Mrs. Margrave Finds Her Children

by I. A. R. Wylie

 

A new way of telling the old, old story of a man who did not take his wife with him while he climbed the ladder of success

Mrs. Margrave Finds
Her Children

By I. A. R. Wylie

Illustrations by
F. R. Gruger

JANE MARGRAVE sat far back in the great hall. They had reserved a seat in the front row for her, but she was so small and unobtrusive that nobody noticed when she came in, and the tall, fair girl who took her place by mistake was accepted by the stewards as Andrew Margrave's wife without question. She looked like Andrew Margrave's wife—or, at any rate, as his wife ought to look. And Jane Margrave did not. She knew it—had always known it. Today the knowledge was too much for her. She wanted to hide.

The two women who sat next her settled themselves back in their furs, purring contentedly. They talked about the various familiar townsfolk and the notabilities as they streamed in. They talked about Jane Margrave herself. They had seen her several times—at the garden fête last week and at various smaller meetings, but she was too like hundreds of other women to be remembered, and besides they knew she would be sitting somewhere well in front. They were very sorry for Andrew Margrave.

“He was just a bank clerk,” one of them said. “I suppose it seemed right enough at the time.”

“But he must have known. Even the people. who knew him then knew that he would come to something.”

“Tn a way I like an early marriage. But an ambitious man ought to wait until he finds his level.”

“And then their having no children—”

“That must be the hardest. Building all that for nobody.”

Jane Margrave closed her eyes for a moment. The secret charm of her small, thin face was quenched like a little flame by a gust of wind. She looked old and wan.

The younger of the two women heaved her ample shoulders. “One couldn't blame him—not a man like that—”

“One doesn't.” The other laughed and lowered her voice—but not enough. “They say—”

The band played a patriotic air, cunningly linking Andrew Margrave with national sentiment, and everybody rustled to their feet. Mrs. Margrave was the last to rise. It wasn't that she felt any incongruity in her standing up to greet her husband. That was natural enough. And it wasn't the hurt. She had an almost amused contempt for the two women—though contempt was alien to her. They so obviously didn't know. They judged by their own standards. They thought Andrew was like other men. Andrew—

Once upon a time he had been “Andy.” For a very short time. That had been in the first flare-up of his passion for her, when she had felt herself strong and victorious. He had been in desperate need of all that she had to give, and had lain helpless in the hollow of her hands. She could have hurt—almost have slain him in those days, and he would have been without defence. But she had been very tender. She had smiled over him and had called him, “Andy, dear—” There had even been foolish baby derivatives which made her faintly uncomfortable to remember.

Insensibly “Andy” had become Andrew. And she had become Andrew Margrave's wife.

The people were cheering. They were enormously pleased that Andrew Margrave should have chosen to come down among them. Their jaded and disillusioned imaginations, surfeited with national saviors who had proved themselves personal boosters, fastened eagerly on a man who had succeeded without shame or reproach in becoming richer than any of them. He had been wise and far-seeing for himself, but he had been wise and far-seeing for the whole community as well. They grudged him nothing. They meant to send him back to Parliament with fresh power. Unconsciously they owed him an incalculable debt because he had kept their faith in men alive.

There he stood, unostentatious but extraordinarily predominating—a slender, broad-shouldered, well-dressed figure of a man, carrying himself with the erect, gallant carriage of a soldier—which he had been for a short time—the lean, sharp-lined face grave but friendly. The gray hair that was as thick as when he had been a boy was brushed back so smoothly that it fitted the shapely head like a cap. Mrs. Margrave remembered that in the old days it hadn't always been so smooth. He had had a habit of ruffling it up. He hadn't been quite so sure of himself. Often she had run her hand gently over the disorder, saying,

“There, Andy, it will be all right.”

The chairman was speaking. Mrs. Margrave was very tired of chairmen. She had heard too many. She knew everything that even the most original of them could have to say. The list of Andrew's excellences fell on her brain like dull blows, She sank back into herself, thinking and remembering.

She wasn't only tired of chairmen. She was tired of herself—deeply, deeply tired. Perhaps for that reason she~had to acknowledge something which she had known fifteen years and had steadily refused to face. She was a failure and as lonely as only a failure can be. For five years she had been a success. She had been a splendid wife for the striving, restless bank-clerk, steadying and advising him with all the sagacity of an unselfish love. She remembered the night that he had poured his heart out to her, kneeling at her feet, his head against her knee. She remembered her own pity, her desire to enfold him and shield him from the disillusionment that lay ahead. For it had all sounded so fantastic and improbable—the little Scotch nobody with the burr of his native speech still thick on his tongue, clamoring for power and wealth and fame. She had held him very close.

“Dear Andy—”

Almost immediately afterward the thing had happened. What men call luck had played into his eager hands. He had gone ahead—slipped away from her. She had never protected him again.

So she had become a failure. For protecting was her business. With some human need of her—something over which she could spread her wings—she throve and grew radiant and splendid. She knew that if Andy had failed, she would have saved them both. But as the wife of Andrew Margrave she had dwindled and withered. She was like a little cockleshell dragged at the stern of a leviathan, useless, not even pretty, and nigh to foundering in the backwash. And sometimes, she knew it quite well, she made the leviathan ridiculous.

If she had had children—just one child. All down the years she had hoped and prayed. A child would have justified her. It would have been her share in the triumph of Andrew's life. And then a child would have needed her. She had dreamed of it so often that it had become almost real—a little boy with untidy hair and wide, visionary young eyes—as Andy's must have been once—who ran to her from his games and whom she shielded from the perplexity and dread loneliness of life. The pathos of his dependence—the unutterable dependence of children—had glorified her.

