Then would I speak, and not fear.
JOB
AFTER a week’s search Bennett found lodgings as far removed as possible from his family in a little pink-brick street that was one of a network woven by a speculative builder over a tract of marshy ground that for years had been unclaimed and used by the neighbourhood for a rubbish heap. In a tiny little house he hired two rooms on the first floor for twelve shillings a week. His landlady was a large German woman who, by threateningly demanding references, inveigled him into paying two weeks’ rent in advance. He had to borrow ten shillings to do that. He was terrified of the German but proud of the two rooms, the first place that he had ever been able to call his own. The wall-paper and paint were hideous, but he told himself that that could soon be altered—should be altered before Annette saw the rooms. By neglecting all other engagements he found time in the evenings to hang what he thought a pretty paper and to paint the woodwork apple-green, paint and paper being bought with more borrowed money. This manual activity soothed him greatly, and he felt very proud of himself, whistled and sang all the time as he toiled. He was so busy that for a fortnight he hardly saw Annette, and when he did snatch a moment with her he was exceedingly mysterious, and would not tell her what he was up to, except that it was for her, a beautiful surprise.
“Where is it?” asked she.
“You wouldn’t know if I told you. I’ll take you there.”
[Pg 242]
“Next week? Is it to be next week?”
“As soon as it is ready. . . . You’re not sorry?”
“Of course not.”
As the end of the month drew near Bennett realised that it was not going to be so easy as he had thought to break the surprising and splendid news to his mother. He knew so little about her, and had always had great difficulty in talking to her even about the most impersonal matters. There had been differences between them before, many trifling, and one serious, over his secession to the High Church fold. All these differences now rose up and stood like a thick-set hedge between him and her. . . . As long as he remembered her she had been always sitting in the middle of the dark drawing-room waiting and watching for the landmarks of the day—dinner at one, his brothers’ return from the bank, his own return from his office, tea, supper, the hour for sleep—as time bore her evenly past them. For years now his only long conversations with her had been at the end of the month when he gave her his earnings and received his dole for spending. It made him ashamed and unhappy to know that he disliked her, but he could not explain it away, and he had never made any attempt to understand why she was as she was—cold and hard and unresponding. If he took sides at all in the antagonism of drawing-room and dining-room his leaning was towards his father, but that was because the only intimacy in the house lay between Tibby and old Lawrie. There was more warmth in the dining-room than in the drawing-room, though, outwardly, it was his father who was disgraced and deposed, his father whom Bennett had been taught to contemn. . . . The only link that bound him to his mother was money. He would use the monthly conversation about money as an opening for his declaration of independence. He had not looked upon it as that: had not contemplated a rupture and open breach between himself and his mother, though he had heard muttered warnings in the depths of his soul.
When he returned home with seven pounds in his pocket, [Pg 243]he hesitated for a long time outside the drawing-room door with every nerve in his body throbbing. His suffering was too great and he decided that he would tell his father first. After all, his father was the head of the family. . . . He walked gropingly down the dark passage to the dining-room only to find his father out and Tibby working for dear life at a column of cotton-prices. He knew what that meant. There would be no telling his father. His father was “plang” (the family euphemism), and, as she had often done before, Tibby was finishing his work.
She looked up at him and scowled. The work was never easy for her, she had to supply the gaps of her ignorance with guesses and was always in dread of guessing awry. Bennett sat down in the horsehair chair by the fireplace, under the blue-eyed portrait of his grandfather, the Scots minister, and rattled the money in his pocket. Tibby went on working. Much of Bennett’s terror vanished and he broke into the scratching of her pen:
“Tibby.”
“Eh?”
“You said once you’d love me whatever I did.”
“Aye. What have you been doing?”
“I’m married.”
“Losh!”
Tibby dropped her pen and turned sorrowful eyes of wonder upon him. Bennett jingled the money in his pocket.
“I’m married,” he said. “I’m very happy.”
“Och! The foolishness of men! Married! Laddie, ye’ll never have a son as young as yourself.”
