# The Mad Busman, and Other Stories/The Perfect Marriage

pp. 245–280.

### VII
#### The Perfect Marriage

I
THE disaster shook River's-End to its depths. This might be thought impossible since River's-End had apparently no particular depths to shake-indeed would have repudiated such a possession as being not altogether respectable. River's End believed in its calm and pleasant surface. Sometimes the surface was agreeably rippled, but only by little, agreeable things. Somebody's daughter was engaged to somebody's son. Or they were married. Or the Mordaunt-Smiths had sold their old car and bought a new one. There was not even any scandal. For to have imputed scandalous actions to any member of the community would have been to cast a slur over the community itself. Instead there were tennis tournaments and dances and the solemn matter of one's golf handicap.
River's-End was a cluster of large, red-brick houses on a tree-clad height overlooking a pretty tributary of the Are. Though they were red-brick and new, the houses were not vulgar. They were in the best taste, and the word "cluster" does them an injustice. It suggests a proximity altogether too warm. As a matter of fact they were separated and almost hidden from one another by shady gardens, each with its own tennis lawn and rose-covered pergola. On the other side of the Heights, deep down in the valley out of sight of the river, was Tatbury—a squalidly prosperous mining town, whose smoke, when the wind was to the east, drifted horridly over River's-End and would have spoiled the white frocks of the tennis players but for the fact that it always rained when the wind was in the east and River's-End was therefore indoors with closed windows. At other times River's-End did not know that Tatbury existed.
Some of the River's-End males went up to business every day, but most of them had retired young. There were no really old people, and nobody was ever very ill—or indeed very anything at all. You could not associate either heart-break or ecstasy with River's-End.
Then Harry Franklin was killed. Not in River's-End, of course. Somewhere out in the wilds of Armenia where he had gone on business. By Turks. Something altogether violent and incredible.
II
Mrs. Eliot and Mrs. Frances talked of it as they walked up the hill together from the station. They had been up to town, shopping, and they had met accidentally. Usually, when they met, they talked about clothes or their children or—in intellectual moments—of the latest novel. But now they could think of nothing else but the Franklins. They did not know the Franklins very well. Nobody did, though everybody knew them. They were like "Ravello," their home, the one white house shining with a subdued radiance amidst the stolid red-brick—aloof, different, and very beautiful. Yet it seemed that after all they had meant something to River's-End.
The two women spoke in undertones. Perhaps it was the summer's dusk which lent their comfortable, round bodies dignity—a poignancy to their voices.
"Poor soul! Poor soul!"
"She must be quite young still. Forty, I suppose. Though she doesn't look it. Quite absurdly girlish, I used to think."
"And so pretty—like a flower—a dark, foreign flower—or a bird."
Mrs. Frances smiled. Every one knew that little Mrs. Eliot was romantical—high-flown. It was always breaking out of her in irrepressible spurts.
"Of course, distinctly pretty."
"So long to live alone."
"I don't know. People who've lived together like that—I've noticed—they seem to break up."
"You mean——? Oh, dear, it's terrible. I haven't been able to think of anything else. She haunts me. I've been trying to imagine what it feels like to lose some one whom one has loved—like that."
"It's a mistake to care too much—almost wrong."
"But rather wonderful, too, don't you think? So perfect."
"They didn't care for any one else. At first we were all rather upset—it seemed so unneighbourly. But then we saw they didn't mean anything unkind. Not that they weren't good about charities—lending their garden and that sort of thing—but one always knew that they were glad when it was over."
"Like young lovers."
"It was pretty to watch them."
"Do you know—we were only acquaintances; none of us was more than that to them—but I used to think of them quite a lot. Sometimes when I was depressed about something—stupidly depressed, because James is a perfect dear and the children are the best children in the world—I used to look across at Ravello, and it cheered me—just to think that there were people like that—perfect people—so perfectly happy in each other. It sort of made things worth while again. After all, it could happen, even in this world, to some of us. Don't you understand?"
The hill had grown rather steep. Mrs. Frances was breathing heavily. "In a way, my dear—of course."
It was almost as though Mrs. Eliot and Mrs. Frances had opened their hearts to each other, and that hearts, even in River's-End, were strange places.
III
While the two women climbed the hill, Joan Franklin was standing by the long window that looked down over the river. The river, where she and Harry had bathed every morning, year in, year out, lay under a pall of white mist. She could trace the shadowy garden path down which they had run together. She could see him running just in front of her, tall and slender and vigorous as a Greek athlete. Sometimes he would take a flying leap over a flower-bed, just out of pure bodily well-being. The next instant there would be a header into the ice-cold water—a clean-cut, beautiful dive made without a pause. Then she came—not hesitating either, but with a tensing of the muscles and a quick catch of the breath—and they would race each other against the stream.
People stared when they heard of these exploits on some biting winter's day. They shuddered and groaned in vicarious suffering, and Harry smiled his cool, illusive smile. He was a Spartan. His body was his disciplined servant, the instrument of his wonderful mind, to be kept keen and supple.
