Robert and Jean were not surprised. That was the fact which, for Vanna, stood out in conspicuous relief. They were grieved, sympathetic, unspeakably tender towards her; but she divined that if they felt any surprise, it was not that Piers had found his present position untenable, but rather that he should have been able to endure it so long. That they should feel so, who were her dearest, most admiring friends, planted a sharp stab in Vanna’s heart, yet it was to them that she owed what poor comfort was to be found during the long intolerable weeks before Piers’s departure.
Jean said little. In her own hour of blackness she had discovered the futility of words, but in a hundred quiet, exquisitely tactful ways she forced upon Vanna the importance of what remained: of the place which she occupied in so many lives; of her own love and need.
“You will never know what you have been to me, Vanna! I have often wanted to tell you; but it isn’t easy to speak of these things. I think after one has married and settled down, one needs a woman friend more than ever. There is so much that even the best and tenderest of men can’t understand. You’ve been my safety-valve and my prop. Multiply my gratitude by the number of all the poor souls whom you have nursed and tended, and you will realise your riches. Thoughts help, Vanna—I’m convinced of that—loving, thankful thoughts going out towards you from all parts of the land. It’s impossible that your life should be cold or bald—”
“Is it, Jean, is it? It sounds very sweet, dear, and very lofty; but put yourself in my place. Would all the gratitude in the world cheer you if Robert went away?”
The colour flooded Jean’s face, then slowly ebbed away, leaving her pale and wan.
“No,” she sighed, breathlessly. “No; nothing! There would be no comfort. He is everything to me—everything! More, a thousand times more, than when we were married; but, Vanna, can you believe it? there have been times during these last years when I have envied you. The balance hasn’t been all on my side. To be well; to be strong; to be able to run about, and plan out one’s life; to say ‘I will do this, I will do that’; to shut up house at a day’s notice, shake off responsibilities, and go away for long, lovely rests—oh, it has seemed so good! When we were young we took health for granted: one has to be ill to realise how it counts; how desperately it counts. Love is said to triumph over all; but, Vanna dear, one needs to be well to be able even to love. That sounds strange, but it’s true; there’s no feeling left. Often and often I’ve longed all day for Robert to come home, and after he has been in the room for five minutes, I’ve longed for him to go away again. I’ve been too tired! Of course every woman does not suffer as I have done; but then how many have a husband like Robert? I tell him sometimes that my bad health is the price I’ve had to pay for having a saint for my husband. If I’d kept well, it would have been too perfect. One does not get everything... And the children—little pets! they love me now; I am a sort of god to them; all that I do is right; but sometimes as I hold them a pang goes through my heart; such a pang! I know it won’t last! I shall go on loving them more and more, needing them more; but they will grow past me. They will make their own lives, their own friends, and I shall retreat farther and farther into the background. They will love me still; I shall be the ‘dear old mater; but they won’t need me any more.’ I won’t really touch their lives. I remember how father loved me, and how I left him without a pang! Is it possible that he felt as I should do, if Lorna or Joyce... The young are cruel to the old—”
Thus Jean, with many tender, loving words; but Vanna noted with a pang that she never once expressed the belief which alone could have brought comfort—the belief that Piers would speedily return home, and remain faithful until death.
The last day came—a blur of pain and grief. Piers spent his last hour alone with Vanna in the den, in which the first happy hours of their engagement had been passed, demanding of her a dozen impossible promises—that she would stay with Jean until his return, that she would not tire herself, that she would be happy; and if at times a bitter reply trembled on her lips, she repressed it valiantly, knowing that by so doing she was saving herself an added sting. His last words imprinted themselves in her brain, and were sweet to remember:
”... If I am ever any good in this world or the next, it is your doing. You have given me faith, you have given me joy, the revelation of heaven and earth. Everything that I have, that is worth possessing, is your gift...!”
When the door closed behind him—oh, the knell of that closing door!—Jean left her friend alone until an hour had passed, and then sent her children as missioners of comfort—the two dainty little maidens in their sublime innocence of untoward happening. Lorna had acquired two new pieces of “poentry”—“Oh, Mary, go and call the kettle home,” and “anozzer one” called, “Twice ones is two”—which she must needs recite without delay. Joyce developed earache, and remembering former help in need, expressed a wailing desire to sleep in “Wanna’s bed,” for “Wanna to stwoke me!” The little, soft, warm body clinging to her, the touch of the baby lips were unspeakable comfort to Vanna during those long wakeful hours when every moment carried Piers farther and farther away.
A week later Vanna returned to the hospital where she had been trained, to fill a temporary vacancy for a few months. Hard work was her best medicine—hard, incessant work, which left no time for thought, and sent her to bed so weary that sleep came almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. A nurse by instinct, it was not in her nature to perform her duties in mechanical fashion. The human aspect of a case made a direct appeal to her heart, and, surrounded on every hand by suffering and want, she was forced into a realisation of her own blessings. She was alone, but youth, health, and money remained to help her on her way, and Piers’s letters arrived by each mail—long, closely written sheets, detailing every day of his life, drawing word-pictures of home surroundings, new acquaintances; above all, breathing the tenderest, most faithful love. Each letter was read and reread until it was known by heart, was answered with a length equal to its own, and by the time this was dispatched—wonderfully, surprisingly soon—another letter was due. She read of the arrival of the mail at Brindisi, and counted over the hours.
The first shock of parting was over, six months had already passed by. Six months was half a year, a quarter of the time of Piers’s probable absence! When the half was over, what joy to strike off the months which must elapse before his return; and meantime could any other man in the world have written such delightful, heart-satisfying letters?
Vanna was keenly interested also in the changes in hospital treatment which had taken place during the four years since she had finished her course, and felt that the six months’ experience had been valuable from a medical as well as a mental point of view. Nevertheless, it was with no regret that she saw the nurse return whose place she had taken, and made her own preparations for departure. At thirty-two the unaccustomed strain of hospital life told heavily on a constitution weakened by mental strain, and she thought with joy of the comfort of her own home, of long, restful hours, when she could write to Piers at her ease, of talks with Jean, of play with the children.
