LITMIR.BIZ

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shortly.

      “We’re used to it — we never notice her, poor old gran’ma.”

      “But she must have made a difference to you — she must make a big difference at the bottom, even if you don’t know it,” I said.

      “She’d got such a strong character,” he said, musing, “— she seemed to understand me. She was a real friend to me before she was so bad. Sometimes I happen to look at her — generally I never see her, you know how I mean — but sometimes I do — and then — it seems a bit rotten —”

      He smiled at me peculiarly, “— it seems to take the shine off things,” he added, and then, smiling again with ugly irony —“She’s our skeleton in the closet.” He indicated her large bulk.

      The church bells began to ring. The grey church stood on a rise among the fields not far away, like a handsome old stag looking over towards the inn. The five bells began to play, and the sound came beating upon the window.

      “I hate Sunday night,” he said restlessly.

      “Because you’ve nothing to do?” I asked.

      “I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like a gag, and you feel helpless. I don’t want to go to church, and hark at the bells, they make you feel uncomfortable.”

      “What do you generally do?” I asked.

      “Feel miserable — I’ve been down to Mayhew’s these last two Sundays, and Meg’s been pretty mad. She says it’s the only night I could stop with her, or go out with her. But if I stop with her, what can I do? — and if we go out, it’s only for half an hour. I hate Sunday night — it’s a dead end.”

      When we went downstairs, the table was cleared, and Meg was bathing the dark baby. Thus she was perfect. She handled the bonny, naked child with beauty of gentleness. She kneeled over him nobly. Her arms and her bosom and her throat had a nobility of roundness and softness. She drooped her head with the grace of a Madonna, and her movements were lovely, accurate and exquisite, like an old song perfectly sung. Her voice, playing and soothing round the curved limbs of the baby, was like water, soft as wine in the sun, running with delight.

      We watched humbly, sharing the wonder from afar.

      Emily was very envious of Meg’s felicity. She begged to be allowed to bathe the second baby. Meg granted her bounteous permission:

      “Yes, you can wash him if you like, but what about your frock?”

      Emily, delighted, began to undress the baby whose hair was like crocus petals. Her fingers trembled with pleasure as she loosed the little tapes. I always remember the inarticulate delight with which she took the child in her hands, when at last his little shirt was removed, and felt his soft white limbs and body. A distinct, glowing atmosphere seemed suddenly to burst out around her and the child, leaving me outside. The moment before she had been very near to me, her eyes searching mine, her spirit clinging timidly about me. Now I was put away, quite alone, neglected, forgotten, outside the glow which surrounded the woman and the baby.

      “Ha! — Ha-a-a!” she said with a deep-throated vowel, as she put her face against the child’s small breasts, so round, almost like a girl’s, silken and warm and wonderful. She kissed him, and touched him, and hovered over him, drinking in his baby sweetnesses, the sweetness of the laughing little mouth’s wide, wet kisses, of the round, waving limbs, of the little shoulders so winsomely curving to the arms and the breasts, of the tiny soft neck hidden very warm beneath the chin, tasting deliciously with her lips and her cheeks all the exquisite softness, silkiness, warmth, and tender life of the baby’s body.

      A woman is so ready to disclaim the body of a man’s love; she yields him her own soft beauty with so much gentle patience and regret; she clings to his neck, to his head and his cheeks, fondling them for the soul’s meaning that is there, and shrinking from his passionate limbs and his body. It was with some perplexity, some anger and bitterness that I watched Emily moved almost to ecstasy by the baby’s small, innocuous person.

      “Meg never found any pleasure in me as she does in the kids,” said George bitterly, for himself.

      The child, laughing and crowing, caught his hands in Emily’s hair and pulled dark tresses down, while she cried out in remonstrance, and tried to loosen the small fists that were shut so fast. She took him from the water and rubbed him dry, with marvellous gentle little rubs, he kicking and expostulating. She brought his fine hair into one silken up-springing of ruddy gold like an aureole. She played with his tiny balls of toes, like wee pink mushrooms, till at last she dare detain him no longer, when she put on his flannel and his night-gown and gave him to Meg.

      Before carrying him to bed Meg took him to feed him. His mouth was stretched round the nipple as he sucked, his face was pressed closer and closer to the breast, his fingers wandered over the fine white globe, blue-veined and heavy, trying to hold it. Meg looked down upon him with a consuming passion of tenderness, and Emily clasped her hands and leaned forward to him. Even thus they thought him exquisite.

      When the twins were both asleep, I must tiptoe upstairs to see them. They lay cheek by cheek in the crib next the large white bed, breathing little, ruffling breaths, out of unison, so small and pathetic with their tiny shut fingers. I remembered the two larks.

      From the next room came a heavy sound of the old woman’s breathing. Meg went in to her. As in passing I caught sight of the large, prone figure in the bed, I thought of Guy de Maupassant’s “Toine”, who acted as an incubator.

      Chapter 5

       The Dominant Motif of Suffering

       Table of Contents

      The old woman lay still another year, then she suddenly sank out of life. George ceased to write to me, but I learned his news elsewhere. He became more and more intimate with the Mayhews. After old Mayhew’s bankruptcy, the two sons had remained on in the large dark house that stood off the Nottingham Road in Eberwich. This house had been bequeathed to the oldest daughter by the mother. Maud Mayhew, who was married and separated from her husband, kept house for her brothers. She was a tall, large woman with high cheek-bones and oily black hair looped over her ears. Tom Mayhew was also a handsome man, very dark, and ruddy, with insolent bright eyes.

      The Mayhews’ house was called the “Hollies”. It was a solid building, of old red brick, standing fifty yards back from the Eberwich highroad. Between it and the road was an unkempt lawn, surrounded by very high black holly trees. The house seemed to be imprisoned among the bristling hollies. Passing through the large gate, one came immediately upon the bare side of the house and upon the great range of stables. Old Mayhew had in his day stabled thirty or more horses there. Now grass was between the red bricks, and all the bleaching doors were shut, save perhaps two or three which were open for George’s horses.

      The “Hollies” became a kind of club for the disconsolate, “better-off” men of the district. The large dining-room was gloomily and sparsely furnished, the drawing-room was a desert, but the smaller morning-room was comfortable enough, with wicker arm-chairs, heavy curtains, and a large sideboard. In this room George and the Mayhews met with several men two or three times a week. There they discussed horses and made mock of the authority of women. George provided the whisky, and they all gambled timidly at cards. These bachelor parties were the source of great annoyance to the wives of the married men who attended them.

      “He’s quite unbearable when he’s been at those Mayhews’,” said Meg. “I’m sure they do nothing but cry us down.”

      Maud Mayhew kept apart from these meetings, watching over her two children. She had been very unhappily married, and now was reserved, silent. The women of Eberwich watched her as she went swiftly along the street in the morning with her basket, and they gloried a little in her overthrow, because she was too proud to accept consolation, yet they were sorry in their hearts for her, and she was never touched with calumny. George saw her frequently, but she treated

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