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Judgment of Eve

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<h2>81VIII</h2> “Now, isn’t it a pity for you to be going, dearie? When the place is doing you so much good, and Susie back in another week, and all.” <div class="illo" id="illo_6"> <ANTIMG src="images/illo_6.jpg" width-obs="447" height-obs="685" alt="A woman packs a suitcase, while two toddlers 'help' and an older woman looks on." /> “‘Now, isn’t it a pity for you to be going, dearie?’” </div> Aggie folded up a child’s frock with great deliberation, and pressed it, gently but firmly, into the portmanteau. “I must go,” she said, gravely. “Arthur wants me.” Mrs. Purcell was looking on with unfeigned grief at her daughter’s preparations for departure. Aggie had gone down to Queningford, not for a flying visit, but to spend the greater 82part of the autumn. She and Arthur had had to abandon some of the arrangements they had planned together; and, though he had still insisted in general terms on Aggie’s two years’ rest, the details had been left to her. Thus it happened that a year of the rest-cure had hardly rolled by before Aggie had broken down, in a way that had filled them both with the gravest anxieties for the future. For if she broke down when she was resting, what would she do when the two years were up and things had to be more or less as they were before? Aggie was so frightened this time that she was glad to be packed off to her mother, with Willie and Dick and Emmy and the baby. The “girls,” Kate and Eliza, had looked after them, while Aggie lay back in the warm lap of luxury, and rested for once in her life. 83All Aggie’s visits had ended in the same way. The same letter from home, the same firm and simple statement: “Arthur wants me. I must go,” and Aggie was gone before they had had a look at her. “John and Susie will be quite offended.” “I can’t help it. Arthur comes before John and Susie, and he wants me.” She had always been proud of that—his wanting her; his inability to do without her. “I don’t know,” she said, “what he will have done without me all this time.” Her mother looked at her sharply, a look that, though outwardly concentrated on Aggie, suggested much inward criticism of Aggie’s husband. “He must learn to do without you,” she said, severely. 84“I’m not sure that I want him to,” said Aggie, and smiled. Her mother submitted with a heavy heart. “My dear,” she whispered, “if you had married John Hurst we shouldn’t have had to say good-bye.” “I wouldn’t have taken him from Susie for the world,” said Aggie, grimly. She knew that her mother had never liked poor Arthur. This knowledge prevented her from being sufficiently grateful to John for always leaving his trap (the trap that was once to have been hers) at her disposal. It was waiting to take her to the station now. Aggie had only seen her sister, Mrs. John Hurst, once since they had both married. Whenever Aggie was in Queningford, John and Susie were in Switzerland, on the honeymoon that, 85for the happy, prosperous couple, renewed itself every year. This year it was agreed that, when the Hursts came up to Islington for the Grand Horse-Show in the spring, they were to be put up at the Gattys’ in Camden Town. Aggie was excited and a little alarmed at the prospect of this visit. Susie was accustomed to having everything very nice and comfortable about her, and she would be critical of the villa and its ways. And, then, it would be awkward seeing John. She smiled. It always had been awkward seeing John. But when the spring came a new terror was added to Aggie’s hospitable anxiety, a new embarrassment to the general awkwardness of seeing John. After all, the Hursts put up at a hotel in town. But Susie was to come 86over for tea and a long talk with Aggie, John following later. Aggie prepared with many tremors for the meeting with her sister. She made herself quite sick and faint in her long battling with her hair. She had so little time for “doing” it that it had become very difficult to “do” and when it was “done” she said to herself that it looked abominable. Her fingers shook as they strained at the hooks of the shabby gown that was her “best.” She had found somewhere a muslin scarf that, knotted and twined with desperate ingenuity, produced something of the effect that she desired. Up-stairs in the nursery, Catty, very wise for six years old, was minding the baby, while the little nervous maid got tea ready. Aggie sat in the drawing-room waiting for her sister. Even 87as she waited she dared not be idle. There was an old coat of Arthur’s that she had been lining, taking advantage of a change to milder weather; it