IX.
THE OLD WIFE
“Yes; married by the 30th of June, introduce my wife to the tenants on Christmas Eve, or no fortune. That was my uncle’s last and worst joke; he was reputed a funny man in his time. The alternatives are pretty ghastly either way.”
“Doesn’t that rather depend?” Sylvia queried, with a swift blue glance from under veiling lashes.
Michael answered her with a look, the male counterpart of her own, from dark Devon eyes, the upper lid arched in a perfect semicircle over pure grey. “Yes; but my wife must have a hundred a year of her own in Consols, to protect me from fortune-hunters—lone, lorn lamb that I am!”
Sylvia emphasised the sigh with which she admitted her indigence. Her pretty eyebrows owned plaintively that she, a struggling artist, had no claim against the nation.
“Mary has just a hundred a year,” she said, her voice low-toned as she looked across the room to where, demure in braided locks and grey camlet, her companion sat knitting.
“I daresay,” Michael answered indifferently, following her eyes’ flight and her tone’s low pitch; “but she’s young. I shall advertise for an elderly housekeeper. And qui vivra verra.”
The words, lightly cast on the thin soil of a foolish word-play with a pretty woman, bore fruit.
A week later Michael Wood stood aghast before a tray heaped with letters, answers to his advertisement:
“Housekeeper wanted. Must be middle-aged. The older the better. Salary, £500 a year.”
Not much, he had thought, £500 a year—if, by paying it, he might win a wife who would entitle him to an annual £15,000, whose declining years he might kindly cheer, and whose death would set him free to marry a wife whom he could love. His fancy drifted pleasantly towards Sylvia.
Michael was a lazy man, who bristled with business instincts. He telephoned to the nearest “typewriters’ association” for a secretary, and to this young woman he committed the charge of answering the letters which his advertisement had drawn forth. The answer was to be the same to all:
“Call at 17 Hare Court, Temple, between 11 and 1.”
And the dates fixed for such calling were arranged to allow about fifty interviews daily for the next week or two, for Michael was a bold man as well as a lazy one. The next morning, faultlessly dressed, with carnations in his buttonhole, he composed himself in his pleasant oak-furnished room to await his first batch of callers.
They came. And Michael, strong in his unswerving determination not to forfeit his chance of inheriting the £15,000 a year left him under his mad uncle’s mad will, saw them all, one after the other.
But he did not like any of them. They were old; that he did not mind—it was, indeed, of the essence of the contract. But they were frowsy, too, with reticules of scarred brownish leather, and mangy fur trimmings, worn fringes, and beaded mantles, whence time and poverty had clawed handfuls of the bright beads. Each of them was, as a wife, even as a wife in name, impossible. The task of rejection was softened to his hand by the fact that not one of them could boast the necessary hundred a year in Consols.
The interviews over, Michael, his spirit crushed by the spectacle of so many women anxious to find a refuge at an age when their children and grandchildren should, in their own homes, have been rising up to call them blessed, went to lounge a restorative hour in Sylvia’s bright little studio, and laugh with her over his dilemma. He would have liked to sigh with her, too, but the pathos of the homeless old women escaped her. She saw only the humour of the situation.
“There’s no harm done, if it amuses you,” she said, “but you’ll never marry an old woman.”
“Fifteen thousand pounds a year,” said Michael softly.
Next day more poor old ladies, all eager, anxious, ineligible.
It was on the third day that the old lady in dove-colour came in, sweet as a pressed flower in an old love-letter, dainty as a pigeon in spring. Her white hair, the white lace of her collar, the black lace of her mantle, her beautiful little hands in their perfect, dove-coloured gloves, all appealed irresistibly to Michael’s æsthetic sense.
“What an ideal housekeeper!” he said to himself, as he placed a chair for her. And then an odd thrill of discomfort and shame shot through him. This delicate, dainty old lady—he was to insult her by a form of marriage, and then to live near her, waiting for her death? No; it was impossible—the whole thing was impossible. He found himself in the middle of a sentence.
“And so I fear I am already suited.”
The old lady raised eyebrows as delicate as Sylvia’s own.