She drove straight from the hospital to the Gloucesters’, where she had arranged to spend a week in idleness before the effort of reopening her own home. The rooms were en fête, profusely decorated with flowers. Jean and the children rushed to the door to receive her—a charming trio, all dressed alike, in a flutter of white muslins and blue ribbons. The whole made an entrancing picture to one accustomed to the bare austerity of a hospital ward; and Vanna felt her spirits soar upwards with a delightful sense of exhilaration. She hugged Jean with schoolgirl effusion, swung the children about in a merry dance, and gave herself up with undisguised zest to the pleasures of the moment: the daintily spread, daintily provided tea, the luxurious appointments of the little house, her own comfortable bedroom, the easy laxity of hours. The first long chat with Jean seemed but to open out the way for a hundred other subjects which both were longing to discuss, and when it was over, the agreeable task remained of dressing herself in a pretty gown to partake of the sociable evening meal.
“Oh, dear! The pomps and vanities of this world, how I love them; how good they are,” she sighed happily. “What a delight it is to sit at a dear little table bright with silver and flowers, and eat indigestible dainties, and know you can sit still and be lazy all evening, and go to bed when you like, and get up, no, not get up, stay in bed and have breakfast, and snoodle down to sleep again if you feel so inclined! I shall be lazy to-morrow! And to wear a pretty dress, and a necklace, on a nice bare neck, instead of a stiff starched bow sticking into one’s chin. Have my strings marked my neck? How do I look? I seemed to myself a perfect vision of beauty, but Jean looks at me askance. I don’t fancy she looks flattering.”
“No, not a bit,” said Jean bluntly. “You look a wreck, like most discharged patients—fit for nothing but a convalescent home. Don’t talk of necks! It’s nothing but bones, a perfect disgrace. I shall feed you up, and forbid work for weeks to come. What you need is a good, bracing change. I need a change, too. Couldn’t we three go off together, and do something nice? I’ve had nothing but seaside holidays with the babies since we were married. A month in Switzerland, in high, bracing air, in good hotels, among the mountains—oh, how good it sounds. Say yes, Rob, like a darling. I want it so!”
But Robert did not speak. It was the first time in the history of their acquaintance that Vanna had known him show even a moment’s hesitation in granting a request from Jean’s lips, and she looked at him in surprise. Distress was written upon his face, and a wistful appeal for forgiveness, but stronger than all, an air of decision which gave no promise of weakening.
“I’m sorry, darling; but it’s impracticable. It will be hard enough to squeeze out any holiday this year; an extra trip abroad is out of the question. Expenses have been heavy lately”—he shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “They always are heavy, somehow, and we must be careful not to launch into fresh extravagance.”
“We have not been extravagant. The money has gone in uninteresting, disagreeable necessities. No one can call a doctor’s bill extravagance, or a new cistern, or stair carpets. Au contraire, we’ve been so dull and prudent that it would be a tonic to spend a little money on fun, for a change. Can’t we manage it, somehow, Rob? Do! Sell a share, or something. It would be a treat.”
The lines on Robert’s face deepened suddenly; his smile flickered out.
“No; I’ve done that too often. That must come to an end. My shares are painfully near an end. I’m sorry, dear, but it’s impossible.”
Jean shrugged her shoulders. The lines deepened on her face also, and her lip quivered with disappointment, but she made no fruitless protestation. For the rest of the meal she was silent, leaving the conversation to be carried on by Vanna and Robert; but before leaving the room she went out of her way to pass Robert’s chair and lay a caressing hand on his shoulder.
He lifted his face to her with the old adoring expression in his brown eyes, and the tired lines disappeared from his brow. He had kept up the conversation out of consideration for Vanna’s feelings, but his attention had really been engrossed by Jean, and his own regrets at being obliged to refuse her request. Now he evidently felt himself forgiven, and was transparently grateful for his wife’s forbearance.
It was the first of October, 1878, a day of fateful memory. Jean Gloucester stood before the mirror in her bedroom, surveying a new gown which she was wearing for the first time. The soft grey crêpe was swathed and draped in absolute disregard of the stiff fashion of the day, two quaint silver buckles of Norman design held the folds together over the breast, an old lace tucker was tied by a silver cord. Jean affected delicate shades of grey, and the neutral colour formed a perfect background for the vivid beauty of her face. She stood back from the mirror, turning slowly round and round, patting, smoothing, pressing with careful, deliberate touch, but the light in her eyes spoke more of expectation than complacence. Jean was not vain. Really beautiful people are seldom victims of this sin. It is your “rather pretty” woman who spends her life in the effort to add to her charms. Jean was accustomed to her beauty, and accepted it—with other such blessings—as a matter of course, but Robert’s fervid admiration was a factor in her life. This afternoon she was feeling unusually well, and as usual under these circumstances, was fired by the old girlish spirit of mischief. Jean was ever a child at heart, loving to play tricks, to plan surprises, and weave pretty, dramatic dénouements out of the prose of life. A hundred times had she so taken Robert by storm, and the hundredth time had found him as astounded, as unprepared, as blankly mystified as the first. After years of matrimony Jean was still an enigma, concerning which nothing could be foretold but the unexpected; but the mystery added strength to her charm. Life with Jean might at times be somewhat difficult and trying, but never by any possibility could it become dull.
This evening Jean amused herself by planning an effective appearance for herself in her new gown. Instead of awaiting Robert in the den, she would stay in her bedroom until he was safely inside the hall, and would then sweep down the staircase in all her bravery, while he stood gazing upward with the glow of delight she loved to see shining in his hazel eyes. Then he would affect to be overcome with surprise, would stagger against the wall, and lean there helplessly while she stood beneath the lamp, revolving slowly round and round to show herself from every point of view. Then they would retreat into the den, and he would kiss her, and call her his beautiful darling, his bonnie, bonnie Jean, and she would preen herself, and ask if he were not a proud man to be allowed the privilege of paying the bill for such a heavenly gown, and they would laugh and spar, like a couple of happy children, rather than a staid old married couple, Jean gave a little skip of anticipation even as she crept to the head of the staircase to listen for Robert’s return. He was due now—this minute! She failed to catch his usual whistle, but presently the key turned in the latch, and she drew back her head, not wishing to be seen until the dramatic moment should arrive.
