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THE JUDGMENT OF EVE

by

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of "The Divine Fire"

Illustrated







    [Illustration: "Arthur lay at her feet and read aloud to her"]




New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
MCMVIII
Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
Published March, 1908.




ILLUSTRATIONS


  "Arthur lay at her feet and read aloud to her"

  "'John,' she said, suddenly, 'did you ever kill a pig?'"

  "Over their cocoa he developed his theory of life"

  "'Quack, quack!' said Arthur, and it made the baby nearly choke with
    laughter"

  "She listened without a scruple, justified by her motherhood"

  "'Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going, dearie?'"

  "'There isn't an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them'"

  "Thoughts came to him, terrible thoughts"




THE JUDGMENT OF EVE

  "'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea'"--_Nursery Rhyme_.




I


It was market-day in Queningford. Aggie Purcell was wondering whether Mr.
Hurst would look in that afternoon at the Laurels as he had looked in on
other market-days. Supposing he did, and supposing Mr. Gatty were to look
in, too, why then, Aggie said, it would be rather awkward. But whether
awkward for herself, or for Mr. Gatty, or Mr. Hurst, or for all three of
them together, Aggie was unable to explain to her own satisfaction or her
mother's.

In Queningford there were not many suitors for a young lady to choose
from, but it was understood that, such as there were, Aggie Purcell would
have her pick of them. The other young ladies were happy enough if they
could get her leavings. Miss Purcell of the Laurels was by common consent
the prettiest, the best-dressed, and the best-mannered of them all. To be
sure, she could only be judged by Queningford standards; and, as the
railway nearest to Queningford is a terminus that leaves the small gray
town stranded on the borders of the unknown, Queningford standards are not
progressive. Neither are they imitative; for imitation implies a certain
nearness, and between the young ladies of Queningford and the daughters of
the county there is an immeasurable void.

The absence of any effective rivalry made courtship a rather tame and
uninteresting affair to Miss Purcell. She had only to make up her mind
whether she would take the wine-merchant's son, or the lawyer's nephew, or
the doctor's assistant, or, perhaps, it would be one of those mysterious
enthusiasts who sometimes came into the neighborhood to study agriculture.
Anyhow, it was a foregone conclusion that each of these doomed young men
must pass through Miss Purcell's door before he knocked at any other.

Pretty Aggie was rather a long time in making up her mind. It could only
be done by a slow process of elimination, till the embarrassing train of
her adorers was finally reduced to two. At the age of five-and-twenty
(five-and-twenty is not young in Queningford), she had only to solve the
comparatively simple problem: whether it would be Mr. John Hurst or Mr.
Arthur Gatty. Mr. John Hurst was a young farmer just home from Australia,
who had bought High Farm, one of the biggest sheep-farming lands in the
Cotswolds. Mr. Arthur Gatty was a young clerk in a solicitor's office in
London; he was down at Queningford on his Easter holiday, staying with
cousins at the County Bank. Both had the merit of being young men whom
Miss Purcell had never seen before. She was so tired of all the young men
whom she had seen.

Not that pretty Aggie was a flirt and a jilt and a heartless breaker of
hearts. She wouldn't have broken anybody's heart for the whole world; it
would have hurt her own too much. She had never jilted anybody, because
she had never permitted herself to become engaged to any of those young
men. As for flirting, pretty Aggie couldn't have flirted if she had tried.
The manners of Queningford are not cultivated to that delicate pitch when
flirtation becomes a decorative art, and Aggie would have esteemed it
vulgar. But Aggie was very superior and fastidious. She wanted things that
no young man in Queningford would ever be able to offer her. Aggie had
longings for music, better than Queningford's best, for beautiful
pictures, and for poetry. She had come across these things at school. And
now, at five-and-twenty, she couldn't procure one of them for herself. The
arts were not encouraged by her family, and she only had an "allowance" on
condition that she would spend it honorably in clothes. Of course, at
five-and-twenty, she knew all the "pieces" and songs that her friends
knew, and they knew all hers. She had read all the romantic fiction in the
lending library, and all the works of light popular science, and still
lighter and more popular theology, besides borrowing all the readable
books from the vicarage. She had exhausted Queningford. It had no more to
give her.

Queningford would have considered that a young lady who could do all that
had done enough to prove her possession of brains. Not that Queningford
had ever wanted her to prove it; its young men, at any rate, very much
preferred that she should leave her brains and theirs alone. And Aggie had
brains enough to be aware of this; and being a very well-behaved young
lady, and anxious to please, she had never mentioned any of her small
achievements. Nature, safeguarding her own interests, had whispered to
Aggie that young ladies who live in Queningford are better without
intellects that show.

Now, John Hurst was sadly akin to the young men of Queningford, in that he
was unable to offer her any of the things which, Aggie felt, belonged to
the finer part of her that she dared not show. On the other hand, he could
give her (beside himself), a good income, a good house, a horse to ride,
and a trap to drive in. To marry him, as her mother pointed out to her,
would be almost as good as "getting in with the county." Not that Mrs.
Purcell offered this as an inducement. She merely threw it out as a vague
contribution to the subject. Aggie didn't care a rap about the county, as
her mother might have known; but, though she wouldn't have owned it, she
had been attracted by John's personal appearance. Glancing out of the
parlor window, she could see what a gentleman he looked as he crossed the
market-place in his tweed suit, cloth cap, and leather gaiters. He always
had the right clothes. When high collars were the fashion, he wore them
very high. His rivals said that this superstitious reverence for fashion
suggested a revulsion from a past of prehistoric savagery.

