To Love Part 4

Marriage may be sometimes a mistaken solution, but at present it is the only one we have."

"Why do you say that?" asked Joan; for the first time she turned and looked at her companion. "Do you really believe it is true?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Abercrombie. "My dear," she put a hand on Joan's arm, "we women have got to remember that our actions never stand by themselves alone. Someone else has always to foot the bill for what we do. I said just now that laws had been evolved to protect the weak; well, marriage protects the child."

"But if two people love each other," Joan tried to argue, but her words were bringing a cold chill of fear to her heart even as she spoke, "what other protection can be needed?"

"Love is something that no one can define," stated Miss Abercrombie; "but centuries have gone to prove that it is not as binding as marriage, and for the sake of the children the man and woman must be bound. That is the long and short of all the arguments."

"If there is no child?" Joan's fear prompted her to the question; she spoke it almost in a whisper.

Miss Abercrombie paused in her act of unlatching the gate, for they had arrived at the cottage by now, to look up at her. "Ah, there you open wider fields," she a.s.sented, "only childless people are and must be the exceptions. One cannot lay down laws for the exceptions."

Mrs. Starkey, the invalid old lady, was garrulous, and delighted to see them. So anxious to tell them all her ailments and sc.r.a.ps of gossip that by the time they got away it was quite late and already the sun was sinking behind the range of hills at the back of the village.

"We will have to hurry," Joan said. "Aunt Janet gets so fussed if one is out after dark."

Hurrying precluded any reopening of the subject they had been discussing, but Joan's mind was busy with all the thoughts it had roused as they walked. The faint hint of fear that had stirred to life in her when Miss Abercrombie had spoken of Bridget was fast waking to very definite panic. She could feel it tugging at her heart and making her breathing fast and difficult. Supposing that the vaguely-dreamed-of possibility had crystallized into fact in her case? How would Aunt Janet think of it; what changes would it bring into her life?

As they turned into the little village street they came straight into a crowd of people standing round an open cottage door. The crowd was strangely quiet, talking amongst themselves in whispers, but from within the cottage came the sound of wailing, the hysterical crying of old age.

Miss Abercrombie, with Joan following, pushed her way to the front, and with awed faces the villagers drew back to let them pa.s.s. At the open door Sam Jones, the village constable, an old man who had known Joan in her very young days, put out his hand.

"Don't you go in now, miss," he said, "it is not for the likes of you to see, and you can do no good. Besides which, your aunt is there already."

But Joan paid no attention to him and, pus.h.i.+ng past his outstretched hand, followed Miss Abercrombie.

The inside of the cottage was dimly lit, and scattered with a profuse collection of what appeared to be kitchen utensils, dishes and clothes, all flung about in confusion. The only light in the place glinted on the long deal table and the stiff dead figure stretched out on it, still and quiet, with white, vacant face and lifeless arms that hung down on either side. Water was oozing out of the clothes and dripping from the unbound hair; it had gathered already into little pools on the floor. In the darkest corner of the room a crouched-up form sat sobbing hopelessly, and by the figure on the table Aunt Janet stood, her face in shadow, since she was above the shade of the lamp, but her hands singularly white and gentle-looking as they moved about drying the dead girl's face, pus.h.i.+ng the wet, clogged hair from eyes and mouth.

Joan paused just within the door, the terror of that figure on the table holding her spellbound, but Miss Abercrombie moved brusquely forward so that she stood in the lamplight confronting Aunt Janet.

"So," she said, quick and sharp, yet not over loud, the people outside could not have heard, "Bridget has found this way out. A kinder way than your stern judgment, Janet. Poor little girl."

"I did not judge," Miss Rutherford answered stiffly, "'the wages of sin is death.'"

"Yet you can be kind to her now," snorted Miss Abercrombie; "it would not have been wasted had you been a little kinder before. Forgive me, Janet, I speak quickly, without thinking. You live up to your precepts; everyone has to do that."

The old woman in the corner lifted her face to look at them; perhaps she thought that in some way or other they were reviling the dead, for she staggered to her feet and crossed over to the table.

"It was fear made her do it," she wailed; "fear, and because we spoke her harsh. I hated the shame of it all. Yet, G.o.d knows, I would have stood by her in the end. My little girl, my little Bridget!" Sobs choked her, she fell to her knees, pressing her lips to one of the cold, stiff hands.

Joan saw Aunt Janet stoop and lay a gentle hand on the heaving shoulders, she heard, too, a movement of the crowd outside and saw the Vicar's good-natured, perturbed face appear in the doorway. Behind him again was a younger man, stern-faced, with quiet, very steady blue eyes and a firm-lined mouth. All this she noticed, why she could not have explained, for the man was a perfect stranger to her; then the fear and giddiness which all this time she had been fighting against gained the upper hand and, swaying a little, she moved forward with the intention of getting outside, only to fall in a dead faint across the doorway of the cottage.