Robert shut the door and advanced a few steps into the hall. He did not whistle again, which seemed curious, as no wife had appeared to greet him, neither did he advance towards the carved oak armoire in which he was used to hang his coat and hat. Jean gathered her skirts round her, and stretched forward her lovely, laughing face to spy what was happening. What she saw smote the smile from her lips in a flash of agonised fear.
Robert had not taken off his hat. He stood still just within the threshold, in the attitude of a man unable to move a step, the light of the lamp shilling full on his face—the face of an old man, haggard, contorted, vacant-eyed.
For one moment Jean stood still, paralysed with horror; at the next the blood raced through her veins, and her heart swelled within her in an anguish of love and longing. In the history of the last eight years Jean had invariably been the one to need pity and help; Robert, the one to strengthen and console. She had suffered, and he had ministered; she had despaired, and he had consoled; she had repined, and he had gallantly borne her burden as well as his own. Until this moment his strength had made no demand on her weakness. But now, now it had come. He was in trouble—her Robert—in desperate, aching need, and Jean’s whole being rushed out towards him in a passion of love and longing. Dropping her skirts, she skimmed down the stairway, scarcely seeming to touch the ground, so light and swift were her steps. Out of her white face her eyes gleamed with unnatural light. There was something almost tigerish in the flame of Jean’s love at that moment. Some one had been cruel to her mate, her man. She must fly to the rescue—hold him safe in her arms.
“Robert! What is it?”
The vacant eyes looked into hers, those clear, brown eyes, which more than any other eyes she had ever seen were the windows of the soul within, and for the first time since their meeting there came no lightening to greet hers. Jean’s thoughts flew backward to that afternoon years ago when she had seen the same dazed look in Vanna’s eyes. Her heart contracted with a sickening dread.
“Robert, are you ill? Have you seen a doctor? Has he said—”
He shook his head blankly.
“No! No—not that!”
Jean drew a long, thankful breath. Relieved of this dread, she felt prepared to face all other ills; but first she must be alone with Robert, behind shut doors, safe from intruding eyes. She slid her arm through his, and leading him into the den, pushed him gently into his own big chair. His hat was still on his head, she lifted it off, smoothed the hair on his forehead with a swift, caressing touch, then sinking on her knees before him, lifted her face to his.
“Robert, we are here together—you and I, in our own dear home. The children are upstairs. There is nothing, nothing in all the world worth grieving for so much!”
He looked at her hopelessly, blankly.
“But it’s gone, Jean—it’s gone. The home’s gone! It’s all gone—everything! Gone! Ruined!”
“What, darling? What has gone? Tell me! I want to know—I want to help!”
“The Bank, Jean! The Glasgow Bank. To-day! Ruin for us; ruin for thousands.”
Jean rested her hands on the arms of the chair, and braced herself to thought. The Glasgow Bank! Father had disapproved of it from the first, and had wished Robert to sell his shares, but he had objected because of the high interest given. They were always hard up, and needed every penny they could get. Besides, Robert declared that it was perfectly safe—as safe as the Bank of England; it was absurd to doubt it. And now it had stopped, and he talked of ruin. Jean’s knowledge of finance had not increased with her years of matrimony, and after the first shock of surprise she told herself with a sigh of relief that, after all, there could not be so much to lose. When she had spoken of selling shares a few weeks ago, Robert had refused on the score that there were so few left. Robert was so dazed, poor man, that he was exaggerating his loss. He must be calmed and soothed.
“Dearest boy, I’m sorry—dreadfully, dreadfully sorry for all those poor people; but you and I have not much to lose, have we? We have rubbed along quite comfortably without a big balance at the Bank, and if a few hundreds have gone—well, we’ll do without them, too. I’ll turn over a new leaf, and be economical. We’ll have no holiday, no new things, the bills for the new furniture are all paid—we need nothing more. Don’t grieve so, dear. I’ll help you. I will help!”
Robert stretched out his arms and folded her close to his heart. The dazed expression was beginning to give way to a yearning tenderness. Jean had yet to be enlightened as to the full extent of the calamity. He must brace himself to the task of explanation.
“Jean, it is not an ordinary bank—it’s unlimited; that was why your father disapproved. But I thought I knew best—I stuck to my own way. If I could bear the consequences alone I wouldn’t grumble; it’s for you, and the children. I have only five shares, but I’m responsible, to my last penny. They can clean me out of everything I possess, can sell our furniture above our heads—every stick in the house, leave us without a bed. And they’ll do it. The calls will be enormous—must be enormous. I’ve ruined you, Jean, by my self-willed folly.”
Jean lifted her lips and kissed him softly on the cheek. She felt faint and limp, as though suddenly overpowered by fatigue; but the predominant feeling was still that Robert was in trouble, that he was appealing to her for strength, that whatever trials were to come, she must not fail him now.
“You’ve given me everything worth having. All the riches in the world couldn’t give me happiness without you. If the money goes, we’ll have to love each other more, and no bank, no bank, can touch that. Robert!”—her voice broke on a note of exquisite tenderness—“remember what you called me that first day—remember the prophecy! If fortune has gone, you have still your treasure!”
And Robert, blessing her, shedding tears of mingled joy and sorrow, declared that he was rich indeed.
Time did nothing to soften the severity of the blow which had fallen upon the shareholders of the Glasgow Bank; rather, with every day as it passed did the situation become more hopeless and terrible. Defalcations of three years’ standing left a deficit so abysmal that nothing short of the uttermost farthing could hope to fill it, and even the enormous preliminary call spelt ruin to many small holders, of whom Robert Gloucester was one. When every copper which he possessed had been realised, he was still far behind the amount demanded, and a bill of sale was issued on his household effects.
