeable adventures when she is pleased with the homage of her
-husband’s friends. She takes some trouble with her little dinner-parties
-and writes out the _menus_ with a good deal of care, and arranges the
-flowers, and occasionally looks into the kitchen to give a word to
-the cook. She wears her new evening gown and smiles at her husband’s
-compliments, with something of her old tenderness. After one of these
-evening At Homes the husband and wife have moments of loving comradeship
-like those in the first days of their marriage. It is a pity that some
-trivial accident or dispute causes ill-temper at the breakfast-table.
-
-But, on the whole, they play the game rather well in the fifth and
-sixth years of their married life. The husband takes the rough with the
-smooth. In spite of occasional bad tempers, in spite of grievances which
-are growing into habits of mind, he is a good fellow and--he thanks
-heaven his wife is happy.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-It is the seventh year. The wife is still doing exactly what she did in
-the fifth and sixth years. Her daily routine is exactly the same. Except
-that she can afford extra little luxuries now, and indulge in more
-expensive kinds of pleasure--stalls at the theatre instead of seats
-in the pit, an occasional visit to the opera, an easy yielding to
-temptations in the way of hats. Her husband has been “getting on,” and
-he is glad to give her what she wants.
-
-But somehow or other she is beginning to realize that she has not got
-what she wants. She does not know what she wants, but she knows that
-there is a great lack of something in her life. She is still “playing
-the game,” but there is no longer the same sport in it. The sharp edge
-of her interest in things has worn off. It has been dulled down. She
-goes languidly through the days and a matinée jaunt no longer thrills
-her with a little excitement. The plays are so boring, full of stale old
-plots, stale old women, stale old tricks. She is sick of them. She still
-reads a great number of romantic novels, but how insufferably tedious
-they have become! How false they are! How cloying is all this sickly
-sentiment! She searches about for the kind of novel which used to
-frighten her, problem novels, dangerous novels, novels dealing with real
-problems of life. They still frighten her a little, some of them, but
-she likes the sensation. She wants more of it. She wants to plunge
-deeper into the dangerous problems, to get nearer to the truth of
-things. She broods over their revelations. She searches out the
-meaning of their suggestions, their hints, their innuendoes. It is like
-drug-drinking. This poisonous fiction stimulates her for a little while,
-until the effect of it has worn off and leaves her with an aching head.
-Her head often aches now. And her heart aches--though goodness knows
-why. Everything is so stale. The gossip of her women friends is, oh--so
-stale! She has heard all their stories about all their servants, all
-their philosophy about the servant problem in general, all their shallow
-little views about life, and love, and marriage. She has found them all
-out, their vanities, their little selfish ways, their little lies and
-shams and fooleries. They are exactly like herself. She has been brought
-up in the same code, shaped in the same mould, cut out to the same
-pattern. Their ideas are her ideas. Their ways of life her ways. They
-bore her exceedingly.
-
-She is bored by things which for a time were very pleasant. It is, for
-instance, boring to go shopping in the morning. It is annoying to her to
-see her own wistful, moody eyes in the plate-glass windows, and in the
-pier-glasses. She has not lost her love of pretty frocks and pretty
-things, but it bores her to think that her husband does not notice them
-so much, and that she has to wear them mostly to please herself. She is
-tired of the little compliments paid to her by her husband’s middle-aged
-friends. She has begun to find her husband’s friends very dull people
-indeed. Most of all is she bored by those evening At Homes with their
-familiar ritual--the girl who wants to sing but pleads a bad cold, the
-woman who wants to play but says she is so fearfully “out of practice,”
- the man who asks the name of a piece which he has heard a score of
-times, the well-worn jokes, the well-known opinions on things which do
-not matter, the light refreshments, the thanks for “a pleasant evening.”
- Oh, those pleasant evenings! How she hates them!
-
-She is beginning to hate this beautiful little home of hers. The very
-pictures on the walls set her nerves on edge. She has stared at them
-so often. She wishes to goodness that Marcus Stone’s lovers on an
-old-fashioned stone seat would go and drown themselves in the distant
-lake. But they do not move. They sit smirking at each other, eternally.
-She wishes with all her heart that the big Newfoundland dog over there
-would bite the fluffy haired child who says “Does ‘oo talk?” But it will
-not even bark. She stares at the pattern on the carpet, when a Mudie’s
-novel lies on her lap, and comes to detest the artificial roses on the
-trellis-work. She digs her heels into one of them. If the roses were
-real she would pluck them leaf by leaf and scatter the floor with them.
-The ticking of the clock on the mantelshelf irritates her. It seems a
-reproach to her. It seems to be counting up her waste of time.
-
-She stays more at home, in spite of hating it, because she is beginning
-to loathe her round of visits. She feels lonely and wishes her husband
-would come home. Why does he stay so late at the office now? Surely it
-isn’t necessary? When he comes home she is so snappy and irritable that
-he becomes silent over the dinner-table, and then she quarrels with him
-for his silence. After dinner he sits over his papers, thinking out some
-knotty point of business, which he does not discuss with her as in the
-old days. He buries his nose in the evening paper, and reads all the
-advertisements, and is very dull and uninteresting. Yet she nourishes
-a grievance when he goes off on his club-nights and comes home in the
-early hours of the morning, cheerful and talkative when she wants to go
-to sleep.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-In some cases, indeed in many cases, the presence of an “outsider”
- adds to the unhappiness of the wife and divides her still more from her
-husband. It is the presence of the mother-in-law.
-
-She, poor soul, has had a terrible time, and no one until now has said a
-good word for her. The red-nosed comedian of the music-hall has used her
-for his most gross vulgarities, sure that whenever he mentions her name
-he will raise guffaws from the gallery, and evoke shrieks of ill-natured
-merriment from young women in the pit. In the pantomimes the man dressed
-up as a woman indulges in long monologues upon his mother-in-law as
-the source of all domestic unhappiness, as the origin of all quarrels
-between husbands and wives, as the greatest nuisance in modern life, and
-so long as he patters about the mother-in-law the audience enjoys itself
-vastly.
-
-It is idle to pretend that the mother-in-law is a blessing in a small
-household. I am bound to admit that the success of the rednosed comedian
-who uses her as his text is due to the truth which lies hidden beneath
-his absurdity. He raises roars of laughter because the people who make
-up his audience realize that he is giving a touch of humor to something
-which is a grim tragedy, and according to the psychology of humor
-this is irresistibly comic, just as the most primitive and
-laughter-compelling jokes deal with corpses, and funerals, and death
-made ridiculous. They have suffered from their own mothers-in-law, those
-elderly women who sit in the corner with watchful eyes upon the young
-wives, those critics of their sons’ marriages, those eavesdroppers of
-the first quarrel, and of all the quarrels that follow the first, those
-oracles of unwelcome wisdom, whose advice about household affairs,
-about the way of dealing with the domestic servants, with constant
-references to _their_ young days, are a daily exasperation to young
-married women.
-
-All that is painfully true. In many cases the mother-in-law becomes so
-terrible an incubus in small households that domestic servants leave
-with unfailing regularity before their month is “up,” husbands make a
-habit of being late at the office, and wives are seriously tempted to
-take to drink.
-
-But what of the mother-in-law herself? Is _she_ to be envied? Did she
-willingly become a mother-in-law? Alas, her tragedy is as great as that
-of the young wife upon whose nerves she gets so badly, as great as that
-of the young husband who finds his home-life insufferable because of her
-presence.
-
-For the mother-in-law is a prisoner of fate. She is the unwanted
-guest. She is dependent upon the charity of those who find her a daily
-nuisance. During the days of her own married life she devoted herself
-to her husband and children, stinted and scraped for them, moulded
-them according to her ideals of righteousness, exacted obedience to
-her motherly commands, and was sure of their love. Then, one day, death
-knocked at the door, and brought black horses into the street. After
-that day, when her man was taken from her, she became dependent upon her
-eldest son, but did not yet feel the slavery of the dependence.
-
-For he paid the debt of gratitude gratefully, and kept up the little
-home.
-
-But one day she noticed that he did not come home so early, and that
-when he came home he was absent-minded. He fell into the habit of
-spending his evenings out, and his mother wondered, and was anxious. He
-was not so careful about her comforts, and she was hurt. Then one day
-he came home and said, “Mother, I am going to get married,” and she
-knew that her happiness was at an end. For she knew, with a mother’s
-intuition, that the love which had been in her boy’s heart for her must
-now be shared with another woman, and that instead of having the first
-place in his life, she would have the second place.
-
-For a little while her jealousy is like that of a woman robbed of her
-lover. She hides it, and hides her hate for that girl whose simpering
-smile, whose prettiness, whose coy behavior, light fires in her son’s
-eyes, and set his pulse beating, and make him forgetful of his mother.
-
-Then the marriage takes place and the mother who has dreaded the day
-knows that it is her funeral. For she is like a queen whose prerogatives
-and privileges have been taken away by the death of the king, and by
-the accession of a new queen. Her place is taken from her. Her home is
-broken up. She is moved, with the furniture, into the new home, put into
-the second-best bedroom, and arranged to suit the convenience of the new
-household in which another woman is mistress.
-
-She knows already that she has begun to be a nuisance, and it is like a
-sharp dagger in her heart. She knows that the young wife is as jealous
-of her as she is of the young wife, because her son cannot break himself
-of the habit of obedience, cannot give up that respect for his mother’s
-principles and advice and wisdom, which is part of the very fibre of his
-being, because in any domestic crisis the son turns more readily to the
-mother than to the young woman who is a newcomer in his life, and in any
-domestic quarrel he takes the mother’s part rather than the wife’s.
-It is the law of nature. It cannot be altered, but it is the cause of
-heartburning and squalid little tragedies.
-
-The mother-in-law, in the corner of the sitting-room, watches the drama
-of the married life, and with more experience of life, because of her
-years, sees the young wife do foolish things, watches her blundering
-experiments in the great adventure of marriage, is vigilant of her
-failures in housekeeping, and in the management of her husband. She
-cannot be quite tongue-tied. She cannot refrain from criticism, advice,
-rebuke. Between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law there is a
-daily warfare of pinpricks, a feud that grows bitter with the years.
-
-But the mother-in-law is helpless. She cannot escape from the lamentable
-situation. She must always remain a hindrance, because she needs a roof
-over her head, and there is no other roof, and she is dependent for her
-daily bread upon the son who is faithful to her, though he is irritable,
-moody and sharp of speech, because of the fretfulness of his wife.
-
-This is the eternal tragedy of the mother-in-law, which is turned into
-a jest by the red-nosed comedian to get the laughter from “the gods.”
- It is also a tragedy to the daughter-in-law, who could shriek aloud
-sometimes when the presence of the elderly woman becomes intolerable.
-
-Many things are becoming intolerable to the young wife. Her nerves are
-out of order. Sometimes she feels “queer.” She cannot explain how queer
-she feels, even to herself. She says bitter things to her husband, and
-then hates herself for doing so. She has a great yearning for his love,
-but is very cold when he is in a tender mood. She cannot understand her
-own moods. She only knows that she is beginning to get frightened when
-she thinks of the long vista of years before her. She cannot go on like
-this always. She cannot go on like this very long. She is getting rather
-hysterical. She startles her husband by laughing in a queer shrill way
-when he expresses some serious opinions, or gives vent to some of his
-conventional philosophy, about women, and the duties of married life,
-and the abomination of the Suffragettes. But he does not see her tears.
-He does not see her one day, when suddenly, after she has been reading
-a Mudie’s novel, page after page, without understanding one word, tears
-well up into her eyes, and fall upon the pages, until she bends her head
-down and puts her hands up to her face, and sobs as though all her heart
-had turned to tears.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-
-I_t is the Eighth Year_. The wife does not know the significance of
-that. The husband goes on his way without seeing the ghosts that have
-invaded his little household. He is too busy to see. The whole energy of
-his mind now is devoted to the business of his life. He must earn money,
-more money, still more money, because expenses still keep increasing,
-by leaps and bounds. He finds it more and more difficult to cut his coat
-according to his cloth. He is often surprised because with a much larger
-income he seems to be just as “hard up” as when he started the adventure
-of marriage. He wonders, sometimes, whether the game is worth the
-candle. What does he get out of it? Precious little. Not much fun. In
-the evenings he is tired, although his brain is still worrying over the
-details of his work, over his business disappointments and difficulties,
-and plans. Now and again he is surprised at the strange quietude and
-lassitude of his wife. He catches a look of tragedy in her eyes, and it
-startles him for a moment, so that he asks her if she is feeling unwell.
-She laughs, in a mirthless way, and seems to resent the question.
-“Perfectly well, thanks,” she says. He shrugs his shoulders. He cannot
-bother about a woman’s whims and moods. Women are queer kittle-cattle.
-He can’t make ‘em out. Even his own wife is a perfect mystery to him.
-It is a pity they get on each other’s nerves so much. What more does she
-want? He has given her everything a woman may desire--a beautiful little
-home, many little luxuries, plenty of pin-money. He does not stint her.
-It is he that does the stinting. He is always working for her so that
-she may play. However--work is best. To do our job in life is the best
-philosophy.
-
-So the husband has on one side the passing suspicion that something is
-wrong with his wife, and the wife hides her heart from him.
-
-Something _is_ wrong with her. Everything is wrong, though she does not
-know why and how. She feels lonely--horribly lonely in spite of all her
-friends. She feels like a woman alone in a great desert with no other
-human soul near her, thrust back upon her own thoughts, brooding over
-her own misery. There is a great emptiness in her heart, and she has
-a great hunger and a great thirst of soul which she cannot satisfy.
-Nothing satisfies that empty, barren heart of hers, that throbbing
-brain. She has finished with Mudie’s novels. She can find no
-satisfaction in _them_. She revolts from the tittle-tattle of her women
-friends. That is no longer amusing. She finds no pleasure in the beauty
-of her face. It is no longer beautiful. She hates the sight of her face
-in the glass. She is afraid of those big wistful eyes which stare at
-her. She is sick to death of dressing herself up. How futile it is! How
-utterly vain and foolish!
-
-She is haunted with ghosts; the ghosts of What-Might-Have-Been. They
-whisper about her, so that she puts her hands to her ears, when she is
-alone in her drawing-room. Faces peer at her, with mocking eyes, or with
-tempting eyes--the faces of men who might have been her lovers, baby
-faces of unborn children. Little hands flutter about her heart, pluck at
-her, tease her. The ghosts of her girlhood crowd about her, the ghosts
-of dead hopes, of young illusions, of romantic dreams. She thrusts them
-away from her vision. She puts her hands before her eyes, and moans a
-little, quietly, so that the servants in the kitchen shall not hear.
-
-She is assailed by strange temptations, horrible temptations, from
-which she shrinks back afraid. This hunger and thirst in her soul are so
-tormenting that she has frightful cravings for Something to satisfy her
-hunger and quench her thirst. She is tempted to take to drink, or to
-drugs, to dull the throbbing of her brain, to wake her up out of this
-awful lassitude, to give her a momentary excitement and vitality, and
-then--forgetfulness. She must have some kind of excitement--to break
-the awful monotony of her life, this intolerable dullness of her little
-home. If only an adventure would come to her! Some thrilling, perilous
-adventure, however wicked, whatever the consequences. She feels the
-overmastering need of some passionate emotion. She would like to plunge
-into romantic love again, to be set on fire by it. Somewhere about the
-world is a man who could save her, some strong man with a masterful way
-with him, brutal as well as tender, cruel as well as kind, who would
-come to her, and clasp her hands, and capture her. She would lean
-upon him. She would yield, willingly.... She tries to crush down these
-thoughts. She is horrified at the evil in them. Oh, she is a bad woman!
-Even in her loneliness her face scorches with shame. She gives a faint
-cry to God to save her. But again and again the devilish thoughts leer
-up in her brain. She begins to believe that the devil is really busy
-with her and that she cannot escape him.
-
-She has a strange sense of impending peril, of something that is going
-to happen. She knows that something _must_ happen.
-
-In this Eighth Year she is in a state bordering on hysteria, when
-anything may happen to her. Even her husband is beginning to get
-alarmed. He is at last awakened out of his self-complacency. He is
-beginning to watch her, with a vague uneasiness. Why does she look so
-queerly at him sometimes as though she hated him? Why does she say such
-bitter, cruel, satirical things, which stab him and leave a poison in
-the wound? Why does she get into such passionate rages about trivial
-things, and then reveal a passionate remorse? Why does she sink into
-long silences, sitting with her hands in her lap, staring at the
-pattern on the carpet, as though it had put a spell upon her? He cannot
-understand. She says there is nothing wrong with her health, she refuses
-to see a doctor. She scoffs at the idea of going away for a little
-holiday to the seaside. She says it would bore her to death. Once she
-bursts into tears and weeps on his shoulder. But she cannot, or will
-not, explain the cause of her tears, so that he becomes impatient with
-her and talks to her roughly, though he is sorry afterwards. He begins
-to see now that marriage is a difficult game. Perhaps they were not
-suited to each other. They married too young, before they had understood
-each other.... However they have got to make the best of it now. That is
-the law of life--to make the best of it.
-
-So in the Eighth Year the husband tries to take a common-sense view of
-things, not knowing that in the Eighth Year it is too late for common
-sense as far as the wife is concerned. She wants uncommon sense. Only
-some tremendous and extraordinary influence, spiritual, or moral, or
-intellectual, beyond the limits of ordinary common sense, may save her
-from the perils in her own heart. She must find a way of escape, for
-these unsatisfied yearnings, for this beating heart, for this throbbing
-brain. Her little home has become a cage to her. Her husband has become
-her jailer. Her life has become too narrow, too petty, too futile. In
-the Eighth Year she must find a way of escape--anyhow, anywhere. And in
-the Eighth Year the one great question is in what direction will she go?
-There are many ways of escape.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-One way of escape is through the door of the Divorce Court. Sir Francis
-Jeune, when he was President of the Divorce Court, saw before him many
-of these escaping women, and he noted down the fact about the Eighth
-Year; and sitting there with an impassive face, but watchful eyes, he
-saw the characters in all these little tragedies and came to know the
-type and the plot from constant reiteration. Sometimes the plot varied,
-but only in accidentals, never in essentials. As the story was rehearsed
-before him, it always began in the same way, with a happy year or two
-of marriage. Then it was followed by the first stress and strain. Then
-there came the drifting apart, the little naggings, the quarrels, the
-misunderstandings, until the wife--it was generally the wife--became
-bored, lonely, emotional, hysterical, and an easy victim for the first
-fellow with a roving eye, a smooth tongue, and an easy conscience. The
-procession still goes on, the long procession of women who try to escape
-through the Divorce Court door. Every year they come, and the same story
-is told and retold with sickening repetition. In most cases they are
-childless wives. That is proved, beyond dispute, by all statistics of
-divorce. Sometimes they have one or two children, but those cases are
-much more rare. But even when there are children to complicate the
-issues and to be the heirs of these tragedies, the causes behind the
-tragedies are the same. The woman has had idle hands in her lap before
-the Eighth Year of marriage has been reached. In the early years her
-little home was enough to satisfy her mind and heart, and her interests
-were enough to keep her busy. The coming of the first child, and of the
-second, if there is a second, was for a time sufficient to crowd her
-day with little duties and to prevent any restlessness or any deadly
-boredom. All went well while she had but one maidservant, and while
-her husband’s feet were still on the lower rungs of the ladder. But
-the trouble began with the arrival of the extra servant and with the
-promotion of her husband. It began when gradually she handed over
-domestic duties to paid people, when she was seldom in the kitchen and
-more in the drawing-room, when the children were put under the charge
-of a nurse, and when the responsibilities of motherhood had become a
-sinecure. The fact must be faced that a child is not always a cure for
-the emptiness of a woman’s heart, nor an absolute pledge of fidelity
-between husband and wife. These women who seek a way of escape from
-their little homes are not always brought to that position by the
-unfulfilled instincts of motherhood. For many of them have no instincts
-of motherhood. They feel no great natural desire to have a child.
-They even shrink from the idea of motherhood, and plead their lack of
-courage, their ill-health, their weakness. With their husbands they are
-partners in a childless scheme, or if they have a child--they quickly
-thrust it into the nursery to leave themselves free.
-
-But, on the other hand, it is a fact borne out by all the figures that
-a child does in the vast majority of cases bind together the husband and
-wife, as no other influence or moral restraint; and that among all the
-women who come to the Divorce Court the overwhelming majority is made up
-of childless wives.
-
-These women are not naturally vicious. They have not gone wrong because
-their principles are perverted. They are not, as a rule, intellectual
-anarchists who have come to the conclusion that the conventional moral
-code is wrong and that the laws of marriage are neither divine nor just.
-On the contrary, they are conscience-stricken, they are terrified by
-their own act. Many of them are brokenhearted and filled with shame.
-It is pitiful to hear their letters read in court, letters to their
-husbands pleading for forgiveness, asking for “another chance,”
- or trying, feebly, to throw the blame on the man, and to whitewash
-themselves as much as possible. To judge from their letters it would
-seem that they were under some evil spell, and that they were conscious
-of being dragged away from their duty as though Fate had clutched them
-by the hair, so that although they struggled they could not resist, and
-were borne helplessly along upon a swift tide of passion carrying them
-to destruction. “I could not help myself” is the burden of their cry, as
-though they had no free-will, and no strength of will. Occasionally they
-give tragic pictures of their idle lives, so lacking in interest, so
-barren, so boring. There is another phrase which crops up again and
-again: “Oh, I was bored--bored--bored!” It was the man that saved her
-from boredom who now shares the woman’s guilt, and stands in the witness
-box in this court of honor. He came to her just at that moment in the
-Eighth Year when she was bored to death. He was kind, sympathetic,
-understanding. He brought a little color back into her cheeks, a little
-laughter into her eyes, a little sunshine into her life. He seemed such
-a boy, so youthful and high-spirited, such a contrast to her husband,
-always busy, and always worrying over his business. He told good
-stories, took her to the theatre, arranged little supper-parties, made
-a new adventure of life. He would sit chatting with her over the fire,
-when there were flickering shadows on the walls. He chased away the
-ghosts, gave her new dreams, brought new hopes.... And then suddenly he
-begins to tempt her; and she shrinks back from him, and is afraid. He
-knows she is afraid, but he tries to laugh away her fears. She pleads
-with him to go away, but there is insincerity in her voice, her words
-are faltering. She knows that if he were to go away she would be left
-more lonely than before, in intolerable loneliness till the ghosts would
-rush back at her. So he stays, and tempts her a little more. Gradually,
-little by little, he becomes her great temptation, overwhelming all
-other things in life dwarfing all other things, even her faith and
-honor. How can she resist? By what power within her can she resist?
-
-She does not resist. And yet by yielding she does not gain that
-happiness to which she stretched out her hands. She does not satisfy the
-great hunger in her heart or quench her burning thirst. She has not
-even killed the ghosts which haunt her, or healed the pin pricks of her
-conscience. Her conscience is one great bleeding wound. For this woman
-of the middle-classes is a creature of her caste Nor in most cases can
-she break the rules of her caste without frightful hurt to herself. She
-was brought up in a “nice” home. Her mother was a woman of old-fashioned
-virtues. Her father was a man who would have seen her dead rather than
-shamed. She received a High School education, and read Tennyson and
-Longfellow with moral notes by her class-mistress. She used to go to
-church, and sometimes goes there still, though without any fervor or
-strength of faith. She has heard the old words, “The wages of sin is
-death,” and she shrinks a little when she thinks of them. Above all she
-has been brought up on romantic fiction, and that is always on the side
-of the angels. The modern problem novel has arrested her intellect, has
-startled her, challenged her, given her “notions”; but in her heart of
-hearts she still believes in the old-fashioned code of morals, in the
-sweet old virtues. This sin of hers is a great terror to her. She is not
-brazen-faced. She does not justify it by any advanced philosophy. She is
-just a poor, weak, silly woman, who has gone to the edge of a precipice,
-grown giddy, and fallen off the cliff. She throws up her hands with a
-great cry. The way of escape through the Divorce Court door is not a way
-to happiness. It is a way to remorse, to secret agonies, to a life-long
-wretchedness. Her second husband, if he “plays the game” according to
-the rules of the world, is not to be envied. Between him and this woman
-there are old ghosts. This way of escape is into a haunted house.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Thousands, and tens of thousands of women who pass through the Eighth
-Year, not unscathed, find another way out. They are finding it now
-through this new femininist movement which is linked up with the
-cause of Women’s Suffrage. The Eighth Year produces many suffragettes,
-militant and otherwise. At first, in the first years of their married
-life, they scoffed at the idea of Votes for Women. They could not
-see the sense of it. They hated the vulgarities of the business, the
-shamelessness of it, the ugly squalor of these scuffles with the police,
-these fights with the crowds, these raids on the House of Commons.
