Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (685 page)

‘Well, I dare say you deserve to be.  Besides, you really are very pretty.  If ever you had a rival, I should think that it must be some consolation to her to know that it was so charming a person who cut her out.’

Maude laughed at the thought.

‘I never had a rival,’ said she.  ‘My husband never
really
loved until he met me.’

‘Did he - oh yes, quite so!  That is so nice that you should both start with a clean sheet!  I thought you were very handsome just now when you were angry with me, but you are quite delightful with that little flush upon your cheeks.  If I had been a man, your husband would certainly have had one rival in his wooing.  And so he really never loved any one but you?  I thought that also only happened in books.’

There was a hard and ironic tone in the last sentences which jarred upon Maude’s sensitive nature.  She glanced up quickly and was surprised at the look of pain which had come upon her companion’s face.  It relaxed into a serious serenity.

‘That fits in beautifully,’ said she.  ‘But there’s one bit of advice which I should like to give you, if you won’t think it a liberty.  Don’t be selfish in your married life.’

‘Selfish!’

‘Yes, there is a kind of family selfishness which is every bit as bad - I am not sure that it is not worse - than personal selfishness.  People love each other, and they shut out the world, and have no thought for any one else, and the whole universe can slide to perdition so long as their love is not disturbed.  That is what I call family selfishness.  It’s a sin and a shame.’

Maude looked at this strange woman in amazement.  She was speaking fast and hotly, like one whose bitter thoughts have been long penned up for want of a suitable listener.

‘Remember the women who have been less fortunate than you.  Remember the thousands who are starving, dying, for want of love, and no love comes their way; whose hearts yearn and faint for that which Nature owes them, but Nature never pays her debt.  Remember the plain women.  Remember the lonely women.  Above all, remember your unfortunate sisters; they, the most womanly of all, who have been ruined by their own kindliness and trust and loving weakness.  It is that family selfishness which turns every house in the land into a fort to be held against these poor wanderers.  They make them evil, and then they revile the very evil which they have made.  When I look back - ‘

She stopped with a sudden sob.  Her forearm fell upon the mantelpiece, and her forehead upon her forearm.  In an instant Maude was by her side, the tears running down her cheeks, for the sight of grief was always grief to her, and her nerves were weakened by this singular interview.

‘Dear Mrs. Wright, don’t cry!’ she whispered, and her little white hand passed in a soothing, hesitating gesture over the coil of rich chestnut hair.  ‘Don’t cry!  I am afraid you have suffered.  Oh, how I wish I could help you!  Do tell me how I can help you.’

But Violet’s occasional fits of weakness were never of a very long duration.  She dashed her hand impatiently across her eyes, straightened her tall figure, and laughed as she glanced at herself in the mirror.

‘Madame Celandine would be surprised if she could see how I have treated one of her masterpieces,’ said she, as she straightened her crushed hat, and arranged her hair with those quick little deft pats of the palm with which women can accomplish so much in so short a time.  Rumpled finery sets the hands of every woman within sight of it fidgeting, so Maude joined in at the patting and curling and forgot all about her tears.

‘There, that will have to do,’ said Violet at last.  ‘I am so sorry to have made such a fool of myself.  I don’t err upon the sentimental side as a rule.  I suppose it is about time that I thought of catching my train for town.  I have a theatre engagement which I must not miss.’

‘How strange it is!’ said Maude, looking at her own pretty tear-marked face in the mirror.  ‘You have only been here a few minutes, as time goes, and yet I feel that in some things I am more intimate with you than with any woman I have ever met.  How can it be?  What bond can there be to draw us together like this?  And it is the more extraordinary, because I felt that you disliked me when you entered the room, and I am sure that you won’t be offended if I say that when you had been here a little I thought that I disliked you.  But I don’t.  On the contrary, I wish you could come every day.  And I want to come and see you also when I am in town.’

Maude, for all her amiability, was not gushing by nature, and this long speech caused her great astonishment when she looked back upon it.  But at the moment it came so naturally from her heart that she never paused to think of its oddity.  Her enthusiasm was a little chilled, however, by the way in which her advances were received.  Violet Wright’s eyes were more kindly than ever, but she shook her head.

