Read Ebook: A lady and her husband by Blanco White Amber Reeves

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Ebook has 1110 lines and 99649 words, and 23 pages

"It's quite possible she'll soon have as many cares as you, my dear, but, as you know, I've always declared that since my girls would have enough to live on anyhow I did not mean to make money the most important thing. I don't object to it, of course, but I don't see why I should let it sway my judgment. Laura's man is not good enough for her, and I shall be disappointed if Hastings doesn't turn out a son-in-law to be proud of." He smiled at Mary, and stroked his trim little pointed beard.

Mrs. Heyham did not answer, but she realised, as she looked up, how proud she was of James. He was a hard-working business man himself, and after thirty years of it he might have been forgiven if he had been a little obsessed by ordinary business standards. Most men in his position wouldn't have looked at a penniless boy whatever they thought of his intellect and character. But James did not keep his principles for nothing. She could almost wish for once, that he had been a more conventional father, and she felt a moment's anxiety as she wondered how far his complaisance had extended.

"You told her--of course--that they'd have to wait?" she asked.

"There was no need, the child showed very proper feeling, but I did say that I didn't suppose you would consent to her setting out on married life at eighteen. In any case, it appears that the young man wants to be earning enough to pay for his own share of the m?nage."

James was evidently pleased with the interview that had just taken place. "She's a dear child," he went on after a minute; "you're to be congratulated on both of them, Mary, though I admit that as a wife I prefer their mother. The women of your day had more character, though nobody made a fuss about their brains. Nowadays young people treat each other as if they were all friends of the same sex; it may suit them, but I know I shouldn't have liked it."

Mrs. Heyham did not move, and he wondered whether his talk was having the desired effect. He felt very sorry for her--when he thought about it he often felt sorry for women. Good women had such a hard time of it, they suffered so inevitably as life went on. It was rough on them losing their looks, it was rough on them when their boys went to school, and many of them had a bad time with their husbands. Men wouldn't have stood it, but women--thank God for it!--were like that. Men were not grateful enough, but he had done his best to make life smooth for Mary and the girls.... Poor Mary, he was glad she had cried on his shoulder. She was a dignified little thing, it was not always easy to tell what she was thinking.

He went over to her and stroked her hair. That, to his mind, was the use of her hair, and to please him she dressed it in a way that was not easily disarranged.

She looked up at him, and he saw at once that she was still a little excited. "James," she said, and then paused. He sat down on the arm of her chair so that he might give her better attention. When she spoke it was in the slow thoughtful way he deplored. It meant that she was taking things too hard.

"What do other women do when the children go?" she asked him. "How do they fill up their days?"

"I should say a good many of them were glad of a rest," he told her reassuringly. "It's not such easy work bringing up children. Haven't you noticed a friend whose grey hairs have gone brown since her daughters married? We shall have you a gay young thing again in no time. Or you could take up politics and make Trent stand for Parliament--the old lady would look fine as candidate's mother!"

She shook her head. "You forget the candidate's wife. I don't think I want to play second fiddle to Trent's Lady Hester. But I suppose that is about what they do. Either they knit boots for their grandchildren, or they go on committees."

The mention of Lady Hester had ruffled James's good humour. "If Trent waits for her, he'll wait some time," he said. He shrugged his shoulders and then they both smiled. "Trent's good at waiting," he admitted.

Mary jumped up from her chair and took his hands. "James," she whispered, "I sometimes wish there were something Trent wasn't good at!"

James kissed her. That was all right! Here was the old lady quite cheerful again. They must all be very kind to her for a day or two, and when she realised that Rosemary wasn't leaving her yet and got used to Anthony's new status she would see that there was nothing to be unhappy about for a long time. And when the disaster came she would be busy waging war on Laura's nurses.

"I told Rosemary she could have her young man to dinner, my dear," he said, apprehensive, but feeling that on the whole it was better to get it over. "It seemed the only decent thing to do."

His wife appeared to have accepted the worst. Her "I'm glad, I forgot to tell her," was serene. "Laura's been here to say that she and Harry aren't coming. That's just as well, Trent will be quite enough for them in one evening."

BUT Mrs. Heyham, though she did her best, could not settle down as she ought to have done. James watched her carefully, and though she was charming about it he felt that the engagement still distressed her. She was a little pale, he thought, and detached and indifferent to carefully planned amusements. Something more radical would have to be done. He would have liked to take her abroad, but he had business matters in hand which he could not trust to Trent. Nevertheless things must not remain as they were. He took his problem to Rosemary, whose own conscience was not untroubled. "We've got to think of some way," he told her, "of interesting your mother."

Rosemary agreed with him. Now that she turned her mind to it she could see that her mother's life needed interests. For what, when she came to express her sense of it, had Mary's life been? She expended some little ingenuity in pointing and amplifying her own conception of such an existence before, in her turn, she consulted Anthony.