-It was opposed to all their ideals of femininity and to all their
-traditions of girlhood. “The hussies ought to be whipped,” is the
-verdict of the young wife in the first stage of her romantic affection.
-But, later on, when romance has worn very threadbare in the little home,
-when reality is beginning to poke its head through the drawing-room
-windows, she finds herself taking an interest in this strange
-manifestation which seems to be inspired by some kind of madness. She is
-silent now when some new phase in the conflict is being discussed in her
-presence. She listens and ponders. Presently she goes out of her way
-to get introduced to some suffrage woman on the outskirts of her
-acquaintance. She is surprised to find her a wonderfully cheerful, and
-apparently sane, woman, very keen, very alert, and with a great sense of
-humor--utterly unlike her tired, bored and melancholy self. Perhaps she
-is quite a young woman, a bachelor girl, earning her own living, down in
-Chelsea, or as a typist secretary in the City. But young as she is she
-has dived into all sorts of queer studies--the relations between men and
-women, the divorce laws, the science of eugenics--and she discusses
-them with an amazing frankness, and in a most revolutionary spirit,
-startling, and a little appalling, at first to this wife in her Eighth
-Year. She has made up her mind conclusively on all the great questions
-of life. She pooh-poohs romantic love. “There is too much fuss made
-about it,” she says. “It is a mere episode, like influenza. There are
-bigger things.” She holds herself perfectly free to choose her mate,
-and to remedy any little mistake which she may make in her choice. At
-present she prefers her independence and her own job, which she likes,
-thank you very much. She is tremendously enthusiastic about the work
-which women have got to do in the world, and there is nothing they
-cannot do, in her opinion. She claims an absolute equality with men. In
-fact, she is inclined to claim a superiority. After all, men are poor
-things.... Altogether she is a most remarkable young woman, and she
-seems to get tremendous fun out of life--and this wife in her Eighth
-Year, without agreeing with her yet envies her!
-
-Or perhaps the wife meets a suffrage woman of middle-age. She, too, is
-a cheerful, keen, alert, bustling woman with cut-and-dried opinions on
-subjects about which the wife in the Eighth Year is full of doubt
-and perplexity. She has a certain hardness of character. She is
-intellectually hard, and without an atom of old-fashioned sentiment.
-She calls a spade a spade, in a rather embarrassing way, and prefers
-her facts to be naked. She is the mother of two children, whom she is
-bringing up on strictly eugenic principles, whatever those may be, and
-she is the wife of a husband whom she keeps in the background and treats
-as a negligible quantity. “We wives, my dear,” she says, “have been too
-long kept prisoners in upholstered cages. It is time we broke our prison
-windows. I am breaking other people’s windows as well. It lets in a lot
-of fresh air.”
-
-She talks a great deal about sweated labor, about the white-slave
-traffic, about women’s work and wages. She talks still more about the
-treachery of the Government, the lies of politicians, the cowardice of
-men. “Oh, we are going to make them sit up. We shall stop at nothing. It
-is a revolution.”
-
-She is amazed at the ignorance of the young wife. “Good heavens, your
-education _has_ been neglected!” she cries. “You are like all these
-stuffy suburban women, who are as ignorant of life as bunny-rabbits.
-Haven’t you even read John Stuart Mill’s _Subjection of Women?_ Good
-gracious! Well, I will send you round some literature. It will open your
-eyes, my dear.”
-
-She sends round a lot of little pamphlets, full of dangerous ideas,
-ideas that sting like bees, ideas that are rather frightening to the
-wife in her Eighth Year. They refer to other books, which she gets out
-of the lending library. She reads Ibsen, and recognizes herself in many
-of those forlorn women in the plays. She reads small booklets on the
-Rights of Wives, on the Problems of Motherhood, on the Justice of the
-Vote. And suddenly, after a period of intellectual apathy, she is set on
-fire by all these burning sparks. She is caught up in a great flame of
-enthusiasm. It is like strong drink to her. It is like religious mania.
-She wakens out of her lethargy. Her feeling of boredom vanishes, gives
-way to a great excitement, a great exhilaration. She startles her
-husband, who thinks she has gone mad. She argues with him, laughs at his
-old-fashioned opinions, scoffs at him, pities him for his blindness. She
-goes out to suffrage meetings, starts to her feet one day and falters
-out a few excited words. She sits down with burning cheeks, with the
-sound of applause in her ears, like the roar of the sea. She learns to
-speak, to express herself coherently. She offers herself to “the cause.”
- She sells her trinkets and gives the money to the funds. She is out for
-any kind of adventure, however perilous. She is one of the Hot Young
-Bloods, or if she has not the pluck for that, or the strength, one of
-the intellectual firebrands who are really more dangerous.
-
-It is a queer business, this suffrage movement, which sets these women
-aflame. There are a few women in it who have the cold intellectual
-logic of John Stuart Mill himself. They have thought the thing out on
-scientific lines, in its economic, political, and social aspects. They
-want the vote honestly, as a weapon to give their sex greater power,
-greater independence, better conditions of life in the labor market. But
-the rank and file have no such intellectual purpose, though they make
-use of the same arguments and believe that these are the mainsprings of
-their actions. In reality they are Eighth Year women. That is to say,
-they seize upon the movement with a feverish desire to find in it some
-new motive in life, some tremendous excitement, some ideals greater
-and more thrilling than the little ideals of their home life. In this
-movement, in this great battle, they see many things which they
-keep secret. They go into it with blind impulses, which they do not
-understand, except vaguely. It is a movement of revolt against all the
-trammels of sex relationship which have come down through savagery to
-civilization; laws evolved out of the inherited experience of tribes and
-races for the protection of womanhood and the functions of womanhood,
-laws of repression, of restraint, for the sake of the children of the
-race; duties exacted by the social code again for the sake of the next
-generation. Having revolted against the duties of motherhood, all
-these laws, these trammels, these fetters, become to them intolerable,
-meaningless, exasperating. The scheme of monogamy breaks down. It has
-no deep moral purpose behind it, because the family is not complete. The
-scheme has been frustrated by the childlessness of the wife. Again, this
-movement is a revolt against the whole structure of modern society as
-it affects the woman--against the very architecture of the home; against
-all those tiny flats, those small suburban houses, in which women are
-cramped and confined, and cut off from the large world. It did not
-matter so long as there was a large world within the four walls. Their
-space was big enough to hold the big ideals of old-fashioned womanhood,
-in which the upbringing of children was foremost and all-absorbing. But
-for a woman who has lost these ideals and the duties that result from
-them, these little places are too narrow for their restless hearts; they
-become like prison cells, in which their spirits go pacing up and down,
-up and down, to come up against the walls, to heat their hands against
-them. They believe that they may find in this suffrage movement the key
-to the riddle of the mysteries in their souls, world-old mysteries,
-of yearnings for the Unknown Good, of cravings for the Eternal
-Satisfaction, for the perfect fulfilment of their beings. Their poor
-husband, a dear good fellow, after all, now that they look at him
-without hysteria, has not provided this Eternal Satisfaction. He has
-only provided pretty frocks, tickets for matinées, foolish little
-luxuries. He does not stand for them as the Unknown Good. After the
-first year or two of marriage they know him with all his faults and
-flaws, and familiarity breeds contempt. But here, in this struggle for
-the Vote, in these window-breakings and house-burnings, in imprisonments
-and forcible feedings, in this solidarity of women inspired by a fierce
-fanaticism--there is, they think, the answer to all their unsolved
-questions, the splendor and the glory of their sex, the possibility of
-magnificent promises and gifts, in which the soul of woman may at last
-find peace, and her body its liberty. She is to have the supreme mastery
-over her own spirit and flesh.
-
-It is a fine promise. But as yet it is unfulfilled. It is not to
-be denied that for a time at least some of these women do gain
-a cheerfulness, a keenness, a vitality, which seem to be a great
-recompense for their struggles and strivings. But they are the younger
-women, and especially the young unmarried women, who get a good deal of
-fun out of all this excitement, all this adventure, all the dangerous
-defiance of law and convention. The older women--many of them--are
-already suffering a sad disillusionment. They have not yet found those
-splendid things which seemed at last within their grasp. They are
-desperate to get them, fierce in their desire for them, but the cup of
-wine is withheld from their lips. They find themselves growing old and
-still unsatisfied, growing hard, and’ bitter, and revengeful against
-those who thwart them. The problems of their sex still remain with them.
-They may break all the laws, but get no nearer to liberty. They are
-still prisoners of fate, bond-slaves to a nature which they do not
-understand. The femininist movement is only a temporary way of escape
-for the wife who has reached her crisis in the Eighth Year.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-There is another way, and it has many doors. It is religion. Many of
-these women “take to religion” as they take to the suffrage movement,
-and find the same emotional excitement and adventure in it. They are
-caught up in it as by a burning flame. It satisfies something of their
-yearnings and desires. And it is a curious and lamentable thing that
-although it has been proved conclusively by all masters of philosophy
-and by all great thinkers, that some form of religion, is an essential
-need in the heart of women, the whole tendency of the time is to rob
-them of this spiritual guidance and comfort. Religion is not a part of
-the social scheme of things in “intellectual mansions” and in the small
-suburban houses of the professional classes. It is not entirely wiped
-off the slate, but it is regarded with indifference and as of no vital
-account in the sum of daily life. Occasionally a certain homage is paid
-to it, as to a pleasant, old-fashioned ritual which belongs to the code
-of “good form.” In their courting days the young man and woman went to
-church now and then on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening and held
-the same hymn-book, and enjoyed a little spiritual sentiment. They
-were married in church to the music of the Wedding March played by the
-organist. Sometimes as the years pass they drop into a service
-where there is good singing, a popular preacher, and a fashionable
-congregation. They regard themselves as Christians, and condescend to
-acknowledge the existence of God, in a vague, tolerant kind of way. But
-they do not enter into any intimate relations with God. He is not down
-on their visiting list. Many of them do not even go as far as those
-people I have described who regard God as part of the social code of
-“good form.” They become frankly agnostic and smile at their neighbors
-who put on top-hats and silk dresses and stroll to church on a Sunday
-morning. It seems to them absurdly “Early Victorian.” For they have read
-a great number of little books by the latest writers, who publish their
-philosophy in sevenpenny editions, and they have reached an intellectual
-position when they have a smattering of knowledge on the subject of
-evolution, anthropology, the origins of religion, literature and dogma,
-and the higher criticism. They have also read extracts from the works of
-Nietzsche, Kant, and the great free-thinkers, or reviews of their works
-in the halfpenny newspapers. The ideas of the great thinkers and
-great rebels have filtered down to them through the writings of little
-thinkers and little rebels. They have been amused by the audacities of
-Bernard Shaw and other intellectuals of their own age. They have read
-the novels of H. G. Wells, which seem to put God in His right place.
-They have imbibed unconsciously the atmosphere of free-thought and
-religious indifference which comes through the open windows, through the
-keyholes, through every nook and cranny. Occasionally the husband lays
-down the law on the subject with dogmatic agnosticism, or dismisses the
-whole business of religion with a laugh as a matter of no importance
-either way, certainly as a problem not worth bothering about.
-
-So the wife’s spiritual nature is starved. She is not even conscious of
-it, except just now and then when she is aware of a kind of spiritual
-hunger, or when she has little thoughts of terror at the idea of death,
-or when she is in low spirits. She has no firm and certain faith to
-which she can cling in moments of perplexity. She has no belief in any
-divine authority from which she can seek guidance for her actions.
-There is no supernatural influence about her from which she can draw any
-sweetness of consolation, when the drudgery and monotony of life begins
-to pall on her. When temptations come she has no anchor holding her fast
-to duty and honor. She has no tremendous ideals giving a large meaning
-to the little things of life. She has no spiritual vision to explain the
-mysteries of her own heart, or any spiritual balm to ease its pain
-and restlessness. She must rely always on her common sense, on her own
-experience, on her own poor little principles of what is right or wrong,
-or expedient, or “the proper thing.” When those fail her, all fails; she
-is helpless, like a ship without a rudder, like a straw in the eddy of a
-mill race.
-
-It is just at this time, when all has failed her, and when she seems to
-be drifting helplessly, that she is ready for religion, a bundle of dry
-straw which will burst into flame at the touch of a spark, a spiritual
-appetite hungry for food. In hundreds of cases these women take to the
-queerest kinds of spiritual food, some of it very poisonous stuff. Any
-impostor with a new creed may get hold of them. Any false prophet may
-dupe them into allegiance. They get into the hands of peculiar people.
-They are tempted to go to a spiritualistic séance and listen to the
-jargon of spiritualism. It frightens them at first, but after their
-first fears, and a little shrinking horror, they go forward into these
-“mysteries,” and are obsessed by them. It appears they are “psychical.”
- Undoubtedly after a little practice they could get into touch with the
-spirit-world. With planchette and table-rapping, and with mediumistic
-guidance, they may learn the secrets of the ghost-world, and invoke the
-aid of spirits in their little household. It becomes a mania with them.
-It becomes, in many cases, sheer madness.
-
-There are other women who seek their spiritual salvation among the
-clairvoyants and crystal-gazers and palmists of the West End.
-
-They become devotees of the Black Art, and dupes of those who prey
-upon the Eternal Gullible. There are others who join the Christian
-Scientists, and find the key to the riddle of life in the writings
-of Mrs. Eddy. They experiment in will-power--upon their unfortunate
-husbands. They adopt the simple life, and bring themselves into a low
-state of health by fruit diet. They learn a new language full of strange
-technical terms, which they but dimly understand, yet find comforting,
-like the old woman and her Mesopotamia, which was a blessèd word to
-her. But in spite of all its falsity and folly, it does give them a
-new interest in life, and lift them right out of the ruck of suburban
-dulness. So far at least it is helpful to them. It is some kind of
-spiritual satisfaction, though afterwards, perhaps, they may fall into a
-spiritual excitement and hysteria worse than their old restlessness, and
-become a nuisance to their family and friends, women with _idées fixes_.
-
-It is better for them if they can grope their way back to the old
-Christian faith, with its sweetness and serenity and divine ideals. Here
-at last the woman may find authority, not to be argued about, not to be
-dodged, but to be obeyed. Here at last she may find tremendous ideals
-giving a significance to the little things of life, which seemed so
-trivial, so futile, and so purposeless. Here is wholesome food for her
-spiritual hunger, giving her new strength and courage, patience and
-resignation. Here are great moral lessons from which she may draw wisdom
-and guidance for her own poor perplexities. Then when temptations come,
-she may cling to an anchor of faith which will not slip in shifting
-sands, but is chained to a great rock. The wisdom of the Church, the
-accumulated experience stored up in the Church, the sweetness of all
-great Christian lives, the splendid serenity of the Christian laws, so
-stern and yet so tolerant, so hard and yet so easy, give to this woman’s
-soul the peace she has desired, not to be found among the ghosts of
-modern spiritualism, nor in the pseudo-scientific jargon of Mrs. Eddy’s
-works, nor in the glass-crystals of the clairvoyants. For the Christian
-faith has no use for hysteria; it exacts a healthy discipline of mind.
-It demands obedience to the laws of life, by which no woman may shirk
-the duties of her nature, or pander to her selfishness, or dodge the
-responsibilities of her state as a wife, or forget her marriage-vows and
-all that they involve.
-
-There would be no fatal significance about the Eighth Year if the old
-religion were still of vital influence in the home. For after all,
-in spite of all our cleverness, we have not yet discovered any new
-intellectual formula or philosophy which will force men and women to do
-those things which are unpleasant but necessary to insure the future of
-the race; to deny themselves so that the future generation may gain; to
-suffer willingly in this world for the sake of an advantage in a future
-life. If people do not believe in a future life, and in such rewards as
-are offered by the Christian dogma, they prefer to have their advantages
-here and now. But as we know, if we face the facts of life clearly, the
-advantages, here and now, are not easy to get. Life, at its best, is
-a disappointing business. There is a lot of rough with the smooth,
-especially for women, especially for those women of the middle-classes
-in small suburban homes, over-intel-lectualized, with highly strung
-nerves, in a narrow environment, without many interests, and without
-much work. It is just because many of them are entirely without religion
-to give some great purpose to their inevitable trivialities that their
-moral perspective becomes hopelessly inverted, as though they were
-gazing through the wrong end of the telescope. Having no banking account
-in the next life, they spend themselves in this life, and live “on
-tick,” as it were. Religion is the gospel of unselfishness. Lacking
-religion, they are utterly selfish. They do not worry about the future
-of the race. Why should they? All they are worrying about is to
-save themselves pain, expense, drudgery. Children are a great
-nuisance--therefore they will not have children. They want to put in a
-good time, to enjoy youth and beauty as long as possible, to get as much
-fun as they can here and now. But, as we have seen, the fun begins
-to peter out somewhere about the Eighth Year, and “the good time” has
-disappeared like a mirage when one gets close to it, and even youth
-and beauty are drooping and faded like yesterday’s flowers. What is the
-woman to do then? She is the victim of shattered illusions, of broken
-hopes. Before her is nothing but a gray vista of years. She has nothing
-to reconcile her with the boredom of her days, nothing to compensate
-her for domestic drudgery, no cure for the restlessness and feverishness
-which consume her, no laws by which she may keep straight. She sees
-crookedly, her spirit rushes about hither and thither. She is like a
-hunted thing, hunted by her desires, and she can find no sanctuary; no
-sanctuary unless she finds religion, and the right religion. There are
-not many women nowadays who find this way of escape, for religion has
-gone out of fashion, like last year’s hats, and it wants a lot of pluck
-to wear a last year’s hat.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Besides, the husband does not like it. He discourages religion, except
-in homoeopathic doses, taken by way of a little tonic, as one goes to
-the theatre for a pick-me-up. As he remarks, he does not believe in
-women being too spiritual. It is not “healthy.” If his wife goes to
-church with any regularity he suspects there is an attractive cleric
-round the corner. And sometimes he is right. Anyhow, he does not feel
-the need of religion, except when he gets a pretty bad dose of influenza
-and has an uneasy thought that he is going to “peg out.” As a rule he
-enjoys good health, and has no time to bother about the supernatural.
-He does not meet it in the city. It is not a marketable commodity. It is
-not, as he says, “in his line of country.” He does not see why it should
-be in his wife’s line of country. He is annoyed when his wife takes
-up any of these cranky ideas. He rages inwardly when she takes them up
-passionately. Why can’t she be normal?
-
-Why on earth can’t she go on as she began, with her little feminine
-interests, keeping herself pretty for his sake, keen on the latest
-fashions, neighborly with young wives like herself, and fond of a bit
-of frivolity now and then? When she complains that she has idle hands in
-her lap, and wants something to do, he reminds her that she found plenty
-to do in the first years of her married life. When she cries out that
-she is bored, he points out to her that she gets much more amusement
-than he does.
-
-And that is true, because by the time he has reached the Eighth Year
-he is pretty busy. Ambition has caught hold of him and he is making a
-career. It is not easy. Competition is deadly. He has got his work cut
-out to keep abreast with his competitors. It is a constant struggle “to
-keep his end up.” He finds it disconcerting when he comes home in the
-evenings after the anxiety of his days, dog-tired and needing sympathy,
-to find that his wife has an attack of nerves, or a feverish desire to
-go out and “see something.” He wants to stay at home and rest, to dawdle
-over the evening paper, to listen to a tune or two from his wife.
-
-He would like her to bring his slippers to him, as she used to do in the
-old days, to hover round him a little with endearing words, and then,
-with not too much of _that_, to keep quiet, assenting to his opinions
-when he expresses them, and being restful. He has his own grievances.
-He is not without troubles of soul and body. He has had to face
-disappointment, disillusionment, hours of blank pessimism. He has had
-to get to grips with reality, after the romanticism of his youth, and to
-put a check upon his natural instincts and desires. In many ways it is
-harder for the man than for the woman. Civilization and the monogamous
-code have not been framed on easy lines for men. To keep the ordinary
-rules of his caste he must put a continual restraint upon himself,
-make many sacrifices. Women and wives forget that human nature has not
-changed because men wear black coats and tall hats instead of the skins
-of beasts. Human nature is exactly the same as it ever was, strong and
-savage, but it has to be tamed and repressed within the four walls of a
-flat in West Kensington, or within a semi-detached house at Wimbledon.
-
-There are moments when the man hears the call of the wild, and loathes
-respectability and conventionality with a deadly loathing. In his
-heart, as in the heart of every man, there is a little Bohemia, a little
-country of lawlessness and errant fancy and primitive desires. Sometimes
-when he has shut himself up in his study, when the servants are in the
-kitchen washing up the supper-things, when his wife is lying down with a
-bad headache, he unlocks the door of that Bohemia in his heart, and his
-imagination goes roving, and he hears the pan-pipes calling, and the
-stamp of the cloven hoofs of the old Nature-god. He would like to cut
-and run sometimes from this respectable life of his, to go in search of
-adventure down forbidden pathways, and to find the joy of life again in
-Liberty Hall. This fretful wife of his, this social-ladder climbing, the
-whole business of “playing the game” in the same old way, makes him
-very tired, and gets on his nerves at times most damnably. He has his
-temptations. He hears siren voices calling him. He sees the lure of the
-witch-women. To feel his pulse thrill to the wine of life, to get
-the fever of joy in his blood again, to plunge into the fiery lake of
-passion, are temptations from which he does not escape because he is
-Something in the City, or a barrister-at-law, and a married man with
-a delicate wife. But, being a man, with a man’s work, and a man’s
-ambition, he keeps his sanity, and quite often his self-respect. His
-eyes are clear enough to see the notice-boards on the boundary lines of
-the forbidden territory, “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” “Please keep
-off the grass,” “No thoroughfare.” He locks up the gate to the little
-Bohemia in his heart, and puts the key into a secret cupboard of his
-brain. He understands quite clearly that if he once “goes off the
-rails,” as he calls it, his ambitions will be frustrated and his career
-spoiled. Besides, being a conventionalist and somewhat of a snob, he
-would hate to be found out in any violation of the social code, and his
-blood runs cold at the idea of his making a fool of himself with a
-woman, or anything of that kind. The creed of his social code, of the
-pot-hatted civilization, of this suburban conventionality of these
-little private snob-doms, is stronger in the man than in the woman. When
-she once takes the bit between her teeth, as it were, she becomes
-utterly lawless. But the man reins himself in more easily. He finds it
-on the whole less difficult to be law-abiding. He has also a clearer
-vision of the logic of things. He knows that certain results follow
-certain causes. He can measure up the consequences of an act, and weigh
-them. He is guided by his brain rather than by his emotions. He has
-certain fixed principles deeply rooted in him. He has a more delicate
-sense of honor than most women. It is summed up in that old
-school-phrase of his--“playing the game.” However much his nerves may be
-jangled, and goodness knows they are often jangled, especially as the
-Eighth Year draws near, he is generally master of himself. At least he
-does not, as a rule, have hysterical outbursts, or give rein to
-passionate impulses, or suddenly take some wild plunge, upsetting all
-the balance of his life. He does not take frightful risks, as a woman
-will always take them, recklessly, when she reaches her crisis.
