XXX

Mrs. Makebelieve was astonished when the policeman knocked at her door. A knock at her door was a rare sound, for many years had gone by since anyone had come to visit her. Of late Mrs. Cafferty often came to talk to her, but she never knocked; she usually shouted, “Can I come in?” and then she came in. But this was a ceremonious knock which startled her, and the spectacle of the great man bending through the doorway almost stopped her breath. Mary also was so shocked into terror that she stood still, forgetful of all good manners, and stared at the visitor open-eyed. She knew and did not know what he had come for; but that, in some way, his appearance related to her she was instantly assured, although she could not even dimly guess at a closer explanation of his visit. His eyes stayed on her for an instant and then passed to her mother, and, following her rather tremulous invitation, he came into the room. There was no chair to sit on, so Mrs. Makebelieve requested him to sit down on the bed, which he did. She fancied he had come on some errand from Mrs. O’Connor, and was inclined to be angry at a visit which she construed as an intrusion, so, when he was seated, she waited to hear what he might have to say.

Even to her it was evident that the big man was perplexed and abashed; his hat was in his way, and so were his hands, and when he spoke his voice was so husky as to be distressful. On Mary, who had withdrawn to the very end of the room, this discomfort of speech had a peculiar effect: the unsteady voice touched her breast to a kindred fluttering, and her throat grew parched and so irritated that a violent fit of coughing could not be restrained, and this, with the nervousness and alarm which his appearance had thronged upon her, drove her to a very fever of distress. But she could not take her eyes away from him, and she wondered and was afraid of what he might say. She knew there were a great many things he might discuss which she would be loath to hear in her mother’s presence, and which her mother would not be gratified to hear either.

He spoke for a few moments about the weather, and Mrs. Makebelieve hearkened to his remarks with a perplexity which she made no effort to conceal. She was quite certain he had not called to speak about the weather, and she was prepared to tell him so if a suitable opportunity should occur. She was also satisfied that he had not come on a formal, friendly visit⁠—the memory of her last interview with him forbade such a conjecture, for on that occasion politeness had been deposed from her throne and acrimony had reigned in her stead. If his aunt had desired him to undertake an embassy to her he would surely have delivered his message without preamble, and would not have been thrown by so trifling a duty into the state of agitation in which he was. It was obvious, therefore, that he had not come with a message relating to her work. Something of fear touched Mrs. Makebelieve as she looked at him, and her voice had an uneasy note when she requested to know what she could do for him.

The policeman suddenly, with the gesture of one throwing away anchors, plunged into the heart of his matter, and as he spoke the look on Mrs. Makebelieve’s face changed quickly from bewilderment to curiosity and dulled again to a blank amazement. After the first few sentences she half turned to Mary, but an obscure shame prevented her from searching out her daughter’s eyes. It was borne quickly and painfully to her that Mary had not treated her fairly: there was a secret here with which a mother ought to have been trusted, and one which she could not believe Mary would have withheld from her; and so, gauging her child’s feelings by her own, she steadfastly refused to look at her lest the shocked surprise in her eyes might lacerate the girl she loved, and who she knew must at the instant be in a sufficient agony.⁠—Undoubtedly the man was suggesting that he wanted to marry her daughter, and the unexpectedness of such a proposal left her mentally gaping; but that there must have been some preliminaries of meeting and courtship became obvious to her. Mary also listened to his remarks in a stupor. Was there no possibility at all of getting away from the man? A tenacity such as this seemed to her malignant. She had the feeling of one being pursued by some relentless and unscrupulous hunter. She heard him speaking through a cloud, and the only things really clear to her were the thoughts which she knew her mother must be thinking. She was frightened and ashamed, and the sullenness which is the refuge of most young people descended upon her like a darkness. Her face grew heavy and vacant, and she stared in front of her in the attitude of one who had nothing to do with what was passing. She did not believe altogether that he was in earnest: her immediate discomfort showed him as one who was merely seeking to get her into trouble with her mother in order to gratify an impotent rage. Twice or three times she flamed suddenly, went tiptoe to run from the room. A flash, and she would be gone from the place, down the stairs, into the streets, and away anywhere, and she tingled with the very speed of her vision; but she knew that one word from her mother would halt her like a barrier, and she hated the thought that he should be a witness to her obedience.

