by Ursula Bloom
They danced. She had not danced since Bonn, when they had cleared the furniture back and Herr Tietz had played on the piano for them, and Herr Zadzig had brought his flute. Then she had pranced, her arm round the silk-clad waist of some bigger girl, to whom she had inevitably to dance as gentleman. She had never danced like this before. The gold epaulette dazzled her, the firm holding of his arm, the sudden rhythm together, stepping out upon the world. She felt his eyes looking down, her own desire to look up, and yet she knew that she dared not. The arcs of dark lashes on his bronze cheek, that mouth so full of promise, so vital, so flexible. They danced with the music of the Blue Danube rising and falling and swelling; she forgot that they had not been introduced, she forgot that she had committed an unpardonable breach of good breeding.
The music stopped. Couples steered their way to the chairs surrounding the room, but her partner did nothing of the sort. He went to the far end, and lifted a curtain which partitioned them from the big hall into the tiny annexe known as the secretary’s office. It was empty.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ she demanded. She was standing there with her eyes shining like stars in the delicious pallor of her face. There was something freesia-like about her skin, something oddly, whimsically scarlet about the thread of a mouth so like that of the Shulamite.
‘This is the nineteenth century no longer,’ he said. ‘It is the twentieth, and we are not so afraid of Mrs. Grundy. I want to talk to you. You don’t even know my name.’
‘No.’
‘It is Peter Lloyd, of Her ‒ His Majesty’s ship Jasmine. I’ve seen you before, you know.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I am Mary Carew. George is my husband.’
‘Who?’
She pulled the curtain aside and pointed into the room beyond, where George in his greened suit was sitting on one chair with Agnes. There seemed to be very little room for Agnes, but it amused them very much; they were like a couple of schoolchildren about it, and George being playful was a devastating sight. Mary sharply jerked the curtain to again. It hurt! It wasn’t that she was jealous, it was that after the wide tract of knowledge the road of littleness seems so narrow. A bird beating its wings futilely against the bars of its cage, that was how she felt herself to be. Because it was a cage ‒ no use trying to delude herself with any other theory ‒ marriage was a cage. And all the while Peter watched her. No, it wasn’t Mr. Lloyd, nor Commander Lloyd, nor anything else Lloyd, it was Peter! There are some people whom one has always known, some loves whom one has for ever loved; she would not temporise, it was just Peter. He was speaking to her, and she could not deny him the truth.
‘We seem like old friends, don’t we?’
‘Yes. Funny, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is the chrysanthemum in your hair. I like that. It makes you different. You hadn’t the chrysanthemum in your hair the last time, and without it you were not quite so fearless. I like you fearless.’
‘We met that day on the hill, when I was going to return a call on those awful people ‒’ And then she laughed.
‘I know.’ He came nearer and sat on the edge of the table, flipping his gloves together. They talked little banalities, but they talked them freely, as old friends talk who have no need of reticence. Then, looking up, he flung a question to her as a challenge: ‘Why did you marry Carew?’
She said truthfully, regardless of the fact that obviously Peter could not understand: ‘Because Mamma was dreadful, and Mr. Jones such a prig, and Johnny had run off with a barmaid. Because there were only George and Wally, and Wally had no money. I liked George. I still like him.’
‘Indeed!’
‘I feel dreadfully disloyal about him at times; I see faults in him. I feel no nice wife would ever see faults in her husband.’
‘Isn’t that a Victorianism?’
‘Probably, but then I am a Victorian. This place, too … it is dreadful. I sit here waiting and waiting … for …’
‘For what?’
‘Death, I suppose. A nice little grave in the churchyard and what is called a good funeral. Lots of nice wreaths, and all that. It will be fun for me, won’t it?’
‘Oh, jolly,’ he said fiercely, and then: ‘But that isn’t life, waiting to die.’
‘No one can change it.’
‘Can’t they?’
‘No. There’s George.’
He went to the curtain, because the band was starting again. ‘You’ll come to tea with me in the ship to-morrow, with George?’
‘How can I?’