But he had never come. He had stood on the edge of her dream, gazing at her sadly. And Andrew had gone into Parliament. He had become a great man.

Illustration: Lady Flavia's room was like a stage boudoir, and Jane Margrave stood in the midst like the intruder she had become in life. But now she was not shamed by her intrusion

He was speaking now. The rich, metallic voice sounded through all her nerves. But she could not hear what he was saying. She did not want to. Whatever it was, it had no part in her. His energy, his passion for ideals and things rather than for human relationships, made him seem stranger than an unknown man to her. Her tiredness was awful. The thought that she might have thirty years to live bore her down like a suffocating wave.

2

PRESENTLY it was all over. She sat beside him in their limousine. Hat in hand, he was bowing and smiling to the blur of friendly faces that filled the windows.

“In the old days they would have taken the horses out,” he said, “and dragged us in triumph.”

“It must have been very slow and embarrassing,” was all she could find to answer.

“Oh, I don't know—”

She thought his voice sounded a little flat. Perhaps he was tired. But the tiredness was too different from her own. After that peroration he must have felt like a runner who has won a great race—exhausted and satisfied. But she had not run at all—just ambled—nowhere and to no purpose.

She beat her brain for the right things to say to a great man.

“It was a wonderful meeting, wasn't it?”

“Splendid. Couldn't have been better.”

“I suppose it's quite certain.”

“Jeffries thinks so. I'm sure myself. One has an instinct about that sort of thing. Anyhow tomorrow it will be over, thank goodness!”

“Yes. You'll be awfully glad.”

“Such a frantic wasting of time—all this vote-cadging. I want to get on to the real business. The Prime Minister has promised me a free hand. As a matter of fact—well, I have a pretty good idea what he has in mind. But it's too early to talk.”

(“Even to me,” she thought.)

They were free of the crowd now and running smoothly along the great main road. He had two more meetings before nightfall—mere village affairs, but he was taking no chances—and he lay back in his corner, making the best of the respite. Motoring soothed him. But to her the thirty-odd miles that lay between them and their destination were like leaden weights that she had to pick up one by one and throw behind her. She looked at him shyly. His eyes were fixed intently straight ahead of him, seeing, she knew, nothing that was visible to her. Queer, to think that they were husband and wife. Queerer still to remember that once he had been passionately in love. The night he had first kissed her, he had looked like a man who had conquered the world. And now that he had really conquered the world—

Something unfamiliar in the set of his face made her say suddenly, before she had time to realize why she asked, “Are you happy?” and he turned to look at her with lifted eyebrows.

She felt abashed under his stare. It was as though she had said something silly, almost impertinent. She saw herself how stupid it was. But she herself was so unhappy.

“Of course,” he said. “Why shouldn't I be?”

She held on with an unreasonable obstinacy. “I mean—as you were in the old days.”

Illustration: From time to time Andrew crouched down, fumbling at the stony bed of the stream. Then she heard him sigh. “Andrew—Andrew!” she called, very gently, so that she should not frighten him. He turned toward her, then came wearily on to the bank and dropped down on a boulder with his face between his hands

He shrugged his shoulders. “My dear, I don't remember being happy 'in the old days.' There were too many things I wanted and didn't have. When I was a kid, I didn't have enough to eat. But I used to dream about this—” He laughed. “At least, something like this. There weren't any cars in those days. And, of course, I married a princess—”

The smile lingered for a moment about his mouth. And then, obviously, he forgot her and her question. He hadn't meant to hurt. He was thinking about the Prime Minister. Besides, their married life was irreproachable. They had never so much as quarreled. The idea that he could hurt her wouldn't occur to him.

She looked down at her gloved hands folded in her lap. Just for a moment she had been impelled to take his lean, relaxed hand between them and comfort it as she had used to do. But she saw how crazy the impulse had been. And now she felt embarrassed and self-conscious. She didn't know what to do with her hands. There was nothing for them to do. It was too sad to be so meaningless.

He was looking out of the window—away from her.

“Where were you?” he asked. “I didn't see you. You weren't in the place they had reserved.”

(So he had looked for her, she thought wonderingly.)

She shook her head. “I sat way back. I didn't want to sit there.” She stammered, because she could not tell him the truth. “I thought it would be amusing to see what it felt like to be just anybody's wife.”

“Well—it wasn't very wise. You're not anybody's wife. People talk.”

“Why should they talk?”

“I don't know. But they do.” After a moment he said, “Lady Flavia was in your place.”

She knew instinctively that though he continued to stare indifferently out of the window, he was for the first time intensely conscious of her. He was listening and watching with all his nerves. And his awareness made her afraid. It was a little, nameless fear. It seemed to creep up from her heart into her throat, constricting her breath so that she made a sound like a smothered sob. But though he must have heard, he did not turn.

“I didn't know Lady Flavia was down,” she said.

“Yes, she came to work some of the outlying districts for me. Her people have property and some influence round here. She has been very useful.”

“I didn't know—I'm glad—I'm sure she would be—” Something kind and generous in her made her add quickly: “She is so beautiful and young. People would do anything for her.”

“She's older than she seems,” he answered. “And I wish she hadn't sat in your place. It didn't look well. People like to think a man's happily married.”

“Aren't we?” she asked.

And then she was sorry. It was just another stupid question. There was only one answer.

“I mean—'” she said, “I can't help you, can I?”

He turned his head. She caught a queer look in his eyes. She didn't know what it meant. It was as though he had been expecting—wanting—to find some one, and the some one wasn't there. It was gone at once, and he smiled with a tired kindliness.