While he was speaking he did not look at Mary. He told Mrs. Makebelieve that he loved her daughter very much, and he begged her permission and favour for his suit. He gave her to understand that he and Mary had many opportunities of becoming acquainted, and were at one in this desire for matrimony.⁠—To Mrs. Makebelieve’s mind there recurred a conversation which she had once held with her daughter, when Mary was curious to know if a policeman was a desirable person for a girl to marry. She saw this question now, not as being prompted by a laudable, an almost scientific curiosity, but as the interested, sly speculation of a schemer hideously accomplished in deceit. Mary could see that memory flitting back through her mother’s brain, and it tormented her. Nor was her mother at ease⁠—there was no chair to sit upon; she had to stand and listen to all this while he spoke, more or less at his ease, from the bed. If she also had been sitting down she might have been mistress of her thoughts and able to deal naturally with the situation; but an easy pose is difficult when standing: her hands would fold in front of her, and the schoolgirl attitude annoyed and restrained her. Also, the man appeared to be in earnest in what he said. His words at the least, and the intention which drove them, seemed honourable. She could not give rein to her feelings without lapsing to a barbarity which she might not justify to herself even in anger, and might, indeed, blush to remember. Perhaps his chief disqualification consisted in a relationship to Mrs. O’Connor for which he could not justly be held to blame, and for which she sincerely pitied him. But this certainly was a disqualification never to be redeemed. He might leave his work, or his religion, or his country, but he could never quit his aunt, because he carried her with him under his skin; he was her with additions, and at times Mrs. Makebelieve could see Mrs. O’Connor looking cautiously at her through the policeman’s eyes; a turn of his forehead and she was there like a thin wraith that vanished and appeared again. The man was spoiled for her. He did not altogether lack sense, and the fact that he wished to marry her daughter showed that he was not so utterly beyond the reach of redemption as she had fancied.

Meanwhile, he had finished his statement as regarded the affection which he bore to her daughter and the suitability of their temperaments, and had hurled himself into an explanation of his worldly affairs, comprising his salary as a policeman, the possibility of promotion and the increased emoluments which would follow it, and the certain pension which would sustain his age. There were, furthermore, his parents, from whose decease he would reap certain monetary increments, and the deaths of other relatives from which an additional enlargement of his revenues might reasonably be expected. Indeed, he had not desired to speak of these matters at all, but the stony demeanour of Mrs. Makebelieve and the sullen aloofness of her daughter forced him, however reluctantly, to draw even ignoble weapons from his armoury. He had not conceived they would be so obdurate: he had, in fact, imagined that the elder woman must be flattered by his offer to marry her daughter, and when no evidence to support this was forthcoming he was driven to appeal to the cupidity which he believed occupies the heart of every middle-aged, hard-worked woman. But these statements also were received with a dreadful composure. He could have smashed Mrs. Makebelieve where she stood. Now and again his body strained to a wild, physical outburst, a passionate, red fury that would have terrified these women to their knees, while he roared their screams into thin whimpers as a man should. He did not even dare to stop speaking, and his efforts at an easy, good-humoured, half-careless presentation of his case was bitterly painful to him as it was to his auditors. The fact that they were both standing up unnerved him also⁠—the pleasant equality which should have formed the atmosphere of such an interview was destroyed from the first moment, and having once sat down, he did not like to stand up again. He felt glued to the bed on which he sat, and he felt also that if he stood up the tension in the room would so relax that Mrs. Makebelieve would at once break out into speech sarcastic and final, or her daughter might scream reproaches and disclaimers of an equal finality. At her he did not dare to look, but the corner of his eye could see her shape stiffened against the fireplace, an attitude so different from the pliable contours to which he was accustomed in her as almost to be repellent. He would have thanked God to find himself outside the room, but how to get out of it he did not know: his self-esteem forbade anything like a retreat without honour, his nervousness did not permit him to move at all, the anger which prickled the surface of his body and mind was held in check only by an instinct of fear as to what he might do if he moved, and so, with dreadful jocularity, he commenced to speak of himself, his personal character, his sobriety and steadiness⁠—of all those safe negations on which many women place reliance he spoke, and also of certain small vices which he magnified merely for the sake of talking, such as smoking, an odd glass of porter, and the shilling which, now and again, he had ventured upon a racehorse.

