The Quaint Companions

"I don't think you'd be very rich, dear; it seems to me he must spend every penny he makes, even if he does get a thousand pounds for four nights sometimes. Besides, if you mean to marry him just for what he can give you, I'm afraid you'd be very miserable. You're not a girl, I know, and you must judge for yourself in these things, but I don't think any amount of money would make you satisfied with what you'd done if you don't care for him – and I'm sure I don't see how you can! When I married your poor father – "

"When you married father he had nothing, I know. And you've had nothing ever since. The children of people who marry on nothing are seldom as sentimental as their parents were. You were brought up in a comfortable home, and so you were romantic, and said, 'Money's the least thing;' I was brought up in a lodging-house, and so I'm practical, and put money before everything else. I think," she exclaimed, "I think it's wicked that people who make improvident marriages should brag of the folly to their poor children afterwards!"

"I am not bragging, dear. But when a woman has loved her husband, she never admits that their marriage was a folly, even in her own thoughts. A man – " She sighed. "A man, I am afraid, sometimes does. As I say, you're not a girl, and you must know your own mind, but the idea seems awful to me; I would never have believed you could think of doing such a thing."

Ownie flushed, and her shoe tapped the floor irritably. "Just because he is black," she muttered. "Where is your religion? I thought you said just now that in the sight of Heaven all men were equal?"

"In Heaven, no doubt, he will be as white as the rest of us," returned Mrs. Tremlett, after a slight pause. "But in the meantime he's a nigger, and I can't think it would be right."

Her daughter did not reply; nor did the elder woman summon courage to recur to the matter. She was, however, relieved on the morrow and the next day to notice that her remonstrance had borne fruit and that Ownie's visits to the drawing-room were discontinued. Lee, who passed the two days in hourly expectation of them, was first restless, and then enraged. The besetting tendency of the negro in his intercourse with Europeans is to take affront, and he told himself that her neglect was an insult which she would never have dared to put upon an Englishman. He left Brighton this time without any adieu, and he was absent for longer than usual.

There were two reasons for his going back when he did. When women say of another woman – as they are often heard to say – that there is nothing in her to explain infatuation, they babble, for there is no young woman, however commonplace, who may not appear unique to some man. One of Lee's reasons was, that his desire to see Ownie again was fevering him; the other was, that he wanted to know if she meant to occupy the box that he had kept for her.

He returned late, and he had no hope of seeing her that night, but he spent the following morning between the windows – his hat and fur coat on the table – waiting for her to leave the house. She had no sooner done so than he descended the stairs with elaborate carelessness, and manoeuvred until they came face to face.

"Oh, Mr. Lee," she said. "So you are back again!"

His resolve to ignore his grievance succumbed to the temptation to reproach her for it.

"I didn't think you knew I'd been away," he said sulkily.

"Not know you had been away?" The innocent wonder of her tone was unsurpassable.

"I hadn't seen you for a long time when I went. Have you forgotten that?"

"A long time?" she smiled. "Two days, wasn't it?"

"It seemed a week to me."

Now she had trembled during his absence, and though she was as far as ever from knowing whether she wished to marry him, she knew at least that she did not wish to avert his asking her. So she shot a glance at him before her eyes were lowered, and said:

"One can't always do as one likes, you know."

A platitude and a pair of eyes are sometimes potent. He walked on beside her mollified.

"What about the concert?" he inquired. "I've saved the box for you."

"Oh, have you?" she stammered. "I don't quite know. I'm afraid – Have you really saved it?"

"Rather! Don't say you aren't coming – you as good as promised. Have you spoken to your mother?"

"Yes, she can't go – that's to say, she says she can't. There's nothing to prevent her, but she's so funny, you know. I 'don't see how I can go alone."

"Why not? That would be jollier still. Don't be unkind. I should sing so much better if you were there."

"Such nonsense!" she said. "I – I'll see. Of course I should like it awfully. I'll think about it, and tell you to-morrow."

