MRS

MRS. KEITH'S CRIME

CHAPTER XVII

A FORTNIGHT has passed since Mrs. Greenside’s relations arrived, and since Ralph and May first came to see me. The latter have been many since, but never to stay long. Molly has been ill, though she is better again now; I have been ill too, and but for the anxiety about Molly I should have broken down altogether. It seemed as if some terrible thing was overtaking me; a dread I could not express was dogging me; but I kept my lips shut, and, when Dr. George came, tried to look bright and to talk, and he did not even suspect what the effort cost me. After all, it was only the re-action, and now that Molly is looking well again I am getting better too. Only this craving for happiness is on me still, the sick disappointment at not getting strong. I hate my own selfish impatience, and think again and again of the many worse lots there are in the world, but it does it does not reconcile me to the possibilities in my own. Age perhaps gets used to sorrow and pain and makes them its sad companions, but till one is old how is one to help longing for health and brightness? Any yet with youth and age alike I suspect it is the same. We may keep our lips shut, and hear our silence called resignation and many fine names; nut wear what garments we will, our poor human hearts beat the same beneath them all.

I am glad that we are here in this little inn and among these pleasant people. It is impossible to help liking them, or to help being interested in their lives and those things that are much to them. Now that Molly is better again I am content. They have all been kind to us and paid us visits. Even Ralph, who confessed that he did not care for children, likes Molly, and plays with her and caresses her; and he is never tired of going over old times with me. I have tried to make him talk about May, but he always avoids it, though he assents cordially to all I say in her favour and seems pleased with he name is mentioned.

‘ We must get you out for a drive,’ he said yesterday; ‘ it would do you and Molly good. I will try to-morrow to find something in the shape of a carriage that won’t jolt the life out of us. Would you like to go out with me, Molly?’

‘ Yes, very much,’ Molly answered; ‘ but mother too?’

‘ Oh yes; mother too,’ he laughed. ‘ I wouldn’t take you without her for the world; I might lose you by the way. Perhaps May will go with us if you will ask her?’ he suggested.

‘ Or if you ask her,’ I said, amused at his manner.

‘ Then it will depend on the young lady’s temper. She is as perverse as she can be just now.’

‘ I dare say it is your fault.’

‘ Oh, no doubt it is; at the same time, any one more—’ But the entrance of Mrs. Greenside put an end to our talk.

We have not seen much of Mrs. Greenside lately. She is always kind and anxious, but now that her brother is here she is a good deal taken up with all that is going on in the house. Miss Josephs comes in very often, and I like her, though I have not learnt to know her very well. She talks more to Molly than to me. The soft sweet voice in which she first spoke is natural to her; she never raises it, and her smile is never less sweet than on that first day when it caught my fancy, but I know little more of her. Yes, she plays well; the beautiful hands seem to have a charm in them when they touch the piano. I could fancy that all her soul goes down to her finger-ends and finds some strange sympathy in the keys. A haunting voice seems in them—a yearning and tenderness, a memory of many things of which the girl who is playing knows nothing. I sometimes look at her and wonder what is behind the pale face, with the soft shy eyes. There is something very maidenly and gently about her, so that I think the poor sardine’s chance cannot be a very good one; for he is hardly the man to take the fancy of this simple damsel. He would please a merry, laughing, dashing woman of the world better. His good-heartedness and straightforwardness, and all his solid virtues, are things she would know how to value; but this girl would only take them as a matter of course, and expect, besides, a more heroic more romantic lover than I fear it is possible for the sardine to be. I spoke to her about him once, but she did not seem much interested—only said, with a little smile, ‘ aunt told me you knew him, Mrs. Keith,’ and changed the subject. Her father came to see me one day last week. Mrs. Greenside brought him in, and he at once talked of Mr. Cohen.

‘ My sister tells me you know Frederic Cohen,’ he said. ‘ He’s a very decent follow, a very good fellow indeed. I don’t know how it was we did not see more of him.’

‘ I am very glad to hear you say so. He was a staunch friend to me when I was in a great deal of trouble,’ I answered.

‘ I can quite believe it,’ Mr. Josephs said. ‘ I have always found him with the right notions about him. He ought to be in Parliament. He is very sound in his views, and I mean to do my best for him.’

‘ He has very sensible views,’ I said.

