| CHAPTER VII. OF THE POWER OF HABITUATION
Time fled. For a week or two matters remained on the footing which Jane had established the first night. Jim seemed to acquiesce, not exactly graciously, but without further remonstrance or supplication. He seemed really to suffer.
From day to day Jane reproached herself as she went about those household duties which she assumed as if to atone for her defalcation in matters vastly more important. From day to day she said to herself that there was not, that there could not be any final escape; that she must give in. And from day to day she deferred doing so. A routine established itself. In the morning she rose and removed every trace of the fact that she had spent the night in her library before the maids came down at seven o'clock. She kept a suitcase under the lounge. At eight, she and Jim had breakfast; and in his new attitude, she found it an easy task to keep up appearances before the servants. Shortly before nine Jim left for his office; and she at once repaired upstairs to make the bed and dust. That done, she looked after her little room downstairs.
Her trunk had, of course, been taken to the bed-room; and its contents distributed between her dresser and the clothes-closet which also held Jim's things.
Thus, without having aroused suspicion on the part of the servants, she recovered her composure, hoping at last in secret that Jim would permanently accept the situation. Her parents called; and she succeeded in deceiving them.
Jim often looked at her in a strange way; but for awhile he said nothing, did not even allude to his disappointment. It was on his account that Jane took all the precautions she did take; for she tried to see his side and to do justice to it.
Apparently he realised that this was the case; for after two weeks he sought her one evening before he retired and said briefly, "I am going to move into the guest room to-morrow; the bed-room was furnished
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for you; and I do not intend to keep you out of it."
Jane, who had been sitting and reading, dropped her book and looked up. She felt much confused. "You are very good," she said at last. "Thanks."
Thus, at a time when they were just beginning to take their place in the social world of the town, this change was made. Jane explained to the chamber-maid that Mr. Forrest preferred to sleep in a room by himself; and between them, under her personal supervision, all his things were transferred to the empty room with its still rather bare furnishings.
Time fled, the summer went by. In every way Jane tried to make up to Jim for the one essential deficiency in his married life. In the early fall she began to entertain; and Jim could not help seeing that she did much for his sake. Her own circle was that of the professional men with their households: above all that of the Hendersons and the Aikins to which Stephen Carter, called "Uncle Carter" by the younger set, was an indispensable adjunct. Stephen Carter, she found, was in spite of his forty-five years essentially a member of the younger set who consulted him on all social difficulties. His existence was rather enigmatical to Jane; for, so far, he seemed to be absorbed by the merest trivialities of social life. He did nothing; but he was reputed to be enormously rich, having in his youth bought land in a certain district where, on the coming of the railway, a divisional town had grown up. It was said that, having thus "cashed in", he had at once retired from all practical pursuits. Jane, having always admired activity, was at first repelled by what she heard. But the more she saw of him, the more she felt attracted by his quaint humour and the directness with which he analysed certain problems.
But she did not, by any means restrict her hospitality to those whom she liked and invariably consulted Jim as to whom to call on and whom to invite. Thus the senior partner of his firm, Leslie Carter, a ponderous man who seemed to have no interest in life except money,
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and his ponderous wife who had aristocratic pretensions and rarely talked of anything but her friend, Lady So-and-so, and her cousin, Lady This-and-that, were almost courted by her and pronounced her to be the most charming acquisition the town had made for a long while. The third partner of the firm, too, Mr. McKay, a bachelor who was profoundly distasteful to her, became a regular habitué of her at-home's. He was a man of possibly thirty, round-faced, black-haired, sleek, making the impression of effeminacy, having an everlasting smile on his lips which Stephen Carter called "the Mona-Lisa smile".
Before the winter was half gone, Jane found herself carried along by a veritable whirl-wind of social activities into which she plunged with all the greater energy as it seemed to make things easier all around. Her leisure hours she used for reading, resuming the studies which had been broken off by that now almost incomprehensible affair with Jim.
Spring came around again; and soon it would be a year since she had been married. Relations between her and Jim were friendly, almost intimate. He fell to discussing business matters with her. She lent herself readily to that, feeling that she owed him every reparation for a great wrong she was doing to him. Railroads were being built all through the west; and the importance of Stockton was rapidly growing. Jim's plans were far-reaching. He laid them years ahead; he dreamt of bringing about a "boom" in the little city; and if he succeeded, he would see to it that in everything his firm was before-hand. Ann Aikins, her friend and college chum, now the wife of the medical superintendent of the mental hospital, told her one day when she spoke of not being able to afford this or that, that rumour had it that there was little she could not afford because Jim surely "was making money hand over fist".