“It isn't everybody's job, my dear. After all, you didn't expect to be a politician's wife when you married. I am afraid it's awfully dull for you.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no, of course not, Andrew. I was just sorry.”

But in a way it was true. She had married a man who needed her. And he didn't need her any more. It was kind of him not to make her feel how little she mattered.

He laughed and patted her on the knee as though she were a child.

“Your nose wants powdering, my dear. And the villagers, though they may object to powder-puffs, are very critical of shiny noses.”

She laughed, too. She took out her gold case that he had given her, and peeped at herself in the tiny glass. It was a magnifying glass, and it showed her every line and the dark hollow places under her eyes. She saw herself as she would be when she was an old, old woman.

She sat very still with her hands tightly clasped and her head up, so that he should not know that her eyes were full of tears.

3

IT DIDN'T matter—growing old. But it did matter, being alone. If that other Andy had been at home, waiting for his mother to come back, it wouldn't have mattered that unintentionally the excited people had pushed her about and that she was a dowdy, simple little woman well past her youth. They were all such active, eager people with their place in the world, and since the other Andy hadn't come she had no place at all.

She felt like a witness at some strange play; she didn't belong to the players, nor to the audience. She stood in the wings, an insignificant figure, looking on, while the chief actor filled the stage, surrounded by his supporters, calm and assured. She could see how he charmed them. His completeness and confidence gave their confused personalities a sense of stability and rest. Even the late member, who had had to resign and make a secure place for him, stood at his elbow, and there was the Lady Flavia Anstruther smiling at him with her frank, almost boyish admiration. She didn't care who saw how wonderful he was to her. The dim light from the overhead lamp made an unearthly radiance round her fair head. She seemed very young. Perhaps, as he had said, she was older than she seemed. Perhaps, Mrs. Margrave thought, he wanted to think her older.

Mrs. Margrave stood by the window which led out on to the balcony of the Town Hall. The crowd outside murmured and rustled uneasily. Every now and then some one started the latest song, and there were cheers and counter-cheers and calls for the three candidates. They were good-humored and patient people, but they frightened Mrs. Margrave. They made her think of wolves waiting for their prey to be flung to them. She would have liked to creep to Andrew's side and slip her arm through his, but she knew that he would have been astonished, and the thought of his astonishment made her shrink. It was as though she had intruded on a stranger.

Queer, what things life did to one! He was her husband—he had been her “Andy.” For a little while they had been one flesh and one spirit. And now they were separate beings, walking in parallel lines that never met. It made everything unreal. You couldn't believe in anything any more—not even in the ground under your feet.

If only the children had come—the children—⁠ She caught herself up sharply. She was afraid of the thought. It was like an obsession. Sometimes she was afraid of going mad. But she was so lonely and so useless. She tried to smile and look as though she were at ease. She was afraid of people seeing and guessing. It was hateful to stand there, not knowing what to do or say. She ought not to have come. He had brought her only because it was the correct thing for her to be there. But no one even noticed her.

Except Lady Flavia. Lady Flavia was passionate and enthusiastic. She was angry with Mrs. Margrave for being so insignificant and Andrew Margrave's wife. And yet something about the small, forlorn figure in the unlovely dress gave her a pang of discomfort. She came across to her, making her way through the crowd like a tall, proud ship. She took Mrs. Margrave's arm and gave it a friendly pressure.

“You must be awfully proud and happy,” she said.

Mrs. Margrave gave a pale, enigmatic, little smile. She couldn't help being touched by the younger woman's conviction that this was the greatest moment in her life. Supposing she said, “My dear, I was proud and happy, when he said he couldn't live without me,” would she have understood? Perhaps—since it was quite obvious that she was in love with him herself. But anyhow one didn't talk like that.

“I don't know,” she said instead. “Not yet.”

“But you will know in a minute. They said they would be through with the counting before nine. It's almost nine now. You mustn't worry. It will be all right. I've been all over the place. Everybody's for Andrew Margrave.”

“You've helped him so much, Lady Flavia. He told me you had worked harder than any one.”

“Did he? I'm so glad. I did all I could. It's one's duty to get the best men for the country, isn't it?”

Mrs. Margrave smiled again. “Of course, my dear,” she said in her prim old-fashioned way.

The girl gave her a sidelong glance. “Mrs. Margrave, you're not cross with me?”

“Cross? Oh, no, why should I be?”

“I took your seat at the meeting yesterday. I didn't mean to. I didn't know it was yours until afterward, when Mr. Margrave told me. I was late, and I did want to hear every word, and I saw the empty place. Please forgive me.”

“There's nothing to forgive,” Jane Margrave answered wearily. “Besides, I didn't want—”

SHE broke off. A door had been flung open, and Lady Flavia let go her hold. She forgot Mrs. Margrave. A number was shouted through the sudden absolute silence. Mrs. Margrave saw her husband's face. After all, the moment had taken him unawares. He cared—cared terribly. And yet—it wasn't triumph that she saw—rather a look of passionate expectancy, of intense waiting, as though now at last something wonderful was to happen, something beyond the event.

“You see—you see—” Lady Flavia cried out exultantly. “I knew.”

It was like a spark on gunpowder. In a second every one knew. The dull murmur of the crowd outside rose to a roar of cheering. The people in the stifling room surged toward the balcony, carrying Margrave with them. As he passed the two women, he glanced back. He saw the Lady Flavia and smiled—holding out his hand as though to draw her with him. Then he saw his wife.

“Come—they'll want you, too.”

They didn't want her. They didn't know who she was. But she stood beside him, looking down into that sea of white faces and tossing arms. He slipped his arm through hers. But it was only a stage gesture.