To Mr Goring the disaster came at once as a shock and a confirmation of old fears. He found himself in the position of being able to say “I told you so”; but there was little pleasure in the advantage when the chief sufferer was his dearest child, and the transgressor so humble and penitent as his son-in-law. His chief grief was that, owing to decreasing income from his own investments, and the expenses of two big sons at Oxford, he could not increase the allowance of two hundred a year which he had regularly contributed towards the Gloucester ménage. Jean expected him to offer to buy her furniture at a valuation, but, to her intense disappointment, he made no such proposition.
“Get rid of the things as best you can—they’ll sell well, or ought to, considering the price Robert paid. They wouldn’t fit into a small house, and you’ll want a different style of thing altogether—plain, simple furniture, that can be kept in order by less experienced maids. All these curios and odds and ends are very well in their way, but they mean work—work! There’ll be no time for dusting old china and polishing brasses. Get rid of them all, and I’ll see what I can do towards helping you to a fresh start. We have been looking through the rooms at home, and there are a lot of odds and ends which we can share. You’ll have to lie low for a time, and be satisfied with usefuls; but I’ll see that you are comfortable, my dear. I’ll see to that.”
“Thank you, sir, thank you indeed,” cried Robert warmly. “It’s most good and kind of you. You have always been most generous. You are quite right about this furniture, it would be unsuitable under the new conditions. It’s all one to me—I don’t notice these things, and Jean has been heroic about it all—she doesn’t mind either. She’s quite prepared for the change. Aren’t you, dear?”
Jean assented with a small, strained smile, and Robert continued to discuss the subject with philosophic calm. Jean had declared with her own lips that worldly goods were of no importance in her eyes when compared to the treasure of their love, and in simple faith he had taken her at her word. It was beyond his powers of comprehension to realise that the last few minutes, with their calm condemnation of her Lares and Penates, had been one of acute agony to his wife’s soul—the worst moment she had known, since the springing of the bad news. When she was silent and distrait for the rest of the day, he asked her tenderly if her head ached, and enlarged enthusiastically on the goodness of Mr and Mrs Goring in proposing to despoil their own home.
“You’ll find life easier, I hope, darling, in a smaller house. They’ve been a worry to you sometimes, all these collections, keeping them cleaned and dusted, and that kind of thing. We’ll go in for the simple life, and be done with useless ornamentation,” he declared cheerily.
Now that the first shock of the misfortune had spent itself, his invincible optimism was slowly but surely beginning to make itself felt. The worst had happened; every penny that could be scraped together had already been confiscated; he faced the situation, and calmly and courageously set his face towards a fresh start.
“Jean doesn’t mind. Jean says she is prepared. That takes away the sting. So long as she is happy, it doesn’t matter a rap to me where we live. After all, we ought to consider ourselves jolly lucky. It’s only the extras which we shall have to shed, while many poor wretches will be in actual need. We ought to be thankful!”
As the weeks passed by, Robert’s complacence increased, just as, in inverse ratio, Jean’s courage collapsed. It was one thing to declare the world well lost, when her husband lay in her arms, broken-hearted, dependent on her support; but it required a vastly more difficult effort to maintain that attitude during the painful process of hunting for a house at about a third of the old rent, and arranging her treasured possessions for an auction sale. To Vanna, her invariable safety-valve, Jean poured forth her feelings, in characteristic, highly coloured language.
“I feel sometimes as if I could not bear it another moment—as if I must shriek, as if I must scream, as if I must take Rob by the arms and shake him till I drop! It’s so maddening to be taken so literally at one’s word, and to be expected to sit smiling on the top of a pedestal while the world rocks. Yesterday, going over that hateful, stuffy little house, when he would persistently make the best of everything, even the view of the whitewashed yard and I had to go on smiling and smiling as if I agreed, I felt as if something in my head would snap... I believe it will some day, and I shall lose control, and rage, and say terrible things, and he will be broken hearted with sorrow—and surprise! He hasn’t an idea, not a glimmering ghost of an idea, what I’m suffering! I said I didn’t care, and he believed it, just as simply as if I’d told him the time. Oh, dear! the blindness of men.”
“And the strangeness of women!” Vanna looked at her with her tender, whimsical smile. “You believed it yourself at the time, dear girl. I can imagine how eloquent you would be. No wonder poor Robert was convinced. I was overcome with admiration for you that first week, but being a woman, I knew that the reaction must come. That’s inevitable; but you must live up to yourself, Jean; you’ve created a precedent by being magnificently brave, and you must keep it up.”
“I—can’t!” said Jean, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “That night I could think of nothing but Rob—his poor face! I would have cut off my hand to make him smile, but my home—my home! To have to break it up! My home where we came after we were married, where the babies were born... It breaks my heart to leave it, and to give up all my treasures that I collected with such joy... And Robert doesn’t see, he doesn’t know—that seems hardest of all. If he just realised—”
“He would suffer again! Is that what you want?”
Jean cast a startled glance, and sat silent, considering the problem. Her eyes were circled by dark violet stains, as from long wakeful nights; there were hollows at her temples which the cloudy hair could not altogether conceal.
“It sounded rather like it,” she said slowly at last, “but no! indeed I don’t—I love him far too much. But just sympathetic a little, Vanna—and appreciative of my loss! Yesterday when we stood in that little back dining-room if he had said to me: ‘it’s awfully hard on you, darling, but it’s only for a time: put up with it for a time!’ I should have hugged him, and felt a heroine. But he looked out on that awful backyard, and said serenely, ‘oh, it doesn’t matter about views! You never cared about looking out of windows,’ and went on calmly planning where we could put a sideboard. And I wanted to scream! He doesn’t understand, Vanna. He doesn’t understand—”
“Men don’t, dear! It’s no use expecting more than they can give. They pull a wry face, accept a situation, and say no more about it. It would seem to them contemptible to go on grizzling. It’s a fine attitude—much finer than ours; and if you look upon it in the right light, Robert’s unconsciousness is a great compliment. He simply gives you credit for being as good as your word, as he is himself.”
But Jean pouted, and protruded her chin in the old pugnacious fashion.
