“If they’re religious, they’re like that. If they’re not religious they’re drunk. If they’re not drunk you never know when they’re going to leave you. That’s the sort of life I came out of and that’s the sort of life I’m never going back into if I can help it.”
“You won’t need to, my dear.”
“You never know.”
With which disquieting assurance he was left to reflect that she seemed to have been as much upset by her visit to June Street as himself. He was tormented by a vision of England, this little isle, the home of heroes and great men, groaning beneath the weight of miles of such streets and sinking under the tread of millions of men like James Boothroyd. Lustily he strove for a cool, intellectual consideration of it all, a point from which the network of the meanish streets of the cities of England could be seen as justifiable, necessary, and unto their own ends sufficient, but, seen from the Copas world, they were repulsive and harsh; viewed through Matilda they were touched with magic.
They were both unsettled and passed through days of irritation when they came perilously near to quarreling. In the end they made it up and found that they had conquered new territory for intimacy. On that territory they discussed their marriage, and he told her that he would like her to have a child. She burst into tears, and confessed that after her calamity the doctor had told her it was very improbable she ever would. He was for so long silent on that, being numbed by the sudden chill at his heart, that she took alarm and came and knelt at his side and implored him to forgive her, and said that if he did not she would go out on to the railway or into the canal. Then he, too, wept, and they held each other close and sobbed out that the world was very, very cruel, but they must be all in all to each other. And he said they would go away and settle down in some pretty place and live quietly and happily together right away from towns and theaters and everything. She shook her head, and, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, she said: No, she did not want to be a lady; at least, not that sort of a lady. He made many suggestions, but always her mind flew ahead of his, and she had constructed some horrid sort of a picture of the existence it would entail. At last he gave it up and said he supposed if there was to be a change it would come of its own accord.
It came.
Mrs. Copas, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, decided that she was middle-aged, entirely altered her style of dressing and doing her hair, and, as the outward and visible sign of the advent of her maturity, set her heart on a black silk gown. She cajoled and teased and bullied her husband, but in vain. He was replenishing the theatrical wardrobe and could not be led to take any interest in hers. She pursued Mr. Mole with hints and flattery, but he could not or would not see her purpose. He had decided that Matilda should be dressed in a style more befitting his wife than she had adopted heretofore, and was spending many happy and weary hours in the shops patronized by the wives of clerks and well-to-do tradespeople. Incidentally he discovered a great deal about what women wear and its powerful influence over their whole being. In her new clothes Matilda was more dignified, more handsome, more certain of herself, and she gained in grace. . . . Mrs. Copas took to haunting their lodgings and was nearly always there when a new hat or a new jacket came home from the shops. She would insist on Matilda’s trying them on, and would go into loud ecstatic praise and long reminiscences of the fine garments she had had when she was a young woman, and Mr. Copas was the most attentive husband in the world.
An old peacock without its tail is a sorry sight, and the young birds scorn him. Matilda did not exactly scorn her aunt, but her continued presence was an irritant. She was not yet at her ease in the possession of many fine clothes and was entirely set on gaining the mastery of them and of the accession of personality they brought. Mrs. Copas was a clog upon this desire, and therefore when, after many hints and references, she came suddenly to the point and asked pointblank for a loan of four pounds wherewith to buy a black silk gown, Matilda flushed with anger and exasperation and replied curtly that her husband was not made of money.
“No, dearie, I know, but I’d so set my heart on a black silk gown.”
And the towsled old creature looked so pathetic and disappointed that Matilda was on the point of yielding; but indeed she was really alarmed at the amount of money that had been spent—more than twenty pounds—and she followed up her reply with a firm No.