Mr. Gatty, on the other hand, had a soul that was higher than any collar.
That, Aggie maintained, was why he always wore the wrong sort. There was
no wrong thing Mr. Gatty could have worn that Aggie would not have found
an excuse for; so assiduously did he minister to the finer part of her. He
shared all her tastes. If she admired a picture or a piece of music or a
book, Mr. Gatty had admired it ever since he was old enough to admire
anything. She was sure that he admired her more for admiring them. She
wasn't obliged to hide those things from Mr. Gatty; besides, what would
have been the use? There was nothing in the soul of Aggie that Mr. Gatty
had not found out and understood, and she felt that there would be no
limit to his understanding.

But what she liked best about him was his gentleness. She had never seen
any young man so gentle as Mr. Gatty.

And his face was every bit as nice as John's. Nicer, for it was
excessively refined, and John's wasn't. You could see that his head was
full of beautiful thoughts, whereas John's head was full of nothing in
particular. Then, Mr. Gatty's eyes were large and spiritual; yes,
spiritual was the word for them. John's eyes were small, and, well,
spiritual would never be the word for _them_.

Unfortunately, John had been on the field first, before the unique
appearance of Mr. Gatty, and Aggie felt that she was bound in honor to
consider him. She had been considering him for some time without any
compulsion. But when things began to look so serious that it really became
a question which of these two she would take, she called in her mother to
help her to decide.

Mrs. Purcell was a comfortable, fat lady, who loved the state of peace she
had been born in, had married into, and had never lost. Aggie was her
eldest daughter, and she was a little vexed to think that she might have
married five years ago if she hadn't been so particular. Meanwhile, what
with her prettiness and her superiority, she was spoiling her younger
sisters' chances. None of her rejected suitors had ever turned to Kate or
Susie or Eliza. They were well enough, poor girls, but as long as Aggie
was there they couldn't help looking plain. But as for deciding between
John Hurst and Mr. Gatty, Mrs. Purcell couldn't do it. And when Aggie
said, in her solemn way, "Mother, I think it's coming; and I don't know
how to choose between them," her mother had nothing to say but:

"You must use your own judgment, my dear."

"My own judgment? I wonder if I really have any? You see, I feel as if I
liked them both about the same."

"Then just say to yourself that if you marry John Hurst you'll have a big
house in the country, and if you marry Mr. Gatty you'll have a little one
in town, and choose between the houses. That'll be easy enough."

Secretly, Mrs. Purcell was all for John Hurst, though he couldn't be
considered as exactly Aggie's equal in station. (They were always saying
how like a gentleman he looked, which showed that that was the last thing
they had expected of him. But in Queningford one does as best one can.)
For all John's merits, she was not going to force him on Aggie in as many
words. Mrs. Purcell deeply desired her daughter's happiness, and she said
to herself: "If Aggie marries either of them, and it turns out unhappily,
I don't want her to be able to say I over-persuaded her. If her poor
father were alive, _he_'d have known how to advise her."

Then, all of a sudden, without anybody's advice, John was eliminated, too.
It was not Aggie's doing. In fact, he may be said to have eliminated
himself. It happened in this way:

Mr. Hurst had been taking tea with Aggie one market-day. The others were
all out, and he had the field to himself. She always remembered just how
he looked when he did it. He was standing on the white mohair rag in the
drawing-room, and was running his fingers through his hair for the third
time. He had been telling her how he had first taken up sheep-farming in
Australia, how he'd been a farm-hand before that in California, how he'd
always set his mind on that one thing--sheep-farming--because he had been
born and bred in the Cotswolds. Aggie's dark-blue eyes were fixed on him,
serious and intent. That flattered him, and the gods, for his undoing,
dowered him with a disastrous fluency.

He had a way of thrusting out his jaw when he talked, and Aggie noted the
singular determination of his chin. It was so powerful as to be almost
brutal. (The same could certainly not be said of Mr. Gatty's.)

Then, in the light of his reminiscences, a dreadful thought came to her.

"John," she said, suddenly, "did you ever kill a pig?"

    [Illustration: "'John,' she said, suddenly, 'did you ever kill
                     a pig?'"]

He answered, absently, as was his way when directly addressed.

"A pig? Yes, I've killed one or two in California."

She drew back in her chair; but, as she still gazed at him, he went on,
well pleased:

"I can't tell you much about California. It was in Australia I learned
sheep-farming."

"So, of course," said Aggie, frigidly, "you killed sheep, too?"

"For our own consumption--yes."

He said it a little haughtily. He wished her to understand the difference
between a grazier and a butcher.

"And lambs? Little lambs?"

"Well, yes. I'm afraid the little lambs had to go, too, sometimes."

"How could you? How could you?"

"How could I? Well, you see, I just had to. I couldn't shirk when the
other fellows didn't. In time you get not to mind."

"Not to mind?"

"Well, I never exactly enjoyed doing it."

"No. But you did it. And you didn't mind."

She saw him steeped in butcheries, in the blood of little lambs, and her
tender heart revolted against him. She tried to persuade herself that it
was the lambs she minded most; but it was the pig she minded. There was
something so low about killing a pig. It seemed to mark him.

And it was marked, stained abominably, that he went from her presence. He
said to himself: "I've dished myself now with my silly jabber. Damn those
lambs!"