“Hardly, I think,” she said, “since your servant admitted me to an interview with you. May I ask you one or two questions before you finally decide against me?”
The voice was low and soft—the voice men loved in the early sixties, before the shrill shriek became the voice of fashionable ladies.
“Certainly,” Michael said. He could hardly say less, and in the tumult of embarrassment that had swept over him, he could not for his life have said more.
The old lady went on. “I am competent to manage a house. I can read aloud fairly well. I am a good nurse in case of sickness; and I am accustomed to entertain. But I gather from the amount of the salary offered that some other duties would be required of me?”
“That’s clever of her, too,” Michael thought; “none of the others saw that.”
He bowed.
“Would you enlighten me,” she went on, “as to the nature of the services you would require?”
“Ah—yes—of course,” he said glibly, and then stopped short.
“From your hesitation,” said the old lady, with unimpaired self-possession, “I gather that the matter involves an explanation of some delicacy, or else—pardon the egotism—that my appearance is personally unpleasing to you.”
“No—oh, no,” Michael said very eagerly; “on the contrary, if I may say so, it is just because you are so—so—exactly my ideal of an old lady, that I feel I can’t go on with the business; and that’s put stupidly, so that it sounds like an insult. Please forgive me.”
She looked him straight in the eyes through her gold-rimmed spectacles.
“You see, I am old enough to be your grandmother,” she said. “Why not tell me the truth?”
And, to his horror and astonishment, he told it.
“And that’s what I meant to do,” he ended. “It was a mad idea, and I see now that if I do it at all I must marry some one who is not—who is not like you. You have made me ashamed of myself.”
A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded cheek. The old lady put up her gloved hand and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She got up and walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.
“If you are going to do it,” she said in a voice that was hardly audible, “I have been used to live among beautiful surroundings—I should like to end my days among them. I do not come of a long-lived family. You would not have long to wait for your freedom and your second wife.”
Never in all his days had Michael known so sharp an agony of embarrassment.
“When must you be married,” the old lady went on calmly, “to ensure your fortunes and estates?”
“In about a month.”
“Well, Mr Wood, I make you a formal offer of marriage, and for reference I can give you my banker and my solicitor”
Her voice was calm; it was his voice that trembled as he answered: “You are too good. I can’t see that it would be fair to you. May I think about it till to-morrow?”
The contrast between the old lady’s dainty correctness of attire and speech, and the extraordinary unconventionality of her proposal, made Michael’s brain reel. She turned from the window, again looked him fairly in the eyes, and said: “You will not find me unconventional in other matters. This is purely an affair of business, and I approach it in a business spirit. You would be giving a home to one who wants it, and I should be helping you to what you need still more. I have never been married. I never wished to marry; and when I am dead Don’t look so horror-stricken. I should not die any sooner because you—you had married me. My name is Thrale—Frances Thrale. That is my card that you have been pulling to pieces while you have been talking to me. Shall I come and see you again at this time to-morrow? It is not a subject on which I should wish either to write or to receive letters.”
He could only acquiesce. At the door the old lady turned.
“If you think I look so old as to make your marriage too absurd,” she said—and now, for the first time, her voice trembled—“I could dye my hair.”
“Oh no,” Michael said, “your hair is beautiful. Good-bye, and thank you.”
As the old lady went down the dusty Temple stairs she stamped a small foot angrily on the worn oak.
“Fool!” she said, “how could you? Hateful, shameless, unwomanly! And it’s all for nothing, too. He’ll never do it. It’s too mad!”
Michael went straight to Sylvia, and told his tale.
“And I felt I couldn’t,” he said; “she is the daintiest, sweetest little old lady. I couldn’t marry her and see her every day and live in the hope of her death.”
“I don’t see why not,” Sylvia said, a little coldly. “She wouldn’t die any sooner because you married her, and, anyway, she can’t have long to live.”
The words were almost those of the little old lady herself. Yet—or perhaps for that very reason—they jarred on Michael’s mood. He alleged business, and cut short his call.
Next day Miss Thrale called again. Mr Wood was sorry to have given her so much trouble. He had decided that the idea was too wild, and must be abandoned.
