Mrs. Dorriman Volume Ii Part 19

The impressions of her mind flowed naturally into rhyme. There was great beauty of thought, though much sameness in its delivery on paper. Her reading with Mrs. Dorriman had not been thrown away, and she began to be able to concentrate her thoughts on her work. The happiness of her life which she had missed, set all to a minor key, but it made her poems more beautiful. To touch the feelings of others, to appeal to their hearts, there must be reality, and reality only can exist from personal experience.

Sometimes the extraordinary dreariness of her life appalled her. To rise day after day, knowing that a secret dread of a possible tragedy, enacted in her house, pursued her; to see no one, to go nowhere, since she was not allowed to cross the threshold. She had no idea that these facts, told to any one, would have immediately brought her release, and that any one, knowing what her life was, would have formed a juster conclusion of the state her husband was in.

But the fear of having to leave, and to be parted from her child, made all else nothing to her, and when she met her husband, he hardly spoke to her. She never saw him without his servant being present, and she could not bear appealing to her husband before him. She could not bear discussing her sister's illness in his hearing.

Every possible opportunity she tried to get that key of the front door, or permission to go out, but each time was met by peals of laughter, of _senseless_ laughter, and refusal.

Her husband's last idea was the most frantic jealousy of the doctor, who had been a little won over by Mrs. Drayton's youth and grace and charm of manner.

Before him Mr. Drayton was always perfectly quiet, and even well-bred, a little sullen, which was, the doctor thought, natural since he must resent the deprivation of any stimulants; but he was satisfied from his observations that he was really kept from them, and saw nothing to point suspicion in another direction.

He regretted never seeing the young wife now, and expressed his regret to Mr. Drayton.

He was surprised to see an angry flush rise in his face, but concluded that perhaps there had been some conjugal difference, and that she did not choose to appear.

When Margaret first contrived to send her little poem to good Mr. Skidd, the editor of the "Industrious Workman," she had done it through her nurse, who had grown warmly attached to her mistress. She was quite young--this was her first place, and she came to the conclusion that if this was the life led by rich people, the poor had many more pleasures.

Margaret read her poem to her, which she but vaguely took in, and she also read her the note she wrote to the editor.

She had no knowledge of him except that at first the doctor had told her she could get books there, when she had asked him, he had also spoken highly of him as a cultivated and intellectual man, who had done a great deal towards spreading wholesome cheap literature, and that he edited a weekly paper of much merit.

Her idea, now, was to write something longer and more important. She had two great incentives to write: she had that something to say, without which all writing falls so flat; and she wished to get money for her sister.

Mr. Skidd received her proposal to write a book of poetry with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

The unknown gentleman who brought out her little poems at his own expense, after they had appeared in the paper, and who received for her the few s.h.i.+llings Mr. Skidd considered them worth, might not stretch his generosity so far as to embark in a larger book--but he would see. He spoke, therefore, rather vaguely to the young woman who came as messenger, so vaguely that Margaret imagined she _must_ try, in some way, and have an interview with the man herself.

But how to accomplish this? True, there was a back door, but she could not bear going out through the connivance of the servant, who was cook and who was a disagreeable woman at all times. Fortune favoured her, however, in a few days. She was walking in the garden one afternoon with her nurse and baby when some one came to the front door with a message, which caused the grumpy man-servant to go into the house for a few seconds. Quick as thought, Margaret slipped out of her prison, and hurried along the road.

She was dizzy with excitement and the sense of freedom--to see Grace--and to arrange about her book.

Her face was glowing as she moved along. She must first see Grace, and then hurry on to do her business.

When she reached Grace's lodgings she was met by a homelike, kindly face; and Jean, forgetting everything but that she had a hard life of it, took her to her arms as though she had been a bairn of her own.

Margaret's tears were never very near the surface, but she had lived a life so unnatural and so repressed, she had been so entirely without kindness or sympathy for so long, that she broke down now, and sobbed upon good, honest, Jean's broad shoulder, sensible only of the sweetness and comfort of the relief.

"My poor bairn, my poor bairn!" Jean kept on saying, and then, recollecting that she ought not to allow her to give way, she said, "but you'll no be fit to see Miss Grace, and you just a blurred objick," and this reflection also stopped Margaret's tears and caused her to lift up her head and try to compose herself.