One day, in the early part of June, Jim mentioned casually that he proposed to use his house at night for a business meeting which demanded absolute secrecy.
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He spoke doubtfully, as if it might be more than he had a right to expect. But Jane agreed at once. "Of course," she said. "Anything I can do to help?"
"Well," Jim said, "I don't know. It's rather a peculiar situation."
Jane smiled at him in the most encouraging way.
"It's this way," he said. "We want to talk business where nobody can hear us; where nobody can even see that we are together. I should want even the girls to be dismissed for the evening. There will be Leslie Carter and McKay, my partners; myself; Moffat, the banker; and a stranger."
"Who must not be known?"
"Exactly. He represents eastern capitalists; he is a millionaire himself. Mr. Rosebaum, an English Jew. But..." And Jim raised his finger to his lips. "It is, of course, known that he is in town; and half a dozen people are pricking their ears. We have agreed that we shall not even nod to him if we meet him in the street. We cannot possibly call at his hotel."
"Then," Jane said, "our house is the very place. We have no neighbours."
"Yes. But it is also essential that he should feel perfectly at home. We have a plan brewing which would mean much to us and the execution of which will depend largely on him since he controls the capital which we need to swing it. So long as the conference lasts, we must be left as if we were alone in the house. And yet, in order to send him back east sufficiently zealous in our interests, I should like tea to be served at nine o'clock, so that the whole thing ends like a mere social affair."
"I shall serve the tea myself," Jane said most obligingly. "I shall stay in the kitchen till you give me the sign."
Jim rose and laughed. "Well," he said, "that, of course, would solve the whole problem if it isn't asking too much."
"Not at all. I am glad to do my share."
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"Thanks," Jim said. "It may mean hundreds of thousands to us; perhaps to me personally."
Jane felt immensely relieved, while she made the preparations for this meeting, that she was able to do something which, apparently, meant so much to him. She even felt that in all but one point she was a model wife.
When, at night, the callers arrived one by one, Jim himself opened the door to them. The light outside and the small hall light between the two doors were turned off. All downstairs windows were heavily curtained and closed. Inside the house, nobody was visible. It was so quiet that, apart from the men who sat closeted in Jane's "library", not a soul seemed to be within the walls of the building.
The signal for Jane's entrance came a few minutes past nine o'clock. Jane had taken a small arm-chair into the kitchen where she had been reading. She rose and went through the dining room into the hall.
The men were just emerging from the library. She knew Leslie Carter, Mr. McKay, and Mr. Moffat. All three came forward to greet her. Mr. Carter had many of the peculiarities of his older brother, though in a less pronounced way; he was more active; his voice more modulated. He bowed to Jane with a jerk of his enormous torso. Mr. McKay was, as ever, rubbing his soft, womanish hands together and smiling his mysterious smile. Mr. Moffat bowed with his usual downward look as if everything that anybody else did were a trifle childish, a trifle below his notice; though there was tolerance in the curve of his smooth-shaven lips.
The fourth man in this quartette of guests was, to Jane's surprise - for from Jim's words "an English Jew" she had expected a man with a poor physique - a tall, myopic man of magnificent appearance, exceedingly good-looking with his black, curly beard and his impulsive motions which, however, were intensely Jewish. He might be thirty
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years old. When, on being introduced to the lady of the house, he bowed, a large, white, well-shaped hand shot out with a gesture of the most hearty greeting. He seemed to be so struck with Jane's appearance that his smile came a moment too late.
Jane included all of them in an inviting motion. "Will you take a cup of tea?" And she led the way to the dining room where she sat down at the table and began to pour tea while Jim went to the buffet where a number of platters were provided with sandwiches prepared by Jane herself.
None of the men sat down; Mr. Carter and Mr. Moffat drifted together in the far corner of the room; Jim, as if intentionally, drew Mr. McKay aside to the door communicating with the hall. For Mr. Rosebaum, in taking his cup of tea from Jane, had remained by her side. Having helped himself to a sandwich, he offered the platter to her.
"No, thanks," Jane said, turning slightly on her chair so as half to face him while she sweetened her tea. "You are from Montreal, Mr. Rosebaum?"
"Yes," he replied as if he were saying what must make her intensely happy, yet not without a trace of self-derision at his impulsiveness. "Have you ever been there, Mrs. Forrest?"
"No. I have spent the greater part of four years at Toronto. But that is as far east as I have been. We are provincial here in the west.
"You must come. Mrs. Rosebaum would be delighted."