And on the morrow she told him that she was going. She was dogged, though Mrs. Tremlett sighed protests. Her life was dull enough, she insisted; she meant to extract the little amusement that was to be had! Lee went to town again jubilantly. He had arranged to meet her at the station when she arrived, and to travel back with her at night. She was to go up in the afternoon and to take her evening frock in a trunk.

On the day of the concert she found him at Victoria, attended by a gentlemanly person who he explained was his valet. As he greeted her, he tossed away a cigar which he had just lighted for that purpose; he felt it must impress her with his breeding to see him throw away a long cigar. The valet seemed to have little to do but to show that he existed. Lee led her to a brougham, and they were driven to the hotel that was then the most fashionable, and ushered into a sitting-room glorified with roses. A chambermaid conducted her to a bedroom.

Here more flowers did her honour, and on the dressing-table were bottles of scent, the largest that could be bought, and all of different colours. In front of the armchair that had been rolled to the fire was a pair of velvet slippers, with the sort of buckles she had coveted in the East Street windows.

She thrilled with a sense of her importance. The buckles fascinated her so much that she put the slippers on at once, and went back to the sitting-room in them, though in his excessive admiration he had chosen a size that cramped her toes.

She had scarcely rejoined him when a waiter appeared with tea and petits fours. She observed that Lee was addressed as if he had been a prince.

"Aren't you going to have any?" she asked.

"I mustn't," he said. "I must run away in a minute. But they'll look after you all right here, don't be afraid."

"I'm not," she said, laughing. "Did the manager provide the slippers?" She raised her foot coquettishly, and resented her stockings. "I'm sure you might have a cup of tea and a biscuit if you may smoke – I saw you throw away a cigar as you met me."

He was gratified that this effect had been remarked.

"Oh, that's nothing," he said; "smoking doesn't hurt."

"You say so because you like it. Well, smoke now, then."

"May I?"

"Why, of course you may, if it really isn't bad; but I always thought it was awful for singers."

"Some fools say so. Mario always smoked just before he sang – he was the only man ever allowed to smoke behind at Covent Garden. I do wish I could stop! If you knew how glad I am you've come!"

"I'm glad too," she said. "But I won't encourage you to do anything wrong. Go home, and – " She was going to say, "Think of me," but she felt that her elation was carrying her too far. "And do your best," she added. "Remember I am coming to applaud you."

He remained for about a quarter of an hour, and as soon as he had gone she took the slippers off, and spread her feet on the hearth in comfort.

At half-past six the deferential waiter appeared again, accompanied by another – mute, but seeming to deprecate by his shoulders the liberty of moving on the same planet with her. For the first time in her experience she dined. Perhaps, because she was a woman, the appointments impressed her more than the cuisine, but she appreciated the menu too. She enjoyed the oysters, the strange dark red soup, the sole with prawns and little mushrooms and things on the top; she liked the bird, and the pink frilled cutlets with a wonderful sauce, the omelette in blue flames, the silver bowl of strawberries and cream inserted in a block of ice. The resplendent sweet, representing a castle, and glowing with multi-coloured lights, astonished her, and the wines that flowed into the glasses stole through her veins deliciously.

She had not long set down her coffee-cup when she was informed that the brougham was at the door. She left the tiny flagons of liqueurs untouched, and ran back to the bedroom, to grimace at her toilette, and dip her puff in the powder again. In the brougham she felt even more opulent than she had done when Lee was beside her in it; she felt almost as if it were her own. She wrapped the rug about her knees, and looked out luxuriously at the gaslit streets. Soon all the traffic of London seemed to converge; the flash of carriage-lamps and the clatter of hoofs surrounded her. Into the cheaper parts of the Hall, the long black files of patient music-lovers still pressed forward. Her demeanour was haughty as she was shown to her box. To her first glance the great building seemed already full, but a thin stream of white-breasted women and shirt-fronts trickled continuously down the red stairway to the stalls. A certain exultation possessed her; they were all here to hear him – the man who was in love with her.

