The Little White Bird; Or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens Read online

  IV. A Night-Piece

  There came a night when the husband was alone in that street waiting. Hecan do nothing for you now, little nursery governess, you must fight itout by yourself; when there are great things to do in the house the manmust leave. Oh, man, selfish, indelicate, coarse-grained at the best,thy woman's hour has come; get thee gone.

  He slouches from the house, always her true lover I do believe,chivalrous, brave, a boy until to-night; but was he ever unkind to her?It is the unpardonable sin now; is there the memory of an unkindnessto stalk the street with him to-night? And if not an unkindness, stillmight he not sometimes have been a little kinder?

  Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be alittle kinder than is necessary?

  Poor youth, she would come to the window if she were able, I am sure,to sign that the one little unkindness is long forgotten, to send youa reassuring smile till you and she meet again; and, if you are not tomeet again, still to send you a reassuring, trembling smile.

  Ah, no, that was for yesterday; it is too late now. He wanders thestreets thinking of her tonight, but she has forgotten him. In her greathour the man is nothing to the woman; their love is trivial now.

  He and I were on opposite sides of the street, now become familiarground to both of us, and divers pictures rose before me in which MaryA---- walked. Here was the morning after my only entry into her house.The agent had promised me to have the obnoxious notice-board removed,but I apprehended that as soon as the letter announcing his intentionreached her she would remove it herself, and when I passed by in themorning there she was on a chair and a foot-stool pounding lustily at itwith a hammer. When it fell she gave it such a vicious little kick.

  There were the nights when her husband came out to watch for thepostman. I suppose he was awaiting some letter big with the fate of apicture. He dogged the postman from door to door like an assassin or aguardian angel; never had he the courage to ask if there was a letterfor him, but almost as it fell into the box he had it out and tore itopen, and then if the door closed despairingly the woman who had been atthe window all this time pressed her hand to her heart. But if the newswas good they might emerge presently and strut off arm in arm in thedirection of the pork emporium.

  One last picture. On summer evenings I had caught glimpses of themthrough the open window, when she sat at the piano singing and playingto him. Or while she played with one hand, she flung out the other forhim to grasp. She was so joyously happy, and she had such a romanticmind. I conceived her so sympathetic that she always laughed before hecame to the joke, and I am sure she had filmy eyes from the very startof a pathetic story.

  And so, laughing and crying, and haunted by whispers, the little nurserygoverness had gradually become another woman, glorified, mysterious. Isuppose a man soon becomes used to the great change, and cannot recall atime when there were no babes sprawling in his Mary's face.

  I am trying to conceive what were the thoughts of the young husband onthe other side of the street. "If the barrier is to be crossed to-nightmay I not go with her? She is not so brave as you think her. When shetalked so gaily a few hours ago, O my God, did she deceive even you?"

  Plain questions to-night. "Why should it all fall on her? What is theman that he should be flung out into the street in this terrible hour?You have not been fair to the man."

  Poor boy, his wife has quite forgotten him and his trumpery love. If shelives she will come back to him, but if she dies she will die triumphantand serene. Life and death, the child and the mother, are ever meetingas the one draws into harbour and the other sets sail. They exchange abright "All's well" and pass on.

  But afterward?

  The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead youngmothers, returned to see how their children fare. There is no otherinducement great enough to bring the departed back. They glide into theacquainted room when day and night, their jailers, are in the grip, andwhisper, "How is it with you, my child?" but always, lest a strange faceshould frighten him, they whisper it so low that he may not hear. Theybend over him to see that he sleeps peacefully, and replace his sweetarm beneath the coverlet, and they open the drawers to count how manylittle vests he has. They love to do these things.

  What is saddest about ghosts is that they may not know their child. Theyexpect him to be just as he was when they left him, and they are easilybewildered, and search for him from room to room, and hate the unknownboy he has become. Poor, passionate souls, they may even do him aninjury. These are the ghosts that go wailing about old houses, andfoolish wild stories are invented to explain what is all so pathetic andsimple. I know of a man who, after wandering far, returned to his earlyhome to pass the evening of his days in it, and sometimes from his chairby the fire he saw the door open softly and a woman's face appear.She always looked at him very vindictively, and then vanished. Strangethings happened in this house. Windows were opened in the night. Thecurtains of his bed were set fire to. A step on the stair was loosened.The covering of an old well in a corridor where he walked was cunninglyremoved. And when he fell ill the wrong potion was put in the glass byhis bedside, and he died. How could the pretty young mother know thatthis grizzled interloper was the child of whom she was in search?

