The Quaint Companions

She saw him shiver. She was reminded suddenly of a dog that Harris used to beat. There was a pause, in which she observed the effect of her taunt with satisfaction. After a few seconds she turned away, and began to unpin her hat at the toilet-table.

"It was because I was jealous," he stammered; "I couldn't help it – I didn't mean to insult you. Ah, take that back – don't say you're ashamed of me! Trust me, and you shall see how good I'll be to you in future. I love you, I love you, you don't know how I love you. Look at yourself in the glass. See how beautiful you are. How can you wonder that I'm jealous? Look at your hair – how soft it is! And your skin – it feels like a flower. I'd die for you. It drove me mad to see you look at another man like that. I know, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I couldn't bear it. Ownie, forgive me!"

She made no answer. She moved carelessly across the room, tossing her cloak on to the bed. Her slippers lay by an armchair, and she sat down in it, bending over her boots. He was on his knees before her in an instant, trying to seize her hands. She snatched them away with a gesture of aversion, and clasped them behind her head.

"I am ashamed," she repeated. "You've disgusted me. I'd let any white man make love to me, would I? Anyhow no white, man would be beast enough to say such a thing."

He put out his hands again – not to caress her this time, but as if to ward off the daggers she was planting in him. The tears welled into his eyes, and, with a thrill of power, she watched one trickle down the black face.

"Forgive me," he implored.

"It serves me right for not listening to advice," she went on. "I ought to have known what you would be. You can't help being jealous? What right have you got to be jealous – how dare you use such a word to me? Do you suppose that I'm never going to speak to any other man again because I married you?"

"I was wrong," he cried, "I know I was wrong – don't say you're 'ashamed'! It's just because I'm a coloured man that the jealousy comes. Oh, can't you understand? Try to make allowances for me. Don't you see, don't you see? – I remember my colour all the time, I never forget it; and when you sat there talking so – talking like that to him, I hated him because he was white. But I'll never complain any more, I swear I won't! You shall do as you like – I know how good you are."

"There aren't many women who would forgive such behaviour, I can tell you," she said sulkily. She thrust out her foot, and he began to unbutton her boot. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"

"Trust me," he begged. "Be kind to me – only trust me."

She lay back in the chair without replying; her pretty face was stubborn still. He drew off her boots. "Be kind to me," he entreated, "be kind to me." He covered her feet with kisses. He knelt there, suing to her, until she said at last that she forgave.

CHAPTER VI

But it was not in the woman's nature to refrain from accepting attentions and showing that they pleased her; and it was not in human nature for a husband who loved her to keep his oath and be tolerant. Before six months had passed there had been half-a-dozen such scenes. Lee upbraided more violently – the reconciliations did not always follow so soon, but the order of things was always the same; she flirted, and he abused her, and then grovelled for pardon till her resentment was assuaged. Her perception of the extent to which she could make him grovel awoke a savage instinct in the woman. Though her faults were the outcome of weakness, not of strength, the taste of power excited her, and she often remained obdurate merely to prolong the enjoyment of it. Once she even wounded him for no other reason than to gratify the taste. They had returned from a concert, and to see the man, fresh from his triumph, abasing himself before her so shamelessly, gave her a vicious pleasure.

They had taken a house at Hampstead, a house with an ample garden, and the necessary stabling. Except the practice-room, with its bare, polished floor, its windows curtainless – containing nothing but the piano and two chairs – she had revelled in the furnishing of every corner. She wrote to her mother with pride that "there wasn't a cheap thing in the place." With almost equal truth she might have added that there wasn't a thing beautiful. She and Lee had one point in common: both admired the ostentatious, and he found his surroundings nearly ornate enough to justify the amount that had been wasted on them.

And she had half-a-dozen servants; the tenor's stepchild was wheeled to the Heath now in fine apparel by a competent nurse. In her servants Mrs. Lee aroused less sympathy than in the men whom her husband called his "friends"; they looked down upon her for having married "that blacky," who was so much more considerate to them as a master than was she as a mistress. Instinctively she knew it, and it was a frequent thing for a maid at The Woodlands to be discharged on the grounds of being "disrespectful in her manner." A landlady's daughter and negro's wife was the last person likely to submit to disrespect.