And now—— Somewhere in the world it had been broken. It served him no longer.
Behind her was twilight and the exquisite scent of dying flowers. On a table lay yesterday's telegram. Nobody had dared to touch it. It lay there like a venomous thing, twisted even now with a grotesque, immobile life, poised to strike. But oddly enough, when a breath of wind stirred it, one saw that its fangs were drawn and that it was dead, too.
The room was their library. Harry had loved it best. Into its stately dimensions they had brought their greatest treasures. It was rich with oak—mellow Elizabethan oak that shone with an unquenchable virility, chill, grey Gothic from which the living flesh had long since fallen, leaving a noble skeleton. Each piece was a museum piece. Each had been tracked down, sometimes over the length and breadth of England. They had been like hunters, patient and untiring. Harry had never been prouder than that day when they had brought home the Tudor chest that stood close to the window. She remembered how he had teased her, in a mood of almost boyish light-heartedness, saying he loved her only because her dark, fragile loveliness set off old English oak so perfectly.
How serene and exquisite their life had been! Not idle, but vigorous, well spent. (It was terrible how calmly she could think of it.) Every morning after they had glanced over the papers—a perfunctory glance, for had they not said laughingly to each other that they were like two people on an island paradise to whom the noisy sea meant nothing?—they had given themselves to the real work of the day. Catalogues, price lists, notices of sales, books of reference were spread out in orderly disorder down the refectory table. For it was not only oak that Harry loved. He had the most valuable stamp-collection in England. It had been begun in his boyhood, and it was typical of him that he had become an expert, so subtle that he could tell a forgery blindfolded, by the very touch. He had taught her all that she could learn, but he had instinct for rightness beyond learning.
In the afternoon they had ridden together along the crest of the pine-clad hills. She could see him now like a vision against the dusk, long-limbed and gracefully at ease on his golden chestnut; the sun had shone down on them both between the red-brown tree stems, clothing horse and rider with a sort of a radiance. And at the end of a hard gallop he would turn to look at her—she shut her eyes now, feeling the old fire burn terribly in her veins—not appraisingly, but worshippingly as at some perfect creation of the gods, and had smiled, his own handsome face alight. And she had looked back, not smiling, but subdued by the wonder of their unchanging love for each other.
At night he read aloud to her. He had a rich voice, manly in its metal, and read well, and his choice of reading was the very expression of himself. All that was nobly and rarely thought he made his own. He shrank from ugliness.
Nothing ugly had ever touched their lives. Not from the hour of their first wonderful meeting, when he had broken upon her girlhood like romance itself out of a dream, with panache and knightly splendor, through their courtship and union in that Italian palace of which this home was the remembrance, to the hour of their first and final separation. Even the years seemed to have passed them by unharmed. They had kept their golden youthfulness. He had been forty-five when he had left her, and he had had a boy's clear glance and clean skin and gallant joyousness with his man's dignity. And he had been proud that she was still a fragile girl, delicate and unsoiled, calm-eyed, knowing no harm. Indeed no harm had come near her. His austere passion had burned about her, guarding her like some happier Brünhilde on their enchanted isle.
And then that letter. Business Business. He had never had anything to do with business. His people had been rich for generations. Now somewhere out in the wilds a source of wealth was threatened. It seemed he had to go. She had seen his face shadowed with distaste, weariness—almost with disgust.
"Why should one have to do these things?" he had asked.
She had wanted to go with him, but there his fastidiousness had revolted. It would be a rough trip at best, and the thought of her exquisite delicacy pitted against dirt and discomfort had made him relentless. And in three months he would be home again.
They had said good-bye to each other, not in the turmoil and torturing constraint of a station, but in their garden under the pale shadow of an almond tree, flushed with an early spring. They had clung to each other like young lovers.
"Nothing shall change," she had whispered. "Every hour you will know what I am doing. I shall carry on our life together until you come."
Even their parting had been perfect. Nothing to be regretted. Nothing left unsaid, or said too much. Without clamour they had laid bare their hearts to each other...
She closed the window against that cold, grey mist. And, closing it, the house became a tomb. She went slowly like a sleep-walker to the mantel shelf and lit the candles in the branched sconce (for they had justly condemned electricity in such a setting). The steady, golden light awoke shadows. So easy to see him sitting there. She took the book from which he had read to her that last night. The marker lay in its place like a finger of finality.
"Peace—peace—he is not dead, he doth not sleep. "He hath awakened from the dream of life."
She read on steadily to the end—as he would have done, as he would have wished her to do. The high oak chair held her upright in an austere hand. She did not cry, though her heart lay stunned and bleeding in her breast. She knew that the first tear would let loose a storm whose havoc she dared not contemplate, whose violence would be an insult to the dignity of their loving.
IV
River's-End understood. It would have been more typical of them if they had condemned, but for these two lovers they had always displayed an unexpected delicacy of perception. As Mrs. Eliot said, "It wouldn't be our way, of course, but then they were always different." And she said it with an odd humility.