“But—in our case, I’m not so sure that it is finer! This upheaval is not one hundredth part so great a trial to Rob as it is to me. He’s sorry, of course, and regrets that he did not sell out his shares; but it will be no trial to him to have a small house, with a greengrocer’s shop at the corner of the road. He won’t mind a marble paper in the hall; it won’t cost him a thought to have a drawing-room composed of odd hideosities, instead of my lovely Chippendale. He won’t even notice if the little girls are shabby, and I wear a hat two years. Is there much credit in being calm and resigned over a thing you don’t feel? I nag at the servants, and snap at the children, and grizzle to you, and any one looking on would say: What a saint! What a wretch! but really and truly I’m fighting hard, and slaying dragons every hour of the day; and if I succeed in stifling my feelings and being decently agreeable for an hour or two in the evening, I’ve won a big victory; and it’s I who am the saint, not he! Vanna—do you think I am a beast?”
Vanna’s laugh was very sweet and tender.
“Not I! I quite agree; but I want to help you, dear, to fight to the end. Grumble to me as much as you like. I’m a woman, and understand; but play the game with Robert. You are his Ideal, his Treasure. Be pure gold! Hide the feet of clay—”
“Don’t preach! Don’t preach!” cried Jean; but before the words were out of her mouth, she had rushed across the room and thrown her arms impetuously round Vanna’s neck. “Yes; I will! I will! Oh, Vanna, how you help! Scold me! Make me ashamed! I don’t want anything in the world but to be a good wife to Rob.”
A month later the removal was accomplished, and Jean struggled valiantly to make the best of the altered conditions. She rarely complained—never in Robert’s presence; set herself diligently to the study of economy, and put aside embroidery and painting in favour of plain sewing and mending. In six months’ time the new ménage was running as smoothly as if it had been in existence for years, and neither the master of the house nor his children had suffered any diminution of comfort from the change. Robert’s special little fads were attended to as scrupulously as in the larger establishment; the little girls were invariably spick-and-span, but no observant eyes could fail to notice the change in Jean herself. She was older, graver, less ready to sparkle with mischievous gaiety. She had hidden her trouble out of sight, as years before she had hidden the baby clothes destined for the little dead son, but it had left its mark. With the best will in the world she could not change her nature, and her artistic sensibilities met a fresh wound every time she walked up and down stairs, every time she entered a room, every time she walked down the dull suburban street. She was in the wrong environment, and her beauty-loving nature was starved and hungry.
Robert was happily unconscious of the change, or if he noticed it was content to ascribe it to a more obvious reason. He himself was ready to welcome his fourth child with an ardour undamped by considerations of money. He adored children, and was delighted that the three-year-old Joyce should have a successor; but Jean’s satisfaction was dependent on a possibility—“If it is a boy!” A live son would compensate a hundred times over for the added strain and burden involved by the addition to the nursery. But the son was not forthcoming, and when a third little daughter was put into her arms Jean shed weak tears of disappointment.
“She’s the prettiest of all your babies, Jean,” Vanna declared a week later as she nursed the little flannel bundle on her arm, and gazed down at the small downy head. “She has just your eyes.”
“All babies’ eyes are the same.”
“This baby’s aren’t; and she has the daintiest little head! Lorna’s head was ugly at this stage. And her nose! Her nose is perfect.”
“Is it?” The voice from the bed was so listless and faint that Vanna held up the little face, insisting upon notice.
“Look at her! Look for yourself. Acknowledge that she is a duck!”
Jean’s lip quivered.
“I wanted a boy, a little son to make up... It seems so hard—”
Vanna pressed the downy head to her heart.
“Poor little superfluous woman! You are not wanted, it seems. Give her to me, Jean—she’d be worth the whole world. I mean it, you know! Say the word and I’ll take her home this moment, and adopt her for life.”
But at this Jean opened wide, protesting eyes.
“As if I would! My own little child! She isn’t superfluous. I shall adore her as much as the others, but just at first it is a disappointment. But I’ll call her after you this time, Vanna, say what you will, and you shall be her second mother.”
“Yes! I’d like this one to have my name, and she is mine, for I wanted her, and you didn’t. Remember that, if you please. No one pays one penny piece for anything this baby wears, or wants, or learns, but her Mother Vanna. I’m going to have a real claim, not only sentiment. She’s going to mean a great, great deal in my life!”
Jean smiled, well content. For herself it would be a relief to be freed from extra expense; and she realised that in giving her consent she was enriching rather than impoverishing her friend’s life. And so little Vanna adopted a second mother.
Two years had passed since Piers Rendall had left England, and still there came no word of his return. Vanna heard from him regularly every mail, letters as long, as intimate, as tender as during the first month after his sailing, yet gradually there dawned in them a difference which made itself surely, increasingly felt. What was it? In the depths of her own heart, where alone the change was admitted, Vanna pondered the question, but could find no reply. The first zest of interest and occupation in a new world had died an inevitable death; that was natural enough and could raise no surprise. The effects of a hot climate were beginning to make themselves felt, he had been overworked, overstrained—natural again; but in this case the remedy lay in his own hands. Why did he not use it? Vanna had never allowed herself to ask one questioning word on the subject of Piers’s return; but she could not avoid knowing that the junior partner whose place he had taken was entirely recovered, and most anxious to return to his post. Old Mrs Rendall, too, was growing sadly impatient, and, on the rare occasions when they met, treated Vanna with frigid disapproval. It was this girl’s doing that her son was homeless and exiled—deprived of the joys of manhood. There was some mystery about this long, dragging engagement—a mystery which had been purposely concealed, a mystery which in some inexplicable fashion referred to Vanna herself. What could it be? The consciousness of this underlying curiosity had been one of Vanna’s greatest trials in her social intercourse during the last few years, and its presence heightened the ever-growing longing for Piers’s return. The evening of mail-day often found her depressed rather than cheered, though the three closely written sheets had arrived as usual; for weary and disconsolate as was Piers’s mood, there was still no reference to a return; but during the week hope would again lift up its head and whisper encouragement concerning “next time.” So elastic a thing is the human heart, that a bracing wind, a gleam of sunshine through the fog, will send the spirits racing upwards, and open out possibilities where the road has appeared hopelessly barred.