Mary listened to him for a while with angry intentness. The fact that she was the subject of his extraordinary discourse quickened at the first all her apprehensions. Had the matter been less important she would have been glad to look at herself in this strange position, and to savour, with as much detachment as was possible, the whole spirit of the adventure. But when she heard him, as she put it, “telling on her,” laying bare to her mother all the walks they had taken together, visits to restaurants and rambles through the streets and the parks, what he had said to her on this occasion and on that, and her remarks on such and such a matter, she could not visualise him save as a malignant and uncultivated person; and when he tacitly suggested that she was as eager for matrimony as he was, and so put upon her the horrible onus of rejecting him before a second person, she closed her mind and her ears against him. She refused to listen, although her perceptions admitted the trend of his speech. His words droned heavily and monotonously to her as through dull banks of fog. She made up her mind that if she were asked any questions by either of them she would not reply, and that she would not look at either of them; and then she thought that she would snap and stamp her feet and say that she hated him, that he had looked down on her because she worked for his aunt, that he had meanly been ashamed of and cut her because she was poor, that he had been going with another girl all the time he was going with her, and that he only pursued her in order to annoy her; that she didn’t love him, that she didn’t even like him⁠—that, in fact, she disliked him heartily. She wished to say all these things in one whirling outcry, but feared that before she had rightly begun she might become abashed, or, worse, might burst into tears and lose all the dignity which she meant to preserve in his presence for the purpose of showing to him in the best light exactly what he was losing.

But the big man had come to the end of his speech. He made a few attempts to begin anew on the desirability of such a union for both of them, and the happiness it would give him if Mrs. Makebelieve would come to live with them when they were married. He refused to let it appear that there was any doubt as to Mary’s attitude in the matter, for up to the moment he came to their door he had not doubted her willingness himself. Her late avoidance of him he had put down to mere feminine tactics, which leads on by holding off. The unwilling person he had been assured was himself⁠—he stooped to her, and it was only after a severe battle that he had been able to do it. The astonishment and disapproval of his relatives and friends at such a step were very evident to him, for to a man of his position and figure girls were cheap creatures, the best of them to be had for the mere asking. Therefore, the fact that this girl could be seriously rejecting his offer of marriage came upon him like red astonishment. He had no more to say, however, and he blundered and fumbled into silence.

For a moment or two the little room was so still that the quietness seemed to hum and buzz like an eternity. Then, with a sigh, Mrs. Makebelieve spoke.

“I don’t know at all,” said she, “why you should speak to me about this, for neither my daughter nor yourself have ever even hinted to me before that you were courting one another. Why Mary should keep such a secret from her own mother I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been cruel and frightened her, although I don’t remember doing anything that she could have against me of that sort: or, maybe, she didn’t think I was wise enough to advise her about a particular thing like her marriage, for, God knows, old women are foolish enough in their notions, or else they wouldn’t be slaving and grinding for the sake of their children the way they do be doing year in and year out, every day in the week, and every hour of the day. It isn’t any wonder at all that a child would be a liar and a sleeveen and a trampler of the roads with the first man that nods to her when her mother is a foolish person that she can’t trust. Of course, I wouldn’t be looking for a gentleman like yourself to mention the matter to me when I might be scrubbing out your aunt’s kitchen or her hall door, maybe, and you sitting in the parlour with the company. Sure, I’m only an old charwoman, and what does it matter at all what I’d be thinking, or whether I’d be agreeing or not to anything? Don’t I get my wages for my work, and what more does anybody want in the world? As for me going to live with you when you are married⁠—it was kind of you to ask me that; but it’s not the sort of thing I’m likely to do, for if I didn’t care for you as a stranger I’m not going to like you any better as my daughter’s husband. You’ll excuse me saying one thing, sir, but while we are talking we may as well be talking out, and it’s this⁠—that I never did like you, and I never will like you, and I’d sooner see my daughter married to anyone at all than to yourself. But, sure, I needn’t be talking about it; isn’t it Mary’s business altogether? and she’ll be settling it with you nicely, I don’t doubt. She’s a practised hand now at arranging things, like you are yourself, and it will do me good to be learning something from her.”

Mrs. Makebelieve took a cloth in her hand and walked over to the fireplace, which she commenced to polish.