Jane nodded and smiled. Every motion of this tall, engaging, and apparently highly cultivated Jew was subtle flattery; and she enjoyed it. "You have children?" she asked, half as a smiling rebuke to the gallantry of his attitude.
"Three," he said, imparting to his voice an exaggerated expression of thorough disgust. In fact, whatever he said, he exaggerated, with a note of persiflage which saved his utterance from the slightest
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suspicion of vulgarity. He had a few pronounced peculiarities; and he deprecated them by this very mise-en-scene. He seemed to take nothing seriously, least of all himself. "They are all girls, by the way," he added. "The oldest is three."
For a moment Jane did not know how to take the implied slur on her sex, whether to laugh or, following his lead, to act indignation. Deliberately she took refuge in triviality. "Children are most charming at that age."
He, as if accepting her rebuke, seemed for once to speak seriously.
"Are they? Well, Verna, the oldest, is very interesting. She does not talk yet."
Jane was completely duped by his tone; a shadow of sympathy flitted over her face.
But the tall Jew, looking down at her, whispered in a voice shot with laughter, "Ah, we are so in hopes she will turn out an idiot. That would be interesting now, don't you agree?"
Jane gasped indignantly. "I don't believe a word of what you say!"
He laughed good-naturedly. "You will have to form your own opinion about that!"
She looked sideways up at him, smiling. He was the undoubtedly most sophisticated person she had ever met; and he looked as if he were created to take all the good things of life without being burdened with a conscience.
Since he was reaching for another sandwich, she asked, "Another cup of tea, Mr. Rosebaum?"
"Well, yes, I will." He handed her his cup. "These sandwiches of yours are exquisite. I must get Mrs. Rosebaum to write you for the recipe."
"You are just trying to flatter me," Jane said, almost irritated by his utter triviality which she felt to be assumed.
He bent over her, ever so slightly. "Have you found me out? Mrs. Rosebaum says it is one of my weaknesses. I always tell her it is a
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sign of good taste; for I never flatter a woman who would not make the absurdest flattery sound like an understatement."
Jane smiled. "But you are flattering my cookery only."
"You don't praise the sun to his face; you say that he makes the grain to grow," he replied with a bold look of his myopic eyes, dangling his glasses by a broad ribbon. Again, the laughing exaggeration of the thing deprived it of all offensiveness; the travesty was used to deprive the words of all meaning and yet left enough to make it appear that the speaker would not thus fence with everybody.
Jim's eyes never swerved from the group.. He was standing in the door, talking to Mr. McKay. Messrs. Moffat and Carter formed a third group, whispering in the corner. Jane was aware of a conspiracy to leave the Jew to her.
"Apropos," he said suddenly, "I am a bibliophile; and we were sitting in a lady's library; I was indiscreet enough to look about among your books. Madame parle français?" He pronounced the French words with the exaggerated accent of an English schoolboy.
"A little."
"You must come to Montreal! The French are most charming people!" And, laughing as if he wished to make it clear that he was saying what one expected from the man whom he was impersonating, he added, "At first I thought you were French yourself."
"Now you are obvious," Jane said; but she could not resist his laugh.
"The one unpardonable conversational sin, according to Oscar."
Everybody, except perhaps Mr. Moffat, was listening.
Jane could not defend herself against an insidious liking for this man who stood by her side. Everything about him testified to a supreme zest in life. His conspicuously immaculate linen, his clothes which looked as if they had never been worn before, the flawless skin of his full, handsome face, with red lips shining through the curly, black moustache, that carefully brushed beard itself - it all breathed
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freshness and morning relish. The most trivial thing he said sounded as if spoken out of a fund of knowledge and culture vastly greater than that of any person she had ever spoken to. All cultivated people she had met in her life knew certain doubts and hesitancies; this man seemed to brush doubt aside and simply to live.
The guests were putting their cups down. Jim turned to a side-board and produced a tray with three or four flasks; a second tray held half a dozen small glasses, as many tumblers, and a tall, narrow pitcher filled with iced water. Jane rose; and the Jew declined by a motion of his hand; the other men approached the table.
Jane led the way back into the hall; Mr. Rosebaum followed. His manner changed. He held himself almost aloof.
"I happened to notice a little volume of verse on the lounge of the library," he said. "You are fond of poetry?"
"I am."
"Any poetry? I protest in advance against the imputation of impertinence."
"Well..."
"The volume I saw was Hugo. As I said, I am indiscreet. I looked at it. Do you draw the line at modernism?"
"Not exactly. But truth to say, I don't know much of it. My reading has never gone much beyond the romantics."