It was in such a mood that Vanna greeted her weekly letter one grey morning in February. The night before she had spent a particularly happy evening with Jean and Robert, who had appeared in better spirits than since the beginning of their trouble. Little Vanna had developed a fresh set of baby charms, and had allowed herself to be nursed with bland complacence, and on returning to her own house Robert had spoken a few memorable words when saying good-bye: “Every day of my life I thank God for you, Vanna! Such a friend is a big gift. You have been a good angel to us this last year.” The memory of those words had been a good sleeping-draught; the warmth of them remained to cheer her as she dressed in the morning, and when her eye fell on the well-known envelope on the breakfast table, a little leap of the heart prophesied good news. To-day it seemed fitting that her waiting should come to an end.
It was a thin envelope. One sheet of paper replaced the usual three. So much the better. Four words would be sufficient to say all that she wanted to know. Vanna seated herself at the table, and bent eagerly over the sheet.
“My Dearest and Best—
“I have your last letter beside me, and have been reading it over and over, wondering how to answer all that is written between the lines. I can read it, Vanna; I have read it for a long time, but have not had courage to reply. You are too sweet and unselfish to allow yourself to write what is really in your thoughts, but I know you so well—you are no calm, equable, cold-blooded saint; you must have known many moments of bitterness, of anger, of resentment. I know it; I understand; I bless you for your patience. Why have I not come home to you? That is the question you are asking me across the world; the question I can almost hear spoken in my ear. You know by my letters that I am miserable and alone; you must have heard by this time that Brentford is anxious to get back. He wrote to me last mail. It is for me as senior partner to make my choice, and I have made it. I wrote to-day to say that I preferred to stay on—”
The paper trembled in Vanna’s hand; her lips lost their curves and straightened into a thin red line. She shut her eyes for a moment before she could see clearly to continue her reading:
“There! it is out. It is terrible to write it. I feel as if with the writing I have cut myself off from the best and happiest years of my life. For that is what it means, Vanna—the end! I have suffered tortures this last year, fighting it out, arguing it over and over again in my heart. I could not have borne it if it had not been for your letters, and yet in a fashion they have added to my suffering. If ever a man loved a woman, with his soul and strength, I have loved you. I have waited eight years, and it would have seemed as a day if there had been hope at the end. I would wait twenty years to gain you in the end. But, Vanna, when hope is dead!... I am very sad, very lonely; I miss you every hour, but I dare not come home to endure a worse pain. The years are passing; my youth is over; I cannot face a solitary age. Vanna, dearest, I promised you to be honest. I swore it. I must keep my word. If the best is denied me, I must be content with what I can have. There is a girl here—”
Vanna’s arm dropped on to the table, the fluttering sheet fell from her fingers, the dull, heavy thuds with which her heart had been beating for the last few minutes seemed suddenly to cease. She lifted her hand to her head, and brushed back her hair.
“A girl!” For one moment the room seemed to swim; consciousness appeared about to desert her, the next she was tinglingly alert, devouring the remaining words with hot, smarting eyes.
”—The daughter of our Colonel. I have seen a good deal of her these last months. She is not pretty, but she is sweet and kind, and has an echo of your charm. If I tried, I think I could love that girl. Vanna, I am going to try!... Do you despise me? Do you think me a faithless hound? Can you understand in the faintest degree that it is just because you have shown me what love can mean that I cannot live my life alone? Will you care to write to me still? I don’t know; I can’t tell. I dare not think how you may feel. I, who longed above all else in life to shield and guard you, to have to deal you this blow!... Forgive me, Vanna—my dearest, dearest love...”
Vanna laid the letter on the table once more, and raised a grey face, from which the lingering youth had been stricken at a blow. Her eyes stared through her window. The dull vista of chimney-tops stretched away into an illimitable distance. Dun banks of smoke hung pall-like over the city. The rain was falling.
How does one live through the first days of an intolerable grief? Looking forward, looking back, it appears impossible that reason itself could remain, yet in reality the automaton with the broken heart eats and sleeps, clothes itself, speaks in an ordinary voice, performs its necessary work.
Throughout the hours of that tortured morning Vanna told herself repeatedly that she would go mad, she would certainly go mad. It was impossible that any human creature could endure such anguish. She, in whose blood ran the fatal taint, must surely succumb sooner than others. She would go mad, and Piers would be justified. All the world would pity him. All the world would hail his escape.
But she did not go mad. She was not even ill. During the whole time of that awful soul-sickness there was not one hour when she was physically incapacitated. This extraordinary immunity of the flesh, over which each mourner marvels afresh, seemed at the time a fresh grievance. To be too ill to think, too ill to care, would have been heaven as compared with this hell of bitter, rambling thoughts. Her hero had fallen; his protestations had been empty words; there was no faith, or truth in this world, or the next; no mercy, no justice! She shut her doors and would admit no one. Jean and Robert would grieve for, and with her. Jean would cry. Robert’s face would cloud over with that pained, shrinking expression which it wore when any one dear to him was in grief, but they would not be surprised! In conclave one with another they would absolve Piers’s conduct, and say it was “natural.” Vanna laughed—a harsh, bitter laugh at the thought. So easy, so easy, when one had all the world could give, to be calm and judicial for others less fortunate! She hated Jean. She hated Robert. She hated the whole world. She hated God Himself.
Days and nights of darkness, weeks of black anger and despair, then slowly, quietly, like the coming of the dawn, the clouds began to melt, and the struggling light to make itself felt. First shame, and a shuddering horror of evil thoughts; secondly, bitterness thrust aside, instead of welcomed; finally the search-light turned upon herself, instead of on others. At that moment healing began, though it would be long indeed before any comfort from the process could be sensibly felt. To a just and generous nature it is impossible to cherish a heart-grudge where the head has pronounced absolution; and when Vanna’s first flame of anger had burnt itself out she had little blame in her heart for Piers Rendall. If he had fallen short of the ideal, was not she herself open to the same reproach? She who had always insisted upon the possibility of a spiritual love, was it consistent that she should wish to keep him sad and dissatisfied, or grudge him happiness because it was given by other hands than her own? He had given her eight years of his life; he had been honest with her. Could she not bear to stand aside, and say “God speed”?