So from a respectful distance River's-End watched Joan Franklin carry on the pattern of her life. Early in the morning she ran down alone to the river's edge and plunged in as gallantly as though he watched her, and swam against the stream, listening with closed eyes to the strong, clean stroke of an unseen swimmer. After breakfast she glanced through the papers—an almost unseeing glance, for the world was further off than it had ever been. Then came their work. There were the stamps that he had left unclassified. He had been very proud of his stamps. There were seven volumes of them in a specially constructed case. Like the Elizabethan oak, they would come one day to a museum. For there was no one to inherit. Some of the River's-End people—the unmarried ones chiefly thought the Franklins' childlessness must be a great sorrow to them, but they themselves had never felt it as such. Perhaps at the bottom of their hearts was a secret thankfulness that no one had ever come between them.
In the afternoon she rode his mare Rosita along the river heights, and at night she read. She read over and over again the things that he had loved best. She did not want to read anything else. She stood still where her guide had left her looking back over the road along which they had traveled.
She wore no mourning, but dressed with the old, elegant simplicity. Sometimes in the evening from an upper window Mrs. Eliot saw her wandering like a pale ghost in her haunted garden. And Mrs. Eliot with her perfectly dear James and her five children wept a little for her and said, "Poor soul! Poor soul!" under her breath and in a note of wondering envy of people who could love so much.
And thus a year passed.
V
At the corner where the road dipped, suddenly Rosita bolted. Perhaps something startled her; perhaps she knew that her rider's hand was listless on the bridle. She went blindly headlong, like a mad thing, and Mrs. Franklin, wakened to the realisation of her danger but not to fear, could hardly keep her to the road. She and Harry had never been farther than the corner, because Harry had said that beyond that point the road became bad and uninteresting. But now Rosita had chosen for herself.
Mrs. Franklin was a good rider. Harry had taught her. In other days she would have mastered the runaway in a few hundred yards. Now she had no strength, no will. In the very midst of that downward, thunderous rush she realised quite calmly that she didn't care—that if anything, she was glad. Change was coming. Death itself, perhaps. And she didn't want to live any more. Not without Harry. It had been very beautiful, her daily, solemn service at the tomb of their common life together, but her heart had been broken. And now fate was setting her free.
The soft River's-End road, strewn with pine needles, became a rough cart track. The trees thinned to hedges that streamed past her like great, grey-green rags in the wind. Familiar landmarks were left behind. To her excited fancy she was rushing into the shadow of a black tunnel that was to bring her to the new life.
Rosita stumbled—recovered desperately. At the bottom of the mill a stirrup leather broke. Mrs. Franklin made no effort. She knew a brief pain that went out instantly like a torch flame in water a silence and emptiness that endured centuries. Then light came back, slowly and heavily—a grey, sunless light that tasted acrid.
She stood up. She was so little conscious of her body that she really believed she was dead and waiting in some bleak limbo for Harry who came even now to meet her. Then, in bitter reaction, she almost laughed.
The man had stopped a few paces from her.
"Hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Your horse bolted past me. I thought some damage might have been done." He looked her up and down, curiously and dispassionately. "Good thing you landed on that nettle bed," he added.
She forced her voice to steadiness. "If you wouldn't mind going after my horse for me——"
"I've something better to do."
It was not said rudely. It was a mere statement of fact. She stared at him incredulously.
"But surely, if I'm hurt——"
"You said you weren't hurt. Your face is bleeding a little. There are worse things than that. Anyhow, I shouldn't galavant after runaway horses."
She saw that he was not a gentleman. Nor was he a workingman. Nor a tradesman. He was tall and heavy-limbed and wore a suit of ill-fitting reach-me-downs. But there was an air of aggressive independence about him. His hard, blue eyes met hers unflinchingly, and the plain ruggedness of his face was lit with the flicker of an ironic smile.
She turned and walked on. Her side hurt her. She was sick with astonishment and pain. She was angry, too—as she had never been angry in her life—and the ugliness of the emotion horrified her. There was only one thing that she wanted—to get away from this man with his brutal indifference so that he should not see that she was on the point of tears.
He called after her. "Where are you going?"
"After my horse," she returned gallantly.
"Well, you'd better not go that way. There's trouble down there."
That almost amused her. Trouble! She nearly called back, "My husband—Harry—was killed last year," but she knew that she was light-headed still, and set her teeth.
He made no attempt to follow. When she glanced back a moment later, he had disappeared, and she felt herself go under in a wave of utter forlornness. She longed for the dead lover as she had never longed for him before—to defend and comfort her—and he had never seemed so far away. In that mystic life amidst the gracious beauty of their home it had been easy to conjure him back. He walked with her in the garden, read with her, thought with her. She had shown him her loveliest rose implicitly confident in his nearness. But now it was as though she had been thrust out of paradise into an alien country where he could not follow.
