CHAPTER V
THE MOTHER AND THE SON
To Mrs. Pendyce, Chelsea was an unknown land, and to find her way to George’s rooms would have taken her long had she been by nature what she was by name, for Pendyces never asked their way to anything, or believed what they were told, but found out for themselves with much unnecessary trouble, of which they afterwards complained.
A policeman first, and then a young man with a beard, resembling an artist, guided her footsteps. The latter, who was leaning by a gate, opened it.
“In here,” he said; “the door in the corner on the right.”
Mrs. Pendyce walked down the little path, past the ruined fountain with its three stone frogs, and stood by the first green door and waited. And while she waited she struggled between fear and joy; for now that she was away from Mrs. Bellew she no longer felt a sense of insult. It was the actual sight of her that had aroused it, so personal is even the most gentle heart.
She found the rusty handle of a bell amongst the creeper-leaves, and pulled it. A cracked metallic tinkle answered her, but no one came; only a faint sound as of someone pacing to and fro. Then in the street beyond the outer gate a coster began calling to the sky, and in the music of his prayers the sound was lost. The young man with a beard, resembling an artist, came down the path.
“Perhaps you could tell me, sir, if my son is out?”
“I’ve not seen him go out; and I’ve been painting here all the morning.”
Mrs. Pendyce looked with wonder at an easel which stood outside another door a little further on. It seemed to her strange that her son should live in such a place.
“Shall I knock for you?” said the artist. “All these knockers are stiff.”
“If you would be so kind!”
The artist knocked.
“He must be in,” he said. “I haven’t taken my eyes off his door, because I’ve been painting it.”
Mrs. Pendyce gazed at the door.
“I can’t get it,” said the artist. “It’s worrying me to death.”
Mrs. Pendyce looked at him doubtfully.
“Has he no servant?” she said.
“Oh no,” said the artist; “it’s a studio. The light’s all wrong. I wonder if you would mind standing just as you are for one second; it would help me a lot!”
He moved back and curved his hand over his eyes, and through Mrs. Pendyce there passed a shiver.
‘Why doesn’t George open the door?’ she thought. ‘What – what is this man doing?’
The artist dropped his hand.
“Thanks so much!” he said. “I’ll knock again. There! that would raise the dead!”
And he laughed.
An unreasoning terror seized on Mrs. Pendyce.
“Oh,” she stammered, “I must get in – I must get in!”
She took the knocker herself, and fluttered it against the door.
“You see,” said the artist, “they’re all alike; these knockers are as stiff as pokers.”
He again curved his hand over his eyes. Mrs. Pendyce leaned against the door; her knees were trembling violently.
‘What is happening?’ she thought. ‘Perhaps he’s only asleep, perhaps – Oh God!’
She beat the knocker with all her force. The door yielded, and in the space stood George. Choking back a sob, Mrs. Pendyce went in. He banged the door behind her.
For a full minute she did not speak, possessed still by that strange terror and by a sort of shame. She did not even look at her son, but cast timid glances round his room. She saw a gallery at the far end, and a conical roof half made of glass. She saw curtains hanging all the gallery length, a table with tea-things and decanters, a round iron stove, rugs on the floor, and a large full-length mirror in the centre of the wall. A silver cup of flowers was reflected in that mirror. Mrs. Pendyce saw that they were dead, and the sense of their vague and nauseating odour was her first definite sensation.
“Your flowers are dead, my darling,” she said. “I must get you some fresh!”
Not till then did she look at George. There were circles under his eyes; his face was yellow; it seemed to her that it had shrunk. This terrified her, and she thought:
‘I must show nothing; I must keep my head!’
She was afraid – afraid of something desperate in his face, of something desperate and headlong, and she was afraid of his stubbornness, the dumb, unthinking stubbornness that holds to what has been because it has been, that holds to its own when its own is dead. She had so little of this quality herself that she could not divine where it might lead him; but she had lived in the midst of it all her married life, and it seemed natural that her son should be in danger from it now.
