CHAPTER VI.
OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE
LOVE-LIT EYES.
"There's nothing missing," said my mother, "so far as I can find out.
Depend upon it, that's the explanation: she has got frightened and
has run away.
"But what was there to frighten her?" said my father, pausing with a
decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.
"It was the idea of the thing," replied my mother. "She has never
been used to waiting at table. She was actually crying about it only
last night."
"But what's to be done?" said my father. "They will be here in less
than an hour."
"There will be no dinner for them," said my mother, "unless I put on
an apron and bring it up myself."
"Where does she live?" asked my father.
"At Ilford," answered my mother.
"We must make a joke of it," said my father.
My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for
my mother. A party to dinner--to a real dinner, beginning with
anchovies and ending with ices from the confectioner's; if only they
would remain ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences,
present themselves as cold custard--was an extraordinary departure
from the even tenor of our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect
none previous. First there had been the house to clean and rearrange
almost from top to bottom; endless small purchases to be made of
articles that Need never misses, but which Ostentation, if ever you
let her sneering nose inside the door, at once demands. Then the
kitchen range--it goes without saying: one might imagine them all
members of a stove union, controlled by some agitating old boiler out
of work--had taken the opportunity to strike, refusing to bake another
dish except under permanently improved conditions, necessitating weary
days with plumbers. Fat cookery books, long neglected on their shelf,
had been consulted, argued with and abused; experiments made, failures
sighed over, successes noted; cost calculated anxiously; means and
ways adjusted, hope finally achieved, shadowed by fear.
And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed
from her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be
the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering
table would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But
between the two yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word
of warning, had bolted--was probably by this time well on its way to
Ilford. There was excuse for my mother's tears.
"Isn't it possible to get somebody else?" asked my father.
"Impossible, in the time," said my mother. "I had been training her
for the whole week. We had rehearsed it perfectly."
"Have it in the kitchen," suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins
to look like ships, which they didn't in the least, "and call it a
picnic." Really it seemed the only practical solution.
There came a light knock at the front door.
"It can't be anybody yet, surely," exclaimed my father in alarm,
making for his coat.
"It's Barbara, I expect," explained my mother. "She promised to come
round and help me dress. But now, of course, I shan't want her." My
mother's nature was pessimistic.
But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon
myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the
window when Barbara came in at the door--in those days, I mean.
She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was
so quick. And at once they saw the humour of the thing.
"There's going to be no dinner," laughed my father. "We are going to
look surprised and pretend that it was yesterday. It will be fun to
see their faces."
"There will be a very nice dinner," smiled my mother, "but it will be
in the kitchen, and there's no way of getting it upstairs." And they
explained to her the situation.
She stood for an instant, her sweet face the gravest in the group.
Then a light broke upon it.
"I'll get you someone," she said.
"My dear, you don't even know the neighbourhood," began my mother.
But Barbara had snatched the latchkey from its nail and was gone.
With her disappearance, shadow fell again upon us. "If there were
only an hotel in this beastly neighbourhood," said my father.
"You must entertain them by yourself, Luke," said my mother; "and I
must wait--that's all."
"Don't be absurd, Maggie," cried my father, getting angry. "Can't
cook bring it in?"
"No one can cook a dinner and serve it, too," answered my mother,
impatiently. "Besides, she's not presentable."
"What about Fan?" whispered my father.
My mother merely looked. It was sufficient.
"Paul?" suggested my father.
"Thank you," retorted my mother. "I don't choose to have my son
turned into a footman, if you do."
"Well, hadn't you better go and dress?" was my father's next remark.
"It won't take me long to put on an apron," was my mother's reply.
"I was looking forward to seeing you in that new frock," said my
father. In the case of another, one might have attributed such a
speech to tact; in the case of my father, one felt it was a happy
accident.
My mother confessed--speaking with a certain indulgence, as one does
of one's own follies when past--that she herself also had looked
forward to seeing herself therein. Threatening discord melted into
mutual sympathy.
"I so wanted everything to be all right, for your sake, Luke," said my
mother; "I know you were hoping it would help on the business."
"I was only thinking of you, Maggie, dear," answered my father. "You
are my business."
"I know, dear," said my mother. "It is hard."
The key turned in the lock, and we all stood quiet to listen.
"She's come back alone," said my mother. "I knew it was hopeless."
The door opened.
"Please, ma'am," said the new parlour-maid, "will I do?"