The big man looked at Mary. It was incumbent on him to say something. Twice he attempted to speak, and each time, on finding himself about to say something regarding the weather, he stopped. Mary did not look at him; her eyes were fixed stubbornly on a part of the wall well away from his neighbourhood, and it seemed to him that she had made a vow to herself never to look at him again. But the utter silence of the room was unbearable. He knew that he ought to get up and go out, but he could not bring himself to do so. His self-love, his very physical strength, rebelled against so tame a surrender. One thought he gathered in from swaying vacuity⁠—that the timid little creature whom he had patronised would not find the harsh courage to refuse him point-blank if he charged her straitly with the question: and so he again assayed speech.

“Your mother is angry with us, Mary,” said he, “and I suppose she has good right to be angry; but the reason I did not speak to her before, as I admit I should have if I’d done the right thing, was that I had very few chances of meeting her, and never did meet her without some other person being there at the same time. I suppose the reason you did not say anything was that you wanted to be quite sure of yourself and of me too before you mentioned it. We have both done the wrong thing in not being open, but maybe your mother will forgive us when she knows we had no intention of hurting her, or of doing anything behind her back. Your mother seems to hate me: I don’t know why, because she hardly knows me at all, and I’ve never done her any harm or said a word against her. Perhaps when she knows me as well as you do she’ll change her mind: but you know I love you better than anyone else, and that I’d do anything I could to please you and be a good husband to you. What I want to ask you before your mother is⁠—will you marry me?”

Mary made no reply. She did not look or give the slightest sign that she had heard. But now it was that she did not dare to look at him. The spectacle of this big man badgered by her and by her mother, pleading to her, and pleading, as he and she well knew, hopelessly, would have broken her heart if she looked at him. She had to admire the good masculine fight he made of it. Even his tricks of word and tactic, which she instantly divined, moved her almost to tears; but she feared terribly that if she met his gaze she might not be able to resist his huge helplessness, and that she might be compelled to do whatever he begged of her even in despite of her own wishes.

The interval which followed his question weighed heavily upon them all. It was only broken by Mrs. Makebelieve, who began to hum a song as she polished the fire-grate. She meant to show her careless detachment from the whole matter, but in the face of Mary’s silence she could not keep it up. After a few moments she moved around and said:

“Why don’t you answer the gentleman, Mary?”

Mary turned and looked at her, and the tears which she had resisted so long swam in her eyes: although she could keep her features composed she had no further command over her tears.

“I’ll answer whatever you ask me, mother,” she whispered.

“Then, tell the gentleman whether you will marry him or not.”

“I don’t want to marry anyone at all,” said Mary.

“You are not asked to marry anyone, darling,” said Mrs. Makebelieve, “but someone⁠—this gentleman here whose name I don’t happen to know. Do you know his name?”

“No,” said Mary.

“My name⁠ ⁠…” began the policeman.

“It doesn’t matter, sir,” said Mrs. Makebelieve. “Do you want to marry this gentleman, Mary?”

“No,” whispered Mary.

“Are you in love with him?”

Mary turned completely away from him. “No,” she whispered again.

“Do you think you ever will be in love with him?”

She felt as a rat might when hunted to a corner. But the end must be very near; this could not last forever, because nothing can. Her lips were parched, her eyes were burning. She wanted to lie down and go asleep, and waken again laughing to say, “It was a dream.”

Her reply was almost inaudible. “No,” she said.

“You are quite sure? It is always better to be quite sure.”

She did not answer any more, but the faint droop of her head gave the reply her mother needed.

“You see, sir,” said Mrs. Makebelieve, “that you were mistaken in your opinion. My daughter is not old enough yet to be thinking of marriage and suchlike. Children do be thoughtless. I am sorry for all the trouble she has given you, and”—a sudden compunction stirred her, for the man was standing up now, and there was no trace of Mrs. O’Connor visible in him; his face was as massive and harsh as a piece of wall. “Don’t you be thinking too badly of us now,” said Mrs. Makebelieve, with some agitation; “the child is too young altogether to be asking her to marry. Maybe in a year or two⁠—I said things, I know, but I was vexed, and⁠ ⁠…”

The big man nodded his head and marched out.

Mary ran to her mother, moaning like a sick person, but Mrs. Makebelieve did not look at her. She lay down on the bed and turned her face to the wall, and she did not speak to Mary for a long time.