One or two women whom she met had also appeared to take a different view of her position from that taken by the men; she found feminine society a shade irksome after her marriage. There were a few mortifying incidents from the first; still she knew that people who were envious always pretended to be disdainful; and the benefits were countless, she reminded herself as time went by. But for the knowledge of what was in store, it would have sufficed for composure to reflect that the other women would act just the same, assuming they had the chance. Her real humiliation came in the form of a baby.

It was a little yellow baby who in the hour of its birth was not expected to live. She did not hear that until some days later – and when she was told, she closed her eyes, for fear they should betray her thought. It was a little yellow baby that she sickened to know her own, and when they put it in her arms, her flesh shrank from it. Lee's joy enraged her. She hated him as he hung smiling over the pillow, was angered by what she felt to be his callousness in supposing she could be glad.

He was enraptured: the child was hers and his. With the passing of the months, he had come to seek more of her than acceptance, and it seemed to him that henceforth they must be one. She was no longer merely the sovereign who permitted – she was the mother of his boy.

But his mistake was very brief, and it was his child who proclaimed to the man that his marriage had been a madness. It was when he saw that she was ashamed of her motherhood that he was ashamed of his passion; it was her contempt for their baby that showed him how he himself was despised.

For her humiliation did not fade, and though she tried to hide the feeling, all the household knew that she never touched the child without an effort. She was humiliated as often as she saw him. The pomp of robes and ribbons, the lace, the paraphernalia of infancy, was painful to her. When he was carried into the air, she winced in imagining the neighbours' comments at their windows. Each time she bent over the bassinet the little face inside looked to her swarthier and more grotesque.

He was christened "David." It was Lee's wish, and the matter had no interest for her. It was Lee who brought him his first toy, and who haunted the nurseries in dread of draughts; it was Lee to whom the nurse soon learnt to turn when she had expensive suggestions to make. Ownie's affection for the other boy had hitherto been somewhat careless, but now she was stung to jealousy, and knew spasms of devotion which were the outcome of resentment. Though the man remained as gentle and generous as ever to him, she called him, "poor little Vivie" in her oughts, and a giggling servant, who was overheard to remark that "his nose was out of joint with somebody," was dismissed tempestuously at an hour's notice.

The baby's unsightliness increased with its length. The stain of the skin deepened; only the tiny palms and the soles of the flat little feet retained the yellowish tint. The spread nostrils gradually widened; the bunch of lip and the high cheek-bones took more and more distressfully the negro type. Vivian had a complexion like a peach, and his head was crowned with damp little flaxen curls that had been coaxed round a comb; David's face became the colour of a medlar, and his hair threatened to be as kinky as his father's. Even for a mulatto he was ill-favoured, and the mulatto and his half-brother were a queer contrast opposite each other in the perambulator. Strangers used to stop the nurse in the street and ask questions – which she seldom failed to repeat to her mistress. Vivian was robust, and had "taking ways"; David was delicate, and the most that the maids found to say for him was that he was "a very patient baby." He made known his desire for food by the whimper which served him for speech, but if the bottle didn't come, the whimper ceased. A faint bleat, and he gazed at the undesired world with resignation.

There was no resignation in Lee. He rebelled furiously – rebelled against his wife's disdain and his own weakness, for he remained the slave to a passion which he knew degraded him. This commonplace woman without intellect, without gratitude, without pretences, held him captive by a purely physical attraction against his will. There were hours when he hated her, yet she retained the power to fire him with a look, and torture him with a glance at another man.

She was not the woman to be unfaithful – for one thing, she appreciated the advantages of virtue too deeply to jeopardise them – but recriminations lost their terror for her soon, and she humoured her vanity without pity or fear. And Lee was no judge of character: in his hell, suspicion smouldered too. The recriminations were so frantic sometimes that the servants, startled from their sleep, hung trembling over the banisters; and there were crashes heard, and broken ornaments were swept up in the morning. "The nigger" was supposed to have thrown them in "the missis's face." In truth the madman shattered them to keep his hands off her.

