Merrick Leonard
The Quaint Companions
CHAPTER V
And she did not repent the promise, nor did her mother's consternation have any effect upon her, other than making her lend a willing ear to Lee's entreaties for a speedy marriage. She agreed to marry him at the end of the following month. She even came to accept his kisses without shrinking much, and to offer her own in return for the jewellery that he brought her. Only once during the engagement her reflections terrified her. The thought crossed her mind that he might lose his voice. He might lose his voice and she would have done it all for nothing! He would be helpless; she would have yoked herself for life to a negro dependent on her exertions. What a future! What a hell! In the moment of alarm it even occurred to her – because she attended church punctiliously every Sunday – that the disaster would be a fitting punishment for the sin she was committing in stifling her better instincts. She was abasing herself under a temptation – she might be bowed under a burden as the result. Characteristically she ignored the fact that to afflict her husband in order to point the moral would be a shade unjust; there are many Christians who would figuratively fire the house to roast the pig, like Ho-ti in the Dissertation. And quite as many who can reconcile their interests and their conscience by judicious prayer. The name of "Vivian" figured in Ownie's prayer. She prayed for strength to act a mother's part to Vivian.
Also she determined that before she had been Lee's wife long she would persuade him to assure his life. Experience teaches; and this precautionary measure had been neglected during her first marriage. She was naturally ignorant of the negro temperament, or she would have known that there is nothing from which it is quite so averse as providing for emergencies, and that she might almost as hopefully have begged him to acquire a cream-and-roses complexion.
Meanwhile there were paragraphs in the papers; and presents were delivered from his fellow-artists, and from some of the Musical Societies; and there were presents from the Public. Even Mrs. Tremlett began to say, "It might be all for the best," now. A man who received big silver teapots from total strangers, she felt, was entitled to more respect than she had shown to him. Her grandchild and the adolescent nurse were to remain with her until the honeymoon was over. The wedding took place in London, and Ownie and Lee departed for Paris, where he was to sing.
If Mrs. Lee had kept a journal at this period, it would have been one of the most fascinating of human documents, though much of its fascination would have lain between the lines, since she inherited nothing of her father's gift for expression. It would have been the gradual diminuendo, that told the tale, the change of key. They stayed in Paris nearly five weeks, and before a fortnight had passed, the outcry in her heart was still. She was resigned. She did not acknowledge it to herself yet; that would not have been written in the diary; she did not look it; but her avaricious little soul was gratified, although her eyes claimed sympathy.
Strangers gave it to her. She was prettier still in the extravagant gowns that Lee paid for – that true loveliness unadorned is adorned the most is as silly a thing as the poet of "The Seasons" could have said – and the Englishmen and Americans in Paris spoke feelingly of "that pretty woman married to a nigger." There are women to whom pity is as sweet as noise to the masses, and Ownie Lee's abortive conscience found all the anodyne it needed in the perception that she was held a pathetic figure. The appealing smile which had always become her so well, gained in intensity. Lucretia might have worn that expression in time, if she had taken drives in the Bois instead of stabbing herself.
And Lee? Lee was intoxicated. If he had wooed her in a fool's paradise, at least the shadow of the tree of knowledge had been in it; he had had no illusions. He had not looked for passion, or for tenderness, or for understanding. It was enough for him as yet to squander devotion on indifference. He shook at the touch of the languid woman who accepted his transports with such sovereign calm. To pour out money for her adornment, to buy diamonds to flash on her fingers and her breast, was his delight. He had a contract for a six weeks' tour in England at six hundred a week, and he spent a fortnight's fees on jewels for her one morning. In the foyers and the streets, when he read the men's eyes, exultance swelled him; they envied his possession of her, these blatant fools who were consequential because they had been born with a white skin. He cursed them cheerfully in his thoughts, arrogant with power – the woman who attracted them was his wife!
Yet there was one occasion before the honeymoon ended when he seemed almost to stultify himself, when the admiration that she roused enraged him instead, and was responsible for a burst of resentment. They had met a Londoner of his acquaintance, a singer; and Lee the elated had presented him to her gaily. The singer, who was a handsome man, and not a gentleman, was too bent on being gallant to remember to be polite as he ogled her, and curled his moustache, and propped his elbows on the café table. His shoulder excluded Lee more and more; the conversation became frankly a duologue. The art of rebuffing a man without gaucherie is not known to every woman; it is, in fact, the peculiar attribute of the well-bred. Still Ownie was to blame; she regarded such impertinence as a compliment, and she made no attempt to check it with dignity or otherwise. Lee's scowl grew fiercer and fiercer, his lips bulged appallingly; and the Englishman had no sooner bowed himself away than she beheld her husband in a new light.
