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_ Was Constance happy? Of course there was always something on her
mind, something that had to be dealt with, either in the shop or
in the house, something to employ all the skill and experience
which she had acquired. Her life had much in it of laborious
tedium--tedium never-ending and monotonous. And both she and
Samuel worked consistently hard, rising early, 'pushing forward,'
as the phrase ran, and going to bed early from sheer fatigue; week
after week and month after month as season changed imperceptibly
into season. In June and July it would happen to them occasionally
to retire before the last silver of dusk was out of the sky. They
would lie in bed and talk placidly of their daily affairs. There
would be a noise in the street below. "Vaults closing!" Samuel
would say, and yawn. "Yes, it's quite late," Constance would say.
And the Swiss clock would rapidly strike eleven on its coil of
resonant wire. And then, just before she went to sleep, Constance
might reflect upon her destiny, as even the busiest and smoothest
women do, and she would decide that it was kind. Her mother's
gradual decline and lonely life at Axe saddened her. The cards
which came now and then at extremely long intervals from Sophia
had been the cause of more sorrow than joy. The naive ecstasies of
her girlhood had long since departed--the price paid for
experience and self-possession and a true vision of things. The
vast inherent melancholy of the universe did not exempt her. But
as she went to sleep she would be conscious of a vague
contentment. The basis of this contentment was the fact that she
and Samuel comprehended and esteemed each other, and made
allowances for each other. Their characters had been tested and
had stood the test. Affection, love, was not to them a salient
phenomenon in their relations. Habit had inevitably dulled its
glitter. It was like a flavouring, scarce remarked; but had it
been absent, how they would have turned from that dish!
Samuel never, or hardly ever, set himself to meditate upon the
problem whether or not life had come up to his expectations. But
he had, at times, strange sensations which he did not analyze, and
which approached nearer to ecstasy than any feeling of
Constance's. Thus, when he was in one of his dark furies, molten
within and black without, the sudden thought of his wife's
unalterable benignant calm, which nothing could overthrow, might
strike him into a wondering cold. For him she was astoundingly
feminine. She would put flowers on the mantelpiece, and then,
hours afterwards, in the middle of a meal, ask him unexpectedly
what he thought of her 'garden;' and he gradually divined that a
perfunctory reply left her unsatisfied; she wanted a genuine
opinion; a genuine opinion mattered to her. Fancy calling flowers
on a mantelpiece a 'garden'! How charming, how childlike! Then she
had a way, on Sunday mornings, when she descended to the parlour
all ready for chapel, of shutting the door at the foot of the
stairs with a little bang, shaking herself, and turning round
swiftly as if for his inspection, as if saying: "Well, what about
this? Will this do?" A phenomenon always associated in his mind
with the smell of kid gloves! Invariably she asked him about the
colours and cut of her dresses. Would he prefer this, or that? He
could not take such questions seriously until one day he happened
to hint, merely hint, that he was not a thorough-going admirer of
a certain new dress--it was her first new dress after the definite
abandonment of crinolines. She never wore it again. He thought she
was not serious at first, and remonstrated against a joke being
carried too far. She said: "It's not a bit of use you talking, I
shan't wear it again." And then he so far appreciated her
seriousness as to refrain, by discretion, from any comment. The
incident affected him for days. It flattered him; it thrilled him;
but it baffled him. Strange that a woman subject to such caprices
should be so sagacious, capable, and utterly reliable as Constance
was! For the practical and commonsense side of her eternally
compelled his admiration. The very first example of it--her
insistence that the simultaneous absence of both of them from the
shop for half an hour or an hour twice a day would not mean the
immediate downfall of the business--had remained in his mind ever
since. Had she not been obstinate--in her benevolent way--against
the old superstition which he had acquired from his employers,
they might have been eating separately to that day. Then her
handling of her mother during the months of the siege of Paris,
when Mrs. Baines was convinced that her sinful daughter was in
hourly danger of death, had been extraordinarily fine, he
considered. And the sequel, a card for Constance's birthday, had
completely justified her attitude.
Sometimes some blundering fool would jovially exclaim to them:
"What about that baby?"
Or a woman would remark quietly: "I often feel sorry you've no
children."
And they would answer that really they did not know what they
would do if there was a baby. What with the shop and one thing or
another ...! And they were quite sincere. _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER II - CHRISTMAS AND THE FUTURE: PART IV
Read previous: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER II - CHRISTMAS AND THE FUTURE: PART II
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