My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed days that swiftly followed, when my mother's eyes would flash towards my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour forth a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards, sitting alone in the dark, with bowed head between his hands.
Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.
In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung closer to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have understood if they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms clasping me tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I hated my father, who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet when my father drew me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind eyes so full of pain, then I felt angry with my mother, remembering her bitter tongue.
It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into each other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow. The idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline in the air, feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently through the pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face before them. Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and the next moment, stealing across to my father, answer for him with his voice, but strangely different. I used to think I could hear it laughing to itself as it stepped back into enfolding space.
To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps man and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face between them. So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I see its mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent laugh. So that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the twilight, but I see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them, creeping after them with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me in quiet ways.
Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark valley of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love's ordeal? testing the feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet again, the darkness passed?
Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann—or Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which—a snuffy, mumbling old frump, with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long blank walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother's right hand; and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish seeming, how she could be so interested in him, shouting much and often to him; for added to his other disattractions he was very deaf, which necessitated his putting his hand up to his ear at every other observation made to him, crying querulously: “Eh, what? What are you talking about? Say it again,”—smiling upon him and paying close attention to his every want. Even old Hasluck, opposite to him, and who, though pleasant enough in his careless way, was far from being a slave to politeness, roared himself purple, praising some new disinfectant of which this same Teidelmann appeared to be the proprietor.
“My wife swears by it,” bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.
“Our drains!” chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; “well, you'd hardly know there was any in the house since I've took to using it.”
“What are they talking about?” asked Teidelmann, appealing to my mother. “What's he say his wife does?”
“Your disinfectant,” explained my mother; “Mrs. Hasluck swears by it.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Hasluck.”
“Does she? Delighted to hear it,” grunted the old gentleman, evidently bored.
“Nothing like it for a sick-room,” persisted Hasluck; “might almost call it a scent.”
“Makes one quite anxious to be ill,” remarked my aunt, addressing no one in particular.
“Reminds me of cocoanuts,” continued Hasluck.
Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his flattery should not be lost.
“I say it reminds me of cocoanuts.” He screamed it this time.
“Oh, does it?” was the reply.
“Doesn't it you?”
“Can't say it does,” answered Teidelmann. “As a matter of fact, don't know much about it myself. Never use it.”
Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of the subject.
“Take my advice,” he shouted, “and buy a bottle.”
“Buy a what?”
“A bottle,” roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his strength.
“What's he say? What's he talking about now?” asked Teidelmann, again appealing to my mother.
“He says you ought to buy a bottle,” again explained my mother.
“What of?”
“Of your own disinfectant.”
“Silly fool!”
Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic (which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely misjudged the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say. I only know that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly, and therefore assume they reached round the table also.
A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned, and the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.
“He's quite right,” was Hasluck's comment; “that's what I am undoubtedly. Because I can't talk about anything but shop myself, I think everybody else is the same sort of fool.”
But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time Teidelmann was evidently interested.
“Well, if you could spare the time, I'd be more obliged than I can tell you,” Hasluck was saying. “I know absolutely nothing about pictures myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in Europe.”
“He ought to know,” chuckled old Teidelmann. “He's tried often enough to palm off rubbish onto me.”
“That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young—” Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; “been the making of him, I should say.”
“I gave him two thousand for the six,” replied Teidelmann, “and they'll sell for twenty thousand.”
“But you'll never sell them?” exclaimed my father.
“No,” grunted old Teidelmann, “but my widow will.” There came a soft, low laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.
“It's Anderson's great disappointment,” followed a languid, caressing voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), “that he has never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art. He'll pay thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed Madonna. Such a waste of money, it appears to me.”
“But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,” argued my father's voice.
“It would enhance the beauty of my neck,” replied the musical voice.
“An even more absolute waste of money,” was my father's answer, spoken low. And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.
“Who is she?” I asked Barbara.
“The second Mrs. Teidelmann,” whispered Barbara. “She is quite a swell. Married him for his money—I don't like her myself, but she's very beautiful.”
“As beautiful as you?” I asked incredulously. We were sitting on the stairs, sha
ring a jelly.
“Oh, me!” answered Barbara. “I'm only a child. Nobody takes any notice of me—except other kids, like you.” For some reason she appeared out of conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of mind.
“But everybody thinks you beautiful,” I maintained.
“Who?” she asked quickly.
“Dr. Hal,” I answered.
We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.
“What did he say?” she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in it.
I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I was positive.
“Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,” Barbara instructed me, “and don't forget what he says this time. I'm curious.” And though it seemed to me a foolish command—for what could he say of her more than I myself could tell her—I never questioned Barbara's wishes.
Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may have clouded for a moment Barbara's sunny nature, surely there was no reason for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention throughout the dinner than the parlour-maid.
“Where ever did you get her from?” asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having just descended the kitchen stairs.
“A neat-handed Phillis,” commented Dr. Florret with approval.
“I'll take good care she never waits at my table,” laughed the wife of our minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman, mother of eleven, eight of them boys.
“To tell the truth,” said my mother, “she's only here temporarily.”