Young Arthur Gatty, winged by some divine intuition, called at the Laurels
the next afternoon. The gods were good to young Arthur, they breathed upon
him the spirit of refinement and an indestructible gentleness that day.
There was no jarring note in him. He rang all golden to Aggie's testing
touch.

When he had gone a great calm settled upon her. It was all so simple now.
Nobody was left but Arthur Gatty. She had just got to make up her mind
about _him_--which would take a little time--and then--either she was a
happy married woman or, said Aggie, coyly, a still happier old maid in
Queningford forever.

It was surprising how little the alternative distressed her.




II


It was the last week in April, and Mr. Gatty's Easter holiday was near its
end. On the Monday, very early in the morning, the young clerk would leave
Queningford for town.

By Friday his manner had become, as Susie Purcell expressed it, "so
marked" that the most inexperienced young lady could have suffered no
doubt as to the nature of his affections. But no sooner had Aggie heard
that he was going than she had begun to doubt, and had kept on doubting
(horribly) up to Saturday morning. All Friday she had been bothering
Susie. Did Susie think there was any one in town whom he was in a hurry to
get back to? Did Susie think such a man as Mr. Gatty could think twice
about a girl like her? Did Susie think he only thought her a forward
little minx? Or did she think he really was beginning to care? And Susie
said: "You goose! How do I know, if you don't? He hasn't said anything to
me."

And on Saturday morning Aggie all but knew. For that day he asked
permission to take her for a drive, having borrowed a trap for the
purpose.

They drove up to a northern slope of the Cotswolds, by a road that took
them past High Farm; and there they found John Hurst superintending his
sheep-shearing. Aggie, regardless of his feelings, insisted on getting out
of the trap and looking on. John talked all the time to the shepherd,
while Arthur talked to Aggie, and Aggie, cruel little Aggie, made remarks
about the hard-heartedness of shearers.

Arthur ("that bald-faced young Cockney snob," as John called him) was
depressed by the dominating presence of his rival and his visible
efficiency. He looked long and thoughtfully at the sheep-shearing.

"Boni pastoris est," he observed, "tondere oves, non deglubere."

Aggie shook her pretty head, as much as to say Latin was beyond her; and
he was kind enough to translate. "It is the part of a good shepherd to
shear, not flay, the sheep."

"Is that from Virgil?" she asked, looking up into his face with a smile of
unstained intellectual innocence.

A terrific struggle arose in young Arthur's breast. If he said it was from
Virgil (it was a thousand to one against her knowing), he might leap into
her love at one high bound. If he said he didn't know where it came from
before it got into his Latin exercise, he would be exactly where he was
before, which, he reflected, dismally, was nowhere. Whereas, that fellow
Hurst was forever on the spot.

On the other hand, where would he be if--if--supposing that she ever found
him out?

A thousand to one against it. He who aims high must take high risks. He
took them.

"Yes," he said, "it's Virgil." And he added, to clinch the matter, "From
the 'Georgics.'"

The light in her believing eyes told him how inspired he had been.

The more he thought of it the more likely it seemed. A flash of
reminiscence from his school-days visited him; he remembered that Virgil
did write some things called "Georgics," and that Georgics were a kind of
pastoral, and that pastorals always had sheep in them, and shepherds. It
was a good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by
success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more
Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by
himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep
slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn't
he do with Aggie's love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin
to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had
asked him what good that would do either of them, he would have replied,
contemptuously, that some things were ends in themselves.

Still, he longed to prove his quality in some more honorable way. He
called at the Laurels again that evening after supper. And, while Mrs.
Purcell affected to doze, and Susie, as confidante, held Kate and Eliza
well in play, he found another moment. With a solemnity impaired by
extreme nervousness, he asked Miss Purcell if she would accept a copy of
_Browning's Poems_, which he had ventured to order for her from town. He
hadn't brought it with him, because he wished to multiply pretexts for
calling; besides, as he said, he didn't know whether she would really
care--

Aggie cared very much, indeed, and proved it by blushing as she said so.
She had no need now to ask Susie anything. She knew.

And yet, in spite of the Browning and the Virgil, it was surprising how
cool and unexcited she felt in the face of her knowledge, now she had it.
She felt--she wouldn't have owned it--but she felt something remarkably
like indifference. She wondered whether she had seemed indifferent to him
(the thought gave her a pang that she had not experienced when John Hurst
laid his heart out to be trampled on). She wondered whether she _were_
indifferent, really. How could you tell when you really loved a man? She
had looked for great joy and glory and uplifting. And they hadn't come. It
was as if she had held her heart in her hand and looked at it, and,
because she felt no fluttering, had argued that love had never touched it;
for she did not yet know that love's deepest dwelling-place is in the
quiet heart. Aggie had never loved before, and she thought that she was in
the sanctuary on Saturday, when she was only standing on the threshold,
waiting for her hour.

It came, all of a sudden, on the Sunday.

Aggie's memory retained every detail of that blessed day--a day of spring
sunshine, warm with the breath of wall-flowers and violets. Arthur,
walking in the garden with her, was so mixed up with those delicious
scents that Aggie could never smell them afterwards without thinking of
him. A day that was not only all wall-flowers and violets, but all Arthur.
For Arthur called first thing before breakfast to bring her the Browning,
and first thing after breakfast to go with her to church, and first thing
after dinner to take her for a walk.

