The Bond/Part 2/Chapter 1
I
WITH the first cold days of autumn, the Ransomes were settled again in town. Teresa brought back from a long lazy summer in the country blooming health and content. Peace of soul and body had wrapped her round. A calm like that of summer nature itself had grown upon her, after the troubled and passionate spring. She was conscious of withdrawing herself from all that could disturb her, of retreating within herself, gathering her forces, mental and physical, for her solitary ordeal.
One day soon after her return Alice Blackley came to see her, fresh from the sea and a summer at St. Moritz, elaborately dressed, and ready to condole.
"You're looking well, though—really well," she said. "How do you manage it? Most women look such frights. And that dress is clever. Why, actually you look—perfectly presentable!"
And she examined curiously Teresa's long sweeping dress of dark violet crêpe, pleated in innumerable narrow folds, flowing out from the square-cut neck to the hem. Teresa smiled.
"I should never dare, myself," said Alice.
"Why not?"
"Oh, a thousand reasons. First, I might lose my figure. Then think of the frightful bother of it all—babies do upset a house so. Then, I should be afraid—terribly afraid. To think what women go through! I don't see how they can do it, unless they want a child most awfully, and I know some do. But I don't. Aren't you afraid, Teresa?"
"I don't think about it," said Teresa dreamily.
"But how can you help it? And you know you can't get away from it, and it comes nearer every day"
"The sooner it will be over. It's all in the day's work."
"But one needn't, you know, unless one likes. And I could never make up my mind to it. Think of the responsibility! To call another human being into this world by our own will, perhaps to suffer"
Teresa looked at Alice's pretty, empty face and large, inquisitive, stupid eyes.
"Perhaps it isn't by our own will—perhaps it's something bigger," she said, as though to herself.
"Oh, Teresa, you are not religious!"
"No, but—the world is vast and—mysterious. It has been going on such a long time, think, and always in the same way! Who is any one of us, after all, to set herself against the current of things? It's easier to go with the tide—to let one's self go"
Teresa stretched out her arms with a vague, sensuous gesture and sighed.
"I can't understand it," said Alice. "Is Basil pleased?"
"I believe he is."
"Of course. There's more paternal instinct than maternal, I think, and no wonder, as they've none of the bother of it. I believe Horace would like to have fifty children, if he'd married somebody else. But he knows I won't. … What shall you do all this winter to amuse yourself, Teresa? Shan't you be awfully bored?"
"Perhaps. People will come and see me, I suppose. And I shall do some work—little things. I began a bust of Basil, but that must wait, now, till afterwards."
"Well, I'm glad to see you so happy about it. I shall send you something pretty for the baby. And you'll come and dine with us soon, won't you—just ourselves? Give my love to Basil. Has he been working?"
"Oh, yes. He's doing some panels now for a bungalow that Mrs. Perry's building down on her Long Island place."
Alice looked suddenly interested.
"Bungalow? But I thought she was building a big house in stone."
"Yes, but the bungalow is a bachelors' house near the main one. She has big crowds staying with her always."
"And what is it like—the bungalow?"
"Decorations all American Indian—Navajo blankets, pottery, baskets, what not—and half a dozen panels, landscapes, old Indian hunting-grounds."
"Have you seen her place?"
"Yes, we've been there two or three times for a few days."
"Oh, you know her, too? Do you like her? I thought she was Basil's flame."
"I like her. Basil does, too, I imagine."
"And she likes him? Aren't you jealous? They say she's fascinating. I've just barely met her."
Teresa smiled. "I couldn't be jealous any more," she said. "All that seems so foolish, now."
"Then you were jealous? … I wonder what it's like! I couldn't possibly be jealous of Horace, could I? But, of course, Basil's different. I don't think I should want a handsome man for a husband. Husbands ought to be useful. What's hers like?"
"Mrs. Perry's husband? Oh, he's useful, I suppose. He's a peevish man, with nervous prostration. He travels nearly all the time. He seems to be interested in nothing but his symptoms and archæology. He's writing a book on the Hittites. I believe he's a good banker, too."
"Well, I don't see what she has to complain of. I hear she's rather too gay. I should look after Basil, if I were you."
"No, you wouldn't," smiled Teresa.
This, too, Alice could not understand, and she went away, convinced that Teresa did not want the baby, and that she was profoundly jealous of Mrs. Perry, but dissembled out of pride.
When she had gone, Teresa began to walk up and down the room, sighing a little wearily. She moved with the pathetic clumsiness of a naturally graceful woman, slowly, the sombre dress rippling about her and hiding the lines of her body. Her head drooped as though owning the weight of her burden, yet its poise on the long throat had a touching dignity. She sighed, for she was beginning to feel the cramping conditions of the city, after her free and quiet summer. She did not like now to go out into the streets. She drove up every day to the Park, and walked there in quiet by-ways ; but she missed her physical freedom, the exhilaration of quick motion, and the irresponsible gaiety of her former life. A touch of mysticism, new to her, helped her to feel that this experience must compensate for itself; and, in resigning her own clear individual preferences, in bowing to a necessity which seemed to lie in the life of love she had chosen, she felt the breath of a wider, vaguer horizon. The world was greater to her, more terrible, but more inspiring, because of this force that compelled her, to which her will submitted. But joy had always lain for her in the free expression of her will and the sense of her own power; her submission could not be joyous. Her face was that of a pensive Madonna. Its outline was fuller, and the narrow eyes had lost their gaiety, their hint of wildness. She did not think much about the child to come. It had not begun to seem an entity to her until, lately, she had made some clothes for it. A queer feeling of tenderness for it woke in her as she sewed real lace about the necks of its tiny dresses, and mysterious tears fell on the muslin.