Her terror called up her self-possession. She drew George down on the sofa by her side, and the thought flashed through her: ‘How many times has he not sat here with that woman in his arms!’
“You didn’t come for me last night, dear! I got the tickets, such good ones!”
George smiled.
“No,” he said; “I had something else to see to!”
At sight of that smile Margery Pendyce’s heart beat till she felt sick, but she, too, smiled.
“What a nice place you have here, darling!”
“There’s room to walk about.”
Mrs. Pendyce remembered the sound she had heard of pacing to and fro. From his not asking her how she had found out where he lived she knew that he must have guessed where she had been, that there was nothing for either of them to tell the other. And though this was a relief, it added to her terror – the terror of that which is desperate. All sorts of images passed through her mind. She saw George back in her bedroom after his first run with the hounds, his chubby cheek scratched from forehead to jaw, and the bloodstained pad of a cub fox in his little gloved hand. She saw him sauntering into her room the last day of the 1880 match at Lord’s, with a battered top-hat, a blackened eye, and a cane with a light-blue tassel. She saw him deadly pale with tightened lips that afternoon after he had escaped from her, half cured of laryngitis, and stolen out shooting by himself, and she remembered his words: “Well, Mother, I couldn’t stand it any longer; it was too beastly slow!”
Suppose he could not stand it now! Suppose he should do something rash! She took out her handkerchief.
“It’s very hot in here, dear; your forehead is quite wet!”
She saw his eyes turn on her suspiciously, and all her woman’s wit stole into her own eyes, so that they did not flicker, but looked at him with matter-of-fact concern.
“That skylight is what does it,” he said. “The sun gets full on there.”
Mrs. Pendyce looked at the skylight.
“It seems odd to see you here, dear, but it’s very nice – so unconventional. You must let me put away those poor flowers!” She went to the silver cup and bent over them. “My dear boy, they’re quite nasty! Do throw them outside somewhere; it’s so dreadful, the smell of old flowers!”
She held the cup out, covering her nose with her handkerchief.
George took the cup, and like a cat spying a mouse, Mrs. Pendyce watched him take it out into the garden. As the door closed, quicker, more noiseless than a cat, she slipped behind the curtains.
‘I know he has a pistol,’ she thought.
She was back in an instant, gliding round the room, hunting with her eyes and hands, but she saw nothing, and her heart lightened, for she was terrified of all such things.
‘It’s only these terrible first hours,’ she thought.
When George came back she was standing where he had left her. They sat down in silence, and in that silence, the longest of her life, she seemed to feel all that was in his heart, all the blackness and bitter aching, the rage of defeat and starved possession, the lost delight, the sensation of ashes and disgust; and yet her heart was full enough already of relief and shame, compassion, jealousy, love, and deep longing. Only twice was the silence broken. Once when he asked her whether she had lunched, and she who had eaten nothing all day answered:
“Yes, dear – yes.”
Once when he said:
“You shouldn’t have come here, Mother; I’m a bit out of sorts!”
She watched his face, dearest to her in all the world, bent towards the floor, and she so yearned to hold it to her breast that, since she dared not, the tears stole up, and silently rolled down her cheeks. The stillness in that room, chosen for remoteness, was like the stillness of a tomb, and, as in a tomb, there was no outlook on the world, for the glass of the skylight was opaque.
That deathly stillness settled round her heart; her eyes fixed themselves on the skylight, as though beseeching it to break and let in sound. A cat, making a pilgrimage from roof to roof, the four dark moving spots of its paws, the faint blur of its body, was all she saw. And suddenly, unable to bear it any longer, she cried:
“Oh, George, speak to me! Don’t put me away from you like this!”
George answered:
“What do you want me to say, Mother?”
“Nothing – only – ”
And falling on her knees beside her son, she pulled his head down against her breast, and stayed rocking herself to and fro, silently shifting closer till she could feel his head lie comfortably; so, she had his face against her heart, and she could not bear to let it go. Her knees hurt her on the boarded floor, her back and all her body ached; but not for worlds would she relax an inch, believing that she could comfort him with her pain, and her tears fell on his neck. When at last he drew his face away she sank down on the floor, and could not rise, but her fingers felt that the bosom of her dress was wet. He said hoarsely:
“It’s all right, Mother; you needn’t worry!”
