She knew now that she loved Senhouse, and that knowledge filled her with indescribable triumph, and gave her unimagined strength. At the same time, the quietude of her new joy really amazed her. She could lie back in her corner seat of the train and watch her flight to the south, be conscious that every thresh of the great driving wheels was taking her from her beloved, reflect that she could neither write to him nor hear from him—wanderer that he was, and sojourner in tents—and regret nothing, and long for nothing more tangible than she possessed already. He had her heart; she had made her surrender on that night of intense colloquy. That had been her true bridal night—by that mysterious intercourse she had become his irrevocably. A great security possessed her, a conviction, which it would have been blasphemous to question, that all was well. If one had told her, you and he may never meet again, she would have laughed in his face at the absurdity. Such a thing was not worth argument, spelt its own refutation. An immense content possessed her, a security which excused her from looking back, and made the future indifferent. She thought neither of her husband with remorse nor of Duplessis with apprehension. She was not appalled by the flatness of her immediate prospect: of a return to town and its round of flurry, chatter, and dress; of Southover and its autumn rites. These things were shadows of life: the real life was hidden in her heart. She would send her tricked-out body to dinner-parties and other assemblies of dolls, while she herself would be elsewhere, in some blue immensity of air, breasting some great hill, breathing the breath—which was food—of her mother the Earth—her mother! Their mother! She and her beloved were brother and sister. Entertainment here, for the flying miles, to which the threshing wheels lent processional music.
If she hardly knew herself it is no wonder. She crossed London by rote, reached Blackheath, walked sedately to her father’s little house, entered the little dull door, and kissed her parents, whom she found at tea—all in a dream. They made much of her, the great lady she was become; found it not amiss that she appeared in tumbled gown, with soiled blouse, and hat remarkable for its unremarkableness. Great ladies could do as they pleased, being a law unto themselves. Nor were they confused by her replies to the proper inquiries. “Mr. Germain?” she said, “I think he’s very well. I haven’t seen him since I left London. We don’t see much of each other, you know, Mother.” A stack of forwarded letters was indicated, telegrams among them. She nodded her head, and passed her cup for some more tea.
She heard of the girls’ progress—all out in good boarding schools of her providing; next of Jinny’s triumphs in the Lincolnshire home of the Podmores. “Jinny has a bold way with her, as you know, Mary. They were not inclined towards her at first. There was a question whether she should not pack up her box again the day after she got there—but Mr. Podmore—her Mr. Podmore—went on his knees, on his knees, Mary—and she consented to stay. Very bold of Jinny, considering that old Mr. Podmore is a Rural Dean——”
Mary smiled. The simple talk went on. By-and-by it came out that a visitor had called to see Mary several times—a Mr. Duplessis, a very tall young man. “He came here the evening we had expected you, and I thought the chimney was afire when I heard his knock. Exactly like the fire brigade. I opened the door in a twitter—and there he was—six feet-two of him, and a tall hat atop of that. “Is Mrs. Germain at home?” he asks me, and I say, “She may be, for she’s not here.” Then he says, “You are Mrs. Middleham, I take it.” I tell him he takes me rightly. “Don’t you expect your—Mrs. Germain?” I told him the truth. “I’ll call to-morrow,” he says—“and he did, Mary, and to-day, too. A handsome, upstanding young man—very much at home with the likes of me. I suppose—but you know your own business best, of course.”
Mary stroked her mother’s cheek. “Dear little old Mother,” she said, “I know you’re afraid for me. Mr. Duplessis is quite harmless. I’ll see him, if he comes to-morrow.”
In the intervals of housework—for she insisted upon being useful—she wrote to her husband from day to day, telling him in her first letter that she had been unable to write before as she had been travelling. On this particular information he made no comment whatsoever; indeed, he confined himself to such generalities as the state of the weather, his cold, “which, under medical advice, I am nursing at home,” and the proceedings of Mrs. James. “Constantia is a great comfort to me. You will be pleased to hear that I am not without hope of inducing her to prolong her visit. She speaks very kindly of you. My brother, I regret to say, has been called home by parochial cares. . . . The Cantacutes dined here last evening. I regretted that I could not be down to receive them. However, Constantia. . . .” She replied pleasantly to all this, feeling not one grain of discomfort out of anything which Mrs. James could or could not do. She begged to be kept informed of his cold. “You know that I will come to you the moment you care to have me.” In answer to that, by return of post, he wrote that “on no account” must she alter her plans. “Believe me, I am fully contented that you should be with your parents. It is, I understand, reckoned a failing of the past generation that children should admit any claim in them who bore and nurtured them. Personally, I do not pretend to be abreast of the times in this particular; nor should I wish you to be so. I am assured that there is no cause for uneasiness on my account, and will most certainly see that you are kept supplied with bulletins. I beg my sincere respects to your father and mother.”
After that she heard nothing more from him.
Duplessis had called two days after her arrival, but she had been out, and he had not waited. He came again after three days’ interval—having written to announce his intention—at 11 o’clock in the morning. She was on her knees, in pinned-up skirt and apron, her arms bare to the elbows, scrubbing the kitchen floor, when his knock resounded through the house. The quick blood leapt into her cheeks, but she held to her task. Her mother came fluttering in. “That’s your visitor, Mary. What am I to do?—and you in such a state!”
“Show him in here, Mother,” says Mary.
“Never, child. He’ll think you demented.”
Mary was inflexible; her eyes glittered. “I shall see him nowhere else,” she said.
Upon his second attack, a scared and serious Mrs. Middleham opened the door. Mary, pausing in her scrubbing, heard the dialogue.
“Oh, good-morning. Mrs. Germain?”
“My daughter is here, Sir.”
“Oh, she’s come, has she? Do you think she would see me?”
“She says so, Sir. I have asked her. But she hopes you will excuse her untidiness——”
“Oh, of course——”
“She has been kind enough to help us here—she is at work now. You will please to overlook——”
“My dear Mrs. Middleham——”
“If you will follow me I will show you where she is.”
Mary rose from her knees to receive him, having wiped her hands and arms on her apron. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes alight—but she looked none the worse, assuredly, for that.
When Duplessis, stooping his fair head, entered the kitchen, she came forward lightly to receive him. “Good-morning,” she said. “You will take me as I am?”
“I’ll take you how I can,” said Tristram, shaking hands. “Your mother prepared me for this attack of industry. You might let me help you.”
Mary laughed. “Don’t destroy my mother’s illusions. She is convinced of the complete idleness of the upper classes. If she lost that she would have to alter all her ideas of society.”
“I don’t know anything about the upper classes; but Mrs. Middleham can have no notion how hard I can work,” Duplessis said. “I was at it all last night. Dancing till Heaven knows when.”
“I’ll warrant Heaven does,” said Mrs. Middleham to herself. She was not able to find anything to say to this magnificent visitor.
Duplessis and Mary made a fairer show, for she had learned to dread, with the high world, a single second of awkwardness. She was even able to continue her work on her knees and chat with Tristram, who, for his part, sat calmly on the kitchen table and talked nineteen to the dozen. It is difficult to say which side of this simple performance scandalized Mrs. Middleham the more—that Mary should be on her knees with a scrubbing brush, or that Duplessis should not be. The good blunt woman sat it out as long as her endurance would last, growing more and more stiff in the back, primming her lips in and in until she showed none at all. Finally she rose with a “You will excuse me,” and stalked out of her own kitchen. She sat in the empty parlour and looked at a photograph album as a protest. Meanwhile Mary’s hour had come.............