“The dream has come true!” he said.

“All but the Princess,” she thought.

She looked up at him. He was waiting for the tumult to die down. Then he would speak. She saw him gathering himself together for the final, crowning effort. And suddenly something unbelievable surged up in her aching heart. He had won. He had been given his part to play, and he had played it. But she, too, could have played well—she, too, had had her part which she could have filled with dignity and honor. But her chance had never come. She had waited and waited, and the stage manager, Life, had passed her by. And now it was too late. The play had no need of her. She hung about the passages of the great theater like a beggar, frustrated, bitter.

She drew away from Andrew Margrave. In that moment she almost hated him.

4

PEOPLE talked—but then as they never talked to Jane Margrave, it didn't matter. Nobody really knew her, and nobody wanted to. In a quiet suburb she would have had her friends who would have seen to it that she shared their knowledge. But as the Prime Minister's wife, she was too uninteresting even to destroy. Whether they really believed that because she was dowdy she was incapable of suffering, it is hard to say. But they let her alone. When they thought of her at all, they blamed her. They felt that she ought to have known from the beginning how unsuitable she was.

So she never heard the whisperings that night—the discreet and cruel innuendoes of highly cultured people. It is possible that even if she had heard she would not have understood. She blundered headlong and unwarned into the truth. Undoubtedly she had had storm signals enough. But her very integrity made her blind. She didn't believe that things like that really happened—not to decent people. After all, he was Prime Minister—really the greatest man in Europe—and it was natural that he should be often away from her, actually and in spirit. Just because she was a failure, she had to be the more undemanding and patient. Her bitterness against him had vanished like a flash of evil lightning, leaving a sense of sorrow at herself.

It was their last reception before recess. All his friends and a good many of his enemies were there. And of course, as the latter pointed out to one another, the Lady Flavia Anstruther. She was rich and beautiful and belonged to the set of young people who did what they liked and showed what they felt, and she carried her admiration of him like a banner. They made a remarkable couple as they stood together, talking with a low-toned intimacy which built a circle round them. His age gave power to his charm, just as the thick gray hair made him seem younger than he was. Not even his enemies could have said that they were ill-sorted.

They vented their ridicule on his wife. If he was on the brink of disaster, it was largely because she looked like a parson's wife who wore her expensive dress as though she were afraid of it. And she was stupid. She couldn't talk about anything, and there was a dull, haunted look in her round, blue eyes that made people impatient and uneasy. They were afraid that she might confide in them, and they had no use for unhappiness of any sort.

The last guest had gone by two o'clock. They left husband and wife standing in a sort of vast, exhausted emptiness. The agonizing shyness that had lamed her all the evening tightened on her now like the coils of a snake, so that her very breath came with an effort. She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the long glasses, and the sight somehow completed her sense of forlorn discouragement. She looked dishevelled and distraught, without dignity. But as Andy's mother she would have mattered.

And suddenly an odd, terrible thing happened. She said aloud,

“I wonder if Andy is awake—”

Margrave turned to her from the desk where he had been standing. He had only half heard. But her voice startled him out of his absorption. And he saw that she was frightened.

“What's that—what did you say—? Is anything the matter?”

She shook her head vaguely. “Nothing. I—I think I'm half asleep. I'm so tired. I'll go to bed.” But she was terrified now—terrified of herself and the loneliness. “Aren't you coming, Andrew?”

He had turned back to his papers. “Not yet. I've got work to do.”

They kissed each other. She thought how awful it was for people who had loved each other to kiss like that. She trailed up the dim stairs to her room and closed the door. The crowd of people had made her miserable with the sense of her inadequacy, but now she saw that they had been a sort of protection. The noise of their voices had confused her, but at least it hadn't let her think. And it was her thoughts that frightened her. They kept storming up out of the dark like black imps, plucking at the fabric of her mind, tearing it down with malignant fingers. She had tried to fight them off, but just now, when she had spoken aloud of that dream-Andy, one of them had been too strong for her. If Andrew had really heard, he would have thought she was going mad.

She mustn't go mad. She must be quiet and reasonable. She must give up brooding and agonizing over things that were over and lost for ever. If this dark, silent room became too much for her, she would go down again and tell Andrew—pour out her heart to him. After all, he was just over-worked and preoccupied. But once he saw her need, he would come to her rescue. Once upon a time he had been very tender.

For an hour she must have stood at her window, listening to the strange stirrings of a great city in its sleep. And then, soft-footed and ashamed, she crept down to him. There was something virgin and very young in her beating heart. She was so afraid, and he was so strong, and she was going to him for protection against the great, overwhelming world.

SHE found him asleep. He lay with his head resting on his arm and a pen loose in his hand. At any other moment his attitude might have struck her with its poignant relaxation, but fear, unreasonable and shapeless, turned her heart to stone. She bent over him, not touching him, not daring to, lest he should be dead. And she saw that he had been writing—a letter—a love-letter—

That was how she found out what his set had known for the last three months.

She stood there for quite five minutes. She was motionless and sightless as a statue, and there was no sound except the tired man's heavy breathing. Then she stole away and up the stairs again. This time she went to bed and fell straightway into a terrible, empty sleep like a stone dropping into a bottomless well. The fight was over. The imps could have their way with her.