‘No, I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again.  I don’t think I could ask you to visit me in London.  I wanted to see you, and I have seen you, but that, I fear, must be the end of it.’

Maude’s lip trembled in a way which it had when she was hurt.

‘Why did you wish to see me, then?’ she asked.

‘On account of that slight acquaintance with your husband.  I thought it would be interesting to see what sort of wife he had chosen.’

‘I hope you are not disappointed,’ said Maude, making a roguish face.

‘He has done very well - better than I expected.’

‘You had not much respect for his taste, then?’

‘Oh yes, I always thought highly of his taste.’

‘You have such a pretty way of putting things.  You know my husband very slightly, but still I can see that you know the world very well.  I often wonder if I am really the best kind of woman that he could have married.  Do you think I am, Mrs. Wright?’

Her visitor looked in silence for a little at the gentle grace and dainty sympathetic charm of the woman before her.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly, as one who weighs her words.  ‘I think you are.  You are a lady with a lady’s soul in you.  A woman can draw a man down very low, or she can make him live at his very highest.  Don’t be soft with him.  Don’t give way when you know that your way is the higher way.  Pull him up, don’t let him ever pull you down.  Then his respect for you will strengthen his love for you, and the two together are so much greater than either one apart.  Your instinct would be to do this, and therefore you are the best sort of woman for him.’

Her opinion was given with so much thought, and yet so much decision, that Maude glowed with pride and with pleasure.  There was knowledge and authority behind the words of this unaccountable woman.

‘How sweet you are!’ she cried.  ‘I feel that what you say is true.  I feel that that is what a wife should be to her husband.  Please God, I will be so to Frank!’

‘And one other piece of advice before I leave you,’ said Violet Wright.  ‘Don’t ever take your husband for granted.  Don’t ever accept his kiss or caress as a routine thing.  Don’t ever relax those little attentions which you showed him in the earliest days.  Don’t let the freshness go out of love, for the love may soon follow it, even when duty keeps the man true.  It is the commonest mistake which married women make.  It has caused more unhappiness than any other.  They do not realise it until it is too late.  Be keenly watchful for your husband’s wants and comforts.  It is not the comfort but the attention which he values.  If it is not there he will say nothing, if he is a good fellow, but he notices it all the same.  She has changed, he thinks.  And from that moment he will begin to change also.  Be on your guard against that.  It is very unselfish of me to give you all this wise counsel.’

‘It is very good of you, and I feel that it is all so true.  But why is it unselfish of you?’

‘I only meant that I had no interest in the matter.  What does it matter to me whether you keep his love or not.  And yet I don’t know.’  She suddenly put her arms round Maude, and kissed her upon the cheek.  ‘You are a good little sort, and I hope you will be happy.’

Frank Crosse had disentangled himself from the rush of City men emerging from the Woking station, and he was walking swiftly through the gathering gloom along the vile, deeply-rutted road, which formed a short cut to The Lindens.  Suddenly, with a sinking heart, he was aware of a tall graceful figure which was sweeping towards him.  There could not be two women of that height, who carried themselves in that fashion.

‘Violet!’

‘Hullo, Frankie!  I thought it might be you, but those tall hats and black overcoats make every one alike.  Your wife will be glad to see you.’

‘Violet!  You have ruined our happiness.  How could you have the heart to do it!  It is not for myself I speak, God knows.  But to think of her feelings being so abused, her confidence so shaken - ‘

‘All right, Frankie, there is nothing to be tragic about.’

‘Haven’t you been to my house?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then - ‘

‘I didn’t give you away, my boy.  I was a model of discretion.  I give you my word that it is all right.  And she’s a dear little soul, Frankie.  You’re not worthy to varnish those pretty patent leathers of hers.  You know you’re not.  And by Jove, Frankie, if you had stayed with me yesterday I should never have forgiven you - no, never!  I’ll resign in her favour.  I will.  But in no one else’s, and if ever I hear of your going wrong, my boy, or doing anything but the best with that sweet trusting woman, I’ll make you curse the day that ever you knew me - I will, by the living Jingo.’

‘Do, Violet - you have my leave.’

‘All right.  The least said the soonest mended.  Give me a kiss before we part.’

