The History of David Grieve Part 104

Louie reddened.

'Well, and if I do want it,' she said, breathing quickly, 'I've a right to want it. You chose to waste all that money--all my money--on that marrying business, and you must take the consequence. I look upon it this way--you promised to put my money into your trade and give me a fair share of your profits. Then you chucked it away--you made me spend it all, and now, of course, I'm to have nothing to say to your profits. Oh dear, no! It's a trifle that I'm a pauper and you're rolling in money compared to me anyway. Oh! it doesn't matter nothing to n.o.body--not at all! All the same you couldn't have made the start you did--not those few months I was with you--without my money. Why can't you confess it, I want to know--and behave more handsome to me now--instead of leaving me in that state that I haven't a franc to bless myself with!'

She threw herself back in her chair, with one arm flung behind her head. David stared at her tongue-tied for a while by sheer amazement.

'I gave you everything I had,' he said, at last, with a slow distinctness,' all your money, and all my own too. When I came back here, I had my new stock, it is true, but it was much of it unpaid for. My first struggle was to get my neck out of debt.'

He paused, shrinking with a kind of sick repulsion from the memory of that bygone year of shattered nerves and anguished effort.

Deliberately he let thought and speech of it drop. Louie was the last person in the world to whom he could talk of it.

'I built up my business again,' he resumed, 'by degrees. Mr. Doyle lent me money--it was on that capital I first began to thrive. From the very beginning, even in the very year when I handed over to you all our father's money--I sent you more. And every year since--you know as well as I do--'

But again he looked away and paused. Once more he felt himself on a wrong tack. What was the use of laying out, so to speak, all that he had done in the sight of these angry eyes? Besides, a certain high pride restrained him.

Louie looked a trifle disconcerted, and her flush deepened. Her audacious attempt to put him in the wrong and provide herself with a grievance could not be carried on. She took refuge in pa.s.sion.

'Oh, I dare say you think you've done a precious lot!' she said, sitting straight up and locking her hands round her knee, while the whole frame of her stiffened and quivered. 'I suppose you think other people would think so too. _I_ don't care! It don't matter to me. You're the only belonging I've got--who else was there for me to look to? Oh, it is all very fine! All I know is, I can't stand my life any more! If you can't do anything, I'll just pack up my traps and go. _Somebody_'ll have to make it easier for me, that's all! Last week--I was out of the house--he found out where I kept my money, he broke the lock open, and when I got home there was nothing. _Nothing_, I tell you!' Her voice rose to a shrillness that made David look to see that the door between them and Lucy was securely closed. 'And I'd promised a whole lot of things to the church for Easter, and Cecile and I haven't got a rag between us; and as for the rent, the landlord may whistle for it!

Oh! the beast!' she said, between her teeth, while the fierce tears stood in her eyes.

Lucy--any woman of normal shrewdness, putting two and two together--would have allowed these complaints about half their claimed weight. Upon David--unconsciously inclined to measure all emotion by his own standard--they produced an immediate and deep impression.

'You poor thing!' he murmured, as he stood looking down upon her.

She tossed her head, as though resenting his compa.s.sion.

'Yes, I'm about tired of it! I thought I'd come over and tell you that. Now you know,--and if you hear things you don't like, don't blame me, that's all!'

Her great eyes blazed into his. He understood her. Her child--the priests--had, so far, restrained her. Now--what strange mixture of shameless impulse--curiosity, greed, reckless despair--had driven her here that she might threaten him thus!

'Ah, I dare say you think I've had a gay life of it over there with your money,' she went on, not allowing him to speak. '_My G.o.d!_'

She shrugged her shoulders, with a scornful laugh, while the tempest gathered within her.

'Don't I know perfectly that for years I have been one of the most beautiful women in Paris! Ask the men who have painted me for the Salon--ask that brute who might have made a fortune out of me if he hadn't been the sot he is! And what have I got by it? What do other women who are not a tenth part as good-looking as I am get by it? A comfortable life, anyway! _Eh bien! essayons!--nous aussi._'

The look she flung at him choked the words on his lips.

'When I think of these ten years,' she cried, 'I just wonder at myself. There,--what you think about it I don't know, and I don't care. I might have had a good time, and I've had a _devil's_ time. And, upon my word, I think I'll make a change!'

In her wild excitement she sprang up and began to pace the narrow room.

David watched her, fighting with himself, and with that inbred antipathy of temperament which seemed to paralyse both will and judgment. Was the secret of it that in their profound unlikeness they were yet so much alike?

Then he went up to her and made her sit down again.

'Let me have a word now,' he said quietly, though his hand as it gripped hers had a force of which he was unconscious. 'You say you wonder at yourself. Well, I can tell you this: other people have wondered too! When I left you in Paris ten years ago, I tell you frankly, I had no hopes. I said to myself--don't rage at me!--with that way of looking at things, and with such a husband, what chance is there? And for some years now, Louie, I confess to you, I have been simply humbled and amazed to see what--what'--his voice sank and shook--'_love--and the fear of G.o.d_--can do. It has been hard to be miserable and poor--I know that--but you have cared for Cecile, and you have feared to shut yourself out from good people who spoke to you in G.o.d's name. Don't do yourself injustice.

Believe in yourself. Look back upon these years and be thankful.

With all their miseries they have been a kind of victory! Will you throw them away _now_? But your child is growing up and will understand. And there are hands to help--mine, always--always.'