"How is my sister? How is Grace, dear Jean?"

"She's no just fit to dance the houlachan," said Jean, gaily, who had her own private way of p.r.o.nouncing most words, "but she's not that bad.

Eh, my dear, come and see her; she's been wearying for you, sair, sair."

Margaret went upstairs, and in another moment the sisters were once more together.

Grace was lying on the sofa, and Margaret found her looking better than she expected. She was a softened edition of the old Grace, still fitful, capricious, but full of tenderness for her sister, whose life she had so completely spoiled.

"Why, darling, have you never been here before?" she asked; "I have sent you so many notes and have had such scanty answers. You never tell me of yourself; you never tell me what I want to know."

"I have so little to say of myself. My husband has been ill, and, since his illness, he cannot bear my going out, and I came to-day because I could slip away."

"But tell me one thing, darling, only one. Why stay with him? Why not leave him?"

"Because of baby; I cannot desert my little one, Grace: and if I left him merely because he is unkind and allows me no liberty and is 'odd,'

he would have the right to keep baby, not I, its mother."

"Then if that is the law it is abominable!" exclaimed Grace.

"I think it _is_ terrible," said Margaret; "even if he was cruel, if he struck me, if he were in other ways infamous, I might leave him; I should be free; but even then it is doubtful if I might have my child."

"And we boast of English justice!" exclaimed Grace.

"It is cruelly unjust," said Margaret. "Oh darling, how often we have laughed at women wanting their 'rights,' and made fun of those who made a stir about having votes: but this one thing, this one frightful injustice, makes me feel that women should, in some way, be able to make their great needs felt; surely a mother should have equal rights with the father, and have something to say in a child's destiny!"

"And we have to submit, and I, _I_ have brought you into this position!"

and Grace burst into tears.

Jean hurried into the room.

"Bairns, my dear bairns, whist, for any sake. You'll make me feel I did wrong in leaving the two of you together."

"We were talking of an unjust law," said Margaret; "we were talking of my child, Jean, and that _if_ I ever left my husband, he would have it probably, and not me."

"It's a man made that law," said Jean, "and it's a real cruel one and not Christian. I never had any opinion of men, they're just poor creatures all round, poor selfish creatures--except, maybe, the police,"

she added, with a sense of ingrat.i.tude for the way in which a policeman had helped her in her hour of need.

"Tell me of your baby, Margaret," said Grace, turning with real interest to her sister; "it is more than a year old now, is it not?"

"My little darling is a year and almost three months old, in five days now it will be fifteen months old. It can run about, and calls me so prettily. Oh, darling, I wish, I wish it were with me at this moment. I feel so anxious if I am away from it; only once before, since its birth, have I been away."

"And does that man shut you up, darling? Do you mean to say that those smoky trees and that walled-in place, looking like a prison, is all you have? Oh, your life is one long trial!"

Margaret did not speak; her life was so utterly wretched, so utterly devoid of hope, that she could not speak of it.

"I have baby," she said, softly, "and, Gracie, dearest, when one is very wretched G.o.d is very near."

The sisters parted with all the anguish of a vagueness about their next meeting, which filled them both with a sense of having nothing to look forward to, and Margaret tore herself away and hurried into Mr. Skidd's presence.

Mrs. Dorriman had boldly authorised Jean to look to Mr. Sandford for all expenses, so that she no longer cared about the money so much.

But this lessened sense of requirement did not in any way make her grat.i.tude to the editor for his kindness, less. With no real knowledge to guide her she did not know that everything must bear the test of criticism, and that it would have been false kindness to encourage her to write without any merit in sight.

But Mr. Skidd had discovered real merit in all Margaret did; there was the impress of truth, and no fict.i.tious feeling. The cry was the cry of a starved, human soul pining for sympathy and an outlet, under a life of great misery and repression, haunted by a never-ending fear.

He was so amazed when Margaret stood before him--at her youth and the graceful way she expressed her thanks, that he was dumb before her.

Next a vivid colour blushed over his bald head, for he remembered that he stood in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.