Somebody climbed to the great organ. His name was unfamiliar to her, and she did not know what the title of the piece meant. He juggled with the stops, and flooded the house with a composition in E flat. She cared little for the organ; it reminded her too strongly of church. She was relieved when he finished. A lady sailed on to the platform and warbled something of Schumann's. Was it a fact that she could not afford her dress? How beautifully it was made! She retired amid loud applause, her finger-tips supported by a gentleman whose functions suggested the ring-master at a circus. She was recalled, and bowed deeply three times, and tripped off with the ring-master once more. A popular baritone received an "encore." A lady violinist had painfully thin arms. Ownie glanced at the programme again – yes, the next name was "Mr. Elisha Lee." The faces in the serried tiers of the vast dome seemed to crane a little; a wave of expectation stirred the throng. There was a long pause before he came.

He bore himself loftily – that was her first thought. The slow, measured steps that he had been taught to make added to his height; the conventional costume, in which his native predilections found no scope, became him well. The unsightly hands were gloved; only his black features and frizzy hair marred the dignity of the man as he stood before the hushed audience, during the opening bars on the piano. He raised his head – the music that he held vibrated for an instant; and then from the nigger's mouth – out over the breathless stalls, mounting high and mounting higher to the back of the far massed gallery – there seemed to float God's Voice. And now nobody remembered that the features were black; and no man among the thousands knew what message the voice was bringing to the heart beside him, for to all there was a different message that the poet had never told. Men tightened their lips to hide their tremors; the jewels on the women's breasts rose faster. Among the hot, tense crowd that strained over the topmost railings, was heard the sobbing of a little child – but only one soul heard it, and the child would have been a woman then if she had lived.

The music was lowered – his arms falling in studied curves to his sides, gave the signal for applause; there was the moment's silence that was so sweet to him. He bowed, and drew a step back. The audience recovered itself; the thunders broke. She saw fashionable women beating their hands together frantically; the roar recalled him again and again. He responded, and retired with a glance at Ownie. Her eyes were moist, and she shivered a little. She was not an emotional woman, but she was a vain one.

In Part II. he sang early, to conform with her arrangements, and they drove to Victoria, where the valet was waiting with her trunk. Lee guided her to a first-class compartment, and she congratulated herself on her forethought in having taken only a "third single" at Brighton. She observed, though she betrayed no consciousness of the fact, that the guard turned his key in the door after the foot-warmers were put in.

"And so," asked Lee for the second time, "you were satisfied with me?" His desire to flatter her was inordinate, but it wasn't responsible for the question: he was only thirsting to be praised.

"I felt as if I had never heard you sing before," she said; "I felt as if I had never heard anybody sing. You thrilled me. You have given me a day I shall remember all my life; it was perfect from beginning to end."

"I should like to give you many such days," he blurted.

"Ah!" She smiled – the faint, appealing smile that had always been so effective with Harris before he married her. "I'm afraid that isn't possible; I must think of this one instead."

Her heart throbbed heavily at her boldness. Even now she was not sure what answer she meant to make; why was she encouraging him to ask the question?

But though he had promised himself to ask it on the journey, Lee hesitated. The question surged to his throat, and swelled immensely and stuck there. A great timidity was on the nigger who had just swaggered before a multitude. The man's heart throbbed heavily at his cowardice.

He leant forward, and tucked the rug round her. He was rather a long time tucking the rug round her. "Is that better?" he muttered. "You're not cold?"

"Thank you. No, I'm as warm as can be. Oughtn't you to keep your wrap round your neck?"

"Not in here," he said; "I'll put it on again at the other end. Sunset is the worst time for me, too – not night."

"That's funny."

"I believe it's the worst time for all singers."

The velocity of the train seemed to him phenomenal, and a sudden misgiving seized him about the second door: somebody might intrude on them at the first stoppage, in spite of the tip. The minutes flew, and in every flashing bank and tree he saw a danger-signal.

"Why?" he said at last.

"'Why'?" She was at a loss.

"Why isn't it possible for you to have other days just as good?"

He was terribly black – she averted her face before she spoke:

"How can I?" she murmured.

"I love you," he said huskily.