"Ah!" he exclaimed. "But modern poetry, at least in France, begins where you left off, with the Parnassiens. Would you permit me to send you a little volume which I prize highly?"
Jane nodded acceptance.
"Thanks," he said simply.
At this moment the other men appeared from the dining room.
Mr. Rosebaum bowed to take leave; he resumed his former attitude of exaggerated gallantry. "I regret that I have to board a night-train and that my secretary is waiting for me at this moment. I came to discuss business. I have found pleasure."
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When he turned to go, Jim followed him quickly into the cloak room. Messrs. Moffat and McKay followed more slowly, bowing to Jane as they passed. Mr. Carter approached to speak to her.
"Mrs. Forrest," he said, "I must thank you for having placed your house at our disposal. You have done us a service. Your husband, by the way, is a wonder. I don't know what we'd do without him."
A few minutes later Jim returned from the cloak room, visibly elated.
Jane smiled at him. "Was it very important?"
"I should say so," he said. "It will mean hundreds of thousands to the firm. It will mean twenty-five thousand a year to me in the future."
It meant much more to him, had he known. For Jane, during the next few weeks, felt strangely troubled. She had, so far, known only the wish that things between her and Jim might remain as they were. Now she wished that the inevitable were over.
She could not fully explain it to herself. But in some curious way this meeting with the magnificent Jew, as she called him half mockingly in her thoughts, changed her attitude. She felt invaded by strange doubts as to the justice of all she had felt with regard to her marriage, beginning with her disquietudes of a year ago. She also kept repeating to herself that Jim, during the past year, had been extraordinarily "decent" to her.
Once or twice, during the weeks that followed, she sat and cried; and at last she came to a heroic resolution.
It was carried out on the day of the first anniversary of her wedding. Jim mentioned, at noon, that he would rent a car to run up to Fisher Landing on business. It would be only a mile or two out of his way to pass her parents' place; if she cared to come along, he would set her down there and pick her up again two or three hours later.
"That would be nice," Jane said. "Is it imperative that you should
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go today?"
"No. But the weather seems settled; and the roads are good."
"You might call for me. It won't put you out if I cannot go?"
"Not at all," he said, rising from the table. "I'll call at three sharp."
Jane knew that Jim had his reasons for often taking her to the place of her parents and for welcoming their visits at his own house. He counted on the silent pressure brought to bear on her by tacit assumptions. She even surmised that he divined why she sometimes hesitated about going. Whatever she averred as her reasons, was accepted as the merest pretext.
When, at three o'clock sharp - for he was exceedingly punctual - Jim entered the house, Jane was neither in hall nor drawing room. A brief glance into her library showed it to be empty. He went to the kitchen.
"Oh, Mr. Forrest," the chambermaid said, for she had not heard him, and his entrance startled her. "Mrs. Forrest left word to tell you that she is suffering from the head-ache. She has lain down."
Jim returned to the library; but she was not there. Of course, it did not matter. She did not wish to go; she might actually have gone to bed; or she might have gone out. If she had gone to bed, her head-ache possibly was no pretext. The door to the bed-room, in that case would be locked; thus he reflected with an irony which by this time had almost lost its bitterness. He would make sure.
A few quick steps took him upstairs. The door was wide open. He was on the point of turning back; she had gone out, after all; and the head-ache was a pretext! But that moment he thought he saw a movement in the room. A number of thoughts, a sudden confusion of feelings flashed through his mind. He went on with quick steps.
The room was half darkened, the side-curtains being drawn; and the bed was occupied.
He controlled his voice. "You are not well?"
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"I am not ill," her voice said as if from nowhere. "My head-ache was a pretext."
Jim stood irresolute for a moment . Then he quickly closed the door and turned the key.--
Time fled. The second summer went by. Jane had become indifferent to herself. Strange to say, if she had so far not shown any great eagerness to keep up a close bond with her parents, she now showed what amounted almost to an aversion; even her father felt in the change of her attitude an estrangement. Throughout the summer Jane did not call at the hill farm; Mr. Atkinson's calls in town were less frequent and shorter.
As a matter of fact, Jane bore a grudge against life and herself. She had done what she had hated to do, before and during and after the doing; she had given herself to a man because he happened to be her husband. And in some almost incomprehensible way the fact had changed her. She did not, for instance, take any longer the slightest interest in her husband's business ventures. There was no longer any reason why she should feign an interest which at bottom she did not share; there was nothing any longer for which she owed him a compensation. She now often spoke curtly to him; she treated him coolly. Yet, at rare intervals, they were led together, in the way of many other marital unions. Jane felt degraded.