-
-So it is that he looks coldly upon his wife’s desires for some new
-emotional activity, of whatever kind it may be, religious, political, or
-ethical. He hates any symptoms of fanaticism. He shivers at any breach
-of good form. He would like her always to be sitting in the drawing-room
-when he comes home, in a pretty frock, with a novel in her lap, with
-a smile in her eyes. He does not and will not understand that this
-childless wife of his must have strong interests outside her little home
-to save her from eating her heart out. He hides from himself the fact
-that her childlessness is a curse which is blighting her. He pooh-poohs
-her tragic cry for help. He is just a little brutal with her when she
-accuses him of thwarting all the desires of her soul. And he is scared,
-thoroughly scared, when at last she takes flight, on wild wings, to some
-spiritual country, or to some moral, or immoral, territory, where he
-could not follow. He tries to call her back. But sometimes she may not
-be called back. She has escaped beyond the reach of his voice.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Snobbishness is one of the causes which lead to the Eighth Year,
-and not the least among them. It is an essentially middle-class
-snobbishness, and has grown up, like a fungus growth, with that immense
-and increasing class of small, fairly well-to-do households who have
-come into being with the advance of material prosperity during the past
-twenty-five years, and with the progress of elementary education, and
-all that it has brought with it in the form of new desires for pleasure,
-amusement and more luxuries. These young husbands and wives who set up
-their little homes are not, as I have said, content to start on the same
-level as their parents in the first years of their married life. They
-must start at least on the level of their parents at the end of their
-married life, even a little in advance. The seeds of snobbishness
-are sown before marriage. The modern son pooh-poohs the habits of his
-old-fashioned father. They are not good enough for him. He has at least
-twice the pocket-money at school compared with the allowance of his
-father when he was a boy. He goes to a more expensive school and learns
-expensive habits. When he begins work he does not hand over most of his
-salary as his father used to hand over his salary a generation ago, to
-keep the family pot boiling. He keeps all that he earns, though he is
-still living at home, and develops a nice taste in clothes. One tie
-on week-days and another tie for Sundays are still good enough for the
-father, but the son buys ties by the dozen, and then has a passion
-for fancy socks, and lets his imagination rove into all departments of
-haberdashery. He is only a middle-class young man, but he dresses in the
-style of a man of fashion, adopts some of the pleasures of the man about
-town, and is rather scornful of the little house in the suburbs to which
-he returns after a bachelor’s dinner in a smart restaurant, or after a
-tea-party with gaiety girls. He becomes a “Nut,” and his evenings are
-devoted to a variety of amusements, which does away with a good deal
-of money. He smokes a special brand of cigarettes. He hires a motor-car
-occasionally for a spin down to Brighton. His mother and father are
-rather scared by this son who lives in a style utterly beyond their
-means.
-
-The girl is a feminine type of the new style. She has adopted the
-new notions. At a very early age she is expert in all the arts of the
-younger generation, and at seventeen or eighteen has already revolted
-from the authority of her parents. She is quite a nice girl, naturally,
-but her chief vice is vanity. She is eaten up with it. It is a consuming
-passion. From the moment she gets out of bed in the morning for the
-first glimpse of her face in the looking-glass to the time she goes to
-bed after putting on some lip-salve and face enamel, she is absorbed
-with self-consciousness about her “looks.” Her face is always occupying
-her attention. Even in railway trains she keeps biting her lips to make
-them red. At every window she passes she gives a sidelong glance to see
-if her face is getting on all right. Her main ambition in life is to be
-in the fashion. She is greedy for “pretty things” and sponges upon her
-father and mother for the wherewithal to buy them, and she will not lay
-a little finger on any work in the kitchen or even make a bed, lest her
-hands should be roughened and because it would not be quite “lady-like.”
-
-A pretty education for matrimony! A nice couple to set up house together
-Poor children of life, they are doomed to have a pack of troubles.
-Because as they began they go on, with the same ideas, with the same
-habits of mind, until they get a rude shock. Their little household is
-a shrine to the great god Snob. They are his worshippers. To make a show
-beyond their meansj or up to the very limit of their means, to pretend
-to be better off than they are, to hide any sign of poverty, to dress
-above their rank in life, to show themselves in places of entertainment,
-to shirk domestic drudgery, that is their creed.
-
-In the old days, before the problem of the Eighth Year had arrived, the
-wives of men, the mothers of those very girls, kept themselves busy by
-hundreds of small duties. They made the beds, dusted the rooms, helped
-the servants in the kitchen, made a good many of their own clothes,
-mended them, altered them, cleaned the silver. But nowadays the wife of
-the professional man does none of these things if there is any escape
-from them. She keeps one servant at a time when her mother did without
-a servant. She keeps two servants as soon as her husband can afford an
-extra one, three servants if the house is large enough to hold them.
-Indeed, a rise in the social scale is immediately the excuse for
-an additional servant, and in the social status the exact financial
-prosperity of the middle-classes is reckoned by them according to the
-number of servants they keep. And whether it be two or three, the little
-snob wife sits in her drawing-room with idle hands, trying to kill time,
-getting tired of doing nothing, but proud of her laziness. And the snob
-husband encourages her in her laziness. He is proud of it, too. He would
-hate to think of his wife dusting, or cleaning, or washing up. He does
-not guess that this worship of his great god Snob is a devil’s worship,
-having devilish results for himself and her. The idea that women want
-work never enters his head. His whole ambition in life is to prevent his
-wife from working, not only when he is alive, but after he is dead. He
-insures himself heavily and at the cost of a great financial strain upon
-his resources in order that “if anything happens” his wife, even then,
-need not raise her little finger to do any work. But something “happens”
- before he is dead. The woman revolts from the evil spell of her
-laziness. She finds some work for her idle hands to do--good work or
-bad.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-If only those idle women would find some good work to do the Eighth
-Year would lose its terrors. And there is so much good work to do if
-they would only lay their hands to it! If they cannot get in touch with
-God, they can at least get in touch with humanity. At their very doors
-there is a welter of suffering, struggling humanity craving for a little
-help, needing helping hands, on the very edge of the abyss of misery,
-and slipping down unless they get rescued in the nick of time. In the
-mean streets of life, in the hospitals, at the prison gates, in the
-reformatories, in the dark haunts of poverty, there are social workers
-striving and toiling and moiling in the service of all these seething
-masses of human beings. But there are too few of them, and the appeals
-for volunteers in the ranks of the unpaid helpers are not often
-answered. They are hardly ever answered from the class of women who have
-least in the world to do, and most need of such kinds of work. Many
-of these women have good voices. They sing little drawing-room ballads
-quite well, until they get sick of the sound of their own singing in
-their lonely little drawing-rooms. But they do not think of singing in
-the hospitals, and the workhouse wards, where their voices would give
-joy to suffering people, or miserable people who do not often hear the
-music of life. These women have no children. They have shirked the
-pains of childbirth. But they might help to give a little comfort and
-happiness to other mothers’ children, to shepherd a small flock for a
-day’s outing in the country, to organize the children’s playtime, to
-nurse the sick baby now and then. These idle women remember their own
-girlhood and its dreams. They remember their own innocence, the shelter
-of their home-life. It would be good for them if they gave a little
-loving service to the girls in the working-quarters of the great cities,
-and went down into the girl-clubs to play their dance tunes, to keep
-them out of the streets, to give them a little innocent fun in
-the evenings. These lazy women cry out that they are prisoners in
-upholstered cages. But there are many prisoners in stone cells, who at
-the prison gates, on their release, stand looking out into the cold gray
-world, with blank, despairing eyes, with no prospect but that of crime
-and vice, unless some unknown friend comes with a little warmth of human
-love, with a quick sympathy and a ready helpfulness. Here is work for
-workless women who are well-to-do. They are unhappy in their own
-homes, because they are tired of its trivialities, tired of its little
-luxuries, bored to death with themselves because they have no purpose
-in life. But in the mean streets round the corner they would find women
-still clinging with extraordinary courage to homes that have no stick
-of furniture in them, amazingly cheerful, although instead of little
-luxuries they have not even the barest necessities of life, unwearied,
-indefatigable, heroic in endurance, though they toil on sweated wages.
-The women of the well-to-do middle-classes drift apart from their
-husbands because perhaps they have irritable little habits, because they
-do not understand all the yearnings in their wives’ hearts, because they
-have fallen below the old ideals of their courting days. But here in the
-slums these women with a grievance would find other women loyal to their
-husbands who come home drunk at nights, loyal through thick and thin
-to husbands who “bash” them when they speak a sharp word, loyal to the
-death to husbands who are untamed brutes with only the love of the brute
-for its mate. There is no problem of the Eighth Year in Poverty Court,
-only the great problems of life and death, of hunger and thirst and
-cold, of labor and want of work. Here in the mean streets of the world
-is the great lesson that want of work is the greatest disaster, the
-greatest moral tragedy, that may happen to men and women.
-
-If the idle women of the little snobdoms would come forth from their
-houses and flats, they would see that lesson staring them in the face,
-with a great warning to themselves. And if they would thrust aside their
-selfishness and learn the love of humanity, it would light a flame in
-their hearts which would kindle the dead ashes of their disillusionment
-and burn up their grievances, and make a bonfire of all their petty
-little troubles, and make such a light in their lives as would enable
-them to see the heroic qualities of ordinary duties bravely done, and of
-ordinary lives bravely led. Here they would find another way of escape
-from the perils of the Eighth Year, and a new moral health for their
-hearts and brains.
-
-It is only now and then that some woman is lucky enough to find this way
-out, for snobbishness enchains them, and it is difficult to break its
-fetters.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-When the woman has once taken flight, or is hesitating before taking
-her flight, in the Eighth Year, it is an almost hopeless business for
-the husband to call her back. Whenever she is called back, it is by
-some outside influence, beyond _his_ sphere of influence, by some sudden
-accident, by some catastrophe involving both of them, or by some severe
-moral shock, shaking the foundations of their little home like an
-earthquake. There are cases in which the woman has been called back by
-the sudden smash-up of her husband’s business, by financial ruin. In his
-social ladder-climbing he is too rash. One of the rungs of the ladder
-breaks beneath his feet and he comes toppling down. Owing to this deadly
-competition of modern life, he loses his “job.” It is given to a younger
-or better man, or to a man with a stronger social pull. He comes home
-one day with a white face, trembling, horribly scared, afraid to break
-the news to a woman who has not been helpful to him of late, and of
-whose sympathy he is no longer sure. He believes that this misfortune
-is the last straw which will break their strained relations. He sees
-the great tragedy looming ahead, hearing down upon him. But, curiously
-enough, this apparent disaster is the salvation of both of them. The
-despair of her husband calls to the woman’s loyalty. All her grievances
-against this man are suddenly swallowed up in the precipice which has
-opened beneath his feet. All her antagonism is broken down and dissolved
-into pity. Her self-pride is slain by this man’s abasement. His
-weakness, his need of help, his panic-stricken heart cry to her. After
-all their drifting apart, their indifference to each other, their
-independence, he wants her again. He wants her as a helpmeet. He wants
-any courage she can give him, any wisdom. And she is glad to be wanted.
-She stretches out her hands to him. They clasp each other, and there
-is no longer a gulf beneath their feet; misfortune has built a bridge
-across the gulf which divided them. More than that, all the little
-meannesses of their life, all the petty selfishness of their days, all
-the little futile things over which they have wrangled and jangled are
-thrust on one side, and are seen in their right perspective. The things
-that matter, the only things that matter, are seen, perhaps, for the
-first time, clearly, in a bright light, now that they are face to
-face with stem realities. The shock throws them off their pedestals of
-conceit, of self-consciousness, of pretence. They stand on solid ground.
-The shock has broken the masks behind which they hid themselves. It
-has broken the hard crust about their hearts. It has shattered the idol
-which they worshipped, the idol of the great god Snob.
-
-And so they stare into each other’s soul, and take hands again like
-little children, abandoned by the Wicked Uncles of life, and they grope
-their way back to primitive things, and begin the journey again. They
-have found out that this new comradeship is better even than the old
-romantic love of their courting days. They have discovered something
-of the great secret of life. They are humbled. They make new pledges to
-each other, pick up the broken pieces of their hopes and dreams and
-fit them together again in a new and sounder scheme. This time, in some
-cases, they do not leave the baby out of the business. The wife becomes
-a mother, and the child chases away all the ghosts which haunted her in
-the Eighth Year. She no longer wants to take flight. She has been called
-back.
-
-It is nearly always some accident like this which calls the wife back,
-some sudden, startling change in the situation, caused by outside
-influences, or by the hand of Fate. Sometimes it is an illness which
-overtakes the husband or wife. Holding hands by the bedside, they
-stare into the face of Death, and again the trivialities of life, the
-pettiness of their previous desires, the folly of their selfishness, the
-stupidity of their little snobdom, are revealed by the whisperings of
-Death, and by its warnings. The truth of things stalks into the bedroom
-where the husband, or the wife, lies sleeping on the borderland. About
-the sick bed the weeping woman makes new vows, tears wash out her
-vanity, her self-conceit. Or, kneeling by the side of the woman whose
-transparent hand he clasps above the coverlet, the husband listens to
-the little voice within his conscience, and understands, with a great
-heartache, the pitiful meaning of the domestic strife which seemed
-to have killed his love for the woman for whose life now he makes a
-passionate cry. In the period of convalescence, after Death has stolen
-away, when life smiles again through the open windows, that man and
-woman get back to sanity and to wisdom beyond that of common-sense. They
-begin again with new ideals. Perhaps in a little while one of the rooms
-becomes a nursery. They get back to the joy of youth, once more the
-woman has been called back.
-
-If none of these “accidents” happen, if some great influence like this
-does not thrust its way into the lives of this husband and wife during
-the crisis of the Eighth Year, if the woman is not caught up by some
-great enthusiasm, or if she can find no work for the idle hands to do,
-giving her new and absorbing interests to satisfy her heart and brain,
-then the Eighth Year is a fatal year, and the President of the Divorce
-Court has a new case added to his list, or the family records of the
-country chronicle another separation, or another woman goes to prison
-for arson or bomb-throwing. Because the laws of psychology are not so
-erratic as the world imagines. They work out on definite lines. Certain
-psychological forces having been set in motion, they lead inevitably to
-certain results. When once a woman has lost her interest in her home and
-husband, when she has become bored with herself, when she has a morbid
-craving for excitement and adventures, when she has become peevish and
-listless and hungry-hearted, she cannot remain in this condition. Those
-forces within her are tremendously powerful. They must find some outlet.
-They must reach a definite time of crisis when things have got to
-happen. These vague yearnings must be satisfied, somehow, anyhow. The
-emptiness of her heart must be filled by something or other. She will
-search round with wondering, wistful eyes, more desperate day by day,
-until she finds the thing, however evil it may be, however dangerous.
-She must still that throbbing brain of hers, even if she has to take
-drugs to do so. In spite of all the poison laws, she will find some kind
-of poison, some subtle and insidious drug to give her temporary cure, a
-period of vitality, a thrill of excitement, a glittering dream or two,
-a relief from the dulness which is pressing down upon her with leaden
-weights. She knows the penalty which follows this drug-taking--the awful
-reaction, the deadly lethargy that follows, the nervous crises, the loss
-of will-power, but she is prepared to pay the price because for a little
-while she gets peace, and artificial life. The family doctors know the
-prevalence of those drug-taking habits. They know the cause of them,
-they have watched the pitiful drama of these women’s lives. But they
-can do nothing to cut out the cause. Not even the surgeon’s knife can do
-that; their warnings fall on deaf ears, or are answered by a hysterical
-laugh.
-
-As I have shown, there are other forms of drug-taking not less dangerous
-in their moral effects. If the woman does not go to the chemist’s shop,
-she goes to the darkened room of the clairvoyant and the crystal-gazer,
-or to the spiritualistic séance, or to the man who hides his time until
-the crisis of the Eighth Year delivers the woman into his hands.
-
-Here, then, frankly and in detail, I have set out the meaning of this
-dangerous year of married life, and have endeavored, honestly, to
-analyze all the social and psychological forces which go to make that
-crisis. It is, in some measure, a study of our modern conditions of life
-as they prevail among the middle-classes, so that the problem is not
-abnormal, but is present, to some extent, in hundreds of thousands
-of small households to-day. All the tendencies of the time, all the
-revolutionary ideas that are in the very air we breathe, all this
-modern spirit of revolt against disagreeable duties, and drudgery, and
-discipline, the decay of religious authority, the sapping of spiritual
-faith, the striving for social success, the cult of snobbishness,
-the new creed of selfishness which ignores the future of the race and
-demands a good time here and now, the lack of any ideals larger than
-private interests and personal comforts, the ignorance of men and women
-who call themselves intellectual, the nervous irritability of husbands
-and wives who live up to the last penny of their incomes, above all
-the childlessness of these women who live in small flats and suburban
-villas, and their utter laziness, all those signs and symptoms of
-our social sickness lead up, inevitably, and with fatal logic, to the
-tragedy of the Eighth Year.
-
-
-
-
-
-PART II--A DEMONSTRATION
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-In the drawing-room of a flat in Intellectual Mansions, S. W., there
-was an air of quietude and peace. No one would have imagined for a
-moment that the atmosphere was charged with electricity, or that
-the scene was set for a drama of emotional interest with tragic
-potentialities. It seemed the dwelling-place of middle-class culture and
-well-to-do gentility.
-
-The room was furnished in the “New Art” style, as seen in the showrooms
-of the great stores. There were sentimental pictures on the walls framed
-in dark oak. The sofa and chairs were covered in a rather flamboyant
-chintz. Through the French windows at the back could be seen the balcony
-railings, and, beyond, a bird’s-eye view of the park. A piano-organ in
-the street below was playing the latest ragtime melody, and there was
-the noise of a great number of whistles calling for taxis, which did not
-seem to come.
-
-In a stiff-backed arm-chair by the fireplace sat an elderly lady, of a
-somewhat austere appearance, who was examining through her spectacles
-the cover of a paper backed novel, depicting a voluptuous young woman;
-obviously displeasing to her sense of propriety. Mrs. Heywood’s sense of
-propriety was somewhat acutely developed, to the annoyance, at times, of
-Mollie, the maid-servant, who was clearing away the tea-things in a
-bad temper. That is to say, she was making a great deal of unnecessary
-clatter.
-
-Mrs. Heywood ignored the clatter, and concentrated her attention on the
-cover of the paper-backed book. It seemed to distress her, and presently
-she gave expression to her distress.
-
-“Dear me! What an improper young woman!”
-
-Mollie’s bad temper was revealed by a sudden tightening of the lips and
-a flushed face. She bent across an “occasional” table and peered over
-the old lady’s shoulder, and spoke rather impudently.
-
-“Excuse me, ma’am, but that’s _my_ novel, if you don’t mind.”
-
-“I _do_ mind,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I was shocked to find it on the
-kitchen dresser.”
-
-Molly tossed her head, so that her white cap assumed an acute angle.
-
-“I was shocked to see that it had gone from the kitchen dresser.”
-
-Then she lowered her voice and added in a tone of bitter grievance--
-
-“Blessed if one can call anything one’s own in this here flat.”
-
-“It’s not fit literature for _any_ young girl,” said Mrs. Heywood
-severely. She looked again at the flaunting lady with an air of extreme
-disapproval.
-
-“Disgusting!”
-
-Mollie rattled the tea-things violently.
-
-“It’s good enough for the mistress, anyhow.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was surprised.
-
-“Surely she did not lend it to you?”
-
-“Well--not exactly,” said Mollie, with just a trace of embarrassment. “I
-borrowed it. It’s written by her particular friend, Mr. Bradshaw.”
-
-“Mr. Bradshaw! Surely not?”
-
-The old lady wiped her spectacles rather nervously.
-
-“A very nice-spoken gentleman,” said Mollie, “though he does write
-novels.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood looked at the author’s name for the first time and
-expressed her astonishment.
-
-“Good gracious! So it is.”
-
-Mollie laughed as she folded up the tea-cloth. She had gained a little
-triumph, and scored off the “mother-in-law,” as she called the elderly
-lady, in the kitchen.
-
-“Oh, he knows a thing or two, he does, my word!”
-
-She winked solemnly at herself in the mirror over the mantelshelf.
-
-“Hold your tongue, Mollie,” said Mrs. Heywood sharply.
-
-“Servants are not supposed to have any tongues. Oh, dear no!”
-
-With this sarcastic retort Mollie proceeded to put the sugar-basin into
-the china-cupboard, but seemed to expect a counter-attack. She was not
-disappointed.
-
-“Mollie!” said Mrs. Heywood severely, looking over the rims of her
-spectacles.
-
-“Now what’s wrong?”
-
-“You have not cleaned the silver lately.”
-
-“Haven’t I?” said Mollie sweetly.
-
-“No,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Why not, I should like to know?”
-
-Mollie’s “sweetness” was suddenly embittered. She spoke with ferocity.
-
-“If you want to know, it’s because I won’t obey two mistresses at once.
-There’s no liberty for a mortal soul in this here flat. So there!”
-
-“Very well, Mollie,” said Mrs. Heywood mildly. “We will wait until your
-mistress comes home. If she has any strength of mind at all she will
-give you a month’s notice.”
-
-Mollie sniffed. The idea seemed to amuse her.
-
-“The poor dear hasn’t any strength of mind.”
-
-“I am surprised at you, Mollie.”
-
-“That’s why she has gone to church again.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was startled. She was so startled that she forgot her anger
-with the maid.
-
-“Again? Are you sure?”
-
-“Well, she had a look of church in her eyes when she went out.”
-
-“What sort of a look?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“A stained-glass-window look.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood spoke rather to herself than to Mollie.
-
-“That makes the third time to-day,” she said pensively.
-
-Mollie spoke mysteriously. She too had forgotten her anger and
-impudence. She dropped her voice to a confidential tone.
-
-“The mistress is in a bad way, to my thinking. I’ve seen it coming on.”
-
-“Seen what coming on?” asked the elderly lady.
-
-“She sits brooding too much. Doesn’t even pitch into me when I break
-things. That’s a bad sign.”
-
-“A bad sign?”
-
-“I’ve noticed they’re all taken like this when they go wrong,” said the
-girl, speaking as one who had had a long experience of human nature
-in Intellectual Mansions, S. W. But these words aroused the old lady’s
-wrath.
-
-“How dare you!” said Mrs. Heywood. “Leave the room at once.”
-
-“I must tell the truth if I died for it,” said Mollie.
-
-The two women were silent for a moment, for just then a voice outside
-called, “Clare! Clare!” rather impatiently.
-
-“Oh, Lord!” said Mollie. “There’s the master.”
-
-“Clare!” called the voice. “Oh, confound the thing!”
-
-“I suppose he’s lost his stud again,” said Mollie. “He always does on
-club nights. I’d best be off.”
-
-She took up the tea-tray and left the room hurriedly, just as her
-master came in. It was Mr. Herbert Heywood, generally described by
-his neighbors as being “Something in the City”--a man of about thirty,
-slight, clean-shaven, boyish, good-looking, with nervous movements and
-extreme irritability. He was in evening clothes with his tie undone.
-
-“Plague take this tie!” he growled, making use of one or two
-un-Parliamentary expressions. Then he saw his mother and apologized.
-
-“Oh, I beg your pardon, mother. Where’s Clare?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood answered her son gloomily.
-
-“I think she’s gone to church again.”
-
-“Again?” said Herbert Heywood. “Why, dash it all--I beg your pardon,
-mother--she’s always going to church now. What’s the attraction?”
-
-“I think she must be unwell,” said Mrs. Hey-wood. “I’ve thought so for
-some time.”
-
-“Oh, nonsense! She’s perfectly fit.... See if you can tie this bow,
-mother.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood endeavored to do so, and during the process her son showed
-great impatience and made irritable grimaces. But he returned to the
-subject of his wife.
-
-“Perhaps her nerves are a bit wrong. Women are nervy creatures.... Oh,
-hang it all, mother, don’t strangle me!... As I tell her, what’s the
-good of having a park at your front door--Oh, thanks, that’s better.”
-
-He looked at himself in the glass, and dabbed his face with a
-handkerchief.
-
-“Of course I cut myself to-night. I always do when I go to the club.”
-
-“Herbert, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood rather nervously.
-
-“I--I suppose Clare is not going to bless you with a child?”
-
-“_In this flat_!”
-
-Herbert was startled and horrified. It was a great shock to him. He
-gazed round the little drawing-room rather wildly.
-
-“Oh, Lord!” he said presently, when he had calmed down a little. “Don’t
-suggest such a thing. Besides, she is not.”
-
-“Well, I’m nervous about her,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Oh, rats, mother! I mean, don’t be so fanciful.”
-
-“I don’t like this sudden craving for religion, Herbert. It’s
-unhealthy.”
-
-“Devilish unhealthy,” said Herbert.
-
-He searched about vainly for his patent boots, which were in an obvious
-position. It added to his annoyance and irritability.
-
-“Why can’t she stay at home and look after me? I can’t find a single
-damn thing. I beg your pardon, mother.... Women’s place is in the
-home.... Now where on earth----”
-
-He resumed his search for the very obvious patent boots and at last
-discovered them.
-
-“Oh, there they are!”
