by Ursula Bloom
‘Yes, Mummy, he knows the Barnes at Ironbridge, and the Gowers.’
‘And your name?’ she asked him.
‘My name is Rupert Brace.’ He sat down again. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll wait for my man. He has no business away so long.’
He sat on talking, and Mary noticed the way in which he looked at Jasmine. It was a quick glance of approval. He was attracted. Every mother knows when a man is attracted by her child, and Rupert Brace obviously was interested. She surveyed him critically. He had a reddish face and blue eyes, a piercing blue like speedwells. Mary smiled to herself as she left them talking; as she closed the door on him she felt that funny little smile twitch at the corners of her mouth into a laugh. The matchmaking mother was within her. It amused her to find it so, but it certainly was there.
She finished laying their frugal meal, and as she finished the chauffeur returned. She told him: ‘Your master is here. Mr. Brace brought the car a good hour ago. I think he wants you.’
‘His Lordship here?’
‘Yes.’
The man gave a low whistle, and he too passed into the front room. But Mary, laying that mean repast, the margarine which she tried to pretend tasted like butter, the broken biscuits because they could not afford to buy whole ones, the desultory meal which is all the very poor can afford, suddenly saw the future rising up before her, a big future of golden import. Mamma the grandmother of a peeress! To creep out of those depths of despair, levered into something better by Jasmine. To get back to one’s own position, to win through at last.
In upon her dreams came the strumming practice of Mr. Roberts from next door, the man who was far too clever to play scales. He played his tune with a systematic and painstaking, though solitary, finger. Two years’ practice did not seem to have improved him, and the thin walls that served as partitions gave full admission to the tinkle of sound, with the same stumbling mistakes. It was ‘Pleasant are Thy Courts above’.
X
Rupert took Jasmine out in the car every day. He was a nice enough young man; Mary, having considered him as a possible son-in-law, reviewed him critically. He was always very pleasant and an ideal companion; at times she thought him a trifle hasty, and the idea that he might drink too much flashed across her mind; she instantly banished it. He was kindliness itself, and he was apparently much attracted by Jasmine. He was very considerate in his care for both of them; he might be sophisticated in the ways of the world, but he was not unpleasantly so. She decided that she liked him. He had none of the little pettiness of the middle classes; he reviewed life from the wider and more philosophical outlook given by a bigger education.
He asked them to dine with him at the hotel. That was awkward. Mary felt that here lay Jasmine’s chance, and they could not possibly afford to miss it, but to go unsuitably dressed was unthinkable. She was at her wits’ end. Then, when she was really desperate, she turned over the few trinkets which she had and selected an odd assortment, one or two of which she hoped might serve her purpose. There was a gold locket, which had poor Papa’s photograph inside. Poor Papa with his sad eyes, and his beautiful whiskers, and his impossible coat collar. She managed to extricate the photograph and laid the locket aside. There was a gold chain, too, yards long, and very heavy; her little silver button-hook and shoe-horn, which Mamma had given her when she married.
She made them into a neat bundle, these pathetic symbols of bygone anniversaries. Her first ring, a girlish affair set with pearls and coral, but the gold should be saleable. She took them out with her in the convenient dusk of the evening. She did not want to be seen. She did not know why there was this sense of shame about the most honest method of borrowing money; she had no right to be ashamed, and yet here she was walking furtively down the street with the poor trinkets clutched to her heart in a faded velvet bag. And in every shadow she imagined eyes, haunting, seeing, grinning eyes, and silent feet that padded beside her. It was better in the main road, where the lamps flung a companionable glare, and the shop fronts were brightly lit. Yet instinctively she dropped her head, and she was ashamed that she should feel like that. She went hurriedly now, whereas in the shadows of the side street she had gone shrinkingly, with a slow tread and a halting gait; but now she was determined.
