Sleep in Peace (31 page)

Laura sighed and desisted; but the following evening she made another attempt.

“Papa,” she said, “I really mean it about the Slade School, you know.”

“What?” cried Mr. Armistead, emerging from his paper explosively.

“I seriously want to go to the Slade School and study art,” said Laura.

“I don't know what you're thinking about, Laura,” said Mr. Armistead severely. “A good, well-brought-up girl like you, wanting to neglect her home and go gadding about the country. I'm disappointed in you. I thought you'd more sense of duty. What's the good of making such a fuss as you and Ludo do about going to Church before breakfast and all that sort of thing, if you've no more sense of what's right than to want to leave home and neglect your family? There's your sister, too—she needs you with her just now. And you want to go off on a selfish whim of this kind! Besides, I can't afford it.”

“If I had my Art Master's Certificate I could teach and earn money,” wept Laura, overcome by this representation of herself as a hard-hearted egoist devouring her father's substance.

“Pshaw! Nonsense! I never heard such nonsense, Laura! If this is due to Grace Hinchliffe, I shall begin to wish I'd never allowed you to have anything to do with her,” said Mr. Armistead severely. “Now don't snivel, Laura. There's nothing to cry about. Come here and give me a kiss, and don't let me hear any of this nonsense again.”

Laura dutifully put a damp kiss on his cheek, and withdrew to her bedroom in tears. Ludo, hearing her sobs from the bathroom, where he was shaving, dropped his brush and came to her in alarm, in vest and trousers, with his braces hanging, his chin smothered in soap. But when he heard what was wrong his face changed.

“Why should you want to go away, Laura?” he said in a tone of disappointment. “Just when we're all so comfortable together?” Laura looked into his kind brown eyes and sighed; it was impossible to explain to him what useless noodles Ludo and Laura Armistead appeared to (for instance) Duchay.

The next day was Sunday. Laura, who had been awake half the night, weeping and praying for guidance, went to Church in a highly emotional, not to say hysterical, state of mind. Her head ached, her eyes were sore, her whole body throbbed with the anguish of indecision. From time to time her tears choked her; but by gulping and swallowing, and applying a handkerchief during the prayers, she managed to conceal this more or less from the congregation. Mr. Armistead, however, seemed presently to perceive that something was wrong, and peered at her crossly over his glasses, so that Laura's heart sank still further, and she began to feel that she could not support any more opposition. The closing hymn, as it chanced, was
New every morning is the love
. A nice cheerful hymn, thought Laura, trying hard to be cheerful. And presently she found herself singing the lines:

New treasures still, of countless price
God will provide for sacrifice
.

Laura gave a great sigh. Her problem was settled, and settled by divine guidance; the Slade School, the Art Master's Certificate, were treasures provided to be sacrificed. She would not shrink from the sacrifice, she would perform her duty with noble promptness. Accordingly, when the three Armisteads had returned home and were standing in the dining-room waiting for dinner, Laura rallied all her forces, and slipping her hand through Papa's arm, as he stood with his back to the fire, legs astride, she whispered:

“Papa, I've given up the Slade School.”

“Come, that's better!” said Mr. Armistead cheerfully, jingling the coins in his pockets.

Just at this moment Gwen and Frederick arrived—they often came to Blackshaw House for dinner on Sunday.

“What's better, Papa?” demanded Gwen.

“Laura has given up an absurd notion she had of studying art
in London,” explained Mr. Armistead, kissing his elder daughter tenderly.

“But why give it up?” expostulated Frederick, suddenly colouring, and turning on Laura a glance which, though it saw none of the external signals of her recent distress, comprehended it wholly.

“Laura has a duty to her family,” said Mr. Armistead sententiously.

“She has a duty to her talent too,” urged Frederick.

“What talent?” murmured Gwen.

“Laura, there are Art classes at the Technical,” persisted Frederick. “You can study there. I'll get you a syllabus.”

“Are there really? Will you really?” cried Laura, to whom this seemed indeed an answer to prayer.

“Laura's first duty is in her home,” said Mr. Armistead severely, as Mildred brought in dinner, and the party sat to table.