He rose from his chair, and put his hand on her arm. She could feel that he was trembling, but he said nothing until they had walked some steps. She turned to him, half frightened and half defiant.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter with you?"
"Don't you ever speak to that fellow again," he exclaimed hoarsely. "Do you hear? I won't have it. Don't you ever dare to speak to him again. If you meet him, you're to pass him by. Is that the way you think a respectable woman ought to behave? Sitting there and – Blast him, I wish I'd thrown the glasses in his face!"
She was alarmed and angry too now. She tried to subdue him by her tone.
"Have you gone out of your mind?" she said, as steadily as she could speak. "I think you forget who it is you're talking to."
"I'm talking to you," he gasped; "I'm talking to my wife; don't you forget it either! You flirted with him, you know you did. You sat there flirting with him – and in front of your husband; you sat flirting with a skunk you'd never seen before, in front of your husband." He came to a standstill, gesticulating excitedly. "You weren't so ready with me, were you? I suppose any man may make love to you if he's white, eh? But take care – you don't know me yet. By God – "
"Hush," she said, "for Heaven's sake; the people are staring at you."
She signalled nervously to a cabman, and gave him the name of the hotel. In the cab Lee's reproaches were so furious that she drew up the windows to muffle his voice from the passers-by. The distance between the café and the hotel was short, and in less than five minutes the courtyard was reached. She sprang out, and hurried to the bedroom while he paid the fare. When he tried the door he found that she had locked it. He called to her, but she made no answer. Then he beat at the panels, and to avoid a scandal she turned the key.
"Is this going on all night?" she demanded, running to the bell-pull. "If you try to hit me, I'll ring for the manager." Her dread of receiving a blow was of the slightest – such fear of personal violence as she had known had faded during the drive – but it was the cruellest thing that she could invent to say on the spur of the moment. She clung to the bell-pull, a picture of agitation.
The threat, the idea that she thought him capable of striking her, sobered him. He entered shamefacedly.
"You needn't be afraid that I shall hurt you," he muttered.
"Needn't I?" she said. "How do I know that? I don't know what you might do, you bully, you – you coward!"
He winced, and stood looking at the ground in silence. Then:
"I didn't mean to bully you," he said huskily. "I – I'm sorry, Ownie, I'll never do it again."
She saw that she was mistress of the situation. Her hold on the bell-pull relaxed; her tone acquired a tinge of shrewishness.
"You won't ever have the chance again," she retorted, "don't flatter yourself! You've shown me what I might expect – I won't live with you."
Though the words were empty enough, they frightened him. He took a step towards her in a panic.
"Ownie!" he cried. And again: "Ownie, I'm sorry!"
"It's not the least consequence whether you're sorry or not," she sneered; she was quite composed now. "I'm sure I don't care. It's very easy to say you're sorry after you've shouted at me, and insulted me as much as you want to. Yes, insulted me, you – Ah, it's what I might have expected! I'm ashamed of having married you. Only a man – a man like you would talk so to a woman."
She saw him shiver. She was reminded suddenly of a dog that Harris used to beat. There was a pause, in which she observed the effect of her taunt with satisfaction. After a few seconds she turned away, and began to unpin her hat at the toilet-table.
"It was because I was jealous," he stammered; "I couldn't help it – I didn't mean to insult you. Ah, take that back – don't say you're ashamed of me! Trust me, and you shall see how good I'll be to you in future. I love you, I love you, you don't know how I love you. Look at yourself in the glass. See how beautiful you are. How can you wonder that I'm jealous? Look at your hair – how soft it is! And your skin – it feels like a flower. I'd die for you. It drove me mad to see you look at another man like that. I know, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I couldn't bear it. Ownie, forgive me!"
She made no answer. She moved carelessly across the room, tossing her cloak on to the bed. Her slippers lay by an armchair, and she sat down in it, bending over her boots. He was on his knees before her in an instant, trying to seize her hands. She snatched them away with a gesture of aversion, and clasped them behind her head.
"I am ashamed," she repeated. "You've disgusted me. I'd let any white man make love to me, would I? Anyhow no white, man would be beast enough to say such a thing."
He put out his hands again – not to caress her this time, but as if to ward off the daggers she was planting in him. The tears welled into his eyes, and, with a thrill of power, she watched one trickle down the black face.
"Forgive me," he implored.
"It serves me right for not listening to advice," she went on. "I ought to have known what you would be. You can't help being jealous? What right have you got to be jealous – how dare you use such a word to me? Do you suppose that I'm never going to speak to any other man again because I married you?"