For no reward would she have looked at him just then, but with a deeper certainty than reason she knew that he was safe.
Stealthily on the sloping skylight the cat retraced her steps, its four paws dark moving spots, its body a faint blur.
Mrs. Pendyce rose.
“I won’t stay now, darling. May I use your glass?”
Standing before that mirror, smoothing back her hair, passing her handkerchief over her cheeks and eyes and lips, she thought:
‘That woman has stood here! That woman has smoothed her hair, looking in this glass, and wiped his kisses from her cheeks! May God give to her the pain that she has given to my son!’
But when she had wished that wish she shivered.
She turned to George at the door with a smile that seemed to say:
‘It’s no good to weep, or try and tell you what is in my heart, and so, you see, I’m smiling. Please smile, too, so as to comfort me a little.’
George put a small paper parcel in her hand and tried to smile.
Mrs. Pendyce went quickly out. Bewildered by the sunlight, she did not look at this parcel till she was beyond the outer gate. It contained an amethyst necklace, an emerald pendant, and a diamond ring. In the little grey street that led to this garden with its poplars, old fountain, and green gate, the jewels glowed and sparkled as though all light and life had settled there. Mrs. Pendyce, who loved colour and glowing things, saw that they were beautiful.
That woman had taken them, used their light and colour, and then flung them back! She wrapped them again in the paper, tied the string, and went towards the river. She did not hurry, but walked with her eyes steadily before her. She crossed the Embankment, and stood leaning on the parapet with her hands over the grey water. Her thumb and fingers unclosed; the white parcel dropped, floated a second, and then disappeared.
Mrs. Pendyce looked round her with a start.
A young man with a beard, whose face was familiar, was raising his hat.
“So your son was in,” he said. “I’m very glad. I must thank you again for standing to me just that minute; it made all the difference. It was the relation between the figure and the door that I wanted to get. Good-morning!”
Mrs. Pendyce murmured “Good-morning,” following him with startled eyes, as though he had caught her in the commission of a crime. She had a vision of those jewels, buried, poor things! in the grey slime, a prey to gloom, and robbed for ever of their light and colour. And, as though she had sinned, wronged the gentle essence of her nature, she hurried away.
CHAPTER VI
GREGORY LOOKS AT THE SKY
Gregory Vigil called Mr. Paramor a pessimist it was because, like other people, he did not know the meaning of, the term; for with a confusion common to the minds of many persons who have been conceived in misty moments, he thought that, to see things as they were, meant, to try and make them worse. Gregory had his own way of seeing things that was very dear to him – so dear that he would shut his eyes sooner than see them any other way. And since things to him were not the same as things to Mr. Paramor, it cannot, after all, be said that he did not see things as they were. But dirt upon a face that he wished to be clean he could not see – a fluid in his blue eyes dissolved that dirt while the image of the face was passing on to their retinae. The process was unconscious, and has been called idealism. This was why the longer he reflected the more agonisedly certain he became that his ward was right to be faithful to the man she loved, right to join her life to his. And he went about pressing the blade of this thought into his soul.
About four o’clock on the day of Mrs. Pendyce’s visit to the studio a letter was brought him by a page-boy.
“GREEN’S HOTEL,
“Thursday.
“DEAR GRIG,
“I have seen Helen Bellew, and have just come from George. We have all been living in a bad dream. She does not love him – perhaps has never loved him. I do not know; I do not wish to judge. She has given him up. I will not trust myself to say anything about that. From beginning to end it all seems so unnecessary, such a needless, cross-grained muddle. I write this line to tell you how things really are, and to beg you, if you have a moment to spare, to look in at George’s club this evening and let me know if he is there and how he seems. There is no one else that I could possibly ask to do this for me. Forgive me if this letter pains you.
“Your affectionate cousin,
“MARGERY PENDYCE.”
