A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

He grunted again and went back to his breakfast. For some minutes they continued to eat their food in silence. Rosemary never argued with her father if she could help it. They were generally on excellent terms, for she found him amusing, indulgent, and on the whole much more enlightened and civilised than one had any right to expect from a father. She was fond of him, and she enjoyed his stories, his quick superficial accounts of his impressions. But he wasn't a person with whom she would ever have become intimate, she had decided, if she had met him casually in the world. He lacked, she felt, the detachment and reserve she admired in her mother. She did not mean to judge him priggishly. She sometimes reminded herself, if she thought she had been harsh, that before very long some other young person would contemplate her failures as a parent with equal detachment. But she did not realise the pitiful nakedness, the defencelessness, of a parent's position. There was no wonder in her mind even as to what poor James was thinking now. It seemed natural to her that life should present itself to her and to her mother under aspects that James could not approve. She knew that he did not like her own ideas, he never had, although he had been charming about them. There was no essential reason, that she could see, why he should like the ideas of her mother. She was busy now planning an interview with Mary. Whatever small support she could give would be at her mother's service. Rosemary admired courage, and she admired all action dictated by principle—she was stirred to find her mother so admirable.

Meanwhile James was thinking no less intently. The whole thing was a nuisance which, lest it should worry him, must be dealt with as speedily as possible. The public company idea was the thing. He would see his solicitors and he would speak to Trent. As a matter of fact a little extra capital would come in very well just now. It had seemed to him for some time that a great deal could be done with picture palaces. Trent was perfectly capable of running the present business by himself, and he, James, was getting a little bored with the monotony of it. The time had come for a new development. Why not cinema shows with your tea and a biscuit free, as that was the custom, but cakes and pastries charged for? There could be intervals when dainty little cakes would be handed round. People who were taking other people out would be certain to buy them. In the evening there could be sandwiches. He'd run the cinema part under another name, and only announce that the Imperial had the contract for the catering. The tea they gave you at most of these places, he'd been told, was undrinkable; he'd look in some afternoon and try for himself. Naturally these odd and end companies wouldn't do the thing as well as the Imperial. If he decided that this was a good idea there'd be no sort of difficulty about raising the capital. Their finances were more than sound. He could practically float the thing at any figure he liked—as long, that was, as Mary didn't land him with a strike on his hands. What an extraordinary world it was—James didn't know what was coming over women!

However, this plan would fix Mary right enough, as far as interfering with wages went. Of course he couldn't prevent her from giving away her own money, though he could discourage it. But they had always lived far below their income—to spend less than he had was for James a matter of pride—she could give away a good deal before it really mattered.

The idea of action, of taking risks, of starting something new, restored his normal good humour. He wasn't a fossil yet—they needn't think it. His picture palaces—if he decided to have them—should be as up-to-date and as characteristic as his tea-shops. They should be really dignified—to begin with—in the way of architecture—no tawdry stucco and white paint. It was worth getting in a good architect for a uniform elevation. Their own young men could fix it up for each particular site. There is something about a good architect's work that you don't get in any other way. Besides, there is patriotism. It would be pleasant to feel that his fronts were well thought of, say at the club, whose members talked a good deal about architecture. He was a poor man when he started the tea-shops, but even then his taste had been good. One secret of it—given good taste—was to see to the whole thing personally. He'd run over to Paris and choose his own films—no agents for him. And he'd look at those new American patents for coloured pictures.

He finished his breakfast and said good-bye to Rosemary without any ill-feeling. Poor child—he could afford to be good-natured. He could not seriously doubt his ability to manage a couple of women. Most men would have harangued them, lectured them, put their backs up. James preferred to preserve the amenities of life while out-manœuvring his opponents. Scolding was a woman's game, a fool's game, it never paid. If a man couldn't be the head of his own house without making a fuss about it he deserved what ignominy came his way. James went upstairs in excellent spirits to kiss Mary good-bye.

He found her still in bed, and he kissed her with the decision of an affectionate husband and the caution of a man who does not want to get fluff from the blankets on to his clothes. He was glad to see her looking better, she mustn't do too much to-day, and he hoped she felt as fond of him as he did of her. She was a vain old thing with her mob cap—personally he liked to see her hair even if it did look untidy. Nonsense—who minded if it was a little grey! He stroked her cheek with his finger and was off. The room seemed to echo with his voice after he had gone.