By slow degrees he began to drink, not heavily – enough to give the situation a cheerier aspect for awhile; enough to shorten his career if he didn't check the habit. It was surprising how much brighter the world looked if he took a little whisky-and-water – especially if he took a little more whisky-and-water. Often after one of his frenzies of resentment he would remain away from the house for a week, though his engagements permitted him to return in two or three days. He would sing at Exeter, or Worcester, or Newcastle, as the case might be, and then go back to town, but not to Hampstead. Moralists in his profession who came upon him dissipating, said that he "treated his wife damned badly." And while he laughed and filled the glasses, the thought of her contempt burned in the man, and at last the suspicion that he could not drown drove him home.

As the child grew old enough to be played with, there came another influence; Lee's love for his child saved him from many excesses. The remembrance of something the boy had said or done would rise in him suddenly and fill him with tenderness. The truest pleasure in the singer's life was when he walked abroad holding his little son's hand, to pick blue-bells where Fitz-John's Avenue stands now, or to bear him westward from the Swiss Cottage in a cab.

David was not mercenary. He jumped at the blue-bells as eagerly as at the cab, though he had learnt already that hansoms always went to the fairyland where presents hung. He was very solicitous about Lee's safety, and lisped cautions against crossing a road when a horse was in sight, and the danger of falling through a cellar-plate into a coal-cellar. Once the nurse told David that the fascinating berries in the hedge were called "deadly nightshade," and that "if he fiddled with them he would die." He was impressed, and "Must never figgle with deadly nightshirt!" was his next warning to his father.

At a very early age there were signs that he was ambitious to secure a reputation as a humorist, notably an evening when he said his prayers in a facetious voice, and met rebuke by explaining that he was only trying to make God laugh. But the phase was a brief one, and he developed into a mournful child who was found to be more like a girl in his character than a boy. "Now Vivian was such an 'igh-spirited little feller!"

David called the lady downstairs "mamma," because he had been told that was her name; and he called his father "pops," because the diminutive came naturally to him. When he was nearly six years old, Ownie closed a door too swiftly and jammed his finger in it. The circumstance caused him to take an unusual liberty – he clung to her knees, howling for comfort. She looked at the finger, and patted him on the frizzy head, and said, "There, there, it isn't bad; suck it – it'll soon be well!" She meant to be gracious. Lee, who watched her face, caught him in his arms, and fondled him till the sobs ceased; and there were tears in the man's eyes which the child was too young to understand.

"I'm so glad you married pops, mamma," said David – "I do like him so!"

It was about this time that he began to understand, in a wordless, instinctive way, that his mother found him disgusting.

CHAPTER VII

The two boys had a daily governess, and Vivian was her favourite. She was an unsympathetic person, who prided herself on being extremely just, and she was careful to explain that as David was much younger than Vivian, she set him much shorter tasks. She also talked a great deal about "the spirit of emulation, which she was afraid he lacked." To supply the deficiency she offered a prize to the child who earned the greater number of marks by the end of the term. Vivian took the lead, and kept it; and when David knew hopeful moments and promised to catch him up yet, Miss Fewster always answered reprovingly that "she feared he had let his half-brother get too far ahead." After which David the downcast made less progress still.

She found him inattentive. She told him once how bewilderingly far from the earth the sun was, and how comparatively close was the moon. In the same minute he asked her if the moon wasn't "much the nearest to Heaven." She sighed, and recapitulated figures.