Her mother, that was the gist of it, had not lived. Here, in this great world of speed and steel and electricity, this world of banks and syndicates and organised labour, Mrs. Heyham had kept her house and nursed her babies as she might have done a hundred, five hundred, years ago. She used the clothes and the food and the furniture of the twentieth century because they were there, at her hand. She knew nothing of how they were made or of what brought them to her. She lived like an insect in a coral reef, ignorant of the laws by which she was governed. Mathematics, the triumph of man's intellect, meant some x's and y's, some circles and triangles in children's school-books. Philosophy meant that a great many cultivated people do not believe in God. Biology meant that in some indiscreet manner we are descended from monkeys; economics that the Conservatives think a lot can be done with Tariff Reform, and the Liberals have been left to make the best of Free Trade. Industry was represented in her mind by the shops where she bought her clothes and ordered her provisions, by factories, heard of but never seen, by a bank with large stone pillars that sent her cheque-books, by so much money from her husband every week. When she tried to escape from it all, at least to vary it, she travelled on padded seats of first-class carriages, she slept in hotels where she was carried to her room in a lift, she stared at views whose last details of excellence had been dissected in guide books. Public opinion, since she was a rich woman, did not allow Mr. Heyham to beat her or to take her money, and she could walk alone in the street without being insulted. She could read novels about other women's love-affairs, she could turn up the light in her house by putting her finger on a knob. Yet she had no clue to the meaning of her life or of the lives of the people who served her and worked for her. She knew as little of the city she lived in as she knew of the fields where primitive women toiled. She was shut off--like all of us, Rosemary thought--from the wild things of the earth, from its oceans, its forests, its snows. She was denied man's heritage of knowledge, the rewards of his search for truth. She was sheltered from the need of working with her hands. She had lost the keenness of her savage senses and the strength of her savage impulses. She had lost her bodily hardness, her mental vigour and curiosity. Even her love of luxury had gone--she did not care, as some women do, to scent herself and hang herself with jewels, to wrap herself in soft furs and in supple bright-coloured stuffs. All these desires had withered to a mere dislike of dirt and disorder, a vague positive aspiration that things should be nice. Mrs. Heyham was a graceful woman, good, simple, sensitive. She respected herself and she was respected by others. That was her spiritual share of the loot of the centuries!

They were walking through the park to Hampton Court when Rosemary tried to impose this view of the matter on Anthony. He listened to it with interest but without excitement. He was a fair-haired, sunny-tempered youth, a little lazy about giving rein to his own enthusiasm but tolerant of Rosemary's, for he admired her wits. It was a fine afternoon. He turned appreciative eyes to the long lines of trees changing from green to grey in the slight pleasant haze. Then he looked back at Rosemary. "Well," he asked her, "granting all that--and you've put it very nicely--what is your solution?"

Rosemary had thought of a solution and a very good solution too, suitable, revolutionary, and high-minded. She was not deterred from explaining it by Tony's indolent tone. Rosemary was herself a Socialist and she could not help feeling that if her mother were to take up some sort of work among her father's employees the results must be thoroughly satisfactory to all right-thinking people. Her father was a good employer--neither she nor Anthony doubted it--but it is admitted that only a woman can understand a woman's difficulties. If you thought of the matter with an open mind, some such devotion of herself seemed only Mrs. Heyham's duty. There could be no doubt that she ate and wore the profits of the business.

"Delightful for the girls, but what is your mother going to get out of it?" Anthony asked. He thought of his own mother, a strong-minded lady who made a great point of remembering that she was only a woman. No child of hers would willingly have extended the sphere of her influence, but then she lacked essential human kindness. Mrs. Heyham, on the other hand, was the kindest woman he knew, she was kinder than Rosemary. He wouldn't, personally, have considered that her life or her personality needed any addition. They seemed to him gracious, complete, and satisfying, and he did not think that she herself would wish to tamper with them.

But Rosemary was answering him. Why--she told him, looking round in her turn at the still trees and the sunny grass--here would be her mother's chance. She could leave her artificial, opulent home and go out into the world, the man's world, that she had never seen. She would touch it, study it, find out her own place and her value from it. She could live again, not only with her charm and her sympathy and her admirable legitimate affections but with her mind, with her soul--Tony might jeer at the word as much as he liked, but it was exactly her soul that Rosemary meant. She would learn that out in the world justice and mercy and pity are not easy, natural things. They must be found--fought for, insisted on. "Mother," she finished, "has never fought for anything in her life."

