“Pure selfishness, I call it!” he said, curtly.
She laughed gaily.
“And your brother’s proposal of marriage has nothing of ‘self’ in it, you think?” she queried. “Well! But if you imagine, as you seem to imply, that I despise wifehood and motherhood, you are wrong — I do not. Only I would have both wifehood and motherhood on a higher plane — nobler and more sacred than they are at the present day. Just now there are two thousand divorce cases awaiting settlement! What good or hope for humanity is there in this? Two thousand! — and yet you would have me join the great company of martyrs! Please do not strike down any more flowers with that stick of yours! — it is quite a ‘manly’ habit! — but the pretty little creatures have done you no harm!”
“You irritate me!” he said. “I feel as if I must hit something!”
“Yes, I’m quite sure you do!” and she bait her soft, deep eyes upon him with an expression that was almost pity. “But please try to understand me! I told you I believed in Christmas — I believe in it ardently as the greatest Symbol ever given to mankind! It teaches that we must have gods born into this wonderful ‘house’ of the world — not so-called ‘men’ who are often lower in their thoughts and actions than the poor four-footed brutes they enslave and kill. The overproduction of such men is the great mistake of humanity — it is responsible for every sort of misery and disease. Wars and strikes and plagues are its results in all ages and nations. And these evils will continue unceasingly until we women take up the business of transforming the race. We should have begun two thousand years ago dating from the first Christmas!”
He looked at her in blank amazement.
“Do you think you have begun this astounding work?” he asked, mockingly.
“Only in so far as I have begun to transform myself,” she answered. “And in doing so I have been helped by friends unguessed of — across the stepping-star. Such a little way across! — you have no idea what a little way it is, nor how easy it is to talk to those on the other side! I hope soon to explain it — when all my facts are ready, and the scientists have come up with me. They are coming — and very quickly, too. One of the best known among them has already written plain words on race transformation from race habits, for he points out that ‘since life began on earth there has been a gradual development into new and nobler forms’ — and that ‘if we merely pass on what we receive the human race cannot develop onward and upward until man is “a little lower than the angels!”’ So, if you ever give me a thought after to-day, try not to condemn me for breaking ‘race habits’ which make our ‘house’ of this world miserable, and helping to develop new and nobler forms which shall make us happy.”
She held out her hand in farewell. They had come to within a few steps of a charmingly built cottage set in a garden which was at this season gay with autumn blossom of asters, golden-rod, and Michaelmas daisies, expressive of delicious peace and pleasure.
“I suppose — as you are becoming a ‘celebrity’ — I may not give the gist of our conversation as a press interview?” he said with almost the “professional” smile, amounting to a sneer.
“You would not be able to give it correctly,” she answered, quietly. “Therefore it is wiser to say nothing. Much of the mischief of the world is made through press inaccuracies.”
There was a pause.
“Well — good-bye!” he said. “I’m sorry you are such a crank, for you are a very charming woman!”
She coloured, not altogether with pleasure.
“After all,” he continued, half banteringly, “I came to see if you really believed in Christmas. Few people really do nowadays. They pretend to—”
“I do not pretend,” she interposed, gravely. “To me it is the symbol of the future. I see the Star in the East!”
“The transformation of the race?” he suggested, smiling.
“The uplifting of Man through the purity of Woman,” she said. “That is the meaning of Christianity and the ultimate goal of all science.”
Her face grew bright with inspired feeling — she looked lovely as any pictured angel, and curiously afraid lest that strange light which had terrorized him before should shine round her again, he bent over her hand and kissed it with conventional courtesy.
“That is your faith?” he said.
“That is my faith!” she answered. “May it soon be yours!”
And so they parted.
WHY SHE WAS GLAD
HER garden was gay with spring-time flowers and foliage; there were happy birds swinging on the boughs and singing their amorous carols to the sun; and she herself, a woman easily contented with simple things, was tranquilly pleased with all she saw and all she felt. Her one child, a little dimpled girl-fairy two years old, toddled with a charming unsteadiness on the velvety green grass, every now and then stooping to pluck a daisy with a small chuckle of delight; and as she sat in a low wicker chair on the lawn busily stitching at a dainty white frock for this darling companion of her hours she thought how good it was to be thus “alone with baby,” as she said to herself— “alone with baby, and without — Him!”
“Him” was her husband — he was away fighting, in company with “all good men and true.” And she was very glad it was so — very glad! In her heart she knew her gladness was a horrible sort of gladness — it was not patriotism, for if the truth must be told she did not care a button what became of any country provided she could only have her little home — her little baby. This was the blank, stark truth; the truth as it is known to many folks who have not the courage to admit it. She was not sufficiently a hypocrite to join in the loud cry of “For King and Country”; she had no particular love for either — as she was wont to say, they did not care for her — why should she care for them? She, and not her husband, had earned the money which bought the pretty country cottage in which she dwelt serene — she, and not her husband, had paid for its furnishing and upkeep, and considering how hard she had worked, she thought the taxes inordinately burdensome and had not the slightest admiration or devotion for the government which imposed them.