She raised her veil, and he kissed her.  He was wearing some withered flower in his overcoat, and she took it from him.

‘It’s a souvenir of our friendship, Frankie, and rather a good emblem of it also.  So-long!’ said she, as she turned down the weary road which leads to the station.  A young golfer, getting in at Byfleet, was surprised to see a handsome woman weeping bitterly in the corner of a second-class carriage.  ‘Comm’ up from roastin’ somebody at that damned crematory place,’ was his explanation to his companion.

Frank had a long and animated account from Maude of the extraordinary visitor whom she had entertained.  ‘It’s such a pity, dear, that you don’t know her well, for I should really like to hear every detail about her.  At first I thought she was mad, and then I thought she was odious, and then finally she seemed to be the very wisest and kindest woman that I had ever known.  She made me angry, and frightened, and grieved, and grateful, and affectionate, one after the other, and I never in my life was so taken out of myself by any one.  She
is
so sensible!’

‘Sensible, is she?’

‘And she said that I was - oh!  I can’t repeat it - everything that is nice.’

‘Then she
is
sensible.’

‘And such a high opinion of your taste.’

‘Had she indeed.’

‘Do you know, Frank, I really believe that in a quiet, secret, retiring sort of way she has been fond of you herself.’

‘O Maude, what funny ideas you get sometimes!  I say, if we are going out for dinner, it is high time that we began to dress.’

CHAPTER XX - NO. 5 CHEYNE RO
W

Frank had brought home the
Life of Carlyle,
and Maude had been dipping into it in the few spare half-hours which the many duties of a young housekeeper left her.  At first it struck her as dry, but from the moment that she understood that this was, among other things, an account of the inner life of a husband and a wife, she became keenly interested, and a passionate and unreasonable partisan.  For Frederick and Cromwell and the other great issues her feelings were tolerant but lukewarm.  But the great sex-questions of ‘How did he treat her?’ and of ‘How did she stand it?’ filled her with that eternal and personal interest with which they affect every woman.  Her gentle nature seldom disliked any one, but certainly amongst those whom she liked least, the gaunt figure of the Chelsea sage began to bulk largely.  One night, as Frank sat reading in front of the fire, he suddenly found his wife on her knees upon the rug, and a pair of beseeching eyes upon his face.

‘Frank, dear, I want you to make me a promise.’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Will you grant it?’

‘How can I tell you when I have not heard it?’

‘How horrid you are, Frank!  A year ago you would have promised first and asked afterwards.’

‘But I am a shrewd old married man now.  Well, let me hear it.’

‘I want you to promise me that you will never be a Carlyle.’

‘No, no, never.’

‘Really?’

‘Really and truly.’

‘You swear it?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘O Frank, you can’t think what a relief that is to me.  That dear, good, helpful, little lady - it really made me cry this morning when I thought how she had been used.’

‘How, then?’

‘I have been reading that green-covered book of yours, and he seemed so cold and so sarcastic and so unsympathetic.  He never seemed to appreciate all that she did for him.  He had no thought for her.  He lived in his books and never in her - such a harsh, cruel man!’

Frank went upstairs, and returned with a volume in his hand.

‘When you have finished the ‘Life,’ you must read this, dear.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is her letters.  They were arranged for publication after her death, while her husband was still alive.  You know that - ‘

‘Please take it for granted, darling, that I know nothing.  It is so jolly to have some one before whom it is not necessary to keep up appearances.  Now, begin at the beginning and go ahead.’  She pillowed her head luxuriously against his knees.

‘There’s nothing to tell - or very little.  As you say, they had their troubles in life.  The lady could take particularly good care of herself, I believe.  She had a tongue like a lancet when she chose to use it.  He, poor chap, was all liver and nerves, porridge-poisoned in his youth.  No children to take the angles off them.  Half a dozen little buffer states would have kept them at peace.  However, to hark back to what I was about to say, he outlived her by fifteen years or so.  During that time he collected these letters, and he has annotated them.  You can read those notes here, and the man who wrote those notes loved his wife and cherished her memory, if ever a man did upon earth.’

The graceful head beside his knee shook impatiently.