-
-He glanced at the clock, and expressed the opinion that he would be late
-for the club if he did not “look sharp.” Then a little tragedy happened,
-and he gave a grunt of dismay when a bootlace broke.
-
-“Oh, my hat! Why doesn’t Clare look after my things properly?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood asked another question, ignoring the broken bootlace.
-
-“Need you go to the club to-night, Herbert?”
-
-Herbert was both astonished and annoyed at this remark.
-
-“Of course I must. It’s Friday night and the one little bit of
-Bohemianism I get in the week. Why not?”
-
-“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Heywood meekly. “Except that I thought
-Clare is feeling rather lonely.”
-
-“Lonely?” said Herbert. “She has you, hasn’t she?”
-
-“Yes, she has me.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood spoke as though that might be a doubtful consolation.
-
-“Besides, what more does she want? She has her afternoon At Homes,
-hasn’t she?”
-
-“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood, still more doubtfully.
-
-“And she can always go to a matinée if she wants to, can’t she?”
-
-“Yes, dear.”
-
-“Then I have taken out a subscription to Mudie’s for her, haven’t I?”
-
-Herbert Heywood spoke as though his wife had all the blessings of
-life, as though he had provided her with all that a woman’s heart might
-desire. But Mrs. Heywood interrupted his catalogue of good things.
-
-“I think she reads too many novels,” she said.
-
-“Oh, they broaden her mind,” said Herbert. “Although, I must
-confess they bore _me_ to death.... Now what have I done with my
-cigarette-case?”
-
-He felt all over his pockets, but could not find the desired thing.
-
-“Oh, the curse of pockets!”
-
-“Some of them are very dangerous, Herbert.”
-
-“What, pockets?”
-
-“No, novels,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Look at this.”
-
-She thrust under his eyes the novel with the picture of the flaming
-lady.
-
-“Gee whizz!” said Herbert, laughing. “Oh, well, she’s a married woman.”
-
-“Do you see who the author is, Herbert?” Herbert look, and was
-astonished.
-
-“Gerald Bradshaw, by Jove! Does he write this sort of muck?”
-
-“He has been coming here rather often lately. Especially on club-nights,
-Herbert.” Herbert Heywood showed distinct signs of annoyance.
-
-“Does he, by Jove? I don’t like the fellow. He’s a particularly fine
-specimen of a bad hat.”
-
-“I’m afraid he’s an immoral man,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-Herbert shrugged his shoulders.
-
-“Well, Clare can take care of herself.”
-
-“I wonder,” said Mrs. Heywood, as though she were not at all sure. “My
-dear, I think you ought to keep an eye on your wife just now.”
-
-Herbert Heywood took his eye-glass out of a fob pocket and fumbled with
-it.
-
-“Keep an eye on her, mother?”
-
-“She is very queer,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I can’t do anything to please
-her.”
-
-“Well, there’s nothing strange in that,” said Herbert. Then he added
-hastily--
-
-“I mean it’s no new symptom.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood stared at her son in a peculiar, significant way.
-
-“She looks as if something is going to--happen.”
-
-Herbert was really startled.
-
-“Happen? How? When?”
-
-“I can’t exactly explain. She appears to be waiting for something--or
-some one.”
-
-Herbert was completely mystified.
-
-“I didn’t keep her waiting this evening, did I?”
-
-“I don’t mean you, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“No?--Who, then?” asked Herbert.
-
-Mrs. Heywood replied somewhat enigmatically. She gave a deep sigh and
-said--
-
-“We women are queer things!”
-
-“Queer isn’t the word,” said Herbert.
-
-He stared at the carpet in a gloomy, thoughtful way, as though the
-pattern were perplexing him.
-
-“Perhaps you’re right about the novels. They’ve been giving her notions,
-or something.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood crossed the room hurriedly and went over to a drawer in a
-cabinet, from which she pulled out a number of pamphlets.
-
-“Herbert,” she said solemnly, “she doesn’t read only novels. Look here.
-Look at all these little books. She simply devours them, Herbert, and
-then hides them.”
-
-“Naturally, after she has devoured them,” said Herbert irritably. “But
-what the deuce are they?”
-
-He turned them over one by one, reading out the titles, raising his
-eyebrows, and then whistling with surprise, and finally looking quite
-panic-stricken.
-
-“_Women’s Work and Wages_. Oh, Lord! John Stuart Mill on _The Subjection
-of Women. The Ethics of Ibsen_. Great Scott! _The Principles of
-Eugenics_.... My hat!”
-
-“Quite so, Herbert,” said Mrs. Heywood, with a kind of grim satisfaction
-in his consternation.
-
-“I don’t mind her reading improper novels,” said Herbert, “but I draw
-the line at this sort of stuff.”
-
-“It’s most dangerous.”
-
-“It’s rank poison.”
-
-“That’s what I think,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Where did she get hold of them?” asked Herbert.
-
-Mrs. Heywood looked at her son as though she had another startling
-announcement.
-
-“From that woman, Miss Vernon, the artist girl who lives in the flat
-above.”
-
-“What, that girl who throws orange-peel over the balcony?”
-
-“Yes, the girl who is always whistling for taxis,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“What, you mean the one who complained about my singing in the bath?”
-
-“Yes, I shall never forgive her for that.”
-
-“Said she didn’t mind if I sang in tune.”
-
-“Yes, the one who sells a Suffragette paper outside Victoria Station.”
-
-“It’s the sort of thing she would do,” said Herbert, with great sarcasm.
-
-“I never liked her, my dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Confound her impudence! As if a British subject hasn’t an inalienable
-right to sing in his bath! She had the cheek to say I was spoiling her
-temper for the rest of the day.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood laughed rather bitterly. “She looks as if she had a
-temper!”
-
-Herbert gave the pamphlets an angry slap with the back of his hand and
-let them fall on the floor.
-
-“Do you mean to say _she_ has been giving Clare these pestilential
-things?”
-
-“I saw her bring them here,” said Mrs. Hey-wood.
-
-“Well, they shan’t stay here.”
-
-Herbert went to the fireplace and took up the tongs. Then he picked up
-the pamphlets as though they might bite and tossed them into the flames.
-
-“Beastly things! Burn, won’t you?”
-
-He gave them a savage poke, deeper into the fire, and watched them
-smolder and then break into flame.
-
-“Pestilential nonsense!... That’s a good deed done, anyhow!”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was rather scared.
-
-“I am afraid Clare will be very angry.”
-
-“Angry! I shall give her a piece of my mind. She had no right to conceal
-these things.” He spoke with dignity. “It isn’t honorable.”
-
-“No,” said Mrs. Heywood, “but all the same, dear, I wish you hadn’t
-burned the books.”
-
-“I should like to burn the authors of ‘em,” said Herbert fiercely.
-“However, they’ll roast sooner or later, that’s a comfort.”
-
-“You had better be careful, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood rather nervously.
-“Clare is in a rather dangerous frame of mind just now.”
-
-“Clare will have to learn obedience to her husband’s wishes,” said
-Herbert. “I thought she had learned by this time. She’s been very quiet
-lately.”
-
-“Too quiet, Herbert. It’s when we women are very quiet that we are most
-dangerous.” Herbert was beginning to feel alarmed. He did not like all
-these hints, all these vague and mysterious suggestions.
-
-“Good Lord, mother, you give me the creeps. Why don’t you speak
-plainly?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was listening. She seemed to hear some sounds in the hall.
-Suddenly she retreated to her arm-chair and made a pretence of searching
-for her knitting.
-
-“Hush!” she said. “Here she comes.”
-
-As she spoke the words, the door opened slowly and Clare came in. She
-was a tall, elegant woman of about thirty, with a quiet manner and
-melancholy eyes in which there was a great wistfulness. She spoke rather
-wearily--
-
-“Not gone yet, Herbert? You’ll be late for the club.”
-
-Herbert looked at his wife curiously, as though trying to discover some
-of those symptoms to which his mother had alluded.
-
-“I’m afraid that’s your fault,” he said.
-
-“My fault?”
-
-“Surely you ought to stay at home sometimes and help me to get off
-decently,” said Herbert in an aggrieved way. “You know perfectly well my
-tie always goes wrong.”
-
-Clare sighed; and then smiled rather miserably.
-
-“Why can’t men learn to do their own ties? We’re living in the twentieth
-century, aren’t we?”
-
-She took off her hat, and sat down with it in her lap.
-
-“Oh, how my head aches to-night.”
-
-“Where have you been?” asked Herbert
-
-“Yes, dear, where _have_ you been?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“I’ve been round to church for a few minutes,” said Clare.
-
-“What on earth for?” asked Herbert impatiently.
-
-“What does one go to church for?”
-
-“God knows!” said Herbert bitterly.
-
-“Precisely. Have you any objection?”
-
-“Yes, I have.”
-
-Herbert spoke with some severity, as though he had many objections.
-
-“I don’t object to you going to your club,” said Clare.
-
-“Oh, that’s different.”
-
-“In what way?” asked Clare.
-
-“In every way. I am a man, and you’re a woman.”
-
-Clare Heywood thought this answer out. She seemed to find something in
-the argument.
-
-“Yes,” she said, “it does make a lot of difference.”
-
-“I object strongly to this religious craze of yours,” said Herbert,
-trying to be calm and reasonable. “It’s unnatural. It’s--it’s devilish
-absurd.”
-
-“It may keep me from--from doing other things,” said Clare.
-
-She spoke as though the words had some tragic significance.
-
-“Why can’t you stay at home and read a decent novel?”
-
-“It is so difficult to find a _decent_ novel. And I am sick of them
-all.”
-
-“Well, play the piano, then,” said Herbert.
-
-“I am tired of playing the piano, especially when there is no one to
-listen.”
-
-“There’s mother,” said Herbert.
-
-“Mother has no ear for music.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was annoyed at this remark. It seemed to her unjust.
-
-“How can you say so, Clare? You know I love Mozart.”
-
-“I haven’t played Mozart for years,” said Clare, laughing a little. “You
-are thinking of Mendelssohn.”
-
-“Well, it’s all the same,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Yes, I suppose so,” said Clare very wearily. She drooped her head and
-shut her eyes until suddenly she seemed to smell something.
-
-“Is there anything burning?”
-
-“Burning?” said Herbert nervously.
-
-“There is a queer smell in the flat,” said Clare.
-
-Herbert stood with his back to the fire, and sniffed strenuously. “I
-can’t smell anything.”
-
-“It’s your fancy, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“It’s the smell of burned paper,” said Clare quite positively.
-
-“Do you think so?” said her mother-in-law.
-
-“Burned paper?” said Herbert.
-
-Clare became suspicious. She leaned forward in her chair and stared into
-the fireplace.
-
-“What are all those ashes in the grate?” she said.
-
-“Oh, yes,” said Herbert, as though he had suddenly remembered. “Of
-course I _have_ been burning some papers.”
-
-“What papers?” asked Clare.
-
-“Oh, old things,” said Herbert rather hurriedly. “Well, I had better be
-off. Goodnight, mother.”
-
-He kissed her affectionately and said:
-
-“Don’t stay up late. I have taken the key, Clare.”
-
-“I hope it will fit the lock when you come back,” said Clare.
-
-She spoke the words very quietly, but for some reason they raised her
-husband’s ire.
-
-“For heaven’s sake don’t try to be funny, Clare.”
-
-“I wasn’t trying,” said Clare very calmly. For a moment Herbert
-hesitated. Then he came back to his wife and kissed her.
-
-“I think we are both a bit irritable to-night, aren’t we?”
-
-“Are we?” said Clare.
-
-“Nerves,” said Herbert, “the curse of the age. Well, good-night.”
-
-Just as he was going out, Mollie, the maidservant, came in and said:
-
-“It’s Miss Vernon, ma’am.”
-
-“Oh,” said Clare. She glanced at her husband for a moment and theft
-said:
-
-“Well, bring her in, Mollie.”
-
-“Yes, ma’am,” said Mollie, going out of the room again.
-
-“Great Scott!” exclaimed Herbert, in a sudden excitement. “It’s that
-woman who flings her beastly orange-peel into my window boxes.
-Clare, I strongly object----”
-
-Clare answered him a little passionately: “Oh, I am tired of your
-objections.”
-
-“She’s not a respectable character,” said Herbert.
-
-“Hush, Herbert!” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-As she spoke the girl who had been called Madge Vernon entered the room.
-
-She was a bright, cheery girl, dressed plainly in a tailor-made coat and
-skirt, with brown boots.
-
-“I thought I would look in for half-an-hour,” she said very cheerfully
-to Clare. “If you are busy, send me packing, my dear.”
-
-“I am never busy,” said Clare. “I have nothing in the world to do.”
-
-“Oh, that’s rotten!” said Madge. “Can’t you invent something? How are
-you, Mrs. Heywood?”
-
-She shook hands with the old lady, who answered her greeting with a
-rather grim “Good evening.”
-
-“Herbert is going out to-night,” said Clare. “By the way, you don’t know
-my husband.”
-
-Madge Vernon looked at Herbert Heywood very sweetly.
-
-“I have heard him singing. How do you do?”
-
-Herbert was not at all pleased with her sweetness.
-
-“Excuse me, won’t you?” he said. “I am just off to my club.”
-
-“Don’t you take your wife with you?” asked Miss Vernon.
-
-“My wife! It’s a man’s club.”
-
-“Oh, I see. Men only. Rather selfish, isn’t it?”
-
-Herbert Heywood was frankly astonished.
-
-“Selfish? Why selfish? Well, I won’t stop to argue the point.
-Good-night, Clare. Doubtless you will enjoy Miss Vernon’s remarkable and
-revolutionary ideas.”
-
-“I am sure I shall,” said Clare.
-
-Mrs. Heywood followed her son to the door.
-
-“Be sure you put a muffler round your neck, dear.”
-
-Herbert answered his mother in a low voice, looking fiercely at Madge
-Vernon.
-
-“I should like to twist it round somebody else’s neck!”
-
-“I will come and find it for you, dear.”
-
-The two young women were left alone together, and Clare brought forward
-a chair.
-
-“Sit down, won’t you? Here?”
-
-A moment later the front door was heard to hang and at the sound of it
-Madge laughed a little.
-
-“Funny things, husbands! I am sure I shouldn’t know what to do with
-one.”
-
-Clare smiled wanly.
-
-“One can’t do anything with them.”
-
-“By the by,” said Madge, “I have brought a new pamphlet for you. The
-‘Rights of Wives.’”
-
-Clare took the small book nervously, as though it were a bomb which
-might go off at any moment.
-
-“I have been reading those other pamphlets.”
-
-“Pretty good, eh?” said Madge, laughing. “Eye-openers! What?”
-
-“They alarm me a little,” said Clare. “Alarm you?” Madge Vernon was
-immensely amused. “Why, they don’t bite!”
-
-“Yes, they do,” said Clare. “Here.” She put her hand to her head as if
-it had been wounded.
-
-“You mean they give you furiously to think? Well, that’s good.”
-
-“I’m not sure,” said Clare. “Since I began to think I have been very
-miserable.”
-
-“Oh, that will soon wear off,” said Madge Vernon briskly. “You’ll get
-used to it.”
-
-“It will always hurt,” said Clare.
-
-Madge Vernon smiled at her.
-
-“I made a habit of it.”
-
-“It’s best not to think,” said Clare. “It’s best to go on being stupid
-and self-satisfied.”
-
-Clare’s visitor was shocked.
-
-“Oh, not self-satisfied! That is intellectual death.”
-
-“There are other kinds of death,” said Clare. “Moral death.”
-
-Madge Vernon raised her eyebrows.
-
-“We must buck up and do things. That’s the law of life.”
-
-“I have nothing to do,” said Clare, in a pitiful way.
-
-“How strange! I have such a million things to do. My days aren’t long
-enough. I am always pottering about with one thing or another.”
-
-“What kind of things?” asked Clare wistfully.
-
-Madge Vernon gave her a cheerful little laugh.
-
-“For one thing, it’s a great joke having to earn one’s own living. The
-excitement of never knowing whether one can afford the next day’s meal!
-The joy of painting pictures--which the Royal Academy will inevitably
-reject. The horrible delight of burning them when they are rejected....
-Besides, I am a public character, I am.”
-
-“Are you? How?” asked Clare.
-
-“A most notorious woman. I’m on the local Board of Guardians and
-all sorts of funny old committees for looking after everything and
-everybody.”
-
-“What do you do?”
-
-Clare asked the question as though some deep mystery lay in the answer.
-
-“Oh, I poke up the old stick-in-the-muds,” said Madge Vernon, “and stir
-up no end of jolly rows. I make them do things, too; and they hate it.
-Oh, how they hate it!”
-
-“What things, Madge?”
-
-“Why, attending to drains, and starving widows, and dead dogs, and
-imbecile children, and people ‘what won’t work,’ and people ‘what will’
-but can’t.”
-
-Clare laughed at this description and then became sad again.
-
-“I envy you! I have nothing on earth to do, and my days are growing
-longer and longer, so that each one seems a year.”
-
-“Haven’t you any housework to do?” asked Madge.
-
-“Not since my husband could afford an extra servant.”
-
-Miss Vernon made an impatient little gesture.
-
-“Oh, those extra servants! They have ruined hundreds of happy homes.”
-
-“Well, we have only got one now,” said Clare. “The other left last
-night, because she couldn’t get on with my mother-in-law.”
-
-“They never can!” said Miss Vernon.
-
-“Anyhow, Herbert doesn’t think it ladylike for me to do housework.”
-
-Madge Vernon scoffed at the idea.
-
-“Ladylike! Oh, this suburban snobbishness! How I hate the damn thing!
-Forgive my bad language, won’t you?”
-
-“I like it,” said Clare.
-
-Miss Vernon continued her cross-examination.
-
-“Don’t you even make your own bed? It’s awfully healthy to turn a
-mattress and throw the pillows about.”
-
-“Herbert objects to my making beds,” said Clare.
-
-“Don’t you make the puddings or help in the washing up?”
-
-“Herbert objects to my going into the kitchen,” said Clare.
-
-“Don’t you ever break a few plates?”
-
-Clare smiled at her queer question.
-
-“No, why should I?”
-
-“There’s nothing like breaking things to relieve one’s pent-up
-emotions,” said Miss Vernon, with an air of profound knowledge.
-
-“The only thing I have broken lately is something--here,” said Clare,
-putting her hand to her heart.
-
-Miss Vernon was scornful.
-
-“Oh, rubbish! The heart is unbreakable, my dear. Now, heads are much
-easier to crack.”
-
-“I think mine is getting cracked, too,” said Clare.
-
-She put her hands to her head, as though it were grievously cracked.
-
-Madge Vernon stared at her frankly and thoughtfully.
-
-“Look here,” she said, after a little silence, “I tell you what _you_
-want. It’s a baby. Why don’t you have one?”
-
-“Herbert can’t afford it,” said Clare. Madge Vernon raised her hands.
-
-“Stuff and nonsense!” she said.
-
-“Besides,” said Clare in a matter-of-fact way, “they don’t make flats
-big enough for babies in Intellectual Mansions.”
-
-Madge Vernon looked round the room, and frowned angrily.
-
-“No, that’s true. There’s no place to keep a perambulator. Oh, these
-jerry builders! Immoral devils!”
-
-There was a silence between the two women. Both of them seemed deep in
-thought.
-
-Then presently Clare said: “I feel as if something were going to happen;
-as if something must happen or break.”
-
-“About time, my dear,” said Madge. “How long have you been married?”
-
-“Eight years,” said Clare, in a casual way. Madge Vernon whistled with a
-long-drawn note of ominous meaning.
-
-“The Eighth Year, eh?”
-
-“Yes, it’s our eighth year of marriage.”
-
-“That’s bad,” said Madge. “The Eighth Year! You will have to be very
-careful, Clare.”
-
-Clare was startled. “What do you mean?” she asked.
-
-“Haven’t you heard?” said Miss Vernon.
-
-“Heard what?”
-
-“I thought everybody knew.”
-
-“Knew what?” asked Clare anxiously.
-
-Madge Vernon looked at her in a pitying way.
-
-“It’s in the evidence on the Royal Commission on Divorce.”
-
-“What is?”
-
-“About the Eighth Year.”
-
-“What about it?” asked Clare. She was beginning to feel annoyed. What
-was Madge hiding from her?
-
-“Why,” said Madge, “about it being the fatal year in marriage.”
-
-“The fatal year?”
-
-The girl leaned forward in her chair and said in a solemn way:
-
-“There are more divorces begun in the Eighth Year than in any other
-period.”
-
-Clare Heywood was scared.
-
-“Good gracious!” she said, in a kind of whisper.
-
-“It’s a psychological fact,” said Madge. “I work it out in this way.
-In the first and second years a wife is absorbed in the experiment of
-marriage and in the sentimental phase of love. In the third and fourth
-years she begins to study her husband and to find him out. In the fifth
-and sixth years, having found him out completely, she makes a working
-compromise with life and tries to make the best of it. In the seventh
-and eighth years she begins to find out herself, and then----”
-
-“And then?” asked Clare, very anxiously.
-
-Clare Heywood was profoundly disturbed.
-
-“Well, then,” said Madge, “there is the devil to pay!”
-
-“Dear God!” she cried.
-
-“You see, it’s like this. If a woman has no child she gets bored... .
-She can’t help getting bored, poor soul. Her husband is so devoted to
-her that he provides her with every opportunity for getting bored--extra
-servants, extra little luxuries, and what he calls a beautiful little
-home. Ugh!” She stared round the room and made a face.
-
-“He is so intent on this that he nearly works himself to death. Comes
-home with business thoughts in his head. Doesn’t notice his wife’s
-wistful eyes, and probably dozes off to sleep after supper. Isn’t that
-so?”
-
-“Yes,” said Clare. “Horribly so.”
-
-“Well, then, having got bored, she gets emotional. Of course the husband
-doesn’t notice that either. _He’s_ not emotional. He is only wondering
-how to make both ends meet. But when his wife begins to get emotional,
-when she feels that something has broken here” (she put her hand to her
-heart), “when she feels like crying at unexpected moments and laughing
-at the wrong time, why then----”
-
-“What?” asked Clare.
-
-“Why, then, it’s about time the husband began to notice things, or
-things will begin to happen to his wife which he won’t jolly well like.
-That’s all!”
-
-Clare Heywood searched her friend’s face with hungry eyes.
-
-“Why, what will his wife do?”
-
-“Well, there are various alternatives. She either takes to religion----”
-
-“Ah!” said Clare, flushing a little.
-
-“Or to drink----”
-
-“Oh, no!” said Clare, shuddering a little.
-
-“Or to some other kind of man,” said Madge very calmly.
-
-Clare Hey wood was agitated and alarmed.
-
-“How do you know these things?” she asked.
-
-“Oh, I’ve studied ‘em,” said Madge Vernon cheerfully. “Of course there’s
-always another alternative.”
-
-“What’s that?” asked Clare eagerly.
-
-“Work,” said Madge Vernon solemnly.
-
-“What kind of work?”
-
-“Oh, any kind, so long as it’s absorbing and satisfying. Personally
-I like breaking things. One must always begin by breaking before one
-begins building. But it’s very exciting.”
-
-“It must be terribly exciting.”
-
-“For instance,” said Madge, laughing quietly, “it’s good to hear a pane
-of glass go crack.”
-
-“How does it make you feel?” asked Clare Heywood.
-
-“Oh,” said Madge, “it gives one a jolly feeling down the spine. You
-should try it.”
-
-“I daren’t,” said Clare.
-
-“It would do you a lot of good. It would get rid of your megrims.
-Besides, it’s in a good cause.”
-
-“I am not so sure of that,” said Clare.
-
-“It’s in the cause of woman’s liberty. It’s in the cause of all these
-suburban wives imprisoned in these stuffy little homes. It lets in God’s
-fresh air.”
-
-Clare rose and moved about the room. “It’s very stuffy in here,” she
-said. “It’s stifling.” At this moment Mollie came in the room again, and
-smiled across at her mistress, saying: “Mr. Bradshaw to see you, ma’am.”
-
-Clare was obviously agitated. She showed signs of embarrassment, and her
-voice trembled when she said:
-
-“Tell him--tell him I’m engaged.”
-
-“He says he must see you--on business,” said Mollie, lingering at the
-door.
-
-“On business?”
-
-“That’s what my young man says when he whistles up the tube,” said
-Mollie.
-
-Madge Vernon looked at her friend and said rather “meaningly”: “Don’t
-you _want_ to see him? If so I shouldn’t if I were you.”
