A Duet (with an occasional chorus) - Arthur Conan Doyle (best classic books to read TXT) 📗

‘Oh yes, I always thought highly of his taste.’

‘You have such a pretty way of putting things. You know my husband very slightly, but still I can see that you know the world very well. I often wonder if I am really the best kind of woman that he could have married. Do you think I am, Mrs. Wright?’

Her visitor looked in silence for a little at the gentle grace and dainty sympathetic charm of the woman before her.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly, as one who weighs her words. ‘I think you are. You are a lady with a lady’s soul in you. A woman can draw a man down very low, or she can make him live at his very highest. Don’t be soft with him. Don’t give way when you know that your way is the higher way. Pull him up, don’t let him ever pull you down. Then his respect for you will strengthen his love for you, and the two together are so much greater than either one apart. Your instinct would be to do this, and therefore you are the best sort of woman for him.’

Her opinion was given with so much thought, and yet so much decision, that Maude glowed with pride and with pleasure. There was knowledge and authority behind the words of this unaccountable woman.

‘How sweet you are!’ she cried. ‘I feel that what you say is true. I feel that that is what a wife should be to her husband. Please God, I will be so to Frank!’

‘And one other piece of advice before I leave you,’ said Violet Wright. ‘Don’t ever take your husband for granted. Don’t ever accept his kiss or caress as a routine thing. Don’t ever relax those little attentions which you showed him in the earliest days. Don’t let the freshness go out of love, for the love may soon follow it, even when duty keeps the man true. It is the commonest mistake which married women make. It has caused more unhappiness than any other. They do not realise it until it is too late. Be keenly watchful for your husband’s wants and comforts. It is not the comfort but the attention which he values. If it is not there he will say nothing, if he is a good fellow, but he notices it all the same. She has changed, he thinks. And from that moment he will begin to change also. Be on your guard against that. It is very unselfish of me to give you all this wise counsel.’

‘It is very good of you, and I feel that it is all so true. But why is it unselfish of you?’

‘I only meant that I had no interest in the matter. What does it matter to me whether you keep his love or not. And yet I don’t know.’ She suddenly put her arms round Maude, and kissed her upon the cheek. ‘You are a good little sort, and I hope you will be happy.’

Frank Crosse had disentangled himself from the rush of City men emerging from the Woking station, and he was walking swiftly through the gathering gloom along the vile, deeply-rutted road, which formed a short cut to The Lindens. Suddenly, with a sinking heart, he was aware of a tall graceful figure which was sweeping towards him. There could not be two women of that height, who carried themselves in that fashion.

‘Violet!’

‘Hullo, Frankie! I thought it might be you, but those tall hats and black overcoats make every one alike. Your wife will be glad to see you.’

‘Violet! You have ruined our happiness. How could you have the heart to do it! It is not for myself I speak, God knows. But to think of her feelings being so abused, her confidence so shaken—’

‘All right, Frankie, there is nothing to be tragic about.’

‘Haven’t you been to my house?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then—’

‘I didn’t give you away, my boy. I was a model of discretion. I give you my word that it is all right. And she’s a dear little soul, Frankie. You’re not worthy to varnish those pretty patent leathers of hers. You know you’re not. And by Jove, Frankie, if you had stayed with me yesterday I should never have forgiven you—no, never! I’ll resign in her favour. I will. But in no one else’s, and if ever I hear of your going wrong, my boy, or doing anything but the best with that sweet trusting woman, I’ll make you curse the day that ever you knew me—I will, by the living Jingo.’

‘Do, Violet—you have my leave.’

‘All right. The least said the soonest mended. Give me a kiss before we part.’

She raised her veil, and he kissed her. He was wearing some withered flower in his overcoat, and she took it from him.

‘It’s a souvenir of our friendship, Frankie, and rather a good emblem of it also. So-long!’ said she, as she turned down the weary road which leads to the station. A young golfer, getting in at Byfleet, was surprised to see a handsome woman weeping bitterly in the corner of a second-class carriage. ‘Comm’ up from roastin’ somebody at that damned crematory place,’ was his explanation to his companion.

Frank had a long and animated account from Maude of the extraordinary visitor whom she had entertained. ‘It’s such a pity, dear, that you don’t know her well, for I should really like to hear every detail about her. At first I thought she was mad, and then I thought she was odious, and then finally she seemed to be the very wisest and kindest woman that I had ever known. She made me angry, and frightened, and grieved, and grateful, and affectionate, one after the other, and I never in my life was so taken out of myself by any one. She IS so sensible!’

‘Sensible, is she?’

‘And she said that I was—oh! I can’t repeat it—everything that is nice.’

