A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

It was too late to do anything that night—and there might not be anything serious to do. Mary told the maid that she could go. She remembered Florrie; she was the child with the nice smile and the pretty flower-like face whom she had seen in the Chelsea depot six months ago. When Miss Percival came next day they would go to Exe Street together. The only thing to be decided now was whether she should show the letter to James. She decided, after slight hesitation, that she would not.

[CHAPTER VI]

MARY woke next morning to a feeling of uneasiness, so that she knew, before she could remember why, that she must brace herself to meet a disagreeable day. Then the sight of her maid, trim and composed, looping back her window curtains, reminded her of Florrie's letter. That was bad enough, but she soon realised that she could only turn from it to other anxieties. What had happened to the poor pretty child, what was James thinking, and what was Mary herself going to say to Miss Percival?

She tried to dismiss this last annoyance by telling herself that she was a coward. Miss Percival, as a secretary, could not seem curious about what her employers, in their Olympian privacy, had said to one another, and she must necessarily put the best face on what she was told. But this was small relief to Mary, who had so little need to dread harsh words that she had trained herself to reckon with thoughts. She now felt the weight of Miss Percival's private disappointment more severely than that lady seemed likely to feel it for herself. But after all, this was nothing compared to her disloyalty to James. She had pretended that she did not hear James when he opened her door last night, and he had gone away, believing that she was asleep. She dressed quickly now, to avoid meeting James in her own room. In the dining-room she would be better able to persuade herself that she hadn't, practically, deceived him. Keeping back Florrie's letter she did not consider deceit; she was accustomed to use her judgment in the matter of shielding James from worry, but the other affected their emotional relations.

In the dining-room she found Rosemary, unexpectedly in time for breakfast. It was one of Rosemary's charming gifts that she could saunter downstairs at noon with the air of dewy freshness proper to an Arcadian milkmaid. Trent was there too, for Trent counterbalanced his sister's masculine carelessness of time by a beautiful punctuality. Their presence shielded Mary from the affection which James, had they been by themselves, would certainly have shown. After her first relief it seemed terrible to Mary that she should be thus welcoming obstacles between herself and the display of James's love. She tried in vain to assure herself that she didn't feel guilty, that her heart beat faster not for James, but for poor little Florrie, that if it cost her an effort to look up from her coffee pot it was merely because she did not wish to trouble her daughter with the anxieties that destroyed her own appetite. She knew all the same that somewhere, in her thoughts, in her actions, she had overstepped an ancient boundary; if she was not yet disloyal she was running the risk of disloyalty. At any rate she was allowing herself, unknown to James, a new attitude of mind which, when he came to realise it, he might not share.

In a moment James would be there! Mary forced her mind back to the table in front of her, poured herself out some coffee, put in two lumps of the sugar she detested, drank it, and then blushed crimson at the proof she found of her own preoccupation. She looked up, instinctively, but no one had noticed her. Rosemary was eating bacon; Trent was reading the Times with an air of kindly tolerance. Trent would dearly have loved to be a Unionist, for the Unionist assumptions soothed his gentlemanly instincts, but he could not see his way to anything but loss from a protective tariff. Trent dealt in luxuries; if he charged more for his cakes his customers would eat fewer. He could picture them, in all their plebeian meanness, eyeing the dish and stilling their appetites with the saw that too many sweet things are bad for the teeth. But the article he was reading did not allude to this cause of stumbling, and his complacent smile turned Mary's uneasiness to a wave of irritation. Why, she asked herself, had she a fool for a son? What was there wrong with him, or with his surroundings, that after twenty-six years of life, with health, with plenty of money, his mind should have acquired nothing from experience but the simple cunning of an animal? She seemed, for the moment, to detach herself from Trent, to see him as coolly as though she were not his mother, pledged to admire him. His fault, poor youth, was that of being slow to receive impressions. He had will and capacity and application, good qualities that came from within, but the walls of his mind had no windows. His dogmas, his attitudes, he took from the children with whom he had been at school; when Trent was an old man his spirit would still be that of a little boy in a lower form. Other women congratulated her upon having a son so handsome, with such good brains, who would deign to become his father's right hand and live quietly at home. Other women's sons went into the army, at best, or they brushed their hair back from their foreheads and spent money in ways their mothers couldn't approve, or, having brains, they caused great anxiety by thinking with them.... Mary had always pitied the mothers of these young men, but now, with a pang, she realised that beneath their smoothness they might have pitied her, have thanked heaven that their boys weren't sticks like poor Mrs. Heyham's.

At this point Trent put down his Times and asked her pleasantly for some more coffee. Mary, as she took his cup, felt a wave of self-reproach. What had happened that she should be bitter like this? He was a good boy, a dear boy, as handsome as possible, and as fond of her, and for his affection she had given him secret contempt. She was, as a matter of fact, the luckiest woman she knew. She looked across at Rosemary, to fortify this feeling, and was rewarded by a pleasant picture. The blue dress the child wore showed the clear tones of her skin and the long lines of her chin and throat. Mary loved Rosemary's chin; there was a soft place underneath it where she had always kissed her when she was a baby. The engagement ring Mary hated was out of sight. That was a pretty thing to have at one's breakfast table—Mary felt that she must talk and be cheerful instead of letting the meal pass in silence. "Have either of you seen your father?" she said, to this end.

Rosemary looked up. "He's gone. He had something to see to down at the works. He had breakfast at eight. And he wants your car at twelve as Trent is using his to-day."

To Mary this came as a fresh proof of her own unkindness. Poor James, away working for them all before she was down, gone without a kiss or a good-bye because he was considerate of her sleep! Gone without a suspicion that his wife had been criticising him and practically lying to him! Mary's impulse to talk passed. She was humbled; she hardly felt relieved when she realised that she would not have to face him until a day lay between her and her deceit.

Meanwhile Rosemary had come to the end of the table and was bending down to kiss her mother. "Good-bye, darling!" she was saying, "I'll be back to dinner on Monday. I'm going for a walk in the Mendips with Margaret, you know. I've never seen them; they ought to be lovely in this weather."