“The people make the wealth of the country by their hard work,” she would say, “and governments take half of it away for unnecessary expenditure. That’s how I see it.”
And now government had taken her husband. And the most curious and disconcerting part of the affair was that she did not mind his being taken! She ought to have minded — but the plain fact remained that she did not! She thought she ought to have been sorry, and she tried to picture the horrors of battle, the trenches, the bursting bombs — all to no purpose. Through and above all shone the glory of his going — not the glory of patriotism, heroism, or any other “ism” — but simply that he had “gone.” Yes, he had gone, and his absence had lasted several months, during which she had been so happy that she could hardly believe in her own good fortune. Everything went “on wheels,” the daily routine of life, the simple housekeeping, the baby’s growth and enchanting little ways — there was nothing to wish for, nothing to grieve about. When any friend called and asked her about her husband, she would look up in a pretty, smiling way and reply, “Oh, yes! — he’s all right! — or he was when he wrote last. He’s in the trenches.”
Then, if the friend volunteered a sympathetic remark, such as, “You must be very anxious!” she would answer: “Oh, I don’t feel anxious somehow! It seems to me that he’s sure to come back! There are some sort of men that never get killed! — they go through all sorts of dangers and are none the worse. Robert is like that.”
And a faint thrill would run through her veins as she spoke thus, because the thought that jumped into her brain and persistently stayed there was that if Robert was not “like that” — if, on the contrary, he did get killed, she would not perhaps be as overcome with grief as might be expected!
Stitching away in the warm sunshine, she looked fair and pretty, with an air of delicate refinement and intelligence in her features which expressed both brain and heart. The
smile that came on her lips as she watched her baby girl toddling to and fro was lovely and Madonna-like, and no one would have thought that she had ever suffered from bitter disillusion and disappointment in her dearest hopes and dreams. Yet such was the case. She had married in the early hey-day of her youth, and her love for the man she chose to be her life’s partner had been one of those rare passions of devotion and unquestioning, blind tenderness which saw no fault, no weakness, no lack of principle or steadfastness in the idol set up for adoration. Yet three years — indeed barely one year — had sufficed to scatter the rose-coloured mist before her eyes and to rend the fine veil of pathetic self-deception. He who, as lover, had wooed and won her with a thousand endearments showed himself in his true colours as husband — a selfish sensualist, ever seeking his own comfort, his own gain, his own convenience. Had she been able to fathom his nature at first she would have soon discovered that it was for his own gain and his own convenience that he had married her at all. He had, as he himself explained to his boon “bar” companions, “got into a bit of a hole” — and he used a woman’s life to pull him out. Learning by chance that this particular woman was making good money by stencilling and other decorative work for big London and Paris firms, he set out to secure her as a wife who would be useful to him. She was very easily secured — all women are, while under the brief hallucination that they are really “loved.” After her marriage she went on working while he loafed and idled, taking various positions and resigning them as the whim seized him, and spending what he earned recklessly, without thought of the wife or the child born to him, and moreover giving way to all the defects of his nature without restraint. His entrance into the tasteful little cottage which his wife had made into a home such as any man might be happy in was the signal of noise and discord — his loud, grumbling voice, for ever on the key of faultfinding, scared the baby and started it to scream and howl; the mere sight of him sent the one maid-of-all-work, a contented little body when alone with her mistress, scampering down the kitchen stairs and into the back cellar where she could pretend not to hear him if he called; and wherever he went, into whatever room he entered, there was an immediate sense of unhappiness and confusion. Nothing was ever rightly done in his opinion — if the window was shut he would roar:
“Open the window, for Heaven’s sake! The place is suffocating — a man must have air!”
If it was open— “Shut that window! I suppose you want me to catch my death of cold!”
If there were flowers on the table, he would throw them out of doors with a gesture of aversion, and the remark:
“Sickly smelling things! They spoil the food! I can’t imagine why you put them near me while I’m having my dinner!”
At meals he would read the paper steadily, hardly addressing his wife save in monosyllables. His baby girl bored him excessively — he longed to smack her little inquisitive face many times, but knew he dared not, with the mother looking on. In the evenings he generally went out “for a game of billiards” as he said, but in truth merely to “pick up” some stray girl with whom he could drink and fool the time away, knowing that when he got home his wife, too contemptuous of his conduct to either comment upon it or reproach him, would be in bed with the baby at her side — that innocent little shield saving her for a time from his company.
Then the Great War broke out, and though he sought “exemption” he naturally failed to obtain it, and was drafted off. Some faint touch of regret and compunction smote his callous soul on the morning he left his home — a sort of scale dropped from his eyes as he looked at his wife, neat and charming in a soft blue print dress, with a blue ribbon in her fair hair, holding “baby” by the wee, dimpled hand, attired in the same blue, the little garment being made out of the remainder of the mother’s gown. He was a tall, heavy man, personable enough as men go, and a curious sort of irritation beset him as he realized that she, his wife, looked very peaceful and pretty.