She stumbled on over the rut-seamed road, catching her breath in sobs. The hedges that straggled miserably beside her, untrimmed and black with grime, degenerated to a tangled, stunted growth that fringed unwholesome vegetable patches and a ditch littered with cans and evil-smelling refuse. The road still sloped downward. In the hollow Mrs. Franklin could see chimneystacks rearing like black, smoldering torches above a clutter of mean houses. From their smoke there dripped a dirty moisture. A fitful wind blew the grit and darkness of it all against her face. Up at River's-End the sun had been shining, but here it rained—perhaps it always rained. The cobbles and broken pavement which petered out by the last house shone with a leprous moisture, and a squalid stream ran in the ill-made gutter.
Of course Mrs. Franklin knew that there were places like this, because on their treasure-hunting trips Harry had always taken such care to avoid them. He hated ugliness. He had always shielded her from ugliness as from contamination. But now he had gone, and Mrs. Franklin could not escape. She was down in the midst of it, on foot, forsaken, helpless. A kind of anger gathered under her distress—a resentment. Such places ought not to be allowed—not near to one like that. It was strange that Harry should have known of all this and not protested—or perhaps he hadn't known.
She had meant to ask for help. She had had an idea of going into the first cottage and sitting by a friendly kitchen fire while a respectable working man went in search of Rosita. A group of women, shawls over their heads, stood in an open doorway. They were looking down the street as though they were expecting something to happen. When they saw Mrs. Franklin, their stare became blank—hostile. They watched her pass—an exotic, slender figure in her dirt-stained riding clothes with the blood still wet on her cheek—and she could feel their silence poised behind her like a clenched fist.
She dared not speak to them.
A company of mounted police clattered out of a side street. Then an ambulance. The women came suddenly to life. They began to run. One of the police tried to turn them back, shouting at them, but they were inexorable. They brushed Mrs. Franklin on one side as though they did not see her. She had never been frightened before. She was frightened now. She ran into the passage of the next cottage. The door was closed. Without waiting she pushed it open.
Then she stopped short. She did not know whether she or some one else had cried out. By the yellow light that filtered through a cracked window pane she saw at first one thing and one thing only. That it was a woman who faced her from the opposite doorway she hardly realised. Women weren't like that in Mrs. Franklin's world. Even the servants had a sort of dignity. This woman's very immobility was violent—menacing. She loomed out of the dusk like a trapped animal. She was half-naked. It seemed that she had tried to dress and then in frantic haste had torn a frowsy sheet from the bed that filled the room behind her with its tumbled outline, and wrapped it about her. The squalor of it all seemed to rush out at Mrs. Franklin like a foul breath.
The woman stared back, open-mouthed, with fixed, wild eyes. No one could have told how old she was. There was youth lurking still in the round face, but her body was heavy, shapeless, and the dark hair that hung about her shoulders gave her a look of madness and ageless suffering. She groaned and swayed where she stood, muttering, "Oh, Gawd—my man—my man——"
Mrs. Franklin choked down her nausea. Behind her a muffled roar of voices surged nearer. She closed the door sharply. "I'm sorry—my—my horse bolted. I came in here—hoping——"
The woman lurched forward, clinging to the table. "Wot 'ave they done at 'im? Oh, Gawd, them cursed strikes. 'E would go—got to stick by 'is pals, 'e said—— They don't think of us——" She steadied herself. "You tell me—I got to know wot they done at 'em—— I'll go mad—lying there—not knowing——"
"I don't know——" Mrs. Franklin's voice sounded shrill and out of control. "I don't know anything—my horse bolted——"
She was stopped by a sense of utter futility. Of course the woman couldn't understand. She wasn't even listening. She whimpered, "My man—my man"—her red, rough hand pressed between her breasts, her gaze fixed beyond Mrs. Franklin as though any moment the door might open in answer to her. Mrs. Franklin turned to escape, but there was shouting in the street, the steely clang of hoofs on the cobbles. She felt trapped, outraged, indignant. It was horrible to be so frightened—so helpless.
"My man—my man——"
It got on her nerves. It was indecent—this animal crying out. These people were animals—ugly animals. She would never be able to forget them. It would be an ugly stain on her memory. Somehow they stood between her and Harry, so that she couldn't see him.
"For God's sake——"
The woman had cried out—screamed. It was a scream torn from the throat. It turned the blood cold. She had crumpled to her knees, clinging with convulsed fingers to the table edge, her body cowed and twisted as though under some invisible lash.
"I—I'm afraid you're ill. I'll get some one."
Mrs. Franklin said it with her lips—mechanically. It was the thing she had to say, because she was a civilised human being. But she knew that once she got outside this room she would never come back. She would run—run as from a nightmare. Then, as she half turned, the woman lifted her head and looked at her queerly—as though she understood, almost with pity.
"It's my time come, lady—my time—that's wot it is."
"I'll get some one."
"There ain't no one, lady. They've gone to the pit's 'ead—to their men."