was warmer than the one he was wearing, and she was afraid to let it go another day lest the wind should turn round to the northeast again. In such anxieties Aggie moved and had her being. For the rest, she had given the little maid a lesson in the proper way of showing Mrs. John Hurst into the room when she arrived. Mrs. John Hurst arrived a little late. She came in unannounced (for her appearance had taken the little maid’s breath away); she came with a certain rustle and sweep which was much more important than anything Susie had ever done in the old days when Aggie was the pretty one. 88Aggie was moved at seeing her. She uttered a cry of affection and delight, and gave herself to Susie’s open arms. “Darling!” said Mrs. John Hurst. “Let me have a good look at you.” She kissed her violently, held her at arm’s-length for a moment, and then kissed her again, very gently. In that moment Aggie had looked at Susie, and Susie at Aggie, each trying to master the meaning of the other’s face. It was Susie who understood first. Prosperity was very becoming to Susie. She was the pretty one now, and she knew it. Marriage had done for her what maidenhood had done for her sister, and Susie was the image of what Aggie used to be. But Aggie herself! Nothing was left now of the diminutive distinction that had caused her to be once adored in Queningford. Susie was young at 89two-and-thirty, and Aggie, not three years older, was middle-aged. Not that there were many wrinkles on Aggie’s face. Only a deep, crescent line on each side of a mouth that looked as if it had been strained tight with many tortures. It was as if Nature had conceived a grudge against Aggie, and strove, through maternity, to stamp out her features as an individual. “Oh yes,” said Aggie, to break the intolerable tension of that look, “it’s one of your old ones, turned and trimmed to make it look different.” “Poor darling,” said Susie; but what she thought was that it did look different. Luckily Mrs. John Hurst was full of the Horse-Show. She could talk of nothing else. It was the Horse-Show that had made her late. She 90had waited for the judging. John would look in as soon as he could get away. Gownboy had carried off the gold cup and the gold medal again, and the judges had been unjust, as usual, to John (John, grown prosperous, had added horse-breeding to sheep-farming.) Ladslove had only been highly commended. Ladslove was Rosemary’s foal. “You remember Rosemary, Aggie?” Aggie remembered neither Rosemary nor her foal. But she was sorry for Ladslove. She was grateful to him, too, for holding Susie’s attention and diverting it from all the things she didn’t want her to see. She was afraid of Susie; afraid of her sympathy; afraid of her saying something about Barbara (she couldn’t speak of little Bessie, Susie’s only child, who had died three years ago). 91Above all, she was afraid of Susie’s inquisitive tongue and searching eyes. She flung herself into fictitious reminiscences of the Queningford stud. She couldn’t have done worse. “Oh, Aggie,” said her sister, “you do mix them up so.” “Well,” said poor Aggie, “there are so many of them, I can’t keep count.” “Never mind, dear.” Aggie’s words recalled Susie to her sisterly duties. “I haven’t asked after the children yet. How many are there? I can’t keep count, either, you know.” Aggie turned away, found the old coat she had been lining, and spread it on her lap. Susie’s eye roamed and rested on the coat, and Aggie’s followed it. “Do excuse my going on with this. Arthur wants it.” Susie smiled in recognition of the 92familiar phrase. Ever since he had first appeared in Queningford, Arthur had always been wanting something. But, as she looked at the poor coat, she reflected that one thing he had never wanted, or had never asked for, and that was help. “Aggie,” she said, “I do hope that if you ever want a little help, dear, you’ll come to me.” Susie, preoccupied with the idea of liberality, could not see that she had chosen her moment badly. Her offer, going as it did, hand-in-hand with her glance, reflected upon Arthur. “I don’t want any help, thank you,” said Aggie. “Arthur’s doing very well now. Very well, indeed.” “Then,” said Susie, “why on earth do you break your back over that stitching, if there’s no need? That’s not my notion of economy.” 