“Is it because I am too old?” said the old lady wistfully; “would you marry me if I were young?”
“Upon my word, I believe I would,” Michael surprised himself by saying. That it was not the answer Miss Thrale expected was evident from her smile of sudden amusement.
“May I say,” she said, “in return for what, in its way, is a compliment, that I like you very much. I would take care of you, and I shall perhaps not live more than a year or two.”
The tremor of her voice touched him. The £15,000 a year pulled at his will. In that instant he saw the broad glades of waving bracken, the big trees of the park, the sober face of the great house he might inherit, looking out over the smooth green lawns. He looked again at the little lady. After all, he was more than thirty. The world would laugh—well, they laughed best who laughed last. And, after a few years, there would be Sylvia—pretty, charming, enchanting Sylvia. He put the thought of her roughly away. Not because he was ashamed of it, but because it hurt him. The thought that Sylvia should wait for a dead woman’s shoes had seemed natural; what hurt him was that she herself should see nothing unnatural in such waiting.
The silence had grown to the limit that spells discomfort; the ticking of the tall clock, the rustle of the plane tree’s leaves outside the window, the discords of Fleet Street harmonised by distance, all deepened the silence and italicised it. She spoke.
“Well?” she said.
The plane tree’s leaves murmured eloquently of the great oaks in the park. The old lady’s eyes looked at him appealingly through the pale-smoked glasses. How she would like that old place! And his debts—he could pay them all.
“I will,” he said suddenly; “if you will, I will; and I pray you may never regret it.”
“I don’t think you will regret it,” she said gently; “it is a truly kind act to me.”
Bank and solicitor, duly consulted, testified to Miss Thrale’s respectability and to her income—the requisite hundred a year in Consols. And on a certain day in June Michael Wood woke from a feverish dream, in which obstinacy and the longing for money had fought with many better things and worsted them, to find himself married to a white-haired woman of sixty.
The awakening took place in his rooms in the Temple. He had yielded to the little old lady’s entreaties, and consented, most willingly, to forego the “wedding journey,” in this case so sad a mockery.
The set was a large one—five rooms; it seemed that they might live here, and neither irk the other.
And she was in the room he had caused to be prepared for her—dainty and neat as herself—and he, left alone in the room where he had first seen her, crossed his arms on the table, and thought. His wedding-day! And it might have been Sylvia, the rustle of whose dress he could hear in the next room. He groaned. Then he laid his head on his arms and cried—like a child that has lost its favourite toy: for he saw, suddenly, that respect for his old wife must keep him from ever seeing Sylvia now; and life looked grey as the Thames in February twilight.
A timid hand on his shoulder startled him to the raising of his tear-stained face. The little old lady stood beside him.
“Ah, don’t!” she said softly—“don’t! Believe me, it will be all right. Your old wife won’t live more than a year—I know it. Take courage.”
“Don’t!” he said in his turn; “it’s a wicked thing I’ve done. Forgive me! If only we could have been friends. I can’t bear to think I shall make you unhappy.”
“My dear boy,” she said, “we are friends. I am your housekeeper. In a year at latest you will see the last of my white hairs. Be brave.”
He could not understand the pang her words gave him.
And now began, for these two, a strange life. In those Temple rooms—ideal nest for young lovers—Mrs Wood, the white-haired, kept house with firm and capable little hands. Comfort, which Michael’s lazy nature loved but could not achieve, reigned peacefully. The old lady kept much to her own rooms, but whenever he needed talk she was there. And she could talk. She had read much, reflected much. In her mind his own ideas found mating germs, and bore fruit of beautiful dreams, great thoughts. His verses—neglected this long time, since Sylvia did not care for poetry—flourished once more.