She stood there, framed by the lintel, in the daintiest of aprons, the
daintiest of caps upon her golden hair; and every objection she swept
aside with the wind of her merry wilfulness. No one ever had their
way with her, nor wanted it.
"You shall be footman," she ordered, turning to me--but this time my
mother only laughed. "Wait here till I come down again." Then to my
mother: "Now, ma'am, are you ready?"
It was the first time I had seen my mother, or, indeed, any other
flesh and blood woman, in evening dress, and to tell the truth I was a
little shocked. Nay, more than a little, and showed it, I suppose;
for my mother flushed and drew her shawl over the gleaming whiteness
of her shoulders, pleading coldness. But Barbara cried out against
this, saying it was a sin such beauty should be hid; and my father,
filching a shawl with a quick hand, so dextrously indeed as to suggest
some previous practice in the feat, dropped on one knee--as though the
world were some sweet picture book--and raised my mother's hand with
grave reverence to his lips; and Barbara, standing behind my mother's
chair, insisted on my following suit, saying the Queen was receiving.
So I knelt also, glancing up shyly as towards the gracious face of
some fair lady hitherto unknown, thus Catching my first glimpse of the
philosophy of clothes.
My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed
days that swiftly followed, when my mother's eyes would flash towards
my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the
moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again
and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and
sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour
forth a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room,
slamming the door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards,
sitting alone in the dark, with bowed head between his hands.
Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their
passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold
whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.
In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung
closer to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have
understood if they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms
clasping me tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I
hated my father, who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet
when my father drew me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind
eyes so full of pain, then I felt angry with my mother, remembering
her bitter tongue.
It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the
house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into
each other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow.
The idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline
in the air, feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently
through the pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face
before them. Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and
the next moment, stealing across to my father, answer for him with his
voice, but strangely different. I used to think I could hear it
laughing to itself as it stepped back into enfolding space.
To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps
man and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face
between them. So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I
see its mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent
laugh. So that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the
twilight, but I see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them,
creeping after them with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me
in quiet ways.
Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark
valley of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love's ordeal? testing the
feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet
again, the darkness passed?
Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive
account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic
parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of
observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that
was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann--or
Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which--a snuffy, mumbling old frump,
with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it
so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long
blank walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother's
right hand; and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish
seeming, how she could be so interested in him, shouting much and
often to him; for added to his other disattractions he was very deaf,
which necessitated his putting his hand up to his ear at every other
observation made to him, crying querulously: "Eh, what? What are you
talking about? Say it again,"--smiling upon him and paying close
attention to his every want. Even old Hasluck, opposite to him, and
who, though pleasant enough in his careless way, was far from being a
slave to politeness, roared himself purple, praising some new
disinfectant of which this same Teidelmann appeared to be the
proprietor.
"My wife swears by it," bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.
"Our drains!" chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; "well,
you'd hardly know there was any in the house since I've took to using
it."
"What are they talking about?" asked Teidelmann, appealing to my
mother. "What's he say his wife does?"
"Your disinfectant," explained my mother; "Mrs. Hasluck swears by it."
"Who?"
"Mrs. Hasluck."
"Does she? Delighted to hear it," grunted the old gentleman,
evidently bored.
"Nothing like it for a sick-room," persisted Hasluck; "might almost
call it a scent."
"Makes one quite anxious to be ill," remarked my aunt, addressing no
one in particular.
"Reminds me of cocoanuts," continued Hasluck.
Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his
flattery should not be lost.
"I say it reminds me of cocoanuts." He screamed it this time.
"Oh, does it?" was the reply.
"Doesn't it you?"
"Can't say it does," answered Teidelmann. "As a matter of fact, don't
know much about it myself. Never use it."
Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of
the subject.
"Take my advice," he shouted, "and buy a bottle."
"Buy a what?"
"A bottle," roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his
strength.
"What's he say? What's he talking about now?" asked Teidelmann, again
appealing to my mother.
"He says you ought to buy a bottle," again explained my mother.
"What of?"
"Of your own disinfectant."
"Silly fool!"
Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic
(which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely
misjudged the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say.
I only know that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly,
and therefore assume they reached round the table also.
A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned,
and the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.
"He's quite right," was Hasluck's comment; "that's what I am
undoubtedly. Because I can't talk about anything but shop myself, I
think everybody else is the same sort of fool."
But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the
passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time
Teidelmann was evidently interested.