David's most violent emotions at this period shook him on the mornings when she was late. It occasionally happened that she did not arrive at all, and then he was free to sit in the garden, doing nothing – "like a girl." (He was always hearing now that he was like a girl; he began to think it would be rather nice to know one.) His feverish hope, as the clock ticked on; the passion of suspense in which he went out to watch for Miss Fewster, praying that she wouldn't appear; the sickening thud of his heart as she turned the corner, seemed physically to weaken him. And always she exclaimed briskly, "So you came to meet me, eh?" And knowing that she saw through him, he would force a hopeless smile and murmur that he had. His thought of the lost garden tied a knot in his throat during the lesson hours, and the droning of the bees grew so loud sometimes that it was impossible to understand what she said. It was really the garden that stood in the way of his writing his exercises, so full was it of sounds, and scents, and of fluttering shadows that he liked to see. In the drawing-room there was a silver inkstand which he knew the Queen had given to his "pops," and one day he thought that if he could have this royal object to dip his pen in, the exercises might be easier. So Lee, who was nettled by the comparisons, lent it to him gladly, and Miss Fewster shuddered. But the Queen's inkstand did not win David the prize.

"Isn't it strange that he never sings?" Ownie asked Lee reproachfully. "Nearly every child sings, or tries to, when he's playing about; they say this boy can't hum a bar."

Lee frowned, and looked away. She was telling him something that he knew already.

"Well, what of it?" he said.

"Well, isn't it strange? If he is going to sing at all – " She felt that if he had sung, he would have done something to justify his existence.

"Nobody can tell if he'll sing, as a man, till he's about eighteen. He won't sing as a child, of course."

"Humph," she said.

"What do you mean by 'humph'? Who wants him to sing as a child?" exclaimed Lee angrily; "why the hell should he?"

"One would think you wanted him to, by your tone!" said the woman. "I'm sorry I inquired, I'm sure. I was wondering what he would do when he grew up if he hadn't a voice."

"He'll do better than I've done, I hope, anyhow. There are worse troubles than having no voice."

"That's lucky for you," she retorted; "if you go on in the way you're going, you won't have one long!"

He rapped out an oath:

"Which skunk said that?"

"Which?" she sniggered. "Everybody!"

"Some man, of course! Drinks my champagne, and runs me down to my wife behind my back."

"Runs you down?" she echoed. "Do you think any man – or any woman either – could tell me more about you than I know?"

"And a lot you care, don't you?"

"I should care if you lost your voice," she said shamelessly. David was all ears behind a picture-book during this conversation.

As the boys grew older, they knew that their parents constantly quarrelled, just as the servants, and the tradespeople, and the neighbours knew it. Vivian, as was natural, had imbibed the servants' view, and held his stepfather a brute who beat "poor mamma" in the night. He called him to David once "a black beast," and in the scuffle that followed, the younger child got badly beaten; his indignation was stronger than his arms. David understood quite early that his father was looked down on because he was black; he realised that it was a disgrace not to be white. That explained why grandmamma had called him "poor little fellow," and why mamma only kissed him when visitors were present. It explained why her rare kisses fell on his cheek like the flick of a wet flannel. He began to see things. And in gabbling his Collects to Miss Fewster, he pronounced with fervour the petition: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord!"

Once he asked Lee where he was born.

"In Savannah, sonny."

Miss Fewster's geography lessons had not extended to Savannah. David wanted to know where it was.

"In America, my boy."

"Are there other people like you and me in America, pops?"

"Oh yes, heaps of them," said Lee after a stare.

David was puzzled. He had always believed his pops so wise, and really he seemed to have done a very thoughtless thing indeed. He would have been more sensible himself.

"If I'd been you, I should have stopped there," he said at last. "Then nobody would have noticed you so much."

Lee laughed, without being amused.

"You see I wanted to be noticed," he answered; "all artists do."

"Is that why you came to England?"

"Well, it's why I stayed here. I came with my father and mother when I was no bigger than you are."

"Shall I be an artist too, pops, when I'm a man?"

"I hope you will."

"And shall I marry a white girl, like you did?"

"I hope you won't," said Lee from his heart.

"Why?" asked David.

"Because the coloured man who marries a white girl is a fool, David. He won't be happy."

"I don't think I should like to marry a black one, pops."

"Then you'd better not marry at all," replied Lee. He reflected. "Don't tell your mamma what I've said."