But the light was still flickering and uncertain; the black clouds hung overhead ready to engulf her in fresh storms; a chance word or sound would open up the wound with a piercing anguish of pain. Why dwell upon the picture of a soul in torment? Vanna struggled on as thousands have done before her; but it was not until five weeks had passed that her return letter was dispatched to Piers in India.
“You are right, and you are brave. Thank you for being brave. Thank you for sparing me from the doom of spoiling your life. Don’t pity me too much. You have given me more than you know, far more; something greater even than love—understanding! Now I can feel; now I can sympathise; now I can help. This is your doing, your gift to me, so be comforted! All my life long I shall be thankful for these eight years.
“No! I will not write; not yet! In time to come we may meet and be friends, but this is Her day, it belongs to her—to that young girl who will be your wife. I’m not perfect, dear; you know my faults. I should be jealous—that’s only natural, I think. It would hurt me to hear her praises, and perhaps (I’m very feminine!) I might in revenge put out all my wiles—and I know how to charm you, Piers!—to keep you a little longer to myself. I’m honest, you see; as you say, we have always been honest with each other—for all our sakes, we’ll leave letters alone. When it is settled—it will be settled, I feel that—you can write and let me know, and tell me her name, and send me her photograph. I’m so poor and mean a thing that I am glad she is not pretty; glad that for the last time you called me your ‘dearest love.’
“I am quite well, and Jean is good to me, and so—good-bye...!”
On the evening of her thirty-eighth birthday Vanna Strangeways said adieu to her last patient, and slowly traversed the streets leading towards Jean Gloucester’s home. It was a dull and dreary evening, but her thoughts were not sad. The years which had passed by since the receipt of Piers Rendall’s farewell letter, and the subsequent news of his engagement and marriage, had marked the various stages which attend all great griefs. First the storm, with the roar of the wind, which threatens to destroy the very foundations of life; then the desert; loneliness; an outlook of flat, colourless sand; finally, slowly and surely, the inflowing calm. Hopeless, long-cherished grief is impossible to a soul who has tasted of love for God and its fellow-men. However severely a tree has been pruned, its leaves shoot forth bravely at the call of the spring, and in a few years’ time strength is gathered for another blossoming.
Vanna had put much good hard work into these last years. In the great metropolis of the world, a woman who is willing to work for others, and to work without pay, need never know a moment’s idleness, and Dr Greatman had always a list of patients who were in dire need of help—patients belonging to that section of humanity to whom in especial Vanna’s sympathies went out. Every day of her life she was brought into contact with women compared with whom her own lot was unspeakably calm and happy—poor waifs on life’s ocean, perishing not only for lack of physical help, but also for the want of love, and sympathy, and brightness; and Vanna, as a free agent, blessed with health and means, had it in her power to minister to mind as well as body. She was that rare thing, a voluntary worker on whom one might depend for regular, systematic service; and in her work she found her best and sweetest comfort.
Jean’s old epithet, “Consolation Female,” was truly descriptive of Vanna in these first years of her sorrow; but as time passed by, and the inevitable healing began to make itself felt, there came moments of restlessness and rebellion—moments when a life of philanthropy no longer satisfied, when the inner Ego awoke, and clamoured for recognition. A duller woman might have looked upon these outbursts as backslidings, and have taken herself severely to task for faltering in the path, but Vanna, more clear-sighted, recognised in them a natural and healthy revival of her old spirit. She made no attempt to stifle the growth of this unrest, but rather welcomed it as a sign of recovered strength, and took a keen natural joy in ministering to herself, even as she had done to others. The first longing for a pretty new dress, the first time that a social gathering became a pleasure instead of a bore, the first interested planning for the future on her own behalf—she congratulated herself on each impulse as it came, and so far as might be, gratified it to the full.
“You are the sanest woman I ever met.” Piers’s words were echoed by more than one person who knew Vanna at this period of her life—by Dr Greatman himself, between a frown and a sigh. “Absolutely sane; no extremes—a perfectly balanced woman, sweet and capable, and humorous—one in ten thousand! It seems as though she had inherited the extra share of ballast which her relations have lacked; and yet it is there, the danger, the shadow. I was right. If I were consulted again I should say the same. Even in the last year another cousin has developed symptoms. Such a family ought to be stamped out. But I’d give five years of my life to see that woman happy.”
This evening as she paced the muddy streets, Vanna’s thoughts were engaged with half a dozen details of her busy life. From ten o’clock in the morning she had been hurrying from house to house, yet had not been able to finish the list with which she had started the day. More people had been waiting for her, longing for her coming, than she had been able to visit; the memory of grateful words sounded in her ears. She was returning home to rest and ease, or, if she pleased, to go forth in search of amusement and distraction of mind. For the hundredth time she told herself that she was one of the fortunates of earth; and for the hundredth time “But I am alone” answered the woman’s heart, and could find no solace to fill that void. Vanna threw back her head with the quick, defiant gesture which had grown habitual in years of struggle. This was the direction in which thought could not be allowed to turn, the direction of earthquake and upheaval; the death of peace. Even as the pain cramped her heart she had decided on her medicine. “I will go to see my baby! There is still half an hour before her bedtime.”
Little Vanna, Jean’s youngest daughter, had been brought up by her parents to consider herself as equally the child of themselves and “Mother Wanna” and had shown herself delightfully eager to avail herself of the privilege.