Not that Andrew Margrave noticed the change. She had always been quiet. That her quiet had been of timidity and was now of a secret absorption he was unaware. Once or twice he caught a faint, enigmatic smile on the small, faded face, as though she were amused by some inner vision, but he had his own thoughts and did not inquire into hers. He was aware of her absences, but their life necessitated freedom on both sides. He came upon her truth as she had come upon his, suddenly—violently. He was not even thinking of her when he chanced upon the little room which lay unexplored behind her sitting-room. He rarely came into her part of the house. For a long time he stood upon the threshold, incredulous, as she had been, of what he saw. And there a moment later she came upon him. She had a brief, outrageous impulse to thrust him aside and slam the door against him. Something about him—trivial details— his perfect grooming, his air of authority—exasperated her like a blow across the face or a taunting insult. It was as though a supercilious unbeliever had intruded on a holy place. But then a kind of weariness came over her. She didn't care. Perhaps they would shut her up. But life itself was a prison. The only escape lay in one's own spirit.

“I don't understand,” he said. “What is this room—to whom does it belong?”

“To my son—” she answered, “—to Andy.”

She saw his stupefaction and then his fear. He came toward her, but she shrank away. He had no part in all this. Andy was her son. Not his.

“But, my dear, won't you explain—⁠ You frighten me. Aren't you well?”

“I think I am quite well,” she answered steadily.

“But then—for God's sake—”

She took a sort of pleasure in his stammering distress. Words came to him so easily. No opponent had ever disconcerted him. But now he was like any other human being.

“Andy is out now,” she said. “I sent nurse with him into the Park. It is such a lovely day. Usually I go, too. He cries if I don't. But I had a headache. This is his nursery, you know. It's charming, don't you think?”

She looked about her, smiling a little. There were his toys—his favorite picture-books. Her inner vision showed her the marks of his sticky fingers. But everything was white and beautiful and untouched.

“I don't understand,” he repeated in a dry, hard voice. “Do you mean that you have adopted some one?”

She laughed to herself. It was natural for his startled mind to take refuge in concrete things. For him they were the only realities. It made her feel almost superior.

“Oh, no—I wouldn't do that. Andy's my own child—”

“Jane—”

“Of course you will think me mad,” she interrupted patiently. “Perhaps I am. But I am quite harmless. No one knows. I go about like every one else. It won't worry you.”

He sat down on one of the little, white stools. It was absurd to see him, almost pathetic. He was so strong, and he couldn't stand any more.

“Jane—I don't think you're mad—or perhaps we all are. Only, for God's sake, explain.”

AND then suddenly anger flared up in her, coloring her pale cheeks and kindling her eyes to a fiery blue. She was middle-aged and frumpy, and passion should have made her ridiculous. It gave her a queer forcefulness.

“It's no use. You'd never understand. You're different, Andrew. You've had everything—taken everything. I've had nothing.”

“Haven't I shared? Hasn't my success meant yours?”

“No—no—” She beat her hands together. “People can't share—not things like that. One has to do one's own work, One has to make one's own life. Hanging on other people—on their money—on their interests—their success—it's no use. It's all empty—empty. One has to succeed oneself—in one's own way. And I've failed.”

“You've done everything—” he began, “everything you could.”

“No—it wasn't my work.”

“What was your work?”

“Taking care of little children,” she said proudly.

He was silent a moment, his head held between his fine, slender hands. She was surprised at his quietness. It was almost as though her outburst, so wild and foolish as it must have seemed to him, had touched awake some aloof thoughts of his own.

“I didn't know. Did you want children so much?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Why, Jane?”

“Because they are so helpless. Because they are often so frightened and puzzled. I could have taken care of them and protected them. They would have needed me.”

He stood up, sighing. “Poor Jane—I didn't know you were unhappy.”

“I'm not—not now.”

“Does this make-believe comfort you?”

“It isn't make-believe. It's true. I used to hide it in myself. I don't need to, now. I've a right to live as I like.”

She was thinking of Lady Flavia and his love for her, and he did not challenge the significance of her voice.

“Of course. Don't forget there are real people.”

“Andy is the only real person left.”

“Have I been such a failure, Jane?”

“You've been a great success, Andrew. I don't grudge it you. I'm glad you're happy. You're a strong, clever man. And I'm weak and stupid. There was only one thing I could have been good at, too. It wasn't given me. So I've been a failure. You mustn't think about me any more.”

He went slowly toward the door. His back was toward her. Somehow it checked the bitter elation which for the first time had lent her the power to speak. There was no triumph in the set of the square shoulders, but rather a sort of weariness. She remembered that long ago they had been very dear to each other. The thought shook her. And she dwindled and became her old timorous, ashamed self.

“Andrew, I'm so sorry. Don't worry. I'll be all right.”

He nodded, not looking at her. 'Yes, you'll be all right,” he said.

5

FOR a week there was silence between them, and then suddenly he was gone. Although there had been at first no obvious reason for alarm, she knew at once. He was to have come in to dinner, and he did not come. That was not important in itself. It had often happened. But she tasted catastrophe in the very air. Sitting at the head of the long, lonely table, she gazed with bleak eyes at the crumbling ruin of their lives.

Afterward she telephoned discreetly—here, there, everywhere, knowing beforehand what result she would get. His secretary gave her blank, evasive answers. He was a young man, new to political life, and he lied badly. She knew that he had his orders. Later on in the evening she ordered round the car.

It was a strange thing for her to take control. Hitherto his life had dragged her, dazed and unresisting, at its heels. Now on the brink of the precipice she caught hold of the reins with hands made strong by sheer despair. She didn't stop to ask herself why it should matter to her that Andrew Margrave was about to take a step that must bring his career to a disgraced end. Perhaps it was the pitiable waste of it all—perhaps a sense of her own responsibility. After all, she ought to have known. He had always been too clever. She had won him by sheer lovingness. But at bottom she had been useless—a drag.