"On the contrary," Anthony told her, "you know nothing about it. A woman like your mother--I speak with the authority of all the ages--finds her life and her adventures in herself. She doesn't need to be stirred by your gross realities, your sordid politics, your miserable clamour for things to eat and a hole to go to sleep in. She lives, so to speak, in the depths of the sea, dark-green and heavy, far away down, while you, my dear Rosemary, are running about in a bright red bathing-dress and splashing in the little waves on the beach." He smiled at her all the same as if he approved her choice of occupation.

"And the air," Rosemary reminded him, "and the sky, and the sun! But seriously, Tony, isn't that all drivel? There may be a mystical life that can do without experience, but most women haven't got it--mother hasn't. Taking things as they are, what can you find to criticise in my plan?"

Tony turned to look at her and met her earnest eyes. She was a beautiful creature, he thought, and he liked her gallant tilting at destiny. It was rather jolly of her to marry him. When he spoke, his voice expressed an easy-going affection. "If I were your mother," he informed her, "I wouldn't stir a finger to touch what you call life. However, from your point of view, your plan is all right--if you can persuade your father."

Rosemary had no doubts upon that score. She could easily manage father, and her mother would simply have to be persuaded. Really it was a masterly idea--it would be thrilling, most thrilling, to see what she made of it all.

To her father next day she presented the plan as if it meant nothing more than a trifling charity, and Mr. Heyham, after careful thought, saw no objection to it. He was not aware of any deficiencies in his system, but he was a broad-minded man and could very well believe that there were a lot of little things that might be done for the girls as long as they were done in a proper way. He had always deplored the spirit which makes so many employers regard their business contract as the only link between master and men. He had given his support to Progressive legislation when his party introduced it, and when he went into one of his restaurants he liked to see the waitresses looking cheerful and well-fed. He knew that he was popular, and the thought of Mary among the work-people, doing good to them and adored by them, was pleasant. Also, and this was the chief consideration, it was just the thing for Mary. Her own children were leaving her and what she wanted was somebody to mother. He thought well of Rosemary for her idea; he told himself that there is a good deal to be said for these modern young women.

Laura, whose own struggles with housekeeping had given her a new respect for Mrs. Heyham, showed the easy enthusiasm of the irresponsible. It would be splendid for mother to have this fresh outlet for her powers, and it would be so nice for them all to feel that everything was being looked after from a woman's point of view. Perhaps later on, if mother organised clubs or anything that might help her--after all, they all shared in the profits of the business and in a sort of way they were responsible. She also felt that it was so splendid of father to want to let mother in, not like most men who are so vulgar about their wives. And--this when she had been told of the young man's attitude--it was just like Trent to make a fuss about what everybody else wanted.

Rosemary, though she was glad of this warm reception, did not feel that it took her very much further as to Trent. If Mrs. Heyham chose to see a difficulty in his beastly mulishness she was not likely to be moved by Laura. After all Trent worked very hard at the business and, in a way, he had plenty of brains. You could not disregard him as if he were a boy or a fool.

"Why not, when he behaves like one?" Laura had only looked in for a few minutes and as she was in a hurry she was inclined to take a lofty way with obstacles.

Rosemary did not agree. "It's very tiresome of him, but what is the use of owning a business if you can't be tiresome and obstinate about it? That's what employers mean when they write to the papers and say that they must be allowed to manage their own affairs in their own way!" In her heart Rosemary was not sorry to see Trent embodying her notion of the grasping capitalist. She was fond of her brother, but she preferred a dramatic interest.

Laura refused to see matters in this light. If they wanted to win, the point to be stressed was not Trent's rights but his ungraciousness. "But, my dear Rosemary," she said, "he can't have any serious objection! Isn't it obvious that he's merely trying to be disagreeable? Unless of course--" this struck her as a good idea--"he thinks his Iredales won't consider it the thing!" She had a train to catch and as she spoke she moved towards the door.

Rosemary shook her head. She didn't believe that Lord Iredale's objection to Trent as a cousin would be affected by any charitable enterprises that Mrs. Heyham might undertake. Trent's reasons, whatever they were, were clearly not of a kind that he could make public.

This, as Trent himself felt, was the weakness of his position. He was not a man who could make a show with sentimental values and this was a matter of sentiment. Trent liked little soft childish women. He liked, in a quiet way, to be made a fuss of; he did not long to be understood, but only to be prettily admired. Women who sat on committees and superintended movements were apt to cultivate an impersonal manner which he found chilling. He had not much leisure for ladies' society, but when he did adorn it he expected to be received with womanly charm. And his grievance now was that Rosemary, with her confounded ideas, was getting hold of, was doing her best to spoil, his charming mother.