In Jim, too, the change was not for the better. So far, he had always felt that he stood on probation. He had watched himself, more so in fact than during the last weeks before his marriage. He ceased to do so ; he let himself go. He often used vulgarisms in his speech; and Jane resented it fiercely. Perhaps she scowled; and he sneered at her. These things would not have had the effect they had if Jane had been able to take things in general somewhat less passionately. But the truth of the matter was that something was revived in her that had been very active during the last few weeks before her marriage, some fundamental suspicion of Jim which she could not have
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defined.
Time fled; and summer went by. As autumn came in, she threw herself into the
social whirl which, this time was complicated by new activities. The boor war
was at its height. The "Canadian Yeomanry" contingent was organised; the Stockton
battalion was formed; the ladies of the town united in sewing and knitting circles.
Jane's eyes were sharpened. She began to observe this world of the little city with a critical, an almost cynical look. And the ever recurring verdict was that most of these people lived the way she and her husband lived.
One day, during the early winter, Jim asked her to invite a certain man, a member of the trading class, to one of her functions; it struck her as significant of the change that had come over her that she declined almost sharply to do so without thinking about it. As to justify herself, she added, in order to place the issue clear-cut before him, "Business and social life must be kept distinct."
"That," Jim said, "was not the way you looked at it a year ago."
Jane shrugged her shoulders.
Then, suddenly, it became an indubitable fact that she was going to be a mother. It was not a great joy to her. Her life was lived, that was all. There was nothing ahead except a dull domesticity.
Time fled; and she had to withdraw from the social life of the town. And, as summer came again , a girl was born in the house on Albert Avenue. Jane looked upon the child with a peculiar mixture of feelings. As a human being potentially like herself it was entitled to love and care; she would give the care; but she was not sure whether she had it in her to give the love. Strange to say, when a young woman was to be engaged to look after the child, she advertised in a Montreal paper for a French governess; and a French governess, accordingly, it was.
Perhaps this had something to do with the sequel of that night, a year ago, when the "magnificent Jew" had been at the house. Some time
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during the winter Jane had received a brief note from Mr. Rosebaum.
"My dear Mrs. Forrest," it read. "You will think that I have forgotten my promise to send you a certain little volume of French verse which I prize highly. I have not forgotten it; but I was unable to find here, in this city, an edition which I should consider worthy of being read by you. I have had to send to Paris for it. It will go forward to you from there . I hope you will like it when it arrives. Yours sincerely, Charles Rosebaum."
The book arrived in May, a month or so before the birth of the child. It was beautifully printed on hand-made paper and bound in a gorgeous cover of in-laid leather, the prevailing colour being a deep, almost black and nocturnal purple. In the right-hand lower corner of the cover the initials J.A.F. were stamped in old-English majuscules. The text was Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. She glanced through it, handling it diffidently, and then put it away, placing it in the centre of a small library table in her room. She was not, at present, in any mood to read.
Jim, that was apparent, had "settled down." With the advent of the child all things seemed to have taken on an air of finality. Although he sometimes resented the attitude of his wife on some minor point, he seemed, on the whole, to take it for granted that she was entirely his partisan. That he did so, proved that he was satisfied with the relationship between Jane and himself; that somehow it was what he understood by marriage. This Jane observed with a sort of wide-eyed wonder. He had had her body, she said to herself; he seemed to think that that meant to have her.
Worse still, Jane felt trapped; more so even than she had felt trapped during the weeks preceding her marriage which, by this time, had taken on the quality of what was ancient history to her inner life. When he came to her in an amorous mood, she felt repulsed. But she could not deny herself; for to deny herself would have seemed equivalent to wooing him; it would have raised an ardency which she
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began to dread more than her own resignation and submission. Yet, sometimes she was in doubt which conduct lowered herself more in her own esteem. But the soul is forever alert to anything that will help to save its self-respect: she told herself that her maiden pudency, her chastity was simply transferred to different spheres.
At the same time she was aware of the fact that physically she was developing in a new way. She had always been beautiful since she had been grown-up; and she had known it. But it had been a cool sort of beauty; it had lacked piquancy for the average man. This peculiar and almost indefinable attraction became hers now. Occasionally she was troubled by it. She knew that, when she walked through the streets, people turned to have another look at her. She wondered whether the peculiar relationship that existed between Jim and herself and which, on his part, and therefore necessarily on hers, was a purely sexual or carnal one had anything to do with it, in some recondite way. It came to the point where she treated him almost with irony.
And time went by.
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