Before she left the house she slipped up to the haunted nursery and bent over the empty cot and prayed a little. She didn't know whether any one heard, but she felt very small and lonely and sick with fear at what lay before her.

The great, expensive limousine sped smoothly through the polished streets. In the other cars they passed, the occupants lounged back at ease. But Mrs. Margrave sat stiff and upright. She, who had been overawed by it so long, loathed the crazy luxury around her. The deep cushions made her sick, like an uncleanness. The two uniformed figures looming dimly through the glass partition gave her a sense of humiliation for them and for herself.

It was not this she was out to save. When it was all over, she would take Andy away with her into her own life and be done with these things for ever. Thank God, he was her very own. No one else could claim him from her. They would be free.

The butler of the tall, sedate house peered at her uncertainly. She was not an impressive figure. But the great car purring against the curb, and the attendant footman looming in the background, gave a respectful inflection to his tone,

“I'm afraid not, ma'am. Her Ladyship is leaving for the Continent in an hour.”

“I know,” the visitor interrupted unexpectedly. “But she will see me. Give her my name. She will understand.”

She was led soft-footed through dim passages to a room full of the charming chaos of a rich woman's departure. The gilt French chairs were strewn with a fantastic prettiness It was like a stage boudoir. And Jane Margrave stood in the midst like the intruder she had become in life. But now she was not shamed by her intrusion. She stood deliberately, She asked no quarter of her surroundings. She was an alien who had done with pitiful attempts at conciliation and was going back to her own people.

NOR did Lady Flavia, hovering for an instant on the threshold, considering her with a faintly quizzical surprise, shake her from her new self-confidence. She knew that she was at a disadvantage. This lovely youthfulness, consummately dishevelled, clad with a flowing, careless grace, accentuated her stiff, middle-class unfreedom. And yet for once they were equals, She was able to appreciate in the younger woman something she herself could never have—a royal and unreckoning frankness.

“You see, I've come headlong, just as I am,” Lady Flavia said laughing. “I'm in the midst of packing, and there are things one just has to do oneself. I'm going away tonight—”

“I know,” Jane Margrave said.

Lady Flavia closed the door. “You know—? But I didn't know myself this afternoon.”

“I guessed. I hoped that I would find you in time.”

“I don't quite understand.”

“I've come about Andrew.”

She did not call him her husband. The feeling that because of some law of possession she had the power to hurt made her shrinkingly careful. She said gently:

“Don't go, Lady Flavia. Don't go. Wait. It will be all right.”

“But I must. My people in Paris have wired to me.”

“And don't lie, my dear.”

Flavia Anstruther threw up her head involuntarily. But the indignant protest was never uttered. Perhaps she knew that she was in the presence of a dogged and honest sorrow. She said quietly:

“I don't lie, Mrs. Margrave. I should be angry—only I feel that there must be something terribly wrong. Won't you tell me—?”

“Everything has been wrong for a long time. I want to put it right if I can. I would like to save things.”

“Won't you please explain?”

Mrs. Margrave made a little, awkward gesture—almost of reproof. “My dear, is it necessary? I want you to understand that I know and that I am not thinking about myself at all. Andrew has left me. I wouldn't be sure of it if—if he hadn't been leaving me for a long, long time. He is going to do something that will ruin his whole career. It mustn't happen. His career is everything to him. In the end it would break his heart. You're very young, Lady Flavia, and men are different, I suppose. Don't let him go. Help to save him, too.”

“I—?”

“It's not that I'm blaming any one. These things just happen. And in a way it's been my fault. I'm not the woman he should have married. I've been in the way. I know—otherwise, perhaps, I wouldn't have come.

“Mrs. Margrave—if what you're suggesting were true—what can I do?”

“Everything. He loves you. It's in your hands.”

“You're saying things I don't understand at all. Of course, Mr. Margrave and I are friends. He's been awfully good to me, and I'd do anything—⁠ But I've never had the slightest influence—⁠ How should I? Compared to him I'm a mere child.”

“Don't—don't—” Jane Margrave pleaded. “Can't you trust me? It's very hard—to come like this. Can't you understand that? I'm trying to do the best I can?”

Lady Flavia glanced down at the gloved, tightly-clenched hands and answered patiently. “You and I are at cross-purposes, Mrs. Margrave. If anything has happened to your husband, I should be frightfully unhappy—like every one who knows and loves him. And if there is anything that I can do—”

“I want you to be patient.”

“About what—?”

“Until I can set him free.”

“I don't know what you're saying.”

“You're a woman of the world, my dear. Cleverer than I am. There must be some way. I don't mind what happens to me. I'm nobody. I've no life that matters to any one. I would do anything—anything—”

“But what have I to do with all this—?”

Jane Margrave swayed a little, like a short, stumpy tree in a bitter wind, “My dear—you're going away with him.”

“With him—I—?” She began to laugh and then went white and grave. “You must be mad—no, I beg your pardon—I know you're not. But you are making some frightful mistake.”

“He wrote to you—”

“Often.”

“Love-letters—”

“Never!”

“I saw them—one of them—”

“They were not to me.”

Mrs. Margrave crumpled up on one of the absurd gilt chairs. She sat very still, giving no sign, but in her heart broken and helpless. She had been so sure. She had thought she had understood—this lovely girl had made things understandable—almost honorable—but now she did not understand any more. The ground had given way under her feet, plunging her into shame and uncertainty. She felt foolish and old and very tired.

Flavia Anstruther came and stood beside her.

“I'm not pretending,” she said. “If he had loved me, I dare say I should have loved him, too. I should have been so flattered. But I should have told you. I shouldn't have been ashamed or afraid. I'm glad he didn't. It would have been terrible for us all. Don't you believe me?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Margrave said.