She was thinking now about a night, just before their return to town, when another feeling about the child had come to her. It was a bright moonlight night, and she was walking on the verandah of their cottage, facing a little inlet of the Sound, that glittered restlessly as the tide came in and rocked the sailboat anchored some way from the land. Charles Page, the young architect, had come down to dine and spend the night, and he and Basil were in the living-room, smoking—Teresa now could not bear the smell of tobacco—and talking lazily, but interestedly. She glanced in now and then at them in the lamplight; they had forgotten her. They were stretched out in two long chairs, the whisky decanter and a box of cigars near by. It was late; Teresa was supposed to have gone to bed; they were too busy talking to observe her silent passing outside. Now and then she heard a fragment of their talk—they were globe-trotting, and their reminiscences of youth and many lands were familiar echoes. Basil showed Page a Japanese pipe, a light dainty thing, such as the women smoke, and Teresa could see the words form on his lips, and the smile, and she could see the picture—the little pale woman, formal and soft, waking in the night, emptying the pipe with a few breaths, and laying it down
And all at once the feeling had come to her: "He is one and I am another—I am forever outside, and he is a stranger to me, in spite of all. But this, this child of mine, is really mine. I shall understand it, it will comfort me, it will belong to me. I shall not need him so much." And the feeling had brought her a new peace, and the power to look at Basil more impersonally, to be grateful for his deep and real love of her, to think of him with almost maternal tenderness. The child, too, in time, would have needs that she could not satisfy, and live its life away from her—and yet it, too, she thought, would always love her.
But between her and Basil something had happened—the first weakening of the physical bond that unites two who are necessary and sufficient to one another. She did not altogether realise it herself. She thought no more about it than she could help, but it saddened her, and touched the cup of physical suffering that she must drink with a strange bitterness. The cost of love was after all, perhaps, in proportion to its sweetness; but one paid, not for love, but for the awful physical force that moved the human world, for its blind, impersonal hunger, for its primeval riot
So the world was made—so it must go on—and the tyranny of that necessity drove men like sheep. The will to live, of life conscious and unconscious, the physical instinct, cruel, wasteful, and careless—at times it seemed to her to make of human beings mere foolish puppets, without will or dignity. If this was the world, who would suffer to carry it on? Except that one must
Was it possible that she, too, had been caught in the mesh spread for all, and that love, that had seemed all joy and lightness, was only a cynical bait, set to entangle one?
When such thoughts beset her, she wished that she were religious, that she might see spirit and meaning governing the world, instead of brute force; but she could not see it. Happily, her dark moods were rather rare.
Basil came in now before the shadow had fairly settled upon her, and his caressing look and touch made her cheerful again. It was a point of pride with her that he should not feel her a burden, now that she was not going out. She liked him to go, and to come back and entertain her with accounts of his doings; and Basil readily adopted her own theory, that she was never bored with her own society. Now, as he dressed for dinner, she lay on his bed and talked to him; dictated what waistcoat he should wear, and tied his white tie. She told him of Alice's visit.
"Alice is an idiot," he said warmly. "She ought to have a baby herself. It's what she needs, only she doesn't know it, and I've told her so."
"You have a panacea for all feminine ills, haven't you?" said Teresa, with quiet sarcasm. "Marriage for those who aren't married, and babies for those who haven't babies"
"That's right—that's what they all want, if they haven't got 'em."
"Then women are divided into two classes—those who have worries, and those who want them."
"Yes, and the last state is worse than the first."
"I wonder," said Teresa, stretching her arms wearily. "For me—I've always had more than I wanted."
"You're a lucky girl—don't put your arms up that way, dearest. You know"
"Oh, be quiet, Basil ! I'm so tired of having to think all the time about it!"
"Never mind, dearest, it won't be long, now." He came over to kiss her tenderly.
"Long? Ah, yes it will be—four long months, and then that at the end"
"Dearest, dearest, I wish I could do it for you."
"Yes, you do, you old silly!"
"I do, honestly. I'd like to be a woman for a while—it must be a tremendous experience."
"I'm not sure that all brands of experience are desirable."
"Well, you are all the better for all you've had—more interesting, sweeter, more beautiful. You were always pretty, but now you're beautiful."
She smiled pensively.
"And now I must go on, or I shall be late. Good-night, my love. I wish you were going, too."
"Good-night. Don't make love to Mrs. Perry."
She held him close for a moment, kissed his eyelids gently, and let him go with a smile.