“I’m married,” said Bennett, “and I’m going to be very happy, and I don’t care what . . .”
“Have you told your mother?”
“No.”
“Better tell her at once. You’ll break your neck over it. I’ll finish this and then I’ll think it out. . . . Married! Losh!”
She turned to her work again, and the pen scratched and spluttered. Bennett reached the door when she called to him:
[Pg 244]
“Laddie.”
He turned.
“If ye love the lassie, ye’ve no call to be afeard. There’s always a way. There’s no way where no love is.”
“I love her,” said Bennett unconsciously dramatic and absurd. “I love her as my life.”
“God bless ye.”
Fortified by her benison and also by having once told his immense secret Bennett passed swiftly to the drawing-room. He found his mother sitting in her chair in the middle of the room with a cat in her lap. He stooped and kissed her.
“I’ve got some news for you!”
“Sit down. You don’t come and talk to me as often as you might.”
There was an unusual geniality in her voice that made it easy for him to go on.
“I’ve had a rise.”
“That’s good. They must be pleased with you. How much?”
“Five shillings a week.”
“That’s very good. You shall have a shilling a week more for your pocket-money. I’m glad you’re doing so well. You can keep five shillings for yourself this month.”
“That isn’t all my news.”
“What else?”
“I want to keep it all.”
“Nonsense. You can’t do that.”
“I must. You see. I haven’t told you everything. You see . . . I shall want my money now. I’m—what I wanted to tell you is that—that . . .” He gave a little nervous giggle that exasperated his mother and set her tapping with her foot on the floor. “I’m—you see—I’m married.”
Her mouth dropped. Her hands waved weakly in the air. She got up and went and stood for a long time—it seemed a very long time—by the window. Without turning she said:
[Pg 245]
“Who is the woman?”
“Her name is Annette. Annette Folyat.”
“I might have known it. . . Will you ask your father to come here?”
“Father’s out.” Bennett felt that his cause was lost. Only in the most desperate cases was his father’s presence over requested in the drawing-room.
“Tibby then.” She went to the door and with extraordinary power of the lungs shouted for the old servant.
Tibby came shuffling. She was dressed to go out, in bonnet and shawl, and had an envelope in her hand.
“I’m in haste,” she said.
“Tibby, what’s to be done? Bennett has married one of the daughters of that High Church popery priest. What am I to do?”
“What can you do?”
“It can’t go on. It’s miserable folly. It’s ruin. It’s beggary. . . . Where were you married? When?” She pounced on Bennett.
“A fortnight ago. At St. Barnabas; banns and everything. We signed the register. I forbid you to interfere.”
“Silence.”
“I will not be silent. I have taken my own life into my own hands. I am going to have my own money and my own house. I shall leave your house to-night, and I shall not enter it again until you ask me and my wife together.”
“That’s right, laddie,” said Tibby quietly.
Mrs. Lawrie opened her mouth to rend Tibby, who added:
“I canna thole a man that winnot stand by his own doings.”
Mrs. Lawrie turned to Bennett and said:
“May you never have a child to hurt you as you have hurt me this day.”
The wild frenzy that had possessed Bennett oozed away, and weakly he asked:
“Am I to go?”
“Go. . . . As you’ve made your bed, so you must lie on it.”
A little unsteadily Bennett walked upstairs to his attic and began to pack his belongings. He laid them all out on the bed, books, clothes, small pieces of furniture, and they seemed to him very little. In possession of his secret he had felt very large and important; now he felt very small indeed.
Downstairs in the drawing-room his mother sat writing a letter to Francis, denouncing him and all his works and his daughters, who were a snare to youth and guilelessness. Tibby had tried to reason with her, but she was beyond reason. She had been hurt and wished to hurt. Carefully, laboriously, she had toiled to insure her children against all risks and perils of the world. Brick by brick she had built a prison for each of them which should last as long as life, and, at the first touch, the walls that hemmed in and secured her youngest born had come toppling down, and all around herself she saw the abomination of desolation. She hated life, and her enemy had proved too strong for her.