G. S.
She sat a long time with the letter in her hand, read it again and yet again. She forgot the night terrors, began to question herself. Of what had she been so frightened? What had Stevens told her? Only that a shabby man had questioned cook about their visitors. Now she wanted to analyse and sift the trouble, get to bedrock with it. She rang the bell and sent for the maids. They had singularly little to tell her; summarised it came to this: A shabby man had hung about Carbies all Monday; cook had called him up to the back door and asked him what he was after—“No good, I’ll be bound,” she told him. He had paid her a compliment and said that “with her in the kitchen it was no wonder men ’ung about.” And after that they seemed to have had something of a colloquy and cook had been asked if she walked out with anybody. “Like his nasty impidence,” she commented, when telling the story to her mistress. “I up and told him whether I walked out with anybody or not I wasn’t for the likes of him.”
It was not without question and cross-question Margaret elicited that this final snub was not given until after tea. Cook defended the invitation.
“It’s ’ard if in an establishment like this you can’t offer a young man a cup of tea.” She complained, not without waking a sympathetic echo in Margaret’s own heart, that Pineland was that dull, not a bit o’ life in it. Married men came round with the carts and a girl delivered the milk.
“‘E was pleasant company enough till ’e started arskin’ questions.”
Then it appeared it was Stevens who “gave him as good as he gave,” asking him what it was he did want to know, and being satirical with him. The housemaid had chimed in with Stevens; there may have been some little feminine jealousy at the back of it. Cook was young and frivolous, the two others more sedate. Stevens and the housemaid must have set upon cook and her presumed admirer. In any case the young man was given his congé immediately after tea, before he had established a footing. Stevens’ report had been exaggerated, Margaret’s terror excessive and unreasonable. She dismissed the erring cook now with the mildest of rebukes, then set herself to write to Gabriel. The time was limited, since the man was returning by the 5.5. She heard later, by the way, that he quite replaced the stranger in the cook’s facile affections. Stevens again was responsible for the statement that cook was “that light and talked away to any man.” Contrasting with herself, Stevens, who “didn’t ’old with making herself cheap.”
Margaret wrote slowly, even if it were only a letter. She had to recall her mood, to analyse the panic. She was quite calm now. His letter seemed exaggerated beyond what the occasion or the telegram demanded.
Dearest:—
How good you are, and safe. Your letter calmed and comforted me. Panic! no other word describes my condition at four o’clock this morning after a sleepless night. Servants’ gossip was at the bottom of it. I have always wished for a dumb maid, but Stevens’ tongue is hung on vibrating wires, never still. There was a man, it seems now he was a suitor of cook’s! He did ask questions, but chiefly as to her hours off duty, whether she was already “walking out,” an expression for an engagement on probation, I understand. He was an aspirant. I cannot write you a proper letter, my bad night has turned me into a wreck, a “beautiful ruin” as you would say. No, you wouldn’t, you are too polite. You must take it then that all is well; except that your choice has fallen upon a woman easily unnerved. Was I so foolish after all? James is capable of any blackguardism, he would hate that I should be happy with you. He can no longer excuse his conduct to me, or my resentment of it on the plea that I am unlike other women. I know his mind so well! “Women of genius have no sex,” he said among other things to account for the failure of our married life. He can say so no longer. “Women of genius have no sex!” It isn’t true. Do you see me reddening as I write it? What about that little house in Westminster? Have you written to all the agents? Are you searching? Sunday night I was so happy. One large room there must be. Colour prints on the walls and chintz on the big sofas, my Staffordshire everywhere, a shrine somewhere, central place for the musicians; cushions of all shades of roses, some a pale green. I can’t see the carpets or curtains yet. I incline to dark green for both. No, I am not frivolous, only emotional. I think I shall alter when we are together, begin to develop and grow uniform in the hothouse of your love, under the forcing glass of your great regard. It is into that house, under that glass I want to creep, to be warmed through, to blossom.
Picture me then as no longer unhappy or distressed, although all day I have neither worked nor played. Your letter healed me; take thanks for it therefore and come down Saturday as usual, with a plan of the house that is to be. (By the way, I must have dog stoves.) In a few days now I, or you, will tell my father and stepmother. The days crawl, each one emptier than the other, until the one that brings you. Arrivederci.