‘What is the use of that to the poor dead woman?  Why could not he show his love by kindness and thought for her while she was alive?’

‘I tell you, Maude, there were two sides to that.  Don’t be so prejudiced!  And remember that no one has ever blamed Carlyle as bitterly as he has blamed himself.  I could read you bits of these notes - ‘

‘Well, do.’

‘Here’s the first letter, in which she is talking about how they first moved into the house at Cheyne Row.  They spent their early years in Scotland, you know, and he was a man going on to the forties when he came to London.  The success of
Sartor Resartus
encouraged them to the step.  Her letter describes all the incoming.  Here is his comment, written after her death: “In about a week all was swept and garnished, fairly habitable; and continued incessantly to get itself polished, civilised, and beautified to a degree that surprised one.  I have elsewhere alluded to all that, and to my little Jeannie’s conduct of it; heroic, lovely, pathetic, mournfully beautiful as in the light of Eternity that little scene of time now looks to me.  From birth upwards she had lived in opulence, and now became poor for me - so nobly poor.  No such house for beautiful thrift, quiet, spontaneous, nay, as it were, unconscious minimum of money reconciled to human comfort and human dignity, have I anywhere looked upon where I have been.”  Now, Maude, did that man appreciate his wife?’

But the obstinate head still shook.

‘Words, words,’ said she.

‘Yes, but words with the ring of truth in them.  Can’t you tell real feeling from sham?  I don’t believe women can, or they would not be so often taken in.  Here’s the heading of the next letter: “Mournfully beautiful is this letter to me, a clear little household light shining pure and brilliant in the dark obstructive places of the past” - a little later comes the note: “Oh my poor little woman - become poor for me.”’

‘I like to hear him talk like that.  Yes, I do like him better after what you have said, Frank.’

‘You must remember two things about him, Maude.  The first, that he was a Scotchman, who are of all men the least likely to wear their hearts upon their sleeves; the other, that his mind was always grappling with some far-away subject which made him forget the smaller things close by him.’

‘But the smaller things are everything to a woman,’ said Maude.  ‘If ever you forget those smaller things, sir, to be as courteous to your wife as you would be to any other lady, to be loving and thoughtful and sympathetic, it will be no consolation to me to know that you have written the grandest book that ever was.  I should just hate that book, and I believe that in her inmost heart this poor lady hated all the books that had taken her husband away from her.  I wonder if their house is still standing.’

‘Certainly it is.  Would you like to visit it?’

‘I don’t think there is anything I should like more.’

‘Why, Maude, we are getting quite a distinguished circle of acquaintances.  Mr. Pepys last month - and now the Carlyles.  Well, we could not spend a Saturday afternoon better, so if you will meet me to-morrow at Charing Cross, we shall have a cosy little lunch together at Gatti’s, and then go down to Chelsea.’

Maude was a rigid economist, and so was Frank in his way, for with the grand self-respect of the middle classes the thought of debt was unendurable to them.  A cab in preference to a ‘bus gave both of them a feeling of dissipation, but none the less they treated themselves to one on the occasion of this, their little holiday.  It is a delightful thing to snuggle up in, is a hansom; but in order to be really trim and comfortable one has to put one’s arm round one’s companion’s waist.  No one can observe it there, for the vehicle is built upon intelligent principles.  The cabman, it is true, can overlook you through a hole in the roof.  This cabman did so, and chuckled in his cravat.  ‘If that cove’s wife could see him - huddup, then!’ said the cabman.

He was an intelligent cabman too, for having heard Frank say ‘Thomas Carlyle’s house’ after giving the address 5 Cheyne Row, he pulled up on the Thames Embankment.  Right ahead of them was Chelsea Bridge, seen through a dim, soft London haze - monstrous, Cyclopean, giant arches springing over a vague river of molten metal, the whole daintily blurred, as though out of focus.  The glamour of the London haze, what is there upon earth so beautiful?  But it was not to admire it that the cabman had halted.

‘I beg your pardin’, sir,’ said he, in the softly insinuating way of the Cockney, ‘but I thought that maybe the lidy would like to see Mr. Carlyle’s statue.  That’s ‘im, sir, a-sittin’ in the overcoat with the book in ‘is ‘and.’