This was before David went to school. Vivian and he were sent to a day-school in the neighbourhood after Miss Fewster turned the corner for the last time, and the elder child reported that "David was an awful little duffer in the playground." The authorities were not much more flattering about his mental attainments. The only high marks that he ever secured were in the composition-class, in which he generally got "double-six" – and was humbled if he didn't. For the rest, he was not ambitious. It was always "Harris" who brought home a prize bound in calf at the end of the term, though it was "Lee" who used to read it. "Harris" was popular, and conspicuous in the lower-school Eleven; "Lee" was a solitary, and usually went out with a "duck's egg." On the horizontal bar "Harris" was as good as many of the boys in trousers; "Lee" could barely manage to pull himself up to his chin.

He was just ten when he fell in love. She was a governess, who took some of the junior classes. Before he left in the evening he used to steal back into the silent schoolroom to say "good night" to her. He always found her standing at the wide window, looking out at the sunset, or the stars. She was still young enough to have her dreams – old enough to be weary. He never told her that he loved her, but she used to lend him her own books, and once she called him "David," and that day he walked up Belsize Park Gardens quivering with joy. Vivian said: "Can't you talk, fat-head?" – and he couldn't.

From the fly-leaves of the books he learnt that her name was Minnie. The knowledge was rapture; for a week he felt that he moved in a different world from the other boys, who only knew her as "Miss Pugh." Once she asked him if he was fond of poetry. He associated it with "Casabianca" and "The Collier's Dying Child," but he would not have sunk in her esteem for a whole holiday, and he said "Yes." So she lent him Tennyson – a shabby volume, with her favourite passages marked. The pencil-marks were very scholastic and precise, and the passages were very sad and sentimental. Poor Miss Pugh! The hardest duty of the governess was to discipline the woman. But David was too young to read the poetry in the margin.

And he was too young to understand the book, but parts of "Maud" he read again and again, and they throbbed in him. They translated what he felt while his father sang, and what the shadows were always hinting in the garden. It was as if he had been waiting for a chord, and it had come. The melody of sense intoxicated him. To put the garden into words, and make music at the same time – how wonderful! Not long afterwards a master discovered him poring dejectedly over original and precocious verse when he ought to have been engaged with declensions, and passed sentence, whereat the versifier gave way to tears.

"I don't like to see boys cry when they're punished, Lee; it isn't English!" said the Englishman, meaning that it wasn't brave.

David looked at him, aggrieved.

"I am crying," he explained, "because I couldn't say what I meant." But henceforth he spoiled his paper more guardedly.

When Vivian was thirteen, Ownie complained that he ought to be at a public school, instead of at Belsize Manor. It was "only right," she declared – "they owed him such advantages" – and Elisha, who had never refused her anything but men to flirt with, answered carelessly, "All right, my dear. Why didn't you say so before? Let him go to Eton or Harrow then, where the swells go. Send him to any place you like." The boy's own wish was to accompany one of his chums to a college on the south coast, and though Ownie parted reluctantly with the idea of Eton or Harrow where the swells went, she gave him his way in the end. She told the cook to see that his playbox was properly filled, and his stepfather presented him with a five-pound note. He made joyous adieux. David, it was understood, would follow him about two years later.

It was when the time came for David to proceed to the college that Vivian began to unburthen his mind to Ownie. The confidential period was not long-lived, but during that Easter recess they used to walk up and down the garden together, disparaging the man who kept them. In one of their conversations, the lad said impetuously:

"I do wish that Dave could be sent somewhere else, you know, mater! I shall get awfully boshed when he joins – it's rather hard lines on a fellow. Why can't he stop at the Manor?"

She sighed. "Will it be very bad for you, dear?"

"Well, a fellow's bound to be boshed. Of course he won't be in my form, but everybody 'll know who he is. It's rather hard lines, having a half-brother who's a blacky."

"Hush! Try and make the best of it," she said, squeezing his arm; "I'm afraid it's too late to send him anywhere else now. We all have things to put up with, Vivie; I have, as well as you."

"Y-e-s," he returned. "It's a good job he won't be in my form. I don't mind so tremendously much. The first time anybody gives me any cheek I'll jolly well sock their heads. Oh, I know you have things to put up with; by Jove, I wonder how you stand the governor sometimes!"