93Susie was a kind-hearted woman, but eight years of solid comfort and prosperity had blunted her perceptions. Moreover, she had an earnestly practical mind, a mind for which material considerations outweighed every other. “My dear Susie, your notion of economy would be the same as mine, if you had had seven children.” “But I haven’t,” said Susie, sadly. She was humbled by the rebuff she had just received. “I only wish I had.” Aggie looked up from her work with a remorseful tenderness in her tired eyes. She was sorry for poor Susie, who had lost her only one. But Susie had already regretted her momentary weakness, and her pride was up. She was a primitive woman, and had always feared lest reproach should lie upon her among the mothers 94of many children. Besides, she had never forgotten that her John had loved Aggie first. Aggie, with her seven children, should not set her down as a woman slighted by her husband. “I haven’t had the strength for it,” said she; and Aggie winced. “The doctor told John I mustn’t have more than the one. And I haven’t.” Poor Aggie hardened her face before Susie’s eyes, for she felt that they were spying out and judging her. And Susie, seeing that set look, remembered how badly Aggie had once behaved to her John. Therefore she was tempted to extol him. “But then,” said she, magnificently, “I have my husband.” (As if Aggie hadn’t hers!) “Nobody knows what John is but me. Do you know, there hasn’t been one unkind word 95passed between us, nor one cross look, ever since he married me eight years ago.” “There are very few who can say that.” Aggie tried to throw a ring of robust congratulation into her flat tones. “Very few. But there’s no one like him.” “No one like you, either, I should say.” “Well, for him there isn’t. He’s never had eyes for any one but me—never.” Aggie cast down her eyes demurely at that. She had no desire to hurt Susie by reminding her of the facts. But Susie, being sensitive on the subject, had provided for all that. “Of course, dear, I know, just at first, he thought of you. A fancy. He told me all about it; and how you 96wouldn’t have him, he said. He said he didn’t think you thought him gentle enough. That shows how much you knew about him, my dear.” “I should always have supposed,” said Aggie, coldly, “he would be gentle to any one he cared for.” She knew, and Susie knew, she had supposed the very opposite; but she wished Susie to understand that John had been rejected with full realization of his virtues, because, good as he was, somebody else was still better. So that there might be no suspicion of regret. “Gentle? Why, Aggie, if that was what you wanted, he’s as gentle as a woman. Gentler—there aren’t many women, I can tell you, who have the strength that goes with that.” Aggie bent her head lower yet over her work. She thought she could see 97in Susie’s speech a vindictive and critical intention. All the time she had, Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur. She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John’s old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off talking about John, or go. But Susie still interpreted Aggie’s looks as a challenge, and the hymn of praise swelled on. “My dear—if John wasn’t an angel of goodness and unselfishness—When I think how useless I am to him, and of all that he has done for me, and all that he has given up—” Aggie was trembling. She drew up the coat to shelter her. 98“—why it makes my blood boil to think that any one should know him, and not know what he is.” Aggie dropped the coat in her agitation. As she stooped to pick it up, Susie put out an anxious arm to help her. Their eyes met. “Oh, Aggie, dear—” said Susie. It was all she could say. And her voice had in it consternation and reproach. But Aggie faced her. “Well?” she said, steadily. “Oh, nothing—” It was Susie’s turn for confusion. “Only you said—and we thought—after what you’ve been told—” “What was I told?” Horror overcame Susie, and she lost her head. “Weren’t you told, then?” 99Her horror was reflected in her sister’s eyes. But Aggie kept calm. “Susie” she said, “what do you mean? That I wasn’t told of the risk? Is that what you meant?” “Oh, Aggie—” Susie was helpless. She could not say what she had meant, nor whether she had really meant it. “Who should be told if I wasn’t? Surely I was the proper person?” Susie recovered herself. “Of course, dear, of course you were.” “Well?” Aggie forced the word again through her tight, strained lips. “I’m not blaming you, Aggie, dear. I know it isn’t your fault.” “Whose is it, then?” Susie’s soft face hardened, and she said nothing. Her silence lay between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of things unutterable; silence that 100was an accusation, a judgment of the man that Aggie loved. Then Aggie turned, and in her immortal loyalty she lied. “I never told him.” “Never told him? Oh, my dear, you were very wrong.” “Why should I? He was ill. It would have worried him. It worried me less to keep it to myself.” “But—the