  All our notions about ghosts are wrong. It is nothing so petty as lostwills or deeds of violence that brings them back, and we are not nearlyso afraid of them as they are of us.

  One by one the lights of the street went out, but still a lamp burnedsteadily in the little window across the way. I know not how ithappened, whether I had crossed first to him or he to me, but, afterbeing for a long time as the echo of each other's steps, we weretogether now. I can have had no desire to deceive him, but some reasonwas needed to account for my vigil, and I may have said something thathe misconstrued, for above my words he was always listening for othersounds. But however it came about he had conceived the idea that I wasan outcast for a reason similar to his own, and I let his mistake pass,it seemed to matter so little and to draw us together so naturally.We talked together of many things, such as worldly ambition. For longambition has been like an ancient memory to me, some glorious dayrecalled from my springtime, so much a thing of the past that I mustmake a railway journey to revisit it as to look upon the pleasant fieldsin which that scene was laid. But he had been ambitious yesterday.

  I mentioned worldly ambition. "Good God!" he said with a shudder.

  There was a clock hard by that struck the quarters, and one o'clockpassed and two. What time is it now? Twenty past two. And now? It isstill twenty past two.

  I asked him about his relatives, and neither he nor she had any. "Wehave a friend--" he began and paused, and then rambled into a not veryunderstandable story about a letter and a doll's house and some unknownman who had bought one of his pictures, or was supposed to have done so,in a curiously clandestine manner. I could not quite follow the story.

  "It is she who insists that it is always the same person," he said. "Shethinks he will make himself known to me if anything happens to her." Hisvoice suddenly went husky. "She told me," he said, "if she died and Idiscovered him, to give him her love."

  At this we parted abruptly, as we did at intervals throughout the night,to drift together again presently. He tried to tell me of some thingsshe had asked him to do should she not get over this, but what they wereI know not, for they engulfed him at the first step. He would draw backfrom them as ill-omened things, and next moment he was going over themto himself like a child at lessons. A child! In that short year she hadmade him entirely dependent on her. It is ever thus with women: theirfirst deliberate act is to make their husband helpless. There are fewmen happily married who can knock in a nail.

  But it was not of this that I was thinking. I was wishing I had notdegenerated so much.

  Well, as you know, the little nursery governess did not die. At eighteenminutes to four we heard the rustle of David's wings. He boasts aboutit to this day, and has the hour to a syllable as if the first thing
heever did was to look at the clock.

  An oldish gentleman had opened the door and waved congratulations tomy companion, who immediately butted at me, drove me against a wall,hesitated for a second with his head down as if in doubt whether to tossme, and then rushed away. I followed slowly. I shook him by the hand,but by this time he was haw-haw-hawing so abominably that a disgust ofhim swelled up within me, and with it a passionate desire to jeer oncemore at Mary A--

  "It is little she will care for you now," I said to the fellow; "Iknow the sort of woman; her intellectuals (which are all she has todistinguish her from the brutes) are so imperfectly developed that shewill be a crazy thing about that boy for the next three years. She hasno longer occasion for you, my dear sir; you are like a picture paintedout."

  But I question whether he heard me. I returned to my home. Home! As ifone alone can build a nest. How often as I have ascended the stairsthat lead to my lonely, sumptuous rooms, have I paused to listen tothe hilarity of the servants below. That morning I could not rest: Iwandered from chamber to chamber, followed by my great dog, and all werealike empty and desolate. I had nearly finished a cigar when I thoughtI heard a pebble strike the window, and looking out I saw David's fatherstanding beneath. I had told him that I lived in this street, and Isuppose my lights had guided him to my window.

  "I could not lie down," he called up hoarsely, "until I heard your news.Is it all right?"

  For a moment I failed to understand him. Then I said sourly: "Yes, allis right."

  "Both doing well?" he inquired.

  "Both," I answered, and all the time I was trying to shut the window.It was undoubtedly a kindly impulse that had brought him out, but I wasnevertheless in a passion with him.

  "Boy or girl?" persisted the dodderer with ungentlemanlike curiosity.

  "Boy," I said, very furiously.

  "Splendid," he called out, and I think he added something else, but bythat time I had closed the window with a slam.