-
-“Oh, yes,” said Clare, trying to appear quite cool. “If it’s on
-business.”
-
-“Very well, ma’am,” said Mollie. As she left the room she said under her
-breath: “I thought you would.”
-
-“Do you have business relations with Mr. Bradshaw?” asked Madge Vernon.
-
-“Yes,” said Clare; “no.... In a sort of way.”
-
-“I thought he was a novelist,” said Madge.
-
-“So he is.”
-
-“Dangerous fellows, novelists.”
-
-“Hush!” said Clare. “He might hear you.”
-
-“If it’s on business I must go, I suppose,” said Madge Vernon, rising
-from her chair.
-
-“No, don’t go; stay!” said Clare, speaking with strange excitement.
-
-As soon as she had uttered the words the visitor, Gerald Bradshaw, came
-in.
-
-He was a handsome, “artistic” looking man, with longish brown hair and
-a vandyke beard. He was dressed in a brown suit, with a big brown silk
-tie. He came forward in a graceful way, perfectly at ease, and with a
-charming manner.
-
-“How do you do, Mrs. Heywood?”
-
-“I _must_ be going,” said Madge. “Good-by, dear.”
-
-“Oh, _do_ stay,” whispered Clare.
-
-“Impossible. I have to speak to-night.”
-
-Although Madge Vernon had ignored the artist, he smiled at her and said:
-
-“Don’t you speak by day as a rule?”
-
-“Not until I am spoken to.... Good-night, Clare.”
-
-“Well, if you must be going--” said Clare uneasily.
-
-Madge Vernon stood for a moment at the door and smiled back at her
-friend. “You will remember, won’t you?”
-
-“What?”
-
-“The Eighth Year,” said Madge. With that parting shot she whisked out of
-the room.
-
-Gerald Bradshaw breathed a sigh of relief. Then he went across to Clare
-and kissed her hands.
-
-“I can’t stand that creature. A she-devil!”
-
-“She is my friend,” said Clare.
-
-“I am sorry to hear it,” said Gerald Bradshaw.
-
-Clare Heywood drooped her eyelashes before his bold, smiling gaze.
-
-“Why did you come again?” she asked. “I told you not to come.”
-
-“That is why I came. May I smoke?”
-
-He lit a cigarette before he had received he permission, and after a
-whiff or two said:
-
-“Is the good man at the club?”
-
-“You know he is at the club,” said Clare. “True. That is another reason
-why I came. Clare Heywood’s face flushed and her voice trembled a
-little.
-
-“Gerald, if you had any respect for me----
-
-“Respect is a foolish word,” said Gerald Bradshaw. “Hopelessly
-old-fashioned. Now adays men and women like or dislike, hate or love.”
-
-“I think I hate you,” said Clare in a low voice.
-
-Gerald smiled at her.
-
-“No, you don’t. You are a little frightened of me. That is all.”
-
-The woman laughed nervously, but there was a look of fear in her eyes.
-
-“Why should I be frightened of you?”
-
-“Because I tell you the truth. I don’t keep up the foolish old pretences
-by which men and women hide themselves from each other. You cannot hide
-from me, Clare.”
-
-“You seem to strip my soul bare,” said Clare and when the man laughed at
-her she said: “Yes, I am frightened of you.”
-
-“It is because you are like all suburban women,” said Gerald, “brought
-up in this environment of hypocritical virtue and false sentiment. You
-are frightened at the verities of life.”
-
-Clare Heywood gave a deep, quivering sigh. “Life is a tragic thing,
-Gerald,” she said. “Life is a jolly thing if one makes the best of it,
-if one fulfils one’s own nature.”
-
-“One’s own nature is generally bad.”
-
-“Never mind,” said Gerald cheerfully. “It is one’s own. Bad or good, it
-must find expression instead of being smothered or strangled. Life is
-tragic only to those who are afraid of it. Don’t be afraid, Clare. Do
-the things you want to do.”
-
-“There is nothing I want to do,” said Clare wearily. “Nothing except to
-find peace.”
-
-“Exactly. Peace. How can you find peace, my poor Clare, in this stuffy
-life of yours--in this daily denial of your own nature? There are heaps
-of things you want.”
-
-Clare laughed again, in a mirthless way. “How do you know?” she asked.
-
-“Of course I know. Shall I tell you?”
-
-“I think I would rather you didn’t,” said Clare.
-
-“I will tell you,” said the man. “Liberty is one of them.”
-
-“Liberty is a vague word.”
-
-“Liberty for your soul,” said Gerald.
-
-“Herbert objects to my having a soul.”
-
-“Liberty for that beating heart of yours, Clare.”
-
-The woman put both hands to her heart.
-
-“Yes, it beats, and beats.”
-
-“You want to escape, Clare.”
-
-“Escape?”
-
-She seemed frightened at that word. She whispered it.
-
-“Escape from the deadening influence of domestic dulness.”
-
-“I can’t deny the dulness,” said Clare.
-
-“You want adventure. Your heart is seeking adventure. You know it. You
-know that I am telling you the truth.”
-
-As the man spoke he came closer to her, and with his hands in his
-pockets stood in front of her, staring into her eyes.
-
-“You make me afraid,” said Clare. All the color had faded out of her
-face and she was dead white.
-
-“You need not be afraid, Clare. The love of a man for a woman is not a
-terrifying thing. It is a good thing. Good as life.”
-
-He took her by the wrists and held them tight.
-
-“Gerald!” said Clare. “For God’s sake.... I have a husband.”
-
-“He bores you,” said the man. “He is your husband but not your mate. No
-woman finds peace until she finds her mate. It is the same with a man.”
-
-“I will not listen to you. You make me feel a bad woman!”
-
-She wrenched her hands free and moved toward the bell.
-
-Gerald Bradshaw laughed quietly. He seemed amused at this woman’s fear.
-He seemed masterful, sure of his power over her.
-
-“You know that you must be my mate. If not to-day, to-morrow. If not
-to-morrow, the next day. I will wait for you, Clare.”
-
-Clare had shrunk back to the wall now, and touched the electric bell.
-
-“You have no pity for me,” she said. “You play on my weakness.”
-
-“Fear makes you strong to resist,” said the man. “But love is stronger
-than fear.”
-
-He followed her across the room to where she stood crouching against the
-wall like a hunted thing.
-
-“Don’t come so close to me,” she said.
-
-“What on earth have you rung the bell for?” asked the man.
-
-“Because I ought not to be alone with you.”
-
-They stood looking into each other’s eyes. Then Clare moved quickly
-toward the sofa as Mollie came in.
-
-“Oh, Mollie,” said Clare, trying to steady her voice, “ask Mrs. Heywood
-to come in, will you? Tell her Mr. Bradshaw is here.”
-
-“Yes, ma’am,” said Mollie. “But she knows that already.”
-
-“Take my message, please,” said her mistress.
-
-“I was going to, ma’am,” said Mollie, and she added in an undertone, as
-she left the room, “Strange as it may appear.”
-
-Gerald laughed quite light-heartedly.
-
-“Yes, you have won the trick this time. But I hold the trump cards,
-Clare; and I am very lucky, as a rule. I have a gambler’s luck. Of
-course if the old lady comes in I shan’t stay. She hates me like poison,
-and I can’t be polite to her. Insincerity is not one of my vices.
-Good-night, dear heart. I will come to you in your dreams.”
-
-As he spoke this word, which brought a flush again to Clare Heywood’s
-face, Mrs. Hey-wood, her mother-in-law, came in. She glanced from one to
-the other suspiciously.
-
-Gerald Bradshaw was not in the least abashed by her stern face.
-
-“How do you do, Mrs. Heywood? I was just going. I hope I have not
-disturbed you?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood answered him in a “distant” manner:
-
-“Not in the least.”
-
-“I am glad,” he said. “I will let myself out. Don’t trouble.”
-
-At that moment there was a noise in the hall, and Clare raised her head
-and listened.
-
-“I think I hear another visitor,” she said.
-
-“In that ease I had better wait a moment,” said Gerald. “The halls
-of these flats are not cut out for two people at a time. I will light
-another cigarette if I may.”
-
-“I thought I heard a latchkey,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Surely it can’t he
-Herbert back so early?”
-
-“No, it can’t be,” said Clare.
-
-Gerald spoke more to himself than to the ladies:
-
-“I hope not.”
-
-They were all silent when Herbert Heywood came in quietly.
-
-“I didn’t go to the club after all,” he said. Then he saw Gerald
-Bradshaw, and his mouth hardened a little as he said, “Oh!... How do?”
-
-“How are you?” asked Gerald, in his cool way.
-
-“Been here long?” asked Herbert.
-
-“Long enough for a pleasant talk with your wife.”
-
-“Going now?”
-
-“Yes. We have finished our chat. Goodnight. I can find my way out
-blindfolded. All these flats are the same. Rather convenient, don’t you
-think?”
-
-He turned to Clare and smiled.
-
-“_Au revoir_, Mrs. Heywood.”
-
-She did not answer him, and he went out jauntily. A few moments later
-they heard the front door shut.
-
-“What the devil does he come here for?” growled Herbert rather sulkily.
-
-Clare ignored the question.
-
-“Why are you home so early?”
-
-“Yes, dear, why didn’t you go to the club?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
-
-Herbert looked rather embarrassed.
-
-“Oh, I don’t know. I felt a bit off. Besides----”
-
-“What, dear?” asked his mother.
-
-“I thought Clare was feeling a bit lonely to-night. Perhaps I was
-mistaken.”
-
-“I am often lonely,” said Clare. “Even when you are at home.”
-
-“Aren’t you _glad_ I have come back?” asked Herbert.
-
-“Why do you ask me?”
-
-“I should be glad if you were glad.” Clare’s husband became slightly
-sentimental as he looked at her.
-
-“I have been thinking it _is_ rather rotten to go _off_ to the club and
-leave you here alone,” he said.
-
-Mrs. Heywood was delighted with these words.
-
-“Oh, you dear boy! How unselfish of you!”
-
-“I try to be,” said Herbert.
-
-“I am sure you are the very soul of unselfishness, Herbert, dear,” said
-the fond mother.
-
-“Thanks, mother.”
-
-He looked rather anxiously at Clare, and said--
-
-“Don’t you think we might have a pleasant evening for once?”
-
-“Oh, that would be delightful!” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Eh, Clare?”
-
-“How do you mean?” said Clare.
-
-“Like we used to in the old days? Some music, and that sort of thing.”
-
-“I am sure that will be _very_ nice,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Eh, Clare?” said Herbert.
-
-“If you like,” said Clare.
-
-“Wait till I have got my boots off.” He spoke in a rather honeyed voice
-to his wife.
-
-“Do you happen to know where my slippers are, darling?”
-
-“I haven’t the least idea,” said Clare.
-
-Herbert seemed nettled at this answer.
-
-“In the old days you used to warm them for me,” he said.
-
-“Did I?” said Clare. “I have forgotten. It was a long time ago.”
-
-“Eight years.”
-
-At these words Clare looked over to her husband in a peculiar way.
-
-“Yes,” she said. “It is our eighth year.”
-
-“Here are your slippers, dear,” said Mrs. Hey wood.
-
-“Oh, thanks, mother. _You_ don’t forget.”
-
-There was silence while he took off his boots. Clare sat with her hands
-in her lap, staring at the carpet. Once or twice her mother-in-law
-glanced at her anxiously.
-
-“Won’t you play something, Clare?” said the old lady, after a little
-while.
-
-“If you like,” said Clare.
-
-Herbert resumed his cheerful note.
-
-“Yes, let’s have a jolly evening. Perhaps I will sing a song presently.”
-
-“Oh, do, dear!” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Gad, it’s a long time since I sang ‘John Peel’!”
-
-Clare looked rather anxious and perturbed.
-
-“The walls of this flat are rather thin,” she said. “The neighbors might
-not like it.”
-
-“Oh, confound the neighbors!” said Herbert.
-
-“I will do some knitting while you two dears play and sing,” said the
-old lady.
-
-She fetched her knitting from a black silk bag on one of the little
-tables, and took a chair near the fireplace. Clare Heywood went to the
-music-stool and turned over some music listlessly. She did not seem to
-find anything which appealed to her.
-
-Her husband settled himself down in an arm-chair and loaded his pipe.
-
-“Play something bright, Clare,” he said.
-
-“All my music sounds melancholy when I play it,” said Clare.
-
-“What, rag-time?”
-
-“Even rag-time. Rag-time worst of all.”
-
-Yet she began to play softly one of Chopin’s preludes, in a dreamy way.
-
-“Tell me when you want me to sing,” said Herbert.
-
-“I will,” said Clare.
-
-There was silence for a little while, except for Clare’s dream-music.
-Mrs. Heywood dozed over her knitting, and her head nodded on her chest.
-Presently Herbert rose from his chair and touched the electric bell. A
-moment later Mollie came in.
-
-“Yes?” asked Mollie.
-
-Herbert spoke quietly so that he should not interrupt his wife’s music.
-
-“Bring me _The Financial Times_, Mollie. It’s in my study.”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said Mollie.
-
-She brought the paper and left the room again. There was another
-silence, except for the soft notes of the music. Herbert turned over the
-pages of _The Financial Times_, and yawned a little, and then let the
-paper drop. His head nodded and then lolled sideways. In a little while
-he was as fast asleep as his mother, and snored, quietly at first, then
-quite loudly.
-
-Clare stopped playing, and looked over the music-rest with a strange,
-tragic smile at her husband and her mother-in-law. She rose from the
-piano-stool, and put her hands to her head, and then at her throat,
-breathing quickly and jerkily, as though she were being stifled.
-
-“A jolly evening!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Oh, God!”
-
-She stared round the room, with rather wild eyes.
-
-“It is stuffy here. It is stifling.”
-
-She moved toward the piano again, with her hands pressed against her
-bosom.
-
-“I feel that something _must_ happen. Something _must_ break.”
-
-She took up a large china vase from the piano, moved slowly toward the
-window, hesitated for a moment, looked round at her sleeping husband,
-and then hurled the vase straight through the window. It made an
-appalling noise of breaking glass.
-
-Herbert Heywood jumped up from his seat as though he had been shot.
-
-“Good God!” he said. “What the devil!----”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was equally startled. She sat up in her chair as though an
-earthquake had shaken the house.
-
-“Good gracious! Whatever in the world-----”
-
-At the same moment Mollie opened the door.
-
-“Good ‘eavins, ma’am!” she cried. “Whatever ‘as ‘appened?”
-
-Clare Heywood answered very quietly:
-
-“I think something must have broken,” she said.
-
-Then she gave a queer, strident laugh.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MRS. Heywood was arranging the drawingroom for an evening At Home,
-dusting the mantelshelf and some of the ornaments with a little hand
-broom. There were refreshments on a side table. Mollie was trying to
-make the fire burn up. Every now and then a gust of smoke blew down the
-chimney. Clare was sitting listlessly in a low chair near the French
-window, with a book on her lap, but she was not reading.
-
-“Drat the fire,” said Mollie, with her head in the fireplace.
-
-“For goodness’ sake, Mollie, stop it smoking like that!” said Mrs.
-Heywood. “It’s no use my dusting the room.”
-
-“The devil is in the chimney, it strikes me,” said Mollie.
-
-Mrs. Heywood expressed her sense of exasperation.
-
-“It’s a funny thing that every time your mistress gives an At Home you
-are always behindhand with your work.”
-
-Mollie expressed her feelings in the firegrate.
-
-“It’s a funny thing people can’t mind their own business.”
-
-“What did you say, Mollie?” asked Mrs. Heywood sharply.
-
-“I said that the fire hasn’t gone right since the window was broke. Them
-Suffragettes have a lot to answer for.”
-
-“I cannot understand how it _did_ get broken,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I
-almost suspect that woman, Miss Vernon.”
-
-Clare looked up and spoke irritably.
-
-“Nonsense, mother!”
-
-“It’s no use saying nonsense, Clare,” said Mrs. Heywood, even more
-irritably. “You know perfectly well that Miss Vernon is a most dangerous
-woman.”
-
-“Well, she didn’t break our window, anyhow,” said Clare, rather
-doggedly.
-
-“How do you know that? It is still a perfect mystery.”
-
-“Don’t be absurd, mother. How did the vase get through the window?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was baffled for an answer.
-
-“Ah, that is most perplexing.”
-
-“Well, leave it at that,” said Clare.
-
-Mollie was still wrestling with the mysteries of light and heat.
-
-“If it doesn’t burn now,” she said, “I won’t lay another finger on
-it--At Home or no At Home.”
-
-She seized the dustpan and broom and, with a hot face, marched out of
-the room.
-
-Clare pressed her forehead with the tips of her fingers.
-
-“I wish to Heaven there were no such things as At Homes,” she said
-wearily. “Oh, how they bore me!”
-
-“You used to like them well enough,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“I have grown out of them. I have grown out of so many things. It is as
-if my life had shrunk in the wash.”
-
-“Nothing seems to please you now,” said the old lady. “Don’t you care
-for your friends any longer?”
-
-“Friends? Those tittle-tattling women, with their empty-headed
-husbands?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was silent for a moment. Then she spoke bitterly.
-
-“Do you think Herbert is empty-headed?”
-
-“Oh, we won’t get personal, mother,” said Clare. “And we won’t quarrel,
-if you don’t mind.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood’s lips tightened.
-
-“I am afraid we shall if you go on like this.”
-
-“Like what?” asked Clare.
-
-“Hush!” said the old lady. “Here comes Herbert.”
-
-Herbert came in quickly, and raised his eyebrows after a glance at his
-wife.
-
-“Good Lord, Clare! Aren’t you dressed yet?”
-
-“There’s plenty of time, isn’t there?” said Clare.
-
-“No, there isn’t,” said Herbert. “You know some of the guests will
-arrive before eight o’clock.”
-
-Clare looked up at the clock.
-
-“It’s only six now.”
-
-“Besides,” said Herbert, “I want you to look your best to-night. Edward
-Hargreaves is coming, with his wife.”
-
-“What has that got to do with it?”
-
-“Everything,” said Herbert. “He is second cousin to one of my directors.
-It is essential that you should make a good impression.”
-
-“You told me once that he was a complete ass,” said Clare.
-
-“So he is.”
-
-“Well, then,” said Clare, quietly but firmly, “I decline to make a good
-impression on him.”
-
-“I must ask you to obey my wishes,” said Herbert.
-
-Clare had rebellion in her eyes.
-
-“I have obeyed you for seven years. It is now the Eighth Year.”
-
-Herbert did not hear his wife’s remark. He was looking round the room
-with an air of extreme annoyance.
-
-“Well, I’m blowed!” he exclaimed.
-
-“What’s the matter, dear?” asked Mrs. Hey-wood anxiously.
-
-“You haven’t even taken the trouble to buy some flowers,” said Herbert.
-
-“I left that to Clare,” said the old lady.
-
-“Haven’t you done so, Clare?”
-
-“No,” said Clare. “I can’t bear flowers in this room. They droop so
-quickly.”
-
-Herbert was quite angry.
-
-“I insist upon having some flowers. The place looks like a barn without
-them. What will our visitors say?”
-
-“Stupid things, as usual,” said Clare quietly.
-
-“I must go out and get some myself, I suppose,” said Herbert, with the
-air of a martyr.
-
-“Can’t you send Mollie, dear?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Mollie is cutting sandwiches. The girl is overwhelmed with work.
-And--Oh, my stars!”
-
-His mother was alarmed by this sudden cry of dismay.
-
-“Now what is the matter, dear?”
-
-“There’s no whisky in the decanter.”
-
-“No whisky?”
-
-“Clare,” said Herbert, appealing to his wife, “there’s not a drop of
-whisky left.”
-
-“Well, _I_ didn’t drink it,” said Clare. “You finished it the other
-night with one of your club friends.”
-
-“So we did. Dash it!”
-
-“Don’t be irritable, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Irritable! Isn’t it enough to make a saint irritable? These things
-always happen on our At Home nights. Nobody seems to have any
-forethought. Every blessed thing seems to go wrong.”
-
-“That is why I wish one could abolish the institution,” said Clare.
-
-“What institution?”
-
-“At Homes.”
-
-“Don’t talk rubbish, Clare,” said Herbert angrily; “you know I have them
-for _your_ sake.”
-
-Clare laughed bitterly, as though she had heard a rather painful joke.
-
-“For my sake! Oh, that is good!”
-
-Herbert was distracted by a new cause of grievance as a tremendous puff
-of smoke came out of the fire-grate.
-
-“What in the name of a thousand devils----”
-
-“It’s that awful fire again!” cried Mrs. Hey-wood. “These flats seem to
-have no chimneys.”
-
-“It’s nothing to do with the flat,” said Herbert. “It’s that fool
-Mollie. The girl doesn’t know how to light a decent fire!”
-
-He rang the bell furiously, keeping his finger on the electric knob.
-
-“The creature has absolutely nothing to do, and what she does she
-spoils.”
-
-Mollie came in with a look of mutiny on her face.
-
-“Look at that fire,” said Herbert fiercely.
-
-“I am looking at it,” said Mollie.
-
-“Why don’t you do your work properly? See to the beastly thing, can’t
-you?”
-
-Mollie folded her arms and spoke firmly.
-
-“If you please, sir, wild horses won’t make me touch it again.”
-
-“It’s not a question of horse-power,” said Herbert. “Go and get an old
-newspaper and hold it in front of the bars.”
-
-“I am just in the middle of the sandwiches,” said Mollie.
-
-“Well, get out of them, then,” said Herbert.
-
-Mollie delivered her usual ultimatum.
-
-“If you please, sir, I beg to give a month’s notice.”
-
-“Bosh!” said Herbert.
-
-“Bosh indeed!” cried Mollie. “We’ll see if it’s bosh! If you want any
-sandwiches for your precious visitors you can cut ‘em yourself.”
-
-With this challenge she went out of the room and slammed the door behind
-her.
-
-Herbert breathed deeply, and after a moment’s struggle in his soul spoke
-mildly.
-
-“Mother, go and pacify the fool, will you?”
-
-“She is very obstinate,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“All women are obstinate.”
-
-Suddenly the man’s self-restraint broke down and he became excited.
-
-“Bribe her, promise her a rise in wages, but for God’s sake see that
-she cuts the sandwiches. We don’t want to be made fools of before our
-guests.”
-
-“Very well, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. She hesitated for a moment at
-the door, and before going out said: “But Mollie can be very violent at
-times.”
-
-For a little while there was silence between the husband and wife. Then
-Herbert spoke rather sternly.
-
-“Clare, are you or are you not going to get dressed?”
-
-“I shall get dressed in good time,” said Clare quietly, “when I think
-fit. Surely you don’t want to dictate to me about _that?_”
-
-“Surely,” said Herbert, “you can see how awkward it will be if any of
-our people arrive and find you unprepared for them?”
-
-Clare gave a long, weary sigh.
-
-“Oh, I _am_ prepared for them. I have been trying to prepare myself all
-day for the ordeal of, them.”
-
-“The ordeal? What the dickens do you mean?”
-
-“I am prepared for Mrs. Atkinson Brown, who, when she takes off her
-hat in the bedroom, will ask me whether I am suited and whether I am
-expecting.”
-
-“For goodness’ sake don’t be coarse, Clare,” said Herbert.
-
-“It’s Mrs. Atkinson Brown who is coarse,” said Clare. “And I am prepared
-for Mr. Atkinson Brown, who will say that it is horrible weather for
-this time of year, and that business has been the very devil since there
-has been a Radical Government, and that these outrageous women who are
-breaking windows ought to be whipped. Oh, I could tell you everything
-that everybody is going to say. I have heard it over and over again.”
-
-“It does not seem to make much effect on you,” said Herbert. “Especially
-that part about breaking windows.”
-
-Clare smiled.
-
-“So you have guessed, have you?”
-
-“I knew at once by the look on your face.”
-
-“I thought you agreed with your mother that some Suffragette must have
-flung a stone from the outside.”
-
-“I hid the truth from mother,” said Herbert. “She would think you were
-mad. What on earth made you do it? _Were_ you mad or what?”
-
-Clare brushed her hair back from her forehead.
-
-“Sometimes I used to think I was going a little mad. But now I know what
-is the matter with me.”
-
-Herbert spoke more tenderly.
-
-“What _is_ the matter, Clare? If it is a question of a doctor----”
-
-“It’s the Eighth Year,” said Clare.