The little shop which was her goal was in a mercifully dark cul-de-sac. It was jammed in between a Methodist chapel and a public-house. It was a narrow, aimless street, leading nowhere, and she had seldom seen people walking down it, yet to-night it seemed thronged. She made pretence to read the notices fluttering on the board in the chapel porch, and she thought that passers-by eyed her curiously. She lingered a moment to peer into the ill-lit window, where the unredeemed pledges were for sale. If Mamma could see her; if Peter … Why did she torture herself with these thoughts? With a supreme effort she opened the door and went inside.
A raucous bell shrilled in the inner room. The sole light in the shop was guttering at half-cock in the brass bracket over the window. She was glad of that. Old clothes hung in mildewed huddles from pegs; jewellery, in sad need of cleansing; all manner of stuff; and here her long-prized trinkets were to rest. She felt a torturing jealousy for them. It was incongruous, it was sordidly horrible. To think that poor Papa should have his locket sold in this dirty hovel. Then her saner judgment reminded her of Jasmine’s need, how it really could not injure poor Papa, and she stood her ground.
The inner door wheezed again, and a hawk-nosed old man peered out. From the background came the smell of frying fish in impure fat, it literally smote one. Mary laid the bundle on the counter. ‘I want to sell these,’ she said.
The man, who reminded her of a ferret, turned the gas on full, so that a blinding yellow light streamed in a jaundiced glare over the interior. He picked the jewellery up, bit by bit, eyed it, smelt it, bit it, looking through a glass which he produced from a pocket; then he swept them all together into a heap.
‘A pound,’ he said.
She was aghast. ‘I hoped for two.’
‘Humph! Them as expects least gets least disappointed.’
‘It is very good gold.’
He grunted. ‘Gold’s gold all the world over. There ain’t no good about it. That’s my price; you can take it or leave it.’
He began to thrust them into their paper wrapping again, but, her need suddenly overcoming her dislike of the position, she said: ‘I’ll take it.’
He went to a till and counted out the money, and, as he counted, a sailor came in, half drunk, leaving the door ajar so that the bell continued to shrill; he slapped a silver watch on to the counter with a cheery:
‘How much, mate?’
Instinctively Mary shrank aside, but the sailor, wishing to be pleasant, and feeling well-disposed to all the world, beamed upon her. ‘He’s a hard old devil,’ said the sailor, ‘but he comes in handy. See what Ah mean?’
She took the pound meted out to her by the ferrety old man, and she fled. She was frightened, horribly frightened, she did not know why. The shop, that dreadful old man, the sailor who wished to be friendly, the sailor … Her eyes grew dim. She leant up against the porch of the Methodist chapel for support and the tears rained down her cheeks. It was so lonely, it was so long. She pulled herself together with an effort, and as she did so the fancy took possession of her again. A man would walk beside her, a man in blue, whom that other sailor, drunk though he might be, would salute.
He was her man!
XI
She went to the doctor because she was feeling so ill that, even though it cost something, she had to make an effort to get better. She went one brilliant October day, when the hills behind Dornsands were red with thorn, bronze with oaks, and yellow with withering willows. Rupert had taken Jasmine out to see some shooting which he was intending to rent.
Mary told herself that she would slip round to the doctor and get a tonic to buck her up and make her feel herself again. So she was waiting in his dining-room, which looked on to the sea, bright in the sunshine. The fish
ermen’s boats danced gaily, they bobbed up and down upon the sunlit water; the pier jutted out, a dark line etched in against the brightness. There was something attractive about it. The doctor’s room was pleasant, if a little drab. The taste that had designed it had been very ordinary; it was impersonal; it told nothing of the people within.
A maid announced that the doctor was ready and she went through. He had been her adviser when Jasmine had nearly died in the influenza scourge, and he welcomed her as an old friend. She sat down before him, and she apologised for trespassing on his time. She just felt rotten, she needed a tonic. She hoped that he would not think her a fad.