‘ He has very sensible views indeed,’ Mr. Josephs repeated. ‘ I remember particularly his remarks about this country, and I have lately proved the truth and value of them for myself.’

‘ Do you like Spain?’ I asked, though I knew what his answer would be.

‘ Like it!’ he exclaimed bitterly, as if all the persecutions of centuries were in his mind.

‘ It is not possible to like it. I have never felt more strongly about anything in my life than I do about Spain. Its very form of government— But then, a lady knows nothing about politics. I feel a compassion for the country itself. It has climate and beauty—everything but a people to bless it.’

‘ And the people?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘ Have done their best to spoil it. The bare, barren land, face to face with this cloudless sky, is a shame and reproach to the lazy, helpless people that encumber it. The Spaniards have done literally nothing for themselves, and have undone all that has been done for them.’

‘ But this is a reproach to their rulers rather than to the people,’ Mrs. Greenside said.

‘ Individually they are surely well enough: the people are not responsible for the laws they have to obey.’

He shook his head. ‘ People make their own laws in these days—indirectly, of course, but still they make them, if they choose. Spain is too far behind the century to have found this out. The people are warped and priest-ridden and callous.’

‘ One never imagines till one comes here that Spaniards are callous and apathetic, but expects to find them full of fire,’ I said.

‘ So they are when they are roused, fire of a wrong kind; in any good, manly cause they are never conspicuous. And, apart from their public morals, the people are not good individually, Mrs. Keith; they are cruel and lying and passionate. Where we at worst use fists, they use knives.’

‘ But this is from uncontrolled passions,’ Mrs. Greenside said, with the air of a person being coached up for an important conversation in the future.

‘ Yes, it is from uncontrolled passions,’ he answered, ‘ and from centuries of misrule; a people wholly destitute of sympathies and overweighed with superstitions, with a barren land and an all but bankrupt exchequer.’

‘ And why are the French and Italians so different?’ I asked.

‘ The French have a love of country and enthusiasms that save them from many things, and the Italians have their simple tastes and love nature—’

‘ The Germans have also a great love of country,’ Mrs. Greenside began, as if she were trying the effect of a remark.

‘ What nonsense, Harriet; we don’t want to discuss all the nations on earth,’ Mr. Josephs said quickly; and then turning to me, he went on, ‘ I have been much struck in watching the landlady here. She sits in the evening fanning herself and talking to her lover. The other night a sick dog lay down at her feet; she kicked it away—’

‘ Oh, but perhaps she does not like animals,’ Mrs. Greenside said.

‘ I was going on. A few minutes later a deformed boy, with the disease in his eyes that is the curse, or one of the curses, of Southern Spain, came up and said something. She treated him with open disgust, and, turning to her companion, said it was a pity he was allowed to live; the deformed and the sick ought to die.’

‘ What did the boy say?’ I asked, with a shudder, vowing that her hands should never touch Molly.

‘ Not a word; that is the curious part of it. To him it was only the expression of natural cruelty—cruelty that was not in her alone, but in him too; he will mete it out to the others as it is meted out to him. No doubt he throws stones at foreigners, and especially at women, already.’

‘ Perhaps she is a disciple of Darwin, and believes in the survival of the fittest,’ Mrs. Greenside said earnestly, but with a slightly abashed manner. She is a clever woman, and by the light of recent theories often makes appropriate remarks, but she seems a little afraid of her brother, and does not talk as well as usual before him.

‘ Then she should despair of herself,’ he said, with grim humour. ‘ She is as little fit to survive, or less, than the boy she insulted. If she marries this Spaniard with whom she spends most of her time, and has children, they may take after her.’

‘ Mr. Josephs, your are worse than Mr. Cohen about the Spaniards.’

He laughed at the remark. ‘ Our race does not owe them much,’ he said bitterly.

‘ Ah, but the days of persecution are past.’

‘ Only because the safety of persecution has passed. I do not believe that the Spaniard is one whit less cruel now than in the days of the Inquisition. His religious fervour has cooled, but not his love of cruelty, as the bull-fight proves. Give him the excuse, and he would enjoy a burning as much as ever.’

He stopped suddenly, as if he thought he had expressed quite enough opinion regarding Spain, and asked after Molly.