They went into the low-lying Queningford fields beside the river. They
took the Browning with them; Arthur carried it under his arm. In his
loose, gray overcoat and soft hat he looked like a poet himself, or a
Socialist, or Something. He always looked like Something. As for Aggie,
she had never looked prettier than she looked that day. He had never known
before how big and blue her eyes were, nor that her fawn-colored hair had
soft webs of gold all over it. She, in her clean new clothes, was like a
young Spring herself, all blue and white and green, dawn-rose and radiant
gold. The heart of the young man was quick with love of her.

They found a sheltered place for Aggie to sit in, while Arthur lay at her
feet and read aloud to her. He read "Abt Vogler," "Prospice," selections
from "The Death in the Desert" (the day being Sunday); and then, with a
pause and a shy turning of the leaves, and a great break in his voice,
"Oh, Lyric Love, Half Angel and Half Bird," through to the end.

Their hearts beat very fast in the silence afterwards.

He turned to the fly-leaf where he had inscribed her name.

"I should like to have written something more. May I?"

"Oh yes. Please write anything you like."

And now the awful question for young Arthur was: Whatever should he write?
"With warmest regards" was too warm; "kind regards" were too cold; "good
wishes" sounded like Christmas or a birthday; "remembrances" implied that
things were at an end instead of a beginning. All these shades, the
warmth, the reticence, the inspired audacity, might be indicated under the
veil of verse. If he dared--

"I wish," said Aggie, "you'd write me something of your own." (She knew he
did it.)

What more could he want than that she should divine him thus?

For twenty minutes (he thought they were only seconds), young Arthur lay
flat on his stomach and brooded over the Browning. Aggie sat quiet as a
mouse, lest the rustle of her gown should break the divine enchantment. At
last it came.

"Dear, since you loved this book, it is your own--" That was how it began.
Long afterwards Arthur would turn pale when he thought of how it went on;
for it was wonderful how bad it was, especially the lines that _had_ to
rhyme.

He did not know it when he gave her back the book.

She read it over and over again, seeing how bad it was, and not caring.
For her the beginning, middle, and end of that delicate lyric were in the
one word "Dear."

"Do you mind?" He had risen and was standing over her as she read.

"Mind?"

"What I've called you?"

She looked up suddenly. His face met hers, and before she knew it Aggie's
initiation came.

"Ah," said Arthur, rising solemn from the consecration of the primal kiss,
and drawing himself up like a man for the first time aware of his full
stature, "that makes _that_ seem pretty poor stuff, doesn't it?"

Young Arthur had just looked upon Love himself, and for that moment his
vision was purged of vanity.

"Not Browning?" asked Aggie, a little anxiously.

"No--Not Browning. Me. Browning could write poetry. I can't. I know that
now."

And she knew it, too; but that made no difference. It was not for his
poetry she loved him.

"And so," said her mother, after Arthur had stayed for tea and supper, and
said his good-bye and gone--"so that's the man you've been waiting for all
this time?"

"Yes, that's the man I've been waiting for," said Aggie.

Three days later Queningford knew that Aggie was going to marry Arthur
Gatty, and that John Hurst was going to marry Susie.

Susie was not pretty, but she had eyes like Aggie's.




III


After all, Susie was married before her eldest sister; for Aggie had to
wait till Arthur's salary rose. He thought it was going to rise at
midsummer, or if not at midsummer, then at Michaelmas. But midsummer and
Michaelmas passed, Christmas and Easter, too, and Arthur's salary showed
no sign of rising. He daren't tell Aggie that he had been obliged to leave
off reading Latin in the evenings, and was working feverishly at shorthand
in order to increase his efficiency. His efficiency increased, but not his
salary.

Meanwhile he spent all his holidays at Queningford, and Aggie had been
twice to town. They saw so little of each other that every meeting was a
divine event, a spiritual adventure. If each was not exactly an
undiscovered country to the other, there was always some territory left
over from last time, endlessly alluring to the pilgrim lover. Whenever
Arthur found in Aggie's mind a little bare spot that needed cultivating,
he planted there a picture or a poem, that instantly took root, and began
to bloom as it had never (to his eyes) bloomed in any other soil. Aggie,
for her part, yielded all the treasure of her little kingdom as tribute to
the empire that had won her.

Many things were uncertain, the rise of Arthur's salary among them; but of
one thing they were sure, that they would lead the intellectual life
together. Whatever happened, they would keep it up.

They were keeping it up as late as August, when Arthur came down for the
Bank Holiday. He was still enthusiastic, but uncertainty had dimmed his
hope. Marriage had become a magnificent phantasm, superimposed upon a
dream, a purely supposititious rise of salary. The prospect had removed
itself so far in time that it had parted with its substance, like an
object retired modestly into space.

They were walking together in the Queningford fields, when Arthur stopped
suddenly and turned to her.

"Aggie," he said, "supposing, after all, we can never marry?"

"Well," said Aggie, calmly, "if we don't we shall still lead our real life
together.

"But how, if we're separated?"

"It would go on just the same. But we sha'n't be separated. I shall get
something to do in town and live there. I'll be a clerk, or go into a
shop--or something."

"My darling, that would never do."

"Wouldn't it, though!"

"I couldn't let you do it."

"Why ever not? We should see each other every evening, and every Saturday
and Sunday. We should always be learning something new, and learning it
together. We should have a heavenly time."

But Arthur shook his head sadly. "It wouldn't work, my sweetheart. We
aren't made like that."

"I am," said Aggie, stoutly, and there was silence.

"Anyhow," she said, presently, "whatever happens, we're not going to let
it drop."

