The Peacemaker

  ‘Have another piece of bread and butter?’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mrs. Pethwick. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

  There was a pause while she munched.

  You see,’ said Mrs. Pethwick, putting the bitten slice carefully on her plate, ‘You see, I’ve got to start feeding myself up now.’

  Dorothy moved uneasily in her chair. She had a horrid doubt—a horrid certainty of what Mrs. Pethwick was going to say next.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.

  ‘Plenty of good nourishing food,’ said Mrs. Pethwick, complacently. Dorothy’s movement had not escaped her. ‘Of course, it’s early days yet for me to be quite sure, but I don’t think there’s any mistake this time. Ed’s awfully pleased.’

  ‘W-What?’ said Dorothy.

  ‘We’ve made mistakes before, and I had a mis. once, but I’m sure it’s going to be all right this time. It’s about time, isn’t it? We’ve been married ten years.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorothy, wildly, ‘I think so.’

  Mrs. Pethwick laughed with admirable self-consciousness.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I didn’t ought to be telling you all this, seeing you’re not married, but when you run a big house like this and have been to college and all it’s just as good as, isn’t it?’

  Dorothy could not bring herself to say anything even idiotic now. She was remembering how Pethwick had said, ‘No, not for years,’ in reply to her question whether he slept with his wife. Mrs. Pethwick burbled on happily.

  ‘Of course, it isn’t even a month yet, in a manner of speaking,’ she said. ‘You can’t ever be sure to the very day, can you? But my Ed he believed I was right a week ago or more, and he’s clever about things, there’s no denying it, even if he doesn’t look it.’

  Every single word seemed to go clean through Dorothy’s skin and then stick there, barbed and rankling.

  ‘I’d thought I’d better tell you early,’ said Mrs. Pethwick. ‘You see, Ed being a schoolmaster—it’s not like any other job. I’ll have to keep myself to myself soon, when I start getting big. There’s no knowing what the boys would be saying about it if they should see me. It wouldn’t be very nice for Ed, would it?’

  ‘Don’t—oh, don’t,’ gasped Dorothy.

  ‘You take my tip,’ said Mrs. Pethwick, apparently not hearing what Dorothy said. ‘When you’re married, you ‘ave one or two kids—don’t you listen to them that say they wouldn’t for worlds. It makes a wonderful difference to a man. My Ed’s been so attentive this last week or two you’d hardly know him.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Dorothy—or she tried to say it, or something similar; whatever it was, it was unintelligible. She hurried out of the room and ran upstairs. She could not bear it any longer.

  Mrs. Pethwick sat and preened herself in her armchair. Her ingenuity had been successful. The same diabolical malice which enabled her to think of those things to say to her husband which hurt most had served its purpose to perfection here. Naturally she had not been as clever as she thought she was; it had not been nearly as ingenious an invention as she believed it to be. It was not hard to guess that a man who for a year had had no sexual relations with his wife would contrive to let his new love know the fact somehow or other; and if he had told her, the most convenient way of hurting her would be to tell the opposite, convincingly. Mrs. Pethwick, smoothing down her frock over her swollen thighs, knew that it had been convincing enough.

  There have been tortures and torments recounted in all the literature of the world, but perhaps there has never been anything as bad as the torment Dorothy suffered that afternoon. The doorbell rang as she paced the floor of her room. She heard Beatrice bring in another caller. She had to go downstairs again. She had to greet her visitors, and pour out tea, and talk lightly, despite the pain that tore her heart-strings. The other guests were mildly surprised and a little contemptuous at finding Mrs. Pethwick there, but she did not try to enter into their conversation. While they talked and gossiped gaily to each other, and to Dorothy, she sat in her corner and smoothed down her frock. Mr. Laxton came in towards the end and talked with the usual boisterous good humour which constituted his social manner towards his inferiors. It was only Dorothy, distractedly pouring out tea, who felt the oppression of the presence of the woman in the corner who said nothing.

  And when the last of them had gone, Dorothy was able to tear herself free from her father on the plea of a headache—she who had never made that Victorian excuse before in her life! Up in the sanctuary of her bedroom she could not lie down, nor sit down. She could only walk up and down, up and down, in the alley-way between the bed and the wardrobe. The pain of it all was unbearable. She told herself, now, that she would not have minded Pethwick sleeping with his wife. After all, he was a married man, and men are insensitive about such things. But that he should lie about it! It was that which hurt. And it was not as if it were a facile little lie, told because the circumstances left him no option and he was carried away by his passion; she remembered how he had said it. It was the blackest sort of lie.

  And even if he had not lied about it, even if he really loved her, Mrs. Pethwick’s condition left Dorothy’s hands tied. The dreams of a golden future in which she had been indulging would never come to fruition. She could not take away the husband of a woman who was pregnant, or who had a little tiny baby. (And expressing it in those words made the pain worse than ever.) A man had to stand by his wife in those circumstances, come what might. And Pethwick’s child (the pain became worse still), Pethwick’s child must not be abandoned to the sole guardianship of Mrs. Pethwick. No one could be so heartless. Pethwick would make a good father, with that understanding smile of his on his lean face.