‘I’ll ask him. I’ll say we have always known each other. In a sort of way I feel we have ‒ perhaps.’ He stooped low over her hands and kissed them. Little soft hands which sewed so valiantly, toiled so hardly, so tirelessly. They went out and danced again, she aware that the gossips would chatter, that the Misses Dawkins would say catty things, and that the Clarridges would be appalled; but if George continued dancing with Agnes Spencer, surely she could continue dancing with Peter? In the next interval, wherein they ate meringues with no little difficulty, no forks having been supplied, Peter over a cup of innocuous coffee introduced himself to George.
‘I knew Mary before,’ he said, and somehow it was no impertinence. ‘You will bring her on board to tea?’
George was flattered. ‘Strangely enough, I’ve never been on board a ship,’ said he, ‘and I’d like it very much.’
‘I’ll have a boat ashore for you, and be waiting on the pier.’
‘Very good of you,’ George purred.
All the while Mary was watching with those deep eyes that read down into hearts. She had wanted this to happen. She had wanted it badly, and now she was afraid. She kept away from Peter for the rest of the evening, curled in a basket-work chair, and left very much to herself, but she did not care. There was a whole world she could consider. A world apart from this swirling crowd, with the chirpings of strings at the far end, a world in which a man moved insidiously, a man pregnant with meaning towards herself.
And when, the dance done, she and George stepped out into the silvery night arm in arm, he said excitedly: ‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew him before? I’ve found out a lot about him.’
Feeling it to be diplomatic to know a little, she asked: ‘Oh, what have you found out?’
‘He is a peer’s son. Most exciting ‒ the Honourable Peter Lloyd. You ought to have told me. Really you are most trying, Mary; you never think of me.’
‘Oh, George, I do,’ she said.
At home the fire was out in the bedroom grate, a handful of dead ashes and dust, that was all. George, who had danced violently and long, flung himself down and slept soundly and somewhat noisily. But Mary, watching the moonbeams flickering on the blind, and listening to George’s regular and heavy breathing, lay dreaming those blissful, wakeful dreams which are of Heaven. The tramp of feet, jingle of harness, the band blaring its brassy tune. Gold epaulettes and a mouth that promised kisses. Then it was that her passionate heart told her of all the sweetness lying ahead.
IX
Tea in the ship!
They walked down to the quay. George had been anxious as to whether he should take his inverness cape or not; he was very concerned as to looking his best. Mary had her one hat and frock which constituted her only change from everyday affairs; after all, she was only the curate’s wife, not a tithe as important as the curate himself.
Peter on the quay. She saw him from far away, long before George had recognised him. Peter with his Service cap, and a couple of gold stripes round each sleeve. She felt the little throb of rapture quicken in her heart. And it was vile, it was wicked!
She was married to George, poor, unsuspecting, lumbering George, and all the while she was carrying on an underhand liaison ‒ because that is where it would end. She must tell Peter to-day; she must tell him now. She thought with a sudden and shuddering remembrance of George reading the Commandments in church; the seventh! Thou shalt not … That dreadful word that frightened her so much. And th
en Johnny’s letter, which had struck her as being quite amusing at the time, ‘we all know what sailors are’. Johnny had nourished no fond illusions as to the virginity of naval gentlemen.
These things ran in the blood. Johnny had had a baby; he had had to marry Isabel, and no bones about it either. She might be already on the downward path in exactly the same manner. She argued with the pitiful helplessness of youth, very afraid of the shallow pitfalls, which could not possibly hurt her, but never seeing the deep bogs where danger lay in waiting.
They entered the boat, and a childish rapture possessed her. Peter holding her hand and sitting by her side in the little cabin; George innocently opposite. The proud chug-chug-chug as the boat puffed bombastically across the harbour. A long grey shape, so slim, so serene in appearance and yet so deadly in purpose. They climbed a narrow ladder; George experienced difficulties, but refused to admit it. Mary wondered what would happen if George, missing his foothold, fell in. She felt sure that he would make a terrific hole in the ocean, but the humour of the situation would be drowned in his intense sorrow for himself. She felt ashamed to admit that on arrival on deck she was disappointed that he had not fallen in.