"Rather not," said he, with incorruptible enthusiasm.

Then, just because he had left off thinking about it, he was told that in
the autumn of that year he might expect a rise.

And in the autumn they were married.

Aggie left the sweet gardens, the white roads and green fields of
Queningford, to live in a side street in Camden Town, in a creaking little
villa built of sulphurous yellow brick furred with soot.

They had come back from their brilliant fortnight on the south coast, and
were standing together in the atrocious bow-window of their little sitting
room looking out on the street. A thick gray rain was falling, and a
dust-cart was in sight.

"Aggie," he said, "I'm afraid you'll miss the country."

She said nothing; she was lost in thought.

"It looks rather a brute of a place, doesn't it? But it won't be so bad
when the rain clears off. And you know, dear, there are the museums and
picture-galleries in town, and there'll be the concerts, and lectures on
all sorts of interesting subjects, two or three times a week. Then there's
our Debating Society at Hampstead--just a few of us who meet together to
discuss big questions. Every month it meets, and you'll get to know all
the intellectual people--"

Aggie nodded her head at each exciting item of the programme as he reeled
it off. His heart smote him; he felt that he hadn't prepared her properly
for Camden Town. He thought she was mourning the first perishing of her
illusions.

His voice fell, humbly. "And I really think, in time, you know, you won't
find it quite so bad."

She turned on him the face of one risen rosy from the embraces of her
dream. She put a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked at him with
shining eyes.

"Oh, Arthur, _dear_, it's all too beautiful. I couldn't say anything,
because I was so happy. Come, and let's look at everything all over
again."

And they went, and looked at everything all over again, reviving the
delight that had gone to the furnishing of that innocent interior. She
cried out with joy over the cheap art serges, the brown-paper backgrounds,
the blue-and-gray drugget, the oak chairs with their rush bottoms, the
Borne-Jones photogravures, the "Hope" and the "Love Leading Life," and the
"Love Triumphant." Their home would be the home of a material poverty, but
to Aggie's mind it was also a shrine whose austere beauty sheltered the
priceless spiritual ideal.

Their wedded ardor flamed when he showed her for the tenth time his
wonderful contrivance for multiplying bookshelves, as their treasures
accumulated year by year. They spoke with confidence of a day when the
shelves would reach from floor to ceiling, to meet the inevitable
expansion of the intellectual life.

They went out that very evening to a lecture on "Appearance and Reality,"
an inspiring lecture. They lived in it again (sitting over their cocoa in
the tiny dining-room), each kindling the other with the same sacred flame.
She gazed with adoration at his thin, flushed face, as, illumined by the
lecture, he developed with excitement his theory of life.

    [Illustration: "Over their cocoa he developed his theory of life"]

"Only think," he said, "how people wreck their lives just because they
don't know the difference between appearance and reality! Now we do know.
We're poor; but we don't care a rap, because we know, you and I, that that
doesn't matter. It's the immaterial that matters."

Spiritually he flamed.

"I wouldn't change with my boss, though he's got five thousand a year.
He's a slave--a slave to his carriage and horses, a slave to his house, a
slave to the office--"

"So are you. You work hard enough."

"I work harder than he does. But I keep myself detached."

"Some more cocoa, dearie?"

"Rather. Yes, three lumps, please. Just think what we can get out of life,
you and I, with our tiny income. We get what we put into it--and that's
something literally priceless, and we mustn't let it go. Whatever happens
we must stick to it."

"Nothing can take it away from us," said Aggie, rapt in her dream.

"No; no outside thing can. But, Aggie--we can take it from each other, if
we let ourselves get slack. Whatever we do," he said, solemnly, "we
mustn't get slack. We must keep it up."

"Yes," said Aggie, "we must keep it up."

They had pledged themselves to that.




IV


No fowler spreads his snares in sight of those innocent birds that perch
on the tree of life in paradise. As Arthur's soul (it was a vain soul)
preened its wings before her, Aggie never inquired whether the brilliance
of its plumage was its own, or merely common to all feathered things in
the pairing season. Young Arthur's soul was like a lark, singing in heaven
its delirious nuptial hymn. Aggie sat snug in her nest and marvelled at
her mate, at the mounting of his wings, the splendid and untiring ardors
of his song. Nor was she alarmed at his remarkable disappearance into the
empyrean. Lost to sight he might be, but she could count on his swift,
inevitable descent into the nest.

The nest itself was the most wonderful nest a bird ever sat in. The two
were so enthusiastic over everything that they delighted even in that
dreadful, creaking, yellow villa. Its very vices entertained them. When it
creaked they sat still and looked at each other, waiting for it to do it
again. No other house ever possessed such ungovernable and mysterious
spontaneities of sound. It was sometimes, they said, as if the villa were
alive. And when all the wood-work shrank, and the winter winds streamed
through their sitting-room, Aggie said nothing but put sand-bags in the
window and covered them with art serge.

Her mother declared that she had never stayed in a more inconvenient
house; but Aggie wouldn't hear a word against it. It was the house that
Arthur had chosen. She was sorry, she said, if her mother didn't like it.
Mrs. Purcell was sorry, too, because she could not honestly say that, in
the circumstances, she enjoyed a visit to Aggie and her husband. They made
her quite uncomfortable, the pair of them. Their ceaseless activities and
enthusiasms bewildered her. She didn't care a rap about the lectures, and
thought they were mad to go traipsing all the way to Hampstead to harangue
about things they could have discussed just as well--now, couldn't
they?--at home. Aggie, she said, would become completely undomesticated.
Mrs. Purcell was never pressed to stay longer than a week. They had no
further need of her, those two sublime young egoists, fused by their
fervors into one egoist, sublimer still. Mrs. Purcell was a sad hinderance
to the intellectual life, and they were glad when she was gone.