"Well, if you could spare the time, I'd be more obliged than I can
tell you," Hasluck was saying. "I know absolutely nothing about
pictures myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in
Europe."
"He ought to know," chuckled old Teidelmann. "He's tried often enough
to palm off rubbish onto me."
"That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young--"
Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; "been the
making of him, I should say."
"I gave him two thousand for the six," replied Teidelmann, "and
they'll sell for twenty thousand."
"But you'll never sell them?" exclaimed my father.
"No," grunted old Teidelmann, "but my widow will." There came a soft,
low laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.
"It's Anderson's great disappointment," followed a languid, caressing
voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), "that he
has never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art.
He'll pay thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed
Madonna. Such a waste of money, it appears to me."
"But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,"
argued my father's voice.
"It would enhance the beauty of my neck," replied the musical voice.
"An even more absolute waste of money," was my father's answer, spoken
low. And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.
"Who is she?" I asked Barbara.
"The second Mrs. Teidelmann," whispered Barbara. "She is quite a
swell. Married him for his money--I don't like her myself, but she's
very beautiful."
"As beautiful as you?" I asked incredulously. We were sitting on the
stairs, sharing a jelly.
"Oh, me!" answered Barbara. "I'm only a child. Nobody takes any
notice of me--except other kids, like you." For some reason she
appeared out of conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of
mind.
"But everybody thinks you beautiful," I maintained.
"Who?" she asked quickly.
"Dr. Hal," I answered.
We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.
"What did he say?" she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in
it.
I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I
was positive.
"Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,"
Barbara instructed me, "and don't forget what he says this time. I'm
curious." And though it seemed to me a foolish command--for what
could he say of her more than I myself could tell her--I never
questioned Barbara's wishes.
Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may
have clouded for a moment Barbara's sunny nature, surely there was no
reason for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention
throughout the dinner than the parlour-maid.
"Where ever did you get her from?" asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having
just descended the kitchen stairs.
"A neat-handed Phillis," commented Dr. Florret with approval.
"I'll take good care she never waits at my table," laughed the wife of
our minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman,
mother of eleven, eight of them boys.
"To tell the truth," said my mother, "she's only here temporarily."
"As a matter of fact," said my father, "we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck
for her."
"Don't leave me out of it," laughed Hasluck; "can't let the old girl
take all the credit."
Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as "My dear," at which
Mrs. Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that
incident could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was looking,
pinched her elbow, which would not have mattered had not the
unexpectedness of it drawn from her an involuntary "augh," upon which,
for the reputation of the house, and the dinner being then towards its
end; my mother deemed it better to take the whole company into her
confidence. Naturally the story gained for Barbara still greater
admiration, so that when with the dessert, discarding the apron but
still wearing the dainty cap, which showed wisdom, she and the footman
took their places among the guests, she was even more than before the
centre of attention and remark.
"It was very nice of you," said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the
circle of compliments, "and, as I always tell my girls, that is better
than being beautiful."
"Kind hearts," added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, "are more than
coronets." Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct
quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell
upon the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like
the Amen in church.
Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.
"When I was a girl," said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing
silence, "I used to look into the glass and say to myself: 'Fanny,
you've got to be amiable,' and I was amiable," added my aunt,
challenging contradiction with a look; "nobody can say that I wasn't,
for years."
"It didn't pay?" suggested Hasluck.
"It attracted," replied my aunt, "no attention whatever."
Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many
experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old
Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the
case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than
business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida
(I am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the
details of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion,
so I have been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise
of the moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa
scheme becoming converted to Quakerism.
But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn
and Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence
in the East End.
As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr.
Florret's presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song
once looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the
cold stare of his disapproving eye. But Dr. "Fighting Hal" was no
gentle warbler of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept
through all polite argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood,
carrying his partisans with him further than they meant to go, and
quite unable to turn back; leaving his opponents clinging
desperately--upside down, anyhow--to their perches, angry, their
feathers much ruffled.
"Life!" flung out Washburn--Dr. Florret had just laid down
unimpeachable rules for the conduct of all mankind on all
occasions--"what do you respectable folk know of life? You are not
men and women, you are marionettes. You don't move to your natural
emotions implanted by God; you dance according to the latest book of
etiquette. You live and love, laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only
one moment do you come face to face with life; that is in the moment
when you die, leaving the other puppets to be dressed in black and
make believe to cry."