She did believe. And she began to cry suddenly, very quietly. The Lady Flavia knelt down and took the stiff, awkward figure in her arms. From the height of her superb youth the tragedy of this aging couple must have seemed heartrending and just a little funny.

“You mustn't,” she said. “Whatever's happened, it's you who've got to save him now, you know.”

MBS. MARGRAVE came home at midnight. The young secretary had not gone to bed, and when he saw the queer, stern-faced woman whom he had always secretly despised standing on the threshold of his room, he gave way, knowing that she was too strong for him.

Her faded hair was untidy; her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. But her utter disregard of herself gave her a sort of power.

“You must tell me where my husband has gone, Mr. Stanton,” she said.

He faced her across his writing table. He had to put up some sort of fight. “Mr. Margrave gave me orders—”

“They can't be kept. Sooner or later every one will have to know.'

“He said he would wire me.”

“I can't wait for that. It may be too late.”

There was something contained and fierce about her. She made him think of a tigress gathering herself together—this plain, middle-aged, uninteresting woman. He was afraid of her.

“You love my husband, Mr. Stanton.”

He flushed up to the roots of his fair hair “Every one does. He has been very good to me.”

“You'd save him if you could.”

“I'd do anything—”

“What has happened to him? What do you know?” She made a curt, impatient gesture “I'm not his wife now—only his friend—his friend—⁠ You can tell me the truth.”

He waited a moment, and then he said simply: “I don't know the truth. But it's true that I've been uneasy. Things haven't been well with him lately. Nobody else has seen, but I have. It's been over-work—worry—something—I can't tell you—a sort of secret breaking-up. When he told me suddenly that he was going away and that no one was to know about it—well, he had a queer look. I got the wind up—but, after all, I've got to do what I'm told—”

“Where has he gone?” Mrs. Margrave demanded imperatively.

The boy handed her a slip of paper. There were tears in his voice. “I expect this will break me,” he said. “It's just my luck.”

At the door Mrs. Margrave turned and looked back at him. And suddenly he saw something in her face that made her lovable. It was as though some one very strong and sure had put her arm over him, comforting him.

“You mustn't worry,” she said. “I'll take care of you.”

7

THE local branch train bumbled contentedly on its way, climbing from one sleepy little station after another into the heart of the hills. The crests of their lonely heights were red with sunlight, but in the valley was a moist, earthy dusk from which peace dripped softly with the muffed tinkle of a distant sheep-bell.

Mrs. Margrave sat alone in the corner of her third class carriage. One by one her fellow travelers had left her with a friendly “Guid nicht to ye, ma'am.” To them she had been just “a comfortable body”—somebody's wife on her way home. At the last big station she had seen a newspaper placard with its strident announcement, “Indisposition of the Prime Minister,” and she recognized Stanton's effort to give her time, but after that the world and its passionate rumors fell back from her. She felt herself slipping from its claws into freedom where she could grow to be herself.

This was a new world to her, and yet she welcomed it as her own. It was as though she had always known and loved these bare hills and fast-running streams. They gave her strength. The loneliness was as familiar and sweet to her as a friend's hand.

A cloud had lifted from her mind. And the dream-Andy seemed far off, like a small, disembodied voice calling more and more faintly. She thought with a kind of remorse,

“When it is all over, I shall come back to you, my darling.”

Then very gently she disengaged her heart from the ghost-like baby hands and thought what she could do to save Andrew Margrave from himself.

The station-master at the little terminus filled the position of porter and ticket-collector. He carried her bag for her, leaving the station to its own devices.

“There's only one place where a body can stay here,” he said. 'Not many visitors come this way. Just a fisherman now and again and a pair of sweethearts maybe.”

He laughed to himself, and Mrs. Margrave plodded at his side along the white, mysterious road. She thought wearily that she and Andrew had been sweethearts once. But that was a long time ago. He had gone on and left her.

The little inn tucked itself snugly between the low, gray-stone cottages. Jane Margrave was very tired, and the warm lights made her long for rest. But the innkeeper looked glumly at her, shaking a gray head.

“We've no but one room,” he said, “and that's been taken by a gentleman these two days.” Disapproval and suspicion glimmered under the bushy eyebrows. “He did say that he was expecting some one to join him—I don't know but what—”

“I am his wife,” Mrs. Margrave interrupted.

Her heart stood still a moment. She had burned her boats. She had set herself straight across Andrew Margrave's path, braving his resentment, and there was no retreat.

The innkeeper took his pipe from his mouth and stood aside. “Then ye can take the lady's bag up, Jimmie. Seeing ye be his wife, ma'am, I'm glad ye came, for the gentleman seems strange like. He's oot the noo—the de'il knows where. Maybe he wasna expecting ye?”

“Not tonight,” Mrs. Margrave said.

“Weel, I'll be gettin' ye a bite o' supper. Ye maun be that famished.”

But she shook her head. She could not meet him here.

“I'll find him first,” she said.

“Then ye'd best take the road up to the burn. That's where he goes.”

THEY pointed the way to her. It was lighter now, for a young moon was up behind the hilltops, and her dumpy shadow grew long and slender on the white road. Her aching feet dragged in the dust. Her heart beat thick with fear. The stark desolation of the mournful hills bore her down in her littleness and helplessness. The voice of an invisible stream ran beside her and made mock of her.

