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Authors: C S Forester
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year dragged more heavily and more painfully than did the one before; To Agatha’s tortured conscience it seemed as if retribution was being exacted from her for her vile sin. To her it was natural that a lifetime of pain and squalor should be the consequence of a five days’ madness. Fine sewing sank steadily in value; private customers fell away—the economic causes of a falling birth-rate and marriage-rate broke her on their wheel. There was not so much demand nowadays for baby clothes or wedding dresses, and simplicity was creeping into fashion even in such garments as were ordered of her. The shops which had first bought her output had grown larger and had amalgamated, and obscurely she was squeezed out from supplying them. Competition was growing fiercer, and money was scarcer in the 1900s than it had been in the 1890s. Agatha’s earnings grew smaller, and there were often weeks when she had to draw upon her hoarded capital to meet Mrs. Rodgers’s weekly bill. She was finding less work and smaller pay for what she did.
Nor was this all. Physical pain, that last exaction by a relentless deity in payment for her sin, had come into her life: Sometimes it was slight, and Agatha could seemingly set it aside unnoticed. But at the other times it was sharper, more intense, drastic. It was not a fair pain. It did not come upon her when she was expecting it and braced against it. When she stood up from her chair and held herself ready for it, it did not come, but the instant she relaxed to go on with what she was doing it fell upon her and rent her with agony. It was a fierce, horrible pain.
It had begun to come upon her when Albert was eleven, when he had grown into a thickset freckled boy with unruly hair just like his father’s. He had done more than his masters had expected of him by winning a scholarship and proceeding from the Council School to a Secondary School. Agatha’s careful supervision of his studies thus bore its first fruit. She was maternally proud of his progress even while she had to reconcile herself to the fact that he was only an ordinary little boy—just like what his father must have been. Agatha, with a growing obsession of sin, tried hard not to think of Albert’s father, but Albert reminded her of him at every turn, overwhelming her with conscience-stricken yearning for something unknown—certainly not for further contact with the Commander, even though she had followed his progress step by step up the Navy List, and had watched apprehensively the reports of the combined expedition in China in 1900 (wherein Commander Saville-Samarez had led a portion of the Naval Brigade), and had even prayed that he would not be damagingly involved in the great Fisher-Beresford feud which was then threatening the Navy with disruption.
Agatha still was up to date in naval affairs. She followed all the twists and turns of the controversy between Lord Charles and Sir John; she appreciated the trend of the new construction so that the details of the Dreadnought , when they were published, roused no surprise in her; she thoroughly understood the import of Fisher’s new policy at the Admiralty whereby ships were scrapped in scores and the Navy recalled to home waters until nine of its guns out of ten were pointing at Germany.
But all that, of course, was before pain came upon her. Pain, and the pressing need of seeking more and more work, began to distract her from this life study. She tried to accept the pain in the philosophic spirit with which she had accepted all the other buffetings of Fate. Pain was all a woman should expect, especially a woman who had sinned as grievously and unrepentantly as she. Pain was natural to a woman at her time of life. Pain—the grinding, lacerating spasms of agony brought sweat down her drawn face and made her gasp and choke even as she was trying to explain it to herself. She lost her smooth, placid good looks. Her cheeks fell inwards and her mouth compressed itself into a
Nor was this all. Physical pain, that last exaction by a relentless deity in payment for her sin, had come into her life: Sometimes it was slight, and Agatha could seemingly set it aside unnoticed. But at the other times it was sharper, more intense, drastic. It was not a fair pain. It did not come upon her when she was expecting it and braced against it. When she stood up from her chair and held herself ready for it, it did not come, but the instant she relaxed to go on with what she was doing it fell upon her and rent her with agony. It was a fierce, horrible pain.
It had begun to come upon her when Albert was eleven, when he had grown into a thickset freckled boy with unruly hair just like his father’s. He had done more than his masters had expected of him by winning a scholarship and proceeding from the Council School to a Secondary School. Agatha’s careful supervision of his studies thus bore its first fruit. She was maternally proud of his progress even while she had to reconcile herself to the fact that he was only an ordinary little boy—just like what his father must have been. Agatha, with a growing obsession of sin, tried hard not to think of Albert’s father, but Albert reminded her of him at every turn, overwhelming her with conscience-stricken yearning for something unknown—certainly not for further contact with the Commander, even though she had followed his progress step by step up the Navy List, and had watched apprehensively the reports of the combined expedition in China in 1900 (wherein Commander Saville-Samarez had led a portion of the Naval Brigade), and had even prayed that he would not be damagingly involved in the great Fisher-Beresford feud which was then threatening the Navy with disruption.
Agatha still was up to date in naval affairs. She followed all the twists and turns of the controversy between Lord Charles and Sir John; she appreciated the trend of the new construction so that the details of the Dreadnought , when they were published, roused no surprise in her; she thoroughly understood the import of Fisher’s new policy at the Admiralty whereby ships were scrapped in scores and the Navy recalled to home waters until nine of its guns out of ten were pointing at Germany.
But all that, of course, was before pain came upon her. Pain, and the pressing need of seeking more and more work, began to distract her from this life study. She tried to accept the pain in the philosophic spirit with which she had accepted all the other buffetings of Fate. Pain was all a woman should expect, especially a woman who had sinned as grievously and unrepentantly as she. Pain was natural to a woman at her time of life. Pain—the grinding, lacerating spasms of agony brought sweat down her drawn face and made her gasp and choke even as she was trying to explain it to herself. She lost her smooth, placid good looks. Her cheeks fell inwards and her mouth compressed itself into a
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