A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

After that the secretary maintained an attitude of superior kindliness. She was sorry for Mary, she seemed to say, for Mary was an amiable person, if a trifle faint of heart. She understood Mary's difficulties and she meant to stand by her. But not even her affection and her loyalty to her employer could make her play the part of a hypocrite. She did not approve of this holiday home, she thought it a base surrender and a waste of money as well. She was not going to pretend, by words or by a delighted energy, that she did approve of it.

This was not as bad as it might have been, and Mary, since Miss Percival, after all, was ignorant of her true reasons, felt grateful for even so much tolerance. But she could not, any more than Miss Percival, throw herself heart and soul into the carrying out of James's scheme. She had meant to do this; she had not planned any grudging acceptance, but she was not able, with Miss Percival there to remind her of them, to ignore her own convictions. The home was, and she knew it, a miserable compromise. She turned with relief from discussions about its site to the business of collecting Rosemary's trousseau.

Here again she was in the position of having to force her emotions. She did not, in her heart, believe that Rosemary was old enough to marry, experienced enough to know or to value the freedom she was losing. She would not need age or experience, unhappily, to make her regret it. But Mary could not very well assert herself to make Rosemary unhappy by postponing the marriage while she herself was guarding her own happiness by giving way in so cowardly a fashion to James. She told herself, therefore, that her feelings were the feelings natural to every woman who sees her youngest daughter leaving her; they were selfish feelings, and she, like every other mother, must put them aside. If they had any value it was their private value, as emotion, for her—she would not have wished at such a moment to feel nothing or only to feel what was pleasurable.

She bought Rosemary's garments then to the accompaniment of an emotional conflict that tired her, but was at least interesting, whereas the holiday home, a wearisome affair, reminded her only of her failure to convince James.

Moreover, buying Rosemary's clothes had an interest of its own. Mary had not felt really happy about Laura's trousseau. Laura, whose intelligence was always admirable, had known exactly where she wanted to go and what she wanted to buy. Laura could see at once, when clothes were displayed before her, which of them would make her look charming and which would not. This was all very well for dresses, Mary had always respected Laura's taste, but when the same principle was pushed further it had seemed to her a little alarming. That underclothes should be becoming was the last service she would have asked of them. Mary liked linen that was finely woven, voluminous, and carefully sewn. When she had bought it she took a pride in it and hoped that it would last her for years. Of lace and such transparencies she disapproved, except for the narrowest edgings. She explained to Laura that they would not wash, but however well they had washed she would not have liked them better. It seemed to her unnatural and distressing that a young woman should look, as Laura looked, more delightful without her full complement of clothes than with them. If she had not feared, by doing so, to put ideas into Laura's head, she would have protested. But it is not easy to discuss these things with a young girl, especially in front of shop-assistants. When Mary had said, in a lowered voice, "Don't you think, my dear, that that lawn is a little too fine—I shouldn't think it would wear very well, would you?" Laura had replied, calmly and frankly, "Oh, don't you, mother?—I think it will look rather nice!" Such innocence—or on the other hand, such command of one's information—intimidated Mary. On one occasion only had she protested and carried her way. It was when Laura, who must have been unaware, poor child, of what she was contemplating, praised and asked the price of a black crêpe-de-chine nightgown. Even then Mary might not have risen to a veto if the deplorable garment had not been labelled "enhancing."

With Rosemary it was a very different matter. Rosemary's shopping was guided by principles, and so long as she was determining what these principles should be Rosemary was very much interested in it. In the first place she determined to buy none but hand-made linen, partly because weaving linen by hand provides a fuller and more fruitful life for the worker than weaving it by machine, partly because it is cheaper in the end to buy what is more expensive in the beginning. And as a poor man's wife—she reminded her mother—she must think of these things. In the second place she would buy æsthetic dresses, because what has never been in the fashion cannot easily drop behind it. This would be a great economy. In the third place she would not buy her clothes haphazard, guided merely by fancy, but would choose just one or two colours and stick to them.

All this was excellent and Mary was cheered to find Rosemary displaying such practical common-sense. It was true that the hand-woven linen was extremely expensive—but then it was stout, and Mary had the pleasure of seeing it made up into garments that would last Rosemary until she grew old. No lace, only the most charming and costly hand embroidery. It was true that there are so many occasions on which one cannot wear æsthetic dresses that Mary found herself, when Rosemary was not there, ordering a considerable number of tailor-mades. Rosemary was generally not there. When she had made a comprehensive survey of the enterprise and delivered her instructions to Mary she preferred to leave the dressmakers to fit her as best they could—she liked her clothes loose—and to wander forth, alone or with Anthony, searching in unlikely places for antique furniture. It was true, also, that the one or two colours began to multiply.

Anthony had read somewhere that a woman's clothes should match her eyes or her hair. That meant greeny-brown tweeds, and possibly liberty satins. White and cream and navy blue do not count. Then Rosemary always liked one dress of a particular green in the summer and another dress of a particular purple in the winter. And Laura thought that the child was at her best in lilac, while Mary thought that she never looked so fresh or so young as in a certain shade—rather difficult to obtain—of gentian blue. But Mary liked to think that the dear child, while she was learning the limits of her income, would not at least have to bother about clothes, and on the whole she welcomed these unexacting cares. She did not wish to contemplate, more than she could help, a situation which had already exhausted her powers of self-deception. She had struggled for some time to persuade herself that she was not a coward, that the holiday home was not a waste of her money and energy, and moreover deliberately intended by James to be such a waste. Miss Percival's eye, bent constantly on her with an expression of weary tolerance, had been too much for her. She had taken next the desperate step of avowing to herself that she was a coward, and excusing herself on that ground from the display of any vigorous qualities.

She was a coward, and it wasn't any use pretending that she could ever be anything else. She might have settled down comfortably enough to this conviction if only she could have been certain that it was true. She had undoubtedly behaved like a coward, but what disturbed her, what sent her running to shops and sempstresses, was the insistent dread that somewhere at the bottom of her heart there was still a remainder of courage. There might even be, she feared, sufficient courage to enable her to reopen the whole affair. Perhaps the future would find her brave, after all. Perhaps she was not going to settle quietly down to the base abandonment of her waitresses—the thought sent the blood to her heart and set her trembling. It could not be possible that all her long misery of decision had decided on nothing, that the travail of thinking must be begun again. She exhorted herself to stand steadfast, to harden her heart in selfish docility, and she was able to believe that she had succeeded when she found herself thrilling with the tenderness, love, and joy which are proper to a woman who finds herself a happy grandmother.

Laura's baby provided her with a real respite, a happiness that needed no analysis and provoked no doubts. He was a marvellous boy, extremely handsome and positively the very image of James. He might so easily have been like Harry—it would have been distinctly a waste, because there were already several Moorhouse grandchildren—and he had chosen to resemble James. It was clear that he meant to develop into a child of exceptional intelligence.