She lay still, an inert heap on the stone floor. Mrs. Franklin ran to her. She half lifted her, half dragged her into the adjoining room. It was awful. The bones of her arms cracked; her muscles ached. She felt that she was going to be sick. The room was dirty with neglect, and there was the acrid smell of a tortured human body. But somehow it was done at last. The woman lay outstretched on the frowsy, tumbled bed. She was quite quiet. Now that her features were composed and the fair hair lay spread out upon the pillow, there was a kind of austere power and dignity in her clumsy ugliness. One hand, drenched with an icy sweat, held Mrs. Franklin's hand so that she dared not move. But she did not want to move. She was breathless, and the old nausea rose and fell in her throat like a tide. But she was oddly content. She had managed. She was little and delicate, and she had lifted this big woman by herself. And the woman clung to her. Nobody had ever clung to her before. She was helpless before the coming crisis. She did not know what to do. She was quite ignorant. She was weighed with a responsibility beyond her strength. She had never been responsible in her life. And yet this woman held her close—as though she trusted her—found comfort in her—— It was very strange—rather touching.
Mrs. Franklin looked down shyly at the hand that held hers. It was a large hand, not unshapely. It made Mrs. Franklin's hand feel very small and white. The woman's eyes opened. They were blue like a sky washed with rain. They were kind, good eyes. One saw that after all she was quite young and perhaps one day would be comely again. She and Mrs. Franklin looked at each other steadily for a long time. Mrs. Franklin never knew what passed between them, or why, suddenly, against her will, without her knowledge, she bent down, whispering:
"It's going to be all right now. I'm here——"
There were voices in the other room, a shuffling of feet. Mrs. Franklin took the candle from the table and went out, closing the door softly. By the flickering light she recognised the man who had spoken to her on the roadside. And there were other men crowding in behind him. He stared at her. At first he was incredulous. Then she saw anger flame up in his scowling eyes.
"You here!"
She nodded. She had wanted to slap his face—vulgarly, incredibly, like an angry fish-wife. That was over. She had the whiphand. She was out of reach.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, "Your horse has been found and sent back to wherever you belong. Better get out of this sharp."
"Thanks. Presently."
"At once, please. You've no business here. They're bringing a man in—maybe a dying man."
She put her hand up. "Please be quiet. She's asleep now. You mustn't wake her."
"She's got to know."
"Not now. There—there's a baby."
He continued to stare at her. No one had ever looked at her like that before. Not as at something to be worshipped, but as at something to be fought. "It's no place for you. We don't want your kind round here."
She had meant to go. She had thought how sweet it would be to stretch her aching body between the clean, cool sheets of the Elizabethan bed. Her expression was composed and obstinate as she looked back over her shoulder.
"I'll go when there's some one fit to take my place," she said, "—and you're not."
She closed the door noiselessly against him.
VI
The Eliots' car, sent down to fetch her, brought her home at midnight. All the windows of Ravello were alight and stared out affrightedly watching for her. The servants fluttered like bats about the hall, carrying tea and hot-water bottles to her room. Mrs. Eliot herself had, as she expressed it, "taken the liberty" of waiting in the drawing-room in case there was anything she could do. It was as though something enormous had happened. Mrs. Eliot, for the first time in their long acquaintanceship, kissed Mrs. Franklin. She was so agitated and motherly that she forgot how shy she was.
"You poor, poor thing. All alone. And among these dreadful strikers. When I heard, I sent Joseph down at once."
"So kind of you," murmured Mrs. Franklin vaguely.
She caught sight of a complete stranger in a long Venetian glass opposite—a scarecrow stranger in a mud-stained riding-suit, the stock of which, torn off in the heat of that long battle, hung limply from a gaping pocket. Her hair had come down, and she had tied it back in an untidy loop. Her face was smeared with dirt and heat—comically, incredibly dirty. She was so aghast that she hugged Mrs. Eliot, who went away with tears in her eyes, saying to herself:
"Poor soul—we shall be friends now!"
And she had visions of long talks, together, of sharing intimately in that perfect love-story.
Mrs. Franklin sent the servants to bed. She lingered about in Harry's room. She felt oddly uneasy and ashamed. The room had changed. It didn't approve. It stood aloof from her. It accused her. She had broken the solemn ritual of her days. She had become an ugly discord in the perfect harmony. She stood, warming her dirt-stained hands by the fire, and said, "Harry—oh, my darling!" over and over again, trying to call him back to her, trying to piece together her shattered personality.
For the first time since Harry's death she had not read anything that Harry loved. Remorse stabbed her to tears of physical pain. She took down Shelley from the book-shelf, and it opened inevitably at Harry's favorite poem.
"Peace—peace—he is not dead——"
How beautiful that was! How Harry had loved beautiful things! She had never seen such a tiny baby. It was hard to believe that it could really live. But the doctor seemed quite sure, and he was a nice man. He had complimented her. Nothing could have been better, he had said.
"—Awakened from the dream of life——"
Her limbs ached. She yawned with unfamiliar, delicious weariness. Perhaps, if she read in bed——? Harry would understand. After a hot bath she would be herself again. "Oh, Harry—my darling!"
Presently she lay clean and sleek between the cool sheets. The lamp burned peacefully behind her. She began to read earnestly. "Peace—peace——" Why, she had read that before—over and over again. What did it mean? Harry was dead. She couldn't believe it—or was it that she couldn't believe he had ever been alive?