“You’ve gotten only one mummie; I’se two!” was one of the earliest boasts by which she endeavoured to demonstrate her superiority over her sisters. She was a delightful little person, pretty, as were all Jean’s children, with her mother’s dark, cloud-like hair, and her father’s hazel eyes; affectionate, strong-willed, and already, at five years old, amusingly conscious of the powers of a dimpled cheek and a beguiling lisp, to gain for her the ambition of the minute. Jean had faithfully kept her promise of allowing her friend to adopt the small Vanna financially as well as mentally; and if it was a delightful task to purchase her small garments, it was still more thrilling to plan for years ahead. Little Vanna must have an education to fit her for her place in life. Her talents from the beginning should receive the most skilful training; she should be taken abroad to learn languages in the only way in which they can be truly mastered; if her attainments justified she should go on to College; if she preferred a social life, she should enjoy it to the full. Privately Vanna cherished the hope that her fledgling might develop not into a grave student but into a natural, light-hearted girl, whose happiness might atone to her in some wise for her own blighted youth. All that love, and money, and the most careful forethought could do, should be done to secure for the second Vanna an unclouded girlhood. In imagination she pictured her in the various stages of growth; the schoolgirl coming home from school, to be taken for holiday trips abroad; the gayest, least responsible of companions, running short of pocket-money, mislaying her effects, full of wild, impractical plans; later on the débutante, a tall, dim maiden, reviving memories of her lovely mother at the same age, attiring herself in a filmy white gown, peeping with sparkling eyes inside a jeweller’s case, showering sweet kisses as thanks. Later on, the coming of Prince Charming—a Prince Charming who could be welcomed without a pang, for, thank God, there were no dark pages in the history of this second Vanna. Finally a marriage, with its happy bustle of preparation, trousseau buying, and furnishings, the interests of the young home; children of the third generation. The future could not be blank with such an interest as this in prospect!
The church clock at the corner of the street had just struck five as Vanna knocked at the door of Robert Gloucester’s house. It was the children’s hour, when Jean was sure to be found in the den striving to amuse her three little daughters, while each vied with each other in the effort to attract the largest share of attention.
They crowded into the hall at the sound of Vanna’s patent knock, and drew her into the room in a clamour of welcome. Each one of the four had a budget of news to unfold, and was eager, for the privilege of first innings. Jean made several futile efforts to send the children back to their several games, but soon abandoned the effort and lay back comfortably in her chair, content to bide her time. As usual, she was beautifully dressed, though more simply than of old. In the shaded lamplight it was impossible to believe that her fortieth birthday was well in sight. Her soft dark hair was as abundant as ever, and the thinness of her face seemed but to show more plainly the exquisite moulding of her features. Vanna glanced at her with the old, never-dying admiration, as she held her godchild on her knee, and listened to the eager confidences of her sisters, and Jean smiled back with affectionate languor. Behind her in a recess of the wall stood a medley of photographs, large and small: Mr Goring, white-haired and spectacled, proudly holding his eldest grandchild on his knee; the two tall, handsome brothers; Robert, with uplifted head and happy, smiling eyes; baby faces nestled closely together. At her feet in front of the old brass fender lay Robert’s dippers waiting his return, but Jean had no thought of any of these things. She had an air of snatching the moment’s leisure, as something precious which should not be wasted, and her eyes showed a dreamy indifference to the children’s sallies—an abstraction which, with juvenile sharpness, they were quick to note. Vanna was a newcomer, and could always be counted on as an interested audience; but no normal child can be satisfied for long if there remains one person in the room who is not paying the due meed of attention. Before ten minutes were passed the trio were once more swarming over their mother’s chair, tugging at her gown to attract attention.
“Jean!” asked Vanna suddenly, “are you happy?”
Jean stared at her with stolid surprise.
“Of course I am happy,” she said flatly. “What do you mean?”
“But are you blissfully, ecstatically, unspeakably happy—almost too happy to live?”
Jean’s stare took on a tinge of affront.
“No! Of course not. Why should I be?”
“Why should you not? If such a thing is possible to any one on earth, it ought to be to you. You have everything that is worth having—everything! Robert—his wonderful love; these children, interest in life, hope, expectation. You are so rich!”
Jean’s face softened. She looked at the white-robed figures at her feet, and for a moment her eyes shone; for a moment, and then once more the shadow fell.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, I know! I am well off, but one can’t live on the heights; and, oh, dear! oh, dear, there are such worries! Morton has given me notice. It’s so difficult to find a decent cook for small wages. I shall have to begin the weary old hunt once more. And Lorna keeps complaining of her eyes. Robert says she must see an oculist, but I do so dread it. If she has to wear spectacles it will break my heart. And you remember those dining-room curtains that I sent to be dyed? They came back to-day the wrong shade—simply shrieking at the walls. Ruined! Isn’t it maddening—I feel so depressed—”
She looked across the room with a transparent appeal for sympathy, but with a quick, glad laugh Vanna leapt to her feet and swept towards the door.
“Good-bye. I’m going. Thank you so much!”
“Going!” Jean rushed after her in dismay.
“Vanna, you’ve just come. Thank me for what? You mad creature, what do you mean?”
“My lesson! Don’t stop me, Jean, I’ll come again—I must go.”
She fled into the street, and the sound of her laughter floated back to Jean as she stood by the open door.
“The dining-room curtains don’t match!” Jean, the beloved, had said these astounding words; had advanced them in all seriousness as a reason for unhappiness! In the midst of plenty, this infinitesimal crumb could mar her joy. And Jean was but a type of her class. All over London while their lonely sisters were eating their hearts with envy, the women rich in home, husband, and children, were allowing pigmy trials to obstruct the sun, squandering their joy, wasting the precious days. And at the other end of the world that young girl who was Piers Rendall’s wife, the mother of his child, she too, perchance, was vexing herself over many things, bemoaning her trials, so dulled by custom that she no longer appreciated her joys.
The great, the supreme secret of life, came home to Vanna with overwhelming force as she walked through the quiet streets. Not without, but within, must man look for happiness; in himself, the divine soul of him, or nowhere lies his joy. All outer possessions are as naught—the baubles, the playthings of a child, which, once gathered, grow tame and lose their gilt.
Vanna had known great grief, and had travelled on bleeding feet through the desert of loneliness, but from the rough journey she had reaped her spoil. Her eyes were opened; she saw the riches of this world at their true worth; her heart was filled with an immense, encompassing love. It was impossible that she should ever again be lonely. She thanked God, and took courage.