"I was wrong," he cried, "I know I was wrong – don't say you're 'ashamed'! It's just because I'm a coloured man that the jealousy comes. Oh, can't you understand? Try to make allowances for me. Don't you see, don't you see? – I remember my colour all the time, I never forget it; and when you sat there talking so – talking like that to him, I hated him because he was white. But I'll never complain any more, I swear I won't! You shall do as you like – I know how good you are."
"There aren't many women who would forgive such behaviour, I can tell you," she said sulkily. She thrust out her foot, and he began to unbutton her boot. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"
"Trust me," he begged. "Be kind to me – only trust me."
She lay back in the chair without replying; her pretty face was stubborn still. He drew off her boots. "Be kind to me," he entreated, "be kind to me." He covered her feet with kisses. He knelt there, suing to her, until she said at last that she forgave.
CHAPTER VI
But it was not in the woman's nature to refrain from accepting attentions and showing that they pleased her; and it was not in human nature for a husband who loved her to keep his oath and be tolerant. Before six months had passed there had been half-a-dozen such scenes. Lee upbraided more violently – the reconciliations did not always follow so soon, but the order of things was always the same; she flirted, and he abused her, and then grovelled for pardon till her resentment was assuaged. Her perception of the extent to which she could make him grovel awoke a savage instinct in the woman. Though her faults were the outcome of weakness, not of strength, the taste of power excited her, and she often remained obdurate merely to prolong the enjoyment of it. Once she even wounded him for no other reason than to gratify the taste. They had returned from a concert, and to see the man, fresh from his triumph, abasing himself before her so shamelessly, gave her a vicious pleasure.
They had taken a house at Hampstead, a house with an ample garden, and the necessary stabling. Except the practice-room, with its bare, polished floor, its windows curtainless – containing nothing but the piano and two chairs – she had revelled in the furnishing of every corner. She wrote to her mother with pride that "there wasn't a cheap thing in the place." With almost equal truth she might have added that there wasn't a thing beautiful. She and Lee had one point in common: both admired the ostentatious, and he found his surroundings nearly ornate enough to justify the amount that had been wasted on them.
And she had half-a-dozen servants; the tenor's stepchild was wheeled to the Heath now in fine apparel by a competent nurse. In her servants Mrs. Lee aroused less sympathy than in the men whom her husband called his "friends"; they looked down upon her for having married "that blacky," who was so much more considerate to them as a master than was she as a mistress. Instinctively she knew it, and it was a frequent thing for a maid at The Woodlands to be discharged on the grounds of being "disrespectful in her manner." A landlady's daughter and negro's wife was the last person likely to submit to disrespect.
One or two women whom she met had also appeared to take a different view of her position from that taken by the men; she found feminine society a shade irksome after her marriage. There were a few mortifying incidents from the first; still she knew that people who were envious always pretended to be disdainful; and the benefits were countless, she reminded herself as time went by. But for the knowledge of what was in store, it would have sufficed for composure to reflect that the other women would act just the same, assuming they had the chance. Her real humiliation came in the form of a baby.
It was a little yellow baby who in the hour of its birth was not expected to live. She did not hear that until some days later – and when she was told, she closed her eyes, for fear they should betray her thought. It was a little yellow baby that she sickened to know her own, and when they put it in her arms, her flesh shrank from it. Lee's joy enraged her. She hated him as he hung smiling over the pillow, was angered by what she felt to be his callousness in supposing she could be glad.
He was enraptured: the child was hers and his. With the passing of the months, he had come to seek more of her than acceptance, and it seemed to him that henceforth they must be one. She was no longer merely the sovereign who permitted – she was the mother of his boy.
But his mistake was very brief, and it was his child who proclaimed to the man that his marriage had been a madness. It was when he saw that she was ashamed of her motherhood that he was ashamed of his passion; it was her contempt for their baby that showed him how he himself was despised.
For her humiliation did not fade, and though she tried to hide the feeling, all the household knew that she never touched the child without an effort. She was humiliated as often as she saw him. The pomp of robes and ribbons, the lace, the paraphernalia of infancy, was painful to her. When he was carried into the air, she winced in imagining the neighbours' comments at their windows. Each time she bent over the bassinet the little face inside looked to her swarthier and more grotesque.
He was christened "David." It was Lee's wish, and the matter had no interest for her. It was Lee who brought him his first toy, and who haunted the nurseries in dread of draughts; it was Lee to whom the nurse soon learnt to turn when she had expensive suggestions to make. Ownie's affection for the other boy had hitherto been somewhat careless, but now she was stung to jealousy, and knew spasms of devotion which were the outcome of resentment. Though the man remained as gentle and generous as ever to him, she called him, "poor little Vivie" in her oughts, and a giggling servant, who was overheard to remark that "his nose was out of joint with somebody," was dismissed tempestuously at an hour's notice.