The deck, with a red sun setting behind the pencilled lines of masts, the lacework of steel wire, and the sinister muzzles of guns. For this was a creature of death; she dealt in death. Mary got a biting impression of the ominous mission of this ship, her tampions slightly frosted with the red reflection from the sun upon them, her masts spires of silver.
They crossed the deck and went down a hatch ‒ surely the whitest-scrubbed wood in the world; she only wished that Hannah could see it, as a shining example of how a kitchen table should look. They were ushered into a small cabin, where easy-chairs and a big sofa were drawn up to the cheery stove. Two more officers rose to meet them. In an instant George was enveloped in a whirl of conversation. What an experience, how good of them to ask him; he was specially delighted. It was quite obvious that he supposed it to be all for his benefit.
‘We’ll show you round,’ said Peter.
‘Please … please,’ said George.
Mary rose too. ‘No,’ said Peter firmly. ‘Women are not allowed to go round warships, only on the deck. You’d like to see the deck?’
‘Yes.’
They had tea first, and, whilst George and the others did a tour of engine-rooms and galleys, of boiler-rooms and mess-decks, Peter and Mary looked into the night. It was a silver ship now, a magnificently silver ship of frosted beauty, riding at anchor in the cold splendour of a vivid moon and the white light of stars, every ripple of the water touched with it, the crude silver of steel. Men on watch; eyes looking out into the night; a voice every now and then; the deep resonant droning of a bell clanging the hours by their halves. They went to the ship’s side, and stood there in the silence, and somehow all the little silly conventions slipped from her, and she said ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ like a child bereft of a plaything.
‘I couldn’t sleep either. I had to talk to you. That’s why I got rid of George.’
‘Got rid of George?’
‘Yes. It is all ridiculous about women not being able to go over warships, but it sufficed, and George believed it. He doesn’t know much.’
‘You shan’t be unkind about him. He is my husband.’
‘It is because he is your husband that I am unkind about him. Why did you marry him?’
‘I told you.’
‘And now … what is going to happen?’
‘Nothing,’ she said dully. ‘What could happen?’
His hand closed warmly upon hers. ‘Everything, I suppose. If I had known you a year ago, so much would have been possible. So much … so much. Now ‒’
‘Now nothing is possible.’
‘I don’t believe it. We are living in more tolerant times. Divorce ‒’
She gave a little cry. All her Victorianism rose up and repelled the bare suggestion. ‘It’s unthinkable. Divorce is a dreadful thing, a wicked thing.’
‘But I love you.’ He said it simply, standing there in the moonlight with the darkness round his eyes, and the mouth which promised so much. ‘And,’ he repeated, ‘you love me.’
‘No.’ She said it with a certain ferocity. She must not admit it; whatever the cost, she must cling to her better judgment and refuse to acknowledge the truth.
‘You cannot lie to me,’ he told her. ‘You see, your eyes tell me what your lips refuse. You love me and you know it.’
‘I’m frightened.’
‘No, you’re not. You can’t be frightened. You’ve got me.’
She shivered a little, and they went back to the warm cabin. Tea had been cleared away, and she stood warming her hands at an inadequate stove; she stood there desperately still.
‘I may see you sometimes?’ he said.
Her heart ached to cry, ‘Often, often,’ but her lips said, with the reticence born of breeding, ‘Sometimes.’
‘You know how I feel?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘We are fighting a big thing, Mary, a tremendous thing; I think it is stupid trying to fight it, because it is much too big for us, far too big. What is the good of throwing away the only life you’ve got, and clinging to a little prim standard? Standards don’t help much, really, they don’t matter much; it is we who matter.’
‘Oh, please ‒’ she begged.
‘I may come and call?’
She turned her head aside and said hurriedly, for she had caught the echo of returning footsteps: ‘Please … please … you can’t imagine how I want it.’