To those with the single eye, the narrow personal view of all things human, by whom the irony underlying the affairs of men is unseen and unenjoyed, whose simple hearts afford that irony its most precious smiles, who; vanquished by that irony, remain invincible – to these no blow of Fate, no reversal of their ideas, can long retain importance. The darts stick, quaver, and fall off, like arrows from chain-armour, and the last dart, slipping upwards under the harness, quivers into the heart to the cry of “What – you! No, no; I don’t believe you’re here!”
Such as these have done much of what has had to be done in this old world, and perhaps still more of what has had to be undone.
When Gregory received this letter he was working on the case of a woman with the morphia habit. He put it into his pocket and went on working. It was all he was capable of doing.
“Here is the memorandum, Mrs. Shortman. Let them take her for six weeks. She will come out a different woman.”
Mrs. Shortman, supporting her thin face in her thin hand, rested her glowing eyes on Gregory.
“I’m afraid she has lost all moral sense,” she said. “Do you know, Mr. Vigil, I’m almost afraid she never had any!”
“What do you mean?”
Mrs. Shortman turned her eyes away.
“I’m sometimes tempted to think,” she said, “that there are such people. I wonder whether we allow enough for that. When I was a girl in the country I remember the daughter of our vicar, a very pretty creature. There were dreadful stories about her, even before she was married, and then we heard she was divorced. She came up to London and earned her own living by playing the piano until she married again. I won’t tell you her name, but she is very well known, and nobody has ever seen her show the slightest signs of being ashamed. If there is one woman like that there may be dozens, and I sometimes think we waste – ”
Gregory said dryly:
“I have heard you say that before.”
Mrs. Shortman bit her lips.
“I don’t think,” she said, “that I grudge my efforts or my time.”
Gregory went quickly up, and took her hand.
“I know that – oh, I know that,” he said with feeling.
The sound of Miss Mallow furiously typing rose suddenly from the corner. Gregory removed his hat from the peg on which it hung.
“I must go now,” he said. “Good-night.”
Without warning, as is the way with hearts, his heart had begun to bleed, and he felt that he must be in the open air. He took no omnibus or cab, but strode along with all his might, trying to think, trying to understand. But he could only feel-confused and battered feelings, with now and then odd throbs of pleasure of which he was ashamed. Whether he knew it or not, he was making his way to Chelsea, for though a man’s eyes may be fixed on the stars, his feet cannot take him there, and Chelsea seemed to them the best alternative. He was not alone upon this journey, for many another man was going there, and many a man had been and was coming now away, and the streets were the one long streaming crowd of the summer afternoon. And the men he met looked at Gregory, and Gregory looked at them, and neither saw the other, for so it is written of men, lest they pay attention to cares that are not their own. The sun that scorched his face fell on their backs, the breeze that cooled his back blew on their cheeks. For the careless world, too, was on its way, along the pavement of the universe, one of millions going to Chelsea, meeting millions coming away…
“Mrs. Bellew at home?”