However you looked at it, it was a horrible plan. Mrs. Heyham, as Trent saw her, was the last person to throw among waitresses and factory girls. Their girls were no worse than the rest, in fact the firm made distinct efforts towards moral tone, but he could not believe in his heart that they were better. And Trent was afraid of waitresses. At Oxford there had been a rather large waitress who made advances to him. She was a moist lady with bright yellow hair, and Trent still shivered with disgust when he thought of her dirty fingers on the edge of his plate.... That was the sort of person Rosemary wanted to bring into contact with his mother! He pictured Mrs. Heyham being imposed on, made use of, duped and talked over by malcontents and agitators. Sooner or later there was bound to be trouble and once she was there they would have to stand by her. On the other hand the prospect of his mother hardened, his mother become managing and suspicious, his mother under the influence of inspectors and Trade Union officials and Socialists of all kinds, filled him with a mild anguish.

Trent did not realise that Mrs. Heyham, who was now forty-five, had a character of her own. She had been almost his ideal of a mother, receptive and sympathetic, and he could not think of her now as anything but immature and easily swayed. A wave of protective feeling rose in his heart. It was particularly shocking that her own husband should expose her to this danger!

But though these considerations glared broadly before his eyes he could not state them directly. Trent had, of a formal kind, an immense respect for his mother, and he accepted the fact that it was as impossible for her husband to discuss her with her son as it was for her son to discuss her with anyone else. It was unfortunate, he thought, that the serious approach had come from his sister and that when James had mentioned the plan to him he had done so in a casual manner, alluding to it as Rosemary's newest idea. Trent had hoped to avoid offence by laughing too, saying that Rosemary's imagination was given to running away with her, and promising that he would think it over as fully as it deserved. Thinking it over had only produced reasons to fortify his impulsive aversion, and if he did not mention it again it was because he hoped that Mr. Heyham might have seen fit, on reflection, to drop it. Trent never made it harder for people to do right by enlisting their pride against him.

But James, who had learned from Rosemary of Trent's real attitude, had as a matter of fact been waiting, not to retreat from his position, but for some sign of an apology from his son. In business matters Trent might stand up to him if he could. Young brains were sometimes a match for experience, and in any case they could only develop by making a fight for it. But where his own wife--where Trent's mother--was concerned, Mr. Heyham was still the head of his family, and he was hurt that Trent should lack the good taste that would have taken this for granted. He had never exacted a show of respect from his son, and he had perhaps assumed too easily that the young man had understood his attitude. He ought to have understood it; if he hadn't he showed a mental coarseness which his father did not find easy to forgive.

Mr. Heyham had always stuck up for Trent, if only because he was a boy and the girls were down on him, but it seemed to him quite possible now that he had been wrong. The possibility was not pleasant, and James, when business allowed it, preferred his thoughts to have a mellow savour. He therefore decided, when two days had passed and Trent had said nothing, to finish the matter out in the library after dinner.

He waited until Trent had left the hearth-rug and settled himself in a chair. James himself remained standing, it was always, he felt, annoying to have your adversary leaning over you. Trent was looking particularly thoughtful, for he was trying a new kind of cigar.

James opened briskly. "Rosemary and I are anxious to know, Trent, when we may mention this plan of ours to your mother?"

Trent was deeply disappointed. He had hoped, at the least, for a reasonable openness of mind, and he was met with what looked painfully like a display of temper. It was clear that argument was no use, there was nothing for it but to be firm.

"As soon as you like, sir," he said in a tone which he hoped would express the sentiments desirable to a man in his position, "as long as my mother understands that it has nothing to do with me."

"As long as we tell her that you wash your hands of her!"

This was unfair, and Trent hated unfairness. He stared hard at the cigar for a moment while he tried to master his irritation, telling himself that thirty years of business make a man quick to put others in the wrong. His father, watching him, was struck by the attitude. "Good lord," he thought, "he might be a curate! Well, well...." Meanwhile Trent was answering. "My dear father, once we're committed to this plan it won't be possible to wash our hands of it. But I don't want my mother to think I approve of it."

"It would be interesting," said James, who was accustomed to come off best in verbal disputes, "exceedingly interesting to know why!"

Trent picked his way as well as he could, among his reasons. "Well, in the first place, I'm convinced that it will make difficulties. Perhaps I see more of the girls than you do, and they're as discontented as they can be. Especially the waitresses. We simply can't afford to have them upset." He hesitated.

"And what in the second place?"

"In the second place, then, I must say that I don't think it's suitable for my mother. Our girls are not like villagers, they're not accustomed to ladies. And mother has never had any experience of this sort of thing."

Here was more unfairness! "I didn't say corrupt. I said upset. Anything they are not accustomed to upsets them. Look at the trouble we had over stopping their tips, though they must have seen that it's a far better plan to have a regular bonus! What I feel is that the person at the back of this is Rosemary, and frankly I'm not prepared to be responsible for Rosemary's ideas."

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