And music—Sylvia’s taste in music had been Sullivan; the old wife touched the piano with magic fingers, and Bach, Beethoven, Wagner came to transfigure the Temple rooms. Michael had never been so contented—never so wretched; for, as the quiet weeks went by, the leaves fell from the plane tree, and the time drew near when he must show his wife to the tenants—his white-haired wife. In these months a very real friendship had grown up between them. Michael had never met a woman, old or young, whose tastes chimed so tunefully with his own. Ah! what a pity he had not met a young woman with these tastes—this soul. And now, liking, friendship, affection—all the finer, nobler side of love—he could indeed feel for his old wife; but love—lovers’ love, that would set the seal on all the rest—this he might never know, except for some other woman, who would succeed to his wife’s title.
Badly as Michael had behaved, I think it is permissible to be sorry for him. His wife, in fact, was very sorry.
One day he met Sylvia in the park, and all the other side of him thrilled with pleasure. He sat by her an hour, his eyes drinking in her fresh beauty, while his soul shrivelled more and more. Ah! why could she not talk, as his wife could, instead of merely chattering?
His wife looked sad that evening. He asked the reason.
“I saw you in the park to-day,” she said. “Are you going to see her? Don’t compromise her: it’s not worth while.”
He kissed her hand in its black mitten, and in a flash of pain saw the black funeral, when she should be carried from his house, and he be left free to marry Sylvia.
And now the days had dropped past; so even was their flow that it seemed rapid, and in another week it would be Christmas.
“And I must show you to the tenants,” said he.
“My poor boy,” she said—it was just as she had risen to bid him good night—“be brave. Perhaps it won’t be so bad as you think. Good night.”
He sat still after she had left him, gazing into the fire, and thinking thoughts in which now the estate and the fortune played but little part. At last he shrugged his shoulders.
“Well,” he said, “I have no lover, no wife; but I have a companion, a friend—one in a million.” And again the black funeral trailed its slow length before his eyes, and he shuddered.
I have not sought to deceive the reader. He knows as well as I do that at this moment the door opened, and a young and beautiful woman stood on the threshold. Her eyes were shining; round her neck were gleaming pearls. She was playing for a high stake, and being a true woman she had disdained no honest artifice that might help her. She wore shining white silk, severely plain, and her brown hair was dressed high on her head. A woman one shade less intuitive would have let the dusky masses fall over a lace-covered tea-gown.
“Michael,” she said, “I am your wife. Are you going to forgive me?”
He raised himself slowly from his chair, and his eyes dwelt on detail after detail of the beauty before him.
“My wife!” he said. “You are a stranger!”
“I did disguise myself well. My sister told me about your advertisement; she lives with Sylvia Maddox. We each have a hundred pounds a year. At first I did it for fun; but when I had seen how—how nice you were—my mother is very poor. There are no excuses. But are you going to forgive me?” Any other woman, to whom forgiveness meant all that it meant to her, might have kneeled at his feet. Frances stood erect by the door. “Anyway,” she said, biting her lip, “I have saved you from Sylvia. For the sake of that, forgive me.”
That stung him, as she had known it would.
“Forgive you?” he said. “Never. You’ve spoiled my life.” But he took a step towards her as he spoke.
She took an equal step back.
“Take courage,” she said. “Who knows but I may die before next June, after all. Good night.”
“I hate you,” he said, and took another step forward. But the door closed in his face.
Next morning the old lady, white haired and mittened, appeared behind the breakfast tea. Michael almost thought he had dreamed, till her eyes, now without their glasses, met his timidly.
“Let us end this play-acting, at least,” he said. Ten minutes of fuming ended in tepid tea poured by a beautiful brown-haired girl.
He watched her in silence.
“It’s horrible,” he broke out. “You’re a strange woman, and there you sit, pouring tea out as if Who are you? I don’t know you.”
“Don’t you?” she said quietly. And then he remembered all the old talks with the old wife.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I don’t want to be a brute.”
“It’s no use my saying I’m sorry,” she said.
“Are you?” He leaned forward to put the question.
“We must make the best of it,” she said. “Perhaps Look here, don’t let’s speak of it till after Christmas; let’s just go on as we did before.”
So the days wore on. But the situation when Michael lived in torment in the company of his old wife was simplicity itself compared to his new life with a wife—young, beautiful, and a stranger, yet in all essentials his dearest friend. This discomfort grew daily—hourly branching out into ever fresh embarrassments— new and harassing, vexatious, half understood, wholly resented.