Heavens, how they kept it up! All through the winter evenings, when they
were not going to lectures, they were reading Browning aloud to each
other. For pure love of it, for its own sake, they said. But did Aggie
tire on that high way, she kept it up for Arthur's sake; did Arthur flag,
he kept it up for hers.

Then, in the spring, there came a time when Aggie couldn't go to lectures
any more. Arthur went, and brought her back the gist of them, lest she
should feel herself utterly cut off. The intellectual life had, even for
him, become something of a struggle. But, tired as he sometimes was, she
made him go, sending, as it were, her knight into the battle.

"Because now," she said, "we shall have to keep it up more than ever. For
_them_, you know."




V


  "'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea,
    And it was full of pretty things for Baby and for me.'"

Aggie always sang that song the same way. When she sang "for Baby" she
gave the baby a little squeeze that made him laugh; when she sang "for me"
she gave Arthur a little look that made him smile.

  "'There were raisins in the cabin, sugared kisses in the hold.'"

Here the baby was kissed crescendo, prestissimo, till he laughed more than
ever.

  "'The sails were made of silver and the masts were made of gold.
    The captain was a duck, and _he_ cried--'"

"Quack, quack!" said Arthur. It was Daddy's part in the great play, and it
made the baby nearly choke with laughter.

    [Illustration: "'Quack, quack!' said Arthur, and it made the baby
                     nearly choke with laughter"]

Arthur was on the floor, in a posture of solemn adoration somewhat out of
keeping with his utterances.

"Oh, Baby!" cried Aggie, "what times we'll have when Daddy's ship comes
home!"

The intellectual life had lapsed; but only for a period. Not for a moment
could they contemplate its entire extinction. It was to be resumed with
imperishable energy later on; they had pledged themselves to that.
Meanwhile they had got beyond the stage when Aggie would call to her
husband a dozen times a day:

"Oh, Arthur, look! If you poke him in the cheek like that, he'll smile."

And Arthur would poke him in the cheek, very gently, and say: "Why, I
never! What a rum little beggar he is! He's got some tremendous joke
against us, you bet."

And a dialogue like this would follow: "Oh, Arthur, look, look, _look_, at
his little feet!"

"I say--do you think you ought to squeeze him like that?"

"Oh, he doesn't mind. He likes it. Doesn't he? My beauty--my bird!"

"He'll have blue eyes, Aggie."

"No, they'll change; they always do. And his _nose_ is just like yours."

"I only wish I had his head of hair."

It was a terrible day for Arthur when the baby's head of hair began to
come off, till Aggie told him it always did that, and it would grow again.

To-day they were celebrating the first birthday of the little son. At
supper that night a solemn thought came to Aggie.

"Oh, Arthur, only think. On Arty's birthday" (they had been practising
calling him "Arty" for the last fortnight) "he won't be a baby any more."

"Never mind; Arty's little sister will be having her first birthday very
soon after."

Aggie blushed for pure joy, and smiled. She hadn't thought of that. But
how sad it would be for poor baby not to be _the_ baby any more!

Arthur gave an anxious glance at Aggie in her evening blouse. His mind was
not set so high but what he liked to see his pretty wife wearing pretty
gowns. And some of the money that was to have gone to the buying of books
had passed over to the gay drapers of Camden Town and Holloway.

"You know what it means, dear? We shall have to live more carefully."

"Oh yes, of course I know that."

"Do you mind?"

"Mind?" She didn't know what he was talking about, but she gave a sad,
foreboding glance at the well-appointed supper-table, where coffee and
mutton-chops had succeeded cocoa. For Arthur had had a rise of salary that
year; and if Aggie had a weakness, it was that she loved to get him plenty
of nice, nourishing things to eat.

"We sha'n't be able to have quite so many nice things for supper. Shall
_you_ mind?"

"Of course I sha'n't. Do you take me for a pig?" said Arthur, gayly. He
hadn't thought of it in that light. Wasn't he always saying that it was
the immaterial that mattered? But it had just come over him that pretty
Aggie wouldn't have so many pretty clothes to wear, because, of course,
whatever money they could save must go to the buying of books and the
maintenance of the intellectual life. For the home atmosphere was to be
part of the children's education.

"We will have lots of nice things," said Aggie, "won't we, when Daddy's
ship comes home?"




VI


Daddy's ship never did come home.

"Quack, quack!" said Aggie, and three shrill voices echoed her.

Aggie had to be the duck herself now; for Daddy had long ago given up his
part in the spirited drama.

They had been married six years, and Aggie had had six children. There was
Arty and Catty and Willie and Dick and Emmy (the baby of the year); and a
memory like a sword in her mother's heart, which was all that was left of
little Barbara, who had come after Catty.

It seemed as if there was not much left of Aggie, either. Her delicate
individuality had shown signs of perishing as the babies came, and the
faster it perished the faster they took its place. At each coming there
went some part of pretty Aggie's prettiness; first the rose from her
cheeks, then the gold from her hair, till none of her radiance was left
but the blue light of her eyes, and that was fainter. Then, after
Barbara's death, her strength went, too; and now, at the end of the day
she was too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa and let the children
crawl all over her, moaning sometimes when they trampled deep. Then Arthur
would stir in his arm-chair and look irritably at her. He still loved
Aggie and the children, but not their noises.