He went into a room fifteen feet square and perhaps ten high, with a sulky canary in a small gilt cage, an upright piano with an open operatic score, a sofa with piled-up cushions, and on it a woman with a flushed and sullen face, whose elbows were resting on her knees, whose chin was resting on her hand, whose gaze was fixed on nothing. It was a room of that size, with all these things, but Gregory took into it with him some thing that made it all seem different to Gregory. He sat down by the window with his eyes carefully averted, and spoke in soft tones broken by something that sounded like emotion. He began by telling her of his woman with the morphia habit, and then he told her that he knew everything. When he had said this he looked out of the window, where builders had left by inadvertence a narrow strip of sky. And thus he avoided seeing the look on her face, contemptuous, impatient, as though she were thinking: ‘You are a good fellow, Gregory, but for Heaven’s sake do see things for once as they are! I have had enough of it.’ And he avoided seeing her stretch her arms out and spread the fingers, as an angry cat will stretch and spread its toes. He told her that he did not want to worry her, but that when she wanted him for anything she must send for him – he was always there; and he looked at her feet, so that he did not see her lip curl. He told her that she would always be the same to him, and he asked her to believe that. He did not see the smile which never left her lips again while he was there – the smile he could not read, because it was the smile of life, and of a woman that he did not understand. But he did see on that sofa a beautiful creature for whom he had longed for years, and so he went away, and left her standing at the door with her teeth fastened on her lip: And since with him Gregory took his eyes, he did not see her reseated on the sofa, just as she had been before he came in, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hand, her moody eyes like those of a gambler staring into the distance…
In the streets of tall houses leading away from Chelsea were many men, some, like Gregory, hungry for love, and some hungry for bread – men in twos and threes, in crowds, or by themselves, some with their eyes on the ground, some with their eyes level, some with their eyes on the sky, but all with courage and loyalty of one poor kind or another in their hearts. For by courage and loyalty alone it is written that man shall live, whether he goes to Chelsea or whether he comes away. Of all these men, not one but would have smiled to hear Gregory saying to himself: “She will always be the same to me! She will always be the same to me!” And not one that would have grinned…
It was getting on for the Stoics’ dinner hour when Gregory found himself in Piccadilly, and, Stoic after Stoic, they were getting out of cabs and passing the club doors. The poor fellows had been working hard all day on the racecourse, the cricket-ground, at Hurlingham, or in the Park; some had been to the Royal Academy, and on their faces was a pleasant look: “Ah, God is good – we can rest at last!” And many of them had had no lunch, hoping to keep their weights down, and many who had lunched had not done themselves as well as might be hoped, and some had done themselves too well; but in all their hearts the trust burned bright that they might do themselves better at dinner, for their God was good, and dwelt between the kitchen and the cellar of the Stoics’ Club. And all – for all had poetry in their souls – looked forward to those hours in paradise when, with cigars between their lips, good wine below, they might dream the daily dream that comes to all true Stoics for about fifteen shillings or even less, all told.
From a little back slum, within two stones’ throw of the god of the Stoics’ Club, there had come out two seamstresses to take the air; one was in consumption, having neglected to earn enough to feed herself properly for some years past, and the other looked as if she would be in consumption shortly, for the same reason. They stood on the pavement, watching the cabs drive up. Some of the Stoics saw them and thought: ‘Poor girls! they look awfully bad.’ Three or four said to themselves: “It oughtn’t to be allowed. I mean, it’s so painful to see; and it’s not as if one could do anything. They’re not beggars, don’t you know, and so what can one do?”
But most of the Stoics did not look at them at all, feeling that their soft hearts could not stand these painful sights, and anxious not to spoil their dinners. Gregory did not see them either, for it so happened that he was looking at the sky, and just then the two girls crossed the road and were lost among the passers-by, for they were not dogs, who could smell out the kind of man he was.
“Mr. Pendyce is in the club; I will send your name up, sir.” And rolling a little, as though Gregory’s name were heavy, the porter gave it to the boy, who went away with it.
Gregory stood by the empty hearth and waited, and while he waited, nothing struck him at all, for the Stoics seemed very natural, just mere men like himself, except that their clothes were better, which made him think: ‘I shouldn’t care to belong here and have to dress for dinner every night.’
“Mr. Pendyce is very sorry, sir, but he’s engaged.”
Gregory bit his lip, said “Thank you,” and went away.
‘That’s all Margery wants,’ he thought; ‘the rest is nothing to me,’ and, getting on a bus, he fixed his eyes once more on the sky.
But George was not engaged. Like a wounded animal taking its hurt for refuge to its lair, he sat in his favourite window overlooking Piccadilly. He sat there as though youth had left him, unmoving, never lifting his eyes. In his stubborn mind a wheel seemed turning, grinding out his memories to the last grain. And Stoics, who could not bear to see a man sit thus throughout that sacred hour, came up from time to time.
“Aren’t you going to dine, Pendyce?”
Dumb brutes tell no one of their pains; the law is silence. So with George. And as each Stoic came up, he only set his teeth and said:
“Presently, old chap.”