“No doubt. But Christ himself urged the duty of self-culture. Laura ought not to keep her talent laid up in a napkin,” said Frederick, unfolding his own.

“Fred, what
are
you talking about?” said his wife.

“I'm quoting the New Testament. Luke nineteen, I believe,” said Frederick.

“When Frederick begins quoting, I give up arguing,” said Gwen with a
moue:

The phrase: “give up arguing” was very suitable to the present stage of Gwen's marriage, which had gone through almost as many vicissitudes as months.

The honeymoon began happily; Gwen was grateful to Frederick for giving her the status of wife, and also for admitting her to that experience of sex which she deeply desired—all the more deeply because she never admitted the desire even to herself. At
first, then, the mere experience was enough. But Frederick, though an ardent lover, was respectful and unselfish in his passion, qualities which Gwen (who, not loving him for himself, judged all his behaviour merely by its effect on her) contemptuously designated as timid and unmanly; when she retreated, in a negative essentially feminine, designed to provoke compulsion, Frederick took her at her word and complied with what he believed to be her wishes. To Gwen this seemed a denial, a rejection, of her own power of attraction as a woman; surely, she argued instinctively, what he truly wanted he would take, and since he did not take he could not want. So on these occasions she positively hated Frederick because he did not enforce submission; and, hating him, repelled his advances all the more stringently. Both therefore returned to Hudley irritable and unsatisfied.

For a time their joy in their charming new house—all their own; their own little home—reunited them; but soon the house itself became a source of irritation. Frederick regarded a house as a place for human beings to live and be happy in, and all its paraphernalia as appointed to that end; Gwen regarded a house, with its furniture, covers, ornaments and other equipment, as a piece of valuable property, the state of which was a criterion of her ability as a housewife. Accordingly, to Gwen Frederick seemed maddeningly careless and hatefully indifferent to what was really her deepest and highest interest; while to Frederick Gwen's fuss about what he regarded as the fetish of property seemed disgustingly vulgar, a blemish on the fair and noble character of his adored wife. When Frederick sprawled on the drawing-room cushions and omitted to plump them out, so that creases defaced their smooth brown, Gwen the housewife felt really insulted in her womanhood, as if her husband had deliberately dirtied her face. When Gwen plumped out the cushions immediately Frederick rose, Frederick felt insulted in his humanity; to value a man less than a cushion was to him the degrading error of the whole capitalist system, which he encountered at every turn of the business
world, against which he was in the strongest possible revolt. Each strove, by characteristic methods, to convert the other. Gwen, who could not explain, because she did not know, that her pride in her household goods was bound up with her pride as a wife, made a multitude of rules for Frederick—where he should remove his boots, where put his glass, when blinds were to be drawn to keep the sun from the carpet, and so on—which Frederick habitually forgot; whereupon Gwen nagged at him. Frederick tried to reason with Gwen about the lack of proportion in her behaviour.

“Is it worth a lifetime of worry to save sixpence?” he urged.

“There needn't
be
any worry if you'd only
thin,”
retorted Gwen. “If you'd behave like a grown-up person and not like a child.”

“It's you who behave like a child,” replied Frederick sombrely. “You're so illogical. All this locking and barring and bolting and dusting and washings—what's the
point
of it, Gwen? Surely the only point of a house is to live happily in it? But you make yourself—and me—uncomfortable for the sake of the house. It's the Victorian fetish of property, what Whitman calls the mania for owning things. I wish you'd read this new fellow, John Galsworthy.”

“Read! Read!” exclaimed Gwen contemptuously. “Reading's the end of everything; with you. What is it to me what Mr. Silly Worthy says? lean have my own opinion, can't I?”

“Of course,” agreed Frederick courteously.

But Gwen was maddened by this kind of agreement.