-
-“The Eighth Year?”
-
-“Yes, that’s what is the matter with me.”
-
-“What on earth do you mean?” asked Herbert.
-
-“Why, don’t you know? It was Madge Vernon who told me.”
-
-“Told you what?”
-
-“She seemed to think that everybody knew.”
-
-“Knew what?” asked Herbert, exasperated beyond all patience.
-
-“About the Eighth Year.”
-
-“What about it?”
-
-“It’s well known, she says, that the Eighth Year is the most dangerous
-one in marriage. It is then that the pull comes, when the wife has found
-out her husband.”
-
-“Found out her husband?”
-
-“And found out herself.”
-
-Herbert spoke roughly. He was not in a mood for such mysteries.
-
-“Look here,” he said. “I can’t listen to all this nonsense. Go and dress
-yourself.”
-
-“I want to talk to you, Herbert,” said Clare very earnestly. “I must
-talk to you before it’s too late.”
-
-“It’s too late now,” said Herbert. “Halfpast six. I must fetch that
-whisky and buy a few flowers. I shall have to put on my boots again and
-splash about in the mud in these trousers. Confound it!”
-
-“Before you go you must listen, Herbert,” said Clare, with a sign of
-emotion. “Perhaps you won’t have another chance.”
-
-“Thank Heaven for that.”
-
-“When I broke that window something else broke.”
-
-“One of my best vases,” said Herbert with sarcasm.
-
-“I think something in my own nature broke too. My spirit has broken
-out of this narrow, deadening little life of ours, out of the smug
-snobbishness and stupidity which for so long kept me prisoner, out of
-the belief that the latest sentimental novel, the latest romantic play,
-the latest bit of tittle-tattle from my neighbors might satisfy my heart
-and brain. When I broke that window I let a little fresh air into the
-stifling atmosphere of this flat, where I have been mewed up without
-work, without any kind of honest interest, without any kind of food for
-my brain or soul.”
-
-Herbert stared at his wife, and made an impatient gesture.
-
-“If you want work, why don’t you attend to your domestic duties?”
-
-“I have no domestic duties,” said Clare. “That is the trouble.”
-
-Herbert laughed in an unpleasant way.
-
-“Why, you haven’t even bought any flowers to decorate your home! Isn’t
-that a domestic duty?”
-
-Clare answered him quickly, excitedly.
-
-“It’s just a part of the same old hypocrisy of keeping up appearances.
-You know you don’t care for flowers in themselves, except as they help
-to make a show. You want to impress our guests. You want to keep up the
-old illusion of the woman’s hand in the home. The woman’s touch. Isn’t
-that it?”
-
-“Yes, I do want to keep up that illusion,” said Herbert; “and by God,
-I find it very hard! You say you want an object in life. Isn’t your
-husband an object?”
-
-Clare looked at him with a queer, pitiful smile.
-
-“Yes, he is,” she said slowly.
-
-“Well, what more do you want?”
-
-“Lots more. A woman’s life is not centered for ever in one man.”
-
-“It ought to be,” said Herbert. “If you had any religious
-principles----”
-
-“Oh,” said Clare sharply, “but you object to my religion!”
-
-“Well, of course I mean in moderation.”
-
-“You have starved me, Herbert, and oh, I am so hungry!”
-
-Herbert answered her airily.
-
-“Well, there will be light refreshments later.”
-
-“Yes, that is worthy of you,” cried Clare. “That is your sense of
-humor! You have starved my soul and starved my heart and you offer
-me--sandwiches. I am hungry for life and you offer me--the latest
-novel.”
-
-Herbert paced up and down the room. He was losing control of his temper.
-
-“That is the reward for all my devotion!” he said. “Don’t I drudge in
-the city every day to keep you in comfort?”
-
-“I don’t want comfort!” said Clare.
-
-“Don’t I toil so that you may have pretty frocks?”
-
-“I don’t want pretty frocks.”
-
-“Don’t I scrape and scheme to buy you little luxuries?”
-
-“I don’t want little luxuries,” said Clare.
-
-“Is there anything within my means that you haven’t got?”
-
-Clare looked at him in a peculiar way, and answered quietly--
-
-“I haven’t a child,” she said.
-
-“Oh, Lord,” said Herbert uneasily. “Whose fault is that? Besides, modern
-life in small flats is not cut out for children.”
-
-“And modern life in small flats,” said Clare, “is not cut out for
-wives.”
-
-“It isn’t my fault,” said Herbert. “I am not the architect--either of
-fate or flats.”
-
-“No, it isn’t your fault, Herbert. You can’t help your character. It
-isn’t your fault that when you come home from the city you fall asleep
-after dinner. It isn’t your fault that when you go to the club I sit at
-home with my hands in my lap, thinking and brooding. It isn’t your fault
-that your mother and I get on each other’s nerves. It isn’t your fault
-that you and I have grown out of each other, that we bore each other and
-have nothing to say to each other--except when we quarrel.”
-
-“Well, then,” said Herbert, “whose fault is it?”
-
-“I don’t know,” said Clare. “I suppose it’s a fault of the system, which
-is spoiling thousands of marriages just like ours. It’s the fault which
-is found out--in the Eighth Year.”
-
-“Oh, curse the Eighth Year,” said Herbert violently. “What is that bee
-you have got in your bonnet?”
-
-“It’s a bee which keeps buzzing in my brain. It’s a little bee which
-whispers queer words to me--tempting words. It says you must break away
-from the system or the system will break you. You must find a way of
-escape or die. You must do it quickly, now, to-night, or it will be too
-late. Herbert, a hungry woman will do desperate things to satisfy her
-appetite, and I am hungry for some stronger emotion than I can find
-within these four walls. I am hungry for love, hungry for work, hungry
-for life. If you can’t give it to me, I must find it elsewhere.”
-
-“Clare,” said Herbert, with deliberate self-restraint, “I must again
-remind you that time is getting on and you are not yet dressed. In a
-little while our guests will be here. I hope you don’t mean to hold me
-up to the contempt of my friends. I at least have some sense of duty....
-I am going to fetch the whisky.” As he strode toward the door he started
-back at the noise of breaking china.
-
-“What’s that?” asked Clare.
-
-“God knows,” said Herbert. “I expect mother has broken a window.”
-
-The words were hardly out of his mouth before Mrs. Heywood came in in a
-state of great agitation.
-
-“Herbert, I must really ask you to come into the kitchen.”
-
-“What’s the matter now?” asked Herbert, prepared for the worst.
-
-“Mollie has deliberately broken our best coffee-pot.”
-
-Herbert stared at his wife.
-
-“Didn’t I tell you so!” he said.
-
-“Why has she broken the coffee-pot?” asked Clare.
-
-“She was most insolent,” said Mrs. Heywood, “and said my interference
-got on her nerves.”
-
-“Well, even a servant _has_ nerves,” said Clare.
-
-“But it was the _best_ coffee-pot, Clare. Surely you are not going to
-take it so calmly?”
-
-“Like mistress like maid!” said Herbert. “Oh, my hat! Why on earth did I
-marry?”
-
-“Don’t you think you had better fetch the whisky?” said Clare gently.
-
-Herbert became excited again.
-
-“I have been trying to fetch the whisky for the last half hour. There is
-a conspiracy against it. Confound it, I _will_ fetch the whisky.”
-
-He strode to the door, as though he would get the whisky or die in the
-attempt.
-
-“I think you ought to speak to Mollie first,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-Herbert raised his hands above his head.
-
-“Damn Mollie!” he shouted wildly. Then he strode out of the room. “Damn
-everything!”
-
-“Poor dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I wish he didn’t get so worried.”
-
-“Clare, won’t you come and speak to Mollie?”
-
-“Haven’t you spoken to her?” asked Clare wearily.
-
-“I am always speaking to her.”
-
-“_Poor_ Mollie!” said Clare.
-
-Mrs. Heywood was hurt at the tone of pity. She flushed a little and then
-turned to her daughter-in-law with reproachful eyes.
-
-“I am an old woman, Clare, and the mother of your husband. Because my
-position forces me to live in this flat, I do not think you ought to
-insult me.”
-
-“I’m sorry,” said Clare with sincerity.
-
-“Mollie is right. We all get on each other’s nerves. It can’t be helped,
-I suppose. It’s part of the system.”
-
-“I can’t help being your mother-in-law, Clare.”
-
-“No, it can’t he helped,” said Clare.
-
-Mrs. Heywood came close to her and touched her hand.
-
-“You think I do not understand. You think you are the only one who has
-any grievance.”
-
-“Oh, no!” said Clare. “I am not so egotistical.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood smoothed down her dress with trembling hands.
-
-“You think I haven’t been watching you all these years. I have watched
-you so that I know your thoughts behind those brooding eyes, Clare. I
-know all that you have been thinking and suffering, so that sometimes
-you hate me, so that my very presence here in the room with you makes
-you wish to cry out, to shriek, because I am your mother-in-law, and the
-mother of your husband. The husband always loves his mother best,
-and the wife always knows it. That is the eternal tragedy of the
-mother-in-law. Because she is hated by the wife of her son, and is
-an intruder in her home. I know that because I too suffered from a
-mother-in-law. Do you think I would stay here an hour unless I was
-forced to stay, for a shelter above my old head, for some home in which
-I wait to die? But while I wait I watch... and I know that you have
-reached a dangerous stage in a woman’s life, when she may do any rash
-thing. Clare, I pray every night that you may pass that stage in life
-without doing anything--rash. This time always comes in marriage, it
-comes----”
-
-“In the Eighth Year?” asked Clare eagerly. “Somewhere about then.”
-
-“Ah! I thought so.”
-
-“It came to me, my dear.”
-
-“And did _you_ do anything rash?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood hesitated a moment before replying.
-
-“I gave birth to Herbert,” she said.
-
-“Good Heavens!” said Clare.
-
-“It saved me from breaking----”
-
-“Windows, mother?”
-
-“No, my own and my husband’s heart,” said Mrs. Heywood. “Well, I will
-go and speak to Mollie again. Goodness knows how we shall get coffee
-to-night.”
-
-She went out of the room with her head shaking a little after this scene
-of emotion.
-
-Clare spoke to herself aloud. She had her hands up to her throat.
-
-“I don’t want coffee to-night. I want stronger drink. I want to get
-drunk with liberty of life.”
-
-Suddenly there was a noise at the window and the woman looked up,
-startled, and cried, “Who is there?”
-
-Gerald Bradshaw appeared at the open French window leading on to the
-balcony, and he spoke through the window.
-
-“It is I, Clare? Are you alone?”
-
-Clare had risen from her chair at the sound of his voice, and her face
-became very pale.
-
-“Gerald... How did you come there?”
-
-Gerald Bradshaw laughed in his lighthearted way.
-
-“I stepped over the bar that divides our balconies. It was quite easy.
-It was as easy as it will be to cross the bar that divides you and me,
-Clare.”
-
-Clare spoke in a frightened voice.
-
-“Why do you come here, at this hour?”
-
-“Why do I ever come?” asked Gerald Bradshaw.
-
-“I don’t know.”
-
-“It’s because I want you. I want you badly to-night, Clare. I can’t wait
-for you any longer.”
-
-Clare spoke pleadingly.
-
-“Gerald... go away... it’s so dangerous... I daren’t listen to you.”
-
-“I want you to listen,” said Gerald Bradshaw.
-
-“Go away... I implore you to go away.”
-
-He laughed at her. He seemed very much amused.
-
-“Not before I have said what I want to say.”
-
-“Say it quickly,” said Clare. “Quickly!”
-
-“There’s time enough,” said Bradshaw. “This is what I want to say. You
-are a lonely woman and I am a lonely man, and only an iron bar divides
-us. It’s the iron bar of convention, of insincerity, of superstition. It
-seems so difficult to cross. But you see one step is enough. I want you
-to take that step--to-night.”
-
-Clare answered him in a whisper.
-
-“Go away!”
-
-“I am hungry for you,” said Bradshaw, with a thrill in his voice. “I am
-hungry for your love. And you are hungry for me. I have seen it in your
-eyes. You have the look of a famished woman. Famished for love. Famished
-for comradeship.”
-
-Clare raised her hands despairingly.
-
-“If you have any pity, go away.”
-
-“I have no pity. Because pity is weakness, and I hate weakness.”
-
-“You are brutal,” said Clare.
-
-He laughed at her. He seemed to like those words.
-
-“Yes, I have the brutality of manhood. Man is a brute, and woman likes
-the brute in him because that is his nature, and woman wants the natural
-man. That is why you want me, Clare. You can’t deny it.”
-
-Clare protested feebly.
-
-“I do deny it. I _must_ deny it.”
-
-“It’s a funny thing,” said Gerald Bradshaw. “Between you and me there
-is a queer spell, Clare. I was conscious of it when I first met you.
-Something in you calls to me. Something in me calls to you. It is the
-call of the wild.”
-
-Clare was scared now. These words seemed to make her heart beat to a
-strange tune.
-
-“What do you mean?” she said.
-
-“It is the call of the untamed creature. Both you and I are untamed.
-We both have the spirit of the woods. I am Pan. You are a wood nymph,
-imprisoned in a cage, upholstered by maple, on the hire system.”
-
-“What do you want with me?” asked Clare. It was clear that he was
-tempting her.
-
-“I want to play with you, like Pan played. You and I will hear the pipes
-of Pan to-night--the wild nature music.”
-
-“To-night?”
-
-“To-night. I have waited too long for you, and now I’m impatient. I
-am alone in my flat waiting for you. I ask you to keep me company, not
-to-night only, but until we tire of each other, until perhaps we hate
-each other. Who knows?”
-
-“Oh, God!” said Clare. She moaned out the words in a pitiful way.
-
-“You have only to slip down one flight of stairs and steal up another,
-and you will find me at the door with a welcome. It will need just a
-little care to escape from your prison. You must slip on your hat and
-cloak as though you were going round to church, and then come to me, to
-me, Clare! Only a wall will divide you from this flat, but you will be a
-world away. For you will have escaped from this upholstered cage into
-a little world of liberty. Into a little world of love, Clare. Say you
-will come!”
-
-“Oh, God!” moaned Clare.
-
-“You will come?”
-
-“Are you the Devil that you tempt me?” said Clare.
-
-Gerald gave a triumphant little laugh.
-
-“You will come! Clare, my sweetheart, I know you will come, for your
-spirit is ready for me.”
-
-As he spoke these words there was the sound of a bell ringing through
-the flat, and the noise of it struck terror into Clare Heywood.
-
-“Go away,” she whispered. “For God’s sake go! Some one is ringing.”
-
-“I will cross the bar again,” said Bradshaw. “But I shall be waiting at
-the door. You will not be very long, little one?”
-
-Clare sank down with her face in her hands. And Gerald stole away from
-the window just as Mollie showed in Madge Vernon.
-
-“It’s our At Home night,” said Mollie, as she came in, “and they’ll be
-here presently.”
-
-“All right, Mollie,” said Miss Vernon, smiling. “I shan’t stay more than
-a minute. I know I have come at an awkward time.”
-
-“She _would_ come in, ma’am,” said Mollie, as though she were not strong
-enough to thwart such a determined visitor.
-
-As soon as the girl had gone Madge Vernon came across to Clare, very
-cheerfully and rather excitedly.
-
-“Clare, are you coming?”
-
-“Coming where?” asked Clare, trying to hide her agitation.
-
-“To the demonstration,” said Madge Vernon. “You know I told you all
-about it! It begins at eight. It will be immense fun, and after your
-window-smashing exploit you are one of us. Good Heavens, I think you
-have beaten us all. None of us have ever thought of breaking our own
-windows.”
-
-“It’s my At Home night,” said Clare.
-
-“Oh, bother the At Home. Can’t your husband look after his friends for
-once? I wanted you to join in this adventure. It would be your enrolment
-in the ranks, and it will do you a lot of good, in your present state of
-health.”
-
-“In any case----” said Clare.
-
-“What?”
-
-Clare smiled in a tragic way.
-
-“I have received a previous invitation.”
-
-“Oh, drat the invitation.”
-
-“Of course I should have liked to come,” said Clare, “but----”
-
-Madge Vernon was impatient with her. “But what? I hate that word
-‘but.’”
-
-“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” said Clare, speaking with
-a deeper significance than appeared in the words.
-
-“There is no weakness about you. You have the courage of your
-convictions. Have you had the window mended yet?”
-
-She laughed gaily and then listened with her head a little on one side
-to the sound of a bell ringing in the hall.
-
-“That must be Herbert,” said Clare. “I think you had better go.”
-
-“Yes, I think I had better,” said Madge, laughing again. “If looks could
-kill----”
-
-She went toward the door and opened it, but I stood on the threshold
-looking back.
-
-“Won’t you come? Eight o’clock, you know.”
-
-Clare smiled weakly.
-
-“I am in great demand to-night.”
-
-The two women listened to Herbert’s voice in the hall saying--
-
-“Of course all the shops were shut.”
-
-“Oh, Lord!” said Madge, “I must skedaddle.” She went out of the room
-hurriedly, leaving Clare alone.
-
-And after a moment or two Clare spoke aloud, with her hands clasped upon
-her breast.
-
-“I wonder if the Devil is tempting me tonight?” she said.
-
-Then Herbert entered with two whisky bottles.
-
-“I had to hunt all over the place,” he said.
-
-Then he saw that his wife was still in her afternoon frock, and his face
-flushed with anger.
-
-“What, aren’t you dressed _yet?_... I think you might show some respect
-for my wishes, Clare.”
-
-“I am going to dress now,” said Clare, and she rose and went into the
-bedroom.
-
-“Women are the very devil,” said Herbert, unwrapping the whisky bottles.
-
-While he was busy with this his mother came in, having changed her
-dress.
-
-“Oh, I am glad you managed to get the whisky,” she said.
-
-“Of course nearly every blessed shop was shut,” said Herbert. “They
-always are when I run out of everything. It’s this Radical Government,
-with its beastly Acts.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood hesitated and then came across to her son and touched him
-on the arm.
-
-“I think you had better come into the kitchen a moment, dear, and look
-after Mollie.”
-
-“She hasn’t broken anything else, has she?” said Herbert anxiously.
-
-“No, dear. But she has just cut her finger rather badly. She got in a
-temper with the sandwiches.”
-
-Herbert raised his hands to heaven.
-
-“Why do these things always happen when Clare gives an At Home? I shall
-abolish these evenings altogether. They will drive me mad.”
-
-“Oh, they’re very pleasant when they once begin,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“I’m glad you think so, mother. I am damned if I do. I was only saying
-to Clare to-night----”
-
-He stalked out of the room furiously.
-
-Mrs. Heywood stood for a few moments staring at the carpet. Her lips
-moved and her worn old hands plucked at her skirt.
-
-“Every time there is an At Home at this flat,” she said, “I get another
-white hair.”
-
-She moved toward the door and went out of the room, so that it was left
-empty.
-
-Outside in the street a piano-organ was playing a rag-time tune with a
-rattle of notes, and motor-cars were sounding their horns.
-
-In this little drawing-room in Intellectual Mansions, Battersea Park,
-there was silence, except for those vague sounds from without. There was
-no sign here of Fate’s presence, summoning a woman to her destiny. No
-angel stood with a flaming sword to bar the way to a woman with a wild
-heart. The little ormolu clock ticking on the mantel-shelf did not seem
-to be counting the moments of a tragic drama. It was a very commonplace
-little room, and the flamboyant chintz on the sofa and chairs gave it
-an air of cheerfulness, as though this were one of the happy homes of
-England.
-
-Presently the bedroom door opened slowly, and Clare Heywood stood there
-looking into the drawing-room and listening. She was very pale, and
-was dressed in her outdoor things, as Gerald Bradshaw had asked her
-to dress, in her hat and cloak, so that she might slip out of the flat
-which he had called her prison.
-
-She came further into the room, timidly, like a hare frightened by the
-distant baying of the hounds.
-
-She raised her hands to her bosom, and spoke in a whisper:
-
-“God forgive me!”
-
-Then she crossed the floor, listened for a moment intently at the door,
-and slipped out. A moment or two later one’s ears, if they had been
-listening, would have heard the front door shut.
-
-Clare Heywood had escaped.
-
-A little while later Mrs. Heywood, her mother-in-law, came into the room
-again and went over to the piano to open it and arrange the music.
-
-“I do hope Clare is getting dressed,” she said, speaking to herself.
-
-Then Herbert came in, carrying a tray with decanter and glasses.
-
-“Isn’t Clare ready yet?” he asked.
-
-“No, dear. She won’t be long.”
-
-“I can’t find the corkscrew,” said Herbert, searching round for it, but
-failing to discover its whereabouts.
-
-“Isn’t it in the kitchen, dear?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Not unless Mollie has swallowed it. It’s just the sort of thing she
-would do--out of sheer spite.”
-
-“Didn’t you use it the other day to open a tin of sardines?” asked the
-old lady, cudgelling her brains.
-
-“Did I?” said Herbert. “Oh, Lord, yes! I left it in the bathroom.”
-
-He went out of the room to find it.
-
-Mrs. Heywood crossed over to the fire and swept up the grate.
-
-“Clare is a very long time to-night,” she said.
-
-Then Mollie came in carrying a tray with some plates of sandwiches. One
-of her fingers was tied up with a rag.
-
-“It’s a good job the guests is late to-night,” she remarked.
-
-“Yes, we are all very behind-hand,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-Mollie dumped down the tray and gave vent to a little of her impertinent
-philosophy:
-
-“I’ll never give an At Home when I’m married. Blest if I do. Social
-‘ipocrisy, I call them.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood rebuked her sharply:
-
-“We don’t want your opinion, Mollie, thank you.”
-
-“I suppose I can _have_ a few opinions, although I _am_ in service,”
- said Mollie. “There’s plenty of time for thought even in the kitchen
-of a flat like this. I wonder domestic servants don’t write novels. My
-word, what a revelation it would be! I’ve a good mind to write one of
-them serials in the _Daily Mail_.”
-
-“If I have any more of your impudence, Mollie----”
-
-“It’s not impudence,” said Mollie. “It’s aspirations.”
-
-The girl was silent when her master came into the room with the
-corkscrew.
-
-“It wasn’t in the bathroom,” he explained. “I remember now, I used it
-for cleaning out my pipe.”
-
-“I could have told you that a long time ago, sir,” said Mollie.
-
-“Well, why the dickens didn’t you?” asked Herbert.
-
-“You never asked me, sir.”
-
-Mollie retired with the air of having scored a point.
-
-“Well, as long as you’ve found it, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Unfortunately, I broke the point. However, I daresay I can make it do.”
-
-He pulled one of the corks out of the whisky bottle and filled the
-decanter.
-
-“Hasn’t Clare finished dressing yet?” he said presently. “What on earth
-is she doing?”
-
-“I expect she wants her blouse done up at the back,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-Herbert jerked up his head.
-
-“And then she complains because I can’t tie my own tie I Just like
-women.”
-
-He drew out another cork rather violently and said:
-
-“Well, go and see after her, mother.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood went toward the bedroom door and called out in her silvery
-voice:
-
-“Are you ready, dear?”
-
-She listened for a moment, and called out again:
-
-“Clare!”
-
-Herbert poured some more whisky into the decanter.
-
-“I expect she’s reading one of those beastly pamphlets,” he said.
-
-Mrs. Heywood tapped at the bedroom door.
-
-“Clare!”
-
-“Go in, mother,” said Herbert irritably.
-
-“It’s very strange!” said Mrs. Heywood in an anxious voice.
-
-She went into the bedroom, and Herbert, who had been watching her,
-spilled some of the whisky, so that he muttered to himself:
-
-“What with women and what with whisky----”
-
-He did not finish his sentence, but stared in the direction of the
-bedroom as though suspecting something was wrong.
-
-Mrs. Heywood came trembling out. She had a scared look.
-
-“Oh, Herbert!”
-
-Herbert was alarmed by the look on her face.
-
-“Is Clare ill--or something?”
-
-“She isn’t there,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-The old lady was rather breathless.
-
-“Not there!” said Herbert in a dazed way.
-
-“She went in to dress a few minutes ago,” said his mother.
-
-Herbert stared at her. He was really very much afraid, but he spoke
-irritably:
-
-“Well, she can’t have gone up the chimney, can she? At least, I suppose
-not, though you never can tell nowadays.”
-
-He strode toward the bedroom door and called out:
-
-“Clare!”