  Then she remembered anew that she hated him. She remembered the smell of stale drink and stale sweat which had reached her nostrils when she had put Mrs. Pethwick to bed. How could Pethwick bear to embrace that woman? Or kiss her? Or after kissing that woman, how could he come straight from her arms to Dorothy’s kisses? Dorothy’s feeling of nausea nearly overcame her at the thought of it. As the paroxysm passed she found herself trying to reason again, telling herself that he was a married man, and that men are insensitive about such things—and with that her thoughts proceeded to describe once more the full circle they had already followed.

  Someone banged on the door.

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ said the voice of Henry Laxton, junior.

  ‘Go to Hell,’ said Dorothy. She heard a surprised Henry go clumping down the stairs again, and her thoughts raced off once more along the path of pain.

  Then came another knock.

  ‘Dorothy, Father says—’

  ‘Tell Father to go to Hell too.’

  They left her in peace after that—or that is how the male Laxtons would have described it, not knowing what was going on in that bedroom.

  There was a new pain now, for Dorothy had begun to recall to herself how Pethwick had looked and spoken when he had sworn to be faithful to her, five minutes before Mrs. Pethwick came back to find the kettle melted. The wanton wickedness of that vow appalled her. Dorothy told herself that if instead of vowing eternal fidelity he had smiled and said something like ‘as long as circumstances permit’ she would have been just as pleased then. But perhaps he did not count sleeping with his wife as infidelity to Dorothy. He was probably rather insensitive about such things. Her thoughts were back in the same old circle again, and they went the complete round once more.

  It was not until very much later, not until hours of dry-eyed agony had elapsed, that tears came to the rescue and provided a safety valve. Dorothy had not wept for years; she had long ago decided that the prevailing belief that women weep more readily than men was a myth of the same class as the belief that women are bigger talkers or worse motor-drivers or less original thinkers than men. Be that as it might, Dorothy wept bitterly; which implied that soon she was weeping from wounded pride and because of her feeling of humiliation just as much
as from her sorrow. In the end Dorothy did something which she had not believed, since she left off reading schoolgirl literature, to be possible. She cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  In the morning her pride was re-established. It had been wounded by the thought that she had shared a man’s kisses with a woman who did not clean her teeth; it had been wounded by her discovery that the veneer of easy-going sexual tolerance which she had acquired at Oxford was only a veneer; it had been wounded by her discovery that she could feel so deeply about a man who was obviously worthless. But on account, presumably, of these woundings, her pride was up in arms, more evident even than usual. The pain was gone; all that remained was a slight dull ache, as though a tooth which had been causing agonising pain had been drawn and the jaw had not yet quite healed—an analogy which was completed by the sensation of something missing which she experienced every few seconds; something gone from her life.

  Dorothy had eaten no tea and no dinner the night before. She completed a twenty-four hours’ fast by eating no breakfast and no lunch before she set out, after school hours, to pay back some of the hurts she had received. She walked across the High Street and slowly down Verulam Road. At the end of Verulam Road she turned and walked very fast back to the High Street, and when she reached the High Street she turned again and walked very slowly back down Verulam Road. It was not the first time she had done this. She had done the same for interviews 5 and 6, because Dr. Pethwick on his way home from the Liverpool School walked down Verulam Road from the High Street, and by adjusting matters carefully Dorothy could contrive that he overtook her and that their meeting might appear accidental.

  To-day, when she reached the High Street corner for the third time she saw him picking his way in his usual sleepy manner through the traffic, and she had only walked twenty yards back along Verulam Road when she heard his step close behind her.

  ‘I was wondering if I should see you,’ said Dr. Pethwick, altering his shambling step to suit hers. His mild grey eyes were bright with pleasure.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dorothy, and several seconds elapsed before she continued, ‘I didn’t want to see you. I was hoping I would not.’

  Pethwick could not, later, nave said what actual words Dorothy had spoken. The tone she used sufficed to serve her purpose. He knew that fate had come upon him.

  ‘But perhaps it is as well,’ said Dorothy, ‘that I have seen you. Because now I can tell you that I never want to see you again.’

  A suburban street is emphatically not the place for a lovers’ quarrel. When walking side by side it is hard for the one to see the expression on the other’s face. There is too much limitation upon words and gestures. Misunderstandings are easy and explanations are difficult. But more than that, there is a drabness about the atmosphere, a monotony about the surroundings, which accentuate the misery of the quarrel. The grievances of the aggrieved party seem somehow deeper; and the dreary pavements and dull houses rob the other party of his good spirits and optimism so that he can do little to heal the breach. The surroundings certainly played their part in Dorothy’s mental attitude. They brought home to her what she had been doing. She had been indulging in a vulgar intrigue with a secondary schoolmaster, kissing him in a shabby little two-bedroom house with plush furniture. She wondered how she could have fallen so low after she had had four years in Oxford, when the beauties of the Dolomites and of Amalfi were familiar to her, and when her mind was filled with beautiful ideas. She was disgusted with herself, and she told herself that her two years of housekeeping in this suburb must have mildewed her. She had forgotten all the glorious pity that once moved her, and certainly she had forgotten the fact that she had once even admired the man at her side. She was merciless now.