Everything seemed vague and misty and unreal. Only that squalid, little room with the woman and that incredibly small baby and the man moaning on a makeshift bed by the kitchen fire. But he wouldn't die either, the doctor had assured her. ""Only a couple of broken ribs, my dear lady——"
Only a couple of broken ribs! How extraordinary to talk like that! Were people always breaking their ribs—the people who didn't live at River's End?
"—He has awakened from the dream of life——"
Was she herself awake or dreaming? Had she really lived through all that—done all that? She recalled the doctor's eyes fixed on her, kindly eyes that paid her a new, intoxicating homage. Her own eyes burned. Heavy fingers were pressing down the lids. She shook herself——
"The inheritors of unfulfilled renown——"
Oh, dear. This was the verse she had always found a little heavy. Though when Harry read it—his beautiful voice—Harry darling—— "The inheritors—the inheritors——" Did it hurt terribly to have your ribs broken? It was an insult to Harry's memory to read like that—not understanding a single word. She would punish herself—go back to the beginning. She only hoped that woman really knew something about babies——
"The dream of life——"
At any rate she looked clean——
Mrs. Franklin was asleep.
VII
Mrs. Eliot called at eleven o'clock the next morning. She found Mrs. Franklin in the library sorting out old stamps from a small, portable safe. Her heart ached for Mrs. Franklin. She looked so tired and listless.
"My dear," Mrs. Eliot murmured, "you must forgive me. So unceremonious. But I was really worried. When I didn't see you run down to bathe—I—I had quite a shock. I felt sure you must be ill. You see—you've always been a sort of timekeeper for us. I used to say to James, 'There goes Mrs. Franklin. It must be eight o'clock.'"
Mrs. Franklin's dark eyes were fixed on her with a strange expression. "I—I overslept," she said.
"Of course, my dear. So natural—after such a dreadful experience."
"It doesn't matter, does it? I shall bathe to-morrow, just as usual."
"Well, dear—you must do as you feel. I wouldn't have worried, only we've just had news that influenza was raging at Tatbury—and—and, of course—I thought of you at once. But I'm sure you will be all right. What a wonderful collection! Of course I don't understand anything about stamps, but I'm sure it must be very valuable."
"Very—at least, I suppose so."
"She's thinking of him," Mrs. Eliot reflected tenderly. "Poor soul!"
Mrs. Franklin let a handful of precious Victorian issues slip through her fingers. "Do people with babies get influenza quicker than other people?" she asked.
Mrs. Eliot laughed out of sheer fright. "My dear—I really don't know. I never thought."
"I suppose babies can get it—new babies?"
Mrs. Eliot was spared a reply. The butler obtruded a bleak and puzzled countenance.
"If you please, ma'am. There's a person wants to see you. He wouldn't give his name."
"What sort of person, Roberts?"
"A sort of—of man, ma'am."
The butler's expression implied the worst, and Mrs. Eliot believed profoundly in the right instinct of butlers. She patted Mrs. Franklin's arm comfortingly.
"Better not, my dear. Don't let yourself be bothered."
Then she saw that Mrs. Franklin had blushed. No, it was not a blush either. It was a flush of anger, of excitement—Mrs. Eliot was too startled to be analytical. But she knew that this was a Mrs. Franklin she had never met before, a Mrs. Franklin who didn't fit into the picture of an almost unearthly romance, and Mrs. Eliot became suddenly fluttered and incoherent.
"Of course—you must do—just as you think, my dear. I'll go. No, no—don't bother about me. I'll let myself out—by the garden—such a lovely garden. If I may—I'll run in again—this evening."
As Mrs. Eliot went down the veranda steps, she caught a glimpse of the man who came into the room behind her—an extraordinary, horrid-looking man. And Mrs. Eliot went off shaking in every limb. She was sure now that something terrible was hanging over Ravello. Perhaps money trouble. Perhaps Mrs. Franklin had put her money into the hands of bad people. So innocent—so helpless. And yet that flush——! Oh, if only Harry Franklin were alive! If only Ravello would remain what it had always been—unspotted from the world—the shrine of little Mrs. Eliot's own secret love-story.
Meantime Mrs. Franklin confronted her visitor. She found herself rather roughly and hastily shovelling the stamps back into their box. She discovered that she did not want him to see them. But he was not looking at her at all, but about him, at the room, with an expression which might have made her very angry again. He was haggard and dishevelled like a man who has not slept. His collar was dirty. Such a person had never crossed the threshold of Harry Franklin's home. He was on her ground and at a disadvantage. She could afford to be tolerant.
He turned at her at last unsmilingly. "I didn't give you my name," he said. "If I had, you wouldn't have seen me."
"Why not?" she asked.
"My name's McAndrew—John McAndrew."
"Oh I didn't know."
"Never heard of me?"
"I'm sorry."
"I've been running the strike down there. Perhaps you didn't know there was a strike?"
"Not till yesterday."
He gave a short laugh. "Well, that beats everything. You're wonderful, you people. A man might drop down dead outside your house and if he wasn't your sort, you wouldn't notice it."