-
-Then he went inside.
-
-Mrs. Heywood stood watching the open door. She raised her hands up and
-then let them fall, and spoke in a hoarse kind of whisper:
-
-“I think it has happened at last.”
-
-Herbert came out of the bedroom again. He looked pale, and had gloomy
-eyes.
-
-“It’s devilish queer!” he said.
-
-Mother and son stood looking at each other, as though in the presence of
-tragedy.
-
-“She must have gone out,” said Mrs. Hey-wood.
-
-“Gone out! What makes you think so?”
-
-“She has taken her hat and cloak.”
-
-“How do you know?” asked Herbert.
-
-“I looked in the wardrobe.”
-
-“Good Heavens! Where’s she gone to?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood’s thin old hands clutched at the white lace upon her bosom.
-
-“Herbert, I--I am afraid.”
-
-The man went deadly white. He stammered as he spoke:
-
-“You don’t mean that she is going to do something--foolish?”
-
-“Something rash,” said Mrs. Hey wood mournfully.
-
-Herbert had a sudden idea. It took away from his fear a little and made
-him angry.
-
-“Perhaps she has gone round to church. If so, I will give her a piece of
-my mind when she comes back. It’s outrageous! It’s shameful.”
-
-There was the sound of a bell ringing through the hall, and the mother
-and son listened intently.
-
-“Perhaps she _has_ come back,” said Herbert. “Perhaps she went to fetch
-some flowers.” This idea seemed to soften him. His voice broke a little
-when he said: “Poor girl! I didn’t mean to make such a fuss about them.”
- “It isn’t Clare,” said Mrs. Heywood, shaking her head. “It’s a visitor.
-I hear Mr. Atkinson Brown’s voice.”
-
-Mr. Atkinson Brown’s voice could be heard quite plainly in the hall:
-
-“Well, Mollie, is your mistress quite well?” Herbert grasped his
-mother’s arm and whispered to her excitedly:
-
-“Mother, we must hide it from them.”
-
-“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “If the Atkinson Browns suspect anything it
-will be all over the neighborhood.”
-
-Herbert had a look of anguish in his eyes. “Good Heavens, yes. My
-reputation will be ruined.”
-
-Once again they heard Mr. Atkinson Brown’s voice in the hall.
-
-“I see we are the first to arrive,” he said in a loud, cheery tone.
-
-“Mother,” whispered Herbert, “we must keep up appearances, at all
-costs.”
-
-“I’ll try to, darling,” said Mrs. Heywood, clasping his arm for a
-moment.
-
-Herbert made a desperate effort to be hopeful.
-
-“Clare is sure to be back in a few minutes. We’re frightening ourselves
-for nothing.... I shall have something to say to her to-night when the
-guests are gone.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked at her son as
-though she knew that Clare would never come back.
-
-“My poor boy!” she said.
-
-“Play the game, mother,” said Herbert. “For Heaven’s sake play the
-game.”
-
-He had no sooner whispered these words than Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson Brown
-entered the room, having taken off their outdoor things. Mr. Brown was
-a tall, stout, heavily built man with a bald head and a great expanse
-of white waistcoat. His wife was a little bird-like woman in pink silk.
-They were both elaborately cheerful.
-
-“Hulloh, Heywood, my boy!” said the elderly man.
-
-“So delighted to come!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown to Herbert’s mother.
-
-Herbert grasped the man’s hand and wrung it warmly.
-
-“Good of you to come. Devilish good.”
-
-“Glad to come,” said Mr. Atkinson Brown. “Glad to come, my lad. How’s
-the wife?”
-
-“Yes,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown, glancing round the room. “Where’s dear
-Clare?... Well, I hope.”
-
-Herbert tried to hide his extreme nervousness.
-
-“Oh, tremendously fit, thanks. She’ll be here in a minute or two.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood appeared less nervous than her son. Yet her voice trembled
-a little when she said:
-
-“Do sit down, Mrs. Atkinson Brown.”
-
-She pulled a chair up, but the lady protested laughingly:
-
-“Oh, not so near the fire. I can’t afford to neglect my complexion at my
-time of life!”
-
-Her husband was rubbing his hands in front of the fire. He had no
-complexion to spoil.
-
-“Horrible weather for this time o’ year,” he said.
-
-“Damnable,” said Herbert, agreeing with him almost too cordially.
-
-“Is dear Clare suited at present?” asked the lady.
-
-“Well,” said Mrs. Heywood, “we still have Mollie, but she is a great
-trouble--a very great trouble.”
-
-“Oh, the eternal servant problem!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown. “I thought
-I had a perfect jewel, but I found her inebriated in the kitchen only
-yesterday.”
-
-Herbert was racking his brains for conversational subjects. He fell back
-on an old one. “Business going strong?”
-
-“Business!” said Mr. Atkinson Brown. “My dear boy, business has been the
-very devil since this Radical Government has been in power.”
-
-“I am sure there has been a great deal of trouble in the world lately,”
- said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“I’m sure I can’t bear to read even the dear _Daily Mail_,” said Mrs.
-Atkinson Brown.
-
-“What with murders and revolutions and eloping vicars and
-suffragettes----”
-
-“Those outrageous women ought to be whipped,” said her husband. “Spoiled
-my game of golf last Saturday. Found ‘Votes for Women’ on the first
-green. Made me positively ill.”
-
-“I am glad dear Clare is so sensible,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
-
-“Yes. Oh, quite so,” said Mrs. Heywood, flushing a little.
-
-“Oh, rather!” said Herbert.
-
-“We domestic women are in the minority now,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
-
-“The spirit of revolt is abroad, Herbert,” said her husband. “Back to
-the Home is the only watchword which will save the country from these
-shameless hussies. Flog ‘em back, I would. Thank God _our_ wives have
-more sense.”
-
-“Yes, there’s something in that,” said Herbert.
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown was gazing round the room curiously. She seemed to
-suspect something.
-
-“You are sure dear Clare is quite well?” she asked. “No little trouble?”
-
-“She is having a slight trouble with her back hair,” said Herbert.
-“Won’t lie down, you know.”
-
-He laughed loudly, as though he had made a good joke.
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown half rose from her chair.
-
-“Oh, let me go to the rescue of the dear thing!”
-
-Herbert was terror-stricken.
-
-“No--no! It was only my joke,” he said eagerly. “She will be here in a
-minute. Do sit down.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood remembered her promise to “play the game.”
-
-“Won’t you sing something, dear?” she said to her visitor.
-
-“Oh, not so early in the evening,” said the lady. “Besides, I have a
-most awful cold.”
-
-“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Herbert. “I am beastly sorry.”
-
-As he spoke the bell rang again, and Herbert went over to his mother and
-whispered to her:
-
-“Do you think that is Clare? My God, this is awful!”
-
-“Clare was not looking very well the other day when I saw her,”
- said Mrs. Atkinson Brown. “I thought perhaps she was sickening for
-something.”
-
-“Oh, I assure you she was never better in her life,” said Herbert.
-
-“But you men are so unobservant. I am dying to see dear Clare, to ask
-her how she feels. Are you sure I can’t be of any use to her?”
-
-She rose again from her chair, and Herbert gave a beseeching look to his
-mother.
-
-“Oh, quite sure, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. “_Do_ sit down.”
-
-“Besides, you have such a frightful cold,” said Herbert, with extreme
-anxiety. “_Do_ keep closer to the fire.”
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown laughed a little curiously:
-
-“You seem very anxious to keep me from dear Clare!”
-
-This persistence annoyed her husband and he rebuked her sternly.
-
-“Sit still, Beatrice, can’t you? Don’t you see that we have arrived a
-little early and that we have taken Clare unawares? Let the poor girl go
-on with her dressing.”
-
-“Don’t bully me in other people’s flats, Charles,” said Mrs. Atkinson
-Brown. “I have enough of it at home.”
-
-Her husband was not to be quelled.
-
-“Herbert and I can hardly hear ourselves speak,” he growled, “you keep
-up such a clatter.”
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown flared up.
-
-“I come out to get the chance of speaking a little. For eight years now
-I have been listening to your interminable monologues, and can’t get a
-word in edgeways.”
-
-“Stuff and nonsense!” said her husband.
-
-“Have you been married eight years already, my dear?” asked Mrs. Heywood
-in a tone of amiable surprise.
-
-“Well, we are in our Eighth Year,” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
-
-Mrs. Heywood seemed startled.
-
-“Oh, I see,” she said thoughtfully.
-
-“I assure you it seems longer,” said the lady. “I suppose it’s because
-Charles makes me so very tired sometimes.”
-
-Two other visitors now arrived. They were Mr. Hargreaves and his
-wife: the former a young man in immaculate evening clothes, with
-lofty manners; the latter a tall, thin, elegant, bored-looking woman,
-supercilious and snobbish.
-
-Herbert went forward hurriedly to his new guests.
-
-“How splendid of you to come! How are you, sir?”
-
-“Oh, pretty troll-loll, thanks,” said Mr. Hargreaves.
-
-Herbert shook hands with Mrs. Hargreaves.
-
-“How do you do?”
-
-“We’re rather late,” said the lady, “but this is in an out-of-the-way
-neighborhood, is it not?”
-
-“Oh, do you think so?” said Herbert. “I always considered Battersea Park
-very central.”
-
-Mrs. Hargreaves raised her eyebrows.
-
-“It’s having to get across the river that makes the journey so very
-tedious. I should die if I had to live across the river.”
-
-“There’s something in what you say,” said Herbert, anxious to agree with
-everybody. “I must apologize for dragging you all this way. Of course,
-you people in Mayfair----Won’t you sit down?”
-
-Mr. Hargreaves became a victim of mistaken identity, shaking hands with
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
-
-“Mrs. Heywood, I presume. I must introduce myself.”
-
-Mrs. Hargreaves also greeted the other lady, under the same impression.
-
-“Oh, how do you do? So delighted to make your acquaintance.”
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown was much amused, and laughed gaily.
-
-“But I am _not_ Mrs. Heywood. I cannot boast of such a handsome
-husband!”
-
-“Oh, can’t you, by Jove!” said Mr. Atkinson Brown, rather nettled by his
-wife’s candor.
-
-“Oh, I beg pardon,” said Mr. Hargreaves. “Where _is_ Mrs. Heywood?”
-
-“Yes, where is Mrs. Heywood?” said his wife.
-
-Herbert looked wildly at his mother.
-
-“Where is she, mother? Do tell her to hurry up.
-
-“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood meekly. She moved uncertainly toward the
-bedroom door, and then hesitated: “Perhaps she will not be very long
-now.”
-
-“The fact is,” said Herbert desperately, “she is not very well.”
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown was astounded.
-
-“But you said she was perfectly well!”
-
-“Did I?” said Herbert. “Oh, well, er--one has to say these things, you
-know. Polite fictions, eh?”
-
-He laughed nervously.
-
-“The fact is, she has a little headache. Hasn’t she, mother?”
-
-“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. “You know best.”
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown rose from her chair again.
-
-“Oh, I will go and see how the poor dear feels. So bad of you to hide it
-from us.”
-
-“Oh, please sit down,” said Herbert in a voice of anguish. “I assure you
-it is nothing very much. She will be in directly. Make yourself at home,
-Mrs. Hargreaves. This chair? Mother, show Mrs. Atkinson Brown Clare’s
-latest photograph.”
-
-“Oh, yes!” said Mrs. Heywood. “It is an excellent likeness.”
-
-“But I want to see Clare herself!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown plaintively.
-
-“Sit down, Beatrice!” said her husband.
-
-“Bully!” said Mrs. Atkinson Brown, sitting down with a flop.
-
-Herbert addressed himself to Mr. Hargreaves.
-
-“Draw up your chair, sir. You will have a cigar, I am sure.”
-
-He offered him one from a newly opened box. Mr. Hargreaves took one,
-smelled it, and then put it back.
-
-“No, thanks,” he said. “I will have one of my own, if I may. Sure the
-ladies don’t mind?”
-
-“Oh, they like it,” said Herbert.
-
-“We have to pretend to,” said Mrs. Hargreaves.
-
-“Well, if you don’t, you ought to,” said her husband. “It’s a man’s
-privilege.”
-
-Mrs. Hargreaves smiled icily.
-
-“One of his many privileges.”
-
-“Will you have a cigarette, Mrs. Hargreaves?” said Herbert.
-
-But Mr. Hargreaves interposed:
-
-“Oh, I don’t allow my wife to smoke. It’s a beastly habit.”
-
-Mr. Atkinson Brown, who had accepted one of Herbert’s cigars, but after
-some inquiry had also decided to smoke one of his own, applauded this
-sentiment with enthusiasm.
-
-“Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Disgusting habit for women.”
-
-“Of course I agree with you,” said Herbert. “Clare never smokes. But I
-don’t lay down the law for other people’s wives.”
-
-Mr. Hargreaves laughed.
-
-“A very sound notion, Heywood. It takes all one’s time to manage one’s
-own, eh?”
-
-“And then it is not always effective,” said his wife. “Even the worm
-will turn.”
-
-Mr. Hargreaves answered his wife with a heavy retort:
-
-“If it does I knock it on the head with a spade.”
-
-Mr. Atkinson Brown laughed loudly again. He seemed to like this man
-Hargreaves.
-
-“Good epigram! By Jove, I must remember that!”
-
-Herbert was on tenter-hooks when the conversation languished a little.
-
-“Won’t you sing a song, Mrs. Atkinson Brown? I am sure my friend, Mr.
-Hargreaves, will appreciate your voice.”
-
-“Oh, rather!” said Hargreaves. “Though I don’t pretend to understand a
-note of music.” Mrs. Atkinson Brown shook her head:
-
-“I couldn’t think of singing before our hostess appears.”
-
-The lady’s husband seemed at last to have caught the spirit of her
-suspicion. He spoke in a hoarse whisper to his wife:
-
-“Where the devil _is_ the woman?”
-
-Herbert Heywood realized that he was on the edge of a precipice. Not
-much longer could he hold on to this intolerable situation. He tried to
-speak cheerfully, but there was anguish in his voice when he said:
-
-“Well, let’s have a game of nap.”
-
-“Oh, Lord, no,” said Hargreaves. “I only play nap on the way to a race.
-You don’t sport a billiard table, do you?”
-
-Herbert Heywood was embarrassed.
-
-“Er--a billiard table?” He looked round the room as though he might
-discover a billiard table. “I’m afraid not.”
-
-“Don’t be absurd, Edward,” said Mrs. Hargreaves. “People don’t play
-billiards on the wrong side of the river.”
-
-Conversation languished again, and Herbert was becoming desperate. He
-seized upon the sandwiches and handed them round.
-
-“Won’t anybody have a sandwich to pass the time away? Mrs. Hargreaves?”
-
-Mrs. Hargreaves laughed in her supercilious way.
-
-“It’s rather early, isn’t it?”
-
-“Good Lord, no!” said Herbert. “I am sure you must be hungry. Let me beg
-of you--Mother, haven’t you got any cake anywhere?”
-
-“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood. She, too, was suffering mental tortures.
-
-“Atkinson Brown. You will have a sandwich,” said Herbert.
-
-He bent over to his visitor and spoke in a gloomy voice:
-
-“Take one, for God’s sake.”
-
-Atkinson Brown was startled.
-
-“Yes! Yes! By all means,” he said hastily. Herbert handed the sandwiches
-about rather wildly. “Mother, you will have one, won’t you? Mrs.
-Atkinson Brown?... And one for me, eh?”
-
-Mrs. Hargreaves eyed her host curiously.
-
-“I hope your wife is not seriously unwell, Mr. Heywood.”
-
-Herbert was losing his nerve.
-
-“Can’t we talk of something else?” he said despairingly. “What is your
-handicap at golf?”
-
-“My husband objects to my playing golf,” said the lady.
-
-“It takes women out of the home so much,” said Hargreaves. “Play with
-the babies is my motto for women.”
-
-Mrs. Atkinson Brown shook her finger at him, and laughed in a shrill
-voice:
-
-“But supposing they haven’t got any babies?”
-
-“They ought to have ‘em,” said Hargreaves.
-
-It was Atkinson Brown who interrupted this interesting discussion, which
-promised to bring up the great problem of eugenics, so favored now as a
-drawing-room topic. He had been turning his sandwich this way and that,
-and he leaned forward to his host:
-
-“Excuse me, Herbert, old man. There’s something the matter with this
-sandwich.”
-
-“Something the matter with it?” asked Herbert anxiously.
-
-“It’s covered with red spots,” said Atkinson Brown.
-
-“Spots--what kind of spots?”
-
-“Looks like blood,” said Atkinson Brown, giving an uneasy guffaw.
-“Suppose there hasn’t been a murder in this flat?”
-
-All the guests leaned forward and gazed at the sandwich.
-
-Herbert spoke in a tragic whisper to his mother:
-
-“Mollie’s finger!”
-
-Then he explained the matter airily to the general company.
-
-“Oh, it’s a special kind of sandwich with the gravy outside. A new fad,
-you know.”
-
-“Oh, I see,” said Atkinson Brown, much relieved. “Hadn’t heard of it.
-Still, I think I’ll have an ordinary one, if you don’t mind.”
-
-Herbert was muttering little prayers remembered from his childhood.
-
-“Mrs. Hargreaves,” he said cajolingly, “I am sure you play. Won’t you
-give us a little tune?”
-
-“Well, if it won’t disturb your wife,” said the lady.
-
-“Oh, I am sure it won’t. She’ll love to hear you.”
-
-He felt immensely grateful to this good-natured woman.
-
-“Edward, get my music-roll,” said Mrs. Hargreaves.
-
-But Herbert had a horrible disappointment when Hargreaves said:
-
-“By Jove! I believe I left it in the taxi. Yes, I am sure I did!”
-
-Herbert put his hand up to his aching head and whispered his anguish:
-
-“Oh, my God! Now how shall I mark time?”
-
-“But I reminded you about it!” said Mrs. Hargreaves.
-
-“Yes, I know. But you are always reminding me about something.”
-
-“Well, play something by heart,” said Herbert in a pleading way. “Any
-old thing. The five-finger exercises.”
-
-“I am very out of practice,” said Mrs. Hargreaves. “But still I will
-try.”
-
-Herbert breathed a prayer of thankfulness, and hurried to conduct the
-lady to the music-stool.
-
-As he did so there was a noise outside the window. Newspaper men were
-shouting their sing-song: “Raid on the ‘Ouse. Suffragette Outrage. Raid
-on the ‘Ouse of Commins.”
-
-“What are the devils saying?” asked Hargreaves, trying to catch the
-words.
-
-“Something about the Suffragettes,” growled Atkinson Brown.
-
-“I’m afraid it will give poor Clare a worse headache,” said Mrs.
-Atkinson Brown.
-
-Mrs. Heywood tried to be reassuring:
-
-“Oh, I don’t think so.”
-
-At that moment there was a loud ring at the bell. The sound was so
-prolonged that it startled the company.
-
-Herbert listened intently and then whispered to his mother:
-
-“That must be Clare!”
-
-“Oh, if it is only Clare!” said Mrs. Heywood. When Mrs. Hargreaves had
-struck a few soft chords on the piano there was the sound of voices
-speaking loudly in the hall. Everybody listened, surprised at the
-interruption. Mollie’s voice could be heard quite clearly.
-
-“I told you it was our At Home night, Miss Vernon.”
-
-“I can’t help that.”
-
-The drawing-room door opened, _sans ceremonie_, and Madge Vernon came
-in. Her face was flushed, and she had sparkling eyes. She stood in the
-doorway looking at the company with a smile, as though immensely amused
-by some joke of her own.
-
-“I’m sorry to interrupt you good people,” she said very cheerfully, “but
-I have come on urgent business, which brooks no delay, as they say in
-melodrama.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood gazed at her with frightened eyes.
-
-“My dear!... What has happened?”
-
-“What’s the matter?” said Herbert, turning very pale.
-
-“Oh, it’s nothing to be alarmed at,” said Madge Vernon. “It’s about your
-wife.”
-
-“My wife?”
-
-“About Clare?” exclaimed Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
-
-Mrs. Hargreaves craned her head forward, like a bird reaching for its
-seed.
-
-“I wonder--” she said.
-
-Madge Vernon grinned at them all.
-
-“It’ll be in the papers to-morrow, so you are all bound to know.
-Besides, why keep it a secret? It’s a thing to be proud of!”
-
-“Proud of what?” asked Herbert in a frenzied tone of voice.
-
-Madge Vernon enjoyed the drama of her announcement.
-
-“Clare has been arrested in a demonstration outside the House to-night.”
-
-“Arrested!”
-
-The awful word was spoken almost simultaneously by all the company in
-that drawingroom of Intellectual Mansions, S. W.
-
-“She’s quite safe,” said Madge Vernon calmly. “I’ve come to ask you to
-bail her out.”
-
-Herbert’s guests rose and looked at him in profound astonishment and
-indignation.
-
-“But you told us--” cried Mrs. Atkinson Brown.
-
-Herbert Heywood gave a queer groan of anger and horror.
-
-“Bail her out!... Oh, my God!”
-
-He sank down into his chair and held his head in his hands.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-Herbert Heywood was in the depths of an arm-chair reading the paper.
-Mrs. Heywood was on the other side of the fireplace with a book on her
-lap. But she was dozing over it, and her head nodded on to her chest.
-Herbert turned over the leaves of the paper and then studied the
-advertisements. He had a look of extreme boredom. Every now and then he
-yawned quietly and lengthily. At last he let the paper fall on to the
-floor, and uttered his thoughts aloud, so that his mother was awakened.
-
-“Did you say anything, Herbert?” said the old lady.
-
-“Nothing, mother, except that I am bored stiff.”
-
-He went over to the piano and played “God Save the King” with one
-finger, in a doleful way.
-
-Mrs. Heywood glanced over her spectacles at him.
-
-“Would you like a game of cribbage, dear?”
-
-“No, thanks, mother,” said Herbert hastily. “Not in the afternoon.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood listened to his fumbling notes for a moment and then spoke
-again.
-
-“Won’t you go out for a walk? It would do you good, Herbert.”
-
-“Think so?” said Herbert bitterly; without accepting the suggestion,
-he played “Three Blind Mice,” also with one finger. It sounded more
-melancholy than “God Save the King.”
-
-“I don’t like to see you moping indoors on a bright day like this,” said
-Mrs. Heywood. “Take a brisk walk round the Park. It would cheer you up.”
-
-Herbert resented the idea fiercely.
-
-“A long walk in Battersea Park would make a pessimist of a laughing
-hyena.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood was silent for some time, but then she made a last effort.
-
-“Well, go and see a friend, dear. The Atkinson Browns, for instance.”
-
-“They do nothing but nag at each other,” said Herbert. “And Atkinson
-Brown hasn’t as much brains as a Teddy Bear. Besides, he’s become
-friendly with that fellow Hargreaves, and I’m not going to take the risk
-of meeting a man who turned me out of my job.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood became agitated.
-
-“Are you sure of that, Herbert? I can’t think he could have been so
-malicious, after coming here and eating your salt, as it were. What was
-his reason?”
-
-“He made no disguise of it,” said Herbert bitterly. “I saw his letter
-to my chief. Said that it was quite impossible to employ a man who was
-mixed up with the militant Suffragettes. Damned liar!”
-
-“Good Heavens!” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Of course it was all due to that ghastly evening when Clare got
-arrested. She knows that well enough.”
-
-“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood, “she has tried to make amends. The
-shock of your losing your place has made her much more gentle and
-loving. It has brought back all her loyalty to you, Herbert.”
-
-“Loyalty!” said Herbert. “Where is she now, I should like to know?”
-
-“She is gone to some committee meeting.”
-
-
-“She’s always got a committee meeting,” said Herbert angrily, kicking
-the hassock.
-
-“She joins a new committee for some kind of social reform nonsense every
-blessed day.”
-
-“Well, it keeps her busy, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood gently. “Besides,
-it is not all committee work. Since she has been visiting the poor and
-helping in the slums she has been ever so much better in health and
-spirits.”
-
-“Yes, but where the devil do I come in?” asked Herbert.
-
-“Don’t you think you might go out, dear? Just for a little while?”
-
-“I don’t _want_ to go out, mother,” said Herbert with suppressed heat.
-
-“Very well, dear.”
-
-Herbert stood in front of the fireplace and rattled the keys in his
-pocket moodily.