risk?” “Oh,” said Aggie, sublimely, “we all take it. Some of us don’t know. I did. That’s all.” She drew a deep breath of relief and satisfaction. For four months, ever since she had known that some such scene as this must come, she had known that she would meet it this way. “Hush,” she said. “I think I hear the children.” <h2>101IX</h2> They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples, holding one another’s hands. First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and Dick, all solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into his mother’s lap. They were all silent but Dick. Dick wanted to know if his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her birfday—pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced that his birfday was to-morrow. “Dickie, dear,” said his mother, 102nervously, “we don’t talk about our birthdays before they’ve come.” She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had given so gross a hint. The children pressed round her, and her hands were soon at their proud and anxious work: coaxing stray curls into their place; proving the strength of the little arms; slipping a sock, to show the marbled rose of the round limbs. “Just feel Emmy’s legs. She’s as firm as firm. And look at Baby, how beautifully he’s made. They’re all healthy. There isn’t an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them.” <div class="illo" id="illo_7"> <ANTIMG src="images/illo_7.jpg" width-obs="446" height-obs="546" alt="A woman sits surrounded by 6 small children, while another woman looks on." /> “‘There isn’t an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them’” </div> “No, no, they look it. They’re magnificent. And they’re you all over again.” “Barbara wasn’t. She was the very image of her father.” Her love of him 103conquered the stubborn silence of her grief, so that she did not shrink from the beloved name. “Susie,” she said, when the little procession had, at its own petition, filed solemnly out again, “you can’t say you’ve seen too much of them.” Susie smiled sadly as she looked at the wreck that was poor Aggie. “No, my dear; but I haven’t seen quite enough of you. There isn’t much left of you, you know.” “Me?” She paused, and then broke out again, triumphant in her justification: “No matter if there’s nothing left of me. They’re alive.” She raised her head. Worn out and broken down she might be, but she was the mother of superb children. Something stronger and more beautiful than her lost youth flamed in her as she vindicated her motherhood. 104She struck even Susie’s dull imagination as wonderful. Half an hour later Aggie bent her aching back again over her work. She had turned a stiff, set face to Susie as she parted from her. John had come and gone, and it had not been awkward in the least. He was kind and courteous (time and prosperity had improved him), but he had, as Susie said, no eyes for any one but his wife. As Aggie worked she was assailed by many thoughts and many memories. Out of the past there rose a sublime and patient face. It smiled at her above a butchery of little lambs. Yes, Susie was right about her John. There was no weak spot in him. He had not a great intellect, but he had a great heart and a great will. Aggie remembered how once, in her thoughtful 105maiden days, she had read in one of the vicar’s books a saying which had struck her at the time, for the vicar had underlined it twice. “If there is aught spiritual in man, it is the Will.” She had not thought of John as a very spiritual person. She had dimly divined in him the possibility of strong passions, such passions as make shipwreck of men’s lives. And here was Arthur—he, poor dear, would never be shipwrecked, for he hadn’t one strong passion in him; he had only a few weak little impulses, incessantly frustrating a will weaker than them all. She remembered how her little undeveloped soul, with its flutterings and strugglings after the immaterial, had been repelled by the large presence of the natural man. It had been afraid to trust itself to his strength, lest its 106wings should suffer for it. It had not been afraid to trust itself to Arthur; and his weakness had made it a wingless thing, dragged down by the suffering of her body. She said to herself, “If I had known John was like that—” She stopped her brain before it could answer for her! “You wouldn’t be sitting here now stitching at that coat.” She stitched on till she could see to stitch no more; for tears came and blinded her eyes, and fell upon the coat. That was just after she had kissed it. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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