The evenings, once prolonged by gas-light and enthusiasm to a glorious
life, had shrank to a two hours' sitting after supper. They never went
anywhere now. Picture-galleries and concert-halls knew them no more. The
Debating Society at Hampstead had long ago missed the faithful,
inseparable pair--the pair who never spoke, who sat in the background
listening with shy, earnest faces, with innocence that yearned, wide-eyed,
after wisdom, while it followed, with passionate subservience, the inane.
Arthur had proved himself powerless to keep it up. If an archangel's trump
had announced a lecture for that evening, it would not have roused him
from his apathy.

And as they never went to see anybody, nobody ever came to see them. The
Hampstead ladies found Aggie dull and her conversation monotonous. It was
all about Arthur and the babies; and those ladies cared little for Arthur,
and for the babies less. Of Aggie's past enthusiasm they said that it was
nothing but a pose. Time had revealed her, the sunken soul of patience and
of pathos, the beast of burden, the sad-eyed, slow, and gray.

The spirit of the place, too, had departed, leaving a decomposing and
discolored shell. The beloved yellow villa had disclosed the worst side of
its nature. The brown wall-paper had peeled and blistered, like an
unwholesome skin. The art serge had faded; the drugget was dropping to
pieces, worn with many feet; the wood-work had shrunk more than ever, and
draughts, keen as knives, cut through the rooms and passages. The "Hope"
and the "Love Leading Life" and the "Love Triumphant," like imperishable
frescos in a decaying sanctuary, were pitiful survivals, testifying to the
death of dreams.

Saddest of all, the bookshelves, that were to have shot up to the ceiling,
had remained three feet from the floor, showing the abrupt arrest of the
intellectual life.

It was evident that they hadn't kept it up.

If anything, Arthur was more effaced, more obliterated, than his wife. He,
whose appearance had once suggested a remarkable personality, a poet or a
thinker, now looked what he had become, a depressed and harassed city
clerk, no more. His face was dragged by deep downward lines that
accentuated its weakness. A thin wisp of colorless mustache sheltered,
without concealing, the irritability of his mouth. Under his high, sallow
forehead, his eyes, once so spiritual, looked out on his surroundings with
more indifference than discontent. His soul fretted him no longer; it had
passed beyond strenuousness to the peace of dulness. Only the sounds made
by his wife and children had power to agitate him.

He was agitated now.

"That will do," he said, looking up from the magazine he was trying to
read, not because it interested him in the least, but because it helped to
keep the noises out.

But the children were clamoring for an encore. "Again, again!" they cried.
"Oh Mummy, _do_ do it again!"

"Hsh-sh-sh. Daddy's reading." And Aggie drew the children closer to her,
and went on with the rhyme in her sad, weak whisper.

"If you must read aloud to them, for goodness' sake speak up and have done
with it. I can't stand that whispering."

Aggie put down the picture-book, and Arty seized one half and Catty the
other, and they tugged, till Catty let go and hit Arty, and Arty hit Catty
back again, and Catty howled.

"Can't you keep those children quiet?"

"Oh, Arty, shame! to hurt your little sister!"

At that Arty howled louder than Catty.

Arthur sat up in his chair.

"Leave the room, sir! Clear out this instant!" His weak face looked weaker
in its inappropriate assumption of command.

"Do you hear what I say, sir?"

Arty stopped crying, and steadied his quivering infant mouth till it
expressed his invincible determination.

"I'll g-g-g-go for Mommy. But I w-w-w-won't go for Daddy. I doesh'n't 'ike
him."

"Hsh-sh--poor Daddy--he's so tired. Run away to the nursery, darlings, all
of you."

"I can't think why on earth you have them down here at this time," said
their father, as the door slammed behind the last retreating child.

"My dear, you said yourself it's the only time you have for seeing them.
I'm sure you don't get much of them."

"I get a great deal too much sometimes."

"If we only had a big place for them to run about in--"

"What's the use of talking about things we haven't got, and never shall
have? Is supper ready?"

She raised herself heavily from her sofa, and went to see, trailing an old
shawl after her. Arthur, by way of being useful, put his foot upon the
shawl as it went by.

After supper he felt decidedly better, and was inclined to talk.

"I met Davidson this morning in the city. He said his wife hadn't seen you
for an age. Why don't you go and look her up?"

Aggie was silent.

"You can't expect her to be always running after you."

"I can't run after her, I assure you. I haven't the strength."

"You used," he said, reproachfully, "to be strong enough."

Aggie's mouth twisted into a blanched, unhappy smile--a smile born of
wisdom and of patience and of pain.

"My dear, you don't know what it is to have had six children."

"Oh, don't I? I know enough not to want any more of them."

"Well--then--" said Aggie.

But Arthur's eyes evaded her imploring and pathetic gaze. He turned the
subject back to Mrs. Davidson--a clumsy shift.

"Anyhow, it doesn't take much strength to call on Mrs. Davidson, does it?"

"It's no good. I can't think of anything to say to her."

"Oh, come, she isn't difficult to get on with."

"No, but I am. I don't know why it is I always feel so stupid now."

"That," said Arthur, "is because you haven't kept it up."

"I haven't had the time," she wailed.

"Time? Oh, rubbish, you should make time. It doesn't do to let things go
like that. Think of the children."