“As a matter of fact,” said my father, “we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck for her.”
“Don't leave me out of it,” laughed Hasluck; “can't let the old girl take all the credit.”
Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as “My dear,” at which Mrs. Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that incident could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was looking, pinched her elbow, which would not have mattered had not the unexpectedness of it drawn from her an involuntary “augh,” upon which, for the reputation of the house, and the dinner being then towards its end; my mother deemed it better to take the whole company into her confidence. Naturally the story gained for Barbara still greater admiration, so that when with the dessert, discarding the apron but still wearing the dainty cap, which showed wisdom, she and the footman took their places among the guests, she was even more than before the centre of attention and remark.
“It was very nice of you,” said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the circle of compliments, “and, as I always tell my girls, that is better than being beautiful.”
“Kind hearts,” added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, “are more than coronets.” Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell upon the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like the Amen in church.
Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.
“When I was a girl,” said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing silence, “I used to look into the glass and say to myself: 'Fanny, you've got to be amiable,' and I was amiable,” added my aunt, challenging contradiction with a look; “nobody can say that I wasn't, for years.”
“It didn't pay?” suggested Hasluck.
“It attracted,” replied my aunt, “no attention whatever.”
Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida (I am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the details of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion, so I have been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise of the moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa scheme becoming converted to Quakerism.
But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn and Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence in the East End.
As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr. Florret's presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song once looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the cold stare of his disapproving eye. But Dr. “Fighting Hal” was no gentle warbler of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his partisans with him further than they meant to go, and quite unable to turn back; leaving his opponents clinging desperately—upside down, anyhow—to their perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.
“Life!” flung out Washburn—Dr. Florret had just laid down unimpeachable rules for the conduct of all mankind on all occasions—“what do you respectable folk know of life? You are not men and women, you are marionettes. You don't move to your natural emotions implanted by God; you dance according to the latest book of etiquette. You live and love, laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only one moment do you come face to face with life; that is in the moment when you die, leaving the other puppets to be dressed in black and make believe to cry.”
It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality of us all.
“Little doll,” he had once called me, and I had resented the term.
“That's all you are, little Paul,” he had persisted, “a good little hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what it's made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a gallant-hearted, soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and primmest of dolls. And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to be a man, but hasn't the pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul.”
“He's a trifle—a trifle whimsical on some subjects,” explained my father, on my repeating this conversation.
“There are a certain class of men,” explained my mother—“you will meet with them more as you grow up—who talk for talking's sake. They don't know what they mean. And nobody else does either.”
“But what would you have?” argued Dr. Florret, “that every man should do that which is right in his own eyes?”
“Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what every other fool thinks right,” retorted Washburn. “The other day I called to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His wife was washing clothes in the front room. 'How's your husband?' I asked. 'I think he's dead,' replied the woman. Then, without leaving off her work, 'Jim,' she shouted, 'are you there?' No answer came from the inner room. 'He's a goner,' she said, wringing out a stocking.”
“But surely,” said Dr. Florret, “you don't admire a woman for being indifferent to the death of her husband?”
“I don't admire her for that,” replied Washburn, “and I don't blame her. I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I do admire her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In Berkeley Square she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief to her eyes.”
“Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” murmured Dr. Florret.
“Go on,” said Washburn. “How does it run? 'That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to the use of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put on.' So was the lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the more an ass. Here asses go about as asses, but there are lions also. I had a woman under my hands only a little while ago. I could have cured her easily. Why she got worse every day instead of better I could not understand. Then by accident learned the truth: instead of helping me she was doing all she could to kill herself. 'I must, Doctor,' she cried. 'I must. I have promised. If I get well he will only leave me, and if I die now he has sworn to be good to the children.' Here, I tell you, they live—think their thoughts, work their will, kill those they hate, die for those they love; savages if yo
u like, but savage men and women, not bloodless dolls.”
“I prefer the dolls,” concluded Dr. Florret.
“I admit they are pretty,” answered Washburn.
“I remember,” said my father, “the first masked ball I ever went to when I was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal; everybody was so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street and see faces.”
“But I thought they always unmasked at midnight,” said the second Mrs. Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.
“I did not wait,” explained my father.
“That was a pity,” she replied. “I should have been interested to see what they were like, underneath.”
“I might have been disappointed,” answered my father. “I agree with Dr. Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement.”
Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.
Always she was very kind to me. Moreover, since the disappearance of Cissy she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my small self. My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was the one thing needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take much pride in our solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to our desires: like the oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world than to ourselves. If others there were who admired me, very guardedly must they have kept the secret I would so gladly have shared with them. But this new friend of ours—or had I not better at once say enemy—made me feel when in her presence a person of importance. How it was accomplished I cannot explain. No word of flattery nor even of mere approval ever passed her lips. Her charm to me was not that she admired me, but that she led me by some mysterious process to admire myself.
And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me, I never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the sudden raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.
She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting on her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his eyes were turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them back again. Once she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some light jest of his, and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick glance, saw that my mother's eyes were watching also.
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