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised at what I am saying,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Pethwick.

  He was not. It did not surprise him that a Lordly One should dismiss him from her presence. The only wonder was that she had borne with him so long.

  ‘Oh, what did you do it for?’ asked Dorothy with exasperation. ‘You knew all the time it couldn’t last.’

  ‘I suppose it couldn’t,’ said Pethwick.

  At this point Dorothy was brought up against the realisation that if she blamed it all on to Pethwick, which was the point to which the conversation was tending, she left herself the appearance of the weak-willed and gullible person she was determined not to be. She was determined to hurt.

  ‘You’re a liar and a coward,’ she said viciously.

  Pethwick winced at that. He could accept dismissal as something inevitable, like falling down when learning to skate, but even a low-spirited professor of mathematics can feel hurt when he is called a liar and a coward. Pethwick was hurt far too deeply to make any reply. He could only open and shut his mouth. Dorothy went on to pour venom into the wounds she had laid open.

  ‘I wouldn’t have hated you for being a coward,’ she said. ‘I thought all along that’s what you were. But that you should lie to me. Me! You cur!’

  Dorothy had never uttered the word ‘cur’ before in her life, although she had read it in books. But such was the intensity of her feeling that the word came out perfectly naturally—as naturally as the heroine of a melodrama would say it. Dorothy was not feeling melodramatic. She was being it, instead.

  Pethwick was out of his depth by this time. He did not know and could not imagine what it was that he was being accused of. If he had said so; if Dorothy’s vicious attack had only made him lose his temper, there was still a chance for them both. But he was hampered by his feeling of respect; he could not bring himself to combat Dorothy’s decision.

  ‘You haven’t made a fool of me, the way you thought you would,’ said Dorothy. ‘And I could make you sorry, too, but I won’t. I’m not going to that much trouble, you poor fool, you. I shan’t ever see you again. I’m going to Norway with Father this holiday.’

  By now they had reached the corner of Launceton Avenue, and Pethwick stopped automatically. He had said good-bye to Dorothy at this corner five times. He stood looking down at her, his features twitching with the pain she had caused him. Dorothy met his eyes once, and then looked away again. Her latent sense of justice prompted her to say all she could for him.

  ‘I thought better of you once,’ she said, and with that she left him, standing there with his papers under his arm, and his shoulders bowed, while she hurried away, never once looking back. It was not until two or three minutes had elapsed that he turned towards his house, dragging his feet along the pavement like an old, old man.

  If he had thought about it, he would have prayed that Mary was not going to be ‘difficult’ on this evening of all evenings. But it was only when he was inside the door that he remembered Mary’s existence, and Mary was not ‘difficult.’ Mary knew, with that diabolical intuition of hers, that her schemes had borne good fruit even as he crossed the threshold. She was sweetness itself at once, a better wife to him than she had been for years. Partly it was because she was pleased at her success, but partly it was with some obscure and indefinite motive impelling her to show him that she was worth more than all the Dorothys on earth. Or it may even have been some lurking sense of good behaviour. She took his parcel from him and put it on the table, and stood by him while he dropped into a chair.

  ‘Tired?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pethwick, under his breath.

  ‘I’ll bring your tea in for you here,’ said Mary, just as though it were her usual habit to make his tea for him.

  She brought in the tray, and rested it on the piano-stool which she brought up conveniently close to his elbow. It was a tempting-looking tray, as tempting as her dulled mind could devise.

  ‘Is there anything else you’d like?’ she asked.

  Pethwick roused himself to look at the tray.

  ‘No, thank you, dear,’ he said, automatically.

  ‘I’ll pour you out a cup,’ said Mary, and did so.

  Pethwick
still sat vacantly in his chair.

  ‘Be sure you drink it while it’s hot,’ said Mary, lightly. Then she went out on tiptoe.

  In the end Pethwick drank it, not while it was hot, but before it was stone-cold, and he poured himself out another cup, feverishly, and drank that, too, and then a third. The habit of drinking tea was so much a part of his nature that even the present crisis could not quite suppress it. The tea did much towards quietening the turmoil of aimless thought in his mind. He began to think consecutively again, sitting there in the chair with the untasted food beside him. Later, when Mary peeped in through the door, he was still sitting there, a little more upright than usual, staring through the wall at nothing at all. Mary’s intuition kept her from breaking in upon his thoughts, and she shut the door again as gently as she could.

  It was a full hour, all the same, before Pethwick was really conscious of more than the misery within him. In the beginning he was merely aware of a sense of loss, so acute that it is hard to describe. Just as a person in physical pain turns this way and that in the hope of relief, and all unavailingly, so every attitude his mind adopted was found impossible by reason of the agony of having lost Dorothy. More than that; of late—and especially during the last three days—his every thought had been influenced and coloured by the faint exhilarating prospect that one day Dorothy might be nearer to him. That was impossible now; she was eternally and immeasurably far away. He was brought up against this realisation at every turn, and it added to his pain, because it was easy at first, in his early stupidity, to begin lines of thought which his mind had grown accustomed to—lines of thought which led towards Dorothy.