She had no words. He got up, and sat beside her. She felt his hand groping for hers under the rug, and trembled. Should she let him take it?.. He was holding it. "Do I frighten you?" She shook her head. "I'd give my life for you!" he cried. "Oh, if you can like me a little, only a little, I'll be so good to you! You shall never be sorry – I'll give you everything you want. I love you; I sang to you to-night. No white man could adore you as I do. Can't you – can't you forget the difference? It's cruel to me. No, no, not cruel; you could never be cruel; I know, I know, it's natural you can't understand – you fill my soul, but you can see no deeper than my skin."

"I do like you," her voice made answer.

"Will you be my wife?"

"Yes," she said. She shut her eyes and let him kiss her.

CHAPTER V

And she did not repent the promise, nor did her mother's consternation have any effect upon her, other than making her lend a willing ear to Lee's entreaties for a speedy marriage. She agreed to marry him at the end of the following month. She even came to accept his kisses without shrinking much, and to offer her own in return for the jewellery that he brought her. Only once during the engagement her reflections terrified her. The thought crossed her mind that he might lose his voice. He might lose his voice and she would have done it all for nothing! He would be helpless; she would have yoked herself for life to a negro dependent on her exertions. What a future! What a hell! In the moment of alarm it even occurred to her – because she attended church punctiliously every Sunday – that the disaster would be a fitting punishment for the sin she was committing in stifling her better instincts. She was abasing herself under a temptation – she might be bowed under a burden as the result. Characteristically she ignored the fact that to afflict her husband in order to point the moral would be a shade unjust; there are many Christians who would figuratively fire the house to roast the pig, like Ho-ti in the Dissertation. And quite as many who can reconcile their interests and their conscience by judicious prayer. The name of "Vivian" figured in Ownie's prayer. She prayed for strength to act a mother's part to Vivian.

Also she determined that before she had been Lee's wife long she would persuade him to assure his life. Experience teaches; and this precautionary measure had been neglected during her first marriage. She was naturally ignorant of the negro temperament, or she would have known that there is nothing from which it is quite so averse as providing for emergencies, and that she might almost as hopefully have begged him to acquire a cream-and-roses complexion.

Meanwhile there were paragraphs in the papers; and presents were delivered from his fellow-artists, and from some of the Musical Societies; and there were presents from the Public. Even Mrs. Tremlett began to say, "It might be all for the best," now. A man who received big silver teapots from total strangers, she felt, was entitled to more respect than she had shown to him. Her grandchild and the adolescent nurse were to remain with her until the honeymoon was over. The wedding took place in London, and Ownie and Lee departed for Paris, where he was to sing.

If Mrs. Lee had kept a journal at this period, it would have been one of the most fascinating of human documents, though much of its fascination would have lain between the lines, since she inherited nothing of her father's gift for expression. It would have been the gradual diminuendo, that told the tale, the change of key. They stayed in Paris nearly five weeks, and before a fortnight had passed, the outcry in her heart was still. She was resigned. She did not acknowledge it to herself yet; that would not have been written in the diary; she did not look it; but her avaricious little soul was gratified, although her eyes claimed sympathy.

Strangers gave it to her. She was prettier still in the extravagant gowns that Lee paid for – that true loveliness unadorned is adorned the most is as silly a thing as the poet of "The Seasons" could have said – and the Englishmen and Americans in Paris spoke feelingly of "that pretty woman married to a nigger." There are women to whom pity is as sweet as noise to the masses, and Ownie Lee's abortive conscience found all the anodyne it needed in the perception that she was held a pathetic figure. The appealing smile which had always become her so well, gained in intensity. Lucretia might have worn that expression in time, if she had taken drives in the Bois instead of stabbing herself.

And Lee? Lee was intoxicated. If he had wooed her in a fool's paradise, at least the shadow of the tree of knowledge had been in it; he had had no illusions. He had not looked for passion, or for tenderness, or for understanding. It was enough for him as yet to squander devotion on indifference. He shook at the touch of the languid woman who accepted his transports with such sovereign calm. To pour out money for her adornment, to buy diamonds to flash on her fingers and her breast, was his delight. He had a contract for a six weeks' tour in England at six hundred a week, and he spent a fortnight's fees on jewels for her one morning. In the foyers and the streets, when he read the men's eyes, exultance swelled him; they envied his possession of her, these blatant fools who were consequential because they had been born with a white skin. He cursed them cheerfully in his thoughts, arrogant with power – the woman who attracted them was his wife!