He held out his to her, smiling. He could not have a.n.a.lysed his own impulse--this strange impulse which had led him to bless instead of cursing. But its effect upon Louie was startling. She had looked for, perhaps in her fighting mood she had ardently desired, an outburst of condemnation, against which her mad pleasure in the sound of her own woes and hatreds might once more spend itself. And instead of blaming and reproaching he had--

She stared at him. Then with a sudden giving way, which was a matter partly of nerves and partly of surprise, she let her two arms fall upon the edge of the chair, and dropping her head upon them, burst out into wild sobbing.

His own eyes were wet. He soothed her hurriedly and incoherently, told her he would spare her all the money he could; that he and Lucy would do their best, but that she must not suppose they were very rich. He did not regard all his money as his own.

He went on to explain to her something of his business position.

Her sobbing slackened and ceased. And presently, his mood changing instinctively with hers, he became more vague and cautious in statement; his tone veered back towards that which he was accustomed to use to her. For, once her burst of pa.s.sion over, he felt immediately that she was once more criticising everything that he said and did in her own interest.

'Oh, I know you've become a regular Communist,' she said sullenly at last, drying her eyes in haste.' Well, I tell you, I must have a hundred pounds. I can't do with a penny less than that.'

He tried to get out of her for what precise purposes she wanted it, and whether her husband had stolen from her the whole of the quarter's allowance he had just sent her. She answered evasively; he felt that she was telling him falsehoods; and once more his heart grew dry within him.

'Well,' he said at last with a certain decision, 'I will do it if I can, and I think I can do it. But, Louie, understand that I have got Lucy and the child to think for, that I am not alone.'

'I should think she had got more than she could expect!' cried Louie, putting her hair straight with trembling hands.

His cheek flushed at the sneer, but before he could reply she said abruptly:

'Have you ever told her about Paris?'

'No,' he said, with equal abruptness, his mouth taking a stern line, 'and unless I am forced to do so I never shall. That you understand, I know, for I spoke to you about it in Paris. My past died for me when I asked Lucy to be my wife. I do not ask you to remember this. I take it for granted.'

'I saw that woman the other day,' said Louie with a strange smile, as she sat staring into the fire.

He started, but he did not reply. He went to straighten some papers on his table. It seemed to him that he did not want her to say a word more, and yet he listened for it.

'I remember they used to call her pretty,' said Louie, a hateful scorn s.h.i.+ning in her still reddened eyes. 'She is just a little frump now--n.o.body would ever look at her twice. They say her husband leads her a life. He poisoned himself at an operation and has gone half crippled. She has to keep them both. She doesn't give herself the airs she used to, anyway.'

David could bear it no longer.

'I think you had better go and take Cecile to bed,' he said peremptorily. 'I heard it strike nine a few minutes ago. I will go and talk business to Lucy.'

She went with a careless air. As he saw her shut the door his heart felt once more dead and heavy. A few minutes before there had been the flutter of a divine presence between them. Now he felt nothing but the iron grip of character and life. And that little picture which her last words had left upon the mind--it carried with it a shock and dreariness he could only escape by hard work, that best medicine of the soul. He went out early next morning to his printing-office, spent himself pa.s.sionately upon a day of difficulties, and came back refreshed.

For the rest, he talked to Lucy, and with great difficulty persuaded her in the matter of the hundred pounds. Lucy's indignation may be taken for granted, and the angry proofs she heaped on David that Louie was an extravagant story-telling hussy, who spent everything she could get on dress and personal luxury.

'Why, her dressing-table is like a perfumer's shop!' she cried in her wrath; 'what she does with all the messes I can't imagine--makes herself beautiful, I suppose! Why should we pay for it all? And I tell you she has got a necklace of real pearls. I know they are real, for she told Lizzie'(Lizzie was the boy's nurse)'that she always took them about with her to keep them safe out of her husband's clutches--just imagine her talking to the girl like that!

When will you be able to give _me_ real pearls, and where do you suppose she got them?'

David preferred not to inquire. What could he do, he asked himself in despair--what even could he know, unless Louie chose that he should know it? But she, on the contrary, carefully avoided the least recurrence to the threats of her first talk with him.

Ultimately, however, he brought his wife round, and Louie was informed that she could have her hundred pounds, which should be paid her on the day of her departure, but that nothing more, beyond her allowance, could or should be given her during the current year.

She took the promise very coolly, but certainly made herself more agreeable after it was given. She dressed up Cecile and set her dancing in the evenings, weird dances of a Spanish type, alternating between languor and a sort of 'possession,' which had been taught the child by a moustached violinist from Madrid, who admired her mother and paid Louie a fantastic and stormy homage through her child. She also condescended to take an interest in Lucy's wardrobe. The mingled temper and avidity with which Lucy received her advances may be imagined. It made her mad to have it constantly implied that her gowns and bonnets would not be worn by a maid-of-all-work in Paris. At the same time, when Louie's fingers had been busy with them it was as plain to her as to anyone else that they became her twice as well as they had before. So she submitted to be pinned and pulled about and tried on, keeping as much as possible on her dignity all the time, and reddening with fresh wrath each time that Louie made it plain to her that she thought her sister-in-law a provincial little fool, and was only troubling herself about her to pa.s.s the time.

Dora, of course, came up to see Louie, and Louie was much more communicative to her than to either Lucy or David. She told stories of her husband which made Dora's hair stand on end; but she boasted in great detail of her friends.h.i.+ps with certain Legitimist ladies of the bluest blood, with one of whom she had just held a _quete_ for some Catholic object on the stairs of the Salon.

'I was in blue and pink with a little silver,' she said, looking quickly behind her to see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings--the sweetest thing you ever saw.

We were both in the ill.u.s.trated papers the week after, but as n.o.body took any notice of Madame de C--she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her complexion or her age!'