“run along, old lady. daddy’s going to write three hundred and seventy-nine letters.”
“oh, poor daddy! and are you going to write to miss eve?”
“yes.”
“give her my love, and tell her god’s been very nice. i heard him promise inside me.”
“that’s very sensible of god.”
lynette vanished, and canterton looked across the breakfast-table at his wife, who was submerged beneath the usual flood of letters. she had not been listening—had not heard what lynette had said. a local anti-suffrage campaign was the passion of the moment.
it struck canterton suddenly, perhaps for the first time in his life, that his wife was a happy woman, thoroughly contented with her discontent. all this fussy altruism, this tumult of affairs, gave her the opportunity of full self-expression. even her grievances were harmonious, chiming in with her passion for restless activity. her egoism was utterly lacking in self-criticism. if a kettle can be imagined as enjoying itself when it is boiling over, gertrude canterton’s happiness can be understood.
“gertrude, i want to have a talk with you.”
“what, james?”
“i want to have a talk with you.”
she dropped a type-written letter on to her plate, and looked at him with her pale eyes.
“what is it?”
“something i want you to know. shall we wait and turn into the library?”
“i’m rushed to death this morning. i have to be at mrs. brocklebank’s at ten, and——”
“all right. i’ll talk while you finish your breakfast. it won’t take long.”
she prepared to listen to him with the patient air of an over-worked official whose inward eye remains fixed upon insistent accumulations of business. it did not strike her that there was anything unusual about his manner, or that his voice was the voice of a man who touched the deeper notes of life.
“eve carfax is coming back as my secretary and art expert. she has given up her work in town.”
“i am really very glad, james.”
“thanks. she got entangled in the militant campaign, but the extravagances disgusted her, and she broke away.”
“sensible young woman. she might help me down here, especially as she has some intimate knowledge of the methods of these fanatics.”
“it is possible. but that is not quite all that i want to tell you. in the first place, i built the new cottage with the idea that she would come back.”
his wife’s face showed vague surprise.
“did you? don’t you think it was a little unnecessary? after all——”
“we are coming to the point. i have a very great affection for eve carfax. she and i see things together as two humans very rarely see them. we were made for the same work. she understands the colour of life as i understand it.”
gertrude canterton wrinkled up her forehead as though she were puzzled.
“that is very nice for you, james. it ought to be a help.”
“i want you to understand the whole matter thoroughly. i am telling you the truth, because it seems to me the sane and honest thing to do. you and i are not exactly comrades, are we? we just happen to be married. we have our own interests, our own friends. as a man, i have wanted someone who sympathised and understood. i am not making this a personal question, for i know you do not get much sympathy from me. but i have found a comrade. that is all.”
his wife sat back in her chair, staring.
“do you mean to say that you are in love with this girl?”
“exactly! i am in love with her.”
“james, how ridiculous!”
perhaps laughter was the last thing that he had expected, but laugh she did with a thin merriment that had no acid edge to it. it was the laughter of an egoist who had failed utterly to grasp the significance of what he had said. she was too sexless to be jealous, too great an egoist to imagine that she was being slighted. it appealed to her as a comedy, as something quite outside herself.
“how absurd! why, you are over forty.”
“just so. that makes it more practical. i wanted you to realise how things stand, and to tell you that i am capable of a higher sort of affection than most people indulge in. you have nothing to fear.”
she wriggled her shoulders.
“i don’t feel alarmed, james, in the least. i know you would never do common, vulgar things. you always were eccentric. i suppose this is like discovering a new rose. it is really funny. i only ask you not to make a fool of yourself in public.”
he looked at her steadily and with a kind of compassion.
“my dear gertrude, that is the very point i want to impress upon you. i am grimly determined that no one shall be made a fool of, least of all you. treat this as absolutely between ourselves.”
she wriggled and poked her chin at him.
“oh, you big, eccentric creature! falling in love! somehow, it is so quaint, that it doesn’t make me jealous. i suppose i have so many real and absorbing interests that i am rather above such things. but i do hope you won’t make yourself ridiculous.”
“i can promise you that. we are to be good friends and fellow-workers. only i wanted you to understand.”
“of course i understand. i’m such a busy woman, james, and my life is so full, that i really haven’t time to be sentimental. i have heard that most middle-aged men get fond of school-girls in a fatherly kind of way.”
he crushed his serviette and threw it on the table.
“in a way, you are one of the most sensible women, gertrude, i have ever met.”
“am i?”
“only you don’t realise it. it’s more temperament than virtue.”
“i’m a woman of the world, james. and there are so many important things to do that i haven’t time to worry myself about harmless little romances. i don’t think i mind in the least.”
he pushed back his chair and rose.
“i did not think you would. only we are all egoists, more or less. one never quite knows how the ‘self’ in a person will jump.”
he crossed the room and paused at the window, looking out. his thoughts were that this wife of his was a most amazing fool, without sufficient sexual sense to appreciate human nature. it was not serene wisdom that had made her take the matter so calmly, but sheer, egregious fatuity, the milk-and-water-mindedness that is incapable of great virtues or great sins.
“have you thought of lynette?”
“what has lynette to do with it, james?”
“oh, nothing!”
he gave her up. she was hopeless. and yet his contempt made him feel sorry.
her hand had gone out to her papers, and was stirring them to crepitations that seemed to express the restless satisfactions of her life.
“don’t you over-work yourself, gertrude?”
“i don’t think so. but sometimes i do feel——”
“you ought to have a secretary, some capable young woman who could sit and write letters for eight hours a day. i can easily allow you another three hundred a year.”
she flushed. he had touched the one vital part in her.
“oh, james, i could do so much more. and there is so much to be done. my postage alone is quite an item!”
“of course! then it’s settled. i’m glad i thought of it.”
“james, it’s most generous of you. i feel quite excited. there are all sorts of things i want to take up.”
he went out into the garden, realising that he had made her perfectly happy.