Yet there was one occasion before the honeymoon ended when he seemed almost to stultify himself, when the admiration that she roused enraged him instead, and was responsible for a burst of resentment. They had met a Londoner of his acquaintance, a singer; and Lee the elated had presented him to her gaily. The singer, who was a handsome man, and not a gentleman, was too bent on being gallant to remember to be polite as he ogled her, and curled his moustache, and propped his elbows on the café table. His shoulder excluded Lee more and more; the conversation became frankly a duologue. The art of rebuffing a man without gaucherie is not known to every woman; it is, in fact, the peculiar attribute of the well-bred. Still Ownie was to blame; she regarded such impertinence as a compliment, and she made no attempt to check it with dignity or otherwise. Lee's scowl grew fiercer and fiercer, his lips bulged appallingly; and the Englishman had no sooner bowed himself away than she beheld her husband in a new light.

He rose from his chair, and put his hand on her arm. She could feel that he was trembling, but he said nothing until they had walked some steps. She turned to him, half frightened and half defiant.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter with you?"

"Don't you ever speak to that fellow again," he exclaimed hoarsely. "Do you hear? I won't have it. Don't you ever dare to speak to him again. If you meet him, you're to pass him by. Is that the way you think a respectable woman ought to behave? Sitting there and – Blast him, I wish I'd thrown the glasses in his face!"

She was alarmed and angry too now. She tried to subdue him by her tone.

"Have you gone out of your mind?" she said, as steadily as she could speak. "I think you forget who it is you're talking to."

"I'm talking to you," he gasped; "I'm talking to my wife; don't you forget it either! You flirted with him, you know you did. You sat there flirting with him – and in front of your husband; you sat flirting with a skunk you'd never seen before, in front of your husband." He came to a standstill, gesticulating excitedly. "You weren't so ready with me, were you? I suppose any man may make love to you if he's white, eh? But take care – you don't know me yet. By God – "

"Hush," she said, "for Heaven's sake; the people are staring at you."

She signalled nervously to a cabman, and gave him the name of the hotel. In the cab Lee's reproaches were so furious that she drew up the windows to muffle his voice from the passers-by. The distance between the café and the hotel was short, and in less than five minutes the courtyard was reached. She sprang out, and hurried to the bedroom while he paid the fare. When he tried the door he found that she had locked it. He called to her, but she made no answer. Then he beat at the panels, and to avoid a scandal she turned the key.

"Is this going on all night?" she demanded, running to the bell-pull. "If you try to hit me, I'll ring for the manager." Her dread of receiving a blow was of the slightest – such fear of personal violence as she had known had faded during the drive – but it was the cruellest thing that she could invent to say on the spur of the moment. She clung to the bell-pull, a picture of agitation.

The threat, the idea that she thought him capable of striking her, sobered him. He entered shamefacedly.

"You needn't be afraid that I shall hurt you," he muttered.

"Needn't I?" she said. "How do I know that? I don't know what you might do, you bully, you – you coward!"

He winced, and stood looking at the ground in silence. Then:

"I didn't mean to bully you," he said huskily. "I – I'm sorry, Ownie, I'll never do it again."

She saw that she was mistress of the situation. Her hold on the bell-pull relaxed; her tone acquired a tinge of shrewishness.

"You won't ever have the chance again," she retorted, "don't flatter yourself! You've shown me what I might expect – I won't live with you."

Though the words were empty enough, they frightened him. He took a step towards her in a panic.

"Ownie!" he cried. And again: "Ownie, I'm sorry!"

"It's not the least consequence whether you're sorry or not," she sneered; she was quite composed now. "I'm sure I don't care. It's very easy to say you're sorry after you've shouted at me, and insulted me as much as you want to. Yes, insulted me, you – Ah, it's what I might have expected! I'm ashamed of having married you. Only a man – a man like you would talk so to a woman."