‘ She is better, thank you,’ I answered. ‘ She is out there on the balcony with your daughter.’

‘ Is she?’ and he got up with a pleased expression on his face, and went to the window and saw Helen in the low chair, which had been placed round the corner to shelter it from any possible draught, nursing Molly. ‘ Why, Nellie, you make quite a picture. So that’s your little one, eh, Mrs. Keith?’

‘ I want to come to you, mummy,’ said Molly.

‘ Oh, Molly,’ pleaded Miss Josephs. ‘ Have I not been kind to you?’

‘ Yes, you are very kind,’ Molly said beseechingly; ‘ but I do like being with mother so.’

‘ Of course you do. Father dear, shall I come and read to you, or what would you like to do?’ and she gave Molly up to me.

‘ Well, let me see. I suppose you are ill, Harriet?’ he asked, as if Mrs. Greenside’s illness was a matter of course.

‘ You know I am never well,’ she said reproachfully, as she went off with her relations.

‘ Mrs. Keith, if you are writing to Cohen at any time, you can give him my very kind regards,’ Mr. Josephs looked back to say.

‘ He is very vulgar,’ I heard Mrs. Greenside remark. ‘ I wonder you encourage him. I know Helen did not like him.’

‘ Ah, that was because you put her up to it. I think he is a very decent fellow.’

All this was said as they went downstairs to the patio, and all the hotel as well as myself could hear it.

I wish now I had told Mr. Josephs of the sardine’s letter. It was only the chance to speak of it that I wanted, and somehow that did not arise. It came two days ago, and this is what it said:

‘ DEAR MRS. KEITH,—Your letter was very welcome. You have fallen in with the young lady, and I have no doubt she and her father have had a good time without their amiable relation. I see your are as bad as the rest of your sex, and determined not to let one have any peace. Still, if Miss Josephs is willing, I will do my best to please you. She did not seem willing last time I saw her, but the best of a feminine mind is, that you never know how soon it will change. Let me know when she arrives. I am half in mind to come and see you; might get offered a passage home in the Flying Dutchman. No place like a yacht for quarrelling—or the reverse. Don’t be surprised if I turn up one morning; in fact, I should but for Mrs. Greenside. That gentle female was too much for me last time, and might be again. I hope the little girl is better. Glad you have cut Malaga. Told you the Spaniards were a bad lot, and you’ll find Josephs will agree with you and me. To return to the other subject: she is a very nice little girl, if Mrs. Greenside hasn’t spoilt her.

‘ I should like to hear from you very much when there is any news.

‘ Your ever,

‘ F. COHEN.’

I wonder what will be the end of it? I do not like to write and raise hopes that may never be realized, and, though the father is evidently prepossessed in the sardine’s favour, the daughter has not made a sign of caring for him in any way. One the whole, I come to the conclusion that it will be wiser not to write at all just yet, but to wait and see how things go on. It would be pleasant if he came here only to be refused.

Mr. Josephs’ account of the landlady haunts me; it confirms all that I have felt about her myself. I wish I could hear of a good French or English maid, for if these kind people staying here now go away before we do, and I fall ill, who will wait on Molly? It would be impossible to trust her to these cruel Spaniards.

A week later, when I am again thinking this over, May Vincent and Helen Josephs come in to ask if they may put Molly to bed? She is a sort of plaything to these happy girls, and they are never tired of doing things for her. When Molly is in bed they both stay to talk, and I think each half wishes the other would go away. At last, May, who has evidently a bit of news that surprises her, can restrain her merry tongue no longer.

‘ Lord and Lady Bexley are not going to Bordighera after all, Mrs. Keith,’ she says. ‘ They are going to the Pyrenees, and they do not start for a fortnight, so they will be here longer than we expected.’

‘ Yes?’ After all, there is nothing remarkable in that.

‘ And they have asked Mrs. Greenside and Miss Martin to go with them; and she will go, we think—’

‘ And leave her brother?’ I ask, in surprise. After all her professions of affection, and after they have come so far on purpose to see her, it seems a little odd that she should leave her relations behind in this little place, for they are going to stay over Christmas. Mr. Josephs does not want to get back to England before the Session begins.

‘ Oh, papa won’t mind,’ Miss Josephs says; ‘ he likes aunt to enjoy herself, and she often gets tired of us after a little while.’