It was a room well stocked with ponderous tomes, with a severe-looking desk, littered with a calendar, writing materials, a stethoscope, and some instruments in a deeply blue glass vase. There was a weighing machine in one corner and a couch for examination. He weighed her first. To Mary’s surprise she had lost a very considerable amount. Dr. Hix asked her age, made several close enquiries, and finally examined her. He asked all manner of questions about the lump in her side. It had been there since the last baby’s birth, the doctor had told her that it would go in time; they had vaguely alluded to a strained muscle; but it had not gone. It had, in fact, enlarged, she thought; she could not be sure about it. Dr. Hix went back to his desk; he sat there, a pencil poised, making funny sketches on the white pad before him. Mary refastened her frock and went back to her chair.
‘If I could have a tonic,’ she reminded him gently, ‘I am sure I should soon get the weight back.’
He looked across at her. ‘I don’t think a tonic would do much good. There is that tumour.’
‘A tumour?’
‘In your side.’ He avoided her gaze and went back to the little sketches on the blotting-pad. Her mouth was dry, and after a moment she said:
‘You mean an operation?’ And the helpless loneliness of life closed in about her overwhelmingly, like a dark abyss. She was for a moment physically nauseated at the idea.
‘No, I do not advise an operation, it wouldn’t help. But I think you ought to have further advice. Parker-Dawson is an excellent man on growths.’
‘You mean the cancer specialist?’
‘He does cancer among other things. He knows everything there is to be known. He would advise a treatment for you.’
She said very quietly, with her eyes fixed and staring: ‘You mean I have got cancer? You needn’t be afraid to tell me; I shall not make a scene.’
In that moment’s silence every detail of the room was imprinted on her mentality: the bookcase, the glitter of the blue glass, the smudge of the stethoscope against the pad. He said: ‘One never knows with tumours, one cannot be too careful. I would not for a moment suggest that it was cancer, but I should like you to have other advice.’
She nodded. ‘How long shall I live?’ she demanded with set teeth.
‘I cannot tell. It is not, we hope, a matter of dying. There are all manner of treatments.’
She rapped out sharply: ‘It is no use trying to put me off. You see, I have guessed. If this is cancer, how long? I have Jasmine to think of.’
‘I do not suggest that it is cancer; if it were, in that position it would be merely a matter of weeks.’
‘I see.’
She sat very still. Four black walls were closing in upon her; she saw a woman being led through them, wardresses … something being done with a rope. Man’s justice meted out. But this was God’s justice. He demanded all of her, finally her life. Her life in the cruellest way, tortured through a hell of pain. For a moment her passionate heart beat in a fierce rebellion at the brutalities of the Creator’s justice. Then, as suddenly, the throbbing died down; they were feet marching … ringing against the stone … muffled against the sand. Time’s sand!
Sailors’ feet, and then just the one man marching. He was marching into the darkness of those enclosing walls, now so near to her. A door opened … it was like a patch of gold in their deep blackness. A square of gold, and a man ushering her in. Beyond lay all beauty, all joy, all love. And the man, a living, joyous being, was beckoning to her. He could not pass the threshold into her darkness; he was calling to her to come to him in his glorious city of light, but she could not pass out of the abyss into his brilliance! He was radiant. He was vital.
‘Mary,’ he called, and she felt her eyelids burning with the whiteness of the gold about him; she closed her eyes to shut it out, it was one of those sacred pictures that are almost too beautiful.
She had fainted.
XII
After she left the doctor’s she sat for a long while in the marine gardens on the front, looking at life from another standpoint. It had been very little, it had not taught her much. There wasn’t time for it to teach her much now. Inside her was a gnawing, gruesome tumour, it would eat her body away, she would become loathsome; the very idea nauseated her. She was lying under sentence of death. The child playing about her might die before she did, she could not tell. Life hangs on so slender a thread that the spider’s web is a cable compared to it. The fact that she knew was the fact that hurt.
George would marry again. That was obvious. The one vital point was that Jasmine must be settled before the end came. It was unthinkable that she could go back to her father; she was the person to be considered, she was the one for whom she must fight to the finish.