“Well! — good-bye!” he said, curtly. “You don’t seem very sorry I’m going.”
She smiled rather mischievously.
“Don’t I? Oh, well, I’m a good patriot, you know! ‘Your King and Country want you!’ — it wouldn’t do for your wife to want you, too! That would be ‘shirking,’ and all the people who stay at home because they’re too old, or too diseased, or too something or other, would be pointing at you and making faces! So I mustn’t be sorry — I ought to be waving a flag and dancing, or beating a drum — anything noisy to show I’m patriotic!”
He looked at her dubiously.
“Of course you know I may be killed?” he said.
Her eyes twinkled.
“Of course! That’s in the bargain! Then if you are, you will have died ‘for King and Country’ and perhaps your name will be mentioned in the ‘local’ rag of a newspaper. What an honour that will be!”
“You don’t care for King and Country!” he said, with a frown.
“No — nor do you!” she answered. “You wouldn’t go if you could help it — everybody knows that! I don’t pretend to care — King and Country don’t trouble about me, and I don’t see why I should trouble about them. I only care — for Baby!”
“Well, Baby was born in this country,” he said, somewhat lamely.
She laughed. “It wouldn’t matter if Baby had been born in a boat on the sea, I should have loved her just the same,” she said. “Country doesn’t count where Baby is concerned — she would have been just as precious to me if she had been born on a nameless desert island.”
“You talk like a fool!” he said.
“Exactly! I know I do!”
There was a pause. A distant clock strack the hour. He fidgeted a little, shuffling his feet to and fro on the gravel path. Then he said:
“I suppose I must be off. I’d like to kiss Baby before I go.”
She looked at him in surprise. He had never desired this privilege before. Then, without a word, she lifted the sweet little bundle of warm flesh, soft hair, and dove-like cooings in her arms, and held it toward him. The child shrank nervously, and pushing him away with her tiny, plump fists began to whimper.
“Won’t have me at any price!” he said, with a harsh laugh. “All right! Do as you like!” This as the mother put the little creature down again on the grass, where it began to crow and laugh as swiftly as it had begun to cry. “I shan’t worry about you!” He straightened himself, drawing his figure up to its full height — as a matter of fact, he rather approved his own appearance in khaki — and fixed his cap more firmly on his head. A smile of conscious vanity and superiority lightened for a moment his rather heavy features, and he stooped toward his wife, brushing her cheek lightly with his lips.
“Good-bye, old girl!”
“Good-bye!” she answered, quietly.
For a moment he appeared to hesitate — something of shame for his long neglect of every tenderness in her regard pricked him like a needle point — but the emotion was brief, and passed before it had time to be deeply felt. Opening the garden-gate he swung it to behind him with a clang, and then marched down the road and so out of sight without once looking back. He was gone.
His wife watched him disappear, then turned to the prettier picture— “Baby.” Baby was sitting on the grass, looking like a little blue flower-fairy, chuckling to herself in evident satisfaction with everything about her. Seeing her mother looking at her, she struggled up to her feet and began to toddle to the fond arms which were at once stretched out to receive her.
“Mum-mum!” said she.
Nor was she at all frightened when “Mum-mum” caught her up in a close embrace, kissing her little soft face and hands in a passion of love.
“Darling! Oh, darling baby!” she murmured. “You and I are alone now! — so happy! Thank God! — so happy—”
Since then nearly ten months had gone by, and from “Him” she had very little news. His letters were brief and free of all sentiment. Sometimes he remembered the child, sometimes he did not.
Autumn and winter had passed tranquilly, and now spring had come again, full of warmth and brightness; yet a chill had fallen on her mind like the touch of frost on a rose, for a letter from her husband informed her that he was about to get a fortnight’s leave. She thought of this, painfully. She felt she knew what that “leave” was likely to mean. A good deal of idling about the neighbourhood with any companions he could pick up, and a considerable amount of drink. Affection for herself, delight in her society, she knew were impossible to him. He was one of those men who despise the good things they possess, and crave for whatever they cannot obtain. Her mind grew clouded over with the prospect of his arrival — she dreaded the sound of his rough, irritable voice, his indifferent, harsh manner, the covert sneer ever lurking in his cold eyes — and anon she wondered at herself as she remembered the time when, as a confiding, hopeful girl, she had believed in his tenderness and had lifted him to the height of an ideal worship as foolish as it was youthful and pathetic. These thoughts and memories crowded into her brain on that sunny afternoon when she sat in her chair on the lawn, stitching at the tiny tucks of her child’s white frock, and she wondered wistfully why she had ever imagined that any good or chivalrous feeling could dwell in a man so selfish and callous.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 959