Frank and Maude got out and entered the small railed garden, in the centre of which the pedestal rose.  It was very simple and plain - an old man in a dressing-gown, with homely wornout boots, a book upon his knee, his eyes and thoughts far away.  No more simple statue in all London, but human to a surprising degree.  They stood for five minutes and stared at it.

‘Well,’ said Frank at last, ‘small as it is, I think it is worthy of the man.’

‘It is so natural.’

‘You can see him think.  By Jove, it is splendid!’  Frank had enough of the true artist to be able to feel that rush of enthusiasm which adequate work should cause.  That old man, with his head shamefully defiled by birds, was a positive joy to him.  Among the soulless, pompous, unspeakable London statues, here at last there was one over which it is pleasant to linger.

‘What other one is there?’

‘Gordon in Trafalgar Square.’

‘Well, Gordon, perhaps.  But our Nelsons and Napiers and Havelocks - to think that we could do no better than that for them!  Now, dear, we have seen the man - let us look at the house!’

It had evidently been an old-fashioned building when first they came to it.  1708 was the date at the corner of the street.  Six or seven drab-coloured, flat-chested, dim-windowed houses stood in a line - theirs wedged in the middle of them.  A poor medallion with a profile head of him had been clumsily let into the wall.  Several worn steps led to the thin high door with an old-fashioned fanlight above it.  Frank rang the bell, and a buxom cheerful matron came at the call.

‘Names in this book, sir -
and
address, if you please,’ said the cheery matron.  ‘One shilling each - thank you, sir.  First door to the left, sir!  This was the dining-room, sir - ‘

But Frank had come to a dead stop in the dim, dull, wood-panelled hall.  In front of them rose the stairs with old-fashioned banisters, cracked, warped, and dusty.

‘It’s awful to think of, Maude - awful!  To think that she ran up those stairs as a youngish woman - that he took them two at a time as an active man, and then that they hobbled and limped down them, old and weary and broken, and now both dead and gone for ever, and the stairs standing, the very rails, the very treads - I don’t know that I ever felt so strongly what bubbles of the air we are, so fragile, so utterly dissolved when the prick comes.’

‘How
could
they be happy in such a house?’ said Maude.  ‘I can feel that there have been sorrow and trouble here.  There is an atmosphere of gloom.’

The matron-attendant approved of emotion, but in its due order.  One should be affected in the dining-room first, and then in the hall.  And so at her summons they followed her into the long, low, quaint room in which this curious couple had lived their everyday life.  Little of the furniture was left, and the walls were lined with collected pictures bearing upon the life of the Carlyles.

‘There’s the fireplace that he smoked his pipe up,’ said Frank.

‘Why up the fireplace?’

‘She did not like the smell in the room.  He often at night took his friends down into the kitchen.’

‘Fancy my driving you into the kitchen.’

‘Well, the habit of smoking was looked upon much less charitably at that time.’

‘And besides, he smoked clay pipes,’ said the matron.  ‘This is considered a good print of Mrs. Carlyle.’

It was a peaky eager face, with a great spirit looking out of it, and possibilities of passion both for good and evil in the keen, alert features.  Just beside her was the dour, grim outline of her husband.  Their life-histories were in those two portraits.

‘Poor dear!’ said Maude.

‘Ay, you may say so,’ said the matron, whose accent showed that she was from the north of the Tweed.  ‘He was gey ill to live wi’.  His own mither said so.  Now, what think you that room was for?’

It was little larger than a cupboard, without window or skylight, opening out of the end of the dining-room.

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘Well, sir, it was the powdering-room in the days when folk wore wigs.  The powder made such a mess that they just had a room for nothing else.  There was a hole in the door, and the man put his head through the hole, and the barber on the other side powdered him out of the flour-dredger.’

It was curious to be brought back in this fashion to those far-off days, and to suddenly realise how many other people had played their tragi-comedies within these walls.  Wigs!  Only the dressy people wore wigs.  So people of fashion in the days of the early Georges trod these same rooms where Carlyle grumbled and his wife fretted.  And they too had grumbled and fretted - or worse perhaps.  It was a ghostly old house.