The wife had her burden to bear also. The laundress had only known the old wife as “Mrs Wood.”
“She thought I was your mother,” the wife said when Michael propounded the difficulty. But the laundress’s attitude to the new Mrs Wood had a sting that was almost punishment enough to the wife, had Michael only known, for all that she had done amiss.
The hour of departure for the Christmas festivities at Wood Grange came as a relief from the persistent pinpricks of unexplained emotion which tormented him. His wife was young and beautiful, yet he was only conscious of repulsion. He hated her for her trickery. But most he hated her because she had cheated him of the old wife—the friend, the confidante, who had grown to be so much, and so much the best part, in his life. For now there was no confidence between the two—no talk, no reading, no music to brighten the Temple rooms. They lived in an almost complete silence.
•••••••
Every window of the Grange shone out with yellow light across the snow. For once Christmas had been kind and seasonable—a white sheet covered the world. Holly gleamed against old oak. Priceless silver, saved from the smelting-pot in Cromwell’s hard days, shone above white napery on the long tables. The tenants’ dinner was over, and now was the moment when, according to the will, Michael Wood’s wife must be presented to the tenants then assembled.
The slender figure in white woollen cloth and white fur, with Christmas roses at its breast, stood on the daïs at the end of the great hall, and the tenants cheered themselves hoarse at the mere sight of her beautiful face, her kind eyes.
“It went off very well,” Michael said when, the last guest gone, the last shutter closed, the last servant departed, the two stood alone in the long drawing-room.
“Yes; think if you had had to present to them the old white-haired wife”
“I loved the old wife,” he said obstinately; but his voice was not quite steady.
“I wish,” she said, playing with the Christmas roses she wore, “I wish you would try to forgive me. It was horribly wrong; but I began it as a joke. You see, I had only just come over from the convent where I was brought up. I thought it would be such fun: I was always good at theatricals. I will never do anything silly again. And to-morrow I’ll go away, and you need never see me again. And you have got the money and the old place, haven’t you? And I got them for you—and—do forgive me. It began as a silly schoolgirl’s joke indeed.”
“But—a convent! You have read and thought”
“It was my father. He made me read and think; and when he died all the money went, and my mother is poor. Oh, Michael, don’t be so flinty! Say you forgive me before I go! It all began in a joke!”
“Began. Yes. But why did you go on?”
“Because I—I didn’t like Sylvia—and I liked you—rather—but I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll go back to mother. Say you forgive me. I’ll go by the first train in the morning.”
“The first train,” said Michael absently, “is the 9.17; but to-morrow is Christmas Day—I daresay they’ll run the same as on Sunday.”
She took her white cloak from the settle by the fire.
“Good night,” she said sadly; “you are very hard. Won’t you even shake hands?”
“We had no roses at our wedding,” he said, still absently; “but there are roses at Christmas.” He raised his hand to the white flowers she wore, and touched them softly. “White roses, too, for a wedding,” he said.
“Good night!” she said again.
“And you will go to your mother to-morrow by the 9.17 train, or the 10.5, if the trains run the same as on Sunday. And I am to forgive you, and shake hands before we part. Well, well!”
He took the hand she held out, caught the other, and stood holding them, his grey eyes seeking hers. Her head thrown back, her hands stretched out, she looked at him from arm’s length.
“Dear!” he said.
A mute glance questioned him. Then lashes longer than Sylvia’s veiled the dark eyes.
He spoke again. “Dear!”
“You know you hate me,” she said.
He raised her hands to his lips.
“Have you forgotten Sylvia?”
“Absolutely, thank God! And you—I—after all, we are married, though there were no roses at our June wedding.”
Again her eyes questioned mutely.
He leaned forward and touched the Christmas roses with his lips. Then he dropped her hands and caught her by the shoulders.
“Oh! foolish, foolish, foolish people!” he said. “We two are man and wife. My wife! my wife! my wife! We are, aren’t we?”
“I suppose we are,” she said, and her face leaned a little towards his.
“Well, then!” said he.