“You are
silly
, Frederick,” she said in a sullen anger, hating him because, while (as she thought) he was not strong enough to overbear her, he never seemed to mind being overborne, and so there was no pleasure in overbearing him. There was the matter of Church, for instance. Gwen had not the slightest intention of losing caste by going to Chapel with Frederick, and was prepared for a battle on the subject which should end in her victory.
But it simply never occurred to Frederick to request his wife to change her religion on his account; such a demand would have appeared the most monstrous tyranny to him. He therefore took pains to see that she was able to leave the house on Sunday morning in good time to reach the Hudley Parish Church, which the Armisteads attended, while he himself joined his own parents in Cromwell Street Congregational, After a few weeks of this, Gwen one Sunday morning delayed a long time in their bedroom putting on her hat.

“You'll be late, Gwen,” called Frederick anxiously. Receiving no reply, he bounded upstairs, and found Gwen in tears before her mirror. “What's the matter, dear?” he asked in his tenderest tone, taking her in his arms.

Gwen between sobs informed him that she did not like going to Church without her husband; it looked as if they had quarrelled, it didn't look respectable.

“You'd rather come to Cromwell Street with me?” said Frederick.

“No,” cried Gwen.

Frederick's face grew serious. “God is everywhere,” he said thoughtfully. “I will study the doctrines of your Church and find how far they are compatible with my beliefs.”

Accordingly he was busy for a fortnight with a prayer-book and some theological tomes, and at the end of that time announced that, while he could not give whole-hearted assent to either of their parents' religions, there was much good in both, and if it would be helpful to his wife he would go with her family and his own alternately, morning and night. Gwen therefore was able to display him in the Armistead pew pretty much as she desired, but Frederick's intellectual philosophisings had robbed the conquest of the feeling of victory; as usual, he seemed an equal making terms, not a conquered man surrendering, and if he was not defeated, she had not won.

On the other hand, when Frederick, as happened sometimes, triumphed in their contests, Gwen's sense of defeat was all the more bitter because Frederick never seemed conscious that he had won, or even that there had been a battle at all. There was the matter of the mushrooms, for instance. Gwen was always asking Frederick what he would like to eat for their evening meal, a high tea. It was a difficult meal for which to cater for two persons, and Gwen was often hard put to it to find something savoury each day. She would have been really glad, therefore, of suggestions; but instead of putting the matter thus, when Frederick would have given his mind to it and produced a long list of suitable dishes, she expressed herself as desirous of giving Frederick his choice. Frederick, who hardly knew what he ate unless there was something wrong with it, and would not have imposed his preferences on his wife if he had been the greatest gourmet, mumbled vaguely and evaded the question, for which Gwen scolded him. It was with an air of triumph, therefore, that Frederick one day at dinner, in answer to her customary question, replied firmly:

“I should like some mushrooms.”

A shadow clouded Gwen's face, and she exclaimed crossly: “Mushrooms! Whatever made you think of those?”

Frederick explained that he had seen some, in a basket in a greengrocer's window in Prince's Road, which he passed on his way from Blackshaw Mills.

“Well, if you want mushrooms,” said Gwen in a hard, shrill tone: “You must buy them yourself.
I
can't afford to buy them out of my housekeeping allowance.”

“Oh, are they costly? I didn't know. It seems odd that they should be expensive, when they just grow themselves in the fields,” observed Frederick, and he began a consideration of the various factors which might raise the price of mushrooms—labour, transport and the like. Gwen meanwhile fumed over his unreasonableness. All these times she had begged him to express
a preference, so that she might have the pleasure of ministering to it; and now when at last he expressed one, it was so absurdly, impossibly, extravagant!

“If you want mushrooms, you must buy them yourself,” she repeated disagreeably when Frederick left for the mill.
“I
can't afford to buy them out of my housekeeping allowance.”

It was Friday; Gwen went out to do the household shopping, returned home in good time, set the table and prepared everything, save the main dish, for tea. She considered various ways of cooking mushrooms, chose one which was sufficiently delectable and yet not too lengthy, and arranged the necessary materials and utensils on the kitchen table. She now felt pleased about the mushrooms; it gave her an agreeable wifely sensation thus to minister to Frederick's preferences. At last she heard his key in the door. (It was one of Frederick's grievances that his house, which he liked to imagine free to all the world, was kept locked up like a gaol.) Gwen rushed to meet him, forbearing even to shed her apron in her zeal.