The finish! She made a wry smile. She felt so alive, the world looked so alive, it seemed unbelievable that death could be so near.
The sea was just the same. It was as brilliant as before, threaded with darts of gold where the sunshine quivered upon it like a mesh. The fishing-boats pirouetted in the same elfish way, the pier was etched as darkly. In the gardens there were long untidy straggles of nasturtiums, with yellowing leaves, and their fragrant, vivid flowers; patches of vermilion and amber, deep blood-reds. The dahlias were hanging plushy heads, touched by the blackening fingers of the first frost. They were all the same, just the same; asphalt paths and green-painted seats, and evenly spaced railings behind.
But she was seeing them as through a veil, a faintly misty veil, but a veil all the same. It was she who was different. She could not understand how it was that she did not feel altogether changed. The change was so slight as to be only a slurring of vision, no more. An hour ago she had been part of this scene, now it was only a picture at which she was staring. She had no part in it whatsoever.
She had always known that she must die, as we all know. But it had been far away and remote, tucked out of sight and quite unreal. Now, in an instant, it had reared itself out of the mistiness of ‘some time’ and had presented itself as a fact before her. It had to be faced.
She hoped that she was not going to be cowardly about it, because she despised cowardice, and she hated to think that she would be giving other people trouble. There was Jasmine, darling little Jasmine. She must not be upset by all this.
Death was the great adventure.
She wondered fancifully how great it would be, if it hurt much; it must be so difficult when the breathing would not come. She hoped that it would not be really painful, because she knew how weak she was, and she was afraid of her lack of heroism. And afterwards? What then? The pleasant courts and the happy birds of the hymn? No, never!
She sat there, unaware how the hands twitched nervously in her lap, how her eyes filled now and again, only conscious that a great placidity was demanded of her.
After death there could be but two possibilities: oblivion ‒ and somehow, although life had not been over-sweet, one rebelled against that ‒ or continuation. It was to be like entering a land of strangers. It would probably be very much like the day when she first went to school in Germany; the ignorance of the language and of the people literally hurting her. She wondered if there would be the same painful ‘turn in one’s tummy’. Yes, it would be school again, starting afresh, among strangers.
No, not all strangers. There would be Peter; Peter standing in the golden square of
the open door, Peter who would help her through, who knew every mood and every whim, who would guide her. If only she could feel more sure of him. The threshold was so dividing.
It was absurd to be afraid when he was there. She must be brave, just a little while longer. The loneliness was coming to an end. It was all coming to an end.
It was so weak to sit here crying with self-pity. Dr. Hix had not said that it was cancer; it was still uncertain. She looked up at the sky in all the brilliant blueness of a fair October, and she thought of the chilliness of a clay grave, and the earth piling in wet sods on top of one. That was hateful. It was horrible. She must not think of that, she must think of Peter standing in the gold of the open door. Or, rather, she mustn’t think at all.
She got up to go home.
XIII
The grey car was drawn up outside the door; as she saw it, she hurried, she did not know that she had been so long. She could not tell them, not yet. She felt that if she tried to shape the words she would cry. For all their sakes that was the thing that she must not do. She galvanised all her senses upon the effort to be natural. She opened the cottage door and went into the room. Jasmine was standing by the centre table, still with her big woolly coat on, but she had her cap in her hand. Her cheeks were flushed with riding through the air, and she was laughing and facing Rupert as he stood against the window. They turned quickly.
‘Mummy, it’s Mummy,’ Jasmine cried.
‘Am I late?’
‘We’ve just got back, and we wondered where you had got to.’
A pause. Would they notice her constraint? Would they see beneath the smile which she made such an effort to maintain? They exchanged quickly furtive glances, as of people in the know. She saw them, and wondered if they had guessed.
‘It was so lovely out,’ she confessed.
Rupert spoke to her. ‘I ‒ I want to talk to you. Send Jasmine away; I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Run away, Jasmine darling.’