-
-“What’s the good of toiling to keep a home together if one’s wife
-abandons her husband’s society on every possible pretext? A home! This
-place is just a receiving office for begging letters and notices for
-committees and subcommittees.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood sighed.
-
-“It might have been worse, Herbert.”
-
-“As far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t be worse. I’m the most miserable
-wretch in London. Without a job and without a wife.”
-
-“You’ll get a place all right, dear. You have the promise of one
-already. And you know Clare’s health was in a very queer state before
-Miss Vernon made her take an interest in helping other people. I was
-seriously alarmed about her.”
-
-“What about me?” asked Herbert. “No one troubles to get alarmed about
-me.”
-
-“Are you unwell, dear?” said Mrs. Hey-wood anxiously.
-
-“Of course I’m unwell.”
-
-“Darling!” said Mrs. Heywood, still more anxiously.
-
-“Oh, there’s nothing the matter with me from a physical point of view.
-But mentally and morally I’m a demnition wreck.”
-
-“Aren’t you taking your iron pills regularly?” said his mother.
-
-“Pills! As if pills could cure melancholia!” Mrs. Heywood was aghast at
-that dreadful word.
-
-“Good Heavens, dear!”
-
-“I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” said Herbert.
-
-“Oh, Herbert,” cried his mother, “I hope not!”
-
-“I’m working up to a horrible crisis,” said Herbert.
-
-“What are your symptoms? How do you feel?” asked his mother.
-
-“I feel like smashing things,” said Herbert savagely.
-
-He sat down at the piano again and played “We Won’t Go Home Till
-Morning,” but missed his note, and banged on to the wrong one in a
-temper.
-
-“There goes a note, anyhow. Thank goodness for that!”
-
-At that moment Mollie came in holding a silver tray with a pile of
-letters.
-
-“The post, sir.”
-
-“Well, something to break the infernal monotony,” said Herbert with a
-sigh of relief.
-
-He took up the letters and examined them.
-
-“Life is a bit flat, sir,” said Mollie, “since we gave up having At
-Homes.”
-
-“Hold your tongue,” said Herbert.
-
-Mollie tossed her head and muttered an impertinent sentence as she left
-the room.
-
-“Can’t even open my mouth without somebody jumping down my throat. I
-will break that girl’s neck one of these days,” said Herbert.
-
-He went through the letters and read out the names on them.
-
-“Mrs. Herbert Heywood, _Mrs._ Herbert Heywood, Mrs. Herbert Heywood,
-Mrs. Herbert--Why, every jack one is for Mrs. Herbert Heywood! Nobody
-writes to me, of course. No one cares a damn about _me_.”
-
-“Your mother cares, Herbert,” said the old lady.
-
-“I shall take to drink--or the devil,” said Herbert, and he added
-thoughtfully, “I wonder which is the most fun?”
-
-“Herbert, dear!” cried his mother, “don’t say such awful things.”
-
-“The worst of it is,” said Herbert bitterly, “they’re both so beastly
-expensive.”
-
-There was the noise of a latchkey in the hall, and Mrs. Heywood gave a
-little cry.
-
-“There’s Clare!”
-
-“Think so?” said Herbert, listening.
-
-From the hall came the sound of Clare’s voice singing a merry tune.
-
-“She’s in a cheerful mood, anyhow,” said Mrs. Heywood, smiling.
-
-Herbert answered her gloomily.
-
-“Horribly cheerful.”
-
-The mother and son looked toward the door as Clare came in. There was a
-noticeable change in her appearance since the evening At Home. There was
-more color in her cheeks and the wistfulness had gone out of her eyes.
-She was brisk, keen and bright.
-
-“Well, mother,” she said, “been having a nap?”
-
-“Oh, no, dear,” said the old lady, who never admitted that she made a
-habit of naps.
-
-“Hulloh, Herbert,” said Clare. “Have you got that new post yet?”
-
-“No,” said Herbert. “And I don’t expect I shall get it.”
-
-“Oh, yes, you will, dear old boy. Don’t you worry! Have you been home
-long?”
-
-“Seems like a lifetime.”
-
-Clare laughed.
-
-“Not so long as that, surely?”
-
-She came forward to him and put her arm about his neck, and offered him
-her cheek. He looked at it doubtfully for a moment and then kissed her
-in a “distant” manner.
-
-“I’m frightfully busy, old boy,” said Clare. “I just have a few minutes
-and then I shall have to dash off again.”
-
-“Dash off where?” asked Herbert, with signs of extreme irritation. “Dash
-it all, surely you aren’t going out again?”
-
-“Only round the corner,” said Clare quietly. “I have got to look into
-the case of a poor creature who is making match-boxes. Goodness knows
-how many for a farthing! And yet she’s so cheerful and plucky that it
-does one good to see her. Oh, it kills one’s own selfishness, Herbert.”
-
-“Well, why worry about her, then, if she’s so pleased with herself?”
-
-“She’s plucky,” said Clare, “but she’s starving. It’s a bad case of
-sweated labor.”
-
-“Sweated humbug,” said Herbert. “What am I going to do all the evening,
-I should like to know? Sit here alone?”
-
-“I don’t suppose I shall be long,” said Clare. “Besides, there’s
-mother.”
-
-“Yes, there’s mother,” said Herbert. “But when a man’s married he wants
-his wife.”
-
-Clare was now busy looking over her letters.
-
-“Can’t you go to the club?” she asked.
-
-“I’m dead sick of the club. That boiled-shirt Bohemianism is the biggest
-rot in the world.”
-
-“Take mother to the theatre,” said Clare cheerfully.
-
-“The theatre bores me stiff. These modern plays set one’s nerves on
-edge.”
-
-“Well, haven’t you got a decent novel or anything?” said Clare, reading
-one of her letters.
-
-“A decent novel! There’s no such thing nowadays, and they give me the
-hump.”
-
-Clare was reading another letter with absorbed interest, but she
-listened with half an ear, as it were, to her husband.
-
-“Play mother a game of cribbage, then,” she said.
-
-“Look here, Clare,” said Herbert furiously, “I shall begin to throw
-things about in a minute.”
-
-“Don’t get hysterical, Herbert,” said Clare calmly. “Especially as I
-have got some good news for you.”
-
-As she spoke these words she looked across a Demonstration to him with a
-curious smile and added: “A big surprise, Herbert!”
-
-“A surprise?” said Herbert with sarcasm. “Have you discovered another
-widow in distress?”
-
-“Well, I have,” said Clare, “but it’s not that.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood glanced from her son to her daughter-in-law, and seemed to
-imagine that she might be disturbing an intimate conversation.
-
-“I will be back in a minute. I won’t disturb you two dears,” she said,
-as she left the room quietly.
-
-“You won’t disturb us, mother,” said Clare.
-
-But the old lady smiled and said, “I won’t be long.”
-
-“Are you going to get arrested again?” asked Herbert. “Do you want me to
-bail you out? Because by the Lord, I won’t!”
-
-“Oh, that was quite an accident,” said Clare, laughing. “Besides, I gave
-you my word to abstain from the militant movement, and you can’t say I
-have broken the pledge.”
-
-“You have broken a good many other things.”
-
-“What kind of things?” asked Clare. “You aren’t alluding to that window
-again, are you?”
-
-“You have broken my illusions on married life,” said Herbert, with
-tragic emphasis.
-
-“Ah,” said Clare, “that is ‘the Great Illusion,’ by the Angel in the
-House.”
-
-“You have broken my ideals of womanhood.”
-
-“They were false ideals, Herbert,” said Clare very quietly. “It was only
-a plaster ideal which broke. The real woman is of flesh and blood. The
-real woman is so much better than the sham. Don’t you think so?”
-
-“It depends on what you call sham,” said Herbert.
-
-“I was a sham until that plaster image of me broke. I indulged in sham
-sentiment, sham emotion, sham thoughts. Look at me now, since I went
-outside these four walls and faced the facts of life, and saw other
-people’s misery besides my own, and the happiness of people with so much
-more to bear than I had. Look into my eyes, Herbert.”
-
-She smiled at him tenderly, alluringly. “What’s the good?” said Herbert.
-
-“Do you see a weary soul looking out?”
-
-Herbert looked into his wife’s eyes for a moment and then stared down at
-the carpet.
-
-“I used to see love looking out,” he said.
-
-“It’s looking out now,” said Clare. “Love of life instead of discontent.
-Love of this great throbbing human nature, with so much to be put right.
-Love of poor people, and little children, and brave hearts. Madge Vernon
-taught me that, for she has a soul bigger than the suffrage, and ideals
-that go beyond the vote. I have blown the cobwebs out of my eyes,
-Herbert. I see straight.”
-
-“How about _me?_” asked Herbert. “That’s what I want to know. Where do I
-come in?”
-
-“Oh, you come in all right!” said Clare. “You are a part of life and
-have a big share of my love.”
-
-“I don’t want to be shared up, thanks,” said Herbert.
-
-She stroked his hand.
-
-“I love you much better now that I see you with this new straight vision
-of mine. At any rate I love what is real in you and not what is sham.
-And I have learned the duties of love, Herbert. I believe I am a better
-wife to you. I think I have learned the meaning of marriage, and of
-married love.”
-
-She spoke with a touch of emotion, and there was a thrill in her voice.
-
-“You are in love with your social work and your whining beggars, not
-with me. You are getting farther and farther away from me. You leave me
-alone; I come back to a neglected home.”
-
-“Why, Mollie and mother look after it beautifully,” said Clare very
-cheerfully.
-
-Herbert gave expression to his grievances.
-
-“I come home and ask, ‘Where is Clare?’ and get the eternal answer,
-‘Clare is out.’ I am an abandoned husband, and by Heaven I won’t stand
-it. I will----”
-
-“What, Herbert?” said Clare, smiling up at him. “Don’t do anything rash,
-old boy.”
-
-“I--have a good mind to make love to somebody else’s wife. But they’re
-all so beastly ugly!”
-
-“Perhaps somebody else’s wife won’t respond,” said Clare. “Some women
-are very cold.”
-
-“I’ll take to drink. I have already given mother full warning.”
-
-“I am sure it will disagree with you, dear,” said Clare.
-
-“You scoff at me,” said Herbert passionately. “I think we had better
-live apart.”
-
-“You would get even more bored than before. Dear old boy. _Do_ be
-reasonable. _Do_ cultivate a sense of humor.”
-
-“This is not a farce,” said Herbert. “It’s a horrible tragedy.”
-
-“Take up a hobby or something,” said Clare. “Golf--or fretwork.”
-
-Herbert was furious.
-
-“Fretwork! Is that a joke or an insult?”
-
-“It was only a suggestion!” said Clare. Herbert jumped up from his
-chair.
-
-“I had better go and drown myself straight away...”?
-
-He turned at the door, and gave a tragic look at his wife. “Good-by.”
-
-Clare smiled at him.
-
-“Won’t you kiss me before you go?”
-
-“I will take my pipe,” said Herbert, coming back to the mantelshelf.
-“It’s my only friend.”
-
-“It will go out in the water,” said Clare. “Besides, Herbert, don’t you
-want to hear my good news? My big surprise?”
-
-“No,” said Herbert. “Nothing you could say or do could surprise me now.
-If mother wants me I shall be in the study for the rest of the evening.”
-
-“But I thought you were going to the river?”, said Clare teasingly.
-
-Herbert was not to be amused.
-
-“I suppose you think you’re funny? I don’t,” he said.
-
-Then he went out and slammed the door. Clare was left alone, and there
-was a smile about her lips.
-
-“Poor old Herbert,” she said. “I think he will have the surprise of his
-life.”
-
-She laughed quietly to herself, and then looked up and listened as she
-heard a slight noise. She stood up with a sudden look of anger as she
-saw Gerald Bradshaw gazing at her through the open French windows.
-
-The man spoke to her in his soft, silky voice.
-
-“Clare, why are you so cruel to me? I have been ill because of your
-heartlessness.”
-
-Clare answered him sternly.
-
-“I thought I had got rid of you. Have you come back to plague me?”
-
-“I tried to forget you,” said Gerald Bradshaw. “I went as far as Italy
-to forget you. I made love to many women to forget you. But I have come
-back. And I shall always come back, because you are my mate and I cannot
-live without you.”
-
-Clare’s voice rang out in the room.
-
-“God ought not to let you live. Every word you speak is a lie. You are
-a thief of women’s honor. Get away from my window, because your very
-breath is poison.”
-
-The man was astonished, a little scared. “You did not speak like that
-once, Clare. You let me hold your hand. You trembled when I leaned
-toward you.”
-
-“I was ill and weak,” said Clare, “and you tried to tempt my weakness. I
-was blind and did not see the evil in you. But now I am well and strong,
-and my eyes are opened to the truth of things. If you don’t go I will
-call my husband and he will throw you over that balcony at one word from
-me.”
-
-Gerald Bradshaw laughed scoffingly.
-
-“Your husband! I could kill him between my thumb and forefinger.”
-
-“He is strong because he is good,” said Clare. “I will call him now.”
-
-She went quickly toward the bell.
-
-“You needn’t call him,” said Gerald Bradshaw. “I would dislike to hurt
-the little man.”
-
-“You are going?” asked Clare.
-
-“Yes, I am going,” said the man, “because something has changed in you.”
-
-Clare gave a cheerful little laugh.
-
-“You are right.”
-
-“I see that now. I have lost my spell over you. Something has broken.”
-
-“Are you going,” said Clare sternly, “or shall I call my man?”
-
-“I am going, Clare,” said the man at the window. “I am going to find
-another mate. She and I will talk evil of you, and hate you, as I
-hate you now. Farewell, foolish one!” He withdrew from the window, and
-instantly Clare rushed to it, shut it and bolted it. Then she pulled
-down the blind, and stood, panting, with her back to it and her arms
-outstretched.
-
-“God be praised!” she said. “He has gone out of my life. I am a clean
-woman again.” At that moment Mrs. Heywood entered. “Must you go out
-again, Clare?” said the old lady.
-
-“Only for a little while, mother,” said Clare, a little breathless after
-her emotion.
-
-“Is anything the matter, dear?” said Mrs. Heywood. “You look rather
-flustered.”
-
-“Oh, nothing is the matter!” said Clare. “Only I am very happy.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood smiled at her.
-
-“It makes me happy to see you so well and bright,” she said.
-
-“I don’t get on your nerves so much, eh, mother?”
-
-She laughed quietly.
-
-“Well, I must go and tidy my hair.”
-
-She moved toward the bedroom, but stopped to pack up her letters.
-
-“I am so sorry you have to go out,” said the old lady.
-
-“I shan’t be more than a few minutes,” said Clare. “But I must go.
-Besides, after this I am going to _give_ up some of my visiting work.”
-
-“Give it up, dear?”
-
-“Yes. One must be moderate even in district visiting.”
-
-She went into the bedroom, but left the door open so that she could hear
-her mother.
-
-“Clare!” said the old lady.
-
-“Yes, mother.”
-
-“What is that surprise you were going to give us?”
-
-“Surprise, mother?”
-
-“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “The good news?”
-
-“Oh, yes, I forgot,” said Clare. “Come in and I will tell you.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood went into the bedroom. Outside, in the street, a man with
-a fiddle was playing the “Intermezzo.” Presently both women came out.
-Clare was smiling, with her arm round Mrs. Heywood’s neck. Mrs. Heywood
-was wiping her eyes as though crying a little.
-
-“Cheer up,” said Clare. “It’s nothing to cry about.”
-
-“I am crying because I am so glad,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-“Well, that’s a funny thing to do,” said Clare, laughing gaily. “Now I
-must run away. You won’t let Herbert drown himself, will you?”
-
-“No, dear,” said Mrs. Heywood, wiping her eyes.
-
-“Who would have thought it!” said Mrs.
-
-Heywood, speaking to herself as her daughter-in-law left the room.
-
-She went over to the mantelpiece and took up her son’s photograph and
-kissed it. Then she went to the door and stood out in the hall and
-called in a sweet old woman’s voice:
-
-“Herbert! Herbert, dear!”
-
-“Are you calling, mother?” answered Herbert from another room.
-
-“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I want you.”
-
-“I don’t feel a bit like cribbage, mother,”’ said Herbert.
-
-“I don’t want you to play cribbage to-night,” said the old lady. “I have
-something to say to you.”
-
-“Has Clare gone?” asked Herbert, still calling from the other room.
-
-“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “But she won’t be long.”
-
-“Oh, all right. I’ll be along in a moment.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood went back into the room and waited for her son eagerly.
-Presently he came in with a pipe in his hand and book under his arm. He
-had changed into a shabby old jacket, and was in carpet slippers.
-
-“What’s the matter, mother?” he asked.
-
-“There’s nothing the matter,” said the old lady; then she became very
-excited, and raised her hands and cried out:
-
-“At least, everything is the matter. It’s the only thing that matters!
-... Oh, Herbert!”
-
-She laughed and cried at the same time so that her son was alarmed and
-stared at her in amazement.
-
-“You aren’t ill, are you?” he said. “Shall I send for a doctor?”
-
-Mrs. Heywood shook her trembling old head.
-
-“I’m quite well. I never felt so well.”
-
-“You had better sit down, mother,” said Herbert.
-
-He took her hand and led her to a chair.
-
-“What’s up, eh, old lady? Mollie hasn’t run away, has she?”
-
-The old lady took his hand and fondled it.
-
-“Herbert, my son, I’ve wonderful news for you.”
-
-“News?” said Herbert. “Did you find it in the evening paper?”
-
-“It’s going to make a lot of difference to us all,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-“No more cribbage, Herbert!”
-
-“Thank heaven for that!” said Herbert.
-
-“And not so much social work for Clare.”
-
-“Well, let’s be thankful for small mercies,” said Herbert.
-
-“Bend your head down and let me whisper to you,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-
-She put her hands up to his head, and drew it down, and whispered
-something into his ears.
-
-It was something which astounded him.
-
-He started back and said “No!” as though he had heard something quite
-incredible. Then he spoke in a whisper:
-
-“By Jove!... Is that a fact?”
-
-“It’s the best fact that ever was, Herbert,” said the old lady.
-
-“Yes... it will make a bit of a difference,” said Herbert thoughtfully.
-
-Mrs. Heywood clasped her son’s arm. There was a tremulous light in her
-eyes and a great emotion in her voice.
-
-“Herbert, I am an old woman and your mother. Sit down and let me talk to
-you as I did in the old days when you were my small boy before a nursery
-fire.”
-
-Herbert smiled at her; all the gloom had left his face.
-
-“All right, mother.... By Jove, and I never guessed. And yet I ought to
-have guessed. Things have been--different--lately.”
-
-He sat down on a hassock near the old lady with his knees tucked up. She
-sat down, too, and stretched out a trembling hand to touch his hair.
-
-“Once upon a time, Herbert, there was a young man and a young woman who
-loved each other very dearly.”
-
-Herbert looked up and smiled at her.
-
-“Are you sure, mother?”
-
-“Perfectly sure. Then they married.”
-
-“And lived happily ever after? I bet they didn’t!”
-
-“No, not quite happily, because this is different from the fairy tales.
-... After a time the husband began to think too much about his work,
-while the wife stayed at home and thought too much about herself.”
-
-“It’s a stale old yarn,” said Herbert. “What happened then?”
-
-“By degrees the wife began to think she hated her husband, because
-although he gave her little luxuries and pretty clothes, and all the
-things that pleased _him_, he never gave her the thing _she_ wanted.”
-
-“What was that?” asked Herbert.
-
-“It was a magic charm to make her forget herself.”
-
-“Well, magic charms aren’t easy to find,” said Herbert.
-
-“No.... But at last she went out to find it herself. And while she was
-away the husband came home and missed her.”
-
-“Poor devil!” said Herbert. “Of course he did.”
-
-“Being a man,” said Mrs. Heywood, giving a queer little laugh, “he
-stayed at home more than he used to do, and then complained that he was
-left too much alone. Just like his wife had complained.”
-
-“Well, hang it all,” said Herbert, “she ought to have stayed with him.”
-
-“But then she wouldn’t have found the magic charm,” said Mrs. Heywood.
-“Don’t you see?... And she would have withered and withered away until
-there was nothing left of her, and the husband would have been quite
-alone--forever.”
-
-“Think so?” said Herbert very thoughtfully. “D’you think it would have
-been as bad as that?”
-
-“Yes,” said Mrs. Heywood. “I’m sure of it.”
-
-“Well, what did happen?” asked Herbert. “Did she find the magic charm?
-It wasn’t a widow in distress, was it? Or Social Reform humbug?”
-
-“No,” said Mrs. Heywood; “that gave her a new interest in life because
-it helped her to forget herself, some of her own little worries, some of
-her brooding thoughts. But a good fairy who was looking after her worked
-another kind of magic.... Herbert I It’s the best magic for unhappy
-women and unhappy homes, and it has been worked for you. Oh, my dear,
-you ought to be very thankful.”
-
-“Yes,” said Herbert, scratching his head. “Yes, I suppose so. But what’s
-the moral of the tale, mother? I’m hanged if I see.”
-
-Mrs. Heywood put her hand on her son’s shoulder, as he sat on the
-hassock by her chair.
-
-“It’s a moral told by an old woman who watched these two from the very
-beginning. A husband mustn’t expect his wife to stay at home for ever.
-The home isn’t big enough, Herbert. There’s the great world outside
-calling to her, calling, calling. The walls of a little fiat like this
-are too narrow for the spirit and heart. If he keeps her there she
-either pines and dies, or else----”
-
-“What?” asked Herbert.
-
-“Escapes, my dear,” said the old lady very solemnly.
-
-Herbert drew a deep, quivering breath.
-
-“Then,” said Mrs. Heywood, “nothing in the world can call her
-back--except----”
-
-“Except what?”
-
-“A little child.”
-
-Herbert got up from the hassock and clasped the mantelshelf, and spoke
-in a low, humble, grateful voice.
-
-“Thank God, Clare has been called back!” he said.
-
-Mrs. Heywood rose from her chair also, and caught hold of her son’s
-sleeve.
-
-“Yes,” she said, “yes. But even now she will want to spread her wings
-a little. She must take short flights, Herbert, even now. She must wing
-her way out to the big world at times. You will remember that, won’t
-you?”
-
-“I’ll try to remember,” said Herbert. He bent his head over his hands on
-the mantelshelf. “I’ve been selfish,” he said. “Blinded with selfishness
-and self-conceit. God forgive me.”
-
-“Perhaps we have all been a little selfish,” said Mrs. Heywood quietly.
-“But we shall have some one else to think about now. A new life,
-Herbert. A new life is coming to us all!”
-
-“Hush!” said Herbert. “Here’s Clare.”
-
-The mother and son stood listening to the voice of Clare singing in the
-hall. She was singing the old nursery rhyme of--
-
-               “Sing a song of sixpence,
-
-               A pocket-full of rye,
-
-               Four and twenty blackbirds
-
-               Baked in a pie,
-
-               When the pie was opened-----”
-
-Mrs. Heywood smiled into her son’s eyes.
-
-“I think I’ve left my spectacles in the other room,” she said. She went
-out into the hall, leaving her son alone.
-
-And Herbert stood with his head raised, looking toward the door,
-eagerly, like a lover waiting for his bride.
-
-Then Clare came in. There was a smile about her lips, and she spoke
-cheerfully.
-
-“Well, you see I wasn’t long.”
-
-Herbert strode toward her and took her hands and raised them to his
-lips.
-
-“Clare, sweetheart! Is it true? Have you been called back to me?”
-
-Clare put her forehead down against his chest.
-
-“I never went very far away,” she said.
-
-Presently Herbert spoke again with great cheerfulness.
-
-“I say, Clare. It’s a funny thing!”
-
-“What’s a funny thing?” asked Clare, smiling at him.
-
-“Why, I was reading the advertisements in the paper to-night---”
-
-“Were _they_ funny?” asked Clare.
-
-“No,” said Herbert, “but I saw something that would just suit us.”
-
-He went over to a side-table and picked up the newspaper. Sitting on the
-edge of the table, he read out an advertisement.
-
-“Here it is.... ‘Chelsea--Semi-detached house, dining-room,
-drawing-room, three bedrooms, and a large nursery. Shed for bicycle or
-perambulator.’”
-
-Clare laughed happily.
-
-“Well, we might have both!” she said.
-
-Herbert dropped the paper, came over to his wife, and kissed her hands
-again.
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighth Year, by Philip Gibbs
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