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MRS. KEITH'S CRIME

 

 

CHAPTER XXVI

 

 

TO-DAY the Vincents go. The ship arrived this morning; to-night at eleven it sails for Gibraltar. I do not think things are any better between May and Ralph. The former only says, ‘ Don’t let us talk of him, dear Mrs. Keith,’ if I mention his name; and the latter I have not seen at all these last few days. I went downstairs this morning, and sat for a long while with Molly in the patio, hoping he might see me; but there was not a sign of him, and we never go into the midday meal now, for Molly is not strong enough to sit it out. It is a strange thing that no one sees her condition; but eyes not sharpened by love are often blind enough.

            Dr. George has gone, and, kind and good as he was, it is a relief that he has, for his going lessens the terrible strain upon me. I have dreaded lest he should suspect what it is that carries me through these strange days, and makes me feel that through all the pain and loneliness, through even the last hours here with my little one—through all the agony of the parting and the long journey home, while she sleeps here, I can walk calmly.

            Yet how I mess the kind eyes and the strong face, the almost tender voice and simple, manly nature. There are some people who seem to be born to see and hear and think only the best in those about them. Of aught besides they have no consciousness and in it no belief, so that, ashamed, it slips away before them and vanishes out of sight. Dr. George is one of these: just an ordinary mortal man, yet unwittingly an evangelist to all the lower natures near him. To look at him made me long to be braver and better, and he made me realise as no one else ever could how great was the happiness of the days that are past.

            Yet, I miss him, and did not know I had leaned so much on him; but I am thankful he has gone—it is better....I look at Molly and kiss her....My sweet, we shall be alone soon, and how we will live in each other those last, last days, when no one can enter more upon us, except the doctor coming to see how long a time we shall have together—those days when there will be no longer the sound of happy feet and merry laughter up and down the stairs, for the joyousness of other people, that strange sight that is now before my eyes, will have vanished. I feel sometimes as a dead woman might feel taken to see a play, and made to laugh and talk and applaud, able to see and hear and behave as though she were alive, so that the players did not suspect her of being a corpse. But when the players have gone home, then—then—then a little real life will come back for the days we have yet to spend together. Molly—my Molly, but let us go back to it.

.         .         .         .         .         .         .         .

          It is getting late in the afternoon, and the Vincents are coming to say good-bye, and all this time in the next room Mr. Walters is painting the beggars over the way. It is a wonderful thing to awake up from sleep—the sleep that steals over a worn and tired soul like mine—to awake and realise how it has nourished you. Molly and I have been sleeping since one o’clock. We look at each other with a smile. We feel half well again; we will go and see Mr. Walters and the beggars. Get up, dear Molly, and let us go back to the play....I can hear a player speaking.

            ‘ You know, my love,’ he says, ‘ that old lady is a most estimable person, but she must be taught to take bolder flights. Perhaps it would be more correct to say she had better be taught the value of weights and measures. To send twenty-five pounds to a place like this, is a mere act of improvidence and folly. A little sum like that one fritters away on purpose when one is abroad, and thinks of no more, so that sending it is just putting temptation in our way, and trying to divert us from the frugal habits we have been a great pains to cultivate.’

            ‘ But twenty-five pounds ought to go a good way, Joe.’

            ‘ My dear, you might as well try to throw a feather over a high wall as expect that we could travel far on a modest sum like that.’

            ‘ But, Joe dear, why don’t you write to Aunt Emma yourself?’

            ‘ Well, my love, if you wish me to write, I’ll write; but it strikes me that there are some few things in which you women beat us men, and one of them is getting money when it is really needed.’

            ‘ I wish you would let Mr. Cohen have that picture; you only got fifteen for the fellow to it, and yet you are refusing twenty from him. Twenty pounds would pay our bill here.’

            ‘ That’s true about the fifteen pounds, my love, but whether twenty pounds will pay our bill here depends a good deal upon the humour Manuela is in when she takes to the composing of that bill.’

            ‘ Joe, that woman is a perfect wretch. I heard her say—’ and her voice gets lower, but I catch the sound of my own name, and listen against my will; ‘ and she thought it would be a good thing when it was gone. She had no patience with sick children,’ she whispers. They are talking of Molly.

            ‘ She is going to marry Don Carlos when we are all gone, that man who owns the flies; and, judging from his looks, I should say he’ll let her know who—Here’s Mrs. Keith with her little one. These beggars, Mrs. Keith, are in such a festive state of mind that there is no fitting them into their proper position. It is only this last few minutes that they have been quiet at all.’