"I've never been interested in—in industrial matters," she explained coolly.
"I bet you haven't. You don't use electricity or coal, do you? You don't draw dividends. No, I guess industry's not in your line."
She felt how easy it was for her to remain calm and well-mannered. Everything was on her side against him. "Perhaps you would like to tell me what the strike was about," she suggested kindly.
"Food. Food to live. Never heard of anybody worrying about anything so gross as food? Well, that's what it was about. It's all over now. Don't bother to pretend interest."
She knew that he wanted to hurt, and that gave her an additional advantage. Her voice was little and cool.
"That's hardly fair, is it, Mr. McAndrew? I didn't pass by on the other side yesterday. But you did."
He lashed out at her. "Aha—you're mighty proud of that, no doubt. You'll brag about it to your soul to your days' end. The Good Samaritan. The fine lady who soiled her pretty hands for the poor woman! Damn the crowd of you! Whetting your virtues on our misery."
"Mr. McAndrew!"
He had drawn blood. She wanted to strike back—to hurt, fair means or foul. And then, amazingly, she was sorry. She did not know why this uncouth, angry man should suddenly make her sorry. His weariness and dishevelment put his surroundings in the wrong. They became insolent. She had a queer impulse to defend him from them—from herself. She made a little, conciliatory gesture.
"Mr. McAndrew, don't let's be rude to each other. It doesn't help. What is it you came for? Won't you at least sit down and tell me?"
He shook his head. "I didn't come to call. Besides"—he gave the Elizabethan chair an ironic glance—"I'm too tired to sit down on a thing like that. No, I'll say what I have to say and and be gone. I dropped in on the Pauls this morning. Mrs. Paul told me you had promised to come back. Well, you can't. The whole place is riddled with the epidemic. It's natural enough. They've no strength to fight it. By the time it's finished those that are left can turn grave diggers.
A rare Labrador fluttered from Mrs. Franklin's fingers to the floor. Presently the draft carried it out through the open window, and it was lost. Mrs. Franklin said under her breath, "Mrs. Paul!"
"Yes. She's got it. Bad. And the woman who was to have looked after her. It was like a stroke of lightning."
"The baby——?"
"Not much chance for that—— Well, I've told you."
"You could have telephoned."
He met the thrust, his eyes fixing her with a defiant stare. "I wanted to make sure."
"Thank you."
He had turned to go. At the door he swung round scowling. "What d'you mean?"
"What should I mean? I've thanked you, haven't I?"
"You're damned obstinate. I've got your back up. You'd go—just to make me mad. Well—your friends won't thank you—bringing back the infection."
"I shan't bring it back. If I go—I'll stay there."
"Bravado—bravado."
She rang the bell. She was trembling with excitement—with fear—with sheer temper. "You're very stupid, Mr. McAndrew. I like Mrs. Paul and her baby. If there's no one to look after them, I must. I suppose you did not walk here?"
"No—I had a sort of cart."
"Then you can drive me back with you."
"I'm damned if I will."
He had shouted at her. The exquisite dignity of the room was convulsed and shattered by his shouting. Nothing could ever be the same again.
"You'd rather Tatbury was wiped out," Mrs. Franklin said fiercely, "—rather than that I should help. But you can't stop me. Roberts—ask Mrs. Eliot if she will lend me her limousine—at once."
McAndrew threw up his head. "God in Heaven—a limousine!"
"It will get there quicker than your—your sort of cart."
Roberts had vanished as he had come, noiseless, aghast. They remained alone, facing each other like wrestlers who have broken apart after a breathless struggle. Gradually the red rage died out of his face. He measured her deliberately, wistfully. And she knew that for once it was not her beauty, either of mind or body that was being measured.
"Well, anyway," he said, "you've got nerve."
VIII
River's-End heard and did not believe. And then it had to believe. Mrs. Franklin was living in Tatbury—in a miner's cottage, nursing, organising, running cheek by jowl with a vulgar demagogue. Rumour had it that she herself had gone down before the epidemic and that it was touch and go with her. River's-End sent kind messages and said, "How sad!" But it couldn't forgive. It was as though she had stolen something from them.
"She has forgotten him already," they said.
Only Mrs. Eliot stood up for her. "No—no—it's her way of remembering," she pleaded.
But when she looked out of her top window at the lovely, empty garden, she cried absurdly.
Mrs. Franklin came home two months later. She had gone down a Dresden China shepherdess, for all her forty years with the peach bloom of girlhood on her cheek, and she came back a middle-aged woman with tired, aware eyes and grey in her black hair. She came on foot at dusk and she crept into the beautiful, still house like a thief. She stood in Harry Franklin's library and looked about her. She thought how comforting it would be if only there were a deep, big chair to lie back in and rest. But it wouldn't have fitted in with the room's austerity. It wouldn't have belonged to the period. She didn't belong either. Any moment she expected some one to come in and say:
"You mustn't stay here. Don't you see that you're all wrong?"
She wandered about, touching familiar objects that had become strange. Harry's stamps—Harry's books—they seemed to her without beauty, without meaning. Or their meaning was like a thing suspended in mid-air, without foundations. And nothing was beautiful that did not have its roots in Tatbury.