“Go back, go back, silly old woman. You can do no good. He won't listen. He will only hate you—hate you—”

But she held on doggedly. The road grew rougher and petered out into a sheep-track that climbed steeply alongside the dark shining water. Liquid silver fell through the moonlight, and furtive life slid rustling in and out of the heather. Mrs. Margrave's breath came sharp and hard. She did not know why she kept on. If she had met Andrew now, she would only have stared at him, exhausted, tongue-tied, and ashamed. More than ever the sense of his greatness and his remoteness overawed her. Whatever he had done, he would be immeasurably the stronger. He would measure her with his cool irony, and her courage would die within her. But it was as though she were bewitched. The night threw a spell on her, urging her forward on her strange pilgrimage. Somewhere at the top of the stony road lay understanding—an answer—

She came upon him suddenly. She knew him by the startled leap of her heart, otherwise he might have seemed a stranger, for the uncertain light made him look queerly old and bowed and shrunken. She stood motionless. Her fear of him had dropped from her like a heavy cloak. She waited—she did not know for what. He had not seen her. He was gazing down into the running water at his feet as though he, too, waited—

She heard a sound, strange and elfish in the eerie silence—a laugh. She saw him crouch down on a stone boulder. His moments had become suddenly so feverish that she did not realize what he was doing until he stepped knee-deep into the water, wading with the stream.

And now it was sheer horror knocked at her heart. She felt that he had passed beyond her saving. Little enough seemed the folly and the wrong she had suspected. It was as though a splendid edifice had collapsed in ruins at her feet. He was mad—mad. And in that unearthly twilight his madness with its ghastly harmlessness filled her with a sick terror. She would have turned and fled from him, but that she knew her faintest move must betray her.

He came on, closer and closer. From time to time he crouched down, fumbling at the stony bed of the stream. He was within a few feet of her when suddenly he pulled himself upright, and she saw his face. She heard him sigh.

And now horror had gone, too. She had an overwhelming impulse to cover his face with her hands so that no one in the world should see its naked sorrowfulness. Not even herself. She said, “Andrew—Andrew—” very gently so that she should not frighten him.

He turned toward her. He gave no sign of astonishment. He came wearily on to the bank and dropped down on a boulder with his face between his hands. She took his boots, which he had hung boy-fashion over his shoulder with the socks tucked firmly into the toes, and the tears made her blind so that she fumbled stupidly with the laces. It was the sort of thing Andy might have done.

“I knew you'd find me—somehow,” he said,

She dried his feet with his large, silk pocket handkerchief.

“You might have caught your death of cold,” she scolded softly.

Then both were silent. But in that silence strange things were happening to them. She took his arm down the steep and stony track, thinking her dependence might strengthen him. But he clung to her—unashamed—piteous—not without dignity.

“Help me—I'm very tired—”

Mer heart was hot and big within her. She felt absurdly that she could have lifted him in her arms and carried him. But she would not speak—not yet. She stood just on the threshold of an opening door. She dared not make a sign lest it should close again.

The village was asleep. The moonlight made ghosts of the gray houses. Only the little inn showed a gold and watching eye for them.

Andrew Margrave stood still a moment. “I used to come here—when I was a boy,” he said. “My parents were very poor, and it was the only holiday they could afford—⁠ We used to stay at the inn—”

SHE made no answer. They did not speak to each other again until they lay side by side on the ancient bed under the low, white ceiling. There were no blinds to the little window, and the moonlight poured in upon them both. They were like effigies of old, forgotten people who had lived and died together. And presently he said:

“There used to be crabs in that stream— funny little land crabs—'pinchers' we called them. When you came after them, they scuttled away into their holes, and the only way to catch them was to stick your finger in after them and let them lay hold of you. Night was the best time to go for them. Of course, I wasn't allowed. I used to sneak out of my window when every one was asleep—”

She scarcely breathed. Her very thoughts were hushed, stealing on tip-toe.

“They weren't any good—the crabs, I mean. It was just the fun—and seeing how many we could get. I wanted to get more than any one else. I often did—but then somehow it didn't seem to matter, after all. I used to think to myself: 'When I'm grown up I'll be a great man. I shall have everything I want—enough to eat and a carriage and pair and people taking off their hats to me. Then I shall be happy—'” He turned his head a little. “Ever since then I've been waiting—expecting—when this and that happened, it would come—⁠ It never came—I know now it never will come—”

She remembered the look of expectation on his face that night and did not move. It was as though a mountain mist were lifting, and she was looking back over the long, hard way they had come. All the time that he had seemed to climb so wonderfully he had been losing hope. One peak after another, but never the final peak of all.

“It all meant nothing, Jane. It went to ashes in my hands. But when I was a boy, I had been happy. I didn't know—”

He had tried to recapture life—to want things again as he had wanted them—even to fall in love. While she had watched her unborn child play with his toys, conjuring up a past that had never been, he had written love-letters to a memory.

“You see—we're all a little mad, Jane. We hide our madness—until we can't hide it any more—”

He had come back to this place. Here, perhaps, where he had dreamed dreams, he would taste the wonder of fulfilment. But he had only found that he had grown old. And there had been his breaking-point.

“Jane—if you hadn't come—just at that moment—”

She knew that the greatest man in Europe was crying like a child.

Why had she wanted children? What were children, after all, compared to men and women? What was their need? They knew neither death, nor failure, nor the emptiness of success. If they starved or suffered, still life lay before them—a shimmering pathway stretching into eternity. People held out their arms in pity to them. They wept over their childish griefs. And when the children grew up and knew disillusionment and loss, the doors were closed against them, and they went out into the loneliness of their own hearts. She had cried out to God for a child so that at least she might have some one on whom she might lavish the genius of her motherliness. And all the time this man had walked beside her—perplexed and sorrowful and alone.

“Oh, Andy—Andy—my dear—my dear—”

She turned to him, gathering him into her empty arms.