            I sit and watch the beggars, while Mr. Walters goes on trying to work. It is apparently the same group that has hung round the doorway ever since we came. One is crouching on the ground, not looking up at the passers-by or heeding those who enter the church. Beside him is a man with a withered arm;—the number of withered arms one sees in Spain! He keeps up a constant dirge, but the others are silent; not one of the ragged beings, brown and dusty and dirty, say a word. They only hold out their hands silent; as if trusting to the sight of their wretchedness to touch the passers-by. There seems to be a certain rank among beggars here, as among other people. The aristocracy does not importune; it stands on its own most venerable legs, and those who will not support it, who are not moved to help by the sight of dirt or disease or rags, let them go home and have it out with their consciences. If they will that the poor shall die, and the oldest institution of proud Spain shall vanish, on them be the shame and the reproach; the Church will make it uneasy enough for the callous ones some day. Then there is the middle class, that asks and whines and follows; and the lowest class, that insults and insists, and will not be sent empty away. And all of these stand on their dignity, and have learnt the ins and outs of polite language, and resent a want of manner even in a donor. The curious thing about it all is that begging seems to rank as an honourable profession, carrying with it a certain demand for consideration, and to suggest that it is a disgrace would, to a Spanish mind, be almost imbecile. I sometimes wonder what Spain would be like without beggars, and with more trees.

            ‘ I quite agree with you, Mrs. Keith,’ Mr. Walters says. ‘But still, there are two things to be said for Spanish beggars: they are excellent to paint, and they enjoy themselves thoroughly. I never look at them but I feel that they must have such a real good time on the whole that they are wise not to give in. To be the whole day long in the sunshine, wear clothes that a gipsy would not steal or a man cast up from the waves put on, have just enough money dropped into your hand to buy food and smoke with, and to go about, if you change your locality, without so much as a carpet-bag—you can bet it is a life that a beggar would be a fool to give up because he is unfortunate as to have moral instincts. I think myself that moral instincts are overdone, and that if some people did not leave them alone we should have no variety let in the world.’ He must have learnt this talk from the sardine. ‘ If you consider the thing seriously, you will see that variety is a most important thing, and we should try to preserve it. It would be unfortunate if we were all so much alike that when we got mixed we could not be sorted.’

            ‘ Joe!’ his wife exclaims; but before she has time to say more Mr. and Mrs. Vincent come to wish us good-bye, and Mrs. Walters signs to her husband to get up.

            ‘ I think, as you have now some other friends, we will go for a walk, and finish this picture another time,’ he says, moving his easel aside.

            ‘ Don’t let me disturb you,’ Mr. Vincent says; ‘ we can’t stay long. So that it what you have been doing. A very picturesque group; well—well—well you want time and study, time and study. Good-bye. We shall meet at dinner.’

            ‘ I am so tired of that American and his pictures,’ Mrs. Vincent says, when they are gone.

            ‘ If he painted better, I should not mind him,’ Mr. Vincent says. ‘ But never mind, he’ll improve. We are very sorry to leave you, Mrs. Keith,’ he says to me; ‘ but we shall meet again in London, I hope—you and your little girl.’ He says the last words doubtfully, but I take no notice.

            ‘ Yes, I hope so, I hope so too,’ Mrs. Vincent says, with a sigh, and the air of a person who happened to know that we never should meet again, but did not wish to betray the secret.

            Mr. Vincent walks round the room and looks at my little scraps of paintings. He has always been rather complimentary to them, and is now.

            ‘ Very pretty, very pretty,’ he says. ‘ A really charming portrait of your little girl—an excellent likeness. And so you never painted Miss Josephs’ portrait, after all? Well, well, you must make Josephs buy something before he goes. These rich Jews ought to be made to disgorge; very difficult, though, very difficult indeed. Mr. Walters has been trying it on with Cohen. Ah! he ought to have been here before Mrs. Greenside went. What a woman that was, to be sure. I can’t understand why the Bexleys took such a sudden fancy to her.’

            ‘ They had reasons,’ Mr. Vincent says. ‘ Lady Bexley told me so.’

            ‘ Well, perhaps they had,’ Mr. Vincent says, as if he feels certain there must be some excuse for them somewhere. ‘ By the way, May has gone to get you some flowers. She said she wanted to make you room look pretty before she went. What a girl she is for flowers.’

            ‘ Poor dear May!’ Mrs. Vincent says sadly.

            ‘ Has she told you anything?’ Mr. Vincent asks, looking at me keenly; ‘ anything about Bicknell?’

            ‘ Yes; she told me.’

            ‘ They are very foolish. I shall take no notice until we are gone, and then I shall write to him and say this must be the end. It has gone on too long. He has behaved very badly.’

            ‘ I almost wonder you have left them to themselves so long,’ I cannot help saying.