It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality
of us all.
"Little doll," he had once called me, and I had resented the term.
"That's all you are, little Paul," he had persisted, "a good little
hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what
it's made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a
gallant-hearted, soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and
primmest of dolls. And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to
be a man, but hasn't the pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul."
"He's a trifle--a trifle whimsical on some subjects," explained my
father, on my repeating this conversation.
"There are a certain class of men," explained my mother--"you will
meet with them more as you grow up--who talk for talking's sake. They
don't know what they mean. And nobody else does either."
"But what would you have?" argued Dr. Florret, "that every man should
do that which is right in his own eyes?"
"Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what
every other fool thinks right," retorted Washburn. "The other day I
called to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His
wife was washing clothes in the front room. 'How's your husband?' I
asked. 'I think he's dead,' replied the woman. Then, without leaving
off her work, 'Jim,' she shouted, 'are you there?' No answer came
from the inner room. 'He's a goner,' she said, wringing out a
stocking."
"But surely," said Dr. Florret, "you don't admire a woman for being
indifferent to the death of her husband?"
"I don't admire her for that," replied Washburn, "and I don't blame
her. I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I
do admire her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In
Berkeley Square she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face
and a handkerchief to her eyes.
"Assume a virtue, if you have it not," murmured Dr. Florret.
"Go on," said Washburn. "How does it run? 'That monster, custom, who
all sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to
the use of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put
on.' So was the lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the
more an ass. Here asses go about as asses, but there are lions also.
I had a woman under my hands only a little while ago. I could have
cured her easily. Why she got worse every day instead of better I
could not understand. Then by accident learned the truth: instead of
helping me she was doing all she could to kill herself. 'I must,
Doctor,' she cried. 'I must. I have promised. If I get well he will
only leave me, and if I die now he has sworn to be good to the
children.' Here, I tell you, they live--think their thoughts, work
their will, kill those they hate, die for those they love; savages if
you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless dolls."
"I prefer the dolls," concluded Dr. Florret.
"I admit they are pretty," answered Washburn.
"I remember," said my father, "the first masked ball I ever went to
when I was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal;
everybody was so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street
and see faces."
"But I thought they always unmasked at midnight," said the second Mrs.
Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.
"I did not wait," explained my father.
"That was a pity," she replied. "I should have been interested to see
what they were like, underneath."
"I might have been disappointed," answered my father. "I agree with
Dr. Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement."
Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would
have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold
eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.
Always she was very kind to me. Moreover, since the disappearance of
Cissy she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my
small self. My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was
the one thing needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take
much pride in our solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to
our desires: like the oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world
than to ourselves. If others there were who admired me, very
guardedly must they have kept the secret I would so gladly have shared
with them. But this new friend of ours--or had I not better at once
say enemy--made me feel when in her presence a person of importance.
How it was accomplished I cannot explain. No word of flattery nor
even of mere approval ever passed her lips. Her charm to me was not
that she admired me, but that she led me by some mysterious process to
admire myself.
And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me,
I never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the
sudden raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.
She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting
on her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his
eyes were turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them
back again. Once she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some
light jest of his, and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick
glance, saw that my mother's eyes were watching also.
I have spoken of my father only as he then appeared to me, a child--an
older chum with many lines about his mobile mouth, the tumbled hair
edged round with grey; but looking back with older eyes, I see him a
slightly stooping, yet still tall and graceful man, with the face of a
poet--the face I mean a poet ought to possess but rarely does, nature
apparently abhorring the obvious--with the shy eyes of a boy, and a
voice tender as a woman's. Never the dingiest little drab that
entered the kitchen but adored him, speaking always of "the master" in
tones of fond proprietorship, for to the most slatternly his "orders"
had ever the air of requests for favours. Women, I so often read, can
care for only masterful men. But may there not be variety in women as
in other species? Or perhaps--if the suggestion be not
over-daring--the many writers, deeming themselves authorities upon
this subject of woman, may in this one particular have erred? I only
know my father spoke to few women whose eyes did not brighten. Yet
hardly should I call him a masterful man.
"I think it's all right," whispered Hasluck to my father in the
passage--they were the last to go. "What does she think of it, eh?"
"I think she'll be with us," answered my father.
"Nothing like food for bringing people together," said Hasluck.
"Good-night."
The door closed, but Something had crept into the house. It stood
between my father and mother. It followed them silently up the narrow
creaking stairs.
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