‘Then she IS sensible.’

‘And such a high opinion of your taste.’

‘Had she indeed.’

‘Do you know, Frank, I really believe that in a quiet, secret, retiring sort of way she has been fond of you herself.’

‘O Maude, what funny ideas you get sometimes! I say, if we are going out for dinner, it is high time that we began to dress.’

CHAPTER XX—NO. 5 CHEYNE ROW

Frank had brought home the Life of Carlyle, and Maude had been dipping into it in the few spare half-hours which the many duties of a young housekeeper left her. At first it struck her as dry, but from the moment that she understood that this was, among other things, an account of the inner life of a husband and a wife, she became keenly interested, and a passionate and unreasonable partisan. For Frederick and Cromwell and the other great issues her feelings were tolerant but lukewarm. But the great sex-questions of ‘How did he treat her?’ and of ‘How did she stand it?’ filled her with that eternal and personal interest with which they affect every woman. Her gentle nature seldom disliked any one, but certainly amongst those whom she liked least, the gaunt figure of the Chelsea sage began to bulk largely. One night, as Frank sat reading in front of the fire, he suddenly found his wife on her knees upon the rug, and a pair of beseeching eyes upon his face.

‘Frank, dear, I want you to make me a promise.’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Will you grant it?’

‘How can I tell you when I have not heard it?’

‘How horrid you are, Frank! A year ago you would have promised first and asked afterwards.’

‘But I am a shrewd old married man now. Well, let me hear it.’

‘I want you to promise me that you will never be a Carlyle.’

‘No, no, never.’

‘Really?’

‘Really and truly.’

‘You swear it?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘O Frank, you can’t think what a relief that is to me. That dear, good, helpful, little lady—it really made me cry this morning when I thought how she had been used.’

‘How, then?’

‘I have been reading that green-covered book of yours, and he seemed so cold and so sarcastic and so unsympathetic. He never seemed to appreciate all that she did for him. He had no thought for her. He lived in his books and never in her—such a harsh, cruel man!’

Frank went upstairs, and returned with a volume in his hand.

‘When you have finished the ‘Life,’ you must read this, dear.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is her letters. They were arranged for publication after her death, while her husband was still alive. You know that—’

‘Please take it for granted, darling, that I know nothing. It is so jolly to have some one before whom it is not necessary to keep up appearances. Now, begin at the beginning and go ahead.’ She pillowed her head luxuriously against his knees.

‘There’s nothing to tell—or very little. As you say, they had their troubles in life. The lady could take particularly good care of herself, I believe. She had a tongue like a lancet when she chose to use it. He, poor chap, was all liver and nerves, porridge-poisoned in his youth. No children to take the angles off them. Half a dozen little buffer states would have kept them at peace. However, to hark back to what I was about to say, he outlived her by fifteen years or so. During that time he collected these letters, and he has annotated them. You can read those notes here, and the man who wrote those notes loved his wife and cherished her memory, if ever a man did upon earth.’

The graceful head beside his knee shook impatiently.

‘What is the use of that to the poor dead woman? Why could not he show his love by kindness and thought for her while she was alive?’

‘I tell you, Maude, there were two sides to that. Don’t be so prejudiced! And remember that no one has ever blamed Carlyle as bitterly as he has blamed himself. I could read you bits of these notes—’

‘Well, do.’

‘Here’s the first letter, in which she is talking about how they first moved into the house at Cheyne Row. They spent their early years in Scotland, you know, and he was a man going on to the forties when he came to London. The success of Sartor Resartus encouraged them to the step. Her letter describes all the incoming. Here is his comment, written after her death: “In about a week all was swept and garnished, fairly habitable; and continued incessantly to get itself polished, civilised, and beautified to a degree that surprised one. I have elsewhere alluded to all that, and to my little Jeannie’s conduct of it; heroic, lovely, pathetic, mournfully beautiful as in the light of Eternity that little scene of time now looks to me. From birth upwards she had lived in opulence, and now became poor for me—so nobly poor. No such house for beautiful thrift, quiet, spontaneous, nay, as it were, unconscious minimum of money reconciled to human comfort and human dignity, have I anywhere looked upon where I have been.” Now, Maude, did that man appreciate his wife?’

But the obstinate head still shook.

‘Words, words,’ said she.

‘Yes, but words with the ring of truth in them. Can’t you tell real feeling from sham? I don’t believe women can, or they would not be so often taken in. Here’s the heading of the next letter: “Mournfully beautiful is this letter to me, a clear little household light shining pure and brilliant in the dark obstructive places of the past”—a little later comes the note: “Oh my poor little woman— become poor for