            ‘ Well, you see his a very good fellow. He has a temper—most men have—but he is a good fellow; very good indeed in many ways, and he has a good position; he is likely to have a still better one; and we must be a little worldly where our children are concerned. Then, I am sure he is very fond of May—as fond of her as he can be of any one, and he has been for years; I don’t believe he has ever looked at any one else. He’s a good-looking fellow; we all like him, ad then,’ Mr. Vincent adds after a moment’s hesitation, as though he had been considering whether he had summed up all Ralph’s advantages before coming to a climax, ‘ and then she’s very fond of him. I am quite sure that it will be a terrible thing for her if it is all broken off. She is a girl who doesn’t fall in love easily; but though she has never told me so, I am quite certain that she is devoted to him. I hope they’ll make it up; they are admirably suited to each other in many ways. Still, if it isn’t made up, I shall write to him from Gibraltar—he is going to stay here another week—and say we must se no more of him.’

            ‘ Wouldn’t it be better to speak to him here?’

            ‘ No; that won’t do. I have considered that over,’ Mr. Vincent answers. ‘ He’s a man who would not be forced; besides, her pride would take fire, and, depend upon it, it would only bring things to a wrong end. The best way will be to let them take their course till after we go.’

            ‘ Where is he now?’

            ‘ He is out, I think. I saw him start for a walk an hour or two ago; but he’ll come back to dinner, no doubt.’

            Then they both get up to go, and Mrs. Vincent holds my hand and looks at me as if she longed to say a great deal, and Mr. Vincent attempts to say it for her.

            ‘ We shall meet in London, and  I hope under happier circumstances. Oh, here’s May. Well, May?’

            She enters with her hands full of flowers, and her arms covered with green boughs. She looks graver than usual, but there is something in her carriage that shows that the part of a love-lorn maiden is the last one on earth she means to play.

            ‘ Dear Mrs. Keith,’ she says, ‘ I have brought you some flowers. I want to make your room pretty before we go, and Molly will remember me at any rate till they fade, won’t you, little sweetheart?’

            ‘ Yes; and I wish they’d never fade,’ Molly answers.

            Mr. Vincent watches his daughter as she wanders about the room arranging the flowers in the earthenware Spanish pots. It is always a pleasure to watch her move; Mrs. Greenside first noticed that. She walks as the Arabs do, as all people must walk who are unfettered by fashion and who have no fear of any kind. It is a different walk from the Spanish woman’s; that is graceful and suggestive enough, but it is not fearless like May’s. Perhaps that is what you feel most about May, that she is fearless. Perhaps in this, seeing how womanly and gentle she is withal, lies at once her charm and her danger. Sometimes when I look at her, and think of her together with Ralph, I think of a beautiful restive horse with a curb on—a curb that may be painful, that may be the means of breaking the high spirit, of taking the light out of the fearless eyes, and yet without it one would dread to think of what would happen.

            ‘ We must go,’ Mr. Vincent says at last. ‘ Very sorry to leave you, Mrs. Keith. You must make Mrs. Walters look after you, and we shall meet again.’

            Mrs. Vincent looks at me sadly, and says almost in a whisper, ‘ I shall think of you a great deal, and I am sorry we are going to leave you, but my husband wants a change. When we get home I shall write to you. May dear, can you help me to pack?’

            ‘ Yes, dear mamma; I will come and help you directly. I shall have plenty of time to do my own packing afterwards.’

            She has soon finished the flowers; she only talks to Molly, and so I can watch her again. Oh, what a fool Ralph is to miss her, I cry out in my thoughts. He would tire of an ordinary woman in a fortnight, of the sort of woman who would give him the blind agreement and obedience he expects from May, whose eyes are open and see clearly. I don not think he would tire of May, with her bright smiles and proud spirit and passionate tears; the ceaseless demand that the very expression of her face makes, that all the best in him should live, would prevent it. I think, too, that as his love might be the saving of her happiness, so might hers be the making of any greatness that is in him. He would be ashamed enough if those eyes saw any littleness in him.

            ‘ I shall come in at half-past nine to-night, to wish you good-bye,’ she says, when she has had a little talk with Molly, ‘ and to kiss Molly in her sleep. We are to leave here soon after ten, so I will come at half past nine.’

            ‘ Dear, are things any better? Have you seen each other, or spoken?’

            ‘ Don’t ask me,’ she whispers, ‘ I can’t bear it.’ She clasps her hands; she is trying to hard to keep back her tears. ‘ Don’t speak of it. I don’t want him to see a sign, but it is breaking my heart. I couldn’t bear that he should know or suspect. It is all over, dear Mrs. Keith—over and finished.’

 

 

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