The baby's unsightliness increased with its length. The stain of the skin deepened; only the tiny palms and the soles of the flat little feet retained the yellowish tint. The spread nostrils gradually widened; the bunch of lip and the high cheek-bones took more and more distressfully the negro type. Vivian had a complexion like a peach, and his head was crowned with damp little flaxen curls that had been coaxed round a comb; David's face became the colour of a medlar, and his hair threatened to be as kinky as his father's. Even for a mulatto he was ill-favoured, and the mulatto and his half-brother were a queer contrast opposite each other in the perambulator. Strangers used to stop the nurse in the street and ask questions – which she seldom failed to repeat to her mistress. Vivian was robust, and had "taking ways"; David was delicate, and the most that the maids found to say for him was that he was "a very patient baby." He made known his desire for food by the whimper which served him for speech, but if the bottle didn't come, the whimper ceased. A faint bleat, and he gazed at the undesired world with resignation.
There was no resignation in Lee. He rebelled furiously – rebelled against his wife's disdain and his own weakness, for he remained the slave to a passion which he knew degraded him. This commonplace woman without intellect, without gratitude, without pretences, held him captive by a purely physical attraction against his will. There were hours when he hated her, yet she retained the power to fire him with a look, and torture him with a glance at another man.
She was not the woman to be unfaithful – for one thing, she appreciated the advantages of virtue too deeply to jeopardise them – but recriminations lost their terror for her soon, and she humoured her vanity without pity or fear. And Lee was no judge of character: in his hell, suspicion smouldered too. The recriminations were so frantic sometimes that the servants, startled from their sleep, hung trembling over the banisters; and there were crashes heard, and broken ornaments were swept up in the morning. "The nigger" was supposed to have thrown them in "the missis's face." In truth the madman shattered them to keep his hands off her.
By slow degrees he began to drink, not heavily – enough to give the situation a cheerier aspect for awhile; enough to shorten his career if he didn't check the habit. It was surprising how much brighter the world looked if he took a little whisky-and-water – especially if he took a little more whisky-and-water. Often after one of his frenzies of resentment he would remain away from the house for a week, though his engagements permitted him to return in two or three days. He would sing at Exeter, or Worcester, or Newcastle, as the case might be, and then go back to town, but not to Hampstead. Moralists in his profession who came upon him dissipating, said that he "treated his wife damned badly." And while he laughed and filled the glasses, the thought of her contempt burned in the man, and at last the suspicion that he could not drown drove him home.
As the child grew old enough to be played with, there came another influence; Lee's love for his child saved him from many excesses. The remembrance of something the boy had said or done would rise in him suddenly and fill him with tenderness. The truest pleasure in the singer's life was when he walked abroad holding his little son's hand, to pick blue-bells where Fitz-John's Avenue stands now, or to bear him westward from the Swiss Cottage in a cab.
David was not mercenary. He jumped at the blue-bells as eagerly as at the cab, though he had learnt already that hansoms always went to the fairyland where presents hung. He was very solicitous about Lee's safety, and lisped cautions against crossing a road when a horse was in sight, and the danger of falling through a cellar-plate into a coal-cellar. Once the nurse told David that the fascinating berries in the hedge were called "deadly nightshade," and that "if he fiddled with them he would die." He was impressed, and "Must never figgle with deadly nightshirt!" was his next warning to his father.
At a very early age there were signs that he was ambitious to secure a reputation as a humorist, notably an evening when he said his prayers in a facetious voice, and met rebuke by explaining that he was only trying to make God laugh. But the phase was a brief one, and he developed into a mournful child who was found to be more like a girl in his character than a boy. "Now Vivian was such an 'igh-spirited little feller!"
David called the lady downstairs "mamma," because he had been told that was her name; and he called his father "pops," because the diminutive came naturally to him. When he was nearly six years old, Ownie closed a door too swiftly and jammed his finger in it. The circumstance caused him to take an unusual liberty – he clung to her knees, howling for comfort. She looked at the finger, and patted him on the frizzy head, and said, "There, there, it isn't bad; suck it – it'll soon be well!" She meant to be gracious. Lee, who watched her face, caught him in his arms, and fondled him till the sobs ceased; and there were tears in the man's eyes which the child was too young to understand.
"I'm so glad you married pops, mamma," said David – "I do like him so!"
It was about this time that he began to understand, in a wordless, instinctive way, that his mother found him disgusting.