CHAPTER V

"Love wakes men, once a lifetime each They lift their heavy heads and look.

And some give thanks, and some blaspheme, And most forget, but either way That, and the child's unheeded dream Is all the light of all their day."

The Grants were sitting at breakfast in their small, red-walled dining-room. Richard, commonly called d.i.c.k, at the end of the table, Mabel at the one side and Mrs. Grant in the seat of honour at the top.

Wherever Mrs. Grant sat was the seat of honour; she was that kind of old lady. Marvellously handsome still, despite her age, with a commanding presence and a nature which had sublime contempt for everyone and everything except herself, she sailed through life exacting service from all and obedience from her children. Why they obeyed her they could not have themselves explained; perhaps it was an inheritance from the dead Mr. Grant, who had wors.h.i.+pped his wife as if she had been some divinity.

In her own way Mrs. Grant had always been gracious and kindly to her husband, but he had been altogether a nonent.i.ty in her life. Before the children were old enough to see why, they realized that Daddy was only the man who made the money in their house. Mother spent it, buying the luxuries with which they were surrounded, the magnificent toys which they disregarded, as is the way of children, the splendidly expensive clothes, which were a perfect burden to them. Then, just when d.i.c.k was beginning to understand, Mr. Grant died.

He had sent for his son--d.i.c.k was about eighteen then--and spoken to him just before the end came.

"You will have to look after your mother, d.i.c.k," he had said, clutching at the young, strong hands; "she has always been looked after. She has never had to rough things in her life. And you won't be any too well off. Promise me, promise me, you will always give her of your best."

"Of course, I promise, Dad," he had answered.

Further conversation between then had ceased because Mrs. Grant swept into the room, regal even in the face of death. d.i.c.k remembered the incident afterwards with a little twitch of his lips because it was so typical of his mother and it was just at this period that he had begun to criticize her. The sick-room had been in shadowed gloom until her entry; the lights hurt the fast-failing eyes.

"I cannot sit in the dark," stated Mrs. Grant, as she settled herself, with a delightful rustle of silk and a wave of perfume, beside the bed.

"You know that, Harry. It always has depressed me, hasn't it?"

"Turn up the lights, d.i.c.k," whispered the man, his hand had closed on one of hers; happiness flooded his heart at her presence.

"But you know they hurt your eyes," d.i.c.k expostulated; he was new to death, yet he could read the signs well enough to know his father was dying.

"Harry can lie with his eyes shut," answered Mrs. Grant calmly. There was no disagreeableness in her tone: her selfishness was on too gigantic a scale for her ever to be disagreeable.

And d.i.c.k had turned up the lights and gone fuming from the room, conscious for the time being of a sense of dislike for his mother's perfection!

It soon faded though; he had been trained too thoroughly in his youth.

Once he said to Mabel hotly:

"Why does Mother cry for Dad? She did not really love him, and she just delighted in buying all that expensive and becoming mourning."

And Mabel had surprised him by replying: "Mother does not really love anyone but herself."

The remark sounded odd from Mabel, who spent her life slaving with apparent devotion in her mother's service. She was a tall, rather colourless girl, with big grey eyes and a quaint-shaped mouth that was always very silent. She moved through the background of their lives doing things for mother. She had always done that; d.i.c.k wondered sometimes whether the soul within her would ever flame into open rebellion, but it never did.

By the time d.i.c.k had pa.s.sed his various exams, and was ready to take up a practice somewhere, Mrs. Grant and Mabel had been practically everywhere on the Continent.

"Money is running short," Mabel wrote crisply to d.i.c.k; "cannot you do anything in the way of taking a house and settling down, so as to make a home for Mother and me?"

d.i.c.k's ambitions lay in the direction of bachelor's diggings and work in London. He thrust them aside and bought what was supposed to be a very good and flouris.h.i.+ng practice at Birmingham. Unfortunately Mrs. Grant took a violent dislike to Birmingham. Their house was gloomy and got on her nerves; the air, she said, was laden with smoke which irritated her throat. She developed a cough, quite the most annoying sound that d.i.c.k had ever imagined, and he was not easy to irritate. Mother coughed from the time she woke till the time she went to sleep--coughed and remembered old times and wept for Harry, who would at least have taken care not to expose her to such overwhelming discomfort.

At the end of six months d.i.c.k threw up the practice in despair and placed himself at her disposal. They put in a year in London, but what d.i.c.k earned was quite insufficient to cope with what Mrs. Grant spent and things went from bad to worse.

Mabel never offered any advice until she was asked but when d.i.c.k spoke to her finally she was quite definite.