Mary did not get up for some time. She was feeling tired, and on Tuesdays she generally had breakfast in bed. Besides, she had still to take stock of what she was going to do. She knew that through the long hours of the night, as she lay awake, she had pondered defiant plans of incredible daring and yet so simple, so just, that only tyranny itself could refuse consent to them. But now in the morning it was different. It struck her, now, as monstrous that she should have thought of flouting James. His authority, for her, appeared as an ultimate fact. If he refused to increase the girls' wages the matter was settled. But her own perception of justice and injustice—she saw that clearly—was also an ultimate fact. The money belonged to the girls and it must be used for them. Her task was now to think of ways and means. She had even come to feel that she might do more with the money by controlling it herself than by doling it out in shillings to ignorant girls. As for James, whatever happened she must preserve her personal relation with him. It could never again perhaps be quite what it had been, its foundation of confident ignorance was gone. But what he was prepared to give her still was all that he had ever given her. He had not changed. She could still, if she chose, be as much to him as she had ever been. And she felt this sunny morning an extraordinary thirst and hunger for his love, for his tenderness and his esteem. When he had come just now into her quiet room she had realised suddenly how strong he was, how much his strength and his buoyancy meant to her; how precise, how small, how rigid her life would have been without them. She had found, too, she thought, in the pain of their recent intercourse, a new sense of the intimacy of marriage. She lay, after all, very much at James's mercy, and he at hers. It was no small thing, the affection that urged them to ease the strain for one another. As she went through the day she touched at a thousand points little whims of James's, little trivial extensions of his personality. She met them with sympathy, with tolerance at worst, because they were his. Under her care, in her hands, he moved freely, he grew as he pleased; his delicacy, his sensitiveness, were safe. This favouring atmosphere she had provided consciously—it would have been her duty to do so, even if it had not been her pride—but she understood now for the first time that James, whether consciously or not, must have performed the same offices for her. If her growth had been pruned and trained, her character disciplined, it was by her own set purpose, in accordance with her own conscience, not by any harshness or cruelty of outside pressure. She could see, she told herself, the sort of repressed little woman she might have been, the narrow, dragging, timid creature a dearth of kindness might have made of her. She had had full measure of kindness all her life, it was only this kindness, this, impunity from attack that made her able now to consult her own nature and believe in what it told her. She did believe in it, she could not but be loyal to that, but she could—she must—in addition be scrupulously loyal to James. James's wisdom, his deliberate decisions, must come first; her own little vanities and disappointments, her unrestrained longings, fell naturally into a second place. As to the practical question, she would tell Miss Percival that this money was at her disposal and they would soon think of something to do with it. It was clear that a hundred things needed doing—they had only to choose. Then she could throw herself heart and soul into whatever it was. She told herself that she would probably cease to worry when she was back at her familiar business of organising and had left this difficult region of decision behind.

It was a day on which Miss Percival did not come until the afternoon, and Mary, after she had dressed, spent the morning pretending to read a pamphlet on the dangers of street trading. She agreed with the pamphlet, and for the moment she found agreement a relief. Soon after twelve Rosemary came into her room. She had, she informed her mother when she had kissed her, been out with Tony trying his electric motor-bicycle. It was quite different from all other motor-bicycles and very much better, because Tony had invented a new kind of accumulator that was very small and light. If it worked it was going to revolutionise all sorts of things, not merely motor-bicycles, but it wasn't really quite finished yet, so it couldn't be a matter for wonder that something had broken down. Tony had had to come back by train in order not to be too appallingly late at the office, and she had had to get an old farmer to shelter the motor-bicycle, and then come back by herself. He had been a dear old farmer, and he had produced a charming daughter, a little person with pink cheeks and black hair. She and Rosemary had smiled at each other with the friendly pleasure young women feel in one another's beauty. Rosemary wished she knew more about engineering, it was the subject of all others that she found most difficult. She never could carry three dimensional ideas in her head.

Rosemary had thrown down her hat, and was sitting now on a stool at Mary's feet, looking up at her while she chattered. It was not often that she talked like this to her mother, freely and childishly, without any thought of effect or consequences, and Mary's heart grew light as she listened. This wise young Rosemary was a child still, a dear, happy child; love-making and lovers' vows had not checked the development of her mind or impaired its freshness. Her mother could laugh without a second thought at the old farmer's astonishment, at his scorn of a woman left in charge of a motor-bicycle, and at the sad plight of that distinguished and ingenious machine stowed away between a harrow and a dilapidated cart.

"I know all the little boys in the place will be trying to make it go," Rosemary was saying, "and Tony will be dreadfully cross, but it was the best that I could do." She did not seem afraid of Tony's crossness.