She closed her eyes and whispered, "Oh, Harry, I thought of you always—always!" as she had done a hundred times during these bitter weeks, but now she knew that it is easier to lie to the living than to the dead.
She had changed. Everything else had stayed just as it was. She remembered the night the news had come of Harry's death. How gladly she had come into this beautiful room. Not a chair or table had moved, even to the fresh-cut flowers—even to the telegram waiting for her, like a scorpion——
IX
Harry Franklin was coming home. He had been thrown, dying, into a Turkish prison and had lived to escape. It was strange that River's-End, not given to profound analysis, should have stood aghast before his homecoming as before a culminating tragedy.
Little Mrs. Eliot fell ill. Nobody knew what was the matter with her. She just flagged—didn't seem to care any more about anything. And James took her to the seaside.
John McAndrew heard and came up the same night. He said curtly—not so much as touching her hand—"What are you going to do?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"Going back to that poodle's life?"
"I can't."
The wide-eyed despair of her shattered his assumed roughness. He came toward her, stammering, pleading
"Come with me."
"I can't, either." She had her hand pressed against her heart. "That's the awful thing—I love him. I never loved any one else. That's real."
"Come with me. We belong together. We're of the same stuff. We could do things—out in the world."
She shook her head. And because he knew her he let his outstretched hands drop. He was a shrewd, hard man, and he did not struggle.
"Well, we've been enemies," he said. "I dare say we shall be enemies again. I didn't think I could learn to love and respect anybody of your sort. I've learned a lot I shan't forget. Most of all—I know that you can fight." He hesitated, as though he were afraid, "And you—are you sorry? I suppose you must be. It's all smashed—your pretty dream."
She was silent a moment, her hands pressed tight together as though she were trying to hold the truth between them. "Yes—it's all gone. I've lost my husband—I suppose I'm going to smash everything for him, too. But I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't. It seems to me now—I was a bad woman."
She was crying, very quietly, not seeming to know that she was crying, the tears rolling slow and unheeded down her white, thin cheeks. He looked away from her—around him—at the calm loveliness of it all and this time he did not sneer. А transfiguring pity lit up the hard face.
"God help you, my dear!"
And he was gone.
X
She went down to the docks to meet Harry Franklin's boat. She watched it manœuvring its way out of the grey mist toward its berth, and said, "God help me!" under her breath, over and over again like some one in desperate pain. She could see Harry, standing by the bulwarks, watching the shore line with glad, hungry eyes. She could see him come toward her and feel his arms about her—so young and gallant and magnificently happy.
And she was a little, middle-aged woman—rather tired, rather sad, burdened with knowledge.
She wasn't his wife, his companion, any more. She was his mother. She loved him deeply with an aching heart. He was a fairy-tale boy who had wanted to live forever with her in a fairy-tale palace. And for her it had become a prison.
He wouldn't understand. He would see his treasures put aside like old toys—his books untouched. And all around him would be the intruding signs of her new life—the commonplace, ugly paraphernalia of worldly, material things—and he would turn to her with hurt, astonished eyes——
"You had forgotten——"
No, not really. Never. She would hold him close to her, pleading for herself. "They were dear to me because you loved them—they're beautiful and good—but I can't fill my life with them any more—not even with you—not even with our love and yet, oh, my dear, I have nothing but you in the whole world——"
He would only see that she had been unfaithful—had forsaken him. She had gone after other gods. Perhaps they would go on living together—but never again in that perfect harmony. The perfect marriage would become just one more marriage—a makeshift, one more partnership of unequal partners, stumbling in their pitiful efforts to keep step.
Or should she make the sacrifice of her integrity—lie to him, pretend like a mother playing with her child—sell her vision of life so that his should be untroubled? No—no—that wasn't worthy of her—nor worthy of his real dignity. She would have to say to him:
"This is what I have become. What are we to do?"
She would lose him. And she would love him till she died.
Other watchers wondered why the faded, middle-aged woman looked so sad—as though the grey, oncoming ship were bringing her only black sorrow.
It came gliding heavily alongside. There were people crowded against the bulwarks waving—calling—— She grew dizzy and blind with fear. Oh, God—if he had only died—for both their sakes! A gangway was let down. They came swarming down—these faceless, meaningless figures. They were welcomed—kissed—jokes fluttered about them—little, tremulous jokes of happy people. Mrs. Franklin did not move. She stood there with clenched hands.
A man came down the gangway. Very slowly. A steward was helping him. A bearded, elderly man, gaunt-cheeked—stooping—grey-looking. She watched him, fascinated. She saw his hand rest on the gangway rope—a beautiful, white hand grown thin—grown old. His eyes lifted from the painfully taken steps. They were the eyes of some one who has suffered and seen great suffering. They searched the crowd—face by face. It was though she were looking into her own mirror. That same hunger—the same deadly fear——
She called his name. He turned toward her. For an instant they remained motionless, staring at each other.
Then she was in his arms—laughing and crying.