It is strange that Lady Bexley should invite Mrs. Greenside, for neither she nor Lord Bexley appeared to like her at first. It surprises me too that Mrs. Greenside did not mention the arrangement, for she was in here to-day and she generally tells everybody all that she is going to do; but this is soon explained away by her niece.

‘ Aunt h as been envying Lord and Lady Bexley so much,’ the little Jewess goes on,

‘ and saying how many things her state of health makes her miss;—it has made her miss seeing Granada, for one thing. And then she told Lord Bexley that she wished she were going to the Pyrenees, that it would be so interesting to watch whether they would inspire him sufficiently to write another book; quite suddenly this afternoon Lady Bexley went up to her and asked her if she would care to go with them. I think it took her by surprise, for they have not been very intimate.

‘ But if Mrs. Greenside is not able to go even to Granada, surely she cannot get to the Pyrenees?’ I say.

‘ Poor auntie said it would be a great undertaking for her; but she is so fond of intellectual society she evidently cannot resist accepting the invitation—’

Suddenly Molly calls from the inner room, ‘ I only want just to kiss you, mummy dear;’ and she puts her arms around my neck, and says, ‘ Poor mother, do you remember how you used to cry about Jack? Poor dear Jack, I have been thinking of him.’

Miss Josephs comes to the bedroom door almost before I have time to answer, and says,

‘ May has gone down, Mrs. Keith. She is coming to see you after diner, with Mr. Bicknell, I think. Shall I play to you a little while? I know you like to hear me sometimes,’ she adds, as if to apologise for asking.

So she goes to the piano, and plays first one thing and then another, while I sit listening here, holding Molly’s hand and hiding my face down in the bed-clothes. It brings the past all back before my eyes. At first all is bright and happy. There are the green trees and the woods, and Arthur coming over the meadow. Presently I hear Jack upon the rocking-horse, going to and fro, hitting the floor with a sounding blow as he comes forward, almost stopping with a little uncertain swerve as he goes backward—there he goes, to and fro, to the sound of the girl’s playing. Suddenly she begins an old minuet. She played it a few days since, and told me its history—how it was found in manuscript among a pile of music in an old country-house in Germany, and brought to England by the finder a hundred years ago. It set me thinking then, it sets me dreaming now, and I shudder as I think of all the dead people who have danced to its stately movement. How strange it is that I can see quite plainly, here with my eyes shut, so much that has never been save in my imagination. There is a long room with a polished floor, and the windows have little diamond-shaped panes of glass. By the fireplace, in which the fire has burnt dead and low, an old woman is sitting, crouching over the cinders. At the spinet by the window, with her face looking out a faded, tired woman is playing and watching, for ever watching for some one who never comes. She is playing the minuet just as the Jewess is. The woman by the fire looks up. ‘ He’ll never come,’ she says—‘ he’ll never come again.’ Then in at the door and softly over the polished boards the dancers come. There are high heels and diamond dresses, they wear wigs and powder; and soft and slow and stately they begin to dance. The sounds go through me; they are sounds from the dead world coming back to the living. There the dancers go, prim and stately, young and old, fresh and withered, in and out the turns of the strange old dance. There is once in a peach-coloured coat, and a lady who looks up as her train sweeps past him. Her little slipper is down at heel; the diamond is missing from her earring. He stoops over her hand and whispers. So they go on, till the music sounds farther and farther off, fainter and fainter, and with drooping heads and weary feet they steal away—ah, whiter? Into the past again, back to the dead people among whom they have slept so long, the dead to whom we all are going. The sounds coming from the piano are but the sounds that have been awakened for many in years gone by, that may still awake again and again in the years to come. A child may bring them to life, a simple girl has power to send them on into space, and yet there is never one, wise or simple, that can bring back to life the atoms that have moved, and laughed, and wept and loved, and forgot, as they listened to those haunting notes in the past. Oh! what is life, and where is it? Is it here in my heart that is so sore, or in my little child sleeping there; or is it in those sounds that wander on anywhere that time or chance or fancy sends them? It seems, as I sit here and listen, as if life for ever held fast by some strange force is theirs; life that is held but a little while by our own longing that is ours—life that is waiting for some freak or fancy to let it slip away into the eternal silence.

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