"It's because I'm always thinking of them."

They rose from their poor repast. (Coffee and mutton-chops had vanished
from the board, and another period of cocoa had set in.) He picked up her
shawl, that had dropped again, and placed it about her shoulders, and they
dragged themselves mournfully back into their sitting-room. She took up
her place on the sofa. He dropped into the arm-chair, where he sat
motionless, looking dully at the fire. His wife watched him with her
faded, tender eyes.

"Arthur," she said, suddenly, "it's the first meeting of the Society
to-night. Did you forget?" They had never admitted, to themselves or to
each other, that they had given it up.

"Yes," said Arthur, peevishly, "of course I forgot. How on earth did you
expect me to remember?"

"I think you ought to go, dear, sometimes. You never went all last
winter."

"I know."

"Isn't it a pity not to try--a little--just to keep it up? If it's only
for the children's sake."

"My dear Aggie, it's for the children's sake--and yours--that I fag my
brain out, as it is. When you've been as hard at it as I've been, all day,
you don't feel so very like turning out again--not for that sort of
intellectual game. You say you feel stupid in the afternoon. What do you
suppose I feel like in the evening?"

His accents cut Aggie to the heart.

"Oh, my dear, I know. I only thought it might do you good, sometimes, to
get a change--if it's only from me and my stupidity."

"If there's one thing I hate more than another," said Arthur, "it is a
change."

She knew it. That had been her consolation. Arthur was not as the race of
dreamers to which he once seemed to have belonged. There was in him a
dumb, undying fidelity to the tried and chosen. From the first, before his
apathy came on him, he had hardly ever left her to an evening by herself.
He had had neither eyes nor ears nor voice for any other woman. And though
her face had become the face of another woman, and he hated changes, she
knew that it had never changed for him. He loved her more than any of the
six children she had borne him.

"After all," said Aggie, "do you think it really matters?"

"Do I think what matters?"

"What we've lost."

He looked suspiciously at her, his heavy brain stirred by some foreboding
of uncomfortable suggestion; she had been thinking of Barbara, perhaps.

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't. The flame in the woman's heart was not wholly dead, because he
had kindled it, and it was one with her love of him. The dream they had
dreamed together had lived on for her; first, as an agony, then as a
regret. But the man had passed over into the sensual darkness that is
seldom pierced by pain. Of the pleasures that had once borne him, buoyant
and triumphant, on the crest of the wave, none were left but such sad
earthly wreckage as life flings up at the ebbing of the spiritual tide.

They had come to the dark shores, where, if the captain wavers, the ships
of dream founder with all their freight.

A dull light was already kindling under his tired eyelids.

"I don't know what _you_ feel like," said he, "but I've had enough
sitting-up for one night. Don't you think you'd better go to bed?"

She went, obediently.




VII


A year passed. It was winter again, and the Gattys had had sickness in
their house. Aggie had been ailing ever since the birth of the baby that
had succeeded Emmy. And one evening the doctor had to be summoned for
little Willie, who had croup. Willie, not four years old, was the last
baby but three. Yes, he was only a baby himself; Aggie realized it with
anguish, as she undressed him and he lay convulsed on her lap. He was only
a baby; and she had left him to run about with Arty and Catty as if he
were a big boy. She should have taken more care of Willie.

But the gods took care of Willie, and he was better before the doctor
could arrive; and Aggie got all the credit of his cure.

Aggie couldn't believe it. She was convinced the doctor was keeping
something from her, he sat so long with Arthur in the dining-room. She
could hear their voices booming up the chimney as she mended the fire in
the nursery overhead. It was not, she argued, as if he ever cared to talk
to Arthur. Nobody ever cared to talk to Arthur long, nor did he care to
talk to anybody.

So, when the clock struck seven (the doctor's dinner-hour), and the
dining-room door never opened, Aggie's anxiety became terror, and she
stole down-stairs. She had meant to go boldly in, and not stand there
listening; but she caught one emphatic word that arrested her, and held
her there, intent, afraid of her own terror.

"Never!"

She could hear Arthur's weak voice sharpened to a falsetto, as if he, too,
were terrified.

"No, never. Never any more!"

There was a note almost of judgment in the doctor's voice; but Aggie could
not hear that, for the wild cry that went up in her heart. "Oh, never
what? Is Willie--my Willie--never to be well any more!"

Then she listened without a scruple, justified by her motherhood. They
were keeping things from her, as they had kept them before. As they had
kept them when little Barbara sickened.

    [Illustration: "She listened without a scruple, justified by her
                    motherhood"]

"And if--if--" Arthur's voice was weaker this time; it had a sort of moral
powerlessness in it; but Aggie's straining ears caught the "if."

"There mustn't be any 'ifs.'"

Aggie's heart struggled in the clutches of her fright.

"That's not what I mean. I mean--is there any danger now?"

"From what I can gather so far, I should say--none."

Aggie's heart gave a great bound of recovery.

"But if," the doctor went on, "as you say--"

"I know" cried Arthur, "you needn't say it. You won't answer for the
consequences?"

"I won't. For the consequences, a woman--in the weak state your wife is
in--may answer herself--with her life."

Aggie was immensely relieved. So they were only talking about her all the
time!

That night her husband told her that her release had come. It had been
ordained that she was to rest for two years. And she was to have help.
They must have a girl.

"Arthur," she said, firmly, "I won't have a girl. They're worse than
charwomen. They eat more; and we can't afford it."