His lips brushed her hair lightly, as though of no consequence, and before she had time to remonstrate the others had come in. George, she could see, had had a wretched time of it. As he had been so enthusiastic in the first place, the others had insisted that he should see everything, and George had not liked to appear unwilling. The result was that George had been pushed into all manner of holes and crannies, despite his figure’s inability, and his aptitude to get wedged; he had been precipitated up dizzy heights on fragile and uncertain ladders. He was daunted by his expedition round the ship, and his ardour being finally quenched he did not appear as happy as he had done before. George had ceased to gush. Mary had an idea that Peter had been to blame for the affair, and though she tried to restrain her amusement, she failed. When you came to think of it, it was so funny.
They left soon after, and Peter stood on the quay saluting in the moonlight; there was something automatic about the movement, something that made him seem unreal. On the way back George, recovering from his tour of the ship and feeling the comfortable Mother Earth beneath his feet, remarked that he wished that he had gone into the Navy. ‘It is more of a man’s job than parsoning,’ said George. ‘Cold nights and steel, and guns flashing, and all that sort of thing.’
Mary agreed, but she was not listening very attentively. George suggested that Peter should be asked to tea.
‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘And what about getting the Spencer girls to meet him?’
George shifted a little. ‘I dunno about that; some women seem to find uniforms so attractive.’
‘But does that matter?’
‘The Spencer girls are so silly.’
‘Yes, I know, George, though I thought you considered them rather charming?’
But George was not to be drawn.
X
The year steered to its close.
She was making a genuine and splendid effort to avoid seeing more of Peter. He came to tea one inauspicious afternoon, when George discussed nothing but the Young Men’s Friendly, and the Amateur Dramatic, and, of course, himself. Peter must have been hopelessly bored. But George was so determined to create a good impression, more particularly because Peter had a peer for a father, and therefore an ‘Honourable’ attached to his name.
‘Though what difference does that make?’ Mary had enquired, and had been told for her pains, ‘Every difference.’
That was a hard wi
nter, and Mary tried to hide herself and the wicked thoughts of her passionate heart among the poor people. They needed ministrations. It was an onerous task, for the poverty in the place was overwhelming, and the thriftlessness of the people staggering.
Christmas came. They had practised carols assiduously for nights beforehand, and Mary had rendered ‘Good King Wenceslas’ and ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’, until her fingers grew stiff under the exigencies of the harmonium. Then came a Christmas Eve mildly warm, and the Clarridges’ offering of a pair of ducks (which they had bought for themselves before they discovered that Grandmamma Clarridge had sent them a turkey), in peril of what Hannah termed ‘going off’. There were Mary’s own little garnerings, for which she had pinched the housekeeping money till she could pinch no more.
‘And I need a new suit,’ said George. ‘I wonder if anyone will think of me?’
‘Your mother?’
But his mother was not of the thinking sort. She had been very annoyed over the affair of the trusteeship, and had said so very forcibly. She had maintained that she had warned George not to marry Mary, and now as he had made his bed so he must lie in it. She had always supposed that Mrs. Jones was not to be trusted, and now they would see that she was right. Matters had become estranged between George and his mother.
An old farmer sent them a chicken; the grocer contributed a tin of biscuits; somebody had made them a plum-pudding and some mince-pies, and mysteriously from nowhere there appeared three pairs of badly knitted socks for George.
‘But who could have sent them?’ she asked, bewildered.
‘Ah, who?’ said he, and she had the unpleasant intuition that he had a very good idea.
‘The Spencers?’
‘Or the Dawkins?’
‘Surely not the Dawkins?’
‘I’m popular,’ said George, and he was bland and beaming, ‘that is what it is. I’m very popular. People care for me. I don’t wonder old Clarridge is jealous.’
Late that night the parcel came for Mary. Hannah brought it in.
‘For me?’ asked Mary.
‘Yes, mum.’
She opened it tenderly, for it bore no name, neither did a card drop out from the folds of tissue paper. She lifted it ‒ a shawl of sheerest silk, woven in some foreign land ‒ a shawl embroidered by delicate fingers, with roses and lilies and exquisite jasmines; humming-birds flitted about the enchanted flowers ‒ humming-birds and vivid butterflies. It was beautiful.
